The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 326: Cuddle the Scimitar

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Lee Burton, Steve Fulton, Warren Bluntzer, Ryan Callaghan, Clay Newcomb, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: The Sahara in Texas at the Bamberger Ranch; rewilding; the time when Steve cuddled a scimitar calf; protective mommas; bison from the Bronx; how you use the horns; the high fecundity of scimitar horned oryx; artificial insemination of cheetahs; fake wooly mammoths; when the natural range of a species is in a failed state; less hump, more rump; the market for scimitar horned oryx supporting the conservation and perpetuation of the species; individual animal experiences vs. population level experiences; the lug nut litmus test; the goal of establishing stable heards back in the Sahara; when does Texas become Africa?; animal diseases; liability; dinosaur footprints and fossils; and more.   Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Okay we're gonna step through a gate marked Sahara Desert. So we're gonna enter the Sahara Desert in Texas and it's 640 acres? Well that pasture is about a square mile. No that pasture is part of the 640 acres. I see. It's probably about 150 acres. Got it. And how many scimitar horned orcs are in there? In that group there are 22 adult females and I want to say there's 11 newborn calves.

And there's nothing special about that rooster. One rooster. No, the rooster. That's a regular old rooster. It's a dynamic that's playing out over there I'm interested in too. Rooster and a dog. And then slightly to the right is a bunch of orcs. Rooster and the dog are best friends.

Okay, so let me hear what your role is here and what you guys do. Okay, I'll start off. My name is Stephen Fulton. I'm the manager of the Bamberger Ranch. I've worked here for about 18 and a half years. I've worked with the Scimitar Horned Oryx for about 10 years now. They've been under my purview. So other than that when it comes to ranch management everything's up for grabs.

Every job is mine if I'm available. I'm Lee Burton. I'm the acting director and programs manager for Conservation Centers for Spe for species survival and based in Austin, Texas. And Bamberger Ranch is one of our first members and has a great story. And the Scimitar Horned Oryx and the founding of the Source Population Alliance, which is a consortium model that helped bring these animals back and ultimately led to their reintroduction in the wild in Chet. So when you say back, it's not back to Texas? No. That gets into the whole topic of these animals are part of a meta population

that are spread out in ex-situ environments. So we have in that particular program, the Source Population Alliance, there's ten different species, all ungulates, two cattle species. And the idea was to pick species that were endangered or even extinct in the wild, put them in ex situ settings over here, repopulate them, do genomics testing on them to ensure you don't get inbreeding, et cetera, so that they're sustainable, build up their numbers within the hope that one day you can do things like have happened in Chad, reintroduce them. And we've had three of our species have now been either put back or supplemented in the wild. Some of the other ones, it's not ripe yet.

And so the idea is the settings here on a ranch like Bamberger are ideal conditions as close as you can get to matching what they have back at home in sub-Sahara the weather in Texas the terrain etc and additionally the the other big benefit of it is these animals were mostly and Steve will tell you the whole story of how it started but we're mostly in zoos and a lot of them weren't faring well not because the zoos are doing wrong but just because of space constraints just not having the the normal social dynamic that you have when you know breeding etc and so putting them back out here has been an incredible benefit to the species and has helped these populations grow where we can do

things like that today and you know look at the future of doing reintroductions uh the model's interesting and you know i'm sure you heard you know the story when they started trying to repopulate american bison on the great plains one of the places they found them was in the bronx you know and sent them sort of like this irony of like loading them up in the Bronx and bringing them back out west, you know. Yeah. This is like on a much, much larger scale, right? It is. There's some other famous stories.

There's a, which is not one of our species, but the Mexican wolf, and I'm not a geneticist, but I think you need three lines at least to be able to not have inbreeding. And so when they were doing that program back in the Southwest, they had two lines and then there was a Canadian guy who had just on vacation, was driving through Tucson, saw an ad in the paper to pick up a wolf pup. No. Yes. Put it up, put it in the saddlebag, got about an hour north or something, thought better of it i don't know if he's pissing all over his bike or whatever the you know hell it was doing anyway and so he stopped turned it over to like some sort of animal shelter it turned out to be the third line so really yeah yeah so uh dave parsons uh who led that reintroduction effort on fishing

wildlife told me that story and so yeah that's why they didn't have to bring in the northern subspecies in Yellowstone. So, yeah, there's a lot of strange stories like that. And Warren? So I'm Warren Bluntzer. I own and operate Warren Bluntzer Wildlife Consulting Services and work all over the U.S. and in several foreign countries. And part of my business is wildlife capture and we specialized in that but basically we work with anything to do with land water and wildlife but

I'm very very deeply involved with exotics and humane treatment the the stocking of ranches rebuilding of these animals and and so we have a we have a company that does extensive wildlife captures. So I've been privileged enough to be on a lot of these ranches like the Bamberger Ranch and get to see firsthand what's really done and help bring some of those animals back and help advise on their welfare and their general well-being. And Warren was also a retired game warden, Parks and Wildlife. Oh, really? Okay. So I was a conservation officer, as you all know them,

and a state game warden for Texas for 25 years. I sit on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Whitetail Advisory Board, and I sit on several disease boards that help formulate, and I testify quite a bit to wildlife disease issues and try to educate. That's the biggest issue that I see in this wildlife world now is the separation between what the general public understands about wildlife management and what it really means and how many benefits a person that took a ranch like this and brought it back to the state it's in because they're

shrinking fast. It's getting more and more of a challenge for generations to hold on to these ranches. And these are really special places. Okay, so we're going to jump in this pickup, go through the gate marked Sahara Desert, and then we're going to go find a female that just dropped a calf within the last 48 hours and try to convince her to let us handle the calf and put an ear tag into it so they can keep track of it oh there's serious horns so you can see you can see a few of those oh yeah those are coming up on about two weeks old. You can see the color of them. Now they're not white like the females. They're more of a tan, a beige color, which with this dry grass they blend in very well.

I struggle to tell the males from the females on these things, man. It has to do with the hook of the horn. This is an all-female herd. Oh, so that makes these tougher. Hard to find a male. The males are in different factions. Does Poncho do the feeding out of this track? Absolutely. Oh, man. Look at that horn.

Wow. So what's the orcs? I've done that. I drew a tag to hunt the off-range New Mexico orcs. That's Gemsbok. That's Gemsbok. Gemsbok, yeah. That's southern Africa.

But it's Gemsbok orcs. Yeah. There's four kinds. Yeah. And who are the other two? Arabians. Yeah, Arabians. Scimitars.

Gemsbok. And what's the other? Sables. Sables, yeah. How stable are the other three? I mean, the other three besides these guys. And they're foreign countries you know. Sable's in pretty good shape. It's the least threatened. I think all the other ones are of greater concern. So the Gems box is hurting on Native Ranch?

Some. You don't see them as much as these guys but yeah they are. I know what I'm saying like where they come from are they stable? It depends on what part of the country you're looking at. Some of them as much as these guys but yeah they are i'm not saying like where they come from are they stable it depends on what part of the country you're looking at some of them the poaching's horrible on them and uh you know those people are starving to death so obviously they're going to eat some of them but where they're really protected a lot a lot of the game ranches now in in africa and their concessions are game ranches so they can protect them now and they've got some good herds over there. The Gemsbach is in much better shape than the Scimitar. Yeah.

If there were some males in here, would you see a lot more broken horns on everybody? That seems like some pretty exquisite horn length on those. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, this is my oldest herd of females. So these animals are 17, 18, 19 years old. Oh, okay. So a lot of them are, and then with, coupled with that freeze two February's ago, we've

lost quite a few horns on these older females. But in most, in most cases the females don't fight much, so they don't really have much use to battle and loot and break off horns. But when the males do, though. When the males got a broken horn, is it more from fighting or freezing? For us, fighting. Okay, so they do do that. Oh, yeah.

I don't know if that was just a misconception. But the rule to that exception is that we've never been 10 below zero in some of this country so we had some of these these true horns two three months later just fall off of them got it it was damn our ear damage the ears froze off of them yeah and so uh we had a we had a right there you see this female separate yep that's from freezing no no she's separate because this is the one we're coming to look at oh you know what i only saying she's only got one horn. Oh yeah, the one horn, yes. That froze off.

Do you guys go with bull calf or male calf? Male calf. So there's the calf right there. He said she's super protective, so she's basically standing over it. So this will be interesting. How long was that calf born? I think yesterday afternoon or evening. So, alright. Now we're not sure if it's a male or female calf again because she's been super protective.

So, I'm going to have to get out of the truck. I'd prefer to be on the opposite side. They just run away right? I would yeah I would no I would I would uh be careful. He's got a good story about that. Corinne I'd be careful keep keep the truck between you and it. Yeah yeah. They are. Oh look at that.

They are very protective. Okay so. Yeah. they are very protective there you go so yeah they growling at you yeah they are very vocal when they get agitated so do you want some distraction though uh yeah

this one y'all will have to let me and poncho take alright wow yeah good volunteer This one y'all will have to let me and Poncho take. Alright. Wow, yeah. I'm a good volunteer. I would hate for y'all to get injured. I have dove into the front of a truck before with one of these narrowly missing me. So how do they get the hook in you when their horns are oriented? They'll put their forehead all the way down to the ground.

Oh, so that's what they do, they come in. They also use that horn like a club. Oh, they do? Yeah. So they'll hit you with it, then they'll hook you with it. Those horns are made out of filament. Oh, yeah. That's how they fill lines.

