The Joe Rogan Experience - #954 - Justin Brown

Episode Date: May 3, 2017

Justin Brown is a biologist who leads coyote field research for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area Family Friendly

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 And we're live with Justin Brown. Justin, first of all, I'm very upset they gave you such a small badge. What's up with that? Yeah, no, it's nice and tiny there. Not law enforcement, so. Seems like you should have like, there's some badge there, there's some enforcement, right? It sure looks like it, doesn't it?

But yeah, no law enforcement on my end. I'm just a biologist. Well, listen, man, I've read about your work in an online article. I don't remember where it was, but about coyotes in the urban area all around Los Angeles. And I've been fascinated by this since I moved to LA. The first time I saw a coyote was in 1994. When I first moved moved here I was in Burbank and I had an apartment and you know one of those they have those pre-furnished Oakwoods Gardens apartment on Olive Street you know where that is

not off the top of my head but it's where people always when they transition to LA they get one of these pre-furnished apartments you know anyway I'm driving up Olive and I saw these coyotes. And it was the first time I'd ever seen a coyote. And I was like, this is crazy.

This is in Burbank. This is in a residential area. And they were just hanging out. And I pulled over, and I stopped, and I rolled down the window, and I was staring at them, and they're staring at me. And they didn't give a shit about me. They were so calm. And they didn't run.

And I just remember thinking, this is so strange. These are like wild dogs that live like right amongst us. And then from then on, I've had some encounters. I had a coyote steal a chicken from my yard. I watched him hop the fence with a chicken in his mouth. I've had quite a few encounters with coyotes, but I'm absolutely fascinated by them. I mean, they've been amazing. I've been working with them now for almost 15 years, actually a little bit more than that now. And I've seen them do some amazing things. I mean, they're able to live in some of the most urban environments we can imagine. I mean, I'm tracking them right next to, I don't know if you know where the Westlake neighborhood is in downtown LA, but I have a coyote running that neighborhood, which when I first drove through

there, so I worked in Chicago for a long time. We were tracking coyotes in some incredibly urban areas there, like right along Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. But in Chicago, there's some green spots where when you get down in L.A., there's not a lot of open spots. There's some little vacant lots and stuff. But I tracked this coyote for about nine months down there in that area, and she was just amazing. Like she was running the streets. She'd kind of hang out in these little vacant lots. And what was even more amazing is that no one was really complaining about her we actually talked to people in some of the houses and stuff they were actually fascinated to see them versus yeah being like they're in my backyard what are they doing well people have always had a weird

relationship with coyotes i had um dan flores on the podcast last month who's the author of coyote america and uh he's a wildlife historian and has just some amazing insight into like the relationship the coyotes had way back with the Native Americans. You know, they thought they were gods in a lot of ways. Yeah, I actually listened to your podcast with Dan. It was great. Dan's got some pretty interesting facts just in his book in general, things I didn't actually know about before. It's kind of nice to have a historian tie in some of the facts. I get asked lots of questions about where the coyotes came from, how they're moving around. Yeah.

And so it's nice to have something like Dan's book to kind of reference people to. I think most people in the downtown L.A. probably welcome something like a coyote because it's kind of cool, you know, to have this thing like hanging around you. As long as you don't have a dog or a cat that it snatches. Yeah, and that's definitely the case. A lot of people think it's cool, but they do cause problems. I'm actually dealing with one in the Silver Lake neighborhood that keeps going up to people walking their dogs and trying to, it's got a den in somebody's backyard. It's actually denning under their deck, so the deck's open, and she put our seven pups underneath this den. Whoa. Yeah, so it's pretty crazy. But she would basically, anybody gets close with a dog,

she comes out and tries to run them off. And this is pretty common during pupping season. This is like the time when most people have issues with coyotes because they're trying to protect their dens. I mean, we're all obviously protective of our offspring. Right. So they think that the dog is going to find the pups and kill them or something? I mean, we don't really know why they're doing it we assume that's probably the case they come up and that most of the attacks have been where they just come up behind

the dog and start trying to like nip at its back and the dog the people move on people freak out as far as I know there hasn't been anywhere that coyote actually like draw blood on the dog so it's almost more like it's like get the hell out of here. Right so they're just scaring them they're not trying to they're not actually being predators. That's what it seems like get the hell out of here right so they're just scaring them they're not trying to they're not actually being predators that's what it seems like for the most part i mean they definitely do kill little dogs yeah and occasionally end up fighting with big dogs as well but that's that's rare wow so these what are they eating like this especially the one in downtown yeah so that's that's interesting um we've actually been doing this study using working with a bunch of citizen

scientists and i don't know if that's the story you read or not but we're basically having people collect coyote scat from around downtown la and we're actually breaking the coyote scat up to look what's in it and we're seeing a huge variety of things i mean lots of fruits and stuff they're actually big time in the vegetation type stuff yeah a lot of fruits and in the urban environment obviously we've got peaches and plums and all kinds of crazy fruiting stuff that they take advantage of. But they're also eating rats and squirrels, cats, insects. We've seen things like earwigs and those big old potato bugs that people see. I mean, almost anything you could think of, they're taking advantage of.

Human trash. Well, I've had them in my yard for a long time. And one of the things that surprised me is how much coyote scat that I find with berries in it. Like, I didn't know that they were omnivores. I mean, they really are omnivores. It's not like a dog or a cat. I mean, they eat pretty much everything. Yeah, I mean, coyotes can take advantage, and that's why they're able to live amongst us. I mean, because even when there's not a lot of prey available, they're able to take advantage of these different fruiting trees.

Yeah, you know, I was talking with a friend about it, and he was saying that he hates them. even when there's not a lot of prey available, they're able to take advantage of these different fruiting trees. Yeah. You know, I was talking with a friend about it and he was saying that he hates them and he wants to kill them all and all this stuff. And I was saying, but yeah, but ever notice that you don't see any rats? Like we hardly have any rats. Like it's so rare that you see a rat or a mouse in my area. And I think a big part of that is because you hear coyotes all the time, and I think they're eating them all. I mean, they definitely take advantage of them.

I mean, there's other predators too. I'm not sure where you live exactly. Owls and hawks and stuff. Bobcats and all those different things definitely take advantage of those prey as well. But yeah, coyotes, I mean, they're amazing. Yeah, they really are a fascinating animal. So this one that got to downtown L.A., do you know like when it arrived i don't know when it arrived so i i kind of drove through there looking to see where i might be able to

collar a few animals so we could kind of see what's going on and how these animals are persisting down there um and actually do that uh how do i see where they're persist no how do you collar them oh how do i collar them so first we have to capture them. So we'll put out traps. We'll capture them. And then once I get them in a trap, I'll go out with a pole. I'll pin them to the ground and then I'll hold them down. Jesus. I'll put a muzzle on them and hold their feet together.

And then we'll throw a collar on them. We'll take blood to look for disease. You don't tranquilize? We don't tranquilize them. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. They actually go very docile.

They're a lot like a dog. Once you kind of show them that you're the dominant thing, they kind of just lay over. I mean, you still have to be careful. Obviously, they can turn and bite you if you don't muzzle them. Right. But usually once you get them down that first time, they usually just lay there until you're done. No kidding. Yeah, and it usually takes me somewhere 35, 40 minutes to do the whole thing.

And they just lay there. They're not fighting me do you have a video of that uh i'm sure i do i want to see that that's gotta be a trip yeah i know i would think that they would be like a wild cat like i've had a feral cat before um and i had her when she was a kitten or he rather when he was a kitten and he was like a spaz like you couldn't even hold on to him you'd freak out and climb the curtains and hiss and sputter at you and that was like a spaz like you couldn't even hold on to him you'd freak out and climb the curtains and hiss and sputter at you and that was like a little domestic cat that was born outside oh yeah we do drug any of our cats we catch so we catch um bobcats it's another study that we're doing a lot

of uh we've actually had a bobcat project going on since 1996 and so we've been collaring those guys for a long time they're not docile they're not docile we don't trust them raccoons are another species you don't handle those guys on drugged oh. They're not docile. They're not docile. We don't trust them. Raccoons are another species. You don't handle those guys undrugged. Oh, yeah. I would imagine. They'll make you pay the price. Isn't that crazy? Like, people don't realize that raccoons are predators.

Yeah. Well, they're definitely omnivores, just like the coyotes are. They actually eat a lot of fruit and stuff. I mean, part of them living in an urban environment is they're just taking massive advantage of our garbage. Raccoons just, I mean, I've seen amazing photos of like 13, 14 raccoons in one garbage can all feasting down. I have chickens in my backyard and this one raccoon was by my chicken coop the other day. And I flashed a light on him and he walked towards the light.

I was like, look at this cocky bitch. He just started walking at me and I got nervous. I was like, I don't have a weapon on me or nothing. I thought a flashlight. He'd be like well Let me get out of here He's just looking right at the flashlight walking towards me you know trying to get to the chicken coop Yeah, well you'd be amazed how many people feed them. Oh because they're so dang cute right big old mask on people are like Oh, they're starving out there. They can't find their own food, and so they feel like they need to feed them and say yeah I oats to its people feel like. They can't find their own food. And so they feel like they need to feed them. And same thing with coyotes, too. People feel like these animals can't fend for themselves, which is ridiculous because they're not able to make it there because we're feeding them.

They're making it because there's resources for them to take advantage of. Yeah, I would imagine they probably play. I mean, like I said, I think in my neighborhood they do play an important part of keeping the rodent population down. But in downtown, there's got to be a ton of rodents as well. I mean, downtown, for people who don't know, is like the only area in all of LA that really looks like a city. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like I said, I drove through there.

I mean, after tracking coyotes in Chicago, I didn't think they'd be in some of the areas they are in LA. They seem to be everywhere I look. I get photos of coyotes on our cameras or get people reporting them to us. And this one that's in downtown is just a single coyote by herself? No, actually she's got a whole pack. So I collared her and then within a couple, she was actually lactating when I caught her. So I know she had pups.

And then we ended up seeing her with five pups probably a week later. And there was actually a ambulance that drove by and she just started howling and all the pups were out there yipping and this is all like in this little vacant lot between two houses wow yeah so they just find these areas where people aren't yeah and so before we colored them the one thing i always heard is oh the coyotes are coming in from griffith park or they're coming in from elysian park and coming into our communities and they're just here for a night or two night causing problems and leaving. Well, that's not what we're seeing. Definitely. Once we threw these collars on these

animals, we're like, no, they've got pretty small home ranges. They're kind of living just in the urban environment. They're not going back and forth. They're living with us. So do you feel like it's a good thing or a bad thing to have them around or just a thing? I think it's just a thing. I mean, it depends on your perspective. I think it's bad when people think we need to feed them, we need to do these things, like to encourage them and make them more comfortable with us. That's not a good thing because that's when bites and that kind of stuff happen. But when it comes to the coyotes and stuff living in these urban environments, it's really all about us. It's more about managing people people getting people to quit feeding them or quit

I mean one thing I encourage people to do scare the stupid coyote off like because There's lots of people that have little issues that occur with the coyotes their cats get taken Or the coyotes start just sitting there watching them I had somebody complain recently because the coyote was sitting behind their yard looking at their wife in the jacuzzi No, Jesus Christ, so's a pervert yeah exactly so it's like come on like all he has to do if he really doesn't want it there go back there and run the thing off so they call you and tell you that a coyote staring at their wife yeah you'd be amazed the calls we get about coyotes people just people are still not comfortable with them being there even though they've been there

for a long time it's just people cannot get comfortable with the idea of there being a medium-sized predator in these urban environments. They're like the perfect size to almost get away with it, too. You know, like, it's not like a wolf. Like, if a wolf was around, everybody would be freaking out. Like, it's too big. Yeah, exactly. A coyote is like, you know, 40 pounds, something like that. And that's a big coyote.

