Nuanced. - 42. Lee Harding: Biologist on Wolves & Caribou in BC

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Lee Harding is a father, grandfather, biologist, environmental consultant, hunter, and researcher. In this conversation, Aaron and Lee talk about the wolf culling that is taking place in British Columbia. Aerial wolf reduction involves the shooting of wolves from a helicopter, which the province claims is the most effective and humane way to reduce wolf populations in remote areas to protect Caribou. Mr. Harding's research suggests this is inaccurate, and in the conversation they discuss viable alternatives. After graduating from a California university with a B.Sc. degree in Wildlife Management (1970), Lee guided for a season in northern British Columbia, hunting Stone’s sheep, moose, caribou and mountain goats. He consulted in wildlife ecology in the Arctic for five years, where he worked closely with First Nations trappers in studies of furbearers, muskoxen and caribou. He was an Environment Canada biologist and program manager for 20 years, and after taking early retirement from the Canadian Wildlife Service, went to Japan for a PhD in Wildlife Toxicology from Gifu University (2003). He was an environmental consultant for another 20 years (1998–2007). Dr. Harding is a Registered Professional Biologist in British Columbia, Canada and a member (retired) of the College of Applied Biology (B.C.), the American Society of Mammalogists and the British Columbia Field Ornithologists. Most of his writing is in government technical reports, technical reports for consulting clients and newspaper/magazine articles.Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Thank you so much for being willing to sit down. Lee, I stumbled upon your work in a research article that I saw, and I didn't feel like I learned enough from it. So I felt it was important that we have a conversation because you were the one who did the background research on wolf culling and what's taking place. Would you mind just giving listeners a brief introduction of yourself? Myself, well, I was born and raised in California.

degree in wildlife management Humboldt State University, 1970 immigrated to Canada right soon thereafter. My first job, not really a real job, but really for fun, was guiding for big game up in Northern B.C. up along the Alaska Highway. So I guided for moose, caribou,

mountain goats, mountain sheep. And you're a biologist? I'm a biologist, yes, a wildlife biology. And how did you get started in that? Oh, well, I could make it long or short, but the medium form is in high school, a sophomore in high school, 10th grade, my biology teacher came to me.

He was also my coach, my track coach. I was on the track team, also the football team. And he said, Lee, if you don't get your grades up in biology, you're off the teams. So he had assigned a project to pick a wild animal

and do a, presentation on it so I picked beavers I really got into beavers and there were beavers we lived on the sort of edge of town there and I was in the habit of walking them down the creeks hunting fishing just pulling around in woods and were beavers there so I got an a plus first a plus he'd ever given and I stayed on the team that's what got me started in wildlife studies oh my gosh

okay well let's get started right away into the wolf killings So when I read the article, I thought it was hyperboleous when I first saw it. I couldn't have imagined that we in British Columbia send out helicopters and planes to gun down wolves at mass. It was like, I think, 1600 over five years. Can you tell us what's going on? How did this get started? How did you start learning about this? Well, I mentioned I guided for big games.

So there were wolves, moose, caribou up there. Our hunters liked to shoot a wolf if they ran across it. We didn't target them specifically. And also one time a wolf came into the ranch where I stayed. I was in the bunkhouse and the rancher was out of the way somewhere. And his wife came running to me and was like panic streak. And there's a wolf. The wolf was like 200 yards out, you know, sort of coming towards the chicken coop.

But anyway, she wanted me to shoot. So I levered a 220-grain bullet into my rifle and aimed carefully high into the right and missed it, and she thought it was a bad shot, and the wolf ran off. Anyway, not long after that, well, it was a while after that. That was 1970. In the mid-80s, there was a lot of controversy about shooting wolves from helicopters or otherwise. I wrote a couple of articles about a drawing on my experience as a hunting guide, and also a biologist. I sort of presented a sort of a biologist to look at why you should hunt wolves or not hunt wolves

and something about how to do it and when and where. At the same time, there was this really good biologist who had been studying Newfoundland and Caribou, He came out, and he moved out to BC to study our caribou, which were declining. It had declined quite a bit from what I first guided for them, which must have been at the peak of their population, and they've been going down ever since. I think they had been going up until then. Nobody knows because there were no surveys, but anyway, by 85, even the province was concerned about the declining population of Caribou, and this guy came out,

this is a good biologist, and he did a good, careful study, lots of field data. I read the papers, and he said that there were so many wolves that they were not really hunting Karibu per se, but they would like spill over into Karibu country and snag a few, usually young ones. So recruitment was down. That's recruitment is the new ones added to the population the year after they're born. So like the following year of a calf survives his first year, he becomes a member of the herd. That's recruitment.

Recruitment was way down, not so much adult care of it. So wolves were clearly targeting calves and yearlings. But the wolf population was high. It was thought, and this guy said, because the moose and elk populations were high. Deer, I suppose, but up in that north country, there weren't many deer, and that's where he did the study. It was up in the north, the Williston Lake area. So the wolf population was high,

and they were mainly hunting moose and elk, but there were enough of them that they would chance to stumble on enough caribou to reduce the recruitment of caribou, and thence the population was in a downward trajectory. Right. It's a good study. So the province decided to,

even before those studies were published, you know, with sort of the raw data, they decided to start hunting wolves from helicopters. It was controversial. I wrote a couple of articles about it, one in the BC Outdoors magazine, and another one, you know, full page in the Vancouver Sun newspaper,

just sort of giving the biologist to look at it. Anyway, that's when I first got really involved in the issue. I hadn't studied wolves professionally up to then or terrible. Yeah. So this was Tom Bertrude, I'm not mistaken. Yeah, Berger, yes. Okay, and he basically said that this is incidental,

that the wolves were not seeking out hunting caribou, that it was just kind of they'd land upon some and then take out what sounds like the younger ones. And so the argument, it sounds like the government is making in the articles that I've seen in CTV, CBC, in various places, is that the reason that we're hunting wolves by plane or by helicopter is to bring down the effects on the caribou. We're trying to save the caribou in B.C.

And killing the wolves is going to help us accomplish that goal. What are your thoughts on that as a biologist who's looked into the matter? Well, the initial studies were good, competent, careful, well research, published in top journals. There were several papers that came out of his work. The problem is, as I see it, first of all, it became like a, a parent. paradigm for all the young biologists, caribou biologists that were coming up, coming out of university, and they also taught this idea in the universities. I don't think they took into account the 100-year scale trajectory of wolf populations.

And that be that as many wolves were high and probably increasing, along with the increasing populations of that deer elk and moves. So that became the paradigm, but the problem is that the government and as consultants, consultants work for the government or the consultants work for logging companies, basically, in most of our area, some oil and gas companies up there. They applied that idea like to the whole province, like the whole Mountain Caribou range. And Mountain Caribou, I'm only talking about the Mountain Caribou, British Columbia, and Yukon. and not other kinds of caribou that live in the Arctic or in the Borough Forest.

Anyway, that became the paradigm, but they applied it even in the Selkirk Mountains where I built a cabin in 1971. It was sort of my dream come true to move to Canada and build a cabin in the wilderness. So I spent a lot of time there, you know, back and forth, and that was sort of a home base place to leave my backpack when I was canoeing. In my canoe when I was backpacking, and I was working all over the Arctic, you know, so I had to have a home base. So I, you know, I saw a caribou, and they came down every year in wintertime, and then again in spring you'd see them down on the highways. There were lots of caribou up in those mountains.

The loggers ate them all the time because the logger would fell a bunch of trees, and the treetops would be lying on the landing. You know, the log deck, you know, the woodland landing, where they pile the trees, and then the caribou would come out to eat the arboreal likings off the trees, lichens. That's what they live on, is arboreal lichens. They're kind of lichen, the hair lichen, you know,

that grows in trees. So there were lots of caribou then, but then they were declining. I thought they were declining. I had an article in 75 or 76 in BC outdoors about asking whether caribou were really endangered should be listed and such, and explaining why, and that got into this whole idea that the habitat for moose, deer, and elk

is like open and semi-open with some patches of nice, mature forests, but a mosaic of open areas, national meadows, farmland, logged over areas, and burned over areas. And it's been known since the 50s that fires for forest logging, which also destroys forests. We're bad for Karibu, because Karibu really needs. this mature old-growth forest. They need it in two places. In the low elevation, where they come down in wintertime,

here I'm only talking about this so-called southern mountain caribou. Selkirk, Columbia Mountains, Purcell Mountains. That's what they call the deep snow caribou because snow builds up so deep. First of all, in the fall, they can't walk on it. There's just too much snow and too deep. So they come down a low elevation in the fall. But then in high country, it's sort of a warm environment.

It's, you know, it's full of freezing and it's cold in snows, but it's warm enough that the snow settles and packs, enough so the caribou can walk on top of the snowpack. And the snow might be 10 feet deep. So the caribu, at that time of year, which is midwinter, then they go back up to the high country in the subalpine meadows and patches of forest, Engelman Spruce, and subalpine fur country.

And then they browse on these arboreal lichens walking on top of the snowpack. They're basically feeding in the treetops. In late winter, it starts freezing and thawing, and the snow forms a crust. And the caribou can't walk on that crust. They just, they break through. And it braids their skin of actually followed blood trails where the caribou were like trying to get out of that high country and get down to the low elevation. but they're walking, they're breaking through the crust so much, it's rubbing the skin off their legs.

It's hard for them if they can't. But then, so then they come down to the cedar hemlock forest, the low elevation, wet, moist forest, warm forest. And in the spring, and that's when, you know, it's starting to green up. The snow's already gone, especially along the sides of the roads and, you know, the avalanche paths. So that's where you would look for them.

You'd see them on the road all the time in the 70s. They're common. In that area, there are no more caribular. They're gone. They've been chased out by, well, there were never any wolves there until about 1990, say. Not sure exactly, but my friend who hunted up in one of those valleys saw the first one of anybody had ever heard of. A year or two later, when they were going on the cabin in Galena Bay, which is in the base of the South Creek Mountains, he saw one on the beach,

and people started reporting the milk tracks. Wolves only came in at that time. Before that, there were never any wolves in that country, and I saw that the first band of Elk that came in that country. They came through a pass from the Cooteney drainage in there, and because there were lots of logged land by then, they were early logging to beat the band back in the 70s or the 80s, and they still are. And then the moose came a few years later.

So with the moose and the elk, and there never had been any moose there at all. On the Arrow Lake side of the Selker Valley, they had been, you know, a malcolm moose on the other side over in the Cootnery, but never there. And so that's, you know, the elk came, then the moose came, and then the wolves came. So that was only up until the late 90s. And until then, there was never any predation by wolves on caribou, but the caribou populations were declining. Why? Well, the logging destroys their low elevation habitat.

At that time, there were still lots of higher elevation habitat still there. There still is a fair bit, since the various caribou protection plans protected some of the higher elevation, but not low elevation. So they come down to low elevation, there's no forest. They need the forest, not so much to feed at that time of year when they come down to low elevation, fall and spring. But they need the forest to escape the predators, which in that country was mostly cougars.

Cougars were taken a fair number. Not a huge number, but some. It turns out that the interesting paper, one cougar can learn to hunt caribou, and then that cougar will be responsible for a lower in the population in the whole area. Wow. Then it trains its babies to hunt caribou also. Other cougars living 10 miles away or whatever, they just hunt deer and elk, like all the other cougars were doing.

But anyway, sorry, that's a sideline. But that's the background. So the terrible population will decline and have been declining ever since. Okay, so from your understanding and your research, it looks like this is primarily due to the deforestation and impacting with logging. You've also mentioned like ski areas and ski trails and stuff like that as being one of the primary impacts. Then why are we killing these wolves in this way? Well, I see. As I said, the caribou biologist growing up and coming out of university,

who are now, you know, between your and my ages, they're like the mature senior biologists, whether they're working for industry or for government. They came up with this idea, and they can't shake the idea that wolves are responsible. And wolves are responsible for bringing down the recruitment in some areas, but not all areas. And that's only part of the story anyway,

because, oh, going back about 20 years now, when the first paper started coming out about the impacts of snowmobiling and heli skiing on Caribou, it harasses them, so they run around, they burn up energy in wintertime when they can ill afford it, especially the females who are carrying fetuses. And it also chases them away from their preferred habitats,

which is these high elevation in winter when the snowmobiles are skiing. or heli skiers, rather, they're up there in these little patches of subalpine fir and spruce eating all the war of lichens, well, swimmobiles just chase them away, even if they don't mean to, because just, you know, a swimmobile coming up the valley. But in fact, I've seen areas in prime caribou winter habitat where there's not a meter of snow on a impacted by snowmobile tracks. They're just so pervasive.