If they don't get a good hit on the line, just the horn itself coming out of the wound. It's hard to concentrate. We'll lose a filament inside the flesh. Hold on, back up, because I'm distracted by that thing. If you get stuck with one of these, they're serious business to get taken care of, or you can lose your arm or your leg. Oh, yeah? Yeah. But what were you saying about with lions?

So when they get a hit on the lion or whatever the predator is after them, if don't kill them a lot of times just the horn itself the see the filaments hanging off that horn right there it'll stay inside that wound yeah it'll get infected now die yeah you're asking about like like splintered like split just like a cactus in south texas got it that cast only about two days old yeah I'm pretty sure she's gonna stomp her own calf. See her, see her. Every year this one is very protective. How many calves has she produced? Every year for at least the last 10 years. She might have missed a year in there somewhere.

Are you guys doing natural breeding or AI? No, it's all natural. Natural except for it's arranged marriages. Sure. I've got a herd bull that I want to pass the genes along. He'll get a herd of females and then other herd of females has a different genetic background. So it'll get a different bull Maybe you go this way and this way and make it reverse and make it closer and maybe it's better Ok

Christy if you want us to move off it's easier just with the No no it's not going to be easy anyway or form Hop in there I just formulated a plan Drive over it Drive over it and there I just formulated the plan drive over it drive over it and it's just under the truck there it is it's a little boy I think yeah feeling I'm good feels like is it yeah that's what it feels like future bull all right so this is just a tag take my daughter to get her earrings this is

basically the same thing this is the only male i'm going to keep this year just because as i said earlier the geneticist that's doing the work on these animals thought this female was of particular interest genetically so so typically a lot of times we'll take the tag and we'll pull the tag out like this to get air behind it and it'll prevent it from getting sometimes infected. But they're not bad about getting infected at all. Yeah.

Good, healthy, strong, young bull kid. You wanna pass it around? So you'll... Anybody else wanna hold the kid? Oh, I'd love to. So will you guys, will you guys like ban? My kids are all grown now so I'll hand it to you Then that way he can't get away from you

He lost my knack No, all the kids, whether it's bull kids or Aw, little fella I sell them as is Okay, got it And once, of course once they're older So I feel right now like we're snuggling and he's loving this is his heart rate like way up no his heart rates up believe me oh it is

have the scary the longer the more stressful is that right all right so we can uh anybody else want to take a turn corinne you know you want to hold one of these things go ahead go ahead sure hold on this there's really only two times a year that we have this kind of contact with them and that's this time of year and it's usually only about six weeks, a six week period where they're birthing. Yeah. Because I put the both males in with each one of the herds at the same time of year. So. Well, how do you know the, how do you get all the females to cycle at the same time? They tend to cycle together. really yeah they fall into unison once you put them in once you if you if you don't have them reproducing constantly they tend to cycle together

so in that six-week period they'll all cycle and they'll all get pregnant that's been my experience now in a wild population where you got the bulls with them constantly yeah I'm sure the cycle their cycles are offset a lot of their past ranges were their breeding cycles to evolution were synchronized with vegetation growth and that that was their biological signal that what they were going to do they're going to do and so it's kind of the evolution has taken it different. This is a different country, but they're still, like you said, they're still evolutionary. They're still locked in on it.

And it's amazing. That's why you see all those animals giving birth on that grass. It's a hell of a feat. I mean, from four years ago, there being none in their native range to now there's 150 there. And they're having calves. And those calves are considered, know of native stock they're no longer considered endangered in the wild like this this baby calf let's just say that he individually is tested or there's a sense of what his genetics is is it possible that he would be a chosen one to i hope so I'd love for that yeah and these animals uh I tagged him for that

purpose um because I again that that site that dam was was told to me that of particular interest genetically so my plan is to keep all of her offsprings for as long as she reproduces I wish I'd known that you know four or five years ago, because I'd have had a lot more of her offspring represented on the ranch. The other aspect of having animals out in a facility like this, in multiple facilities, and this idea of this metapopulation, is that we've had to rethink the number of individuals that you have to have to keep your genetic variability. And the goal is, in this program, over the next 100 years, to maintain at least 90%. And in the zoo world, if you keep them only in zoos, just because they don't have the space to do that. I mean, there's something like a total of 158 of the AZA zoos.

They had roughly about 11,000 acres. And just within our program, it's closer to 100,000 acres. And so the number of animals you can get, you know, they used to think maybe you need a few hundred, a couple hundred. You know, now they know you need well over 1,000, 1,500, even 2,000 maybe or more. So that is another aspect of it that, you know, having them in places like this beyond just individual genes you don't want to lose variability at all if you can yeah and a lot of times zoos run into breeding problems just some species just don't want breeding the zoo you know they will but they don't like it and so they they miss times and times are years and years are decades and so you can get behind

quick so when you have a free rangerange situation and individuals like he's keeping track of and switching out to keep that variability in there they there's where the true the true herds do well. And they're much more likely to do better when they go back into the wild being in a wild or semi wild setting like this you know and and having those traits yeah there's going to be some fighting sometimes whatever but obviously that serves them well you know when they go back in versus a more docile animal that's you know several generations removed in a zoo environment and whatever the epigenetics is however all that

works or you know just um just behavior, not being passed on. So these animals are likely to do well, and they have so far. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated.

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Alright, now that we've visited the young... Did you guys go by calf? Is it bull cow calf? What is it in Oryx?

Yeah, bull cow calf. Really? Is that universally accepted, bull cow calf? I believe so. Now that we've visited the cow calf unit of the scimitar-horned orcs, walk me through how that animal fits into the broader picture of what happens with the conservation centers for species survival, like where it fits into the hierarchy of activities? Sure. So the scimitar-horned oryx is one of the 10 species

in what's known as the Source Population Alliance. And that's one of the programs under Conservation Centers for Species Survival, or C2S2 for short. And we have a number of different programs. That one is focused, so other species, including cheetah, red wolf, southern black rhino. The Source Population Alliance focuses just on ungulate species. And it was originally four species, which were the ones that we kind of discussed earlier and were the most critically endangered, or in the case of the scimitar-horned oryx, was extinct in the wild.

It also included the attics and doma gazelle. And then the fourth species was the sable antelope, which is not, that's actually doing fairly well. They were the original four, and the concept was created back in 2005. There was a renowned scientist named David Wilt out of Smithsonian. He was a reproductive physiologist and did some great work, including artificial insemination, et cetera. He noticed among others that these animals, these ungulate species were just not doing as well in a zoo environment as they hoped. So they looked at that. They were concerned because of the space constraints, not having normal social dynamics, this idea of you needed to have,

if you wanted to keep them alive in these ex situ settings, having a metapopulation. Explain ex situ and in situ. I know that from archaeology, but I've never heard it with animals. Yeah. It's one of these sort of terms that sounds fancy. It's pretty simple. So in situ is just their native range, their native habitat where they live. So again, with these guys, the three we just mentioned, the Scimitar Attics and Dama Gazelle, that's sub-Sahara Africa. And so that would be in situ. Ex situ is anywhere removed out of that.

It's not their home range, okay? And so the idea was we wanted to have, you know, the zoo world was set up for way back when for a lot of reasons. But the conservation aspect several decades ago was, there was, I guess you'd say re-energized, refocused. And so these species survival plans were created to try to maintain these populations in an ex situ environment for a lot of reasons. And one of the reasons was to have an assurance population. If something happened to the animals in their in situ, and the scimitar is a great example of that, if they go extinct, you don't want to lose the species altogether

if they get extirpated in that case. So these species survival plans were set up and these animals were bred for several decades in the zoo world. And they did a great job. Again, they had the stud books. They knew the lineages. You know, they knew, hey, I'm going to take this bull and breed it with this female over here. But they were space constrained. And also, again, it removed the natural conditions that

just take place and how these species interact and compete, right? And survival to fittest, all that stuff. So David Wilt noticed this. And so he and some other scientists got together in some of our facilities and said, hey, let's take some of these animals, let's put them in places like, and Bamberger already had scimitar horned oryx, which is a great story in and of itself that predates this, but let's put them in these facilities where they have big ranges that are not truly, they're not in C2, but they closely mimic where they come from. And so if we put them in there, we think they're going to do a lot better. They're going to breed, their numbers are going to build up.

And our motto at C2S2 is grow, optimize, return. So, you know, grow the herd, optimize the genetics, and then hopefully, you know, when possible, return them into their native habitats. Do you guys feel the last part of that, the return part, that strikes me as being immensely important. But you hear people often, like, you hear people hold the belief that, like, well, it can't be, like, let's say we take the scimitar horned oryx, which effectively, if I'm not mistaken, like, it went extinct. Yes. In the wild.

Yeah, in the 1990s was when they think that the last ones in the wild were gone. So it ceased to be a wild animal. Yes. Like, I feel that you couldn't then say, like, well, yeah, but... was when they think that the last ones in the wild were gone. Cease to be a wild animal. Yes. Like, I feel that you couldn't then say like, well, yeah, but we have them in Texas. So that's good enough. I completely agree.

But that seems like a sentiment you hear a lot. Well, I think maybe you hear that among some people that just like to have them as, I hate to say ornaments, or just property. We clearly don't view it that way because we're a conservation organization. You rolled the return into it. Exactly. So when this, who's the guy you're talking about, the geneticist or? David Wild.