What's a small one? So, our average is around 25 to 27 pounds. Wow, okay. So, you's a big coyote what's a small one uh so our average is around 25 to 27 pounds wow okay so you're really not small they are and that's why i'm always like when people are so scared of them like it's really not that big of an animal i mean there's a lot of small dogs are bigger than that they're smart though man they're really clever one of them um he or she essentially uh what you would, honeydicked my dog and tricked my dog into, do you know what it's like when a chicken molts? Yeah, I actually have chickens as well. Okay, cool.

Yeah. So my chicken was molting, so I had to separate her from the rest of the chickens so she wasn't in a nesting box. And I put her in a cage by herself. If you let them sit in a cage for a few days, they figure out that they don't really have an egg, and then they go back to their normal behavior. So this coyote was too small to knock over the cage, but my mastiff is big enough to do it. So she literally tricked my mastiff into coming out with her

towards where the chickens are. He knocks over the cage. She steals the chicken and hops over the fence. Wow. Did you see all this happen? I caught him with another chicken in his mouth. And I was like, you motherfucker. And then I see the coyote jump over the fence with the chicken.

He was with the coyote right next to it. He thought it was his friend. He was treating the coyote like, this is my friend. She's cool. We hang out together. And she tricked him into knocking over this small pen. He's like 140 pounds. He just smashed that thing and broke it open. And she grabbed the chicken, thanks, and hopped over the fence. And I watched her. I was sitting there. I was playing Monopoly or something with my wife and my kids were sitting in the living room. And I see the coyote running across the backyard with the chicken in its mouth and hopped over this five foot fence. Like it didn't even exist. Just just right over the top of it. I was like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah. They're really smart. I mean,

heck to live in downtown. They've got to be like crossing roads. it's amazing. Like I watch them walk up to these busy roads. They stop about 10 feet shy, kind of sit there listening. Then they'll peek around the corner and look both ways, and then they'll run across. Well, I've heard that they understand traffic lights now. There was an article I read yesterday about coyotes and traffic lights. There's real evidence that coyotes understand when that beep, beep, you know, that beep sound that they use for blind people, that coyotes understand that that means the cars aren't allowed to go. And that's when they walk.

Huh. I haven't seen that one. That's interesting. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, it's incredible watching them move around this urban environment and just dealing with us and dealing with traffic. Like they get around. I mean, they'll come out in the street.

All of a sudden somebody will peek out in the street to go around their car and they'll cut between the cars and go down the sidewalk. Like they figure out our movements and how to avoid us pretty quick. How many do you think there are in the greater L.A. area? I get asked that question a lot. And it's a hard one to answer because we don't know because they are pack animals. So you could end up with easily it could be just two animals in an area or it could be two adults with seven young or it could even be five, six, seven, ten adults together with a pack of young as well. Because a lot of times the young from the year before may not disperse. If there's enough food available, they'll keep hanging in there until they are able to find their own territory.

So whenever someone would give an estimation, it's really just a rough guess. It's a very rough guess. A lot of times what they'll do is they'll just try to be like, okay, this is how big of an area coyote uses. And then be like, okay, there's this much area in LA and throw a number out there. But there's a lot of variables that come in. And it has the, do you feel like the numbers increased over the past few years or? Definitely not over the last few years. It's possible over the long run because I know there are some reports of places that there weren't coyotes. Like the Baldwin Hills, there was some work done where they identified all the different animals there and coyotes weren't in their list. So they used trail cams?

Like what did they use to identify the animals? Back then, I think they were doing a lot of track surveys and just going out there into the field and looking for them. Track surveys meaning like looking at the ground? Exactly. Yeah, and with coyotes, they leave enough scat different places. Like if they were looking hard for them, they would have found them. How can you tell the difference between coyote scat and dog scat? Usually, so dog scat is almost always just dog food.

And it doesn't, these coyote scats end up getting more spiraled inside. And so they'll be really tapered on the ends where dog scat can be tapered, but it's usually just drastically different. Huh. Why is it tapered? It's partially just the way their digestive system works. And they're getting all this hair in there because they're eating these animals. And so it gets more and more spiraled as it comes out.

And we can tell them apart from like bobcats because bobcats kind of get this. They're more almost, I don't want to call it a pellet, but they're smaller segmented and they're kind of just one side's concave and one side's convex of each pellet. And so you can tell them apart. That's actually can be more difficult for some people than the dog and the coyote. I found some mountain lion shit once in Santa Monica. Not in Santa Monica, excuse me, Santa Barbara. And it was very disturbing because it was a rope, like a fat rope of hairy shit.

And I was like, what is this from? And I sent it to a friend of mine who is, he's very knowledgeable about animals. He's like, it's almost definitely a mountain lion. I was like, whoa, somebody got got here. No, yeah. Because it was pretty thick rope, like a human-sized log with all this hair in it. Yeah.

We actually have a lion study going in our mountains, too. We've been calling our mountain lions for a long time. I'm sure you've probably heard of P-22 in Griffith Park. I have, yeah. Yeah, that's actually an animal

that one of my colleagues collared. Oh, yeah, that's the famous photo of the Hollywood Hills. Exactly. That is an amazing photo of that enormous cat with that collar an amazing photo of that enormous cat with that collar on yeah that was Steve Winters with National Geographic got that photo I mean it's pretty impressive he worked hard between him and my

colleague Jeff they they did a lot of work to get that photo well Jamie's gonna pull that photo up when you take a look at it now that is that is an iconic photograph man you know what I think we should have that photo in the new studio we should get a print of that. Can we buy a print of that? You know where someone could buy a print of that? I believe you can get it from Steve Winters. Jamie, make a note of whoever this gentleman is and if he sells that.

Because that seems so crazy, it doesn't even look like a real photo. Because the Hollywood sign is so perfect in the background. And the cat is fucking huge. You know what's amazing about the Hollywood sign? There's no lights on the Hollywood sign is so perfect in the background and the cat is fucking huge. You know what's amazing about the Hollywood sign? There's no lights on the Hollywood sign. He got that photo because he was able to do enough camera work that he made the Hollywood sign glare out. That's just from lights from the city.

Really? Yeah. If you look at the Hollywood sign at night, it's not lit up like that. Wow. Look at the forearm on that thing. Yeah. I mean, that's like a thigh. Yeah. God, it's like a thigh. Yeah.

God, it's a huge cat. Yeah. How big do you think that is? It's a big male. I think the last time, so we've captured him three or four times now, and I think the last time he was about 120, 130, I believe. I'm not positive of that, but it's somewhere in that area. Yeah, he's a good-sized cat. I mean I mean what's amazing he's running in Griffith Park he never leaves the Griffith Park

general area because he's blocked by freeways and yet there hasn't been any conflicts with him and people besides the time he got underneath that guy's house God look at the size of him but yeah Jesus Christ that's so weird so joggers no one gets interrupted by him? Oh, interrupt is a funny word. Jacked is a better word. He doesn't mess with people at all? No, we get sightings everywhere where people report it. But yeah, we haven't had any conflicts with him, which has been amazing. I mean, he's got the smallest home range of any mountain lion, male mountain lion that we know of.

So what is like a square mile? Is he just the park? He's just the park. I mean, he's been up by like Universal Studios right in there once or twice, like in some green strip through there. But for the most part, yeah, he's just hanging in the park

and then some DWP property next to the park. How big is the park? I wish I could call that number off the top of my head. Just roughly, if you had to guess. Oh, yeah. I'm not good with that. Griffith Park? Yeah. I looked up there. It's like 4,300 acres or something like that. It's like the biggest in America. my head just roughly if you had a guess oh yeah i'm not good with that griffith park yeah i looked up there's like 4 300 acres or something like that okay it's like the biggest in america or

maybe the world urban park uh it's a pretty big park it is but what is it but when you compare that to mountain lions in our main mountains we usually think two mountain lions can live in the santa monica mountains which is about 150 acres. So his range is pretty small, 4,300 compared to about 75,000 acres. That's incredible. And he's mostly eating deer. He eats some coyotes, um, raccoons, but it's almost most of the, most of all of our mountain lions, all their diets deer. Well, that's one of the reasons why there's so few deer in California. I hear that. I mean, we don't, we don't know if that's truly what's going on. Mountain lions, they do kind of self-regulate.

So the big males usually kill the smaller males. And so they do kind of control their own populations at some level. Oh, that's interesting. So the competition, they kill competition. They're not cannibals, though. I don't believe they eat them. They usually just kill them. That's interesting. So do they kill them. That's interesting.

So do they kill them to bring the females to estrus or they do them just because they're competition? We believe it's just because it's competition because they're usually killing those yearling males. So they're killing them once they're independent? Exactly. But they also, we have had them kill a female lion as well. So it's not that simple hmm yeah that's interesting and is this in the park you found this yeah wow so you find a dead mountain lion in the park i mean they have radio callers on them so we kind of know what's going on now is there any concern like does anybody make the argument that they shouldn't be there does anybody ever say hey you know this is where i live i don't want this cat here why do you guys let this thing it's a giant predator wandering around our neighborhood yeah i mean we definitely hear that but we also get the other side as well a lot where they want to protect every lion

right i mean we get the same thing with coyotes people don't want the coyotes there with the coyotes it's even more tricky because we've tried to kill coyotes for a long time to try to get them out of areas and we have not been successful i I mean, places like Chicago with coyotes, I mean, they'll go through and do removals, like a lot of the landowners will do removals, and the coyotes just come back pretty quickly. Interesting. So it's really not that effective

when you start trying to remove these animals. Yeah, especially coyotes, right? They're so crafty. I read a really disturbing article about mountain lions where they were talking about the number of mountain lions that get killed every year by professional mountain lion hunters that the government hires because they're preying on cats and dogs. And that they said that 50% of these animals, this was around the San Francisco area, that 50% of their diet was domestic animals, like domestic cats and

dogs. Yeah, I'm not familiar with that one, but we definitely haven't seen that with ours. So this one has just got a good supply of deer and that's just what it's eating on a regular basis. That's what it seems like. I mean, even Griffith Park, that's what they're focused on. I mean, like I said, they also kill the coyotes and the raccoons and stuff as well. Sure. The other thing that was really disturbing about that article because they were that it was the the author was trying to make a connection between missing children yeah they were talking about uh several cases over the years where children were missing and never found again and these are the same areas where these mountain lines are roaming and they were wondering whether or not that had been the case and that makes you

just go whoa yeah i mean I think it's probably more likely human caused than wildlife caused. I mean, maybe we're way creepier than these animals are. That's true. But do you remember about two years ago, uh, there was a case in Cupertino right near the Apple campus where a mountain lion attacked a kid and, uh, the father had to fight the mountain lion off. I mean, these stories definitely pop up every once in a while, but we also have lots of places where there's lions and there's no issues. Right. Our mountains, we haven't had a human lion issue.

