Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Bears

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

In this week’s Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand one of America’s grandest animals, the Grizzly Bear. Emblazoned on the California flag and seal, what does this giant predator have to say about the American people? David discovers that animals kill about 400 Americans every year… how many of those deaths involve bears? To get some perspective on this often misunderstood creature, David sits down with journalist and newspaper editor Rob Chaney, who wrote an incredible book about Grizzlies called “The Grizzly in the Driveway”. What are the main misconceptions about the Grizzly bear and why does the population of Grizzlies in major parts of America still face being wiped out? Why can other countries co-exist with this giant beast yet America is still struggling? David also learns about how to best protect yourself from a Grizzly attack, what happens to the human body in a Grizzly attack, and why despite their size this spectacular megafauna still tends to come out the loser when it comes to humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, and New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now, one of my favourite things about New Zealand is that we don't have animals that can kill you. Well, we do. There's the occasional shark attack, and we have a couple of venomous spiders, but it's nothing like our neighbour Australia, which has a tonne of deadly stuff. They've got snakes, spiders, stingrays, freshwater and saltwater crocs, a load of sharks,

cassowaries, stingrays and stonefish. New Zealand has none of that stuff. So one of the weirdest things about coming from New Zealand to America is remembering that there are deadly animals everywhere. I was walking the other day in Los Angeles and there was a giant rattlesnake on the path. Animals kill about 400 Americans every year and injure about 47,000 more. I mean it's not the most dangerous place in the world. Last year in Africa hippos killed about 500 people. But 400 deaths is still a lot. The most animal related deaths happen in Texas, followed by California, then Florida. A lot of that has to do with those places having a lot of people. Since 1970, as far as the bigger animals go, snakes have killed 57 people, sharks another 57,

and at the number one spot, grizzly bears, killing 70 people. And it's the grizzly bear I'm curious about this week. I want to know how they're getting on with the human population. So make sure you've got bear spray in your pocket and don't leave a bunch of raw meat lying around, because this is the pretty broad topic for Flightless Bird, Grizzly Bears. We don't have them in New Zealand. There are a lot of them here in America. I think it's okay for a topic, right? I think it's okay.

Do they exist in other places as well? They do. Okay. So it's not strictly an American thing, but I just think I'm so fascinated by the fact you can go camping in America. Is that what you call it, camping? Yeah, I hate camping. Camping.

And there could be a bear. Yes. That's outrageous to me. In New Zealand, you can go camping. Nothing can kill you. Nothing can go wrong. In America, it's the opposite. Maybe I'll like camping in New Zealandaland you can go camping nothing can kill you nothing can go wrong in america it's the opposite maybe i'll like camping in new zealand i can try it what don't you like about

camping it's not comfortable it's itchy you have to make your own food which i got really so ryan hansen shout out ryan hansen he had a camping birthday party for his 40th birthday so we all went and it was really fun but but it wasn't really fun. It wasn't. We call that not fun. Yeah. You didn't have a good time. No, I wanted to so bad.

And I got really excited. I bought all this stuff for it because I love buying stuff. And I got camping mugs. I got a little stove, a little chair for the front. A little sleeping bag, a little tent. Well, that's where I made mistakes. I did get a sleeping bag and I did get a mattress in quotes. It was really just.

Blow up mattress or. I should have. I have one. I didn't bring it. It's so dumb because I wanted to be a really legit camper. So I got the camping pad and it's just like this thin. It's barely more than the tent floor. It's nothing.

I think it's for people who backpack. Oh, no. And this wasn't backpacking. And how did you sleep? Horrible. Horrible. I didn't sleep. We were also right by the highway.

So it was a nightmare. But I did treat myself to a night at San Ysidro after. So it was worth it. What is that? San Ysidro? San Ysidro at San Ysidro after. So it was worth it. What is that? San Ysidro? San Ysidro. San Ysidro. It's a very luxurious hotel.

So you sort of had to bring yourself back into equilibrium. I did. You sort of were so out of sorts. You had to go way back the other direction. So when you were camping, were bears ever a concern? Always. Yeah, they're always around. They're scary.

And we had a person on Armchair Anonymous when we had our episode on, have you ever fought a wild animal? We had a bear story. It was really intense. That's nuts. Yeah, things do get crazy. I think what I find interesting and where my documentary this week goes is the way humans are forced to interact with the bears and bears are forced to interact with humans. And it's obviously happening more and more as humans build more and more. I went to somewhere in America, there's a big lake, and there were houses around, and when you put your rubbish out,

you had to lock it in a lockbox, because if you didn't, the bears would come and get it. And I just find it really interesting that bears are lumbering into human populations and what that relationship says about us and what we do about it yeah because it is odd have you ever seen a bear in the wild never okay so i think for a part two for this episode i've got some leads from doing this episode and i want to go into yellowstone and have a sort of a close encounter with a grizzly and the audio you've seen me recording audio, getting all the audio, the foley.

I'm going to do that with a grizzly and it's going to be such a good episode. You're not allowed to do it. We are not sponsoring that. Oh, be careful. No, you won't.

You don't know. This is the thing I have with dogs. You don't know. You sure you want to do this? Listen, animals, you can't just act like they're going to be

nice to you and that you can predict that they're not gonna you never know dax did a movie with a bear bart the bear he very famous bear very well-trained bear and bart bit dax and that did not happen that did not happen but bart totally attacked the trainers several times okay and they had little bats and you're like get real that thing does not give a fuck about a not at all mini bat yeah it was in new zealand too seriously first time a bear had ever been in new zealand bart the bear grizzly bear oh my god yeah oh yeah yeah i heard it was at Barton the Bear without a cat in New Zealand. Hi, I'm Glenn.

