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Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col’s Week in Review with Ryan cow Calahan. Here’s cal The Conservancy of Southwest Florida announced a record hall of invasive pythons. Biologists from the conservation group removed one hundred and seventy seven pythons totaling eight thousand to eighty pounds of pure serpent mass during the previous breeding season of November twenty twenty five to April twenty twenty six, and they did it all in a two hundred square mile area in Collier County. The group says it’s quote the greatest biomass of invasive Burmese pythons removed in a single season by the Conservancy’s python tracking team and volunteers since the program began in twenty thirteen. Some of the snakes hauled in were pretty darn big, with the average female python weighing ninety five pounds and the biggest one being a one hundred and fifty three pounds seventeen foot bohema. Perhaps more importantly, biologists and volunteers blocked and estimated forty one hundred python eggs from getting into the world of the captured snakes. Females carried an average of seventy eggs apiece, and a quarter of them had eaten the remains of a native white tailed deer. What’s particularly impressive about the four ton haul is how it happened. The Conservancy employed the help of forty male scout snakes. Those snakes were tagged with radio telemetry devices, then researchers relied on the male snake’s desire to find a female. Once the male snakes slithered into a nest site, which are otherwise typically well hidden in thick brush, they reported to the scene and removed the females before they could breed. It’s a big win for native wildlife, as invasive pythons, as well as other species are known to be hell on all kinds of native gritters, such as raccoons, poss and bobcat, marsh rabbits, cottontails, and more. While the invasive reptiles will likely never be eradicated from the Sunshine State, removal efforts are important for mitigating their impact. Quote. Without the conservancies continued removal efforts, these invasive predators would still be out there, decimating native wildlife and reproducing across the landscape. Said Rod Moore, president CEO of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. This week, we’ve got hunting rights, technology regulations, and so much more. But first I’m going to tell you about my week. And my week has been filled with puppy and child rearing, on top of working hard to spread the word on threats to our public lands, the weaponization of the word access, and reminding folks how awesome our shared public resources, our public lands, waters and wildlife are and why they are also ours to lose. The puppy is closing in on ten weeks old. She already knows the place, command and sit. She’s also mostly successfully broken down the old dogs in the house. She’s made contact way less snarling and nipping than the was a week ago. Big changes having a human baby and a puppy in the house for a nine year old Border Collie and a six year old lab Big changes for Mom and I too. We’re getting the hang of things and for the most part, getting to bed a lot earlier, calculating heavily what type of adventures we can pull off and if the baby juice is worth the squeeze. I guess by the time you hear this, maybe July, which is wild. A little fellow was born May twenty two, and May seems like a different planet. Not a month and change day has gone by. The little boob beater is strapped to my chest, lightly fussing as I record this. If you hear a little baby squeal, you know why. Sportsmen and women in Colorado are pushing to get an initiative on the ballot this fall that would enshrine the right to hunt and fish in the state’s constitution. The measure is being pushed by a collective of hunting and fishing conservation groups, including Policy and Coalitions for the International Order of t Roosevelt, Colorado’s for Responsible Wildlife Management, and Howl for Wildlife. These groups have garnered nearly one hundred thousand signatures. They need one hundred and twenty five thousand verified signatures to meet the threshold required to get the measure on the ballot. The initiative is nearly identical to one that recently passed in Florida. That one was called Amendment to and passed with sixty seven percent of the vote. In total, around twenty four states already have the right to hunt and fish somewhere in their constitution. Enshrining these pursuits in a constitution can help fend off attempts by localities to restrict hunting and fishing, though it wouldn’t revive any currently prohibited hunting or fishing seasons or change any existing CPW that’s Colorado Parks and Wildlife Regulations. Travis Thompson, director of Policy and Coalitions for the International Order of t Roosevelt, told our friends over at Field and Stream that cementing the right to hunt fish in a state constitution is an important safeguard to these traditions. Quote. This puts a lock on the door. The lock’s not perfect. Someone could still kick it in, shoot it off, or come in through a window. But it’s just common sense to at least have a lock on the