I mean, we've had livestock taken, but that's about it. And we're talking a park that gets a huge amount of visitors. Griffith, yeah. Lots of lion. Well, Griffith, but also the whole Santa Monica Mountains. Right. So we're part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and we've got, at any given time, we could have 12 to 15 lions in there.

Wow, really? And we've never had a human lion issue besides livestock. What is the big issue when they do attack people? Because it's always like someone either running or on a bike. They think that the person is trying to get away? Is it like a cat thing, like a regular cat? You know, like if you roll a ball, a yarn in front of a cat, they just jump on it? Yeah, I don't think we really have a full understanding, but it probably has something

to do with a prey drive. Yeah. Because I've read a few mountain lion attacks on people that had to do with mountain bikes. And I was thinking, like, why would they want to attack someone on a bike it seems like a bike would be scary yeah I mean they're an ambush predator and they're they're big animals so they're not used to having anything bigger than them take them on so right they're not they're not that fearful of most things I mean a lot of times when people see the Lions they don't run and so people freak out but that's that's actually not that uncommon

for them just to kind of sit there and look at you and judge your situation yeah try to figure out what they can do with you or whether or not they should eat you. Hope that's not what they're thinking. Right. Most likely not, right? Most likely not. What are the numbers of attacks on people? Do you know?

You'd have to talk to my colleague. I'm definitely not the lion guy in our office. I'm much more focused on coyotes. Do you remember the last time you heard of a lion attack on people? No. Off the top of my head. I mean, it might have been that apple thing, or there was attack in Orange County quite a while back. But that's really it. It's not that common, especially for not the number of lions that are here.

There's a mountain lion in San Juan Capistrano that's been attacking this farm. a mountain lion in San Juan Capistrano that's been attacking this farm. A buddy of mine, Ian McCall, who's a UFC fighter, has a friend who owns this farm. And this mountain lion has been hitting this farm every now and again. And the other day it killed 37 ducks and a goat. Just goes on a rampage. Yeah. And doesn't even eat them. Just fucks them up and leaves. Yeah. So what we usually see with them is, I mean, because they almost always eat what they kill. It's just when they kill something in a farm, they usually end up being uncomfortable afterwards. Because we come in, we see the situation, things change. And so they don't come back.

Because they'll feed on a deer for a week or more. Right. So I think it's more of a factor. When they leave those things, it's more that they just all send like, oh, crap, what'd I do? I got to get out of here. Why'd they kill 37 then? It's just prey drive prey drive i mean they can't help themselves yeah they get in there's times when they get in pens with bigger animals too things like llamas and stuff where they'll end up killing multiple animals just because they get in this pen and then all suddenly

they're jumping around making all these noises and so then the animals get excited and i mean it's just like a dog dogs that get in chickens. All of a sudden the dog goes in and kills the whole flock of chickens. Right. It's the same type of deal. They just can't help themselves. Yep. Yeah, there's that one that's in the Santa Monica Mountains. What is it?

P52, is that the name of it? P45. I'm guessing if that's what you're talking about. Is that the one that killed a bunch of llamas and the woman got a depredation permit to kill the mountain lion and then people freaked out and started sending her death threats? Yeah, it got a depredation permit to kill the mountain lion then people freaked out started sending her death threats yeah he got a little out of control yeah it's like it was really creepy listening to this woman's position because she didn't know what to do because she's you know she lives there she's got this farm and this big old cat just keeps coming in and fucking up like

10 llamas yeah in a in a setting yeah so us in national National Wildlife Federation actually started working with her to try to help pin her animals up better because a lot of it just comes to making sure your animals are secure at night. Is that what it is? Like you have to figure out a way to close the area so the mountain lion can't get into it? Exactly. And it doesn't take anything that complicated. We actually held a workshop for people in the local vicinity and we'll be holding more

to teach livestock owners how to secure their animals so that that stuff doesn't happen is there a way they can um do something that like uh emits a sound or something that scares them off so there are some devices out there that are being tested and being used in some vicinities but nothing's 100 the problem with a lot of devices is you've got livestock moving around so they're going to be triggering the devices all night oh right and so it's it's kind of a tough situation The best thing is to try to pin the animals up So you have to put something with a roof on it so the mountain lion can't get in over the top exactly so when you're talking about an animal like that like when they

They sometimes they capture them and then they move them to a new area, right? That is very rare to happen. Is it really? Yeah. Like when we capture animals, we don't move anybody. You just let them go right back to where they are after you call them? We collar them. We take blood.

We do what we need to do to them. And then we just let them go right there. So is the idea like mess with them as little as possible? Exactly. Yeah. If we didn't have to capture them, we wouldn't capture them. We would just throw it. If there was a way to get a collar on the animal without touching it, we would do that.

Like maybe a dart that shoots a GPS unit in them or something. Yeah, whatever the technology is, if it ever comes up that way, most wildlife people would prefer. Because the least we have to do to them, the more we're going to understand their behaviors. Yeah, I would imagine this cat in Griffith Park, you said it's been captured three times? Yeah. That's kind of crazy. Might even be four. I can't remember.

I'm not, like I said, I'm not the guy that does all the lion work so i just help out the cat must be like jesus christ they got me again the third time he's probably like i'm so tired of wearing the stupid jewelry they keep putting on me yeah well i don't know you might have saw the pictures too where he got he was really sick with mange oh yeah that's right yeah and so they got a medication so we caught him and we have a topical medication that we can give animals. We do it to bobcats and stuff. So what we found with this mange disease is that it's caused by rodenticides. So all these rat poisons we put out there basically ends up getting into the mountain lions and the bobcats and the coyotes.

And there seems to be some sort of correlation between those poisons and why these animals get sick. Oh, is that him right there with mange? Yep, that's him. Yeah, that's fascinating. That is a real issue with people poisoning these animals so that it also affects owls, apparently. Definitely. Rat poison is causing a drop in the owl population because the owls are getting a hold of these

rats that are sick from the... Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, well, it's amazing. I mean, to think of a mountain lion getting rat poisons it's not like they're out there hunting rats right but it's because they're killing the coyotes that then are that are eating the rats that are sick oh it's what we believe is happening so a mountain lion wouldn't eat a rat i mean they might but for them to eat enough rats they're not just sitting there focusing on rats it's really not a big enough prey source for them right so they're they're definitely focusing more on the coyotes and the bigger prey.

I can't believe there's that many mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains. That's crazy. Yeah. And these are collared mountain lions, correct? Not all of them. There's definitely some out there that are uncollared. We can only get what we can capture. And so when you make an estimate of, would you say 15?

Is that what you said? We think that's our upper size limit. How many of them are collared? I think right now we're around eight or nine. Yeah, I wish Jeff was in here. He could answer these questions a lot better than me. Because like I said, I'm- I'll get Jeff in here next time.

Yeah, sure. It's so fascinating because California is such a unique area in that we are very urban, but we're real spread out. And we've got the Santa Monica Mountains right there, like in Topanga, right there. I mean, I have a buddy who lives in Topanga. You go in his backyard, you would swear to God you're in Colorado or something. I mean, it seems like the wilderness. Yeah, the mountains are amazing.

I mean, it's 155,000 acres. Oh, Jamie's got a map he pulled up of all the mountain lions. Ah, look at them all. Jesus. So obviously the Santa Monica Mountains are just there south of the 101. Basically, so the park is basically from the Hollywood Hills out to Point Magoo, and it incorporates most of Malibu, and then it goes a little bit up into Simi Hills. But the mountains themselves are mostly south of 101.

little bit up in the Simi Hills. But the mountains themselves are mostly south of 101. This is such a unique place to live that we're so sort of surrounded by nature in a lot of ways. And there's so many different places. Like you could go to Big Bear in an hour and a half and you're in the woods. I mean, you are literally in the wilderness. That's a great thing about LA. That's why we all like living here, right? It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. But people are super uncomfortable with the fact that this wildlife sort of interfaces with our urban environment. And that's where guys like you come in, right? Yeah. I mean, we're hoping to help reduce some of these conflicts. And a lot of it comes to what we do. It's not so much with animals. I mean, with coyotes, a huge amount of the issues are because somebody next door to use feeding them and so the coyotes hanging around

Is that's really common like the people leave out food. Yeah, sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's not like feeding your dog outside It's never a good idea Right having fruit trees in your backyard that are just dropping fruit constantly and no one's picking it up or cleaning it up That's all attractant. So it's all bringing in coyotes raccoons possums skunks All these animals are coming in to take advantage of that stuff. Do you think they eat olives? Have we seen olives? Probably would take advantage of them here and there,

but I don't think it's like a super big food source for them. I haven't seen any spots, so we've been doing this diet study for a little while now, and olives are not one that pops up regularly. Because my dogs eat them. That's why I'm asking. My dogs catch them when they fall out of trees, and it's the same yard, obviously, where the coyotes had been visiting. Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't rule it out. But definitely, if you have anything like figs, we find tons of figs in there. Figs. Scat. Yeah. Figs are a big one. So they really like figs. They do.

And figs fruit twice a year, a lot of the varieties of figs. And so they're a lot. So the coyotes just kind of learn to key in on them. Oh, okay. And probably a lot of calories there too for a minute Exactly. What are those little tiny red berries that they like to eat? Piracantha maybe is that what it is? I think so. That's not even edible to humans, right? Not I don't think so, but coyotes can eat them

Yeah, I mean whether it's edible to us or whether we would want to eat them different question, I guess. Yeah They're out there grinding exactly. They're eating a lot of things that we would not touch I guess. Yeah, they're out there grinding. Exactly. They're eating a lot of things that we would not touch. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, they go off, pick stuff up off the road, nasty little, it looks like just putty on the road. I've seen them grab stuff. I mean, coyotes, they're just, they're crazy. I mean, there's a lot of these talk about kites going after cats and all that. And there's no question they eat cats. I've seen them. One of our collared animals was actually eating a cat. It and two of its pack mates were sitting there just eating this cat in somebody's front yard Which I'd never seen I knew they ate them Have you seen that video of the coyote eating the cat that someone captured in Los Angeles? I don't think so It's a great video because these people from their car are filming this coyote That's right there on the street in busy LA and it's just staring at people chewing on this cat It's right there on the street in busy L.A. And it's just staring at people chewing on this cat.

It's like, ooh, Jesus Christ. We played it for Dan Flores. And Dan has the opinion. He's of the opinion that a lot of these cats that are getting killed by these coyotes, like here's some coyotes just wandering across the street. I mean, this is really crazy because this is as urban as it gets. I mean, busy street. And this coyote is just hanging out. And so these people followed this coyote urban as it gets. I mean, busy street, and this coyote's just hanging out.