Stop. I'm running audio. Okay. Oh, my God. Listen, my translation of that is that it bit Dax, and so you cannot predict when a bear will bite. You are not to go into Yellowstone and get bit. No, and that is a problem that obviously Yellowstone's having with tourists getting

a little bit too excited. The problem with what we do as humans, right? We anthropomorphize everything. Bears are friendly and there was that amazing footage, horrific to watch. Nothing bad happens, but you just feel on the edge of your seat. don't know where it was but there's an incredible video of a seal a really big seal and it was just sat there and a parent was taking a video of their kid as they went over and jumped on the back of the seal oh no and just sort of doing a cute video not going on this thing could tear that child apart we put all our human emotions on animals and if we think they're cute and fat and friendly then we like go and pop our kid on top i feel like you did this episode specifically to torture dax because he has all these stories he has a story about a seal biting his hand because he was high okay bears part two we're gonna get dax on so yeah something i find

interesting about this country is that there are deadly things everywhere. Bears represent the biggest of that. The snake on the path, I was hiking. Every day I walk up Griffith Park. It's a great little hike. There was just, I'd say it was a meter and a half long rattlesnake there. It's my nightmare. Rattling, sitting in the sun. Some people weren't walking past because they were too scared.

I was brave and ran past. You did? Yeah, it was really a brave moment for me. But just the fact these animals exist that could kill us at any moment. Don't know why that's funny. That could kill us at any moment. They're all out there, aren't they, here in America? And that's not something we have in New Zealand. Can I put you in a tough position? Let's say we were hiking together. I'm very scared of snakes. So how would you have protected me in this situation?

I would have demonstrated how to run past the snake. And then you would have seen me do that and seen that it was okay. And then you could have done the same thing. Okay. So you would have been on the other side of the snake. Yes. As a test, I'm sacrificing potentially my life for you to show you that it is safe and it's okay. I took that risk. I survived. Therefore, you know it's safe and it's okay i took that risk i survived

therefore you know it's safe to come past that's not the right answer yeah rob what would you do to protect me i'd kill it thank you no see that is so american i gotta step in there that is the most american answer and i would argue the problem with humans in America, we just want to kill things. Well, dangerous things. Absolutely. That is a rattlesnake having a beautiful time relaxing in the sun. Next minute, it's been clobbered to death by a man in a baseball cap while a woman shrieks next to him. Okay. Yeah.

But seriously, was that a real option, killing it? That you'd be okay with that? I thought you would be horrified that this poor, it would be awful, this poor snake would be lying there dead on the path. A beautiful piece of nature that I've just savagely whacked over the head. I thought that would be a no-go zone. I don't want it to die, but I don't want to get bit. Okay, best case scenario Is I guess you call

A ranger You stand in front and block And then you call someone Someone to remove the snake But if the snake is attacking I want you to kill it If it is attacking me or if it's like Getting up you know how they get up

And stick their little sticky tongue They Yeah, and they rattle, don't they? They rattle. The sticky tongue comes out. Yeah. At that point, I want you to kill it. I do. I'd distract it maybe, or I'd give it a little thump. But I still don't think, I'd really struggle to kill a rattlesnake.

I really appreciate that about you. But I would like to think that you wouldn't get bitten and die. That would be awful as well. I'd feel a certain level of guilt if that happened. I would hope so. And Rob would be like, you should have killed it. I'm like, oh, but the poor snake. But this is about bears.

Go on. And I wanted to sort of find out what other Americans had experiences with bears or not. Because I don't know if it's common. This is what people had to say about bears. Have you ever seen a grizzly bear in the United States? No, but I've seen a lot of black bears. I grew up outside Seattle.

There's a lot of black bears in Washington. Any advice on what to do if I ever encounter a bear? Growing up, they always said that you're supposed to not make eye contact, get super big, and then back away slowly. And never get between a mother and its cub. Back up very slowly. And don't panic and run because they're faster than you is the word. Black bears usually won't bother you.

Grizzly bears and brown bears, you should carry bear spray where they're around. If one attacks, bear spray, cover up, cover your head and neck. Have you ever seen a bear in person no but my husband once saw a mountain goat when he was camping and apparently a good way to like distract mountain goats from charging you is you have to urinate so he and his friend had to pee and then the mountain goats came and were like interested in their pee and then they hightailed it out of there so they didn't get killed by mountain goats. This is the most amazing advice.

Number one, I didn't even know mountain goats were a dangerous thing in America. They're like big and they will charge you if they feel like you're encroaching on their territory. So if you're a safe distance away, it's good. If that rattlesnake came out, I would wee in front of it. Okay. And that might distract it. But apparently that does work with goats. If they're charging, just have a little wee and they'll stop to sniff it while you get away or climb a tree.

Okay. I mean, that is good information. I don't pee very much. I'm very dehydrated. So I don't think I'm in good shape if I run into a goat. So you just need to try and get out of there and hope for the best but yeah a lot of people have seen bears around it seems like most americans have been oh yeah i've seen a brown bear or i've seen a black bear i've seen a grizzly bear yeah i've never seen one

have you seen one um you don't remember have you seen a bear a big bear and that's somehow memory that's not coming to you this giant animal what i have uh you've seen a bit in the wild and then also at like one of those weird little oh there's a sanctuary sort of rescue but is it a rescue yeah you never know it was just like driving on the highway in colorado okay so it wasn't too memorable memorable no okay well i knew very little about bears but this is what i learned i feel like over the years bears have meant a lot of different things to different people. For some, they're Yogi Bear, the first big breakout animated cartoon character who roamed Jellystone National Park with his buddy Boo Boo.