He was a reproductive biologist. So his interest was in things that, his interest was in species that were imperiled. Absolutely. On their native, like that was sort of the thing that they had to, that had to be there for him to want to do. Absolutely. And he was from Smithsonian, and they've done a lot of great work.

They do our genomics testing right now. And, you know, they did the first AI on a cheetah a couple of years ago. So you guys have, we should go and look at the cheetahs, Corinne. Where are the cheetahs? Well, they're running around out here somewhere steve can find um uh they're in a variety of facilities really uh yeah yeah there's and they're spread all over so we're we're mostly north america and with a heavy emphasis in texas again because you know climate

what have you ranch but cheetahs are here in Texas. Yeah, absolutely. And breeding them. And that was another program that was a success. That was about 10 years ago. Again, kind of the same story. But an infinitely smaller gene pool, correct? That's correct. Because there were two founder events with the cheetah. One was about 100,000 years ago.

They don't know for sure what happened, but population got very small. And then about 12,000 years ago, it happened't know for sure what happened, but, you know, population got very small. And then about 12,000 years ago, it happened again, which is why you can take... You mean in Africa? In Africa. Okay. Which is why you can take, you know,

skin from one cheetah and graft it on to another one that's, you know, two countries over, and it'll take it. They're that closely related. What? Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. They went through a major bottleneck.

Yes, twice. And, it's crazy. They went through a major bottleneck. Yes, twice. And so that's why. And those timelines are just insane to think about. Yeah. I mean, in geologic terms, that's recent. Blink of an eye, right? Right, exactly. And I.

Is there an estimate how tight the bottleneck was? In terms of number of individuals, I don't know off the top of my head. I've heard some. I don't know if they know exactly. I mean, even humans went through that. Yeah, yeah. You know, 70,000 humans or something. Like mitochondrial Eve and all that.

Right, exactly. Exactly. So cheetahs are already in a bad state. And then, of course, what's happened in the wild. And so this idea of breeding them and the North American population, I want to say it was struggling, but not doing as well as they needed it to do. So we came up with this idea, we collectively, the scientists in our facilities about, hey, let's set up these breeding centers, share best practices, you know, do all these things. And cheetahs successfully bred, their numbers shot way up in just five years, population,

I think nearly doubled from the North American population. So that was a success. And so we saw this model replicating over and over and over again. Now, every species is different, right? Sorry, could you explain what constitutes the North American cheetah population? Well, that gets complicated, but historically they were in the AZA zoos. What does that mean? Association of Zoos and Aquariums. That's the big organization. It used to be almost all zoos that were accredited were part of that. There's another organization, which is ZAA, which is kind of a splinter group. But in any case, there's cheetahs who are in that. We have stud books on them, and I think it's several hundred. I think it's over 500 now between those two groups.

But then you have all of the illegal wildlife trade, and depending on what the laws are for each individual species. So there's more cats, cats obviously out there than that. We're actually on that. We're trying to assist with an effort to what's called integrate these stud books between the various organizations and international in the hopes of getting a better model to manage these animals, right? And make breeding recommendations.

We've done some genomics testing already and to do more of it because for, for them, it's especially important. You know, like Steve was saying he's got this special scimitar, right? Well, if you find one or two cheetahs, you know, you may not be able to find those genes almost anywhere else and you don't want to lose those. Yeah. That's a question. That's something I need to understand before I can really go much farther here

is, uh, are you guys familiar with the, the Seek a Deer in Maryland? Okay. So they got now in the Delmarva Peninsula. So the East shore of Chesapeake Bay, I mean, they got what, 10,000 of them now or something? They have an absolutely unknown amount of deer. Cause there's no way to, there's no way to measure them but what they're able yeah they got a pile of them and they're able to go to you could i've had a guy take me out in a boat the island's barely there anymore but he's able to be like

you know bob johnson had six on that island and that's it he got them and he got them from some guy in England. And the guy in England got them from some guy there. And those six swam to the beach. Another 10,000 of them. There's no like, and then some other guy let some go. Right. It's just like, you know where they came from. But 10,000.

But how many, how many people, how many people cut loose a cheater cut loose? I mean, how many people go to Africa and bring home a scimitar horned oryx? The Ohio Zoo, right? Well. Or the private collection, rather, that all of a sudden animals were wandering around. Well, close to 20 years ago, the importation of these animals was basically cut off. I think primarily because of disease considerations. How many years ago?

I think it was close to 20 now. That's when they... Yeah. So it's actually a problem in some... Like for instance, there's about a little bit less than 40 Southern black rhinos in North America. We manage that population in conjunction with the International Rhino Foundation. Okay.

And we need some more bloodlines, but importing them is almost impossible now because of political situation. But on the ungulate side, it's just as difficult because you can't get them in. So you kind of have what you have now. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get at is, do you now know? Let me give you another example.

In the late 1800s, when people were thinking themselves holy shit like the america bison is going to go extinct they would write letters to each other and be like he has four he has three right and you kind of knew like well he got his that way he got his that way uh how is it is there is there like in texas an unknown number of times when someone managed to ship a scimitar horned oryx to texas or can you be like oh no there was that event that event and that event that led them to be dispersed around the state. Well, population dynamics change some of that in itself, unbeknown to us. It's the population dynamics of these areas were changing. You had perilous storms hit. You had equipment failures where they escaped, like you're talking about on the island.

So as time moved forward with the escapes and the evolution of wildlife diseases, a lot of these endeavors got more and more complicated. What endeavors? Where you had someone had a pen failure, a pasture failure, or a ranch failure, fence, water gap, whatever, and they escaped. And in that period of time, population was growing, but at the same time, evolution of wildlife diseases were changing right in front of our eyes. Now, I got to re-ask my question. Wait, I think I know. I'm not explaining the question.

I think I know where you may be going with this. I thought of a really clean way to do it. Okay, go ahead. How many times did a human being how many times did human beings collect oryx in the sahara desert and drive and fly them ship sail them whatever and cut them loose in texas once um i don't know the exact do you know the answer to that i do not know okay so it was enough that no one knows well here's the thing it depends on the species right so if there weren't on the esa prior to this importation ban if they weren't on the esa then yeah you can import kind of

whatever back in the day in texas so i don't think they were tracked now the zoos tracked them very closely because they had stud books and if they were in a species survival plan they know exactly and you know they exchange them and you know for breeding reasons all that but the other species that came in prior to you know this band yeah we don't really know but they weren't thousands and thousands of events like this. These were very well-founded connections in a lot of cases and limited numbers of imports. They weren't just across the country importing them like one may have thought. But what happened is if you look at the habitat, the terrain and topography of Texas, if you spin someone around and you can put them in a certain part of Texas, they can't hardly tell if they're in Africa or Texas.

So what happened, the synonymous habitat, the weather belts were very conducive to those animals making it. So boom, boom, boom, the stool went from three legs to five legs to 10 legs to 12 legs. So it wasn't hundreds of events. It was the responsibility or the preclude, however you want to look at it, of a group of ranchers that started this from a limited number of individuals. They sold them. They traded them. And then you throw in the escapes, the other things that perpetuate them. Because we've got, in some of these counties, we've got free range and exotics.

No one really owns them. But do you know, I'll put it to rest. Like I understand that the answer is not as clean as I'd like it to be. But what was the first year that someone delivered someone delivered an or a scimitar horned oryx to the united states of america i don't know that so that's not even i don't know that i do know that in the 1930s uh i think it was the san antonio zoo um i forget his first name mr friedrich he got some surplus animals they they had and put them on a couple of ranches around here okay and then it wasn't too long after that i'm'm sure you're familiar with the King Ranch.

Yep. Right. They got some exotics down here as well. And there were a couple of other famous exotic ranches in Texas. There's one in the Hill Country called the Y.O. Ranch. And so a lot of these animals just came, you know, they were there. So that was around when this was becoming a thing. And then you had maybe some surplus animals from zoos or whatever happened way back and you know they were however put to pasture any certain places the scimitar is a different story

though because there was only a smattering of those animals and i'll let steve tell the whole story but zoos a few zoos around the country had them, and basically almost the entire world's population was gathered up. Yes. So here on the ranch, it was in 1984. Now, don't quote me on that. It might have been 85. But Mr. Barenberger was a board member for the San Antonio Zoo,

and they had the grand meeting to discuss the plight, But Mr. Barenberger was a board member for the San Antonio Zoo. And they had the grand meeting to discuss the plight of the scimitar orndorix and a couple of the other ungulates that we work with, with the Source Population Alliance. And he was privy to up as a place where they can bring all the known genetics to one spot to begin this species survival program. So at that time, or short after that meeting, they brought, as a member of the AZA, they brought 28 animals, and those 28 animals represented 31 different bloodlines to begin the species survival program right here on the ranch. And was that like the Texas bottleneck of that species, or was there probably quite a bit more that weren't included in that initial roundup? Well, there likely were other animals that were not aza animals but not many i mean that was pretty much it i mean he he literally saved the scimitar

horned oryx but that seems incredibly diverse for such as you know very few animals but but they but they were very successful at breeding and perpetuating. Whereas in the zoo environment, they were there. We knew they were there. We had genetics going on that you could see and touch, but not to the extent of what they did when they put them on an open range, quote, ranch, whether high fence or low fence. Most of them are behind high fences because they'll get away from you. But the perpetuation of them was astounding how well they did.

