It Could Happen Here - Did Donald Trump Ban Buffalo?

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

James is joined by Molly to discuss how the Bureau of Land Management is quietly changing its approach to public land management and what it means for approximately 900 bison in Central Montana. Sources: https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/810541893_202412_990_2025073023621659.pdf  https://gov.mt.gov/_docs/governor/AmericanPrairieProposedDecisionJanuary162026.pdf  https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-17537.pdf  https://www.mtpr.org/montana-news/2026-01-21/blm-cancels-bison-grazing-permits-for-montana-nature-reserve https://news.mt.gov/Governors-Office/Governor_Gianforte_Appeals_Judges_APR_Bison_Grazing_Decision#:~:text=Following%20the%20judge's%20order%2C%20DNRC,appeal%20may%20be%20found%20here.  https://t.co/HUAyMUnOVi  https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2015/06/18/business-leaders-provide-green-behind-conservation-effort/28960843/  https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-revokes-american-prairie-bison-grazing-permit https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/estatetaxfinal.pdf  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/12/2026-09386/rescission-of-conservation-and-landscape-health-rule   https://www.blm.gov/about/laws-and-regulations/conservation-and-landscape-health-rule  https://largetribes.org/2026/02/affirmative-action-for-cattle-tribes-challenge-feds-plan-to-revoke-bison-grazing-leases-on-public-land-media-share/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, and welcome to it could happen here. Very special episode today because I am lucky enough to be joined by Molly Kong. Hi, Molly. Hi, James. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to hear about today's topic. Yeah, today's topic is Buffalo, if this just came up on your phone without you clicking in. So, I guess, look, Buffalo, when people imagine the Great Plains, before European colonization, I think, Buffalo are the fauna that they particularly imagine being present, right?

It's such a romantic image, right? And they're gone now, but they were once so many. Like, every time we drive through Southwest Virginia, I'm in Central Virginia. So when we drive through Southwestern Virginia, my husband always brings up this account that he read of someone witnessing the Buffalo stampeding through the Cumberland Gap, like we're right down on the tip of Southwestern Virginia. And just looking at it, that place and imagining buffalo there, like, you have to romanticize it. That's incredible. Yeah, they're sick. One of the coolest, like, American experiences I've ever had, maybe seven or eight years ago now, I was bikepacking in, like, the Colorado Wyoming border up there. And I was with some friends, we've been, like, maybe we're like three or four days

in, you know, like, where you kind of hit the sweet spot at that point when you, like, haven't showered for that long and you're just kind of disconnected from the world. That's when it starts to be getting. Molly's making. making a face. The sweet spot. You can't see. Just four days of human stink. It really starts to get good.

Yeah, it's when it gets good because you're just like, that's how long it takes to disconnect, right? Something at your phone and, like, worrying about not smelling good and stuff. Becoming a beast of the outdoors. Yeah, you just return to your feral self. I'd like to return to my feral self as something as possible. But we're, like, riding, I forget where we're going at Walden, maybe. We're coming off this big plateau dropping into this big kind of like, where it gets kind of more plane-y, big, big kind of meadow plane.

And we're coming down there, and there's a few of us, and these buffalo just come, like, from the side of us. And they're running alongside us, right? And we're riding, going and we're cooking, like, 20, 25 miles in a house, something like that. And these buffalo are just cruising next to us because they're just trying to get, like, trying to check out, like, what are these weirdos doing?

And they're just like, why the fuck would you put all your stuff on a bicycle and go right around like this. And then we're like, oh, it's a fucking buffalo. And for like maybe a mile, they just kind of wanted to keep this in. But they just wanted to keep tabs on us as we're going down this dirt road. And then, like, they were getting really close, right? So they're, like, kicking up all this dust. And you got to feel like you were, like, almost one of the buffalo, you know,

you're like in the herd, traversing the planes. I think you're supposed to keep your distance from them, right? Yeah. They went, we didn't have many options. I mean, I guess it's not a choice at that point. Yeah. When they're like, do not approach. Yeah, they were approaching us. We didn't stop. I was like pretty keen on not stopping. Molly is right. They look so petable, but they're really not. They're really not. Despite their fluffy appearance, it's advised. Like anytime in Yellowstone pretty much, especially in these summer months, you will find a video of a tourist approaching a buffalo and regretting that season. They're pretty big. I've been gored by a bowl before and I would like to keep it to a one goring.

lifetime for me. One is all most people get. Yeah, yeah, it is. I was pretty, let me tell you, I thought that one was all I was going to get. I was, I was ready to make my peace with the world. Luckily, I got a second chance. Yeah, people kind of focus on a buffalo, right? They ignore many of the other species that we lost during this intent period of ecological destruction, right? And I can see why really, you can find images of piles of dead buffalo skulls. there's that really haunting image of the idea of killing animals only for their capes or their tongues. Often this period of genocidal violence is referred to as the buffalo genocide. And I think that encapsulates, right, not just the destruction of the buffalo population,

but also of the indigenous cultures that relied on that buffalo population and of the ecology that went with it. Obviously, when I say destruction, I'm not saying they've gone very much till here, still present. but the attempt by the government in capitalism to remove those people from their land. But yeah, it is a shame that these other animals don't get a fair shake. Have you ever seen a black-footed ferret? When you said there was going to be something about ferrets,

I was thinking about it, and I realized all domesticated animals were wild animals, and it never occurred to me that a ferret could live outside. Oh, yeah. A ferret thrives in the outdoors. I really wanted to have ferrets when I was younger, like I enjoyed the presence of ferrets. I enjoyed working with ferrets.

Oh, he's kind of cute in a gross way. He's not gross. The ferrets are very sweet. Yeah, we had a friend with ferrets growing up so we'd use them to catch rabbits in the UK, right? Oh. Yeah. The reason that these guys struggle

to get back on the landscape is because they need massive prairie dog towns to feed of. Oh, do they live in like societies? Do they live like a prairie dogs? So do ferrets live in like ferret villages? The ferrets predate the prairie dogs. But do they live in like a village? I don't know if they live in like a, I don't know what their social structure is.

In Colorado, there's a national blackfooted ferret center where you can go and see them. I've cycled past it, but I regret not going in. Maybe I'll make a special trip. Reach out if you're with the ferret people. Sorry I said he looks gross. Yeah, please don't cancel us. Because the peri dog towns can collapse, right? their populations can collapse pretty easily.