For others, the bear is the creature they saw in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, who tore bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell to shreds, the whole thing captured on tape. I grew up in this town. It's about 100,000 people on the west side of Montana. Rob Chaney knows bears. He's the managing editor of the Missoulian newspaper in Montana, and he's written an incredible book about America's relationship to the bear called The Grizzly in the Driveway. Over his career in journalism and writing in Montana, Rob's grown to love the grizzly, a subspecies of the brown bear, which is a chunkier version of other bears like the black bear.

In all of my childhood, I spent a lot of time in Glacier National Park, which is just a couple hours to the north of here, which was one of the last redoubts of the grizzly bear back when it was put on the endangered species list back in 1975. Before 1975, it was open season on grizzlies. See, back in 1800, there were about 50,000 grizzly bears scattered across all 18 western states. Europeans arrived and a bounty program was set up to shoot poison and trap bears who were seen as a threat to cattle and humans. We took 50,000 grizzly bears just in the area between the Canadian and the Mexican And pretty much between about 1870 and 1930, we wiped them out. There was a federal policy to eliminate most predators from the areas that sack full of strychnine-laden beef or bait and just leave it around for every coyote and wolf and mountain lion and jaguar and grizzly bear

and eagle and pet dog and anything else that ran into it to get them off the range. And we were very successful at it. By 1975, 50,000 grizzly bears had been cut back to only 700 across the 48 contiguous states. They roamed only 2% of their former range. I never heard of that term contiguous states before, but apparently it's the 48 states between Canada and Mexico, excluding Alaska, even though Alaska is attached to the continent. So weird. The result is that unless you were in Mexico, excluding Alaska, even though Alaska is attached to the continent. So weird.

The result is that unless you were in Alaska, Americans didn't really see grizzly bears anymore. Back then, though, it was a ghost. If you ever saw a bear all summer long, and I worked in the park as a boat captain on a tour boat and saw a grizzly twice in two summers of full-time working. You know, you didn't see them, you didn't encounter them, so you sort of invented what they were and what they meant. And to many, grizzlies represented something mysterious, something to be feared, because when you did hear about them, it was because of something scary. But Glacier National Park is the night of the grizzlies. The famous book about a bizarre incident in 1967 when two grizzly bears killed two women in two separate campgrounds on the same

night. Back in the late 60s, two women, both 19 years old, were killed by grizzlies in Glacier National Park, which is about a six-hour drive north of Yellowstone. Julie Hougeson was visiting from San Diego and was attacked at midnight. Then in a completely separate attack, Michelle Coons woke up to a grizzly sniffing her at four in the morning. Other campers around her scattered to escape, but Michelle's sleeping bag zipper stuck. Trapped in her sleeping bag, she was dragged into the woods. This is her friend speaking in a documentary in 2010. She screamed, he's got my arm. And then the other thing that she screamed was, oh my God, I'm dead, which was bone chilling, obviously. And that was it. A book was written

about it, Night of the Grizzlies. And that was just catnip for reading around a campfire and murder monsters and all of that excitement. So people feared grizzly bears. And with the population so low, grizzlies risked extinction. Glacier Park, where those deaths happened, and the wilderness areas around it are known as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. It's one of the largest wilderness areas in the world and a major grizzly recovery zone. Rob says that when they started trying to help grizzly bears there, there were only 300 in an area that's six million acres. Now there are over a thousand. That's an amazing recovery, a great success in the effort of taking an endangered species and bringing it back.

It's also hanging by a thread. There are now almost 2,000 grizzlies in those 48 contiguous states. That's more than in 1975, but it's not a lot. And the Federal Endangered Species Act that governs recovery of the grizzly only applies to those bears south of the Canadian border, the 2,000 in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. There are thousands more grizzlies in Alaska and Canada that are not legally threatened, although that's biologically debatable. In summary, there's a line in Bob's book that really captures America's relationship to the grizzly. We 330 million Americans hold total power over the fate of

about 2,000 animals that in order to endure must have the right to eat us alive. And I think that's kind of the central conflict here, right? Where the apex predator is America wants to be top of the world. I'm not sure that America likes the idea that there's this creature out there that can eat us. I framed it that way to be deliberately provocative because what we're talking about is a relationship. The bear is a thing that you can get your, literally, you can get your hands on, or it can get its claws on you.

But we're also talking about nature as an agent in our lives and whether we believe we're in a dominant position where we have dominion over the earth and all that flies and crawls on it, as the Old Testament Bible likes to say, or we're in something of a more equal or maybe even a subservient status with forces on the planet that are perfectly willing or capable of killing us at a moment's notice, whether you're talking about a lightning strike on a golf course or a flood that takes out two thirds of Pakistan in an afternoon, or a grizzly bear that shows up in your driveway and changes your life. It's funny because in New Zealand, we literally have no predators. You

could run through the forest naked and nothing is going to kill you at all. So I'm sort of getting used to the idea of certain places in the United States. If I walk, just being very aware that something could kill me, like it is quite a different way to think about your existence on the planet. Well, I think even in New Zealand, as Aldo Leopold liked to say, if you think like a mountain, if you think in a different time frame, a geologic time frame, a mountain will come after you and kill you. If you go running across that mountain, a mountain will kill you really fast. So it's a matter of assessing your place in the world, in its food chain, in its forces and powers of dominance and subservience. But the bigger issue, I think, is that we as a species just seem to jump on the idea that we're

in control of it all, that everything is a giant terrarium with some levers and knobs, and we just turn the temperature up a little bit, or we back off the humidity, or we turn the lights down to suit our immediate need without realizing that we might actually be the species in the terrarium, and we're not in control of the knobs. There are a lot of Americans in the terrarium, and non-Americans like me, and we just keep encroaching on the bear part. I have had it, boo-boo. How come, Yogi? Every day it's the same old thing. Look at the bears, look at the bears, look at the bears. Sheesh.

