Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with James Campbell https://www.jamesmcampbell.com/, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/?hl=en, Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/?hl=en, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/. Topics discussed: James' latest book, "Heart of The Jaguar" https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867619; how much Steve loves our newest true crime-in-the-woods podcast, Blood Trails https://www.themeateater.com/listen/blood-trails by our colleague Jordan Sillars https://www.themeateater.com/people/jordan-sillars; the historic and preset-day ranges of jaguars; jaguar behavior, El Hefe; the latest jaguar sightings; reintroduction efforts; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:35Steven Rinella?

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• 1:21Steven Rinella?

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• 2:05Steven Rinella?

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• 2:20Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case underwearless.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  We're hunting, the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:29Steven Rinella?

  You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Lite. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Lite builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlite.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com.

• 2:55Steven Rinella?

  When's the play start, Phil?

• 2:57Speaker 05

  Ah, second week in December, I think.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Oh, you're gonna miss it.

• 3:00Steven Rinella?

  No, no, I got tickets too. Yeah, we got tickets. We're doing date night.

• 3:04Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  Are you going with Randall?

• 3:07Steven Rinella?

  It just came up in here. It came up in here and we followed through. Turn the machine on, Phil.

• 3:12Speaker 05

  Machine's on, Steve, it always is.

• 3:14Steven Rinella?

  It's the Cratchit Report.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  Here we go again.

• 3:16Steven Rinella?

  The Cratchit Report with Phil the Engineer. How you feeling, Phil?

• 3:22Speaker 05

  I'm feeling great. By the time this airs, we're a week or two away from opening. I'm excited. I've got like 75% of my lines down. I know that's an important stat for you.

• 3:31Steven Rinella?

  Hit me with, just give me a line. Give me a line. I saw your script was open on your desk the other day.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was memorizing mine.

• 3:37Steven Rinella?

  A shilling for a farthing.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  Ah, yeah, Scrooge, he seems unaffected by the seasons, even on Christmas Eve.

• 3:47Steven Rinella?

  Oh, and that's your British accent? Hit me with it again.

• 3:50Speaker 05

  Oh, no. This is a bad time for you to be doing this to me.

• 3:53Steven Rinella?

  Hit me with it again.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  He sits by the fire after, uh, after working, goes over the firm's accounts.

• 3:59Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Might want to work on it a little bit.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 4:02Steven Rinella?

  I'm not buying it.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  You're not buying it?

• 4:04Steven Rinella?

  Uh-uh.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  Because, because it doesn't sound like this, does it?

• 4:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. He wants you to sound like a cab driver. Same as any other night, I'd say. He'll never put it down, he'll throw it, he will. Bring it, man. He wants you to be a henchman from Braveheart. More Harry Potter.

• 4:21Speaker 07

  More Harry Potter.

• 4:22Steven Rinella?

  What night are we gonna be there, Randall? Uh, it's this, it's the Sunday performance, uh, I believe the 13th. So on the 13th, I don't care what you're doing, I'm not there. On the 13th, I want you to just come in hard.

• 4:33Speaker 07

  Okay, so scratch your previous notes about.

• 4:35Steven Rinella?

  Have any pudding?

• 4:36Speaker 07

  About all American accents, American currency, you don't want that, you want full blown.

• 4:41Steven Rinella?

  I did, but I changed my mind. I want you to bring it now, and I want you to sound like what I expect a old timey English guy to sound like.

• 4:47Speaker 07

  An unwell Cockney man.

• 4:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 4:52Steven Rinella?

  Joined today by the author, James Campbell, um, who's got a ton of books, man. Books that would be a very, uh, of high interest to listeners. Um, James Campbell, he's a magazine writer for a long time, but he wrote The Final Frontiersman, which if you haven't read it, you've seen it around, I'm sure. He wrote The Ghost Mountain Boys, which I just finished two nights ago. Here's the problem I run, and I always, I'm always honest with guests.

• 5:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:17Steven Rinella?