And so these people followed this coyote all around the street. Does it look like it has a collar? Why don't I see a collar? No, no collar. No, it's not collared. But Dan thinks that the coyotes are eating the cats because they're competitive predators. So that has definitely been seen with things like foxes. Look at him. There he is. So...

Just chillin', eatin' a cat right in front of everybody. I mean, that's crazy. Did they actually see it? I'm guessing they didn't see it actually catch the cat. No, because the cat's stiff. Yeah, so... See how stiff that cat is? That cat looks like it's been dead for quite a while, but he's just chewing on that cat in front of everybody. Yeah. That coyote actually, you see how its face looks kind of bald?

That coyote may actually have mange. And you think that could be from rat poison? With the coyotes, it's a little more complicated than that. We think it's a different type of mange they get. So we don't think that's directly tied to rat poisons. It could be still, but it's kind of uncertain with those guys. And some of it is because of bugs as well, right? So mange is actually caused by a mite. Yeah. And it just irritates their skin and they end up scratching their own fur off. Oh, that's it?

Yeah. Really? Yep. I thought it just, look at that one cat. It's like, oh, that's my friend. Oh dude, that cat is so crazy. He's just sitting there watching this coyote. Yeah. So what a dumb cat. Well, I saw a cat in the middle of a street a coyote was walking down the street i thought it was a bag of garbage i was about 100 yards away and i was sitting here watching this coyote go to it i was like oh the coyote's gonna get in this garbage next thing i know this coyote circles it three times walks off all of a sudden the thing jumps up and walks away i was like whoa did i just see that wow i could not believe it like because even like i know it's complicated but i was like

that was a pretty easy prey they could have just grabbed it so are coyotes much faster than cast is that what it is well in that scenario it didn't have to be faster the cat was just laying there right like they could have grabbed it at any point yeah i wonder why the cat felt calm enough to do that yeah i don't know and why the coyote didn't go after it i have no idea i think it's just it's just not that simple that they go after every single cat. Yeah. Well, they obviously don't, right? Yeah. Now you, so you say that it is fairly common that people feed them. It is. I've just with tracking these animals, I've been to a bunch of places where people feel like they need to put dog food or cat food out on the street just for the coyotes or the skunks or the raccoons or whatever. They're feeding

something intentionally out there and then the coyotes are taking advantage. And do you talk to these people? Do you have to have... So I will occasionally. Usually I just tell animal services about it and they'll talk to them. Or if it's somebody I'm like already having some sort of communication with, I'll definitely be like, you don't really need to feed these guys. They're doing fine on their own.

Yeah. All you're doing is encouraging them to come here. Yeah. Do they get that? Do you deal with some nutty animal people that don't get that? Yeah, we definitely deal with some people that don't understand They feel like these animals are gonna starve to death or or die of dehydration if they don't put that bowl of water out there That's so crazy. So yeah, Dan Flores had a woman who came to him and was doing a documentary on saving the coyote Yeah, and he was like, I don't think you understand like they're doing great yeah they've expanded their range incredibly like they're living in every big city around i mean from new york chicago um toronto yeah that's insane yeah it's crazy they're

everywhere yeah they literally are in every state in every every city, in the entire country, except Hawaii. Except Hawaii, yep. But that is so bizarre to think that they're in Queens. They've found them in the Bronx. Yeah. What's amazing, they've expanded their range over a fairly short time span, too. I mean, it's really just since Europeans have been here that they've been able to kind of expand out and do that. And that's through all this time of us trying to kill them and all that. And so I get a lot of people that want to remove coyotes from the urban environments.

I'm like, well, we've been trying to do that for a long time and it's not working. What is the solution then? The solution is just to sort of mitigate their impact on us? Well, I think we need to change what we do. Yeah. I mean, it's about not making sure we don't have food out there. I mean, if the more food they have, it's been shown coyotes can increase their litter sizes. And so they produce more coyotes.

And so it's really about trying to reduce the amount of food that we are responsible for. That's also what I read in Dan Flores' book, that the more we impact the coyotes as far as people trying to push them out and pressure them, the more they produce extra babies. Especially if they do that roll call thing when they scream out in the night and you hear them, which is amazing. That is one of my favorite things about coyotes, man. When I'm out at night and, like, you know, like you're sitting on the deck,

like having a cup of coffee or something, and you hear, you're like, wow, this is wild. Like, they are really out here, like, grinding. Yeah, it makes you feel you're actually out in the wild a little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Even though like you're sitting on your deck listening to music.

Exactly. Yeah. Also the diets are going off. Yeah. Drinking a nice cup of coffee or something. Yeah. It's just, it's just, it's such a unique relationship that we have with that one predator where it's like, I like them around.

Like I would be really weird if that was, uh, you know, any other kind of like scary predator, but coyotes are kind of cool to have around. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely. I think the same way. A lot of people may not feel quite the same when they're dinning in their backyard, but I don't know. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I do too. I mean, I'm a dog lover. I've got chickens. I've got all these things that coyotes could affect me as well. But I also realize that there's things I can do to make sure that they're not going to get to my chickens or they're not going to get to my dogs.

Well, I have a puppy right now. And that's my big fear. It's because I have a golden retriever puppy. And he is like golden retrievers. I don't know if you ever had one. They are like the most non-dog dogs like they don't bark at anybody they're terrible watchdogs they love everybody and they just have zero killer instinct like zero they're just sweethearts yeah and i'm just worried that he's gonna get jacked yeah i mean i would definitely keep him secure until he gets up to that 40 50 pound range right he there, they're generally pretty safe.

Yeah. Now, they do sometimes ambush him though, right? It happens. It's rare. Usually, most of the attacks are smaller dogs. However, there are definitely cases where they've gone even after something as big as your Mastiff. That's crazy. I mean, it's pretty rare that happens.

The whole coyote dog thing is complicated. I bet you if you Google dogs and coyotes playing on YouTube, you would find a dozen videos very quickly. Yeah. Yeah, because we've actually looked at some of that, and it's just like that relationship is not as simple as just like they're going to go after the dogs. No, they play around together, but then they'll kill them and eat them, which is just like, what kind of relationship do we have, man? Yeah. Well, and we don't know how often they actually eat them. Which is just like, what kind of relationship do we have, man? Yeah. Well, and we don't know how often they actually eat them. We think sometimes they just kill them and carry them off because that's the same thing they do with foxes. Really? Yeah. So like gray foxes and red foxes, the coyotes will kill them, but they generally don't eat them. Really? When

you start thinking ecologically, it makes sense, right? Like they're so related that there's lots of diseases that could be transmitted between them. So it's kind of a risk anytime you eat something that's very closely related to you. Oh, that's fascinating So essentially the same thing is like a mad cow disease Exactly, which is comes from the prions which is we feed cows cow material and then they get that What is it called Jacob's Crutzfeld disease? That's right. Yeah, which is the same disease that they find in cannibals in um where is it what country is it that they find that in indonesia i forget where it is um but that's interesting that's essentially the same thing the same yeah yeah i mean anytime you start and that's just one disease i mean there's lots of parasites and stuff too that if you're they transfer between similarly

related species much easier than it does to say between a cat and a dog wow so i mean there's a lot of spillover and zoonotic diseases between wildlife and domestic animals luckily we have lots of vaccinations for things i'm sure you've heard of like parvo and distemper. And so there's vaccinations we can give our animals to take care of that. Obviously, these wild animals just have to deal with it. Yeah. Distemper is very common, right? I had a dog that had to be put down. And parvo, it's also deadly to puppies, right? They get that. Exactly. Parvo is very common in this area. We actually, not just right down the street here, we lost some pups to Parvo.

And is this something that's transmitted through wildlife as well? It can be, yeah. So we're not exactly sure if it's only wildlife to domestic. It's probably both. It's probably being moved between the different populations. So, I mean, luckily, if we vaccinate well, we can reduce that spread. But people have to be good about vaccinating their animals. So do you guys have a mandate, like when it comes to studying coyotes and when it comes to dealing with them, like what is the overall emphasis on?

Is it on just understanding their range, where they are, or is it, do you try to do something with them? So our role is to try to help protect wildlife within National Park areas and so what we try to do is we try to get as most understanding we can so we can help reduce Conflicts help reduce disease transmissions help just basically help the whole ecology of these animals to make sure there's not things coming into our Populations that are are going to end up affecting them. It's interesting because I would think like when people start cutting budgets and they start looking for like, well, where can we reduce spending? Like there might be a few people that come along and go, hey, why do we give a shit about these coyotes? You know, does that come up?

I mean, that always comes up anytime budgets are dealt with. But for us, an important thing for us is just to make sure that we do everything we can to protect our resources within our park. And so we've identified that this is a potential risk for our local wildlife. And so that's why we've started studying the things like the mountain lions, the bobcats. So our park is completely surrounded by urbanization. We have lots of influences. I mean, our mountains are about 50% of it is privately owned. And so there's a lot of chances for development. So it's important for us to understand how development is affecting the wildlife so we can help try to mitigate that in the future.

That's awesome. Now, when you're dealing with these animals and you're collecting data and information, do you guys share it with people that maybe other peers that you have that work in much larger areas? And do you find like similar patterns and similar results? So we generally share through scientific publications. This is usually how stuff is shared kind of between us. That being said, we definitely talk to other parks like Yosemite. I just recently went up there to help them do some raccoon stuff. And so we will definitely share information to try to help deal with similar issues. I mean, so I was up there for about three or four days, and we talked about lots of different things. But one of the things they've had with coyotes is people feeding them out of the car.

So, like, people drive through. They'll take food because the coyote's hanging off nearby, and they'll throw it out the car to the coyote. Well, the coyote got so habituated to that, it would just be coming up to every car and start jumping up on cars whoa and so they're like this is they end up having to remove the animal because all these people just end up feeding it they would go up and scare the thing and they would you I think they even tried I think they said they tried to paintball it but it ended up learning who they were like they learned their

cars learned who they were so every time they would come up the kite would disappear back into the bushes even if they tried it in their own cars but even if they came in their own cars the coyote recognized them yeah over time it ended up learning to recognize the people they're too smart they are wow that's so interesting yeah and I definitely noticed that even like with trapping and stuff, when we're trying to capture these animals, I feel like there's times when they definitely kind of avoid the area because some of these animals have been on the air for years. And so we, we try to capture them as many times as we can to keep them on there. So our collars only generally last somewhere between a year and three years, depending what kind of collar we put

on them. And so a lot of times we want to keep them on long-term. So we actually understand the whole life cycle what's going on. Um, and so we'll go in and try to keep them on long term so we actually understand the whole life cycle, what's going on. And so we'll go in and try to capture them again. But they're smart. They kind of learn to avoid once I start going into an area. Well, according to Dan Flora, it's a big part of their cleverness. And also their adaptability comes from them being preyed upon by gray wolves and their relationship with gray wolves. The gray wolves had left and then come back to North America. And in the meantime, coyotes had kind of thrived.