The evidence out of Yellowstone National Park, where we seem to have the greatest number of mentally deficient tourists, is not good. People just love to just march across a field with their great big brand new camera and try to do the National Geographic thing and very frequently get in serious trouble for doing so. On the other hand, there's just a boatload more of us than there used to be even 20 years ago. This mother black bear caught charging a group of tourists to protect her cubs. Whether it's a tourist at Yellowstone National Park, someone building their next holiday home, or a farmer trying to earn a living by raising livestock, we're all living in a kind of tension with the bear. We're having here in the Missoula Valley a massive problem with that right now,

with mainly black bears, which are a different species. They're smaller. They're not nearly as Black bears, which are a different species, they're smaller, they're not nearly as threatening to humans. But we have dozens of them roaming alleyways looking for garbage, breaking into people's kitchens. And coming along behind them are a significantly smaller number of grizzly bears that are looking at the same places that we have decided are our ranch lands, our farm fields, our corn stalks, and saying, hmm, looks like a grocery store to me, to anthropomorphize. We've already colonized those river bottoms and those pastures and those good feeding areas and then covered them with sheep and cows and dogs and llamas and chickens and then And that's the ironic thing, I guess. It's easy to be dramatic with figures, going, oh my god, animals killed 400 Americans a year, and grizzlies have killed 70 people since 1970.

But Americans have killed over 38 billion animals so far this year alone, just for food. And so is it all that surprising that a bigger predator than us might want to kill some of those animals before we do, when we put them right under their nose? What I see consistently happening here is what economists call an externality problem. And in insurance, it's risk management. And we have made decisions that have huge risks and external costs that we have ignored. In a much bigger sense, but on the same playing field, we're building houses in places where wildfires occur, which happen to also be places where grizzly bears live.

And then we just presume that a fire department will show up and save our house if the wildfire gets too close. But we didn't provide for a fire department that is capable of putting out a wildfire. We don't have enough retardant bombers and guys in yellow and green shirts and helicopters to put out these fires. We just are gambling that we'll get lucky and somebody else's house will burn down. We are gambling that if we run those free range chicken eggs, that a grizzly

bear won't show up and tear our coop apart. So what it comes down to is a reassessment of what it costs to do the things we want to do. I mean, the whole reason we have insurance is that we are banking money against losing a bet on doing something we wanted to do. We're not banking that money on building these houses in grizzly country, in wildfire country, in earthquake country, in places where rivers are going to flood. And this gets back to that whole relationship with nature. We're just betting that we won't lose. And nature is running the table at the moment saying, how's that bet working out? Stay tuned for more Flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors flightless bird is brought to you by indeed now hiring well means getting past preconceived ideas

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I think about where we are in Los Angeles, there's coyotes running around everywhere. Yeah. I find that really delightful. Other people find it terrifying and kind of horrific. I think you probably know where I land. Totally. And I think that's fine, but it's like the rattlesnake thing as well. It's like they're here first, so where do we have the right to live and do our thing

and balance up their rights against hopefully not having ourselves torn apart? Well, yeah. And the level of predator it is compared to a coyote, which we've been told won't hurt people. We've been told this myth. So I've been fine with the fact that- Can they hurt humans? Yeah. So then we had in that same episode with the bear, we had the woman who got attacked by a coyote. And it was a coyote wolf.

Yeah. Coyote wolf. Right. I mean, that's scary. I don't know how to... No, but like brushing up against them and living up against them is this weird friction we've got. Like I'm sure if I had a child, I'd be more freaked out about coyotes.

At the moment, I feel safe and fine. And it's also a lottery. It's how often is that going to happen? You're more likely to get hit by a car crossing the street than be attacked by a lot of these things. So I just feel like it's less of a worry. But it's not like a fair judgment call because who's doing that statistic? Across the country, maybe you're more likely to get hit by a car. But if you're living in a place where there's an abundance of predators, you might not be more likely to get hit by a car. You might be more likely to get attacked by an X, Y, and Z. And I would argue it's our fault if we move to those areas. You do the research and you're like, oh, this area where I'm going to build my holiday home, there's a lot of bears around.

Yeah. And kind of factor that in with the reason you want to move there i guess i get that i wouldn't live in a place where there are bears nearby i imagine how stressful your life would be just every day out to the chicken coop just hoping that you don't get jumped on well first of all i wouldn't have chickens either the scenario is already off no actually um so amy and ryan have a chicken coop in their house in the valley in Studio City. It's really cute and they make these cute eggs and it's adorable. And it is scary to think if there was a coyote to come.