And that's almost exactly right. We were fortunate because there are that many bloodlines, and they had come from different places. There were some risks there because, you know, what if we'd had a disease outbreak or something and you know you got your eggs in one basket which is why this idea and why we use the term meta population is that you've got a population here over here over here and together they make up this greater population which is an a reservoir if you will an assurance population um but but you know thank goodness that they did that because it's you know possible this animal would not be around if that were not the case. Not be around period, not just in Texas.

Correct. And I think there were some other individuals, um, maybe in Europe and some other places, but, uh, this was certainly North America and, and may have been, I don't know, Steve, if you know, the largest and only sizable population in the world. I mean, it was certainly a cornerstone of it. So it's very important to what you were talking about, the return aspect, because that very possibly, if not likely, would not have occurred without someone like Mr. Bamberger's vision to do that. And some of this was not just chance. These group of individuals, they knew of the synonymity of Texas versus Africa, and they theorized if they could just get them here, they would perpetuate because of the synonymous of the two countries, the habitat, the temperatures, and all that. And of course, they were right. You know how it seems like you hear more and more about these,

particularly over the last decade, it's like the idea of a seed bank, right? Where you have, where they built that one in North, I don't know. I think that's right. Iceland or Norway. Yeah. Somewhere where they have this, they built this perfectly. That's right.

Stable underground climate and they just store seeds there. Correct. That there'd be some global catastrophe, and then you'd start from scratch, right? Plant stuff in the ground. With mammals, I'm guessing that it doesn't work to go and have a bank of frozen embryos. No, actually, we do do that. You can do that? Yeah.

They don't like lose, you know what I mean? Like without sort of a continuity of, like we watched today, right? We go out and there's a mother and she, you know, you want to get her calf, put your tag in it. She doesn't want you to do that, right? She presumably picked where she was going to give birth. Like this is stuff she is exposed

to has done it before learned from it um i imagine if you thaw that stuff out and do it like you probably you have to lose something like a herd like a sort of like herd dynamic knowledge base or something is gone right so you're speaking on learned behavior yeah that's what i mean like you know i mean like how important is it to have, because I can picture, if you look, I never give animals in zoos any, I don't give them any credit.

You know what I mean? I'm like, okay, there it is, but it's not, right? It is, but it's not. Well, I think it's species specific. It is, and it's a different, it's all a different theater versus what,

there's great merit to zoos, but they have their limits. And the issues with a property having the propensity to look like, act like, see like, function like the open range, there's no substitute for it because they do a lot of different things out there they don't do in a captive situation or that's what yeah that's the thing maybe it's probably not easily answered but well there's some species like wolves where as far and i'm you know i'm not a wolf biologist but if you turn them loose they just kind of know what to do oh right like you could thaw them out and turn them loose right with cats that's not necessarily the case the mother has to teach him how to hunt and talk

about big cats anyway right so but to your point i mean that's that's relevant but yeah we we do do um was it o site capture you know certain species and sperm banking um and even if the species doesn't go extinct you want to keep some of those genetic traits. Like for example, we have some rhinos that have reproductive pathologies or older or whatever, but they might have some valuable traits. Well, we can't breed them, but as AI techniques, artificial insemination get developed, having a sperm bank, that becomes very useful in the future, right? To reintroduce those genetics. So that animal, the line of that animal is not lost. So even if the species doesn't go extinct,

that's still important. But yeah, obviously there, you know, there's some other dynamics in there about behavior and training and, you know. Yeah, some of these species, you have to maintain animals on the ground doing what they do in order to make that egg bank, seed bank. That's right.

An actual resource. Well, yeah, although even with the newer techniques, there's some new organizations that are formed about talking about trying to bring back the woolly mammoths. Oh, I know, man. It's just. Yeah. So. Are you guys into that or does that annoy you guys?

Let me put it this way. It's not what we do. Yeah, that's good. That's good. However, there are maybe some advantages of that in terms of what you learn and some applications genetically. Yeah.

Because they're not bringing back the woolly mammoth. Well, they're messing with an age and L of P to eventually accumulate a bunch of traits where you can be like, that's probably a little bit what it looked like. Right. So, but although you never know,

it can happen in the future. Well, this is why it is a little annoying. But there's stuff blinking out right now. Right. It's like, we have a thing, we don't even It's like, we have a thing that went extinct, I don't know, 13, 20,000 years ago for unknown causes. But meanwhile, 50% of the mammals on the planet have a sort of viable pathway to extinction. And now you got all these celebrity investors and this whole mammoth project. We haven't sequenced all of our animals yet in the spa so there's an immediate need you know for that

and you know they're still alive and most of them are still in the wild so absolutely um you know again there are some techniques that i think will be very important that they're going to learn from yeah it's like the argument like if it wasn't for nasa we wouldn't have teflon yeah exactly you know they're like but they put all that money into pan coatings yeah they probably have a hell of a pan coating well i mean we we read about stuff every single day right it's like and by the way this got collected a hundred hundred years ago it's been sitting in this categorized shelf and then all of a sudden somebody's like well well, we have this new thing. Let me take a look at that old copper light.

Oh my God, there's a rattlesnake in there. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Uh, but it's like, I'd love to know the hierarchy of needs of the preservation of species,

right? Cause you, you take an animal that has this very known, uh, uh, system of learned behavior. Like I, I have to teach my young how to build the nest i have to nurture a bunch of eggs to get some to hatch i have to then teach these little baby

birds how to fly and and we know that doesn't happen without the parent but but also things that are just so much like if there's not not water here, go look over there. Yeah. Like that's not carried in an egg. Right. Yeah. But hopefully that's a smell thing. Yeah. And goes, right? I mean, I think there's some species that we know, right?

Like the sandhill crane, right? Is like, that thing wants to do everything but live. I just realized I said sandhill crane instead of whooping crane. Some of those behaviors can be taught, I think, by animal caretakers. There's probably a limit there. Well, anytime you alter their natural learning ability, you're influencing possibly what they're going to do in the future as far as survivability. There's a lot of belief that if they can't do it on their own, they can't do it. And maybe their history is dictated. But the thing that we do know now, and I'll go back to the zoos versus the free range,

both of those places have great purpose, but the free-range situation like we were in today, even though it's an enclosure, it's so much closer to what they're supposed to be doing, and they know it, and they do well, and they respond well from it. Yeah, and that's reflected by a very tangible result, right? Which is the offspring. Well, and look at the ages of those animals where we were at today. Have we influenced that? Obviously we have. But again, when you have that scenario and they're not in cages or pens, and cages isn't a fair term for an ungulate like that, they're just going to do better. But some of this was not by accident on the cemeteries there were people that knew if they could get them to texas they felt like they were going to propagate and do well and those those few individuals with some other caring individuals were right and this this is really a success story as he as he pointed

out early because these things were gone, basically. Now, the next species might not do exactly what this species did. Yeah. Because they're all different biologically, and they're different sociologically, how they roam and how they do. So to answer your question, it's always better, obviously, if you have the species and they can learn from their own. But we have gotten a lot better and i teach a couple animal behavior classes at a couple universities and like in the bird world they've learned this like an avian ecologist i work with of training these birds you know how to look for threats right they was that right oh yeah it's amazing what

they've done with that now you know you hear this hear this, you know, alarm, this is this, it means it's an owl or this kind of hawk. And there's a famous example. They tried to introduce thick-billed parrots. I think it was in the 80s back into the southeastern Arizona. And I think you've been hunting down there coos deer, right? And they put them in there and they were great. They'd done great, except they had no idea that hawks were a threat. They all got wiped out.

That's like, I'm sort of like pulling all these little snippets from things I know from native wildlife. They had done great, except they had no idea that hawks were a threat. They all got wiped out. I'm sort of like pulling all these little snippets from things I know from native wildlife in the U.S. and trying to interject them here. But when you talk to people who are involved in the recovery of the American wild turkey, sort of the aha moment was you can't put pen-raised turkeys down. Yeah, exactly. They just can't 48 hours they're all dead just they get annihilated and you had to put you had to put like wild reared you had to put wild reared birds on the ground if they're going to have any chance of hatching up of having any

idea about how to avoid predators and another iconic thing about the scimitars that i find very interesting is sometimes we're our worst on enemies. We have caring individuals, knowledgeable individuals. They bring them over here. They do good. And lo and behold, we get a regulation that almost sent them backwards again. Yeah, I wanted to have you tell that story, but let me hold that because that's important to hear. But I got one more. I got another question just like particular to the scimitar horned oryx and how, like, let's say here in the U.S. you have people who are globally aware, right?

And globally ecologically aware. They understand that this species is imperiled on its native range. It's a candidate for extinction right um at what point do do those individuals or like your organization at what point do you wind up forming some form of contact with the government or the the the the proper agency in one of these countries where the country is perhaps almost a failed state. Right. Like if you were to right now recognize

that there's a species in Afghanistan, I'm sure there are many. There are. Yeah. So you're like, okay, the snow leopard ranges in Afghanistan. At what point does someone go and introduce themselves to the Taliban to say,

we understand you have a problem. We'd like to help. That's gotta be like a tricky. At what point does someone go and introduce themselves to the Taliban to say, we understand you have a problem and we'd like to help? That's got to be like a tricky. It's very tricky. Because you've already got so much money into it. Yeah. And so I asked this question a while back with the cheetah, with some scientists. And it gets into politics.