They get infectious diseases, so they need like a massive number of prairie dog towns in order to have a sustainable genetically diverse ferret population. Oh, I get it, I get it. And because we don't have those, right, because they are not generally amenable to agriculture, and then the ecosystem is very different. One of what's naturally worse, that means, I don't know if there are any, they're not extinct genetically, but ecologically in terms of their participation in the ecosystem. I don't think there are any very, I think there are some in the Charles Russell Wildlife Refuge,

but very few black-footed ferrets, which is a shame because they're cool little guys. I mean, I guess given what we did to the landscape of so much of the country, I'm sure there are other animals that just like their niche is gone. Yeah, and that is exactly what I want to talk about today, right? Like, specifically I want to talk about Buffalo because of the canceling of some public land grazing leases for Buffalo. Before we do that, Molly, we should talk about the terminology, right? The Buffalo Bison discussion. Right, because they're not Buffalo, they're bison.

They're bison and bison. And as we are, what, five minutes into this, someone has already logged on to Reddit. They have opened. The thread already exists. It's too late. Yeah, it's too late. You might as well even address it. It's too late.

Yeah, we should have moved this to the front of the episode, I guess. If that is you, Rediting, please stop. I am aware that scientifically. We should call them bison. I don't care. English-speaking people have been calling these animals buffalo since English-speaking people came to this continent. They did so because the animals remind them of Cape Buffalo.

I actually have had a framed gourd by a Cape buffalo as well. We're going through most of my goring experience. You've got to leave these big cow-type creatures alone. He was ambushed. But my goring was entirely my fault. You shouldn't be unkind to animals, and I deserved it. And it was a good learning experience for me. It hits wasn't.

I think it was just a bad overall experience. Being gored, wouldn't recommend it. I'm avoiding it. Yeah, you've got this far. You're probably good. I think men in their 20s are probably like peak. I was going to say, I think once you hit 30, your odds decreased dramatically.

Yeah, you're out the wind. Unless you're working with cattle. Like, my dad got pretty close a couple times when I was declared. I remember jumping over a fence once. But I think that was more of a professional hazard than like a lifestyle choice. So here's the deal, right? There are many species in the USA which have names similar to species on other continents

that they are not the same. European blackbirds and American blackbirds, right? Robins would be another example. There is a different sheep's head fish almost everywhere I have gone underwater. Everyone has a sheep's head. The coolest sheep's head for people wondering is California sheep's head because it undergoes a sex change

making a pretty cool fish. Also, it gets really cool after it transitions. it gets like these black and red stripes. It's like one of my favorite fish. If you want to be censorious about buffalo names, I would suggest picking one of the many indigenous words that have been used to refer to this animal for far, far longer than buffalo or bison. Also, Buffalo is one of the cooler words in English language. Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. Yes, exactly. Yes. It is the longest single word sentence because it's a noun and a verb and a proper noun, right? Right. So it's Buffalo the city, Buffalo, the animal. Buffalo the verb,

meaning like what to like to bully or something to like yeah don't know if you've been around them but they do do this they sort of bother thing yeah yeah yeah I'm making of course a motion with my neck and shoulders that no one apart from molly can see uh yeah they're they're they're just kind of aggressive in a sort of pokey and yeah like it's a good verb I don't know hang around what's your buffalo you'll get it um yeah it's buffalo the proper noun buffalo the noun buffalo the verb buffalo the proper noun Buffalo the noun. No, Buffalo the noun. You're going to have to diagram this one.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. It's basically like bison from upstate New York are bullying other bison from upstate New York. Yes, that is the breakdown of the Buffalo sentence. Fun trivia for everybody. Yeah, we'll do that at the end of the year. We'll quiz you. Why are we talking about Buffalo today? I can't remember. I can. Let me tell you.

It is because the Bureau of Land Management has canceled grazing rights in seven a lot of public land in Phillips County, Montana, from privately owned bison. And there's been a bunch of reporting on this. Like, when this stuff happens, when stuff the Trump administration does with public land, the outdoors, they're like Democrat blue wave, fake news, panic accounts really, really go kind of wild with it. They did with this one, right? I think people running whatever, like, you know, Occupy Democrats.

Pantsuit Nation for change. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Hucked by Democrats. I forgot about Pantsuit Nation. Wow. That's a real throwback. Yeah, I never forget about the Pantsuit Nation. They live forever in my mind. What I think the people of that tendency have not realized is that these are not per se wild buffalo. It's not like these buffalo have individually, like, or as a population, survived the genocide, have been holding out on this land in Phillips County for more than a century, right? that doesn't mean that we should be calous about this, we shouldn't.

But I just want to explain it a little bit more, I guess. There are still thousands of Buffalo across the West on federal and private land. Some of them have been grazing on public land with permits for more than four decades. Having them on the landscape is a good thing, right? We need the genetic diversity even if they're privately owned.

Right, so it's not just like, I don't know, knowing very little about this. I think a lot of the discourse around these like permits for grazing on public land. It's like, well, why should these farmers get to use our public land for their property, for their cattle? And I don't know enough about that to care about that at all. But in terms of what buffalo do to the grassland, like just walking around on it and eating it is part of the maintenance of that grassland. Yes. Yeah. Like the eradication of the buffalo in the Midwest caused ecological havoc because we need them walking around and shitting on it.

Yeah, yeah. Specifically what we need is them coming in, eating everything, trampling around, shitting everywhere, and then leaving. Right? Because that is what, like, so many indigenous cultures have these like, these like traditions that the buffalo go away and we do a tradition and they come back, right? This happens for a lot of migratory animals. It's not just buffalo, right? Because it gave shape to time in people's lives. That's how they impacted the landscape, right? They didn't stay in one place. They moved through space. So, like, if we want to restore this short grass prairie ecosystem, which is, as it turns out, why people are putting buffalo on this particular land, then we need a lot of space to do it. And we need the buffalo to be able to move around, right? So people who own these particular buffalo are an NGO called American Prairie. Do you heard of American Prairie? It used to be American Prairie Reserve. No, American Prairie Foundation.

Okay, great. Are they the villains or the heroes? Neither. And in the Trump administration is the villains, Doug Bergam specifically, I guess, always. God, I forgot about Doug Berg. Yeah, unfortunately, Doug is now Interior Secretary. Thanks to REI for signing a letter, endorsing him.