door. Or Dan Gates of Colorado’s Responsible Wildlife Management and I had talked about this on through the Gates Podcast, which is the CRWM podcast hosted by Dan. Even if you’re not in Colorado, there’s ways for folks who vacation, travel, hike, bike, fish, recreate. Even if you’re not doing it now and you want to in the future. You can weigh in on stuff like this. You can’t go sign that petition because it’s for residents, for legal voters of the state of Colorado. But what you can do is you can call Colorado Parks and Wildlife, you can call the governor, you can call state representatives and just let them know that hunting and fishing is the reason that you travel to other states such as Colorado and spend your hard earned bucks, and you would love to see something like this past. Again, that won’t necessarily translate to signatures on a petition, but those types of moves shown and that populous support does give our elected officials a little more backbone in these cases. Jumping over to Iowa the Tech Desk, Earlier this year, we talked about efforts to update technological hunting aids in Idaho, which included restricting the use of cellular trail cameras on publicly accessible lands there. A cellular trail camera is something that transmits images directly to you in real time while you’re at your desk, and that cameras in the field. And the argument, right is like that thing, because it’s transmitting in real time, is kind of like doing the hunting for you. Now, Iowa is looking to change its trail camera rags except this proposed change would impact standard trail cameras. Essentially, the Iowa Natural Resource Commission is looking to ban them on state managed land. Cell cams are already prohibited for hunting on both private and public land in the state. Chris Ensminger of the Iowa D and R says the proposed ban would quote protect the recreational experience of sportsmen and sportswomen and other visitors to these wild areas, and it ensures that hunters don’t gain an improper or unfair technological advantage over game animals. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is on board with the change. Listener nick Bach wrote in to let us know his stance, and he made some reasonable arguments. Quote this would only affect guys on public and have no implications on private I personally don’t really use trail cams, but I have a lot of friends who do and get good data out of them. I think this is unfair that they are imposing this only on state land. If they pushed this statewide and made it equal for everyone, I would support this. Do you have thoughts on the viability of trailcams on the private and public land in Iowa or elsewhere? I’d love to hear what you think at askcl that’s ascal at themeteater dot com. More importantly, if you hunt in Iowa and have a stance on the subject, they are accepting public comments until July twenty eighth. The best and I think, really, in my opinion, like the only reasonable argument for trail cameras is back in the day, it was a means of like motivation for exercise, and folks loved going out with their kids and pulling cards and you know, kind of like unwrapping Christmas presents seeing what they got on those cameras, you know, And I think, is that the only way to get outside with the family and get pictures of critters? Absolutely not, but it seemed to be a very good way of motivating the fam to get get out there on the trail with you. For the same purpose. Right of regulating our public wildlife, those regulations only apply to those of us who are hunting on public land. Again, the wildlife is public if it’s on the private side of the fence or the public side of the fence. However, often regulations, many of which we’ve cover here on this podcast only apply to us on the public side of the fence, and as we see the Center for Western Justice, I think is what it is, which is the law firm that’s going state to state and trying to get rid of the open fields doctrine, which is a tool that our game wardens and law enforcement officers can use to help enforce game laws on private land. So as this open fields doctrine starts getting repealed or rescinded from state laws, there go more tools in our wildlife managing agencies ability to regulate our public resource when it is on the private side of the fence. If the open fields doctrine is not perfect, then let’s find something more fitting. Ideally before we get rid of it. Can new AI powered technology help prevent bear conflicts? Conservation group called Polar Bears International thinks so. The group recently partnered with military tech companies Spotter Global on a project that uses medium range radar, camera and artificial intelligence to detect and identify polar bears near remote communities and bases in the Arctic. The technology can then alert people and also potentially trigger a remote deterrent like a strobe or sound. The system apparently works so far, at least on an Arctic landscape. Polar Bears International recently released a YouTube video showing the so called beardar Alert staff at a remote research station of a female polar bear and cubs. The staffers then used vehicles to haze