It gets into these species oftentimes, particularly particularly animal like a cat like that, that will, you know, in some cases have very large territories, may cross boundaries. You've got different laws and some of them it's like, well, we'll do reintroductions. No, we only want native, you know, born animals here. So there's all kinds of things. So typically what ends up happening is you have to have multiple organizations involved who are working together and clearly one or two on the ground. So in Chad, where the scimitars were reintroduced, there's Sahara Conservation Fund really was, were the guys on the ground who put this together. But they had to have financial backing and the whole program was a success because of the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi, you know, and they helped lead this, put the resources in, you know, they kept, they had their own stock of scimitars. So you have to have buy-in and then they had to go get buy-in from the locals, you know, because these are on pastoral lands, there's domestic livestock running around. So yeah, it is tricky. And so you have to have a lot of buy-in. And you

know, we found this out here, as you well know, from reintroducing like the wolf here. Oh boy. Right. And the learnings they got from that, the first ones, the red wolf was the first one they did was, and then the gray wolf, the Mexican wolf, is that you've got to have buy-in from the state agencies and then from local landowners. People are going to have to deal with that and you have to have a comprehensive plan to make it all work and if you don't have that you're going to run into problems so i think we know a lot more about that than we used to but this is why even though we may have enough numbers of a lot of these species

if the conditions aren't right on the ground then you know there's no point in reintroducing at that point do you have can you think of examples of of animals where uh you're poised to do a reintroduction but the situation on the ground is just not like you're in a holding pattern because of the political climate whatever yeah sure yeah well in terms of numbers of animals yeah um there's several i mean you know the cheetah is one example where certainly there's some possibilities there but again given the political situation and different laws and again we're we're not the ones my organization is not the one that does the reintroduction to be clear about that right you don't just show up and say here's what people need no no but um. But yeah, there's several species.

Cheetah would be one of them, you know, for certain. And then the other element that we haven't talked about, but it's a major element, is conflict with people. Some of these species are not viewed as we're saving the species. The classic example of that was the reintroduction of the wolf. There were big support to do that until the public, the ranchers got into it and it got in conflict and, and it, and it is remained in conflict ever since. And, uh, the, the dynamics of the population swelling and growing,

we're talking about Montana. Texas is going through it. All these western states are going through this. So some of these species, there are other lines to walk, and they may not get that chance because of that. Well, it doesn't even need to be an ungulate versus a predator. That's exactly right. The Rocky Mountain elk is a big issue with

a lot of ranching communities right so we're buffalo if you talk to those ranchers oh yeah yeah it's not even um competition for that's like recovering your own that's like recovering your own native wildlife where you have the animals we just don't have the public willpower and and the real truth may be there are just some species that aren't gonna have the graces Because of because of these issues we're talking about right now And then you get in even other issues like you brought in the bison we've looked at that is you have domesticated bison They've got cattle genes. Well, you don't want those in a wild Population, you know for a lot of reasons and so how do you manage that? I don't want to in a wild population, you know, for a lot of reasons.

And so how do you manage that? I don't want to stray too far, but I totally disagree, man. I think if it looks like one, I think at this point. Well, there's people who make that argument. At this point, if it looks like one, let's go with it. So then you'd want the woolly mammoth brought back. No. Because it looks, it's going to look like it.

I don't, but I'm saying you wind up being that you wind up, you have like vermeil. So they have genetically pure ones, Yellowstone. They got genetically pure ones, Vermejo. There's just not that many of them. Meanwhile, you got half a million of them. You got half a million of them on the continent. And then 7,000 are up to snuff. The real truth may be you can't get them back pure again.

And a buffalo is a perfect class of that, an example of that. You start looking at how many of these buffalo have cattle genes in them. Lots of them do, but can you look at them and tell? No, not every time. If I was anti-bison recovery, which I'm not, if I was anti-bison recovery, I would be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'd do like a totally Machiavellian move, and I would be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'd do like a totally Machiavellian move. And I would be like, oh, no, no, no.

I'm all for it. But they have to be genetically pure. That's right. That's how I would win my fight. If I didn't want it to happen. That's exactly right. The one caveat to that is that in some places, they are selecting bison to be more domesticated. And so you can imagine over-

Less hump, more rump. That's right. And so over a long period of time, if that gets into... Dale Irwin, I think was his name. He was the UC Davis professor who was like the foremost bison expert. That was his concern.

That it wasn't... It was like my comment about the zoo animals. Looked like it, but it wasn't it. So I understand what you're... about the zoo animals so i like it but it wasn't it so i understand what you're in fact the doma gazelle actually there's a they thought for a while it was a subspecies there's two colors there's one that's a predominantly kind of burnt orange looking and there's one it's pure white and they thought well it's you know different gene or they substitute it's not it's a phenotype got it right so but had that been the case i do you mix those do you not you know and so i understand where you're coming from on that um and unfortunately because the more we learn about

genetics and genomics like there used to just be one species of black rhino then they realize well no there's an eastern there's a southern well actually there's a southwestern when now there's a western several of them have gone extinct right so? So where do you draw the line? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I guess you have to weigh someone's motivations and then help trust it. Okay, let's, I know the basic outline of this story. Someone, the scimitar horned orcs, it's going extinct. Someone's like, hey, there's a bunch of them in Texas. Thank God.

And then they want to say, okay, no one in Texas touched one. And people didn't like that. And it was counterproductive. How close is that to reality? The story I just told. Well, I think the word they probably begs to be defined. Okay. So well-meaning probably people that thought they shouldn't be commercialized

because of other things and other places and other issues that were going on. But those particular group of people weren't looking at the perpetuation of that species and what was going on. And the minute they came in and they put those regulations on them. What was the regulation? Well, it had to do with movement, hunting, and barter sale, exchange, and trade. They were on the ESA, but there was an exemption, and they removed the exemption. This has been 2012, I think.

Okay. On whose ESA? Ours. How are they on a U.S. listed species list? Because it's global. Because it's global. It's not just U.S. listed species list? Because it's global. Because it's global. It's not just U.S. species. They don't look at Texas and make the law for the world.

It's a global view of that species. And of course, I didn't know there was even any. It's global species. I didn't know there was like a governor. Is it the ICUN? Who's the governing? Okay. Who's the governing body that would say,

they're imperiled there, don't mess with them in Texas? Well, ultimately, I think it was our decision for the ESA, but it's like if a species is imperiled, you know, wherever its native habitat is, right, then it's considered under the umbrella of the ESA. I mean, it's endangered, so any of those protocols can come into play in terms of what you can and can't do. So once it's endangered, then there's criteria under that endangered title, and that criteria may say barter, sell, exchange, hunt, transport. All those things can be under there, and what happened is that happened to that species of animal and when it did that thing that that plan that was going on right before our eyes came to a crash and halt in texas and i'm gonna speak for texas because i'm more familiar with the plan being people distributing allowing to breed yes because commercialization was predicating those numbers and And commercialization was the mother.

It was pushing the numbers out. Because there was a market for those animals in the state, and a byproduct of that market was creating more of them. That's correct. And then you couldn't hunt them. Of course, the market was dictating that people wanted to trade them. Whatever people's view of that is, that's the reality of it, right? And so the market crashed and then furthermore if you had them on your uh ram i mean this is an exception and all of our facilities are like that we're conservation so we don't actually hunt them here because we're trying to increase their numbers but then you couldn't

even hunt your own so what do you do with them at that point and here they go they're perpetuating right so they're you're saying there's some, and listen, for every listener out there, I'm not sure if the folks in this room like it or not. The very first thing that we did today was get a scimitar horn oryx and put an ear tag in it. So if you think about it with along the lines of every animal out there that have ear tags and are running around in pastures. That's what we're talking about in the commercialization right now. So, um, there were individuals out there who had purchased scimitar horned oryx during this period where all of a sudden they're on the- And sorry, if I'm biased, we tag him for a slightly different reason because we track him. We do a census count every year you know how many offspring how many die etc and so he needs to track him and for genetics reasons as well you know we oh that's animal number 28 whatever so that's the reason primarily we do that

so but there's other folks out there who are like i'm gonna buy some of these i'm gonna have them specifically for the reason that i'm gonna hunt them on my ranch but then when that regulation came down they just became animals that were competing against the other animals that had all of a sudden had more value yeah and they can't do anything with them they can't hunt them you can't trade them and so they're just paying to feed them so what did happen to them like the numbers went down absolutely people shot them out of spite well you're not supposed to but you know i'm sure some of that happened they did let's let's let's uh be frank they the numbers dwindled yeah for whatever reason because the value now was not

on the animal the the value is what brought the incentive to perpetuate the animal. And we were in Texas probably, well, I know so. We've got more than anybody. And he was selling them to a rancher. We were capturing them. We were moving them over here. We were moving them for this reason, this reason. But everybody had a reason to perpetuate that animal. And when those regs came down, all of a sudden, it disincentivized us.