Oh, so fuck you. Merrick & Prairie's interesting, I guess. It's not what I would want, but I don't think it's evil. Sounds like most NGOs. Yeah, it sounds like most of the world is. It exists. Not my preference. Yeah.

Then how I would do it, American Prairie is a big NGO that I've been trying for about a quarter of a century to buy up private land adjacent to public land around Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. So the goal is to create, like, by bridging these two pieces of public land, to create a massive reserve. where, like, one of the things with Bison specifically, right, they need a lot of space, and very few Bison can cross, like, political boundaries.

They don't have passports. They don't, yeah, this is one of their issues. They're undocumented, you could say. But, like, think about the Yellowstone. People get really mad about the Yellowstone Bison leaving the part. This is a big deal. This has been a big deal for... Yeah, yeah, yeah, people, like...

What, like, they're Disney cast members? Like, they're not allowed to leave in costume? Yeah, exactly. They have to return. Take the head off. Yeah. They take the head off. Take the body off and just wear the head.

Mickey Mouse can't be walking in the parking lot. Yeah, you can't see Mickey Mouse at Fond. So that would really ruin the magic. Yeah, people get mad at them, right? For a number of reasons. The Buffalo don't know about the part. That is a thing, right? And Buffalo, as it turns out, they love to disrespect a fence,

which I respect. I like that about it. If I had shoulders like that, I would disrespect a fence. Yeah. They, so like, cattle fencing is generally not sufficient. efficient for buffalo fencing. But buffalo fencing can be built. It does exist. When people are building it, it's better if they are conscious of other wildlife. Right. Like another of the megafauna, you know, megafauna that has existed here for Melania, but it's now in much, much, much,

much lower numbers are like Croncone Antelot. We have those here? Yes. Oh, wow. I guess I don't really, I have never really been out west. So you guys have such a beast out there. If you would like us to make a podcast where I take Molly camping. Show me an animal. Yeah, we just look at animals. That would be my ideal job, a podcast where I just talk to someone about an animal every week. Like, we go camping, we see an animal, we talk about it. I didn't know ferrets lived outside.

Like, think of all you could show me. Yeah, it'd be amazing. God, we could have so much fun if we start with the ferrets. Yeah, but pronghorn are amazing. You've not seen a pronghorn. I thought they lived in Africa. What am I thinking of? Like an IBEX. Yeah, I mean, Ibex does live in Africa. I think some of them live on.

Okay, we're going to... Oh, man, everyone's finding out. I don't know anything. Podcast a version. I'm Googling Pronghorn Antelope. Yeah. You see them? And these are just out there. Yeah, they just, like, they live on the landscape. They actually were massively numerous, like, before the various extinction events.

So it's like a reindeer that lives in Colorado. A reindeer, reindeer are only reindeer in North America when they're in captivity. Caribou, when they're wild. Okay. We don't really have a lot of like wild animals out here. Really?

See, this is, well, yeah, because the East Coast is much more urbanized, right? Like every now and again a baby bear will wander into town and it's like big news. Sick? Okay. Yeah, I like it when a bear. Bears are another animal I have massive respect for. I love how they don't give a ship. I respect any animal that you. from the trash. Yeah, the pronghorns are actually massive, like, I think Antelocapradai is the genus, and then there were different species. There were tons, like we had, we at one point had tiny,

like wean dog-sized antelope. Oh, like a dick-dick. Yeah, yeah, like a dick-dick, but... That's a cool guy. But fast. Oh. So one of the thing about prong-horns is they can jump. Like, I've seen them jump. Yeah, it looks like a jumping guy. Well, they don't like to jump a fence, is the thing. Oh, so then now you have like a problem. The buffalo are stuck, but so is the Antelope. Yeah. Because their speed was always their, like, defense mechanism, right? They're super there.

I think cheetahs are the only land animal that's faster. And they don't live in the same environment. No. Yeah, they're different continents. Yeah, there is not a North American cheetah. I mean, at this point, you could, that's how you could tell me there is. I think there might have been at one point, like a prehistoric cheetah. Look at the time they had like ground slows and things.

But, yeah, when you're building the buffalo fencing, you have to allow the prongorns to go under if you're trying to build an ecological fence. Oh, I guess because they could like bend over in a way the buffalo can't. Yeah, exactly. There's just more... Buffalo's too big. Yeah, there's a lot of chunk to a buffalo in the way it couldn't get under there, right? So the other reason people don't like Buffalo is because of brucellosis.

Do you know what bruselosis is? Is it a buffalo disease? Well, it's a disease that Buffalo can have. Maybe, you know, from the Warren's Yvon song. You don't? Okay. This is funny. I'm talking to Molly about really American shit. And neither the British person.

I don't know any of what you're saying. Okay. Warren's Ivan, a very good famous musician guy, Sallet. He has a song about Buffalo disease? He has a song which in part, it talks about bruselosis. It says, cattle will have brucellosis. What a great journey we're going on.

That's the service I provide as the podcast idiot, because I know nothing. You have a very deep, very deep well of knowledge. It just doesn't extend to Warren's. No listener left behind. There's no one sitting here listening wishing that something had been explained more because I'm making you explain what antelope are and what a Warren Zvon is.

Yeah, we could go off on a tangent here because I don't know if this song is about the fact that Sweet Home Alabama is a deeply, deeply hateful song. But it does, that does get mentioned quite a lot. But yeah, the brucillosis. But I feel like once you're touching a buffalo, you have worse problems than whatever this is.

Oh, not great. Yeah, it depends. It depends who you are, right? Like, what brucellosis does is generally it infects heifers. So, like, young lady cows, it will cause them to abort their first calf. Oh, that's sad. Yeah, it's sad. Also, like, because of the way it is controlled, your herd can get killed out if you have brucellosis. Oh, like, it would be contagious to people's, like, cattle.

Yes. And that would be very bad. So, okay, when you say people don't like buffalo because they're worried about brucellosis, they're not worried that they will get brucellosis. They're worried that it will affect their cattle. Yes, I do believe people can get brucellosis. I'm not as familiar with that. Apparently, I'm looking here.

Apparently, if you do get it, there's a 20% chance that your testicles are going to swell up real bad. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. I guess that's why they don't want it. Yeah. Well, that would also be bad, right? Like big bull brucellosis would be painful like that. But no, okay, so we're talking about the cattle industry. I'm on board. I'm on board.