the bear away from the base, and apparently they show the bears successfully hunt seals on sea ice the next day. It remains to be seen how widely this technology will be adopted in the artic and if it could be applicable in different landscapes. It’s a neat idea and it seems to be working well so far. See how we showed a balance of a negative spin on technology and here’s a possible positive spin. Moving on to the state news desk. First up, we’re going over to the Keystone State, where local hunting an outdoor rerecordation groups are sounding the alarm about Senate Bill eight five seven, which would require all land acquisitions by state agencies to pass a county government approval process. The sponsors of this one oppose more land going into the public trust, and so they want to throw up one more obstacle. But the process in place now works great. Private landowners who want to conserve their properties work with civil servants at Wildlife agencies to transfer over the land and manage it accordingly to scientific principles, no political middlemen. By routing this process through county governments, we all of a sudden inject politics into private property rights, essentially creating an unnecessary veto The sponsors of the bill contend that once these lands go into conservation, the local areas lose tax revenue, but the state’s payment in lieu of taxes program already routes money to localities to overcome that issue. Furthermore, public land access drives Pennsylvania’s outdoor economy, which generates a whopping twenty point four billion dollars for the state. Far from starving local areas of revenue, publicly accessible land in fact funnels money to those areas. The last thing we need are more barriers to conservation and public access. So Pennsylvanians, call your state senators and tell them to vote against SB eight five seven. You can also head over to the Backcountry Hunters in Angler’s website and navigate to the Pennsylvania chapter page and you’ll find a handy dandy mailing tool to send your opinion right to your state senator. Let’s not break the process in Pennsylvania people moving on to Indiana. The fifty thousand acre Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge is in danger of closing its gates due to federal budget cuts. Thanks to all you listeners who sent this one in. Big Oaks is a fascinating place. It was an originally an air to ground gunnery range during and after World War Two. That means they tested out different kinds of bombs by dropping them on this patch at Indiana. Eventually, the military only needed a small part of the total property, and so people at the state had a bright idea why not managed the former bombing range as wildlife habitat and publicly accessible land. So in the year two thousand, the US Fish and Wildlife Service began to manage the property as a so called overlay National Wildlife Refuge. The Army still owns the land, but Fish and Wildlife takes care of the land and coordinates public access. It’s been a wild success. In a true example of turning lemons into lemonade, the existing bomb craters have created what former refuge manager Joe Robb called quote, a mosaic of ephemeral wetlands used by endangered crawfish, frogs, salamanders and other frog species. Big Oaks is now a sanctuary for over one hundred and twenty birds, including the endangered henslow sparrow, and the Audubon Society has named it a quote unquote globally important bird area. As the second largest parcel of public land in the Hoosier State, it also is a keystone of public access there. Six thousand, hundred and anglers come to Big Oaks every year, along with nine thousand other visitors, including bird watchers who travel from all over the world just to see that particular species. But the refuge’s history makes it a bit more complex to access than some other places. Certain areas still contain unexploded ordinance and are therefore off limits, so every visitor has to go through a simple orientation and must sign in and out of the property. That means that although staffing wildlife refuges is important everywhere, it’s essential to access in Big Oaks, someone has to be on site to conduct the orientation. At the very minimum, maintaining the world class habitat also demands prescribed burns and other essential maintenance. However, the federal government recently cut all five on site employees at Big Oaks, and now the entire refuge is the responsibility of one official based in southern Illinois. Big Oaks is currently only open a few days a month, and now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a one hundred and eighty day notice to terminate the memorandum of understanding with the Army, which would close the refuge entirely. You may remember back in January when we covered a memo that Brian Nesvik, director of the USA Fish and Wildlife Service, posted to internal department staff ordering a quote unquote comprehensive review of all national wildlife refuges to identify quote refuges established for a purpose that no longer aligns with the mission unquote. The review also requests quote opportunities to achieve efficiencies in the areas of