  I didn't get to the Jaguar book yet. Because I got sidetracked by Ghost Mountain Boys.

• 5:23Speaker 07

  I'm not sure what I should think of that, but thank you.

• 5:25Steven Rinella?

  I'm getting there. It's like the stack, the stack, see, I got onto, and Randall's been on one too. I got onto a Whiskey Whiskey Two book kit. Kit. Yeah, we spent a lot of time in the Pacific. Well, it was a two book, so I read The Battle, uh, The Battle for Manila, The Battle of Manila, like an academic title that just came out. And that got me all fired up.

• 5:44Speaker 07

  About World War II in the South Pacific.

• 5:46Steven Rinella?

  Pacific theater. My old man was European theater.

• 5:48Speaker 07

  Oh, he was.

• 5:49Steven Rinella?

  So I know that well.

• 5:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:51Steven Rinella?

  But then I got to, then I, I just, it just kind of opened up this whole world of suffering.

• 5:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:56Steven Rinella?

  Just like, it's like World War II.

• 5:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:58Steven Rinella?

  With malaria.

• 5:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:59Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 6:00Speaker 07

  With dysentery.

• 6:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's just like the disease function.

• 6:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:03Steven Rinella?

  Just stuff I wasn't, like, I was familiar with all his stories, you know, like, people freezing their toes off and everything, and then, and I, of course, I was aware. You know, my, my, my, my wife's grandfather was a Marine on Iwo Jima, right? I was aware, but.

• 6:20Steven Rinella?

  Anyways, I got into the Battle of Manila. Then I got into this and I never got to the damn Jaguar.

• 6:27Steven Rinella?

  But we're gonna talk about, I'm like, super interested in Jaguars, sure. But what, what

• 6:31Speaker 07

  But it hasn't dissuaded you from continuing on to the Jaguar book?

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. I'm more excited than ever about it.

• 6:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:37Steven Rinella?

  But, but the, the Ghost Mountain, the Ghost Mountain Boys, what year did this one come out?

• 6:41Speaker 07

  Two thousand eight.

• 6:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 6:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:43Steven Rinella?

  The Ghost Mountain Boys tells the tale of the, the campaign in Papua New Guinea.

• 6:47Speaker 07

  Yeah. And a lot of them were from your country. From Southern Michigan.

• 6:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 6:52Speaker 07

  Lots of the guys.

• 6:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 6:53Speaker 07

  Company G, Company E, yeah.

• 6:55Steven Rinella?

  Tums them from my, the county I came from.

• 6:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:58Steven Rinella?

  And, um, the thing that, uh, there was a couple of things that like, about it that really stuck me. One, just the disease factor. Like, most of your casualties are tropical diseases.

• 7:10Speaker 07

  Yeah. Which MacArthur never took into consideration when he sent those guys over the mountains. You know, they had, they had dysentery, they had jungle rot, they had trench foot, they had malaria.

• 7:20Steven Rinella?

  Hookworm.

• 7:21Speaker 07

  Hookworm, and they, he never considered that that would happen.

• 7:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 07

  How could he not? After having been in the Philippines? Yeah.

• 7:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's just disgusting. And then, and then in the end, you realize, they're taking these guys and I don't know if, if listeners, I'm sure you've been on malaria medication.

• 7:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 7:39Steven Rinella?

  Like malaria medication leads to like its own little form of psychosis. Like, there's people that can't take it.

• 7:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right.

• 7:45Steven Rinella?

  I mean, it gives you like wild dreams, it can send you into bouts of depression, especially the stuff they used to use.

• 7:50Speaker 07

  Lariam.

• 7:51Steven Rinella?

  They take these guys, and like, there's this one guy that you follow through the book, who's writing all these loving letters with his wife, he's got kids waiting at home.

• 8:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:02Steven Rinella?

  Then they go to treat him for malaria and they dose him so heavy with this drug, they didn't understand the psychological effects.