And when they came back, there was a period of thousands of years of them being preyed upon by these gray wolves. So they've adapted all these different sort of mechanisms in order to stay alive and to avoid predation. And one of them being that they expand their range. So as we've tried to kill them one of the things that dan was saying is that when they do that roll call thing if someone's missing the female will actually have larger litters and then they'll expand their range so when you shoot

one you think like well keeping the coyote population down no you probably raised it up by like 10 15 and you expanded their range by a few miles. Yeah. I don't know if it's just based off the calling. I've heard that before and there's some dispute about whether that's the full case or not. But definitely because there's lower numbers, there's definitely more food resources available. And so it makes sense that they would then reproduce more because we definitely know if food resources go up, coyotes can increase their numbers. Oh, that's interesting because he was saying that it's a direct result of them being preyed

upon. You think that's probably in dispute? Well, the preyed upon, I mean, how- I mean, shot or killed or removed. I mean, truthfully, it doesn't matter how the animals, how the population decreases. The fact is that it's down, so then prey numbers go up, and so then there's more prey, and so then they reproduce more. Because Dan was implying there's a direct so then there's more prey. And so then they reproduce more. Because Dan was implying there's a direct correlation between there's a physiological

event that happens inside the female that when the population grows smaller, their litters grow larger in response to the population being smaller, not necessarily in response to the increase of food supply. As far as I know, the only things I've read, it's usually they associate it somehow with food supply. So it's probably maybe a combination of those factors? It very well could be. I mean, it's complicated, right? These animals are crazy with what they can do.

It is absolutely fascinating how adaptable they are, though. Is there anything like them? I mean, you start thinking of things like crows. They can be pretty adaptable, too. They can live in a wide variety of areas. But they move through 3D space. They move through the air. That's a different sort of bargain.

Yeah, no, I mean, the coyotes, they definitely, there's not any other species that's been able to move around the country like they have. They're able to live in the most urban environments we can imagine. I mean, places that people generally think of maybe a raccoon being able to live. I know in Chicago, they've gone into areas where they have coyotes living and they did not have raccoons living in those same locations. Or if there were, they were raccoons were very rare.

And yet the coyotes seem to be able to persist, which is amazing for an animal that size. It just shows how intelligent they are to be able to move around us and be able to take advantage of us. Is it because they run faster? They're just... It's probably a combination of things. They learn how to deal with roads.

I mean, anytime you get in these urban environments. Right. Like one thing I always like to say is like the Westlake neighborhood, it's one of the most dangerous neighborhoods for pedestrians. Yet this coyote's running this neighborhood all the time and it didn't have any signs of ever being struck by a car. Do you think the smartest coyote is smarter than the dumbest person? Yeah.

Whoa. That's deep. Nice, yeah. That is deep. Yeah, I mean, they live in places that I don't know if I could live there. Wow. So. Now, what city has a, is there any city in the country that actually has a legitimate

problem with coyotes? Depends who you talk to. I mean, LA, we definitely have our issues. Right. I mean, there's been bites. There's been other situations. Has there been bites? People have been bitten?

Yeah. Yeah, Elysian Park had some bites. There's been bites down in Orange County. Irvine had some bites. Are they biting homeless people? Are they biting people who take naps? What are they doing? It's all over the board.

Usually, it seems to be tied to people who have been feeding it. And so, it's almost coming up in biting people on the hands or people on the leg. Um, I don't think any of them, none of the ones I've heard have been like where they're trying to take the person down. Really? Type thing. They've all been more like where they're coming up and none of them, like none of them have. Yes.

You heard about that woman who was a folk singer in Canada that got killed a couple of years back by coyotes. Yeah. I actually went up there a couple of years after that. They actually got a study going on coyotes up there. They radio collared a bunch and I went up there and helped him capture the first couple of animals to kind of see what's going on. And that's just a crazy scenario up there.

It's way different than what we see down here. The coyotes first are their Eastern coyotes. So they're a little bit bigger. But they're also, they've kind of, there's very few food sources up there. They're dealing with snowshoe hares, which their cycles kind of fluctuate up and down. And so sometimes there could be tons of food and other times there could be almost none.

But they've learned that they can take advantage of moose during the winter. And they're actually killing moose in the snow. Which you'd think of this little 40-ish pound animal taking on this huge moose. But they're seeing it. They do these snow surveys and they're finding these dead moose that were very clearly killed by coyotes. Wow. So a full grown moose. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. A full grown moose is like more than a thousand pounds. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's, it's amazing. I mean, obviously these moose in the winter, the snow gets deep. So they're, they're definitely, they can get stuck in things and that type of scenario. How do they know that it's coyotes that killed them and not wolves?

There's no wolves there. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I did not know that a coyote could kill a fucking moose. Yeah, well, and they had them radio collared, so they were able to see the coyotes at the carcasses and stuff too. Wow.

So when they have the radio collar, how much information are they getting? Do they get like a full, like if you could see a map, would you see like the trail, like everywhere they go? It depends. So the collars have different settings. So they're GPS units. So there's always a tradeoff between battery life and the number of locations you can get. So you could, if you only cared about a two week span, you could have that GPS unit take a location every 30 seconds. And you could map it out. But generally, we're interested in a broader time frame. So a lot of times we're getting, so like the lions, a lot of times it's about eight locations a day.

And that's a pretty good-sized caller. On the coyotes, I usually do somewhere around six. And then I'll do these little bouts where I'll do 20-minute locations a day. And so then I'll get more intensity. And then I can map out,minute locations a day, and so then I'll get more intense data. And then I can map out where they come up to roads or where they do different things, where they're feeding. So, yeah, you can get some pretty detailed data on how they're moving. So what kind of a battery source are you using on these collars that you can get such a long?

Like how long does a, like if you stretch it out the longest, how long can they last? So there's different sizes of collars. And so like the lion collars are, they can be 2D cell batteries in them, which are just lithium cell batteries. And those go about two years with a 2D cell battery. Wow. You can put them on tiny little things. I mean, people have done, not with GPS yet, I don't believe, but they've even done like little bugs where they've put the – so the collars have two different things. They have a GPS and they have a VHF function.

The VHF allows us to actually go out and track the animals. So when you see biologists out there with those antennas, that's what they're doing. Oh, so you literally know where they are. They are, yeah. So that's how like a lot of these observations I've talked about, that's how I see them is because they have that little beacon that goes off in their collar. And so I can track them with that antenna and see where they are and get pretty close to them and see what they're doing. That's incredible. So they literally last two years with two D cell batteries?

Yep. And then when the two years are up, then you don't know where he is. Exactly. Fuck that. Well, what's amazing about the lions is that we can recapture them. We have really good success getting those guys back. And so Jeff's been amazing. I mean, he's been able to get these animals time after time after time.

And that's why, like, P-22 has been captured so many times because we have to replace the collar why I like P22 has been captured so many times we have to replace the collar right so it's usually about every two years We have to replace the collar so yeah, so how are they tracking that cat? I Mean there we've done multiple things We've gotten lucky one time and he was actually down in a hole and me and Jeff were actually there and we darted the thing And it just fell asleep in the hole, which was pretty sweet. So you saw in a hole, like a hole in the ground. It was kind of a drainage channel was kind of eroded away and he was kind of down in this and there's a bunch of brush covering it. And so he felt pretty comfortable, I guess. And he just stayed there.

And so we were hiking into, I don't know if we were looking for a kill or if we were just checking on him. I can't remember what we were doing, but whatever we saw him. And so we're like, well, let's try to dart him. And so I stood there and waited for Jeff to go get the stuff. And Jeff was able to dart him when he came back and the cat just laid there. Like we put a dart in him. He growled at us. He laid back down and fell asleep and we were able to process him. How creepy is it when a cat growls at you? It was actually pretty freaking cool. Like, I i mean it's pretty amazing being that close to such a big animal how far away were you uh probably from me to your wall oh no yeah really yeah oh my god so pretty close oh my god do you have a backup gun or a taser or we carry pe shield? Captain America shield, nice.

I'm out there with my Captain America shield. Come on, I got you. I would think that that would actually be a good move for a cat, right? Like a big old gladiator shield. They'd probably be confused. They'd try to jack you, bang, they'd run into the shield. Where is he? Nice.

Yeah, I don't think I want to carry that through the brush, though. That's a good point. No, we do carry bear spray. to carry that through the brush, though. That's a good point. No, we do carry bear spray. Does that work? I mean, we haven't had to use it, so I couldn't tell you. Oh, Jesus. Use it once and tell me. Because I was thinking, like, I run through the hills. I was thinking, you know, there's an area where I run where it's really desolate.

There's no one out there. And I know there's bobcats there. But I also now know that there's a mountain lion there because a buddy of mine saw a mountain lion there and i know there's bobcats there um but i also now know that there's a mountain line there because a buddy of mine saw a mountain line there and it had a collar and then he heard about a mountain line that got killed on the five freeway and he checked a website is there a website that shows you the track like where where the animal has been um there are that we can see. We don't share that with other people. I wonder how he found out. He knows a lot of people. Maybe he asked

somebody, but found out that it was the mountain lion that he saw in his neighborhood. He lives pretty close to the five. He was explaining that he saw it. We don't have many cats that are up there near the five. He could have probably just looked at that map

that you guys put up there even, and it could have easily been one of those cats. Okay. Because there's just not many up in that area that we have collared. But they do occasionally get hit by cars, right? Yeah, that's actually one of our biggest causes of mortality these days is them getting hit by cars.

Really? We work a lot with Caltrans to try to improve permeability of the roadways for wildlife and protect them from being hit by cars. I know there was a ramp that was being proposed that they were going to put a ramp over the highway, right? Oh, here it is. Yeah. Caltrans proposes wildlife overpass on the 101 freeway. Now, where were they going to try to put that? So this is supposed to be near Liberty Canyon. This is where's Liberty Canyon. Um, it's just a little bit west of here near uh agora oh okay um yeah so this this overpass will be big for mountain lions but also lots of other wildlife on our mountains

so we have seen that the 101 freeway is a major barrier to gene flow and so things like even coyotes even though they're able to live in this super urban environment that 101 and the development along 101 is serving as a barrier that they're not getting across regularly enough to keep the population genetics up. So genetic diversity south of the freeway is a lot lower than genetic diversity north of the freeway. Right, right. And that's for bobcats, mountain lions, and coyotes. I have a friend who works at the Tohon Ranch. Do you know where that is?

Yeah, I have a buddy that works there, too. Oh, do you? Yeah, I have a buddy that works there, too. Oh, do you? Yeah, I was actually just there this weekend. And they were explaining to me that they had a camera trap on one of the water holes, and they saw 16 different mountain lions. Wow. They've got 16 photos of 16 different cats that are on there. I mean, huge ranch, 270,000 acres. It's an enormous ranch.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how they could identify each individual lion that's my first question yeah how did they know individual um but yeah i mean mountain lions they can be quite a few of them i mean a lot of times the mountain lions will come back obviously especially with the thing like a water source there right um so i would i would question whether it was different or not but yeah i mean it's a place like the hone i mean it's amazing right there's lots of different prey animals there. Oh, yeah. From elk to deer to lots of other. That's a special place.