I had my first conflicting feelings about coyotes. You know me. I'm like, the animals, they come first. Let's look after them first. I did have a moment where a lot of things clashed in my brain where I also love cats, right? And I've got friends in Los Angeles and they rescue cats. It's actually amazing. They've just got cats all on the lawn waiting to be fed. They capture them and they spay them so they can't breed anymore, but they

make sure that they're treated and they're in good condition and they're not going to die. Two of their favorite cats had just got the gall to start coming into the house. They were finally But they make sure that they're treated and they're in good condition and they're not going to die. Two of their favorite cats had just got the gall to start coming into the house. They were finally that domesticated where they're comfortable to come inside and hang out on the couch. Really cool cats. They went away for the weekend. They came back. And their two favorite cats, just their heads were sort of on the lawn.

No! Because coyotes had jumped over into their yard and had just happened to get their two favorite stray cats and that's the first moment where i went oh god that is a bummer we saw that one of our neighbors we were walking calvin to school and saw on the front lawn just like a head of a cat and like the rest of its body oh my god yeah that's horrifying it's not good to be a cat in this area, is it? Or a small dog. They have got a lot of small dogs too. I want to know about people like you who... People like me.

I'm serious. I'm serious. I actually had this thought on the walkover, so this is timely. Who do prioritize animals over people. I don't want to pass a judgment on this. I think it's so different from me that I want to understand it a little more. I don't think it's bad.

Yeah, there are different levels of it because you'll always get people donating to an animal shelter as opposed to a crisis involving people. An orphanage. Yeah, totally. Which is the same thing. Yeah, and I agree with you.

I think that is quite unusual and out of whack but i will still gravitate towards animals i'm kind of guilty of that as well i think the reason behind it i don't want to make this about me because i don't like talking about myself but i think it's because this idea and i think this idea is wrong but it's why people do it it's this idea that animals have no choice in it and that it's easy to think with people if things have gone wrong, they've made some sort of choice that's gotten them there. That's like the big problem with the unhoused, right? People are like, oh no, they must have made a choice to get there somehow, so therefore we're not going to help them. Whereas this poor

stray dog that we found, it didn't have a choice in this, it's just been sort of shat on by everyone else. It's not its fault and so we'll definitely help the dog as opposed to an unhoused person. I think that's the logic. They're so innocent. Plus, animals are always really cute. I think that ticks things off as well. And I think that's the biggest trigger. You should look at orphans.

They're cute. Yeah. They are. This is an issue with humans. We think everyone has all this choice and it's not true. I mean, it's the basis of a lot of racism. Well, why didn't they just pull themselves up from their bootstraps? Like they weren't given boots.

Like sometimes I am totally confounded by the same person who has all these dogs and loves their pets so much and then. Doesn't care about people. Yeah. Yeah, I also think that is somewhat deranged as well. I mean, that's not you. I'm not saying that's you, but I'm really just trying to get in the mind of a serial killer who these people are. Okay, yeah, he's the animal lover. David.

Yeah, but I think where it differs for me is i always think we should always just give a bit of respect to what was there first and if it happens to be a rattlesnake on a path i'm like oh let's just go back in the direction maybe not go on a walk today yeah as opposed to like we must let nature move for us i get that that's what i sort of default to but would you kill a bear you'd have to we get into a bit of that in the next part of the doc. Yeah. And the short answer is just always have bear spray on you because it's really effective. And shooting a bear is really hard to do.

Doesn't work. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Rob, what are you going to do to protect me? I got a little bear spray. Okay. And ribbon's head off. All right.

This is the second part of my documentary. And here we go a little bit more into the practical things of how to coexist with the bear. So Americans aren't all that great at coexisting with bears. And that's something sort of unique to America. In the United States, we have been coexisting with bears for way less than 200 years in any sort of really to America. In the United States, we have been coexisting with bears for way less than 200 years in any sort of really close fashion. And by we, I mean mainstream American society. Native American cultures go back for millennia with bears. But in Europe, you have coexistence with bears going back millennia. And there's some pretty good argument that bears and

humans have identified some boundaries that they are sort of unconsciously observing and are able to coexist. You know, there are grizzly bears in national parks 50 miles outside of Rome. There are brown bears all throughout Russia, down into Mongolia. There are 7,000 grizzly bears in Romania alone. There are parts of Central Europe and Western Russia and Kazakhstan that have thousands of brown bears and people have figured out how to coexist with them. Japan has a pretty big population of grizzlies. In Sweden, for example, you've got thousands of grizzly bears and they're referred to as ghost bears. People almost never see them, but they're out there and they have a

hunting season for them and they kill a lot of bears in their hunting season. So if you want to go looking for them, you can find them. The only recent incident of a person getting hurt by a grizzly bear was a kid who was skiing out of bounds in a ski area and fell into a bear den and woke the bear up and the bear reacted as you might imagine. The kid was 12 and got seriously mauled, but survived. In America, grizzlies are not so invisible, because Americans take more risks. And that doesn't always end well.

My daughter's boyfriend got bit by a bear. There's another lady down there that's screaming. So she got better than none. In July, campers called 911 after a bear rampaged through a campground just outside Yellowstone National Park. Camper Deb Friel was attacked as she slept. And it's really important to think about you're staying safe and the bear is staying safe. Because, you know, like they say about trying to race a train across the train tracks, all ties you lose. Most encounters for a bear and a human, the bear will lose eventually.