• 8:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:09Steven Rinella?

  They start dosing them with this drug and he shoots himself in the head.

• 8:11Speaker 07

  Adibran psychosis, it was called. So he, he was the division surgeon, a guy named Major Simon Warmanhoven. And he was an amazing guy. So I'd finished the book, completely, ready to turn it into my publisher. And Simon Warman, Warmanhoven's two daughters, happened to find my number and they called me up. And they said, "I want to send you the love letters that my dad sent to my mom from Papua New Guinea. Would you be willing to look at him?" And I said, "Yeah, I'd love to see him." So I read all hundred love letters. Oh my gosh. And then I called my publisher and I said, stop the press. These are too beautiful.

• 8:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, it's.

• 8:54Speaker 07

  I have to completely rewrite the book and write in this character and write in his love letters because they're just so heart, heart wrenching.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 07

  And um, my publisher gave me an extra two months to their credit.

• 9:08Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 9:10Speaker 07

  That's not much. So I wrote hurriedly, but can you imagine that the, first of all, the courage of his daughters because obviously, you know, you, there's a stigma attached to the, you know, to, to shooting yourself, but it was adren psychosis and they had a lot of that.

• 9:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't know him, but like you look at the transition and then even say his last letter home and he's on the treatment. His last letter home is like, I try not to let it happen.

• 9:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 9:36Steven Rinella?

  But I have the blues. That's why I haven't been writing.

• 9:39Speaker 07

  Yeah. And he had to, he had, and he was in Brisbane at the end, just outside of Brisbane at the, at the thirty second division hospital and he was caring for all these men, you know, who'd been wounded in battle and who had various diseases, tropical diseases. And I mean, he was just overwhelmed in addition to taking adren and having adren psychosis. Yeah. It's just a, just a horrible story.

• 10:06Steven Rinella?

  You know, another thing that, that came out reading this and reading that, that book about the battle for Manila and also just documentaries I've been seeing and stuff is, is it seems like, we're kind of running out of them now. It seems like as a lot of veterans from World War Two got to a certain age.

• 10:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:26Steven Rinella?

  They became more ready to discuss. I don't want to call them like, what would, what would be regarded as war crimes, but I don't even want to like condemn it.

• 10:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, right.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  But it became like later in life, like I watched this, watched this series and there and I was watching these old guys being like, they're talking about the, the concentration camps.

• 10:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:46Steven Rinella?

  And they're like, anyone that worked at a concentration camp, we just lined them up, shot them.

• 10:50Speaker 07

  Uh huh. Right.

• 10:51Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 10:52Speaker 07

  Right.

• 10:52Steven Rinella?

  And guys in here, they're. Like guys that are talking about stuff later, whatever, it just seems like for a long time, a lot of that stuff was just not mentioned.

• 11:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, they don't get their day in court.

• 11:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and now it seems like more people are like, no, man, I mean, we didn't, we didn't deal with prisoners.

• 11:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 11:10Steven Rinella?

  Or we didn't like to deal with prisoners.

• 11:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, you're talking about the Japanese, the wounded Japanese, they would just stick them with their bayonets.

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 07

  And of course, they didn't talk about that till a lot later. But a lot of those guys I contacted, ultimately contacted about 80 guys that fought on the island in New Guinea, and I interviewed a lot of them, and a lot of them, I drove over to Michigan, you know, to interview these guys. And typical story, you know, they'd never told their stories about World War II. I think James Bradley in Flags of Our Fathers said, "They came home and they got on with living."

• 11:43Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:44Speaker 07

  You know, they didn't want to remember, so they, you know, they deliberately just repressed this stuff. And I started talking to them, and initially, they'd tell funny stories, you know, and I'd go to their old timers division meeting, and they'd tell jokes and listen to bad poker music, you know, and play cards all night. But slowly, they started to like, reveal stuff. And then it was like, it was like this gusher of emotion. You can imagine after, you know, 50 years, this trapped inside, you know, they never talked about it. And sometimes their wives would call me up and say, you know, so-and-so, you gotta, you can't interview him anymore. He's, he has nightmares every night.