And it's a huge industry. You know, people love snowmobile. I do too. I used to, well, I never did it for recreation, but I did use it for wildlife surveys and related things. It's fun to get out and, you know, race around the snow and, you know, no roads and go wherever you want. But, you know, so that's the first thing. It impacts the caribou directly. But also indirectly, because it turns.

out the wolves more easily and more willingly will follow a snowmobile track up into the high country where the caribou were trying to hide. And then the, you know, when the snowmobile track freezes, it gets hard, rock. So it's easy to walk on. Easier for wolves, not for caribou, because caribou breakthrough. So you have this duality where the winter habitat is being destroyed by logging, but at the same time, and both high elevation and low, there's almost no low elevation forest left in that area, well, in any area,

because the loggers harvest the more easily accessible, low elevation forest first. And that's common throughout mountain Caribbean. So you've got the impact of increasing the elk and moose and deer population, increasing the wolf population, the caribou not having any place to hide from the wolves either at low elevation or high elevation and the wolves more easily traveling up to the high elevation

or maybe they just go explore and they see well where is this track well let's go find out they get up there and they find some caribou yeah so that has been the story and that study that you mentioned well let me just explain the study It has been this paradigm that the way to save Caribou is to kill wolves for a long time. Well, that's, you know, since 85 anyway. But it hadn't really been, there had been, you know, one good series of studies up in the Peace River country. And then little bits of studies that sort of let the biologists infer that that was the case.

there also, but not really any concerned studies. A colleague of mine, good biologists, I know him personally, he thought he'd draw together all the studies from all these different areas, and by the late teens, 2019

his paper came out, so his research was up to about the previous year, 2018. He looked at all the different terrible populages all over with the idea of showing whether or not killing wolves could save caribou. And his data showed that where they had removed wolves,

the caribou population at least stabilized and in some cases started to go back up. But when I read it, I realized he'd made some major errors. And so many that as I read it and read it and I got his data tables and I constructed my own data tables from his and found some errors in the data. Let's not go there.

It wouldn't have been fatal to the paper. But I realized that where the caribou populations were going down was in this, really dramatically, it was in this deep snow country. The government had tried to have a maternal pen. Shall I explain that? Yes, Chase. Well, if they're trying to protect, you know,

increase recruitment, then they need to protect the calves in the earlings. And one way to do that is to capture all the females who are about to give birth, put them in a pen, and let them give birth to their calves in this protected area with no wolves, let the calves grow to a certain age where they're probably fend for themselves or at least outrunning wool, and then take them back up on the hankering and turn the loose. Right. So there was a maternal pen, some good work by the Soto and other First Nations up there, working with the government and with the companies that wanted to log, and so they were hiring biologists. So they were taking charge of their country, and they wanted to protect their animals. So they came up with this protection plan.

This is in the Clinton-Zee-Zaw territory, I think it's between Chetwin and Port St. John, those mountains. Right. Or maybe it's a little south and west of Chetland. Nice country. And they did good work. They made a paternal pen. It was up in high elevation.

They caught the pregnant females, all the ones they could find. They had like two sub-population. One of them had gone almost to extinction by the time they did this. So they sort of, on paper, they emerged. populations, but they got the thing that, you know, they got the pregnant cows, they raised the calves, turning loose, and at the same time, they're calling wolves, so fewer wolves, more of the recruitment, terrible populations started going up. It was good work. It was well done. And sometime after that was well going, and the initial results were good. They built another

maternal pan down in the southern deep snow country. Let me just clarify this deep snow in the north, that is around the Quincy's Ate territory. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, by the way. Anyway, the snow is really light. It's colder up there in winter. It's like a continental climate. It's dry and cold relative to the southwest and southeast of BC.

And so the snow is light and fluffy and not very deep. There's not that much snow. there's not that much total precipitation, but the snow is light and fluffy. And the caribou there, they never browse Arboral lichens in the trees. They dig through the snow, and they need terrestrial lichens.

Like all of the other caribou in the world, practically. They posture the snow for terrestrial lichens. And a lot of them will stay in a high-elevation country where the wind blows the snow off the mountain tops and they can browse alboreal lichens up there. And some of them go where I was guiding, for example, that's the pink mountain there in. Those caribou would come off and mass in the fall, late fall,

and they'd go out into the Muskeg and browse terrestrial lichens out there. So every year you had this mass migration across the Alaska highway. It was really easy to shoot a caribou. The hunters would go up in this early 70s, I'm talking about. The hunters would go up and just line up, along the Alaska Highway and wait for the caribou to come across. Wow. I was one of them.

And, yeah, it was really, it was migration. It was amazing. There wasn't tens of thousands. It was, you know, dozens. But still, you know, it was, over the course of a winter, it would be many thousands of caribou that would come across from the high country. Nobody was doing winter surveys,

so they didn't know if those northern caribou were, if some of them were still in the high country or not, they assumed that they all came out and migrated fairly long horizontal distance. So this is not the same kind of the migration I described as double migration where they, in the Selkirk Mountains, where they come down twice a year, they come down, or they come down again in the spring. You know, this is different. It's a horizontal migration in there, and they're totally different caribou.

In fact, let me digress a moment. Since about 2000, when Caribou classification was sort of revised, actually there was a major revision in 61, I won't trouble you with that. But in 2000, the government, the Canadian government, classified Caribou all over Canada, really according to the ecosystems where they lived. The ecosystems were defined on a broad scale. So the Southern Mountain Ecozone was from basically Fort St. John all the way down through the Cordillera of the mountains of British Columbia. And then the northern mountain, Ecozone, was from there all the way up through the Yukon. So those caribou were classified that. And one of the Caribou, the southern mountain ecotype, as they called it.

it was classified as threatened. It turns out that was an error in that classification. It didn't take into account the genetic relatedness of the caribou, the ecosystem, the habitat, the behavior, or anything. It was just based on these very large-scale ecosystems that had been defined for some other reason. Well, since then, there's been a lot of research, including genetic research, to show relatedness among caribou population. And these papers started coming out in the early 2000, mid-2000s.

And they showed that the caribou, these mountain caribou, weren't, in fact, related to the woodland caribou that live in Canada all across the prairies and the maritimes. they were somewhat distantly but still more closely related to those caravans to the arshade caribou, the tundra caribou, the ones that survived the last and maybe the previous ice age in Beringia in the Alaska-Ukong area. And so they're unrelated to the caribou that lived south of the ice sheets all across the rest of North America. So these mountain caribou were really not related, but according to this 2000-era classification, they were just all, there were two kinds of caribou, northern mountain and southern mountain.

But this more modern research with genetic behavioral and ecological showed that there were three kinds of mountain caribou, northern mountain, a southern mountain, which were both of these Beringian, lineage with beringia is the area of Alaska, Yukon, and what, eastern Siberia that was ice-free during that size of berencius, the beringian lineage. And then there was another population of caribou that the geneticists defined as central mountain caribou. They turn out to be a kind of a hybrid between our other mountain caribou. and woodland caribou. They're on the other side of the mountains,

the eastern slope of the Rockies. Interestingly, these three types of caribou were all identified in the 1899, 1902 as separate species and not merely subspecies

or ecotypes. They're actually separate species. So the mountain caribou was the southernmost and the Selkirk Mountains was Ranjifer Montana's Mountain Caribbean the central mountain was rocky mountain caribou and they were remained

as different species for most of the century but this was not recognized by this 2000 era geographically sorry I'm rambling a bit but I think it's an important point it was not recognized by this

2000 era classification that was just geography-based instead of, you know, lineage-based or ecological or behavioral or anything. And so this has been known since the mid-2000s. In 2011, Canadian Wildlife Service did a review of all the classification of Caribou and the genetic data, behavioral data, ecological data, relatedness among lineages based on the genetics, and they defined these three that maybe not coincidentally, these three mountain ectotypes, then went back to the original descriptions, except that they weren't revised formally in a taxonomic basis, so they weren't given their old species names. They were just called egot types, still officially, even

today classified as subspecies of wooden caribou, which they're not even related to, or at least not, you know, for the last 100,000 years. Right. So basically, like, what you're pointing out is that, like, putting out, like, one research study is not conclusive, and there's dangers in taking one and just assuming that this is what the new reality is, and we can just take this wholeheartedly and move forward based on it. You've kind of pointed out with certain research that there's nuance to it and that if people aren't careful, if they make assumptions, or if they, um, breeze over certain data that we can make a lot of big errors. And it's very concerning, and it sounds like you've been able to see just smaller errors that are important that are relevant to our understanding of what's going on. Yeah, you've actually said it more distinctly than I did.

So that's right. So this 2019 study, they ignored these different kinds of caribou, or they're different kinds of habitats, behavior, ways of living, arboreal versus terrestrial lichens, just lumped them all together. and also lumped areas with different kinds of different mixes of predators, as I mentioned earlier. And they actually ignored

more than half the populations of mountain caribou that they could have included in their analysis. And turns out the ones they ignored were the ones that didn't fit their hypothesis. The way to kill wolves is to, or they're The way to save caribou was to kill wolves because there were a lot of populations where they had removed wolves, but the caribou populations still went down. And they had included one or two populations like that. But they had ignored these other caribou. So there was a fundamental flaw. There were under other fundamental, really, I think, fundamental flaws. The study purported to show that the amount of good caribou habitat, which they equated to forest versus non-forest. was not a factor. But they used invalid metrics, invalid data

for what was Caribou Habitat, unaccountably, because data were actually available. They ignored what we call in science and statistical analysis, confounding variables. That's a variable that might influence the results that we should account for in your study design. So they ignored the impact of snowmobiles, which from 2000, when the papers first started coming out until now, it was just gone up exponentially. Literally, if you look

at the data, it is an exponential increase in snowmobile use. And of course, local chambers of commerce love it, you know, and tour guides love it, and it's good for business. So good, in fact, that the provincial government refuses to even talk about limiting snowmobile use and critical caribou habitat now. In 2000, let me just backtrack a bit. In 2008, the province came out with a new caribou recovery plan. Total disaster, nine populations have gone extinct since they came out with this plan. but in it they tried to account for the impact of snowmobiles and heli skiing on caribou by enacting closures where these machines were not allowed winter motorized recreation is the sort of unwielded term but from when the science team that they had developing this plan

They made these recommendations based on keeping these snowmills and skiing out of winter critical habitat. But the negotiated boundaries of the closures were much less than the science team would recommend it because they just didn't want to restrict the use of snowmobiles because it was so important to local communities economically. Then the other flaw about that was the closures were... mostly ineffective. There was no enforcement mechanism.

There were several other reasons I won't pour you with the detail about why the closures were ineffective, but they were and demonstrably so. Anyway, this 2000 study didn't account for that. So my colleagues, I sort of redid the study, reanalyzed the data, found totally different results, and published a paper saying that the study was flawed. Well, that doesn't mean it was wrong, just because they failed to prove to our satisfaction that there are a central hypothesis that if you kill enough wolves, the carver will be protected.

It might just be that they failed to prove in a properly designed study would show the same thing. And that's basically what they said was. And they've published some papers since, to their credit, they're correcting the errors that they identified. I don't know they can get us credit for it. And they go on saying this. But they're careful not to apply that too much, like in southern areas. You know, the southern Selkirk caribou herd was dwindling. But through the 2000s, there were still dozens of caribou in that herd, even though it had gone down quite a bit.

This is right on the border. Well, they went extinct in 2000. 18 After they had killed all the wolves So it didn't work Yeah They killed all the wolves

And the population still went extinct Right And this is just an anecdote But if you look at the data Especially throughout the southern You know mountain Area southern mountain

caribou area there's just no relationship at all with killing wolves and saving caribou caribou going down anyway Can you explain why it's so important

that we save the caribou can you just give us like an understanding of what the value they bring to the ecosystem that listeners might like I've never seen a carib I've never interacted with one

it's hard to develop that relationship with something when you don't have a good understanding of what what they are and how they live and how they impact their ecosystems. But you do recall the image on one side of the Canadian quarter, right? Yes. It's a Caribou.

Right. And that's because Caribou was so important to the founding and development of modern Canada. Well, the colonial period, but also the pre-colonial period, when throughout the country, the First Nations people always lived on Caribou. They hunted them and ate them. And they, you know, they had, you know, myths about them. And I don't know, maybe I couldn't say myths, but they had stories about the caribou and how they relayed to the people.

And this is, you know, I worked with First Nations people all over this country. Well, all over the western northern parts of this country. And they all had, you know, deep regard for caribou. Anyway, if you never saw a caribou... Well, first of all, I'm sad to say you probably never will. Although if you go up north, you know, northern and Yukon, far enough, in Northern BC and Yukon, you still can see Caribou. There still are some there.