Even if you die, a whole bunch of game wardens are going to come out and kill that bear. So bears running into us, bad deal for bears. The thing is, the animal will always end up dead, like Freya the walrus in Norway. Humans couldn't stay away from selfies, so authorities ended up killing Freya before Freya killed someone. Authorities believe they have a killer grizzly on their hands, an animal who has already taken down one person and has raised a lot of concern in Yellowstone. There's a bear on my car! Oh my gosh! And this family in their car, terrifyingly close to a grizzly. We are in the process of doing testing with the bear

and make sure that we've in fact captured the right bear. If those tests confirm that the bear is involved, the bear will be euthanized, along with her cub. One dead human, two dead bears. The math isn't all that great for the bear. Rob says it's best to avoid getting mauled or killed by a bear for everybody's sake. A really good idea if you're in bear territory, keep a can of bear spray nearby. Something I didn't even know existed until I talked to Rob.

It's a can of capiscum chili powder and propellant that shoots it out like a can of wasp spray. And it's remarkably effective. In fact, I just interviewed two men who got charged at point-blank range by a huge grizzly a little ways away from where I live here. And the one guy was carrying both a can of bear spray and a pistol. And in the press of the moment, he got confused. Do I reach for the spray or the gun? And what he wound up with was the binoculars and basically was defenseless. Fortunately, his partner did have his one, two, three plan worked out. Grabbed the bear spray, sprayed the bear, not in the face, but sideways. And you'd think, you know, this is a glancing blow. That bear made a 180 mid-air turn. The guy's still trying to work out the physics of this. And bolted. Attack

over. Done. And it points up a thing that people often really don't understand about the bear spray. It's not like tear gas. It's not like mace that you spray at a mugger and they wind up in a little ball of paint on the floor. It is more like if you imagine that you're in a $50 million fighter jet, and you've got this super fancy radar system that's going to tell you exactly where your enemy is, and it goes on the fritz. Grizzly bears in attack mode, they don't want a fair fight. They want overwhelming force. They want all of their smell and their vision and their audio, their ears working at

100% and backing up their 500 pounds of claws and teeth. And the bear spray messes with that. It messes up their nose a little bit. It itches their eyes a little bit. And it's like losing your radar on the fighter jet. You're not going to risk that $50 million fighter jet with no radar. And a bear is not going to risk going into a fight when it can't smell. So it breaks off. It leaves. I like to think that when I'm deep in Yellowstone with Dax, Monica, and Rob,

I'll have quick reflexes with my bear spray and save the day. I've seen the Revenant. I know what can happen. That fight between Leonardo DiCaprio and a grizzly lasted 4 minutes and 28 seconds. Mostly because Leo was too slow with his bear spray. There are a pile of studies showing that in 90-95% of bear attacks, if you have bear spray, everyone walks away unharmed. Most of the remaining 5 or 10% is because they didn't get the spray out fast enough.

If you have a gun, a pistol or something, you're looking at between a 50 to 60% success rate. And a success automatically means that somebody gets shot, usually the bear. You throw up bear spray, you're putting a wall of irritant that's at least six feet in diameter. And if you've got another couple of seconds, you've got a wall that's 30 feet wide and six feet high. Whereas if you are standing behind a pistol, let's say you've got a nine millimeter, that's a wall that is as big around as your pinky finger. And you're trying to put that wall in front of something that's coming at you faster than a German shepherd chasing a frisbee.

Except it weighs 500 pounds and it's got 5 inch claws and teeth. And you're trying to concentrate. There are very few people in the world who can make that shot successfully and i'll bet you're not one of them rob says you never surprise a grizzly they know exactly where you are they know what's in your backpack and what you had for lunch yesterday he also points out they're not like some roving gang member looking to beat you up grizzlies have a purpose for using the energy they've got and that purpose is to defend itself or its cubs or its food source or its territory. If you're not threatening any of those things, well, it's not

going to knock your scalp off just because you look funny. But of course, that hack question keeps coming up in my mind. It's been there this entire time. What if? What if I go on a walk in Yellowstone and forget I'm not in New Zealand anymore? I barge into the woods, a McDonald's cheeseburger in hand, dropping a trail of nuggets behind me as I barrel into bear territory. There tend to be sort of three levels of things. The first is what's known as a bluff charge, where a bear will come at you full speed and then at the last possible second,

break off and leave you be, but let you know, don't ever do this again. Number two is a bear sees you as a threat and dispatches you. Imagine getting attacked by a dog. Imagine that times about 100. People in those attacks may die instantly. A bear can kill a cow by just smacking it in the head. They're that strong. Just crush its skull with a swat of the paw.

Other people have been, as they say in football, ragdolled, where the bear is trying to teach you a lesson by thrashing you around and throwing you and swatting you and may or may not survive that encounter. A number of people have, that's why we know of these things. It is a very, very rare occasion when a bear will be in what's known as predatory behavior and consider you as lunch. That's way below single-digit percentages, And if anything, the occasions where a bear has actually fed on a human tend to be two parts. One is they probably had a threat encounter where the bear went off like a bomb and killed you. Once you're dead, you're protein. And so then when the bear is like, oh man, what just happened? Oh, look,

lunch. But again, that's in the single digit percentages as far as I've been able to tell. Bears don't go roaming around Old Faithful going, hmm, that one looks tasty. The unfortunate thing is that those occasions where a bear comes into a campground at night and attacks somebody in a tent and hauls them off and eats them, that's the boogeyman monster that becomes the reputation of grizzly bears. And it's wildly out of proportion with the reality of what grizzly bears

actually are on the landscape. Yeah, much more likely to get hit by a car in Los Angeles when I go to get my morning coffee than get eaten by a bear in a camp. Exactly. Do you put on your lightning suit every time you go out in a rainstorm? Overall, despite being a lot bigger and stronger, grizzlies fare worse than humans. It's not helped by the fact they're the slowest reproducing mammal in North America.