• 12:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you're kidding me, it was bringing it back up?

• 12:26Speaker 07

  And it's haunting him. And I said, okay, that's the last thing in the world I want to do, you know, is put him through this again. But then they would call back, and they would say, no, man, I gotta talk about this. This is the first time I've ever talked about this in my life. My kids don't even know these stories. I have to keep talking. So it was, yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty emotional.

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 12:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was.

• 12:50Steven Rinella?

  You know, I don't like, you know, I usually, I don't like any.

• 12:54Speaker 07

  No, not any.

• 12:57Steven Rinella?

  I think the only, you know.

• 13:00Speaker 07

  What?

• 13:01Steven Rinella?

  I'm a Bob Service fan.

• 13:02Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. I love Bob Service.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  He's a poet. I heard he's a poet.

• 13:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, and Clady Bailey.

• 13:08Steven Rinella?

  But where's his poem?

• 13:09Speaker 07

  Clady Bailey used to.

• 13:10Steven Rinella?

  Where's his poem this dude wrote?

• 13:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:12Steven Rinella?

  It's the first time we ever read a poem.

• 13:14Speaker 07

  Possibly, quite possibly. Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 06

  Reads books, so you don't have to.

• 13:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, Bob Hartman, right.

• 13:20Steven Rinella?

  This is a veteran.

• 13:21Speaker 07

  Grand Rapids.

• 13:22Steven Rinella?

  Did he write this much after the war?

• 13:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, he did. He did.

• 13:26Steven Rinella?

  Okay. "I laid him down by the bend in the stream and erected a cross at his head. His funeral song was a cockatoo's scream, as if they knew my buddy was dead. I've evened the score, yes, a dozen, a dozen times over. But no matter the distance between, my mind wanders yet and I'll never forget his grave by the bend in the stream."

• 13:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's poignant.

• 13:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's got a Bob Service quality to it.

• 13:56Speaker 07

  It does, it does. Yeah, it does have a Bob Service.

• 13:58Steven Rinella?

  It's these poets that don't even bother rhyming.

• 14:00Speaker 07

  Right.

• 14:01Steven Rinella?

  It's just that.

• 14:02Speaker 07

  Bob, um, Bob Hartman is the same guy that said, "If I owned New Guinea and I owned hell, I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea."

• 14:14Steven Rinella?

  But you just, you just got back from New Guinea.

• 14:16Speaker 07

  I just got back, yeah.

• 14:17Steven Rinella?

  So what, uh, we're, we're gonna get, don't worry about it. We're gonna get to the Jaguar. We're gonna get to the Jaguar situation.

• 14:21Speaker 07

  I love talking about New Guinea.

• 14:22Steven Rinella?

  But, but what were you doing there now?

• 14:24Speaker 07

  So, two things, well, three things.

• 14:26Steven Rinella?

  Can you help me understand something?

• 14:27Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 14:29Steven Rinella?

  Why do, what is the difference between saying Papua New Guinea and saying New Guinea?

• 14:33Speaker 07

  So the isle, the, the, the entire island is called New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is a separate, is a separate nation on the eastern half, formerly an Australian colony, German colony once upon a, it was called Kaiser Wilhelm's Land way back when. And the other side is owned by, is part of Indonesia, and that's called West Papua.

• 14:54Speaker 07

  So the whole island is called New Guinea.

• 14:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay, no idea.

• 14:57Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 14:58Speaker 07

  So, um, I've been going there since nineteen eighty-nine. Um, my brother and I first went there on a, you know, you know, young men's adventure or misadventure. But somewhere, and I took my wife there for our honeymoon, by the way, and she got malaria.

• 15:16Speaker 07

  How romantic.

• 15:20Speaker 07

  Her parents wanted her to ditch me so fast.