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this is speculation but was the was the first off what year are we talking about um is it that was 2012 it was risk the exemption was put back in in 2014. Okay. So there was, so there's a two-year window when this was going on, when this sort of the prohibition on hunting, prohibition on moving, whether it's like an exemption that was lifted or not, let's just describe it as like a prohibition on these activities was a two-year window. Did the number of animals during that two-year window actually go down yeah they halved and so but they so what i'm saying is they weren't dying old age no sir not it's just that people are like i mean there's like a little bit of spite right well if i had to venture a guess like you

saw how defensive that mother was we talked about how aggressive the the bulls are in fighting. Yeah. I'm sure they can be detrimental on other animals inside your pasture there too, or they're just beating themselves to death sometimes. I can speak on the ranch's behalf, but for those two years, we had no breeding. I kept the males completely separate from the females. Again, because what were we going to do with them we had we had our own we have our own carrying capacity which is top on a good year is 60 animals right now i got 45 animals um with with addition of a bunch of young um if this year continues to

be as dry as it is now i'm likely going to have to down stop or I'm going to run out of grass. I got you. So we couldn't breed. Yeah, because you had no outlet. Yeah, couldn't get rid of them. You had no outlet for the ones that weren't essential for your program. Correct. And one thing that we haven't mentioned, but I participated in this, when that was lifted,

we had people that reached out and said, I want to multifacet my operation. I don't want cattle anymore. I want something that has multi-value to it. So we, in a lot of cases, we had cimentars, we had neoguy, we had other ungulates that were exotics that were also used to manage grass pastures, just like cattle. But we had a multi-value farm. We could breed them. We could sell them. We could hunt them.

We could manage grass communities with them. So now we've got an incentive to own them. And that's where we're at today. And that's why the numbers are here like they are. But they wouldn't have been. Had they not lifted that and we had not organized and fought like we did we would be down more so than we were at half at the time that thing would happen i just say this i know there's a lot talked about the exotics industry and especially in texas

but that way that was handled for conservation purposes you know was not a good thing. Yeah. And when it was rescinded, was it rescinded with a, man, you were right. That was a horrible idea. No. Oh, okay. I can answer that. I don't even need to think about that. It was rescinded because of political clout and pressure. I got it.

And that's the honest truth, or we'd still be right where we were. I got it. Texas spent thousands and thousands of dollars lobbying in Washington. It's funny because just in my circle, I have heard, and people not from the conservation biology world, I have heard people still grumbling about that. In their mind, like just like, you know, oh, you want to talk about idiocy. Because they open a book and there in the book says they're almost are close to being extinct in another country.

And these people in Texas are shooting them and commercializing them. What in the world is going on here? What's going on here is we're perpetuating these animals because they have a value. Yeah, no, I could see, like, it's not a stretch. I don't mean to run around, you know, I don't want to sound like, oh, they're so stupid. But I mean, you can see how someone would draw that conclusion

if they weren't really, if they weren't, like, acutely aware of, like, all the dynamics in place and the motivations of people involved. If you went and wrote some goofy newspaper headline, Texans killing endangered species, right? They did. Well, that's of course would be the headline. And there's been a lot of articles written like that.

They did. Because some of us did interviews on those and they were tough interviews. There's some folks out there who at that time and still today would rather these species not be here at all that any of them are haunted yeah no that's that yeah I think that's a that's a that's a sentiment um yeah I think it's a widely held sentiment among people who would that I would consider

like the the radical animal rights agenda would put a very strong emphasis emphasis on individual animal experiences and that that would actually matter more to them than population level experiences and that's just i can't even have the argument you know i mean it's like i would it would be hard for me to sit with someone and have the argument. I wouldn't even know where to begin. It all happened when people didn't know what lug nuts were anymore. That's your litmus test? I love it. It's a good one. I heard someone else bring it up recently.

How did it go that just all of a sudden no one knows how to change a tire? Well, we're close. I'm using lug nuts. But really, as time goes on, these challenges, these bicycles will have multiple riders on them that we have to defend to perpetuate an animal, to make it to be beneficial again, to have a value, because they're just people that don't know what lug nuts are. And when you have that, in my world, I deal with it every other day. And I have to educate as hard as I can, but I also have to be a good mediator and understand how people think.

And that's why I'm so sensitive about the merit of every good story and every good scenario is to precede both sides of the issue. You have to. You can't hold it back. And it's tough sometimes to sit in a room and talk to people about why this animal's doing good. We got to start with the nest. There's also a lot of crossover too, because of, you know, obviously, as you well know, hunting brings in a lot of conservation dollars, right? That go to that. But particularly here with the whole land rush, and he deals with it very closely,

that, you know, if you didn't have this, you would have even more fragmentation and development and what have you. So, you know, we try and encourage people, and Bamberger is the best example of it, of, you know, you can have an exotic species, but you can manage it sustainably and still you know create great habitat for native wildlife as well yeah yeah no not everybody can do what they've done here because it's fantastic but you know you can still do that and you know warren is a specialist in that and so that's that's the other message that we're trying to get across. What percent of the species that your organization is involved with are native North American animals and what percent are Africa, Asia? Most of them are Africa, Asia,

but we have a couple of grassland bird species. So the loggerhead trike, which, you know, Texas does quite a few of them, but their native grassland prairie, which, you know, Texas still has quite a few of them, but their native grassland prairie habitat is, you know, well now is shrinking and they've largely disappeared, you know, up in all the way up into Canada. So, um, you know, we support that and doing some releases up there where they do genomics testing to try to, you know, help the viability. A couple other grassland species, um, even like the whooping crane, the red wolf is another one. And then most of the rest of them are exotic. So probably as a

percentage, I don't know exact number, but you know, it's probably in natives, probably, you know, 25% or something thereabouts. To what, to what degree, if you compare, let's say you're going to compare the Sahara, and just, I know it's hard, but the U.S. in general, if you look at something, take something like the Pacific salmon, for instance, it's not an animal problem.

It's a habitat problem right right it's like if if you took all the dams out of the columbia watershed your problem's over yeah right yeah um in in in chad in the sahara with the scimitar horned oryx, I gather that it was, it became like an animal problem. It's multifaceted, if I understand you correctly. So it's a, it's a bushmeat problem. A lot of these areas, you know, historically, or, you know, at least last hundred years, war zone problem. It's a human footprint expanding problem, a disease problem as well. Okay. You know, again, having to cohabitate with domestic livestock.

And then when you get down, another aspect of what we do is that when we're looking at something like this, we enlist the help of, there's an offshoot of IUCN called CPSG and they do great work like population modeling and, you know, figuring out, you know, you have this many animals and, you know, you're going to add this many to it. And here's how often drought happens. Here's how much poaching, you know, you can kind of pretty well predict what's going to happen. And when you get down below a certain number, you know, it becomes unsustainable. So, you know, there's species out there right now, you were alluding to it earlier, that if it's just left to their own over time, they're probably not going to make it. You know, and fragmentation is another huge issue, right? You know, corridors are cut off, you know, so you don't get not only genetics crossing,

but just being able to connect populations, have more room for them to disperse you know drought over here versus you know there's better range over here so all those problems factor into it i i thought of another a more extreme uh visual way of putting it let's say you just started flying c-130s into chad and offloading thousands of scimitar-horned orcs, at this moment in time, you would find that in some number of years, you're probably going to be right back in the same situation all over again. That's exactly right. A lot of the habitat's gone. It's not prepped. Because it's localized.

It's localized where they can, not that they can't make it somewhere else, but the extruding factors on it will only make it in that particular area where they have that protection. A lot of it's been converted to agriculture. That's another problem. They've lost grasslands. And how many do they have? So how many do they have on the ground now in a sort of like semi-wildish state? Scimitars?

Yeah. In Chad? About 150. Yeah. And what size, like, on what? Is it a size of ground comparable to where we're sitting right now? No, it's much larger. Much larger.

It's a huge area. I don't have the exact number, but it's... But it is. It's a big area. Yeah, and Steve, do you know? I thought I heard it was the same size as, like, West Virginia. Yeah, it's, like, hundreds of thousands, millions of acres. And they need to, they're

actively, they need to be like actively defending the animals from poaching and other incursions? I don't know about defending, but you know, there's been a lot of education that's gone on about it and, you know, they monitor it closely. Of course, you know, they're collared, right? And the animals will disperse

a lot. I think the biggest thing, or one of the biggest things they've done is just education with the herders, the shepherders, you know. And I think so far that's going pretty well. But again, we're only talking 150 animals, so it's hard to gauge. You know, it's not like there's 15,000 out there. Is that number growing? It is. Yeah, they've had offspring, and they keep actually,

they're, I think, doing another release right now as we speak. So, yeah, there's definitely plans to add on to it. I don't know if there's a total number that they're trying to get to. No. But, yeah, they definitely want to grow. I mean, obviously, 150 of a herd animal is not sufficient to, you know, you need to grow that substantially that i can't call it stable yet that's yeah not yeah it's still ever changing but but uh the only way probably to get

it to where they someday will say we have a stable population is by help uh that they won't do it on their own probably if they it would be so eons out um that that it just you couldn't monitor it. So the influx that groups like this can help is what's going to make it someday say we have a, in this area, we have a standardized herd. I mean, just off the top of my head, again, I'm not a population biologist, disclaimer, so, but, you know, I would think you'd have to have at least several hundred animals, ultimately not several thousand, but whatever that number is, unless it's into the thousands, you're going to need to supplement from time to time. Got it. What is the stable number?