Yeah, it's the cattle that they're concerned about. They can take or leave the testicular swelling. Like, they're tough like that. Why are they touching the buffalo in the first place? They're not. Okay. Yeah, they're not. Okay, yeah. It's a buffalo coming out and causing the cattle to get brucellosis, right? Here's the deal. Elk also can get brucellosis. I know about elk. We have those. Okay, yeah. You know, okay. So an elk also travels widely, right? An elk, it's not generally an animal that is kept behind high fences. Sometimes there probably are high fence like game farms where people pay to go and hunt elk. I think we have some in Virginia. Yeah, that's kind of gross, in my opinion. I don't like that. But elk also carry brucellosis, right? So if we're concerned

about brucellosis, we also need to be concerned about elk. But it really doesn't get brought up in the elk discussion. It gets brought up in the buffalo discussion. So these are the reasons that, Some of the reasons that people don't like buffalo, right? Right, because they carry a cow disease and they don't like to stay inside the park. Got it. Yeah, yeah, they don't like to stay inside the park. We've talked for a long time, Molly, talking of things that might cause your testicles to swell. Here is some products and services.

Or maybe it'll help. Yeah, maybe you'll have bought your first calf. Who knows? Roll the dice. Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers, and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off, with the best deals from brands you love all in one place.

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We are back. So let's talk about the area where this is happening, right? This is happening in kind of northern central Montana around Livingston. Lots of the land in this area has actually dropped below the population density that Turner considered to be evidence of the closure of the frontier when he was developing that thesis, right? I'm not a big fan of the concept of the frontier. If that's another podcast, I don't make one day, but I don't like it. But there's like no people there. Yeah, it's, yeah, there are very few people there.

In part because cattle farming is hard, in part because it's harder in a globalized economy, in part because of climate change. There's this theory of the Buffalo Commons written by two people called Popper. And they considered, like, this specific area to be a tragic. of the commons where this beautiful plains ecosystem has been destroyed. And they put forward the idea that the presence of buffalo on the landscape could return it to a sort of short grass prairie commons. This isn't a direct link to the American Prairie Reserve, but this is kind of what they're

trying to do. They're not putting buffalo on the landscape because they are a buffalo organization. Right. So they're trying to restore the grassland. Yes, that's the idea. Because we don't have a prairie national park, right? When colonization was moving west, as the Department of Homeland Security, likes to highlight with its use of that image, liberty was floating across the plains there. Sorry, let's just put an image in my head. Remember when the Trump administration was getting very aggressive towards Somali people? I guess it still is. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see the AI version of that, whereas a Somali woman like crossing the planes? No. No. Okay, it was pretty funny.

It was one of the... You're doing a pose like the mermaid on the front of a ship? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, it was like this is a Somali promise land. They were like, I guess, parodying American rhetoric towards indigenous people and being like one... So like Somali people can't do Manifest Destiny? I thought we loved that. Yeah, it was very funny.

It was kind of amusing to see that American rhetoric reflected back. Somali people have incredible hosting abilities. that the CHS was not ready for. So what the APR is trying to do is, yeah, use the Buffalo here as like a landscape engineer, right? Like an animal that will help return this area to, I guess, natural state is a problematic term, you know, but like... To its pre-industrial state? Yeah, yeah. When we think about, like, why isn't there a plane's national park?

We have to consider the role the capitalism plays, right? Because no one would go visit that. Yeah, well, I think they would. The planes would be beautiful in their way. Right, but I guess, like, you know, just thinking of like, is the role of the National Park to preserve this landscape, this ecosystem, or is it to create a place where people could go and buy things? Yeah, exactly, right. And increasingly, it's the latter. Yeah, and I think there is a bias towards preserving, yeah, there's like a scenic vista bias. This is an area where people could ranch cattle. And so, like, that happened instead.

And then we got to a point where, like, no one was going to give up their private land to make a massive park. Well, they didn't want to in any of the other times either. Yes, the government used to make you. Yeah, I think the government could force you back in the day. I mean, I just can't imagine a new national park ever coming into existence. We just don't have that kind of political will anymore. Yeah, I mean, we might get like the Donald Trump's birthplace National Park or like something similar, you know, like... Right, but we would never get Yellowstone again.

Yeah, we wouldn't. And like, part of that is because they violently remove the indigenous people from those places in order to... Right, I don't want to romanticize that. Like, I live near Shenandoah at Valley National Park where people were forced out in a pretty brutal way. That's a big part of the history here. So I don't want to romanticize the creation of the national park. I just mean like the government is not going to spend a lot of money on something that's just for everyone to enjoy ever again. Yeah, yeah.

And they're not going to say like to an extent we are removing this piece of land from the rapacious capitalism that has destroyed the rest of our natural spaces. So if somebody's going to eat this grass, it's going to be hamburgers. Yeah, yeah. We wanted to turn into the cheapest meat possible. Also, like, I should point out that like land back and national parks are very, very, very different streams. I like to kind of illustrate this with the idea, like, during the Nes-Pers War, as a Nes-Perserce, like, fighting their way towards a Canadian border, they are having gunfights in Yellowstone National Park as tourists are coming to Yellowstone

to, like, check out the mountains and see the geyses and stuff. You know, that's, that's America. Yeah, it's perfectly America, right? Like, look at with, look, we're preserving this for you as we violently remove the indigenous people. And just, like, coming to spend your tourism dollars, never mind. that there's a war going on there. Yeah, just being like, just kind of letting that go past. Like whatever the time period equivalent of a visor and a fanny pack was, that was cooking. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Probably a cigar and I don't know, like, those trousers to stop past your knee.

So you'll hear people saying a lot of shit about the API, the American Prairie Reserve, right? And so I did what I should do as a responsible journalist, and I pulled their 990s. That's my favorite thing to do. Yeah. Where's the money going? Yeah. Where's the money coming from? Yeah, where's the money coming from?

You'll hear a lot of like anti-APR stuff. Some of it's from the cattle industry, right? If you go through that part of Montana, you'll see signs that say like save the cowboys, stop the American Prairie Reserve. I think we have a different understanding of what a cowboy is, me and the sign maker. Yeah, right. Well, it is inherently tied, I guess, to cattle, right? And the idea being that these bison are displacing cattle. It's not a direct contract with cattle.

In fact, the APR has 10 times more cattle on its land than it does buy. Like most ranchers, the APR has deeded or private land that they graze on, leasing right to adjacent public land. What the APR is spending its money on, among other things, among like some staffing costs, office costs, paying consultants, paying fundraisers. Not to pay consultants. Oh, yeah. They're dropping some coin on consultants. Is they buy up ranches. Oh, really?