There's still hunted in some parts of Northern B.C. So there still are some caribou. In northern Yukon, you can go in Yukon, all over the McKenzie, there's still caribou. Of course, in the hierarchy, there's herds of, you know, tens of thousands. As a biologist who's had the opportunity to hunt them, to be involved with them, to see them live. What is it like to find out that, like, certain species of them have gotten extinct?

Well, here's an example that's close to me. I told you that I used to see them all the time after I built my cabin. I was driving around, you know, the logging roads, even the main highway. They were always careful there and, you know, late fall. My son and I went for a mountain hiking. He was, you know, a young man just, you know, striking out on his own. He and I got together in 2000, sorry, 1999. We went up in the mound behind the cabin.

There were a fair number of caribou up there. He took pictures. I took pictures. And I, you know, bull caribou and females with calves. And, you know, nice, this is right behind our cabin. It ends up in the high country. Well, he traders that time. He knows he'll never see a caribou.

And his son, my grandsons, my granddaughter, they'll never see one, not around there anyway. They don't have to go up to the Yukon to see a caribou because there just aren't any left. That whole big block of mountains where my cabin is, aerial monitoring of caribou population shows that there's none there. And they've just been chased away by the heli skiers and snowmobilers and a few of you being by wolves, although it's hardly been documented in this area. A few have been eaten by cougars. That population is still hanging on, but it's not in that block of mountains. It's further back.

There's still about two days in the last count. And when I moved in there, there were like hundreds. The first survey, which was after they'd been declining for years, there was around 400 caribou in that patch of mountains. So how fast was that decline from when there were 400 to when There was none. How long was that period? That's about 20 years.

That's amazing. Yeah. So in that population, that's now the southernmost population of Mount Caraboo in Canada, and there were about two dozen in that population, where there used to be 400. And further to the south, another population, southern Selkirk population, is gone. Southern Purcell population gone. Across the lake where I could see the mountaintops peeking up through the trees in my cabin that whole range of monoshees used to be caribou habitat i've seen caribou

habitat i mean i've seen caribou there none zero they went to went to zero and declared functionally extinct in 2016 i think it was another population up uh between uh revelstoke and the in the alberta border gone down there and they're you know of the 18 or so subpopulations of southern mountain caribou, nine of them, at least nine, are completely extinct. And some of them only have two or three animals at last count, which was a couple of years ago. Right.

So, I mean, I feel bad for the caribou because I know them, you know, I hunted them. I was there when they were at their peak of their population. When I was guiding, we would carry, you know, carried beef and pork with us up in the high country on the panneys and backpacks of the packhorses. But when that, over a long hunt, it would run out. And then we thought nothing of shooting a young caribou bull for camp meat. It was just the way it was done. It was technically illegal.

But even the wildlife service guys that we'd meet with occasionally acknowledged that. And they said, I don't know. Talk about that. There's lots of caribou. And now that it's a completely different. Yeah. It wasn't long after that. They began closing the hunting over most of the province,

including the area around my cabin in the cell creek. All that areas have been closed for almost 50 years now. Still the populations are going down. Like I said, they're still hunting them in the north where there still is huddable populations. And there are some guides and outfitters that make a good living, taking clients. and there are some clients that are very happy to have a chance to shoot the caribou.

I just think it would be ashamed to lose the caribou. I mean, we have lost so many already, so many like whole subpopulations. Yeah. I think it's completely possible that we'll lose the whole of the southern population, which this genetic research shows are unique. They're not part of this so-called southern mountain eco-zone that the government defined erroneously in 2000. They're unique, and we're going to lose it.

Sooner rather than later, I think in my lifetime, I'm 70, I'll be 7.5 soon. That's how long I think the last ones will last. And from, let's get into what's going on with the government's kind of handling of this, because you, and I think that this is where it's important for listeners to understand, And there is a process in which the government, like we talk about studies and we talk about research and that makes people feel good that research is taking place or something like that. But from how you've kind of described it, the government preferentially chooses consultants, perhaps research that goes along with their economic goals that meet certain objectives

that they have independent of whether or not they're going to actually save the caribou. And so you kind of laid out that they brought together these committees. and that they put one committee together, and then they fired them, and then they brought another committee, and then they disbanded that, and then they brought in another to try and get information that they want, they hoped that they would hear. They were kind of trying to figure out who's going to give us what we want to hear. Can you describe that to listeners?

Just what took place? Well, the government started getting worried about Caribou. In 85, there was a workshop in Kamloos. About 10 years later, and also there were some big land use. management plans in that era that were being developed. Well, they called them, there was an acronym, I forget, anyway, land use management plans being developed. And so they put together the science team, team's biologists.

And so the first Caribou recovery plan was, I think it was dated 95 thereabouts. And they did actually protect some area. They drew lines, you know, around high. mountain caribou habit or not low mountain because they didn't want to take away the fiber for the palm mills and the sawmills. But anyway, they recommended that they started a seriously curtail logging and critical caribou habitats. Well, the government didn't like that. So they put the report on the shelf buried as deeply as they could. I have a coffee. What do you mean when you say they buried it? Like what is it? I'm sorry. I'd be a little flip.

they just ignored it. They fired the biology or disbanded the committee that they had assembled to advise them and they formed another committee with other biologists. Some of them were the same ones. How do they go about justifying that? What are their reasons to say these biologists are not helpful or they didn't come to a useful conclusion? Like how do you go about getting rid of one committee and switching it out without drawing attention to yourself? Because a lay person like me goes, well, what's wrong with these biologists and what are these other biologist is going to do that's different? I can't answer that.

I mean, you know, the government just didn't want to know that. And Logging's an important industry. And they just said, well, let's find a solution that doesn't involve curtailing logging. So then they formed another committee, and they came with a report 2002, same thing. So they disbanded the committee, put the report on the shelf, and formed another what they called a Caribou Science. team. And they seemed like they were really going to get serious this time. And they, from 2000 to 2006, 2008, that team worked. And they came up with a third caribou recovery plan. It was really

difficult. The negotiations were really hard and protracted. I was, I had friends in the environmental groups that were on the committee. Some of them left because they, they, they, their opinions weren't being heard, and the ones that stayed sort of just bit their tongue and toughed it out. Negotiations were really hard. You know, the logging companies, they had representatives on the committees. And there was like a main committee, and then there was a political committee, and then a science committee, and then regional committees,

like, for every herd, every group of terrible heads. And they did their business. best to come up with a good plan. And in the area behind my cabin, it actually wasn't too bad. They ended up saving a fair amount of caribou high elevation habitat, mainly because the Valhalla Wilderness Society and two or three other wild site, I forget, which environmental groups, they really dug in their heels. And they were about to lose the whole thing. And then politically, I think that the government just said, well, no, let's give them that. It's high elevation. worth much anyway.

But the process was constrained politically. The marching orders in 2006 were to not have a plan that reduces the amount of logging.

That's a bit of an overstatement. It provided for some logging, you know, some potentially logable stands of a forest being protected as caribou habitat. But overall, there was like a zero net loss. And no net loss policy was given to them at the start in 2006,

where they weren't the government at the political level wasn't willing to accept any loss of fiber flow to the sawmills and palmments. So that's what the people on these committees, that's what they had to work with. They work really hard. I mean, they were, you know, drawing, you know, maps and they had these GIS systems spewing out maps one after the other as they negotiated, you know, they reached a point. They said, okay, let's, you know, draw these lines.

And then they would be back to the drawing board the next week, trying, you know, the logging company would say, look, that's a really valuable, valuable piece of timber right there. Let us log that and take this other, you know, other forest that's the timber. isn't valuable for logging, but still good for Karibu, and let the Karibu have that. So there were a lot of this give and take, and it was really tough negotiations. I credit all the people working hard. The problem is that they had this constraint. Yeah. And it ended up being there's zero recognition of this low elevation habitat that the Karibur absolutely need.

Right. This is very frustrating to hear because you're talking about conservation. I'm in law school right now and we talk about the Delgamuk case. We talk about the Marshall decision and the Supreme Court of Canada basically says something like you're allowed to have your indigenous rights and title so long as conservation is met. And when you're describing how conservation works where we bring in industries who in my opinion shouldn't be at that table and even if they are allowed to be at that table for economic purposes because I do understand we have an important economy and natural resources are important,

they should not be able to set the requirements of what's not like having a net zero impact on my business. That doesn't seem like a middle ground to me. And so when I learn about decisions about conservation and how the government of Canada and BC is able to limit indigenous rights and title for the sake of conservation, and then you start describing how conservation discussions and committees take place, it has, it sounds like less to do with the science of what's actually going to save these caribou and more about political kind of movements and how are we going to make sure the economy is not impacted while we try and save these caribou. And it doesn't sound like it's 100% we're going to save these caribou. It's, well, what's the low-hanging

fruit that's not going to impact anything? What was that like to what? Do you think that this is an effective system that we, like it sounds like good work was still done, but would you like to see these committees in the future set up differently? Is it better under an NDP government versus a liberal government? Because it sounds like 2006, that would have been the liberal government. Gordon Campbell, if I'm not mistaken, would have been leading that. Would that have made any impact? Do you see improvements now with an NDP government? They seem to tout more care for the environment? No, I don't think so. Just letting the caribou decline because of habitat loss has been going on through several changes of government.

I don't think the NDP has been any better. The NDP, they talk well, but they have all these. Well, let's go back in that. In 2017, I as an individual wrote a letter to the federal minister of environment. They have this Species at Risk Act, which provides for emergency orders. if I'd had enough. So I wrote to her, and I said, to the minister, I said, they're logging in Caribou Critical Habitat.

This is Habitat defined as critical by the federal government in 2014, when the federal government came out with their recovery plan. So I said, look, and I was just there pictures of logging in the area behind my cabin and Caribou Habitat. I asked her to do an emergency order and stop the logging. and also stop some will be on some other, well, just those two. Well, two other groups, I was an individual, but two groups of environmental people at the same, or about the same time, were developing similar requests for lawyers.

We shared notes, I have to tell you. One up north, and one in the south, Bahala Wilderness Society was one. So the minister received these three requests for emergency order to stop the logging and some will be on critical, and federally designated critical Caribbean habitat in several areas of the southern Caribbean country. Well, to do that, the species of risk acts lets the federal government do it, but to do so they have to step on the province's toes. And then there's a process that has to go through.

So right away, the fed's contact with the province. I don't know what they might have said. I sought the correspondence through access to information act. They delayed, delayed, and delayed, and finally sent me all this redacted stuff. I came and came to see who was writing to whom. Anyway, they consolidated with the province, and the province realized this is a really big deal.

If the feds have to step in and give these emergency orders, that's going to be a big impact on our snowmobile. hilly hiking and logging industry. So the province then seemed to get serious, and they formed a committee. They worked with the SOTO, First Nation, up north, not just the SOTO. There's two or three bands involved.

I forget all which they were. It's led by the Soto, I think. And good people. It worked hard. They put it, I told you, about their maternity pen. Yeah. And Wolf College, they're built in Northern Caribou. They're not even Southern Caribbean.

Anyway, the government started developing this, I mean, both governments, mainly the province, lived by the province. They started negotiating an improved recovery plan. And they first had a formal agreement with those first nations up north, which they saw as a critical way of proceeding, which was right and proper. But to do that, they delayed dealing with the southern herds or the southern peoples whose territory includes those herds. But then they started working towards an overarching agreement, which they finally signed, I think, about a year, or less than a year ago, for these southern areas. but then now they're working on like herd specific plans so like each so the umbrella agreement covers general principles

and then they have to have a plan for each herd well in the process they're completely ignoring my paper that said that this previous paper was flawed and that killing wolves might not be the best way to save caribou and that there are in fact other ways that whether you kill caribou or kill wolves or not you still have to do these other things, otherwise you're going to have more care of it. Those other things are habitat protection and limiting winter motorized recreation in their habitat.

So I think I'm kind of rambling about and getting to answer your question, but no, I don't think it's the liberal or conservative or NDP government that is the solution. What I think is the solution is let the First Nations people manage. the wildlife and the habitat in their territories. They'll do a much better job of it than, frankly, the provincial federal governments will. And we've shown that already in the Quincy's-Aught territory up north. Those are dinner people. Yeah. So it doesn't look like forming these committees is very effective.