governance, oversight, and span of control. Now, on paper, closing refuges like Big Oaks fits right into this plan. That’s only, however, if you’re just looking on paper and you fail to see the context of what public access means when it’s extremely limited, such as in the state of Indiana. This is an absolute gem of an opportunity for hunters and anglers in the Hoosier state. Last week, there was an in person rally in Madison, Indiana to save Big Oaks. There’s also an online petition to restore funding and uphold the management agreement with the US Army. Our Indiana Chapter of BHA is working on this issue, and we’ve been in touch with US Fishing Wildlife Service, who has already expressed the fact that they do not want to see a loss of access and opportunity in Indiana, and we’re certainly looking at a more complex refuge situation. As a reminder, not every refuge out there has unexploded ordinance. We’ll stick with this one get to the bottom of it, but please check out change dot org save Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge, and run on over to Backcountry Hunters dot org and check out what the Indiana chapter is up to. Moving on to the Feds, the specific example of cutting the budget of Big Oaks is a good indication of the wider issue of public land funding nationally. Last week we highlighted the America the Beautiful Act, which would reauthorize the Legacy Restoration Fund and dedicate one point nine billion dollars per year to maintenance and improvement of public land across the country. It’s a great piece of legislation and we should all push for it. This is just like common sense legislation. However, the total maintenance backlog across all public lands in this country, national parks, national wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, and so on, has reached a gargange win forty one billion dollars as of last year and is growing at about twelve billion dollars per year. The Legacy Restoration Fund comes from revenue generated from energy development on public land, which is good, but it can’t replace all other government spending on America’s best idea. Some politicians are making a big noise about supporting the America the Beautiful Act and using it as proof that they care about public lands, but at the same time they’re voting for budgets that starve agencies like the US four Service System, National Park Service, the BLM, and all the rest. When they slash staff who take care of the day to day upkeep of public lands, they’re accelerating the deterioration that gets more and more expensive with every passing day. It would be a great idea to write in and remind your elected officials of what matters to you. I’m sure you’re reading the news and you’re seeing what our cash gets spent on. Not a bad idea to let him know you’re paying attention and you got some differences of opinion when it comes to your choice between ballrooms and big bucks. Jumping over to the bear desk. Most of the time, when we talk about bears and humans overlapping, things often go bad for the people and even worse for the bear, often fatally worse. That’s why we were relieved to see two stories from opposite sides of the country about a happier outcome for man and beast. First up, in Portland, Maine, a black bear wandered into the historic Old Port neighborhood last week, and who could blame him. There’s one restaurant there called Duck Fat, another one called Honeypop. Police and fishing game staff caught up to the bear in the basement level of a parking garage. They were able to tranquilize and relocate him to the wild. We hear he’s planning to open his own branch of the Honeypow near Sebago Lake this summer. Get in line for that pop up right now. Over to Nampa, Idaho, just outside of Boise, you call it the Greater Boise metropolitan area. At this point. In fact, a young yearling male bear was spotted in a tree in a residential neighborhood. Fishing Game Regional Wildlife Manager Ryan Walreth said quote often, euthanizing a bear in town is our only option, but this particular bear hadn’t yet become habituated to food and still showed a healthy fear of people. Fishing Game staff therefore decided that relocation had a good chance, so they darted the bear and released it north of town in Ola. Still sightings in Idaho are on the rise due to the ongoing drought. Bears are likely to keep seeking food and water near people as those things get harder to come by out in the woods. However, if bears are spotted early before they become part of the fed bear to dead bear program, there’s a higher chance of them living to raid a bee’s nest again some other day. So as soon as you see a bear in town, no matter how cute it is, get on the horn with local authorities right away. More importantly, make sure that your bird feeders and trash cans and garages are secure all right, gang much more common here. That’s all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to write into a s k c A L. That’s Ascal at the meeteater dot com. Let me know what’s going on in your neck the woods. You know I appreciate it. Thanks again, we’ll talk to you next week.
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