The way land ownership works in this area is kind of like a checkerboard. And you've got public land and private land. So they're trying to make like pathways for the bison by buying contiguous plots? Yeah, they're not all contiguous, but their goal is to have a large contiguous area in which... Right, and you just have to buy them when they come up. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I think the argument is that they're pushing up land prices, right? But in reality, like this area is depopulating rapidly.

it might push up land prices a little bit, but it's not like there's massive bidding wars going on here for each of these ranches. Right, because are there new people seeking new cow ranching opportunities who are trying to move in who are being prevented from doing that? Well, it'd be people trying to either, I guess, if, yeah, expand their ranch, or if a family's subdividing its ranch,

or if you didn't inherit your family ranch, I guess, when to buy some land. Generally, how it works here is you buy a certain part of land. It'll be like 60, 40, 70, 30, something like that. So you'll buy land. That will give you the privilege to have like first dibs on grazing on the public land that is adjacent to your land. So most of these ranches are checkerboarded, right? It's not like a big contiguous plot.

So not being able to graze a bison on the public land, kind of fucks that up in these plots for the American prairie people, right? And like I should say that like I have some sympathy for people marching in this area. like my family of farmers. Like it's got to be really fucking hard right now when fuel prices are insanely high to be trying to farm on these, especially the way that like American people farm have massive expanses, right?

You have to be in a vehicle a lot. I was reading about the brucellosis stuff and it made me think of foot and mouth disease which happened in the UK when I was a child. I remember how traumatic that was for people having their whole herds killed. Several people who were like within our extended family social circle killed themselves.

That's horrible. When they lost all their cattle. Yeah. Like it's really fucked up. Like at least in that part of the world, like you might have, there might have been your great grandfather who started breeding these cattle, right? Like it's an intergenerational project that joins lying through your family.

So I do understand these people are like deeply tied to this land also, not in the same way as indigenous people. Not way. I can see that people like, you know, don't want it to change. I understand that. And like consolidation in agriculture,

climate change, the way our food ecosystem works, that is an issue we should address if we want to take care of the land. What the government is doing is not how we address that. Sometimes you'll see people saying that the APR is entirely a tax avoidance system for the Mars family. Like the chocolate people? Yeah, yeah, big chocolate. You're familiar. The Mars family are rich as fuck. Yeah. I didn't know they were involved in the bison industry. Well, they have donated. I couldn't find an exact figure rate. Like with the change of nonprofit, like the reporting laws. It's a lot harder now than it used to be.

So they don't own or operate it? They've just made large donations. They've made large donations. There's a unit called Mars Vista within the APR, which has some private housing on it. But like, I think people have fundamentally misunderstanding how they're super wealthy. Like, these people are worth more than $100 billion.

I would highly encourage anyone who thinks that an NGO, which is going through, like, in the tens of millions, a year, maybe. By 2015, so in the first 14 years of this project's existence, they donated 20 million. That's not touching the edges. I'm sure they have a complicated tax shelter system set up for themselves that doesn't involve bison. It involves bank accounts in countries you haven't heard of. Yes, exactly. Like, the Panama Papers had zero bison in it for a reason, right? Like, you're just being very, it's very sweet if you think that, like, the way that they're avoiding paying federal taxes is buying land to put Buffalo on. Like, all these families have their own whole foundations that are just about moving money around in opaque ways.

Yeah, if you're trying to avoid paying taxes, you don't donate to a real charity that's actually doing something complicated with physical animals and land. You have a foundation that does grants for something obscure. Yeah, like, it's just not, it's just not it. Like, it's just, it's not it. That's not how taxes work. That's not how rich people work. So we talked about brucellosis, we're going to move past brucellosis. I have a diversion on chronic wasting disease and elk feeding, but maybe we'll make that a whole other podcast. So we also talked about this, this checker boarding a public land, right? Lots of these ranching operations that they're buying rely heavily on public land grazing.

So in 2022, they applied in 2019. The BLM allowed them. to graze bison on seven plots in Phillips County, right? So that's saying that you can put your bison on this public land, which is adjacent to the private land, which you own. And that's standard practice. Everybody's doing that. It depends on the particular plot, right? So they had to apply to the Bureau of Land Management.

But it's, like, pretty common for people to be grazing, to get these permits to graze on the public land. There have been bison on public land for 40 years. There have remained bison on public land across the west to include some tribes grazed bison on public land as well as on tribal land. But like the cattle farmers are doing this as well. Oh yeah, the cattle farmers are all doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm saying, like, if you buy this plot of land, it's like kind of common that you would also be grazing on the public land adjacent to it. Yeah, it's entirely understood. Like, oh, not even adjacent to, but sometimes like interspersed with. Yeah. Like, so if you look at like a, sometimes you'll see like a deeded and a leased acreage when you're looking at like a land. Like if you were, if you were interested in buying a ranch model.

So like when they, so when they bought this land, it would be reasonable for them to assume that they would be able to use the parcels adjacent and interspersed within it. Yes. Yes. And they would have known that that would have required in some cases asking the BLM, right, which is what they did. And in 2022, the BLM said, go ahead, put your Bison on this on these particular seven plots, right? So they were amended to include Bison. They got environmental impact study done. You know, they did all the things. I'm doing an environmental impact study. of the presence of a native animal? Yeah, on its native range. What would happen if a buffalo lived here? Yeah. We asked 10 government scientists. Yeah, we spent thousands of dollars finding out what happens if Buffalo lives in Buffalo home.

Turned out it didn't do massive ecological damage. So BLM said, let the Buffalo back. What is interesting about this rule change is the justification the BLM is using. And that is the thing that people should be worried about. in my opinion, that should be the headline. The headline should be. So the BLM is trying to regulate these leases that have their roots in the 1944 Taylor Grazing Act.

I'm noddingly. Yeah, the Taylor Grazing Act is a big deal when it comes to public land in the West and farming, right? It is trying to regulate these leases to quote-unquote productive purposes. It doesn't say productive purposes anywhere I can find in the Taylor grazing net.

It does use a term, I guess, domestic livestock. A bison could be a livestock. Well, they are a livestock. I've eaten them. Yeah, these bison are vaccinated. They are fenced. They are tagged.