And the other thing I'm kind of getting out of this is that there's a problem with not bringing in people like yourself. Like, you've worked with various organizations as a biologist. why aren't they consulting with you? Like when I'm reading these interesting articles about, and they're referencing your work of there's no statistical evidence to support Wolf Kaling to save Caribou habitats. You've helped inform, it sounds like, even though they didn't give you credit, they've given you credit for, like, they've followed your work,

but they have not acknowledged your involvement. Why aren't they bringing in individuals like yourself who've been working on this, it sounds like for about 20 years now, you've been at least monitoring the situation whether or not you're coming out with papers every year irrelevant you've been monitoring the policies that are taking place what you think would be genuine solutions you propose papers you help address the problems that are going on why aren't they saying hey lee you got you got to get in here let's let's figure out a plan to save these caribou that seems to be why we're investing all this money and all these consultants let's just

get it done let's make sure that we don't we at least have the caribou into the future what What's going on? Well, I'm afraid I've burned a few bridges, made, I don't know, not enemies exactly, but I'm sort of persona non grata in this fraternity of Caribou biologists. It's not that they don't think that I'm right, myself and my co-authors. There's been enough follow-up work showing that our paper was criticizing this previous paper was completely valid. They don't want to hear it.

They don't want to hear the message. And it's not so bad. It's not like shooting the messenger. I mean, I'm a good biologist. I have a good reputation. My biologist can't be ruined by, you know, by people getting mad at me. I still publish in journals. But the people reading the journals, they agree with me.

you know, the academics, the scientists and the universities who are, you know, working on these problems, we're all in agreement about what the problem is and what the solutions are. The government just doesn't want to hear it. So they don't want to hear me. I just don't understand how you can, like, why have, why even bother? Why even tell people that you're trying to save the Caribbean then? As they've put in implemented plans in place, they've failed, they've killed wolves by helicopter, which I'd like to talk more about. But they've done the things, and it hasn't worked. You've said that they've gone extinct since bringing in these policies.

So why even waste their time trying to say that they're trying to save the care? Why even have any committees at all, if they're not going to have any impact, if they're not going to hear from people like yourself? Like I just, I have trouble understanding why even give the lip service at all. I couldn't have said it better myself. But basically what it is is this, the fact. The federal threat of these emergency orders was so profound, the province, as I see it, and this is just my personal opinion, but this is what it looks like to me. The province is going through all the lip movements of protecting Caribou just to keep the feds from coming with these emergency orders.

And it wasn't, like I said, it was not just my request for emergency order. there were these two others, you know, well-written, well-thought-out, that spurred the federal government into action, and that spurred the provincial government into action, but they're not going to, well, a terrible biologist who I know and respect and the Cooteney told colleagues of mine, not me directly, in a meeting, formal meeting, they just would not hear about limiting snowmobiles.

this is in the area that herd that I mentioned the now the southernmost herd after several other subpopulations have gone extinct southern roost herd gone from 400 animals down to 26 at last count and pervasive with snowmobiles and caribou habitat and the government won't even think about limiting

won't even talk about it do you think that at all like I don't know if you've heard of 10 tree, but they're a company you buy, I think they're based out of Vancouver, you buy like a sweater and they agree to plant 10 trees for when you buy their clothing. So I have some 10 tree sweaters. They plant trees as a consequence of my purchase. Do you think there's a, like, I think of people who go snowmobiling who enjoy these recreations. I'm sure that regular consumers that are enjoying these experiences, they don't want to contribute to the death of Caribou or the extinction

of Caribou, all for them to go riding. Is there a way we can take their money to, and and invest it and have them pay a little bit extra when they go snowmobiling or when they go hell of skiing and have that money dedicated towards protecting the caribou so that everybody wins they get to have their snowmobiling and they're skiing and we take some of that money and we protect the caribou that seems like an easier solution than convincing government officials who are usually hoping for purse strings to make some difference to actually address this issue because as a consumer if you start warning people hey you do this you're going to make the caribou extent. There's going to be a little bit of guilt there on everyday consumers like

myself of like, I don't want to be a part of that. I know that we're losing biodiversity in the world and I don't want to be a contributor to that. Do you think that that would be a solution that would perhaps persuade these big industries looking at building giant spaces for heliskeying to say, hey, if you pay 20 bucks more each time you come, we're going to put that money towards protecting the caribou. Do you think that that's a solution at all? that's an interesting idea and the idea is well presented I wish there were more people like you work on these problems

but let me ask you one question those 10 trees wherever they planted oh I have no idea that that's the problem when I was a when I was a Cub Scout leader my son was in the Cub Scouts

way back when we had a program to plant trees I think the scouts did it every year for a while And where we planted trees was, you know, we had a hard time finding them in our neighborhood. So we went up and down, you know, the vacant lots. We planted trees all over the vacant lot, right away and along the roadsides. Well, every single place we planted trees was later, not much later, subdivided, and those trees were gone.

The federal government, you know, as an election promise, they were going to plant, what, 2 billion trees? Where? The thing is, where are they going to plant these trees? When you log, when you take down the forest, you're required to replant. And they replant. There's a vigorous tree replanting program in Canada, in British Columbia. It's employs a lot of people, and a lot of companies make a good living, raising trees, and the timber harvest companies, they have to replant them,

less so on naturally burned areas that are outside of the commercial timber zone. leave that aside, but anyway, within the commercial timber area, they're required to plant trees. And that's virtually all the Caribou habitat is in those areas where the companies are planting trees anyway. Well, the problem is not that they're not reforesting, so planting the trees isn't going to help. The problem is that they cut down so many and so quickly that it's going to take, even if they stop logging completely in the Caribou low elevation winter habitat will still be 300 years until the forest grows up and like the like are the lichens that they eat are fairly slow growing right you know their combination of fungus and plant they're

fairly slow growing you know these forests that they're cutting are 250 300 years old at a minimum well that's a long time to wait until you've got caribou habitat especially if you think caribou were going to be extinct in the area and you know a couple of decades yeah yeah i'm hoping to have the person from Tentree on to explain more about what you're saying, because you're right, we risk going back down a path of lip service if we let corporations basically say, look, we're saving the caribou. I would just say perhaps that you can have a little bit more optimism because it's easier to see, you're saying that in the next 20 years, we could have no caribou left. And so if they're saying that they're helping with this and then the

caribou do go extinct, well, then they didn't really help. Yeah, that doesn't mean that the Tent crazy's idea is not a good idea. It's just not good for caribou. It might be good for a lot of other, you know, birds, near, you know, whatever. But then there's the also, there's the lesson of Brazil and the Amazon rainforest, where somebody maybe like yourself came up with the idea that if, you know, if all the world's conservation has got together and like paid Brazil to not log their rainforest and Brazil could take that money instead of the tax money that would otherwise get

from logging over, they don't get much because most of it's illegal, but that's a side issue. So Brazil actually accepted many millions of dollars from the international conservationist community to not log portions of their rainforest, the biggest rainforest on the planet. Yeah, considered like a lung to the planet, right?

Yeah, a lung to the planet. Well, then they get this new conservative, not tarning with that brush intentionally, but he's a conservative politician, Bolsonaro. He's really a pro-business guy. He dismantled all these agreements. And he turns a blind eye to the illegal logging. He permits more illegal logging in areas where he dares. And where he doesn't dare, he just has his people.

He has actually dismantled the, the environmental and forestry management parts of agencies that would have caught the legal logging, we're catching the legal logging, and living legal logging to areas where it wouldn't do that much harm. So now, I just heard on the paper yesterday, there's been more logging of the Amazon rainforest in the past year than ever. Right. This is after the international community. And all the fires that were taking place, what, a year or two? Oh, yeah, those fires, they were devastating.

On top of the fires now, now we're logging again. And from my understanding, we do get a lot of pharmaceutical, positive benefits from the Amazon. And it's so diverse, biodiverse, that there's a lot to get out of those areas. Yeah. This is much to the detriment of the native people who live in those areas, too. And they have themselves fought against logging and other encroachment in their territories for, well, for 100 years. And they're losing the battle.

They don't lack it. They're not happy, but there's nothing they can do. And even less they can do now with this particular president. So, I mean, they're losing their livelihoods. If they don't leave their villages and, you know, go to Rio de Janeiro or South Paulo and, you know, get a job driving truck or whatever, then they're not going to be able to make a living from the forest because the forest is the forest is gone. So we talk a lot about climate change. It's a big topic for a lot of people, and part of climate change is the lack of biodiversity.

So do you feel like it is a lot of lip service, or do you feel like there's a lot of good initiatives taking place that we can all be very optimistic about? Well, I'm of two minds. There's a lot of really good work that's being done. Theoretical work, and you've mentioned some ideas, and some of that's been put into practice, so there's practical work, like tentries. good idea and there's a lot of if you go through the you know the climate change and the biodiversity by the way you probably didn't know this the international convention on biological

diversity biodiversity convention was signed in my office really when i worked for the canadian wildlife service i did not know that yeah uh well they just needed a brand malroney uh acceded to the treaty on behalf of Canada in my office and signed the documents. Wow. And they just needed a space with a nice view out of the window, I guess. Anyway, but I was involved in that, you know, from a lowly sort of mid-level bureaucrat working for Environment Canada, biodiversity convention. It was a good idea.

And there's been an awful lot of good work. Well, you've heard that in the COP 26 or whatever on that, that relates to climate change. So there's been a lot of curtailment of greenhouse gases, climate change. And before that, we actually solved the ozone problem, 1987, the Montreal Protocol, where all the countries the world got together and agreed to limit chloro-fluorocarbons to ban them. And at that time, the ozone was holes in the stratospheric ozone there, and you know all that story. So it's not that we can't do these things.

We actually solved that one problem. What was that like to see play out from your perspective? Because I don't think I was, I don't think I was, I wasn't born yet. But it looks like one of the best case studies that humans, we can do good. We can, like for indigenous people, it's a commonplace to consider ourselves stewards for the land. That seems lost on perhaps other cultures, on other communities in comparison. And so I feel like that's a good case study for people to go, it is possible to make a good difference, to set a good example, to be a part of something good.

But sometimes it seems like climate change is so broad. Like I see we had the floods here in the Fraser Valley and politicians leaped on the opportunity to start blaming climate change rather than admitting that the dike systems were like a one out of four in terms of their quality. And then it seems disingenuous to blame. And then you get people who are skeptical of climate change

because they're like, well, the dikes were not repaired properly. And then you're saying it's climate change, even though if we look at the dikes, that's your responsibility, government to maintain, then we get into infighting because people are so confused on, is it climate change, is it man-made errors and failures in governments? Do you feel like we're all on the same page and that good things are going to come in the future in terms of these steps? And what do you think of what happened with the ozone layer?

Well, the ozone layer was a good success. I guess it was because it was only one industry and one chemical and it was sort of easy. People could get their minds around it. Once they understood the physics, how, you know, the chloro-fluor problems, you know, this molecule goes off and the damages in ozone molecule and then that ozone molecule is gone, but the chloro-fluor carbon molecule is still there and goes in damage and that's what propagate. People could get their minds around. The climate change is harder. But I've not understood why reasonable people and smart people resisted so long. I published my first paper on the effects of weather on the capacity of the particular West Coast environment in 1988.

In that same year, I went to the first meeting of federal bureaucrats like myself and some sort of politician sub-1. to deal with climate change and the federal these are federal bureaucrats somebody from Ottawa came tabled some draft legislation

that would limit climate change right now it was it was you could use regulations to put a limit on how much carbon people could discharge of carbon dioxide

carbon dioxide plus methane depending how it's configured So that would have been easy This was 1988 Non-controversial at the time I assume in comparison to now No I wouldn't go that far Okay

At that time the The government still didn't Admit the climate change It said the physics looked like it was a possibility But the data weren't insane It was actually happening That didn't come until 91 In the first

The first big international report. Well, coincidentally, I mean, I had done this study and didn't even relate to that. I was working for the Environmental Protection Service with the palm mills, and the palm mills were polluting. And we had this incident where a whole salmon run was destroyed in the area where the where the palm mill was polluting, not because of the palm mill for sale or contributed, but the problem was that the water got too warm, unreasonably warm, and it had never been

that warm. This was the Sue Mass River. So it was an effect of weather. My people was the effect of weather. I didn't realize it was part of climate change, but it wasn't long until. And then I had a job for Environment Canada where I was supposed to look forward to some coming problems that we'd have to deal with. And I all had to do with biological diversity, really, but that was actually in the lead-up to the real convention on biological diversity.

At the same time, I was looking at the climate trends, and I realized that the precipitation was going up on the co. There were several things, you know, insect infestations were going up. This was my research was in the late 80s, early 90s. My report came out in 94, after the whole thing was peer-reviewed, twice because the politicians couldn't do with their reading the first time, were the managers. So then, this was 94, it had some chapters on effective climate change, and then the government was going into the Kyoto Protocol Meetings in, well, in Kyoto. And they needed to be brief, so some of us myself and some others who could contribute, we actually wrote a book, a big, thick book on climate change projections and environmental response to the climate change, to the projections from BC and Yukon.