Like, do we have an idea what that herd stability size is, self-sustaining? Because that country is so different, it's hard to classify animals per acre. And I don't know the dynamics to that number but i i would say that they're they're they're people over there know what they're what they need to do to where they could finally say we do have a stable herd they move a lot they're they're my yeah they're they're they're right the larger the herd the larger the range needs to be they're nomadic and it's more it's more sparse than you know steve has this fantastic grass here well that driving into this property is a lot more yeah and it rains into this

it'll rain in one area of this of this area where they've got them and they'll move to that area because a lot of their all their ecology is steered around perpetuation. So they know to go to that area, and it's timed with all their parturations and all the things they do. And so it will take time, years, before they'll ever be able to say that's a standardized herd and we're comfortable. I mean, this is ideal for them here in terms of what we're trying to do. And, you know, these guys have done such a great job and, you know, burns and, you know, not, you know, they don't graze the rest of it or not hadn't had a history of overgrazing all those kinds of things. So it's ideal habitat, you know. I mean, driving through here, this country probably never looked like this prior to folks

putting up fences, right? I mean, you guys don't have the natural competition out here because you're managing it heavily. You just all lost the grasses. You're seeing 50 years of intensive management. Maybe this is how it looked like 200 years ago or closer to it. As long as the bison weren't traveling through. He's being pretty humble because I do what he does.

He's worked his rear end off out here. I see it. It's amazing. And he's got the backing and he's got the knowledge and that's why you see the garden growing like it is. And you know to the naked eye it's hard to understand what he sees and what I see on these properties because this is years and years of our lives to get these grass communities back to where they're at. It just doesn't happen happen i mean this land has transformed so much i grew up around here and it's you know uh native americans kept this burned off to a large degree with natural fire uh but you know i'm sure you've been around here now it's changed tremendously the juniper choked you know

and so he's done restored it whatever you want to call natural you want to call that natural you know it used to but certainly from a wildlife perspective it's steve what'd your bird count go from uh the first the first counts done in like 1970 1971 um they they found 48 species these are year-round surveys. Okay. And today we're over 220. Really? God, that's amazing.

That's incredible, man. If you had to boil that down, it's water, water and grass recovery? Diversity of habitat. So when Mr. Bamberger bought this- So way more than just more grass. Right, absolutely. When Mr. Bamberger first bought this property,

it was, in 1969, it was basically a cedar forest, a cedar break. Right. It was very much clad with cedar, like you see a lot of the hill country today. From fire suppression. From fire suppression. Which is juniper. Everybody calls it cedar down there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Overgrazing. Overgrazing led to that a lot. So, yeah, in early 70s, just set about restoring the place and that basically removing a lot of the juniper, not all of it because this is a native tree. Restoring the grasslands, also giving our native deciduous hardwoods a chance to become a hardwood

forest again. And then with that, came back water. It was one of the first things that came back to the ranch it wasn't here um we have quite a bit of water here yeah um then with you got that such a diversity of habitat and especially that edge habitat you know that transition between forest to grass or water's edge that sort of thing i mean i imagine some of that some of those numbers i mean it wouldn't account for a significant number but some of those are sort of thing so yeah i imagine some of that some of those numbers i mean it wouldn't account for significant number but some of those are sort of things on a more national scale you know absolutely like like some rafters right i don't know if you got a peregrine on your thing

but it could be because of peregrine activities happening hundreds of miles away so that's an impressive increase man definitely yeah but an improved habitat as ste Steve said, brings diversity of wildlife. So a lot of these ranches now that have the finances and the skills to do all this, they're not only benefiting exotics, deer, it's all species, mammals, reptiles, bird life, avian life, all this is benefiting from people. Well well you guys have a bat cave yeah and that's what happens when you get a commitment uh because we've done it and restored it uh not i'm not talking about here i've done it on other ranches like steve's done but we see the benefits and this bird life is a classic example of responding to improved habitat.

That doesn't happen by accident because now they have these levels they can live in, edge effect, hardwood forest, all the things that they've done out here. So, yeah, I mean, Bamberger is like a modern-day example. I don't know if you've ever seen Tending the Wild at Booking, California, about Native Americans managing the landscape over there, this is an example of that. I mean, literally,

I saw a study recently where, I don't know how they came to this conclusion, but researcher figured out that this part of the world anyway, 85% of the fires were set here by Native Americans. Now it only burned 40% of the landscape because set here by native americans now it only burned 40 of the landscape because you know lightning fires would just go right so they had controlled burns and they were managing

it for wildlife you know to bring back you know whatever you know pecans walnuts yeah attract wildlife whatever and so he's actually kind of gone back even though this is a modern he's gone back to much more the way it was in terms of managing the land for wildlife got it uh i got two more big questions for you one's one's pretty concrete one's theoretical uh the so the scimitar horned orcs, they came full circle. They were in the Sahara. They were, for whatever reason, lost to us. Collectors, whatever, brought them here. They were kept in zoos.

They went extinct in the wild. They went back. Who's in line to have that happen again most immediately? What species that you're working on is like, the clearest path exists to being like, they're going to go back on the ground. Well, the two other ones of our species that are being worked with right now actually in the same preserve are the dama gazelle um and the attics and there were some remnant populations there

somewhere between 100 and 300 animals but scattered about this this is in the same area in chad yeah and niger they so they were they've translocated some uh but yeah they're they're releasing i think right now actually some doma gazelle okay so they're ready to release we're doing it texas animals it's already happened and it's well it's again it's this multi-step process right where uh maybe some of them came here historically and then they went over there and now it's two or three generations there and the third generation i'm with got habituated you know and then they they let them go right yeah yeah like you can't like it's two or three generations there and the third generation got habituated you know and then they they let him go right yeah yeah like you can't like it's not really practical to track

the individual exactly it's it's bloodline or whatever exactly and that that's why the genomics is so important and why we want to keep sequencing and testing these these animals because we want to know if we have valuable traits or whatever like ste Steve, you know, got his report on his female scimitar that, hey, in the future, you know, that bloodline, maybe not that particular animal, but that bloodline we want going over there, right? And so that's kind of the future so that when the conditions are ripe to do more of these, we're ready to do it. Remember early on in our conversation, we talked about the idea that if an animal's not where it's from, it doesn't count. Now, well, no, I don't mean that because that's going to sound wrong because I am a very avid wild turkey hunter. I hunt wild turkeys in a state that turkeys aren't from. They're not that far down.

I could drive in a day. I could drive in a day to where they're from, but they're not from there. I love them like my children. Well, not quite. In some ways, more. Yes, in some ways, less. some ways less but so so i get it it's like there's not like it's not a black and white issue in terms of native you know native animals and non-native animals but what's your sort of like what's your take if we looked at that that you determined that for whatever reason we determined the Sahara, since we talked about that a bunch,

you get to a point where you're like, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It's divided up. It's war-torn, not getting any better. It just isn't going to happen. Do you then lose interest in the orcs? Or do you go like, okay, plan B is this part of Texas is Africa. And you know that it's not ever going to be a reintroduction issue.

Well, I guess there's two things. That's a loaded question. It is. It's very loaded. Yeah. I mean, one, I think, you you know there's a difference between like say this part of texas or letting them run rampant and just keeping the species uh alive not letting them go extinct for and you could have a philosophical debate about that a lot of

reasons right you know they deserve to live you know uh value in them about what we discover about their genes or you know could be use of other animals, all kinds of reasons for that. Yeah, the ole could be a cure for cancer. Right, yeah, yeah. But then also, in terms of these assurance populations, well, what do things look like 150 years from now? I don't know.

Yeah, I can see what you're saying. It'd be a pretty cocky decision to do. Ain't gonna happen. Right. So it's kind of like, if we're gonna gonna keep them then we might as well keep them in a setting where they can do well right in in sufficient numbers with enough diversity so when there's an opportunity you know we can we're ready you know we can put them back and i say we i mean collective not just my organization right so that that's one of the things and you know we can put them back and i say we i mean collective not just my organization

right so that that's one of the things and you know there's also i think an educational component um there's even these guys have done it we've actually partnered i know it sounds bizarre but uh with a virtual reality organization to kind of create some environments where people can see what these animals look like you know in, in their native habitats or at the facility. I'm normally opposed to virtual reality, but I like it. I hear you. Hey, that was my initial reaction. I got it. When my kids want to do it, I'll be like, you can do that one thing with the animals. Right, exactly. But from the standpoint of, does that raise awareness and does that get them interested and, you know, generate some, I mean, as we know, we're becoming a more urban world and people move in cities. And I'm a big believer that if you don't have

your feet on the ground, if you're not out doing stuff, then you just don't have the same attachment or connection to it. So in lieu of that, do these, does something like that help? And if it does, then maybe there are opportunities in the future. So I think those are some of the arguments. I know it's not black and white. And, you know, it is a little odd sometimes you drive around, you see something looks like Africa and, you know, you see more and more of it, but, you know, we're focused really on the conservation aspect. And I think you can make a strong case for, regardless of what's happening on the ground, that we at least want to keep these remnant populations going for the future, whatever the future is.

Someday, it just hit me. Someday I'm going to write a dystopian novel. It'll be that humans are all gone, virtually all gone, and it'll be like some small group of people trying to put all the animals back where they belong. Well, I think Jeff Bezos had that idea that one day we'll be living, orbiting the planet and repopulate.

Yeah, and I'll be like, okay, before I die, I got to make sure to put these things back and those things back. So we're coming around the table, so I'll put my two cents in and it'll be short. I think the limiting factors besides population dynamics will probably be evolving wildlife diseases. Oh, go on.