• 15:25Speaker 07

  Fortunately, she did, and three daughters later. Um, but, uh, I discovered for the first time, I didn't even know the story.

• 15:34Steven Rinella?

  You're staying close to your mic.

• 15:35Speaker 07

  Okay, I didn't even know the story of the war in Papua New Guinea. But anyway, um, so in two thousand and six, we, I rep- repeated the trek that the Ghost Mountain Boys did for the first time since World War Two. And, um, I became interested in the villages and just the World War Two history. So on the most recent trip, we brought in people there in the villages, isolated villages, they die of skin infections. You know, they're dying of malaria, so we brought in four thousand dollars worth of medicines that the one health clinic can, um, you know, can give out to the people, you know, they have a little cut, you know, that

• 16:14Speaker 07

  they eventually lose their leg or lose their life, so, you know, it doesn't have to be dramatic stuff, but medicines to help them. And, um, that, the Ghost Mountain Trail used to be called the Kappa Kappa Trail because there was a village called Gabba Gabba, the soldiers couldn't pronounce it, it became Kappa Kappa, it was called the Kappa Kappa Trail. And, um, we want that to be a national historic trail, like the Kokoda Trail, I don't know if you guys

• 16:41Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 16:41Speaker 07

  have ever heard of it, that's where the Australians fought the Japanese on the island of New Guinea on the Kokoda Trail. And now five thousand truckers come every summer to Papua New Guinea to trek the Kokoda Trail where their, you know, grandfathers or great-grandfathers or great-uncles fought the Japanese, so it's a big deal.

• 17:03Steven Rinella?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  So we want to try to bring Americans over to Papua New Guinea to walk this trail, it's twenty-one days. It's over the own Stanley Mountains, it's tough.

• 17:12Steven Rinella?

  Y'all, you'll run that son of a bitch.

• 17:13Speaker 07

  What's that?

• 17:14Steven Rinella?

  Y'all need to run it.

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Is it?

• 17:16Speaker 07

  Hundred and thirty miles.

• 17:17Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 17:18Speaker 07

  But it is straight up and straight down. Straight up, you know, you go up to nine thousand feet. Are you a runner?

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Little bit.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  Well, by a little bit, like a hundred miles at a time. Okay. Thirty thousand feet of elevation at a time.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  How, what's the elevation when you say up and down?

• 17:35Speaker 07

  Well, with the plane we tried to find on this trip was at about ten thousand feet. But the old Stanleys get up to about twelve thousand. But you're going through solid jungle. I mean, absolute solid jungle. I remember, I don't want to go astray here, but I was reporting in two thousand six for National Public Radio. And I was doing, I was calling them and doing interviews with them from the jungle. And um, my first interview, um, I, I, I was late for, so I grabbed the sat phone. And I wandered out into the jungle and I did my interview and then I thought, I don't know where the hell I am.

• 18:15Speaker 07

  I have no idea where I am. You lost your direction quick. Yeah, I lost my direction that fast. I was probably like forty feet. Oh, I could picture. You're not being deliberate. No, not being deliberate at all. And so I'm screaming, you know, out of my lungs. And fortunately, one of the villagers, one or one of the carriers that was with us happened to find me. Otherwise, who knows?

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Is there, when you say trail?

• 18:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  You know, it can have a lot of different definitions. So at this point, what is it like? Could just a regular old hiker follow?

• 18:48Speaker 07

  No, it's like, it's like a deer trail or a rabbit trail through the woods. And the people of New Guinea are the most like physically fit people you've ever seen. It's like the people of the Andes or something. They, they, um, they live in the mountains, so they're accustomed to it. They just walk straight up and straight down. No national park switchbacks. So it, yeah, I mean, it's tough, but if you ever want to come in, I'd love to thank you. You need to organize a big. You can't run it.

• 19:20Speaker 07

  So.

• 19:20Steven Rinella?

  You need to organize like one of them races.

• 19:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 19:24Steven Rinella?