They'll be handled. I'm guessing the way the APR does it is like a kind of non-invasive handling, like trying to keep them not acclimated to human contact per se. But like these are livestock. A bison to human content. Yeah. You can get like beefalo, right, which is like a hybridized bison. They sell bison at my whole foods.

That's livestock. Yeah. The APR is not raising them to kill them to sell them for meat. But they could if they wanted to. Because I don't think the government is ever going to go to a cattle rancher and say, you have to kill X number of these or they're no longer livestock. Yeah, well, that is the question, right? Like, what if we choose, if you gave me a million dollars today,

I would immediately cease making podcasts. I would buy a large plot of land. And I would have an ungodly number of rare and endangered domestic livestock species. Right. I'd have Jacob Sheeb. I'd have polyserrat sheep with four horns, you know, and it's Satan looking sheep. I'd be all about it. And they would remain legally livestock even if you had no intention of eating them.

Well, that is the question, right? The productive purposes definition could be extremely broad. What if you're doing practices like restorative ranching? Wait, what if the Bureau of Land Management was concerned with the land being properly managed? Well, at a point, I guess, the BLM was, right? because there was a rule, this is actually kind of funny, it was called the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, and the BLM rescinded that last week.

So previously, that was one of the considerations for managing land, for managing public land. And I guess, like, we should just briefly say that there is no such thing as government land, right? It's all native land. And the land which is currently managed by the government is paid for by me and Molly and everyone else. Doug Bergam doesn't own it.

It is there for future generations, Right? Like, what is, what are they going to do with it if they kick the buffalo off of it? Cattle will be my guess. They're cattle only leases. So they're just going to lease it to someone else? Yeah, but like, I guess some portions of public land in that part of Montana and Tarty land locked by private land. Like, one of the things that APR did that made people like it there is that the APR bought a bunch, bought a ranch and then opened up a gated road, which allowed people to access 50,000 acres of public land that had been.

previously been completely islanded, right? So, like, what their plan is to do they have to sell these ranches now? So the government just is saying you can't use this public land anymore in such a way that might negate your ability to use your privately owned land because we don't think bison are livestock. Yeah, because bison are woke. More broadly, like, this conservation and landscape health rule with cintion is worrying. Very amusingly, the BLM has forgotten to take down the website that

explains the value of the rule. So at the time of recording, the BLM's website still says, quote, the rule recognizes conservation as an essential component of public lands management on equal footing with other multiple uses of these habitats. Americans rely on public lands to live, food, energy, clean air and water, wildlife habitat, and places to recreate. The BLM knows the importance of balancing our use of natural resources with protecting public lands and waters for future generations. The rule will safeguard these lands and waters to protect our way of life. Still a bit cringe, but they've now rescinded that rule. So I guess our way of life is now under threat. Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium

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Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Because I just don't understand how this is justifiable at all, but I guess that's not really the point. For a lot of people, right, like it sort of flies under the radar because it's not, you know, like a big Washington thing. I can see how like in our major population centers, it can be easily to be like, who the fuck cares where the cows and buffalo go? But I think even aside from from an ecological

argument, which I think is very important, right, the restoration of these grasslands, this is the government saying, no, we're going to take this public resource away from someone who is rightfully using it and paying to use it. And we're going to sell that right instead to a capitalist concern over a bullshit fake reason. Yeah. Not that the APR is not, I suppose, it's not really a capitalist concern. It's like a nonprofit, but... There has to be some sort of big cattle lobbying at play here. Yeah, I think there are elements of the cattle industry which have been opposed to Bison, especially due to that, like, departure of Bison from the park is really something that for years

has been like a point of tension in Yellowstone. It's worth noting like who, yeah, who is for this and who is against it, I guess. It is cattle ranches who are opposed to the grazing of bison out here. And who specifically is getting... those seven specific plots? Yeah, well, I think the reason they resided those is because they were the seven most recently approved. Okay.

Because there are other plots. I think there are tribes in California, for instance, who have applied for buffalo grazing on public land. And I should point out that like a tribal cultural herd, a food sovereignty herd is a very different thing to the APR. And I hope that APR would acknowledge that I know that tribal interests would. But I guess as far as the government is concerned, it's the same that the answers just know.

I don't know yet. We don't know yet, right? We don't know if those tribal leases have been approved. What we do know is that like this production standard is a theory of threat to them. The coalition of large tribes actually wrote a letter opposing this decision. I'll quote from it here. It is offensive and unacceptable that the federal government would still seek to keep Buffalo off of these lands. Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, Ryman Leboe wrote, adding that BLM lands are all former Buffalo lands. He calls the decision a painful reprise with genocide of federal government, attempted to commit against us and our relative buffalo.

They also called it affirmative action for cattle, which was kind of funny. Wow, true. Yeah, but yeah, it's true. Like, it's like saying... They're doing cow DEI. Yeah, this is one, our one angular is fine and the other one is in. I want people to be concerned about this because it could be deeply damaging to the attempts of tribes to recover their buffalo population.

It could be deeply damaging to our public lands. I guess I want to talk briefly about the buffalo genocide because I think it's something that people have like a grasp of but not like a maybe in-depth understanding. What I want to briefly say is like the government played a massive role in wiping out of most of a buffalo. We ended up with fewer than a thousand head of buffalo. Like there were times when a tree falling down, a lightning strike, a bad flood could have significantly like altered the future of the species because there were so few. Capitalism also played a role, though. The idea that the buffalo hunters were like just following orders from the government relies in part on books written by former buffalo hunters,

trying to absolve themselves. I would suggest that we also look at the incentive to kill the animals and to not make use of their remains after people did that, right? Because, like, as much as the government did, like the capitalism that the government was ringing with it killed the majority of the wild buffalo in this country. and that is what's happening again, right? We look at public lands management today.

Like last year, I was in Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon was the site of the biggest building in what is now the United States until the 1880s. Oh, wow. Chaco and civilization built these massive great houses there. Really, really beautiful, amazing place. One of the less visited units in the National Park system. Gorgeous, amazing.

I saw some out there, too. This is all news to me. You've got to go to Chaka Canyon. We have to find something we can record that gets me down to the Southwest. Yeah, I bet there are some bigots. You know, there are because they use the they appropriate Zuni Sacred Sun symbol in some of their Nazi shit. Because have we not fucking done enough?