It is. It's really crazy. Yeah. Just, I mean, everything, the wildlife, the flowers, the pigs, like, it's just a crazy, crazy place. It is. There's so many pigs there. It's a nutty farm. I mean, a nutty ranch.

Well, it's so large. It's just, it's amazing. Like, my buddy's a cowboy up there, and so he took me for a tour to kind of see the ranch, a nutty ranch. It's so large. It's just, it's amazing. Like my buddy's a cowboy up there. And so he took me for a tour to kind of see the ranch and it's, it's amazing. Yeah. Well, it's the biggest ranch in California. Yeah. 270,000 acres is almost hard to like wrap your head around how big it is, but when you're there and you go, how far does it go? And then you go, see that third mountain range? We go to that. You're like, what? Yeah. Over to the desert. Over. Yeah. It's crazy.

It's everywhere. And then the water for Los Angeles goes through it. Ever see that gigantic water pipe that goes through the ranch? Yeah. And you go, what? That's where all the water goes? It goes through this thing? It's just crazy. Yeah.

It's amazing. Yeah. Well, it's weird that we have a place that's an hour and a half outside of LA that has elk. I know. And that's like hour and a half outside of L.A. that has elk. I know. We're so lucky. It's such a unique spot in a lot of ways. Yeah, it's amazing.

I mean, there used to be tons of elk here, right? All the tule elk. They used to cover the whole area. The stories of tule elk out in the San Joaquin Valley there. It's just amazing numbers of elk. Yeah. Well, also grizzly bears. And grizzlies, yeah.

There's a town up near Tohon that's named after the last guy that got killed by a grizzly bear in California before they wiped him out. God, I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember the town's name. Damn it. But it's been confirmed that he was killed. They actually exhumed his body and found it broken up

into pieces and one of his legs was chewed off. Wow. He really did get jacked by a grizzly bear. Apparently we had enormous coastal bears

and that's why they wiped them out. It was just like when the settlers came here they were like, okay, fuck this. We've got to kill these goddamn things because they were like K okay, fuck this. We got to kill these goddamn things.

Yeah. Because they were like, you know, Kodiak sized. Yeah. Enormous bears. But obviously they did a good job since we don't have a single grizzly left in California. Yeah. That's one animal, Lebec. Thank you, Jamie.

Lebec. Lebec. That's one animal where people are not clamoring for a reintroduction. Yeah. You know, like. Well, truthfully, there's no area left for them. Yeah. Like the area that grizzlies occurred, we've developed turned in agriculture, urbanization. So bringing grizzlies back. I mean, you hear it every once in a while. Somebody say that. But I'm like, it's they're too big and they need too much food. Yeah. And too much of that food is living animals. And that would be a problem. Yeah. Well, even if that's, I mean, even all that, if there's no habitat, where do you put them?

Like they're not going to live up in the high mountains. That's what we have protected is the Sierras and those type areas. That's not grizzly habitat. Well, we do have quite a bit of black bears, right? We do. But they can live up in the mountains. Yeah. They do much better in that scenario.

Yeah. And it's really fascinating to me how the whole thing is sort of like a balanced system and they all sort of keep each other in check. You know, California is a good example of that because it's one of the few states that has a large, healthy mountain lion population, but they don't allow hunting of mountain lions. So because of that, you have less deer, and people will complain about that, hunters, but also because of that, you have less car accidents with deer. Like if you live in, like I have a buddy who lives in Iowa, you have to drive slow. Because the fucking deer are just jumping out in front of the road every 50, 100 yards.

I mean, it's crazy how many, especially during the rut when they're breeding and they get silly. You see just dead deer every couple miles. You see a dead deer on the side of the road. Yeah, I mean, we're a lot different, obviously, than the Midwest, like you're talking about, too. We've got a lot less vegetation and a lot less rain, so we have a lot less of that good quality vegetation for the deer. So our deer numbers are also going to be in check, partially just because we don't have the highest quality habitat for deer in most of our areas. They're just eating grass and stuff, right? What are they eating?

They eat a lot of browse, a lot of brush. Sage, right? They eat a lot of browse a lot of brush sage right they eat a lot of sage they can definitely eat sage um there's a lot of like deer brush and just lots of variety of type of broad I mean you walk through there there's tons of different varieties that they eat um we actually have a couple deer radio collar right now that we're following and they're they're always browsing on something when I see them usually something taller and how do you capture them? We dart them. So do you trap them and then dart them? No, we free dart them. Okay, so how do you do that?

You basically just try to find where they're at. I mean, it's basically hunting. We're basically hunting with a dart rifle, so it's a lot like archery, basically. Your range has to be really short, right? Yeah, so somebody really good with a dart rifle can probably get up to 70 meters or so. Oh, really?

I'm not that person. I'm about 30 meters with mine. How many deer have you darted? I've only darted two here, but we're hoping we still have four more we need to do. So is it an air rifle? So there's two different types. There's one that's basically powered off a 22 shell. Then there's another one that's powered off CO2.

Hmm. And so do you practice with this thing? Like how do you get good at it? Yeah, you practice. I mean, it's like a rifle. You got a scope and all that. So you can kind of, you get it all sighted in. But the ballistics must be terrible.

Oh, they're bad. And it's even more complicated because you want it to arch really lightly. You want to hit the animal as soft as possible because if you hit them hard, they're going to run. Right. And the drug, it's not like the drug takes them down immediately. We usually have about 10 minutes for the animal to go down. Oh, Jesus, you'll never find them. Exactly.

So it's really about like arching that shot in there really softly, hit them as soft as possible, and then a lot of times they don't go very far. Wow. So like what's the feet per second of the dart? Oh, I don't know. We don't have the chronographer. You don't have a radar thing that you shoot it through?

We don't. Want to borrow mine? Sure. Yeah. I'll lend it to you. I want to know. Yeah. Because I think that's interesting.

Like, what, like, because you must have, like, the drop must be huge. It is. Like, how do you sight in a scope for something, for people to know what we're talking about? Like, if you shoot a rifle, rifle rifle a bullet goes very fast so you could shoot out to 100 yards and it essentially is going to go exactly where you're aiming at but then when you go to 200 yards it gets a little tricky and you have to adjust your scope because it'll drop a little bit you get to 300 yards it'll drop a little bit more 400 yards and out is where it gets really weird. Like you're dealing with wind drift. You're dealing with drop.

So I would imagine that a dart is not going very fast. So it probably drops quite a bit. It does. And it's heavy. They're fairly long. How many grains is it? Three and a half inches. I don't know how many grains they are.

They don't come in those measurements. And I've never weighed one, so I'm not positive. But obviously because they are going so slow, they're dealing with wind drift at five meters. They can start doing it. So if you're in heavy winds. Not aerodynamic either, right? It's not horrible.

I mean, it basically looks like a syringe with a needle on the end, and we have some feathers on the end. Oh, so you have, like, fletchings to make sure you. I wouldn't call it fletchings. That's what it looks like? Yeah, exactly like that. 20 ml air for 10.0 ml dart. What does that mean?

So that's... You can put 20 milliliters of air for the 10... The dart that holds 10 milliliters of drug. Oh, I see. So that's not the exact drug we use. We use one called... I believe it's New Dart. It's a little different. It actually has a... So ours... At the exact drug we use. We use one called, I believe it's Nudart. It's a little different.

It actually has a, so ours, at least the ones we use for the deer, we use these type as well. But for the deer, we use ones that have a little charge in them. So when it hits, it discharges basically by like a shell wood. That's a little gunpowder in there that triggers off. Jesus Christ. Wow. So you have to sneak up on these deer and then do this. Yeah. So what I was going to tell you

kind of how we adjust for that distance because that's the last question you were asking. So the nice thing about our rifles versus a regular rifle, so you get one shell, and that's what you go with. With us, because it's air-powered, we can adjust our pressure. So to account for that distance, we know at 20 yards, we do two bars of pressure. At 30 yards, we do three bars of pressure at 30 yards we do three bars of pressure that type of thing wow so we have a little more adjustability than typical rifle would

so are you walking around with a range finder yeah and then you're you're changing it on your rifle as you go along yeah as we make our decision we because we don't like we don't walk with it charged we i mean our darts in there ready to go but we don't fire i mean we don't walk with it charged. I mean, our dart's in there ready to go, but we don't have our pressure up until we know what deer we're taking and the distance. And are you just aiming for center mass? No, hip. Hip, huh? Why hip? Because that's where the biggest muscle is.

Oh, I see. Okay. So the drugs enact intramuscularly. Right. So if you accidentally hit the ribs, it's not good. It's not great, no. It still will probably put them to sleep. The needles aren't long enough that it should do much damage.

It's not going to hit a vital, right? I mean, you can't ever say never, but yeah, it shouldn't. But it's not going to kill them. It shouldn't. No. And we practice a lot to make sure we hit where we want to hit. Yeah, how do you practice that? Do you have a rubber deer that you shoot at?

We have archery targets that we shoot at, yeah. Wow. That's interesting. And do you use a regular rifle scope, or do you have a scope specifically designed for darts? No, it's a regular rifle scope. No kidding. Yep. Wow.

So how often are you practicing? Before we do it, I practice quite a few times. I go out, like I don't practice daily like you do with the archery, but I practice pretty regularly right before I was darting these last two. We're kind of taking a break right now because they're fawning, and

so we don't want to dart them while they're big and pregnant and dropping fawns. We want to wait until the fawns get a little bigger. That's interesting, man. Have you ever missed one? I haven't taken that many shots. Did I miss any of my shots?

How many have you darted? Just the two. Just two? Yeah. And this is our first time doing deer stuff. So Fish and Game came out and helped us with these guys, which was great. And you have to dart two more? Is that what you said?

Four more. Four more? Yep. And why six? Is that just like you just want a good study number that so we're looking at roadways and trying to identify crossing points for i mean we're not just doing deer we're doing other species as well but we're trying to identify where we can make improvements things like that wildlife overpass in other areas so that's why we're're doing that. And so we're just trying to get a sample size that we can kind of work with and the callers aren't cheap. So it's about resources and what we have that we can use towards the project. And what are you trying to gather? Like what data? So it's all movement-based data. So these are GPS callers. They transmit us.

It can be anywhere from, I I think the caller 60 points a day down to I think my low is eight points a day and so it'll tell me it'll give me an idea of where the deer are approaching the roadways and how they're moving relative to the roadways so we can help come up with mitigation to improve their ability to get across okay so it's all about their migration and where they're moving around and keeping them away from danger. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't quite call it migration, but close enough.

That's the idea is just to help them be able to get across. Now, are they Columbia blacktail? These are not. These are mule deer in our mountains. Mule deer? Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. And are they like a pure mule deer?