It takes a female grizzly about four to five years to reach breeding age. Once she does, she'll have between one and three cubs. Of those three cubs, maybe one will survive to adulthood. So she's basically replacing herself every five to ten years. So while grizzlies are in better shape than they were in 75, that could change quickly. When you're dealing with a species that reproduces that slowly and you have, let's say, a couple of really bad food years, or you impose a hunting season and you take accidentally over stock of females, you can crash that population in a relative instant. And it will take decades to get back to where you were after one bad hunting season.

And incidentally, you won't have accomplished any policy goals protecting humans or reducing cattle depredation or anything else by a hunting season because grizzly bears are for the most part solo animals and dead bears don't teach. I guess the trick is figuring out how to keep grizzly bears alive in America. And that might mean humans compromising a bit. It's compromise, or live in an America where there just aren't grizzlies. That seems really lame. If I don't want grizzlies, I'll just go back to New Zealand. Because grizzlies are cool. Their claws can be up to four inches long. They can stand two and a half meters tall

and run 35 miles an hour. They love swimming and eating trout and hibernate for half the year. You can't help but be in awe of this creature that could kill you in an instant and weighs up to 800 pounds, the equivalent of three Dwayne the Rock Johnsons. You don't get much more majestic than that. That's what makes them, as we call them around here, charismatic megafauna. The few times that I've encountered bears, one of the ones that has stuck with me the most was in a glacial valley in Glacier National Park. And I was on one side of the cirque and looking across the other side. It was about at least a mile away.

And one of the boulders flipped over another boulder. And I realized I was looking at a grizzly bear flipping boulders. The sheer power and majesty of being able to experience something like that has never left me. To see something that could just casually rearrange its world like that to know that that's out in the world makes me happy he really really loved bears and i think that was kind of amazing yeah rob cheney has one of the deepest coolest voices i've ever heard he knows a lot about bears he's seen a lot of bears he was soly. And then to hear him tear up a little bit at the end is so nice. That's really sweet.

Did you guys, were you in person? No, he was over Zoom. Okay. I'm going to meet, when I go on my grizzly bear hunt for part two of this, I'm going to take him because he's going to be a safe, good person to go with. He'll know all the different things. I'm going to be responsible. David.

I joke about it, but I do want to be safe and I don't want to get attacked. And if you're going into that territory, you should be respectful and safe. Yeah, I kind of feel like everything we learned in this episode is saying, please don't go. I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm going to be really careful. What are you going to do?

I want to feel what Rob felt and feel that emotion when I see this giant thing flipping a boulder over and hopefully not running at me really fast. Okay. I'm going to be kind of amazing can't you just use your imagination like i don't think you're equipped to handle those scenarios i think no i appreciate your concern and it's really kind you are concerned that's i'm going to take that as a kindness well if you were weren't over zoom would you have hugged him i would have given him a little hug because you don't like hugs i don't yeah i was raised without a lot of hugs

and so i do find it really hard to hug people yeah i've been told that i sort of go rigid like a board and no one wants that in a hug they want i mean what do you mean to do just be like fall into it and be oh yeah. Yeah, like lose. But I've been trying to force you to hug because it's very American. Honestly, you could do an episode on American hugging. I think you could include different handshakes in that as well and different hand gestures. And yeah, the hug is definitely affection. Yeah, people are so affectionate here.

And I'll often find myself putting out my hand for what she should do for a handshake. But then they will come in anyway. And they will, Jessica, they will come in and hug. And that really puts me on the back foot. But I think with Rob, you know, feeling that emotion, I think I would have let him get that feeling out. And then maybe the end of the interview, I would have given him. You would have pat him on the back. I would have given him a back pat. Because the other thing isn't it you can ruin a hug

if you do the back pat apparently I got a hug right once and someone was really impressed they're like oh my goodness you're doing this but I ruined it by giving a little pat on the back oh I mean it can seem condescending apparently I thought it was just a nice thing to do I had a party get annoyed at me once because apparently I would pat them like a cat. Like a cat? I was lying there. I don't know what you're meant to do with your arms and stuff if you're there. But I thought it was a good idea to give them a pat.

But after a while, they're like, can you just stop doing it? They got really angry. It's so annoying. I'm not a cat. Really? I don't know if cats like a pet a human like a little pet as well doing this no it wasn't a pet it was a stroke okay i think that's nice i thought it was a nice affectionate stroke but it backfired on me some people like animals more

than humans that's why i give to all the animal charities and i don't kill the rattlesnake and i love the bears because i understand animals yeah they're so much easier to understand than people people are so complex animals are just a more pure version of what people are okay now we're getting to something i think you're just you feel too vulnerable around the different they don't ask annoying questions like i do yeah like you're in orphans you hate orphans no i don't i don't hate orphans no it's the questions yeah there's no questions from animals no there's not they just sort of accept what's going on and they're kind of like into it or they're not i think a bear ripping you apart but generally it's simpler

and i like that well i've been forcing you to that sounds bad to To hug me. Try and open up more. I'm trying. I'm really trying. And I think you do a great job hugging. Thank you so much. I'm getting better slowly, and I think I'm getting better at sort of opening up in little bits. But often I do it, and I find myself talking and being open, and apparently that you're meant to do that as a human.