I wrote the environmental response chapter. So that was, basically, it was published in 97, same years as the Kyoto Protocols. Well, there was good science. The good science underlying the climate change projection and good science underlying the response to the climate change protection. And we mentioned the Sumas River and the Adverture in the Sumas Lake and the dikes. That was like prominent in the thing in the report. Most of it not by me.

Other people, you know the dike experts, the river flow experts wrote those sections. So that was 97. And by that time, I had already had some years of looking at this climate change issue. And from then, until, well, only two or three years ago, all the governments of the world basically ignored it or denied it. And then they had these climate change denial people saying that the science wasn't true, mainly, I don't know where they come from, where they've got these ideas, but mainly in the states. supported by the oil industry, who had a lot to lose if they started putting the controls on emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. I don't understand why, since I wrote these reports, and I was only one of, you know, many, you know, biologists and meteorologists and, you know,

affidavit environment specialists, it's been known since then. And why are we still now just debating it? And Canada has, I'm sorry to say, is just not been effective in developing their climate change plans. No government, not liberal, not conservative in Canada. It's completely ineffective. And they come up with all these ideas that I think are crazy, you know, this, you know, the tax structure. Well, the tax structure looked like it had a chance of working, but, you know, carbon trading credits and everything. and, you know, it's like your 10 trees. It's a good idea, but if it's not implemented right, it's not going to work.

Yeah. And they're not taking it seriously. They're not taking it so seriously that they have to actually, you know, curtail ministry. My struggle, I guess, is that on everyday people, we feel, I think, I think it's comparable to the idea of original sin. in the biblical stories, the idea that when people go shopping, when they drive their car, when they take a flight somewhere, there's like a deep guilt about I'm destroying the planet and when I'm driving my car. Like people feel better about themselves when they get an electric car.

We feel pretty good about ourselves when we think of BC Hydro because it's less harmful than perhaps other routes. But there's this personal guilt I see so many people carry when it comes to shopping, when it comes to buying products. We're looking for the little green leaves because the little green leaves make us feel like we're not bad people anymore. And it makes us feel like we're on the right track. And then when you start describing how the government's handled Caribou, when they're perhaps not doing things that would actually make a positive impact because it's not friendly to industries or it's not going

to be supported by certain companies, it's concerning because all the weight seems to be falling on people. Like people are always asking, what can I do to help with climate change? Can I switch out my light bulb? Can I do this? Can I? And it's like, those are all great things. But at an individual level, that's positive, and we should all try and do better. But when you see the governments who are kind of making us feel bad, they're putting the tax on us, I don't like that relationship where it feels like the onus has been put on the individual, when it sounds like companies and larger industries have a larger role to play, and we don't direct that energy towards them.

And I'm interested in your thoughts on perhaps these environmental organizations, because I agree with the fur bearer's analysis, but I don't know how you feel about them, but sometimes they feel too far. They feel too far on one side where it's hard for me as an individual to go, you're right 100% of the time. I think the fur bearer's page is against any hunting or trapping at all ever. And to me, it's like, as an indigenous person,

I know that communities have a relationship with their responsibilities to hunt and fish and to handle things properly. We have salmon ceremonies to give thanks when we fish, and we have a responsibility in these regards. And so when you say zero, I can't go that far with you. And so when I'm putting myself in perhaps the government shoes, I go, well, I can't listen to these people because they're two on one side. And then you go to the industries, and they've got all the money, and they're all on one side. And so you're not having a balanced conversation because one side, you can't take too seriously. And they don't have a lot of financial backing.

And then the other side has all financial backing. and they're going to help with your campaign next year, and they're going to help make sure that this influence and that this study is funded and all these things. And so it's easier to listen to industry than environmental organization. So I'm interested in your thoughts. You've worked with environmental organizations a long time. What are your thoughts on perhaps the good ones or what you've experienced?

I wish more people thought like you. And you've said it well. And this is actually the success of all this environmental work, is that you can have these thoughts, and you can realize that there are environmental, you know, actions and policies that have a meaning and make a difference. My friends, I'm not a member of a conservation club, except, well, I guess not any. But I have friends in there, and I admire their work. I have worked with them a lot.

I have contributed objective science as best I can to help them out. I have not gone on the, you know, I haven't, you know, made a placard and marched the streets with him. But this is where we have had success. The very fact that we're talking about this means there's been some success. The fact that people are buying prices, this is all success. People have taken it on an individual level, not everybody, but enough people that has made a difference. It made a market for price cars, for example. And, you know, my wife and I at home, we limit our plastics and we do everything we can.

we change our bulbs out we do all this thing and all that's good the problem is it's not it's not enough and if we go back to you know climate change is one thing if we go back to the biodiversity convention an awful lot of good work has been done first of all there's been good research by by science showing you know how to preserve them not just places but the ecological functions within those places and also outside of those places a lot of um New protected areas have been established since 88 when the first sustainability idea came out at Wilson. Wilson was the guy. There's no. So if you look around the world and you're going to have this convention, the bioadverture convention ratified in my office signed in Rio the previous year, 92.

they had mandated the countries try to protect so many percent of their country and a lot of countries have done this so there have been a whole lot of including in Canada a new territory the problem is if you just look at Caribou

well none of those areas are in Caribou habitat a few small ones perhaps but they're happy to protect bath swast of the Arctic which I happen to love because I worked in the Arctic for years. I've seen wild polar bears and had them come into my cab, you know, all this. I worked with Inuit people. And I think that's wonderful to protect, you know, for example, a great huge swath of Banks Island, another great huge swath of Bathurst Island where I work,

other big chunks. And in northwestern BC in the Klinga country, a huge protected area, I think it's a provincial park, not sure with the designation, but it's a big area, and it's protecting some mining incursions, but we won't have to go there. But, so all this has been good and successful, and it was a result of all the work, smart people like yourself, carrying the banner. But it hasn't, governments, all levels, have really not not stepped up to the plate to use a baseball term. they haven't taken that idea and said, well, how will this apply to the caliber? What about the world? Are they important enough that we should resist from shooting them from planes and find some other way to solve the caribou pad?

They haven't gone that far. And they're constrained because, I guess, of all powerful economics and powerful economic interests. Right. Can we talk about Wolf Culling? I want to get your perspectives on what's taking place in terms of killing wolves from planes because when I read it, it was so hard to imagine that this is happening, that this is taking place that in British Columbia, like, when I first read it, I was like helicopters, taking guns, shooting them from planes, and then it sounds like flying away.

Like, to me, and like, I don't mean to lean into the, too much into just being indigenous, But like, that goes against this relationship we have this with the environment. And I'm sure that other people would like to have stronger relationships. But indigenous culture is very strong in that regard. We have responsibility. Like, I just interviewed Sunny McKelsey, who's a stolo historian and researcher. And he talks about the salmon ceremony and how we all share the first salmon with as many people as we can. And then we return the bones to the water.

And we give thanks to that. And we say a prayer for that. And it's similar to grace in that regard of giving thanks for our food, that we would never go out and just murder on, at scale, a bunch of animals and then just leave and not do anything. And I think of the effects not only of just killing these wolves, which I think are admired and loved by so many people, but the research also shows that they impact mid-sized predators that allow for greater biodiversity across BC. They take out the mid-sized ones, so the little ones have actually a better chance of surviving. And so it's not just not helping the caribou. It's not just terrible for your ears or your eyes to have to read about what you're doing, but it actually has negative impacts to the biodiversity of the environment.

And so can you explain how this came about and what your thoughts are on Wolf Cohen? Yeah. First of all, let me tell you a story. I'll make it fairly short. I was in the Arctic, this is 1970, 3 or 2, I was. I hired this native guy, the Kikiza, as Athapaskan truck. He and I were up in the high country, and the plan was to snowshoe down this river. I was studying beaver.

I was studying beavers, and we were going to snow down this river until spring break up and then build a boat and carry on down to a round of a place at a lake. Well, it was an ill-conceived idea. It was totally my fault. No way I could have built a boat, even with the First Nations guy helping me. He just looked at this thing we cobbled together and scratch his head. Anyway, I could make it a longer story, but the short form is we tip the boat over in the water. water still running with ice

Henry scrambled up the bag I saw it was okay so I swam down the river trying to find our floating stuff and throw it up on the riverbank so we wouldn't lose all of our stuff until I my leg seized up and I just sank and he I came to leaning against the tree

I couldn't talk you know when you have severe hypothermia you know the muscles just go numb So Henry's laughed And he's got a fire going He's thawing me out He's got a fire, you know, three feet away, four or five He's chuckling himself and I said

When I, you know, hours went by before I could talk I said Henry, why are you laughing? Where in the hell of the fix? He said He said, well we're going to We're going to travel like Indian And I realized at the time

We were carrying all this Huge amount of stuff with, you know Food from the South that I was used to, and he wouldn't have carried anything. He would have just walked off and done this beaver study with nothing. So there was a few days. There's a sub-story. I won't trouble you with the details, but we could catch beaver,

so we caught a beer after three days. Before that, we were pretty hungry. We caught a beaver, and cooked it in the fire, and ate a nice thigh, and threw the bone in the fire. which of my habit because I like to keep a clean camp, you know, burn up the bones, the mongtrak bears. Well, Henry leaped up,

grabbed the bone out of the fire and threw it in the river and looked at me like I was crazy. And he said, why did you do that? And then he realized he was talking with a southerner who didn't know the way of the world worked. And then he calmed down, and he explained to me, no, no.

The Beaver spirit, is important here the bones go back sorry bones go into the river he figured he'd save my life because if I had insulted the beaver spirit so bad

something horrible would happen and he said that anyway that's just an old story reminded me of what you said there was salmon bones into the river evil bones, good for the beaver spirit to be back again, not all separated and end up. Yeah.

Anyway, I sort of got off the trap, but the idea of how to shoot wolves from, how to reduce the wolf population. Nobody likes the idea of shooting wolves from aircraft, helicopter, or you can do it from fixed wing too. but you have to land on skis and chase them into it lake. I don't think, consider all the ways you can kill wolves, I don't think that's the worst in terms of just being humane as a wolf killer. If you want to be humane, that's as good a way as any, if your idea is to get rid of the wolves. I don't like it.

Recently, there's been some talk among the Caribou Recovery people, having First Nation people get rid of the wolves, trap, hunt, whatever, you know. But do it on the ground. It's a more natural way to do it. Anyway, the way the idea was presented, it's more natural. It's more humane. It's if the First Nation people do it,

then it's in keeping with their traditions. And besides they're managing, they're managing, they should be managing the lands themselves anyway. And as I said before, I think that would be the salvation. The first nations take over the management, especially these critically endangered species. Whether it's more humane, I mean, I've seen wolves trapped in snare, and I've seen wolves, leghold traps. It's not a humane way to do it.

But I think if you have to kill wolves and doing it from a helicopter is a good way as any in terms of being humane. It's not cheap, but if you have a lot of money to spend, and you have a lot of money to spend because your logging industry is paying good taxes, your helix skiing industry is paying good taxes, the provincial conference, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little, it's a little cynical here. Anyway, I don't necessarily think that shooting wolves from Caribou is the worst way to shoot wolves or kill wolves. I just think that there's something dark about the people who have to do that

and the disconnect that you have just like when we see, I don't know if you heard about in Chilliwack, we had like the chicken event where all these chickens in this one coop and the people working there, they started abusing these chickens,

they started throwing the chickens, they started being abusive. I think that what you do when you're just, whoever's having to sit there and just shoot, an animal as majestic, as well-respected as a wolf, I think that that does something negative to how you identify yourself. I don't know how you, like, the reason, I believe personally

that the reason that you have these respectful ways of treating animals in First Nations culture is not only their religious beliefs, perhaps, but because it's a way of process. Like, you see these vegetarians and these vegans saying, I won't eat anything if it's had to be killed, because I don't deserve to, I think that that's them trying to cope with something that indigenous people figure it out a way to cope with, is how do I kill this animal, this life, and live with that and take on the responsibility afterwards to walk away and go, I need to be a better person now because I had to murder this beaver, I had to murder this life, and so now I have a responsibility.

I don't think you get that when you're just gunning something from a helicopter, and I think that that messes, I predict that would mess psychologically with whoever's having to do that. Because now you just don't value anything, and it's fine to just fly overhead and kill innocent animals that don't understand what's going on. And then for those animals, you're not showing them the respect, as we described with the beaver or the salmon, of utilizing their body and appreciating their role in the ecosystem. And I think that that's all really, really bad. It might not be bad in terms of, like, perhaps it's better in cost, but it's worse on our civility. I think that's right. Again, I think you've taken complex issues, emotional ones, and boiled them down into a nutshell.