I believe so. Hmm. Yeah. The blacktail start a little bit north of us. I don't remember exactly where the cutoff line is, but. So like right around here, like in the hills and like in Sino and stuff like that, those are mule deer. Those are all mule deer. Wow, that's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, I always thought that too because I've deer hunted for years and I always thought blacktail. But no, once I got here and started working with them, I was like, oh, these are all mule deer. And how do they make the differentiation? How do they understand that? There's some just physical characteristic differences, and I think there's been some genetic work done as well. Because traditionally when you think of mule deer,

you think of a large deer with a big rack. Like mule deer have enormous racks. Like that deer right there, that's a mule deer. Like if you saw one of those around here, you'd be like, holy shit. Like you never see a deer that big around here. No. there's some decent deer in these mountains but yeah it's I mean but you'll not all mule deer that big right of course where there's mule deer that are still quite small and that's just what we're doing with here is the smaller and do you think it's because of the predators like they never really get

a chance to get that big because there's the populations are pretty small or is a genetic issue we think it's a genetic issue. I mean, this population's been kind of isolated for a long time from others. But California generally is not thought of to have monster bucks, even though there's plenty of mule deer in this state. Right. So it's more just a factor of what's here. And so north of us is where the black tail are? Yeah. And where does that range begin?

I wish I could. I'm not sure off the top of my head. There's some sort of interbreeding, correct? I'm sure there is, yeah. And they're viable or are they hybrids? I would assume they're viable, but not positive. Hmm. Yeah, I'm definitely not fully up on all the deer literature.

So what other animals are you guys concerned with, like their safety and populations? So, I mean, we're worried about the whole community. I mean, we do things with frogs, salamanders. We do surveys for snakes. We actually have a red-legged frog reintroduction right now. A reintroduction? Yeah.

People complaining? Not enough red-legged frogs? Well, they used to be here, and we had a— well, we don't really know why they disappeared, but they disappeared 30 years ago or so. And they were left in one little pool in one place. And so we're just trying to help them get reestablished. Dude, don't let Donald Trump find out about this.

He'll cut funding. Red-legged frog. What? We need that money to go to bankers. Yeah. I mean, it just seems, it's, it's fascinating to me that we do have these programs to like help out like a frog. Yeah. I mean, it's all about-

Considerable man hours, right? It takes some, but it's not huge amounts. I mean, it's one person going out and doing these projects, and it's not like that's their only job. They have lots of different things they do. So it's just one small part of their job. So they just bring a bucket of frogs and throw them into the bushes? Good luck, guys. Yeah, it's not quite that simple.

They have to move egg masses, basically, is what they do. Oh, is that what they do? Yeah. Oh, so when they move the egg masses, do they move the mom as well? Or the frogs just develop independently in this new area? Yeah, they develop independently. They even do that in their own area. The mom doesn't care for the frogs or any of that.

Bitches. Lazy bitches. So when they do that, when you drop off these egg masses in this place, so this frog will be born or hatch in this area rather, and they just assume this is where they live. Yep. Oh, that's interesting. So if you took a fully developed frog and put it there, probably wouldn't know what to do with the area because it would be a new area for it.

It'd be like, why am I here? Yeah. This isn't my project either, i'm not 100 on it but from my understanding is that they will try to move back towards their natal range and then they don't end up making it so it's better to do the tadpoles or the eggs and then they'll hopefully stay there that's cool so what is the benefit of having these red-legged frogs around they're just a part of the ecosystem we think it's a good idea to... Exactly. It's just trying to protect the overall ecosystem. We don't really understand. I mean, we like to think we understand all this ecology and all that, but it's complicated, right? We

don't know the interaction between a lot of these species. So a lot of it's just trying to make sure that our full suite of species is there. So our ecosystems are as healthy as possible. So when you reintroduce the red frog, will there then be subsequent studies about the impact of the reintroduction of the red frog, red leg frog? And it's hard to know at this point. I mean, it's all based off funding. Like there, we, there's potential there, but right now we, we don't really know. All right. Let me, uh, propose this to you. What if you had an unlimited budget? What if I made Justin Brown king of the world? And I said, listen, dude, you can do whatever the fuck you want with all this money. And what would you do? Are you making any promises

here? No, I wish I could. I wish I could. Obviously, I don't have that kind of power. Yeah, of course. If I did, though, if I said, listen, man, I'm gonna give you an unlimited budget to take care of this wildlife as you would see fit. What would you like to have done? Well, one of the first things would be that wildlife overpass you see for our, at least if you're talking about doing things for what's good for the local ecology here, that would be probably the highest thing on my priority list because that is something that's not just affecting one species. It's affecting everything that's within our mountain range,

which is fairly large, 150,000 acres, that there's just completely being disconnected from other wildlife. So to me, that's our number one thing. The other thing is, so we have lots of issues with these poisons. I would try to find alternatives to these poisons that are being spread throughout the environment because that's a major issue for our wildlife. Yeah, that is a giant issue. When you see the mange that's on that cat and you think that that all comes somehow or another from rat poison, like what happened to rat traps? Like how about

just use a trap? Yeah, people don't like to see blood. Is, what happened to rat traps? Like, how about just use a trap? Yeah, people don't like to see blood. Is that what it is? That's my best assumption, because people, you try to recommend traps, and they just won't do it. There's such a trickle-down, though, when you're using those toxins. I know.

That's frightening to me, because that gets to people in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, it's my worry as well. It also leaks into the ground. Like, there's all sorts of weird effects that you can get from poisons. Yeah, and we don't even understand the effects.

We put tons of toxicants out there that we have no idea the actual long-term effects or how it's going to change things. I mean, like these rat poisons, there was a long time they said it wouldn't move up the food chain, but we are quite clearly seeing it move up the food chain. To have a mountain lion die of rat poison is crazy. Yeah, do they die of it? Yeah, we've had three mountain lions die of rat poison wow and you believe it's from coyotes that's what we think yeah yeah so one of them they went back to a few kills that it made right before it died and they found that it killed a couple coyotes ah wow wow and it doesn't kill the coyotes uh who knows The coyotes could have been really sick at that point.

And maybe that's how the mountain lion got it anyway. Exactly. So, because with these poisons, a lot of times these animals don't die for four to ten days. Oh, God. And so they're walking circles. I don't know if you've ever seen like rats walking circles out around any of the buildings. Like I've seen it a couple times out walking around. And that's generally what they're dying of.

They're dying of dehydration basically because they're just bleeding out internally. Yeah. Well, that was actually in Dan Flores' book is that they had developed certain types of coyote poisons that were slow acting so that they could trick these coyotes into eating this stuff. And the other coyotes wouldn't know where the coyote got sick from because it took so long for them to die. It wasn't like strychnine. Where you eat it. You watch the other one die. And that's also what rats do. Did you ever see that rat documentary on Netflix?

I heard you mention it. But I still haven't seen it yet. Dude. You got to watch it. It's amazing. It freaked me out. It's nuts. Like when they show the amount of rats that are in New York City.

And they show all the people dealing with them and they show them in the sewer system and everything. It's mind boggling. And then they talk about how the rats will literally send a young dumb rat over to the poison and they watch that rat eat the poison and die. And they're like, fuck this ratty. And they all take off. Like they've got a whole system for dealing with poisons. Yeah. Well, because they did the same thing with rat poisons from my understanding they they kind of come through different morphs of the poison to try to make them last a little longer so because the rats will do the same thing the coyotes do and not to eat it so that didn't surprise me they saw that documentary i'll have to watch that there's no way to mitigate the problem now i mean the the rat population is

so large in new york city they think there as many rats as there are people or more. Yeah, I believe it. I mean, I've been in little intersections down in L.A. at night and just rats. It looks like the ground's moving at times in these crazy locations. Like most of the places you go, you don't see that many rats. But then all of a sudden you'll hit this called a honey hole for rats. Yeah. And they'll just be like, whoa, look at what the hell's going on here.

I was in New York City way back in the day. It was so long ago there was pay phones. hole for rats. Yeah. And they'll just be like, Whoa, look at what the hell's going on here. I was in New York city way back in the day. It was so long ago there was pay phones and, uh, I, uh, had to make a phone call and I was getting gas. So I pulled up to this gas station. I put the pump in, I'm filling up my car and I go over to this pay phone to make a call. And as, I mean, in the time it took me to walk from the pump to the payphone, I'm watching rats jump onto the wheels of my car. Like, they're jumping on the wheel and crawling up and down. They're like, I don't know if they're looking for food or they're looking to get in the engine for warmth or whatever. But apparently people have a real issue with rats getting inside the hood of their car and like nesting. They like climb in there for the heat and they stay warm inside the hood of your car.

Good Lord. Yeah. I mean, they're so adaptable, but they instantaneously did it. I pulled the car up, put the pump in, walked, turned around like, what the fuck? I'm not talking about like one rat. I'm talking five, six, seven rats just hopping up and another one would hop up and one would hop down It was terrifying because I was trying to figure out okay Am I gonna be driving there's gonna be a rat on the floor and then I'm gonna hit the gas instead of the brakes

I'm gonna freak out like a little girl Yeah, it was terrifying. Yeah, that would be creepy. Well, there's they're just so adaptable I mean and it's it's another Essentially, we don't like to think of them as a wild animal, but a rat is a wild animal that lives in this weird symbiotic relationship with people in urban environments. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. That is the one species that's probably more adapted to us than the coyotes are, obviously, because they are able to live in almost everywhere that we live. Yeah, and they're, I mean, they serve a purpose in some sort of a weird way. I mean, if they were removed, I wonder what the impact would be.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure we'd probably have more nesting birds and some of that kind of stuff because we know that rats definitely impact bird species. Yeah. And who knows? There may not be, if there wasn't rats, whether coyotes or some of these other small predators would be around the urban areas because they're obviously another prey source. Yeah. But trying to get rid of rats is a urban areas because they're obviously another prey source. Yeah. But trying to get rid of rats is a whole other ballgame. Good luck.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the one that's probably harder than coyotes to get rid of. You'd have to nuke that city. You'd have to get everybody to agree. And then they'd probably move back in within a couple of years. Yeah. Yeah.

You're not going to do it. No. So this proposed bridge across the 101, is there a roadblock to that? Is it a funding issue? Is there anybody that is against it? As far as we know, there's not anybody really against it. There might be a few people in the nearby community that's worried about more mountain lions coming in or something, but we don't think that's a realistic thing because our population's at holding capacity from as far as we understand. So we don't think that's going to be a major issue. But it's really about funding we're trying to national wildlife federations leading the charge

to try to raise i think the cost it's over 50 million dollars to do this yeah so it's a big price tag um the bridge is going to be quite wide it's going to be natural covered and it's going to have to go over the the agora road and the 101 both and so oh wow it's going to have to go over the Agora Road and the 101 both. And so it's going to be a big bridge. How wide is that? Oh, I wish I could call that off the top of my head. Yeah, sorry. You'd have to look it up. I think it's probably on that thing you had up earlier.