Yeah. But then part of my brain is going uh-oh uh-oh and then the trap doors swing shut again and i'm done i'm out of there for a bit well okay so just i don't know when those trap doors gonna open but they always swing shut very quickly i already texted you this and you said you were at a concert and you couldn't text back which was true is that because you're afraid that if you're fully open that you'll get rejected or abandoned no if you give people too much of yourself they'll use that against you when things go wrong and so you should never let anyone have any ammo and you just keep it all to yourself yeah it's really bad because that's what you do no i'd never do that you have to trust people you can pick who you trust you can pick who you trust but you do have to have some people who you feel like you can talk to about things yeah maybe it's the new

zealand in me as well just always a bit wary of that of sharing it's i'm not saying it's a good thing but that's where it comes from with me or there is that thing of rejection like if you show someone yourself and they don't like it that's really scary as well yes so don't even go down that road so what we've learned that you shouldn't share too much with the bear because that could go wrong yes but take out bear spray if you're in the woods yeah because bears can be scary but also and so respect the bear and don't just charge up to a bear to take a photo of it because they are bigger than us and they can move faster and their claws are bigger one thing that i did find really funny and this happened with the kyle wolf story as well in armchair anonymous they look for the very specific bear that acted out as if that bear is different from any other bear.

No, but it is. It's so stupid. I disagree. That bear killed them because they were in the bear's territory. Exactly. I see what you're saying. It's a rabid bear. It's not that it's a serial killer bear versus non-serial killer bears they're all the same

yeah and also in that story in the documentary they also killed its cub because i guess the cub would not be able to survive without the mother but it's still horrific well or the cub would grow up and then want revenge see that isn't the way they're making they're like they've made it about intention this i'm actually sticking up for the bears here no you are they made it about intention. This is, I'm actually sticking up for the bears here. you are. They've made it about intention. Like we got to find the bear that did it. We got to find the coyote that, what do you mean? Like.

Yeah. Suddenly got a taste for human blood. All of a sudden it's just going to, a bear serial killer suddenly going around. Exactly. So to me, it's either you, you kill that bear in the moment,

obviously when it's mauling someone or like, all right, we missed that opportunity yeah you're right it's ridiculous doing that actually humans are too small-minded and they're just getting revenge on this one bear they're thinking of them as humans yeah the bear doesn't know any better no yeah that story that walrus that i spoke about briefly overseas they'd warn people just don't get close to this walrus it's here we need to give it its space let it coexist people wouldn't they were just getting too close taking photos

and so the only option the government had was to kill this animal just because people can't resist just giving something a bit of space okay let's do this mind i hate my always traps your mind experiments they're always a trap i know that's why funny. I am ready. Let's say there was a group of serial killers. Okay. Okay. Or terrorists. Let's say terrorists. These are bad guys. Baddies. There's a group of baddies. Baddies. They live in this area and they take up the area. And it's a nice area to live. Like, it'd be great. You want to live there. But they live there.

And they'll kill you. But they were there first. Okay. So you don't. So you're moving into this neighborhood where you know these baddies are living. Exactly. Do you think that people should do anything about those baddies or just let them be they should if they were there first and they're murderers it is a little bit different when they're people because if you've got animals we're talking about animals we have more power over them it's not an even fight we

don't over bears we still do bears will still come out worse off overall. We can kill them. Well, they'll get killed after they kill someone. Yeah. But we still have dominion in general over bears. We almost wiped them out. We had to try and bring them back. So I think it's a difference. I don't think the comparison quite stands up because with animals, it's slightly different where we have dominion.

So we have to be a little bit more respectful of, because we know how powerful we are. There's a power dynamic. There's a power dynamic. And we kind of have to be like, hey, guys, we need to help you out or you're just going to become extinct. Right. I guess we do want psychopaths to be extinct, but we don't want bears to be extinct. Yeah, and also those psychopaths have a choice that they've done those bad things so that's another debate yeah i mean yeah that's actually is a more complicated issue

but generally humans have more choice involved and animals don't my argument's going to start falling apart yeah it is it's stripping yeah because if there were a gang of serial killers in an apartment and i moved into the area i would probably want them to go and i think they should go yeah whereas i don't feel that way at all about the beautiful coyotes that run around in the streets i just think that's the coolest thing ever i'd be the sort of person who would pop up with a dog food out for them on the back porch so they can fatten up a bit because some of them are looking a little bit skinny stop you really you're not supposed to i haven't don't do that i haven't then they'll all come more of them more beautiful yes because they know that's where the food is

no and then they'll eat your neighbor's cat yeah oh no i don't want that and rip its head off and leave it on i don't want that i won't feed the coyotes, but I think it's really beautiful that they're running around in the neighborhood. I just think it's one of the best things. I think it's one of the best things about this area we're in. I think that part of this is that you grew up in New Zealand where there weren't threats. So you're not built with this natural fear of animals. And I actually think a lot of people aren't. It's more of a novelty for me, in a way. Yeah, I haven't got the reality of the situation through my skull, potentially.

Do you guys not have poisonous snakes in New Zealand? No. No, that's the thing. Everyone thinks we do. We don't. That's all in Australia. We've got a couple of poisonous spiders, but very rare. That's the craziest thing.

Australia is just full of the most poisonous snakes. New Zealand, none of that stuff. I should move there. That seems like nice. You would actually, Monica, you would actually, New Zealand would be the dream place for you. No rattlesnakes.

I would love it. No bears. No dogs. No assault rifles. No assault rifles. Yeah, I'd like that. All right, grizzly bears. America.

We all learned something today. We all learned that we have different thoughts on different things, but secretly I think we all love the grizzly's majesty. Because they're so impressive. And the show has jumped the shark. That too. Jumped the bear. Bye.

Bye.