It reminds me a bit of when I was first doing those fur bear studies at the northern 1970. They dropped us off fixed-wing aircraft on skis on the lake, and we put up our tent, 45 below, and we started studying fur bears, and we had the plane coming every couple of weeks. weeks with groceries and mail. One week, our pilot landed and gave us the grocery in the mail. He said, oh, I killed a wolf on the way here. He was real proud of himself. He'd seen these wolves and used his aircraft to chase him into the middle of the lake

and then landed on the lake, cut out his rifle, and shot this wolf. And he was real proud. Well, my boss, that was 1972, still my good friend, To still my good friend, I talked to him all the time. He really upbraided the pilot who had done this, told him, you'll never fly with us again if I ever hear of you shooting wolves on our contract, our, you know, logistics contract, a flying contract. So we don't do that.

We're not going to hire anybody who does. So this is, I mean, we're all, well, our colleague was there, so this is a man, Kikki's a guy, not, not. that not Henry that I've mentioned before. But basically the pilot, and that's due biology, you know, we're southern and we're not from that country. But two of us had the ethos of not shooting wolves just sort of just to shoot a wolf.

And the pilot didn't have that ethos. He thought it was fine to chase a wolf on or whatever can shoot it. But after that incident, when we abraded him, my boss did, my friend, He never did it again. His company, his flying company, Bush, Bush Piles, they never did. They adopted it. So I think these ideas, they can spread. I think as we mentioned before, all the work of the environmental groups, it does spread.

You have these many small successes. You don't necessarily always get the big success that you really want, but the small successes don't, I mean, it's more than nothing. it's good whether you're talking climate change, biodiversity new national parks and protected areas back in the 60s the fight to get rid of these chlorinated

pesticides that are building up in birds' eggs and causing the eagles and pelicans to decline we've had a lot of successes and we still can have some but to save the caribou and we're not going to

at least now in this state Yeah. Particularly, I just think of, like, we know that all dogs, I would say, like, I'm more of a dog person, but I would say that all dogs come from wolves, and we know that pretty clearly. And we co-evolved with them over time. And so just to think about the impact that we're having on a species that we've had such a long, strong relationship with, and to do it in this way, it just seems. It seems really dark to think of when you look at your dog, it came from a wolf. Like, it's a lineage. It goes all the way back to those animals.

And we have this longstanding, beautiful relationship. I watched a Netflix series called Explained, and they do one on dogs specifically. And they say that over time, wolves realized that they could work with humans. And so their emotional states became intertwined with ours so that they could regulate our emotions, which is why they work so well as support animals, as police dogs, that they've really grown to understand how to connect with a person. And I think that's beautiful. And I think of those wolves were the first,

and we're so lucky to have had that evolution with them and to do what we're doing. I'm not against conservation. I'm not against the idea that perhaps we do need to bring down wolf populations for a variety of reasons. I'm okay if the science says that needs to be done. But I think that we need to honor these animals in a better way than we are for not only them, but for ourselves, for our own. Because reading that, that made me feel terrible about humans, because then it's just like another one of those moments of like when you hear about a bear accidentally wandered around, like, community too long.

So they killed it. It's like, that doesn't make me feel good. That doesn't make me feel like we're good stewards of the environment and reading that we're killing them from. helicopters just again makes me go, like, how can we say we care so much and how can that be the headline when we're doing and behaving this way? Because perhaps it needs to be done, but there has to be a better, more friendly way of going about that to take off the responsibility because, again, we might have a role to play in controlling the amount of predators and prey. But if we don't take on that responsibility 100%, you end up in a helicopter shooting animals from the

sky and saying that you're you're being a good conservationist and there's no part of i think most people that feels like that's that's the way conservation should be that that's the gold standard of where we should take this it's statements like that made me think there's hope and like i said i stream wolves from helicopters it seems wrong it's for me it's just disgusting it's unconscionable and yet irrationally if you have to shoot wolves it's probably or if you have to kill wolves it's probably as good a way the same way to do it

I'd rather they going back to my conversation with the pilot in 1972 who killed a book on our charter I think it's wrong and it shouldn't be done there should be another way to solve the problem and with wolves and carbo there is another way to solve the problem and that is protect the habitat and get rid of the snowmobiles

that are in their critical winter habitat. And if you would do that first, and then if you had to kill a few wolves, you know, increase recruitment among the caribble populations, then well, then find a good way to do it. I think the whole idea is wrong. And again, I reiterate, not against wolves killing wolves per se. I'm against killing wolves and not solving the other problems that are bringing down the caribou populations.

Absolutely. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where did you go to school and how did you kind of become a biologist? Oh, yeah. Well, I mentioned at the start. I was born and raised in California and I went to school in a little mountain town in northeast of California. And there was lots of wildlife. My buddies and I hunted, you know, we hunted during hunting season and fished all the rest of the year and got our, you know, went skiing and did winter sport.

You know, we're always outside. But wildlife was important to us and we always hunted and fish. So when I went to college, I stumbled a bit and took away and find my direction. But then I got into the wildlife program and got a degree in wildlife management. and still in California, but then learning about wildlife management from a professional wildlife management point of view, I started realizing that their wildlife habitat is pretty well used up in large parts of California. There just wasn't much left.

There's still, you know, relic populations here and there, you know, but they're just a few and far between compared to, you know, you know, there are just, you know, you know, a century past. And as I near graduation, I started remembering when I was seven, my family took a whole summer and we went to drive it all around

the western states up through Alberta and British Columbia. I started thinking as I was in college nearing graduation, you know, Canada was a pretty nice place. There were places there were still, there's lots of wildlife. Habitat isn't all ruined and used up

and viewed. And then, there was also the Vietnam War was going on. I thought it was wrong. Geopolitically, it was wrong. It was morally it was wrong. I didn't want to go and fight the war. And so I had another reason to go to Canada. So I came to Canada as a draft dodger, but also because I wanted to start a career in wildlife, you know, something. Wildlife men, wildlife biology, wildlife biology, wildlife. At the time, was it tough to come to Canada, being accused of being a draft dodger? Was that something that was, Because I'm sure, like now, looking back on it, of course, things did not play out the way I think the United States expected it to. But during that time, was that a tough decision at all?

It was tough decision. Not because I never got any bad vibes within Canada for my decision to avoid the draft and come to Canada. I did have some bad vibes among my family. We tend to be conservative and colleagues. and university and so on, but, you know, you make your decision, you follow your path. I never had any regrets and never, like I say, being in Canada, I never had any problems from that point of view in Canada. I had a good career. You know, I worked for a series of selling companies and then went to work with the government

and became Canadian citizen. I just, we don't, like, we don't have anything like the draft today and how. I've never grown up with the draft existing. And in Canada, it's been used very, very rarely, I think only at heights in World War I and two. And so I'm just, that's why I'm interested is I can't imagine that pressure from your family to do something like that. Like, we don't have anything like that today where we would feel pressure to do something like that. And to have to make a moral decision for yourself in that regard where the stakes are so high to go to another country and fight or to have to figure out how you. you're going to handle this. It's like we don't have anything comparable today.

No, thankfully. It's not much I can say about that. Among my high school buddies, you know, we're all on the track team, football team, good close friends, hunted and fish together. And we made different decisions. Some got drafted and went to the water. Some took officer training and, you know, a jet or whatever. Some took alternative service, went to Alaska. and worked in the hospital or whatever, and I went to Canada. Interesting, I had a little get-together with my... This is sort of off the topic of woes in those.

No worries. A few years ago, well, ten years ago, I had a little mini reunion with those guys, my high school buddies. Some of them fought in war, the ones that came back. And also the guys that went to Alaska and myself, we all got together.

And even from those guys, even from those guys who fought in that horrible war, I didn't get any bad vibes from them for having gone to Canada. Not at all. It's so tough to think about looking back in hindsight because now it played out so

differently than people would have expected because there's a part of patriotism, There's a sense of community, there's a sense of responsibility, and there's got to be so much pulling from you from all sides. And so it's good that you were, like, it sounds like you got some closure from that to be able to know and to put that decision to rest. I've had a really blessed career, to be honest. I've had, like, my whole life has been like a series of dreams come true. I told you I had, ever since I came to Canada first, you know, when I was seven years old, I, I thought the idea of building the cabin in the wilderness was something I wanted to do, and I did it.

I went to work with a wildlife biologist, and, you know, all around the Arctic and the north, and I did that. It was a dream come true, and seeing the undisturbed northern wildlife, you know, was a wildlife biologist's dream. I have to say, working with First Nations people was also a real treat. they were more or less I'm damn I don't know that's the right way to say it but the people all up and down to McKinsey

were following their traditional way of life and it was a big time of change for them because the Bridger inquiry was coming up and there were big changes you know McKinsey Valley Pipeline was going to be big changes to all the communities and we worked with those guys

you know every time we started same my buddy and I told you about it was my boss but you know my friend both by all is the same age our modus operandus we'd go into a village where we wanted to do a study meet the chief explain the study asked to be introduced to the trapper who trapped in the area where we wanted to do our study because we were studying fur bears he and i were others in the team were studying and a caribou or whatever. We're still in fur bears, Martin, Nick, thanks.

You've ever seen this guy. So then we'd meet the guy who were trapped in that area, and usually we'd make some accommodation for him. He'd help us move our gear. He'd bring his dog team or whatever, his boat, move our staff, he'd live with us. So I got to live and work with those guys, and that was a real treat. Just seeing how

they lived, you know, in the old days, seeing how their technology. or how they manage their dogs, how they manage their toboggins, how they, you know, how they eat while they're on the trails. They make, you know, they're in the dry fish, they bring along the dry fish, they bring along the dry meat, they, you know, collect things while they're out. That was a real treat. Another real treat that was related was, you know, the Berger Inquiry was going. Our studies were related to the Berger Inquiry, this moving pipeline thing. the environmental impact.

So, we met a lot of old guys and a lot of young guys. The chiefs were all old. They were like the sage elders of the communities. But during the time, the few years, four or five years that I did that work, in virtually every community, there was a turnover in the chiefs. And who, the old guys, and they had to go and make submissions to the Brider Inquiry. They had to, like, give the, you know, the benefit of their knowledge and wisdom to the Brider Inquiry about, it's their land, it's their wildlife, and how to protect it, but their concerns were. Well, there was a turnover, you know, who initiated, I don't know, but it was the same, like every single village that we worked at.

A young guy who had some education would become chief. Not young as young as you, of course. But, you know, guys in their 30s and 40s were becoming chiefs. And that was because the communities were realizing that we needed an English-speaking guy who understood white culture, the southern culture, the problems as well as the the bad as well as the good and could go to the inquiry and they also had these community meetings

not just in the other community so there was a turnover in the people you know the elected chiefs an outcome of that process this was you know mid-70s an outcome of that was the land claims when having

gone to the yellow life or attended to a community hearing with Berger and all the lawyers and all the southerners and all the big money people and all the engineers and all the engineering companies and oil and gas and seeing what's what's at risk in their country a lot of them started saying well you know really and there were international things too there was well I don't have to about the international thing, but there was a global ideas that people who are from an area and who can trace their lineage back, some time immemorial, should have a say in how the area is managed, maybe should do the management themselves. So in McKenzie, and also

in Nunavut, in the country, they put forward these, also in Yukon, where I also were, they put forward these, it's called them land claims at first, but land claims, co-management treaties, they basically took over management. So that now when you go to the, well, I went back to Rosalie a day a few years ago on a government contract and looked up some more people. When I first started, there would have been a, sorry for, I don't mean to be using characterizations that are unfair, but there would be a white guy who would be the game manager.

He's who we would meet with. I told me we also met, if we were going to go to study, we would meet the chief and et cetera, and the troppers, but there would be a white guy who was in charge of managing, well, now, Now, no. When I went to Roslou Bay, I didn't, was there even a white guy involved in that? Who you met with was the Hunters and Trappers Association. These were the Inuit people who were out on the land. They hunted and they trapped. They brought, you know, they brought in the muscocks and the caribou and the fish.

They brought furs to sell. And they were in charge of the communities. but they were the responsible people in their communities, but they're also elected officials, if it was the chief, and there are also the Hunters and Traffers Association. And then there's a Nunavut-wide sort of land management council with different subgroups, like the wildlife. These are like for the whole of Nunavut.