So you're probably dealing with a few hundred yards or something. Yeah. I mean, it's almost as wide as it is long. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's going to be big. It's going to be used for hiking during the day as well so it's not just for wildlife. So people can go across it. Exactly because currently there's no

easy way to go from the the Santa Monica's in the south to the Simi Hills in the north which are all public property so there's no way to get across there so people can hike they have to to go down onto Liberty Canyon Road and cut across there, which is kind of sucky. So how does one raise money for something like this? Do they try to have like a GoFundMe or do they just rely on the state budget? No, it's all they're doing fundraising, trying to get people to kick in. I believe the Annenberg has already offered to donate a million dollars matching. So they've got to raise another million to get that amount.

It's all, for the most part, I believe it's all from either conservation agencies or from private donations. So if you were king in the world, that would be the first thing that you would work on as far as wildlife in California? Definitely for our region, yes. What about other issues? I mean, habitat protection is just obviously incredibly important if we want to keep all of our species. So protecting more land is always a valuable thing to make sure that, or at least to make sure what development we do is done in a proper way. Now, when you say protect more land, would that be like buying up available private land when it comes for sale and then turning it

into public land? To some level, I would consider that. I don't know if that would be my ultimate goal. To me, it's more important to lock it up so it's natural versus public versus private. Oh, so like to stop development? Stop major developments from going in and putting things right in places that are going to be major blockages to wildlife movement. Yeah, Boulder is kind of interesting in that way, where they buy up all the available property and then turn it into open space, so you can't develop on it ever.

They're really smart with that, because I think Boulder is an amazing place in that they've really recognized that they have this incredible, sort of beautiful little community that's surrounded by this inescapable beauty of the mountains, the Rockies.

Well, you don't get much more beautiful place than around Boulder. No. So that makes sense. I mean, if you want to keep your communities the way they are, you kind of have to protect some of the land. Yeah, they're not into anybody developing there. They're like, nah, no, let's not do that. It's really wise of them.

But it's amazing that they've managed to go so long without being co-opted by money you know yeah i mean that's kind of the name of the game i mean obviously we need developments because our populations keep growing so to me it's not always realistic to say we need to protect every piece of land we can protect right what development we do we need to do it smart and make sure that things are protected in the proper places is there any other wildlife issues in and around this area that uh are protected in the proper places. Is there any other wildlife issues in and around this area that are being addressed right now? I mean, those are the two biggest things going on that we're actively trying to deal with. Yeah, I can't think of too many.

I mean, there's always the little nuisance issues that everybody's trying to deal with where a coyote is in somebody's yard or going after dogs or whatever that we try to deal with but those are the two major ones would be connectivity um habitat loss and then just poisons and are there a lot of raccoons in this area um a lot i would it depends what you're comparing healthy population yeah there's a decent number of raccoons if you're comparing it to. Healthy population? Yeah, there's a decent number of raccoons. If you're comparing it to somewhere like Chicago, no, we don't have anything. Chicago's larger population of raccoons? Yeah, they're just much more adept there. They're just the way the landscape is, a lot more mature trees, mature forest, which is what raccoons like, a lot more water, which are all things that attract raccoons.

We're a lot drier. We're a lot drier. Raccoons can occur within like our mountains, but they do seem to be more focused near roadways and some of that stuff, taking advantage of whatever resources are there. Well, they're big garbage hunters too, right? They definitely take advantage of garbage. They'll also eat lots of fruits and stuff. So some of the scats you see in your yard that you think are coyotes, they could be raccoon as well. They eat a lot of berries and stuff. Yeah, I found some skunk poop.

Really? Yeah, my friend who recognized the mountain lion poop, lot of berries and stuff. Yeah, I found some skunk poop. Yeah, my friend who recognized the mountain lion poop, I sent him some stuff and I said, what is this? He said, that's skunk poop. Skunks are amazing. Before I started tracking these coyotes in downtown LA, I would have never thought skunks could be down in that area. There's actually a decent number of skunks in that Westlake neighborhood. I could not believe how many skunks I was seeing. I smelled skunk in Hollywood last night. I was driving through. It could have been strong weed, but I don't think it was.

I'm pretty sure it was an actual skunk. Skunk, yeah. I was leaving the comedy store, and it just stunk of skunk. And I was like, how weird that these animals have figured out a way to live right here in, like, right near sunset. Yeah, I know. And they're, I mean, little short legs, not super mobile, but yet these striped skunks seem to have figured it out. Yeah, they were going after my're, I mean, little short legs, not super mobile, but yet these striped skunks seem to have figured it out. Yeah. They, they, they were going after my chickens too.

The little creeps. Really? Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're apparently they like to eat chickens. That's interesting. Yeah. One night I actually had a, we were sitting in the house, me and my wife just hanging out and all of a sudden I hear my chickens going crazy out there. And I'm like, we both got up and took off running. We have a lot of feral cats around our house. And I was like, Oh, this thing cats are in running. We have a lot of feral cats around our house. And I was like, oh, those dang cats are in there. We go looking around. Our chickens are flying all over the yard because we hadn't gone out and closed the door yet. Because my chickens can kind of free range my yard.

And we're looking around. We don't see anything. All of a sudden, I open up the coop door, and there's a big old possum just sitting there grinning at me. Oh, those creeps. Oh, yeah. So it didn't get anything. It didn't grab one of my chickens, even though one of my chickens was just there like looking at it and squawking it's like you should be he was trying he was trying but he just didn't they're not very fast they're not yeah they're with possums you

like for me they're another species you don't need a drug to handle i can just you can just grab them up by the tail usually and oh really hold on to them yeah no you could just run up to them and grab them people do there's definitely there was a guy doing his master's work on possums, and he would drive around town. And when he saw one, he'd jump out of his car. He'd be out hanging out with his friends. He'd see a possum, jump out, grab it, and cram it in his trunk. Oh, Jesus Christ. He'd throw it in his trunk?

Yeah, that's dedication right there. And what did he do with it once he got it in his trunk? He was collaring them. He's doing kind of like what we do here, trying to identify their movements and what's going on with them. What did they find out? Anything unusual? I don't know. I've never saw his talk.

I wasn't like, I ran into him at a conference one time and we got chatting about what he did. And I was like, that's pretty hilarious. It is really weird how many animals we live around. I mean, it's really weird. There's so many different and such a wide variety, especially when it comes to birds. You know, one thing that I see a lot of is, well, there's a lot of hawks in my neighborhood and we did this thing in our backyard where we had a wrought iron fence and we changed part of it and put a glass fence and these hawks hadn't

figured it out and they would swoop down and slam into the fence headfirst we KO'd quite a few of these poor hawks yeah I can imagine yeah but it's just amazing how many you find out there and how many predators and there's the occasional golden eagle in this area too right we get reports of them coming through every once in a while yeah it's they're not super rare by any mean or super common by any means but they come through now and when you how would one know whether or not you're looking at a golden eagle just because it's really big? It's really big. There's some other little characteristics that I'm not as good with, but they're significantly larger than like the red tills, which would be the one you'd be most likely to confuse it with. Yeah, it's just the wide variety of different raptors and these.

Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, red-shouldered hawks every once in a while. We'll be trapping for bobcats it's amazing i mean red-shouldered hawks every once in a while we'll be traveling for bobcats and we'll catch a red-shouldered hawk on our traps it's like oh this is so cool we've even caught a great horned owl once and so it's pretty neat seeing some of these animals up close yeah i'm worried that the owls in my neighborhood have been poisoned because i used to have quite a few of them and you used to hear them all the time you You used to hear them hooting all the time. And one time I went out on my back porch and there was one sitting on the fence.

And it was huge. I mean, I don't know how big it really was because I'm sure I was kind of freaked out by it. But I was shocked. It was at least two feet tall. And it was just sitting on this back fence. I mean, at least that tall. I mean, no exaggeration. But it looked like it was like four feet tall.

It looked, I couldn't believe how big it looked. Great horned owls are huge. Huge. Yeah. I mean, they can carry away foxes. There's a study in Bakersfield that they've documented owls coming down, grabbing the kit foxes and carrying them up to their nest sites. I had a video on Instagram.

It's still up there that I got online of this owl swooping down and jacking a hawk in its next. Have you ever seen that? I haven't, but I've heard about it. One of my coworkers actually is a falconer. And when he released, or what did he do? One of his hawks got away from him, and he said the tree was just being swarmed by greathorns. He stayed there all night trying to help his hawk stay alive no kidding yeah isn't it crazy that owls eat hawks yeah i didn't know that until he was telling me that like that's crazy i mean great horns are huge

though check out this video because it's really nuts i was gonna show you a picture i saw the other day did you know how long owl's legs were oh yeah look at those legs. Never seen that before. That's crazy. Hard to find something even close to it. Wow. They're amazing. I worked at Cal State Bakersfield in there. They had a raptor rehab thing, and I got to handle great horned owls. When those guys flopped their wings, it's like, whoa.

It was pretty crazy, comparable to the golden eagle. The golden eagle is definitely more powerful, but the great horned owls were pretty amazing. Well, our perception of them is so interesting because they're a serious predator. But most people don't think of an owl as a predator. They think of them as some wise forest creature that gives advice on fire. Yeah. Well, they're obviously not a threat to you or me. Right.

Obviously. Your cat, they could potentially grab your cat right Yeah, and who knows as people get smaller and smaller dogs watch this because you see the eyes in the distance see the eyes Yeah, check this out. I love this video Bing wow The other hawk doesn't even know what happened. He's like what what's up? What's going on? What's happening, man? Is that a juvenile? I do not know.

I don't know. They look a little fuzzy. Yeah, they do a little bit, right? Especially the one in the back. The one that gets jacked. Wow. But the way it gets jacked, it's like, boy, that thing's dead before it leaves the nest. Those claws and talons are so gigantic.

They are. They're amazing. That's kind of why we want them around, right? To help control rabbits and rats and everything else. And also because they're cool. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a big thing about coyotes, too. And I wish some of these short-sighted folks that don't want them around because they're worried that they're going to get their dog and all this different stuff.

Like, man, we're really lucky that we can see these things. I mean, nature is cool. It's cool to see. Well, it's amazing now. I mean, being in downtown LA, a lot of these people that live down there, they don't ever get to see wildlife. Right. Now, all of a sudden, there's this medium-sized carnivore running around their neighborhoods

that they get to see. And some people, I mean, it's funny. I talk to one person that's, like, scared to death of this thing. And the next person's like, it's the coolest thing they've ever seen in their life. Right. And it's always that balancing act. I mean, to me, I've always been pretty fascinated with them. Yeah.

I identify more with the people who think it's cool. It's just it's we're really like we were talking about. We're really lucky. We live in a very unique area in that we have this big city, huge city. And then just outside of it, we have all this wildlife, like real legit wildlife. You can get from downtown LA to 100% wilderness in an hour. Oh yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah. Or less. I mean, yeah, you can get into like Santa Monica's pretty quickly from most spots in LA and it's, you get in there and it's pretty amazing. Well, listen, man, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing all your information and and and educating us on this stuff it's super cool and thanks for everything you do and uh it's just it's really interesting that you get to share all this stuff that you're learning about these things yeah I really appreciate it man thanks for having me on thank you all right folks we'll be back tomorrow with uh my pal

Al Madrigal we'll'll see you then. Bye-bye. That was great. Cool.