  Call them malaria one thirty.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm sure with with the recent explosion in in participation in these endurance races, you could very easily get.

• 19:36Speaker 07

  That's interesting.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  A couple hundred people to go and fast hike, run your that trail.

• 19:41Speaker 07

  Hadn't even considered it, but just to finish the story, we we were my my part, my co partner in Australia found a plane called the Flying Dutchman. Um, you know, the ode to the Michiganders at ten thousand feet, he found it last year and it hadn't been seen since I think like nineteen sixty seven. So we were taking a small group up into the mountains to to to identify the plane, see the plane, touch the plane and retell the story of.

• 20:11Steven Rinella?

  Are the remains in there still?

• 20:12Speaker 07

  No, they're gone. They've been taken, they were taken out, I think in nine, I can't remember the date. But the plane, pain, plane has this really poignant story about it crashed and I think six of the guys were killed. The um, eight, fifteen of the guys were too injured to get out. But um, two parties tried to make it out. One party marched to the north coast, it took them about thirty days to get through the jungle and another party marched, a guy from named Ed Holloman from just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, found safety after about thirty days and they tried to court martial him for leaving the plane.

• 20:55Speaker 07

  And he did, I mean, he saved these guys' lives and it was.

• 20:58Steven Rinella?

  What happened to the guys that went the other direction?

• 21:00Speaker 07

  The other guy, they they actually, two of the guys drowned, they tried to, they tried to ride logs on the river to the north coast and two of the guys drowned, the other two of the guy, the other two guys made it to safety. Tried to get a rescue party to come back to save the guys on the plane. The rescue party stopped one day short because they ran out of food and ultimately all the guys on the plane died.

• 21:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 21:27Speaker 07

  So, in fact, the chaplain died in the arms of the villagers who found the plane. Um, on January 7th, 1943. So it's, yeah, it's really, it's a terrible story, so.

• 21:41Steven Rinella?

  What was the plane, what was it, what were they doing at the time?

• 21:44Speaker 07

  So you read about the Ghost Mountain Boys who walked over the mountains. They were trying, they'd found usable airfields on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, near the battlefield of Buna. And they were trying to fly the guys over instead of having them walk. And they were probably trying to punch holes in the clouds. Cause they hadn't, they hadn't really flown over the own Stanleys very much. They called it the hump, like in Burma, they called it the hump. And, um, the, you know, that, that plane crashed up there at 10,000 feet. So, but they were, the intention was to fly them over to the battlefield.

• 22:19Steven Rinella?

  Wow. Okay, by way of a transition into Jaguars, that's why you're here, right?

• 22:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure, but I love talking about Papua New Guinea and the Ghost Mountain Boys.

• 22:28Steven Rinella?

  Uh, it's gonna be a gradual transition, cause two things, so, so, so. James's books are for reading, ours are for cooking. We got, uh, just letting people know here. So we took our two cookbooks, our Meat Eater Fishing Game Cookbook and our Outdoor Cookbook and made like a gift box.

• 22:46Steven Rinella?

  You get both of them right here in this sweet box, two for one. Great gift item. We signed, we signed a whole mountain of them.

• 22:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, only place you can get the signed ones is on the Meat Eater website.

• 22:57Steven Rinella?

  Not true.

• 22:59Speaker 07

  Where else you get it?

• 22:59Steven Rinella?

  In the stores.

• 23:00Speaker 07

  Oh, the two retail stores.

• 23:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we just signed a whole mountain of them. And then, uh, yeah. It's a very, it's a very economical way of getting both our books for someone for Christmas. I'm not even gonna get into F'd up old trucks, but look at this. Hmm. That make you want to get a calendar? Hell of a calendar. Not getting into that. The other plug is this. A while back on the show, we ran an episode of something called Blood Trails. It was about that dude who was turkey hunting and got shot in the back while he's turkey hunting. And they've like interviewed all these guys. They've definitely interviewed whoever did it, but they have yet to. How many years has it been? Like seventeen years, eighteen years?