So these hunters and travers associations composed of the guys who were on the land and had been on the land, you know, since their ancestors' time, they're the ones making decisions now. And I think it's wonderful. I mean, I saw it evolve from being totally directed from outside forces to being at least largely directed from within. Getting back to Caribou, I think this idea of the Soto and other people's up around Chetwin, I think that's the way to do it.

The problem is in the Arrow Lakes. The Arrow Lakes people were declared extinct a few decades ago by the federal government. So there's nobody, there's no one like First Nations institution or organization within that particular valley. There is further east. It's not a hot people. Right. It sounds like what you're also saying, though, is that this is a problem that's better addressed, perhaps, like, like First Nations communities are I usually compare them to like a municipality

that it's better done by a lower level of government where the people actually live there they actually care it's tough when your decisions about your community um your cabin it sounds like are being dictated by people who live in victoria who don't see caribou every day who don't care because it's not in their backyard and so it seems like this is like an authority ideally that would be moved to like the municipal level because the community members who live in that community actually go for walks and actually get to see the wildlife in their area

and instead of having a provincial government of somebody who lives in a high rise in Vancouver making the decisions about the wildlife that exists hundreds of kilometers from them that they're never going to go see, that they're never going to take off their suit and start exploring the wilderness, these people aren't the best people to be making the decision.

So perhaps moving it to the municipality, municipal level would have some impact because then it's your city council and then you can elect them to start to make decisions about the ecosystems that exist in your area rather than all the way in Victoria or in Ottawa where these people have no real relationship or understanding of what's taking place. Why do these animals matter? What is it like to see this animal? Because for me, I've never seen a wolf in person. I've never seen a caribou in person. And so it's it's all theoretical until I'm out there looking at the animal and going, wow, this is it's in its natural environment. This is how it's living.

Yeah, this is the idea of devolution from higher levels of government, giving the authority down to lower levels. And it's a good idea. It can be overdone because at some point, if you push big responsibilities down too low, then you get people who don't see the big picture, don't have big enough responsibilities. But so there's always a balance of a tradeoff between what exactly, you know, I'm talking about governance issues, but I don't really know anything about governance. It's just my, what I've picked up over the years, but I think it's right. But First Nations are a little bit more, more complex than just devolution to a lower level of government because they have this, well, it's like a, it's like a family. It's like my, you know, my,

my family, you know, we have our history and the places that are important to us. But the miners scattered all over the northern hemisphere. The First Nations, in many cases, by and large, are they have an intimate connection with this land, this place. Like my friends up north, you know, my, my, my, my, my, uh, Henry, the Kekisa guy who pulled me out of the freezing water and then went on to become a counselor. And his dad was chief, and he went to the burden inquiry.

This is important. I couldn't have done that. I couldn't have given his speech. I read his speech years later, just out of curiosity. He stood up in front of the inquiry, and thought he was erudite and thoughtful and fair and balance and he gave a nice detailed account of his and his

community's interest in the land. I couldn't have done it. And even being a scientist and having collected all this information about the physical environment and the biological environment, we don't have that sort of societal connection.

I'll tell you another little sort of, you know, I like telling stories. We can edit this. No, this is why we're here. This is why I'm making it. him three hours. It's a little bit off the track, but I was, one of my career things is wildlife toxicology. After I quit the government, well, I worked until I could, for various reasons, came together,

I could take early retirement when I was 50. This was 27 years ago. So then I quit the government, took my early retirement package, paid off my vote. when consulted, one of the things I could consult with good because I had some history and some contacts was wildlife toxicology. So I did some wildlife toxicological studies for various companies, mostly mining companies, not entirely, some oil gas. So, and my clients who were mining companies at the start, but later, some of my clients were actually First Nations. So I'd be on this side of the table, you know, with the mining engineers and vice presidents.

And then sometimes I'd be meeting with the same people, but I'd be sitting on the other side with my First Nations climate. Usually it was that we're around. But the thing is that the first, these are like issues over mining licenses, and operating permits. You know, how do you develop a new mine without damaging the things that are important in the environment? So the First Nations representatives, they came, they're always well prepared, at least as well prepared as I was, and I'm a good biologist. I know my job, and these guys were in the same category. We were like peers in that sense. We were specialists in our respective things. And they didn't just limit their conversation, you know, where the good berry picking was. I don't, sorry, I don't mean to be in

to characterizing in anybody, but they came armed with technical things about, you know, exfiltration and the ions and the data from the wells and, you know, they could trace the flow, you know, conceptually as well as, you know, maps and diagram figures of contaminants through the environment and various kinds of subservice ground and whatever. And I found myself thinking, if these guys, if these First Nations guys, these Aboriginal people, if they were just given the responsibility, the whole responsibility, or if they wrested from whoever has it, either way, whether it's given or taken, but if they had the responsibility to manage their environment, we could do a lot worse. We're actually doing worse than now than if we,

if they would take over. And how to make it happen? I don't know, but, you know, the silkatine people, you know, they had that big treaty. They got rights entitled to a big area. There wasn't a human cry in the newspapers and the economic interests were at risk because they couldn't foresee how the silketeen people

were going to. manage their, exercise their newfound rights and title without damage and somebody else's former rights. But that's not how it works. It's good for the environment. It's good for the wolves. It's good for the caribou. To have people who live there, who have always lived there, take over the management. I mean, I saw that in the Arctic, you know, with the hunters and trappers committees. Now, you know, making the decisions on hunting and trappers. happen. I think it's their advice, if not all the solution, at least a big part of the solution. Yeah, that is what I read in the Marshall decision, which was about, it was a more

Ontario side decision, but the idea that the Supreme Court came to was like, well, you can have your rights, but we need to maintain conservation. And it's like, oh, well, you don't really understand First Nations people then, because that's like our primary objective. And it seems, like, from what you're saying, that we take that as seriously, if not more seriously, than the claims that governments make to the idea of conservation. That because it's been here for so long, we actually are committed to it where when you're in a board meeting, in a building, and you're all discussing how we're going to save the caribou, that it's all a little artificial. You're not there. You don't understand those animals. You don't understand the relationship you've had for years.

you don't have stories about them that make you value them more and they give you that deeper connection and I think it's perhaps one of the limitations that like because I see the stories of indigenous people and the Bible is somewhat comparable to the morality

that they teach you First Nations people we use them for geographic locations so I had as I said Sunny McElseon and he was describing what Mount Chiam means wild strawberries at the top And so that's what the, yeah, that's what the, and then there is still that strawberry patch at the top.

And so we have these stories that give us a relationship with the land. So if you're coming here from Yukon or from different areas, you'd be able to figure out where you are based on these stories. And that gives you a deeper relationship. And I think it's comparable to the idea of Noah and the Ark, where you have this story of this one individual, the flood comes and he saves the animals. He takes responsibility for the environment by trying to save them. Whether that literally happened or not, I think we don't have to get lost in that because we understand that the responsibility of people is to protect the wildlife. And when you're, again, in a high rise, in a building and you're looking at graphs and figures,

it's so artificial in comparison to somebody who's been out there, who's looked at these animals and had that deeper respect. One of my last responsibilities before I left the government, I was working for the Wildlife Service, and they put me in charge of negotiating the First Nations treaty rights and developing co-management agreements for wildlife, just the wildlife part, not the whole environment part. But I was responsible for working on individual treaties and land claims. And also I went to Ottawa, and I worked with the policy people on... developing policies to do this.

And what was permissible in a co-management agreement for wildlife management with a hypothetical fish nation? And so there were federal policies that were written in stone. They were given to us to start with. But the woman I worked with in Ottawa, who was in charge of the section, it was like I was just doing the regional thing, right? worked on half a dozen or more, a dozen or so of the so-called tables.

She was First Nation herself. She was part three and part She was going on, I forget. But she was a First Nation woman, a lawyer, and a biologist. She had three really good credentials to be ahead of that section. And she and I worked closely together, we sort of sat there, we, you know, over many months worked out. And here's the sort of apology statement, here's what it would mean in practice, you know, putting down.

And this point that you've mentioned several times today about the rights to manage except up to the point where conservation becomes a concern. We got stuck on this. And I kept saying, well, I mean, you know, I'm steeped in government. You know, I university, you know, Southern University and government, I have a respect for authority and the laws are such and such, you know, and the organizational structure or such and such. And we got into a real tough argument about this. when should the conservation clause kick in?

Is it even necessary? You know, like a co-management agreement or land claim or a treaty. And she was having a hard time making me understand that the first nations who would be negotiating these treaties, land claims agreements, they have all they need

in their own community. to take on the issue of when should conservation clauses kick in. When does, when do carib will become so scarce? We have to kill wolves or if we have to kill wolves, you know, how do we do it? Whatever. And I was saying, you know, it's got to be in writing. Say, for example, I put forward the idea, well, how about up until it becomes officially declared as threatened, then the native right and title

would have to be abrogated in terms of conserving whatever species we're talking about. And she said, why would you think that? No. She said, the people who've managed from there, who have elders who remember the old days, they know. They know. And one thing she said to me when we were having a particularly tough

conversation. She said, Lee, if I can't make you understand, me, meaning, you know, I've worked with person, agent's people, I've told me that some of my history, I have, had friends all of and down, McKenzie, you know, trappers and their families of these, I had, had these deep relationships and experience that I trade her. She said, Lee, if I can't make you understand, How am I going to make the average bureaucrat, a politician understand? And she was right. I was stuck. I was stuck in my own history.

Sorry, Andrew. No. I think it's incredibly brave to be able to see that and to understand our relationship and to be able to change your perspective, because that's often where people get stuck, right? And you've shown that throughout this conversation, is that you're not committed to one side. You're evolving with the science.

You're willing to admit that overall this study may come to the same conclusion, but there were these few errors that needed to be acknowledged and addressed. That balanced perspective is why I thought it was important to have someone like yourself on, because I did see that your article was referenced by an extremely one-sided, perspective, but I saw through your work and through our conversations that you had a very balanced perspective and you just want what's best for the environment, for the people who get to experience these lands. It's why you chose to move where you live today and have that cabin. And for you to be able to own that, I think that's an example for so many other people.

It's why I like talking to leaders and role models like yourself is because if we can't admit where we're wrong, there's nowhere else to go. There's no more progress that can be made because we get stuck. And that ability to share that story, I think, is so valuable. Well, she was right. And they still haven't solved all this problem either. I left, and I probably wasn't the worst they could have had in that position either. Yeah.

Yeah, I think of decisions and, like, how interviewing various people, and, like, these stories seem to have such a strong impact on people. think that the best hands are individuals like yourselves are able to review the information and try and make good decisions, whether it's in a community, whether it's biology. And that ownership, I think, is so, I interviewed Karen Bondar, and I don't know if you've heard of her, but she's a science communicator. She's been on Netflix, National Geographic, various platforms to talk about science communication. And she's been pushing the idea of making our relationship with First Nations community stronger because they see these relationships and they value them

and they have stories about the caribou or they have a deeper relationship with these animals that gives us a greater appreciation. And I think that that's what strong environmentalists are working towards. They want that connection. Again, as I said, vegans, vegetarians, people have made those decisions. I think they're craving. They really want that relationship. And it's something that you don't hear about ever when you go for dinner there's no grace anymore and whether or not you're religious or not you should appreciate what you're eating uh because the other part i wanted to ask you about for me i've never seen a grizzly bear i've never gotten to see otters in their natural environment or beavers doing their own thing we saw a beaver once at a pond but it's it's again

it's artificial it's not them working like they had like rules around making sure that the beavers couldn't build dams and like when i saw this because I was like, this is so artificial in that it doesn't get to be a beaver. Beaver's like to build dams. You can't build dams here. So it's really just kind of swimming around kind of stuck. And so I'm interested to know what the experience, some of your experiences of being able to be in nature, in wildlife, not on the main trail. Like when we go for walks, we're on a trail.

It's basically paved. It's not the same as what you've experienced, where you chose to live and have a cabin in the woods. that relationship it seems like it's falling away there's less and less people who have that relationship with the wilderness and with being able to be comfortable saying like okay I have to go hunt for my food now

there's that's lacking and I'm just I think hunters set such a good example in terms of their willingness to be conservationists to like a lot of in the United States I know a lot of their the money that they pay for tags and stuff goes back into conservation and many people don't realize that they get freaked out with the word hunting and they go, you kill an animal. But I think that gives you that

deeper relationship. Canada too, a big part of our hunting license goes to habitat conservation. Yeah. And so you have this deeper relationship with your food that you lose when you're at a Walmart and you're picking up 25 chicken breasts for $12. You have no relationship with that animal. You have no understanding of its life and what it went through. Whereas when you shoot something or when you have to kill something, you have a strong relationship. So what have those experiences been like to be out in the wilderness? Well, I mean, I just traded her. I told you before my whole life has been a series of dreams come true.