Well, apparently not, right? Because there is a campaign to have drilling to like de-list areas of Chaka Canyon. I also spent time last year in Gwitchin homeland with Gwitchin people. There, what's happening is a tru-list. Trump administration is trying to grant drilling permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Man. The Gwichian people, I should say, preferred to use the term Arctic refuge. So I'm going to try and use that going forward.

They don't like ANWR, just the acronym. So what that will do, right, is on the plane there, drilling is the place where the caribou migrate, the porcupine caribou herd makes the longest land mammal migration in the world. So we're just speed running the devastation of every cool, big animal we have. Yeah, like we're going to do drilling in the place where the caribou carve, right? And if they don't go there to carve... Then it's over. Yeah, and there are so few of these animals left, right?

They can cross political boundaries, that can travel their great distances unimpeded by capitalism. Largely that's because the Gwichin territory is not a reservation. It's like they own it. So they can go off public land onto Gwichin land. And without the Caribou, like the Gwichin culture cannot be the same as it is, right? the caribou is sacred to them. Like, their culture and the existence of the caribou, I guess, are tied together. And, like, the same could be said for bison, right?

Like, that is part of the reason that we don't have bison on the planes anymore, because indigenous people and the bison went hand in hand. In the genocide of the indigenous peoples, there was also genocide of the buffalo, I guess, and those two things weren't separate or distinct. And I think, like, there's this idea in the American liberal psyche that, like, bison being on the land constitutes a return. And, like, that's not it, right? Like privately owned bison being on the APR is not land back.

I mean, it would restore the grassland to some degree, but that's not, that doesn't have the same cultural impact as returning the land to its natural stewards. Yeah, exactly. And allowing indigenous people to like manage the land for future generations in the way that they did for millennia, before this massive extinction event, the European colonization. I hope nobody thinks they privately own buffalo flock is the same as land back. Yeah, I hope not. I really hope not.

Like, did you see like when the forked pet tribes were like killing some of their buffalo to feed people during the last shutdown? I do remember that, yeah. Yeah, there was kind of a strange reaction being like, oh, how sad that they have to kill their buffalo. But that's what the buffalo are for. Yes, that is why they, the buffalo are there so the culture can exist. It's not like a sacred cow situation. Yeah, yeah. It's sacred to them, but not in that way.

Yeah, like it is sacred to them and that it is sustaining to them, right? And like, that's my understanding at least. And having spent a little bit of time with people who have that relationship to other animals, like when I think about which inference in their caribou, like they will fight as hard as they can to preserve their caribou herd. That doesn't, that's not like a different thing from them. They also hunt the caribou and eat it. Yeah, part of the natural relationship with them is sometimes eating them. Yeah. And like they did in that way, the culture is. sustained by the ongoing presence of the animal, right? I guess we just, I don't know, the Western mind, we can only hunt something to extinction. We can't contemplate. Yeah, wanting to coexist with it. A symbiotic coexistence where we eat them sometimes, but we don't want them all to be dead. Yeah, right. We're not just going to be like, okay, that was fun while it lasted.

On to the next one. Yeah, I just do the next species now. So, like, people should be worried about this. This is not the end of bison on public lands. it's not the end of bison on tribal lands. But this productivity standard should really concern people. BLM is the biggest public lands management agency. Sometimes it gets jokingly called the Bureau of Livestock and Mining,

which is pretty much the way it's going, right? Right. So is there a legal definition being used here, like something from a statute or something from a contract? Like, what is this? What is productive use? So productive use is a standard that they have derived from the term domestic livestock in the Taylor Grazing Act.

And then how is domestic livestock legally defined? Any domesticated animal? Yeah, well, they are claiming that it is domestic livestock if it is productive. But this is circular, right? So productive use means livestock, and livestock have to be productive. But what is productive? It's livestock. The livestock is productive. Well, there has to be like a cash exchange.

I guess they're saying that it has to be raised for sale. But then, like, how exactly are we measuring that? Does it have to be profitable? Does it have to be extracting the maximum, like, output out of that given area of land? Do you have to be exporting something? Like, do you have to have a government? Like, what is the threshold here for what's productive? Yeah, APR has given bison meat to food banks before.

So apparently that doesn't meet the standard. Right. So, like, without a hard and fast, like, clear written standard, this is the government just deciding who does or doesn't get to do business with them. Yeah, and who does and doesn't have access. There are issues, big issues with grazing cattle on public land. Ecological, social, climate change, animal welfare, there are issues, many of them. But the idea that if you wanted to, let's say if you wanted to raise fewer cattle and do what they call regenerative ranching to something more sustainable, you couldn't because it's not as productive, it's bonkers, right?

On public land, like on... Right. So now you lose your government contract because you tried something, try something, try something. new, try something sustainable. You tried to be too nice to the land that supposedly belongs to everyone. So in order to use this land that is supposed to be for public preservation, you have to be as exploitative and destructive as possible. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Doug Bergam. Yeah, cool. Are we going to extend this to like, I'm not as familiar with mining, but you can stake a claim on public land, right? Lots of most mining claims that imagine are staked on public land. And you can, you can exploit that claim. Is it now going to be the case that, like,

You have to exploit that claim. Like, if we don't have this standard of maintaining the land, and that instead it's gone now, and that the only standard is there has to be as productive as possible. Then how is that land management? Yeah. The Bureau of Land Exploitation. Yeah, the BLM is just, and I know the BLM has done this for many,

and this isn't new for the BLM. But having officially rescinded their rule on conserving the land. Yeah, then this could be really bad, right? like the massive chunks of the West are managed by the BLA. And like the idea that they're only going to allow it the most productive uses or force the most productive uses. Like this is one of the many ways the Trump administration is attacking public lands that people should talk about more. And again, without adequately defining it, I just feel like this is another vector for just handing out government resources to donors, to allies. Yeah.

And like without any changes. statute, right? This is the law that Bergam is reinterpreting here, you've got a 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, and then there's a 1976 law, and the statutory language is that the BLM should manage the land for multiple use and sustained yield. That is broad, but like, we're not going to get this Congress to pass a better one. No, and if anybody does try to take this to court, the Supreme Court will just say, no, you have to strip mine the field. Yeah, yeah, like your only choice is. You have to frack. Even whether there's gas there or not.