I knew you were going to ask me that, and that's my summary. We've got to do another show now or you won't get it out of me. Well, no, give a little more there. You're saying this is like a conservation challenge. I think that absolutely, but zoonosis, if you look at what we don't know about wildlife reservoirs and human interaction with diseases, we're on the pioneering edge of where all these lay. And I think as time goes by, we're going to find more and more reservoirs that might mutate and affect humans or vice versa. And so I believe that as time goes by, the science will develop that there might be a species you can't do anything with because of evolving wildlife diseases that may affect populations.

And guess what? If it affects a human, who's going to be first? Yeah. I mean, this gets into strange territory, but what if there's a few species that are resistant well not after the last couple years it doesn't feel too strange it doesn't yeah it does exactly what was the what was the question again well i mean back to your other question it's like what if you find you know some traits in a few of these species are

closely related one or two that are beneficial and disease resistant, you know, could that, keeping those alive, could that be useful? I mean, that gets into strange territory. It can, it can, but where the bridge starts getting weak is where, is where there, the possibility exists to jump from wildlife reservoirs to humans. And typically that's from a mutation and so if you really look at a lot of things that are happening with humans now with illnesses and things and look back at wildlife reservoirs you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what's happening no it's becoming yeah i think that that's that's entering sort of the public consciousness absolutely as we have

this like pretty spirited debate about you you know, bats, wildlife markets, and then these new strains of COVID that seemed to, and then, you know, like this 60% of the whitetails, 60% of the whitetail deer taken out of, I think, Indiana, um, had been exposed to COVID. Well, Quebec, right? We just, we just, just had this, right?

Like the COVID-19 into the deer herd, that deer herd, spit it back out into the human population. And it's very, very close to COVID-19, but it's not quite the same. Yeah. Right? And I don't care what you think of COVID. That's right. But that's something to pay attention to. And when you sail across the sea, and I'm not being a pessimist

because I'm a biologist, that's what I do for a living. But when you sail across the sea to take a reservoir out to bring it somewhere else to do something else with, there's always a chance. Yeah. But I think we're on the very infancy of where this is going to go. Sure. And also, just I want to add on the thing

you're saying because you talk like there's organizations like the rocky mountain elk foundation okay their their business for for well they had you know i hate to oversimplify it their business had been twofold it was habitat right right and then restoration of herds with cwd right now moving herds around that's not happening man do you mean like the appetite for that stuff is it's just not happening and it's like it's because of this understanding of disease transmission that we weren't talking about yep he's on ground zero for that oh okay yeah so so i mean we could we would be here till two o'clock in the morning but but but i i think my message is it's not as easy as the wishes and the money to save an animal now there's more there's more to look and see through the fishbowl

and i'll in mind i'll pass it to steve now oh well now that you said that, I would say short of disease, here at the Bamberg Ranch, our philosophy is it's our responsibility. As long as we can afford to do it, as long as that species is not detriment to our native species and our landscape, our land, we should do it. So that's something you look at, that you're like trumping this is native wildlife but right now those things can be harmonious absolutely yeah how do you guys

get funded i mean i'm assuming your funding doesn't come from the residents of chad no so our membership institutions uh fund us and primarily and then um of course and they're they're great they really are good at supporting our work um and then we get some small fees from other program members as well and then of course you know individual donors um uh benefactors so um you know we it's obviously been tough the last couple of years you know a pandemic and what have you so fundraising's been yeah yeah and and it's we need to do a lot more things like genomics testing um and so you know funding helps for that so if anybody wants to go to our website conservationcenters.org, we have a donate.

It's certainly appreciated. The one good thing is that genomics testing has come way down in price, and it's only going to get cheaper. But, you know, conservation work, as Warren was saying earlier, and testing to Steve has done all the work he's done, is that it's not cheap. You know, it takes a lot of effort. There's a lot of science involved. It's not just turning the animals loose, you know, transport, you know, breeding the whole nine yards. So, you know, we need support just like every other conservation organization

out there. Do you guys accept volunteers? I feel like you might get some volunteer requests. We get some. It's more for things we need in office because we're science based. We really leverage. It's our

facilities and our ranches like Steve. They really do the work. I feel like people are going to be like, ah, come out and wrassle that orcs. I'll show you how to grab one and that's that's also why for this model to work this consortium model i just mentioned one other thing that there's over 500 species survival plans um in in the the aza the zoo world it's estimated in the next few years for a variety of reasons um both financial practicality that half of those may go away and so this model this consortium is going to be very

important to picking those species up and they'd go away for what reason funding issues uh funding viability you know uh just hey this isn't you know don't say it's notability, you know, just, hey, this isn't, you know, don't want to say it's not working, but, you know, it may not be sustainable. Not the best place to put the money or whatever. Yeah, you know, habitat, all kinds of things, right? And so. So there's like a plan and it's more than just a piece of paper. Yeah, I mean, it's in development. This is all happening right now, we speak. So we're looking at how can we leverage this existing model,, help get people involved. And that ties back into

the earlier discussion, which is, you know, from a market standpoint, Bamberg is a little different, but, you know, these other facilities, the private ones, and even some of the public ones, they have to make a living, so to speak, you know, so, you know, they have to be able to move these animals, you know, and make it work for them. And if they can't, they're, you know so um you know they have to be able to move these animals you know and make it work for them and and if they can't they're you know it's not that they wouldn't have an interest in helping conservation but it just won't work for them yeah i'm with you what is the liability you said liability earlier like when it's like oh i want to have scimitar horned oryx on my place well like what i'll give you a really good example.

Please do. Because the only people that'll insure my company is Lloyd's of London. Oh, that's complicated. Oh, my gosh. My farms are from here to that canyon over there that I have to fill out. You're like, well, we go up in helicopters. So here's a good example of liability. You take what he's willing to do today because his whole approach is about education and helping look at what they do out here to educate the public.

We got in a pickup truck. We had a lady that was sitting on the tailgate. We had a calf on the ground with a mother that's not bluffing. We had a driver of a pickup truck so all those things come into play about liability that was like two minutes into our trip that's right and so i'm gonna get away get out of the way so the liability to include people in what we've done it is absolute um almost impossible at times for a guy like me to include the public in what I do because of the dangers. He's very organized, very, but don't think he doesn't have a risk sitting

in that pickup trucks or risk. And so, uh, if you, if you turn a seminar out, just, he's going to be on his own. What if somebody walked up on that calf uh so this is all about this this just this just doesn't happen by accident there's a lot of responsibility and a lot of things you have to do yeah i can see with liability because there's like a there's an actual like ownership path i mean if you get gored by a deer like whose damn deer is this you'd be like it's just the lands deer it's like it belongs it belongs to the state but it'd be like, whose damn deer is this? You'd be like, oh, it's just the land's deer. It's like it belongs to the state, but it'd be like, no, that orcs is...

Yeah, and it's already happened. It's already happened. Yeah, I got you. There's also the whole animal care aspect. And we have all kinds of experts that we draw from, you know, veterinarian, disease experts. I mean, these people are specialists. They've been doing this for, you know, decades, right? And, you know, someone like Steve

that's been doing this for a long time. So it's not just anybody can show up, um, you know, and, and do this. And so we always have a vetting process that we go through. We have an ethics document when they want to join a program and, you know, we, we do a whole check on them to make sure they know what they're getting into. They're capable, they have experience, you know, and, and every, there's a lot that goes into it. Not just anybody can get in the black rhino game. Exactly. That's exactly right.

Yeah. For a number of reasons. Yeah. So, uh, tell, so people can come visit this. So tell people how to come visit this place. Oh, the Bamberger Ranch. Uh, we're not open to the public. Uh, it's all by reservation.

But yeah, look on our website, bambergerranch.org. We do a multitude of things. We see a lot of kids, about 1,500 kids a year. Now, it doesn't sound like a lot, but you've met... Sounds like a lot to me.

I have zero. That sounds like a lot. That's 500 times sounds like a lot i have zero that sounds like five that's 500 times more than how many i deal with but you've met the you've met a quarter of the staff uh we've only got really four people here uh that deal with the the people ranching or the ecotourism aspect so yeah they can visit the website and come out for a tour uh we do also uh offer a whole series of workshops and landowner workshops to just give people new landowners in the area an idea of how to manage land. That's great.

Oh, that's cool, man. So if someone bought some property in the vicinity, they might come out to be like, what's possible? You could come here and see what's possible. Yeah. We show you how to get on a smaller scale what we have here. That's awesome. what's possible. We show you how to get on a smaller scale what we have here. That's awesome. That's nice.

He has some really interesting demonstrations, like what happens when you chop the juniper and looking at the water retention of grasses versus cedar and how that helps your water table, et cetera. It's really good stuff. Got it. And then your inner child, you might be missing out. We do have dinosaur footprints on the place.

What? We have places where we collect fossils. Oh, man. You've got to wrangle an org. That's something not most of our public do. I got to cuddle one. You did. You wrangled one, I cuddled one. That was a special treatment.

And then how do people go find if they want to get the broader picture of the organization, what's the best place to go look? Yeah, just conservationcenters.org. That's plural. And then how do people go find, like, if they want to get the broader picture of the organization, what's the best place to go look? Yeah, just conservationcenters.org. That's plural. And then go on there. You can see our programs and find out just a wealth of information and our member institutions, who we work with, et cetera. And how to make a donation.

Yeah, right there on the homepage. All right. Well, thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our pleasure. Pleasure. It's a privilege to be here with you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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