Been able to go up in the Arctic and, you know, see a live polar bear and see, you know, 65,000 caribou all in one herd, you know, catching his big fish, you know, past a little bit of fish, you know. seeing all the different kinds of environments. You know, the alpine country in the north, northern BC where the caribou live and the Arctic tundra where the different kind of caribou lives and the grizzly bears. I've treasured that.

I've often thought, I mean, I know a lot of people don't have those experiences. We've seen them while poor bear are grizzly. And here we live in a grizzly country. I don't know what the solution is, except that the more people who have these experience and get closer in nature, I think the better off will all be. Even if they just take elementary school

class out and look at butterflies. They should at least do that. If that's all they can do, then they should do that. And you try to instill a lot of our new people coming from foreign shores who haven't got even as much

so So historical empathy with the natural environment as we do, they need to be introduced to the natural environment. I think the more people who get out and get a chance to see even a deer, never mind a caribou or a grizzly bear, better off will be. I mentored a Syrian family. This is totally off the topic, but I do my civic duty. Syrian people were coming over

and they were looking to volunteer. I volunteered to be a mentor to move Syrian family from a war zone didn't speak in English. How long ago was this? Two or three years. I mentioned them for two or three years

until I saw they got in their feet. A young woman, three kids, a husband killed in the war. A horrible story. I just started showing her the natural environment around. I mean, they live in Coquitlam. One of the things I thought, well, I can do for them,

well, I'll show them. So I took them and saw a waterfall. They'd never seen a waterfall. But there's not enough water anywhere in Syria that it could, like, fall over a rock or, you know, come out of a mountain. I took him to see the salmon spot, and, you know, a capital of the river

and, you know, big salmon and water flowing down and even, you know, walks around the town here, you know, different places. I took them a different place every week, like, for three years, a different natural place to introduce them to Canada. This is Canada. You know, we have mountains. Well, the first day when I took the mountain, they had a medical report and sent it to it. And came back, I said, you mind if we take the inlet a different way?

Okay, well, we stopped a lot of the part of the Green Park, and they're looking at these huge continent trees. There was just one that just arrived. They've never seen anything like that. Well, if more people like that can be, you know, introduced to what's natural, I think the better off will be. I think it starts early. It starts early, and you need to get your toe on the accelerator

and keep it there. and take all the classes out as often as you can, winter and summer, rang and try, let them go out and show them a deer. If all you can find is a deer, then show them a deer. Yeah, I think about, I don't know if you heard in the news recently, they decided to allow doctors to prescribe going to national parks. Oh, yeah. And they get cards now, and they can get that prescribed.

And I thought, what a good idea. And I, of course, support it. But then it was kind of like, the other part of me was like, where are we where we need that prescribed to us? Like I think of my grandmother, like everybody I know who's older than me has been like, we used to go out into the forest and we just used to get lost for a while and just explore and enjoy ourselves. And so like where have we gotten to where we need that prescribed to us in order for us to go and do that in order to think we should be out in nature because I interviewed. I don't know if you know him, Brian Minter, he ran Minter Country Gardens. I mean, I met him. Yes, and so he talked about how an hour in like real forest actually boosts your immune

system. And it's like there's scientific reasons, there's health reasons, there's so many reasons to return to these environments. It humbles you, I think, when you interact with certain animals, you kind of remember, oh, I'm just a part of this. I also interviewed Elder Eddie Gardner, and he has like a deep respect in my favorite part was when he described trees. He didn't call them trees.

He said the rooted ones. And when he described bugs, he called them the ones that crawl. Because he doesn't, like, I think of bugs and I go, get that mosquito, get that bug off me. But he didn't look at them that way because they're all apart. And they all have a role to play in our environment. And then you think, like, I hear a lot of friends go, like,

oh, there's a spider. And then there's always somebody who will go, like, yeah, but we need the spiders. And then it's like, there's a bee. And then people are like, you need the bees. And it's like, we need all of it. Like, we have this deep relationship with everything around us. And when you start to learn about that, to me, I don't know, it makes you full.

When you, we've been learning more about mushrooms and how they help trees grow and how they help the deformed wing virus and bees. And like, you learn about these complex relationships that I don't, it humbles me. And it makes me grateful that, like, it makes me respect, I guess, the wilderness more and understand that we're just a small. part of this? Well, you know, the Earth has been here a long time. It's been involving all of, you know, the bees and the spiders and everything since long before we were here, and we've been here relatively recently. But we're, you know, we are a part of the environment.

We spring from the environment. The more people who can keep that perspective, that feeling of being part of the environment, I think the better off will be. Absolutely. Can you tell us just a little bit about your family life? When did you meet your wife, and how did that kind of come about with your work in biology? Was she originally from Canada as well, or how did that come about? She hired me.

A nice Jewish girl from Winnipeg, and I was working, I worked up north, a company in Evanton, and I changed a different company, still working up north, but the company was in Vancouver. She's the one that hired me. She was in charge of hiring. for that environmental consulting company

and well, you know, one three a niece another so she's my wife

and we have our two kids and the three grandkids and the grandkids live in Lovellstoke and they've

never seen a caribou my son has seen a cariboo as I told you before and my daughter

was you know in 40 she's doesn't have any kids and no permanent

her boyfriend. She's a really good mountain girl though. She just loves to go out in mountains and she'll say, dad, let's get the canoe and go for a long canoe ride and she and I take the canoe out. She takes her friends camping, fishing, canoian, hiking. She's a good hiker. So she's close to, she's not a biologist, you know. I think my son is more of, lives up in rebels like he's a chef. He's more of the close to the land in terms of like picking mushrooms. She's more of a, she visits, more of a visitor environment. She's good, though.

She's a good mountain girl. She spends a lot of time in the trails and pathways. He's the one, you know, he cuts firewood. heat his house and picks mushroom and grows a lot of vegetables and plants and stuff. That's amazing. It's nice to have that kind of family

ties. Yeah, how did you guys go about, decide? Were you the one who said, we got to get a cabin up north here and she was on board or were you both on the same page about where you wanted to? I already had my cabin by the time I met

her. Okay. I got the cabin not long before a couple of years at this. Hold on. You built it? Yeah. Like you got the wood, you started building this place? Yeah, I bought 60 acres of land and a home light chainsaw.

Wow. I cut the trees, peel them, dragged them into place, cut the notches and made a cabin. My first cabin now is owned by my niece. There's been some changes, but we have a little family enclave down there. my old property I sold to my sister and her husband, who was one of these guys I've mentioned that, you know, I was on the track in high school, on the track team. One of my buddies from high school married my sister, a long story, but they now owe my old property, the 60 acres that I had.

I've got my little cavern. My son's got a cabin there, a nice little timber frame house that he and I built together. I cut the trees, you know, made the notches and put up the timbers. And my, so that's four little cabin. Oh, just pull it up. That's four little cabin. My old cabin, my old cabin, Carol and Charles Cabin and my sister. My cabin, my new one, and then I bought another property nearby.

So, and then my son, so we have a little family enclave, and it's nice to get together and share this love with me. and environment and have some history with the place. Absolutely, and it sounds like you guys have, you've kind of built that into your family unit that you value the environment and that you've encouraged that because so many people live in cities now that Revelstoke in those areas are much more peaceful. There's much more opportunities to reconnect with nature.

Yeah. I was lucky in my family back in California. Well, it sort of starts with bad luck. My grandfather settled in Bakersfield, started raising a family, and the problem is that there was polio and some other diseases that seemed to always come in the summertime. So people who had the wherewithal to get out of town in the summer, they did. And so my granddad, who, you know, leased a forest service lot, and Sequoia Forest, the forest, giant Sequoia Forest. and built it Cabin

and then my dad his brother rebuilt it and now my eventually passed to my cousin and now

to her to my nephew saying Calvin but we the whole family the extended

family of the clan and family friends spent all of our summers at that cabin

my dad was a teacher so he had the summer's free so we all just roamed around

you know the There was, it wasn't wilderness exactly, but it was up in the Sierra Nevada Islands. It was pretty wild. You know, lots of deer, but there were also bears and cooters and ways to get hurt. There were all to snakes. And we all shared that thing with that particular cabin.

And this is probably, I'm sure that's the root of my, plus my trip up through Alberta and B.C. that I had this idea that I had to go to cabin in the wilderness. There's some books I read, Heidi. You know the story about Heidi? No. Heidi. This story was set in the Alps and we're unaware of the French or Swiss Alps. Heidi was a little mountain girl.

They had a, well, I lived in a town in the mountains. I don't even remember the story now. Look it up. You'll have to look it up. Okay. They had a, in Europe, in the mountains, throughout Norway and all the mountain parts of Europe, because of the environment, they have a way up high in the mountains, they have a little cabin where they spend their summers with their livestock that she caused. And then they have a remain home in the village or the farm down below. So I don't remember what the story was about Heidi, but there was a book, a children's book about Heidi.

And she would go and spend her summers up in this alpine meadows with beautiful scenery, at least as illustrated, the building of wildflowers. This is one of the influences. I always had the idea of building a cabin amidst the wildflowers and trees and natural environment. And then having the family cabin in California is natural for me you want to go to Canada and have a cabin, which then became sort of the nucleus of a family island. yeah that's brilliant yeah but I was lucky not everybody has that and not everybody has the wearable filter to build a cabin I mean fortunately we have national parks

and provincial parks and sometimes I thought maybe I would have done better with without a cabin because I would have exploded more widely and gotten to know the province I know the province pretty well but there are parts of the province I haven't been to. I don't know. You wonder if it could have done a different way and I'm happy the way it turned out. I'm really happy with my experiences in my life. Yeah, and it's not over. So I'm sure if there's certain areas you want to check out, you can. Can you tell us what individuals listening can do if they're interested in trying to address some of the things we've talked about here today, is there, like, ways they can donate to something? Is there wildlife conservation

organizations that you think are high quality in comparison to perhaps some of the more extreme viewpoints? What can people do if they care about the wolves, if they care about the cariboo? Is there anything that people can do to try and address these things in their own lives? Yes. I'll have to think about this, but certainly donating to the groups like the hollow society, equal justice, who does good work in the legal area. You probably know, making those donations is good. I think bringing yourself and your kids up with a desire to have To have good knowledge, and extensive knowledge, would be a good thing. If you can steer your kids into science, at least have them to take some science courses.

I think science should be more valued. This whole climate denial business was anti-science, and since then we've seen a lot of other anti-science sort of streams of vile. I think science should be encouraged. writing should be encouraged. I think if people write about their experiences, then they'll value their own experiences more. I think people should be encouraged to write,

and to write properly. This means good English, not what you might get on Twitter or whatever. Yeah. And like I said before, get people, students, especially get out into the natural environment, go for picnics. When I was little, everybody went for picnics all the time.

It was just a thing that people, families did. They would get together a picnic basket and get in a little jalopy or take a bus even and just go out in some wild place and have a picnic. No, nobody takes picnics. Picnics should be, it was a good idea. Go camping, you know, and even if it's just a Golden Nears Park, which is just on a doorstep, you know. But there are a lot of places around here. Go camping. See the environment.

Fishing. I think more time people spend in the natural environment, the better off of the environment's going to be and the better off that people will be. You mentioned the trees, the Japanese have it word for it. Forest bathing is how it translates. Forest bathing. You go out into the forest and you bathe in the forest.

You let the good bides or whatever soak into you from the forest. Forest bathing. there is so much to learn from these cultures and like they might not have known the exact science of the immune systems or anything like that but they they knew enough and they were aware of the benefits and i think that that's that's so important i really appreciate you being willing to to drive all the way out here today um i really appreciated our online dialogues um i think that individuals like yourself are so important because you didn't come down on one side or the other side you respect the need for economies and for development, but you also think that they can be limited to make sure that we don't lose species to lose the biodiversity. And I think that it's so valuable that you were able to say this study could have been improved in these ways and it had errors. It was not perfectly done. If they did these changes, we could have gotten more reliable data on this. I think that your critiques of the government are well-founded. But again, you're not one side or the other.

Your humility in regards to First Nations communities and their culture, I think, is so valuable because I think that the more by all the, the more the sciences can work together collaboratively with ancient understandings and knowledge and community understanding, I think the stronger our country and our communities can become, to me, that's what reconciliation looks like, is bringing the best of the two worldviews together and seeing what new we can make from that. And I think that that's the example you sat by sharing your work. And I think that we're very lucky to have individuals like yourself who are willing to look at the articles and to critique them where critique is needed and to offer ways forward for others. And I really appreciate you being willing to share all of this with us today and your personal stories. Absolutely. Well, it's been a platerable conversation. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.