You have to set up fracking. You're like obliged to do feedlots even though you can't. Like it's just like a really concerning area that I think has been approached kind of almost tokenistically in some of the press. Like this is bad for everyone. Right. If the government is saying you can only ranch this way on public land, like that's also bad for ranches all over the West. Right. I don't think that like the way that.

we restore our land to its custodians and to like its natural state. It's big private parks. Like APR is like a private national park, right? Like you can walk through lots of it. You can hunt on it like public land in some places. You can camp on it. They have dispersed camping. That's nice. I don't believe in the benevolence of the rich. Because like look how we fucking got here. Right. But that that half measure was the best thing we had at this moment. And now it's illegal. Yeah, now it's, and like, I'm glad that these rich people are putting buffalo on the landscape because we need more of them. Like if we're ever going to have truly wild herds, we need that genetic diversity, right? They've been through horrible genetic bottlenecks in getting up to this half a million number. Right, it's not like we can just try again later, let the number drop back down, we'll try again in a hundred years. Like at some point, we've missed the boat. Yeah, and as the climate continues to change, we have to think about how land management food, chairman plays a role in our future. And like, this is the opposite of doing that. And I think people ought to be concerned about that. There's not much you can do about it. Like, it's these people who

weren't elected, like ruling on things that are not statutory. But it is something that I think people ought to add to that many concerns with the Trump administration. Be more worried. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want you to be more worried. I want you to go outside, like see a Buffalo. It would be nice. I would at least know that, I don't know, the future existence of the world as we know it as being attacked from all sides, even from directions. I wasn't aware of. Yeah. There are attack vectors that I just had not considered. Yeah, this is a new and exciting way that they're making shit worse. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed a little diversion about Buffalo. Next week I want to talk about bears. I'm on a tear. The bears I'm excited to learn about. Because I've seen a bear and I know they live in the United States.

They do. They do. I guess I was thinking of like Springbok maybe. Pronghorn spring. But they both have like a pea in it. I don't know what I said. I've been to a zoo and they got of antelope type animals there. So I just, I don't know, everything at the zoo must be from far away. Now the pronghorn is like it's a, there's a cool zoo. I'm not a big zoo guy. You've got to make sure it's one of those ones that, I don't know, is accredited. Yeah. There's one in Palm Springs where you can see, I've seen big horn. I've been fortunate enough to see big horn sheep in their natural habitat. Oh, wow. But for most people, your best chance to get to look at a big horn sheep is to go to that one in Palm Springs. When you see a prong horn, just pronging, you know, like, do they like?

Yeah, they bounce alone. They got those giant tendons, right? They, they, they, a buffalo can go 35 miles an hour and they're faster than a buffalo. I don't want to see a buffalo go 35 miles an hour. I don't. want to see that. Oh, they can be, yeah. It's like seeing a minivan, like doing muscle car shit, you know, like, they can jump. They could, they have this incredible, Buffalo can like jump over stuff. They're actually very nimble despite looking, you know, like a, like a cinder block. Well, they're so cute, though.

I want to touch one so bad, but I don't want to get brucellosis. Vise against it, yeah. Bracillosis is going to be a long-term issue. It's, yeah, it's the trampling. There'll be a short-term issue for you. So, yeah, don't touch Buffalo. Don't touch them. Send Molly pictures of your prong horned encounters.

Yeah, if you have seen a wild animal in the United States, let me see it. I didn't know we had those. Yeah, getting Molly's replies with your raccoons in your trash. Raccoons I know about. I've seen a raccoon. Okay, yeah, yeah. Skunks. I was in South Korea many years ago at a theme park that had a zoo in it.

I don't know. It was a while ago. Perfect. But in the zoo area, there was this huge display. everyone was crowded around this very cool zoo animal. Was raccoons? Oh, really? They don't have them.

They play such a cultural role in the American cultural hegemony. I don't want to see a raccoon, but I guess, yeah, if you can't see one, that's an intriguing get. Yeah. I remember my initial engagement with raccoons was through the movie Pocahontas, which is a whole other shit. So when I first saw a raccoon, I wanted to visit it, right? Because, you know, they have biscuits. Yeah, you thought it was going to be like, chatty.

Yeah. Like a little friend. Yeah, it was very aggressive, be unnecessarily aggressive. Not a little friend. Yeah, I was approaching spirit of kindness. I think like generally,

I also have been victimized by a skunk for several years now. I think maybe I just... That's not a friend. No, it finds me. You wonder what those ladies on TikTok that have pet ones will tell you. That is not a friend.

Apparently they're very nice if they like can be encouraged not to, I don't know, I don't please don't capture a skunk and bring it home with you. Like, the skunk wants to live on its own.

Yeah, this one skunk will find me every time I'm going through. Like, I'll be coming out at night. He's thinking about you. On my head, like it's like a fucking exocet missile. I see him coming from like 200 yards away. It's that fucking guy again. Yeah, he's pissed at me. I'm pissed for him.

He turns around. He squares up. Did you get caught? No, no, he'll show his ass to me. And then I'll just kind of give him a wide berth and think, oh, that was unusual. Seeing a skunk do that. And then two weeks later, there he is again. Yeah, he's waiting for.

for you. He does not want you to come back. Yeah, no, he doesn't. He's also trying to, like, exercise control over the public lands and an aggressive. He's doing land management and you're not part of it. He's returning it to its natural state by keeping European people off the land, which I guess is... Honestly, valid. Respectable. He's heard horror stories from his great grandparents. Yeah, I can respect that. No, you know, I think of it in that way. But yeah, I've got some good pictures of the back end of him. Well, after he kept doing it, I thought I may as well photograph and document this tendency. So, yeah, I have them. I'm just going to use some kind of greetings card or something, but I haven't yet. Perfect for the family Christmas card, I think.

Yeah, yeah, just keep people on their toes. We've rambled enough. Okay. Yeah, please send us your wildlife pictures. We would love to see them. And next week, bears? Bears, yeah. Mully, before we go, do you want to plug your podcast about people who probably don't engage with animals very much? Oh, yeah, you can listen to my show, Weird Little Guys. I don't think there's been an animal in the show in a while. I guess eventually I will get around to those guys that occupied that BLM land. Yeah, yeah, that's it. But it's that kind of show. Yeah, I bet they love wolves.

I bet they think a lot about wolves, even if they don't see them. Oh, yeah, yeah, there was a guy who had his username on a Nazi forum was the device of wolf, which is incorrect German for the white wolf. Perfect. So they do love wolves. Yeah, yeah, I could, I guess. Thank you very much, Molly. Thank you, James.

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