• 23:39Speaker 06

  Something like that.

• 23:40Steven Rinella?

  So we got a whole series out now called Blood Trails, a podcast. And it's about hunting and fishing related like murders, cold cases, mysteries. It's really good. Jordan Sillars has been doing a phenomenal job on it. So check out and subscribe to the Blood Trails podcast feed. Um, it turned out, I'm very proud of it. It turned out very, very good. Uh, it's, it's well worth the listen. He did a phenomenal job. And rather like a lot of that kind of stuff, it's like some dude will go read like a Wikipedia entry or read somebody else's book. And then they'll make like a podcast where they basically like regurgitate some stuff they just read.

• 24:22Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's like interviews. It's interviews with, it's interviews with investigators. It's interviews with victims' families. It's, it's, it's very well done, like a ton of original reporting in it. It's a great series.

• 24:37Steven Rinella?

  All right.

• 24:38Speaker 07

  Jaguars.

• 24:39Steven Rinella?

  Jaguars. Is this stuff good here, Phil?

• 24:41Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 24:43Steven Rinella?

  How many Jaguars are floating around in the world right now?

• 24:46Speaker 07

  Well, there's a big discrepancy between the numbers. One number is sixty-three thousand. Another, the other number is seven, one hundred and seventy-three thousand. Most, most Jaguar biologists think the lower number is the more accurate number. But about, um, eighty percent of those Jaguars, let's say sixty-three thousand, let's say a hundred thousand, are in the Amazon or the Pantanal of Brazil.

• 25:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 25:17Speaker 07

  Outside that, so the, the, in the IUCN, the Jaguar is considered threatened or near threatened. But if you eliminate the Amazon and the Pantanal, they're considered endangered or critically endangered.

• 25:31Steven Rinella?

  Hmm, which.

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• 26:04Steven Rinella?

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• 26:44Steven Rinella?

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• 27:41Steven Rinella?

  Would be true of a lot of wildlife species. I mean, if you eliminate their core range.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, good point.

• 27:47Steven Rinella?

  Then it looks grim.

• 27:49Speaker 07

  It looks grim, yeah. However, um, you know, with with the corridor, there's a reinvestment of time and effort into the corridor. Um, there's something called the 2030 roadmap that um, a lot of the environmental organizations have signed on to, including Panthera, WCS, lots of other IUCN. Um, and by 2030, they want to, um, they want to solidify 30 jaguar conservation units and connect 30 more potential jaguar units. So, so there's a big, across Latin America and South America, there's kind of this new appreciation of what the jaguar represents.

• 28:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, like, explain their historic range a little bit. And while you're doing that, can you touch on, did, do you believe Coronado ran into jaguars, like way up in Kansas?

• 28:43Speaker 07

  First of all, yeah, I do believe Coronado ran into jaguars. Yeah, I think that, when was Coronado, what was the date?

• 28:50Steven Rinella?

  Late 15s.

• 28:51Speaker 07

  Late 1500s, definitely. Yeah, I think jaguars were pretty much spread across much of the United States.

• 28:57Steven Rinella?

  Cause he talks about, he talks about leopards?

• 29:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:01Steven Rinella?

  And he talks about lions.

• 29:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:02Steven Rinella?

  And you're like, the lions, mountain lions.

• 29:06Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:06Steven Rinella?

  But then people are like, what in the hell is he talking about?

• 29:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 29:09Steven Rinella?

  When he mentions seeing leopards.

• 29:11Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I do think, um, up until, up until probably 1900, they were in, you know, Colorado, in California, in West Texas, um, Alabama, Louisiana.

• 29:26Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:28Steven Rinella?

  You think that?

• 29:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, I do.

• 29:30Steven Rinella?

  Alabama and Louisiana, you think legit?

• 29:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think it's legit. I mean, you, look at their, look at the habitat. I mean, that's the, that's the ideal habitat for a jaguar.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  Until what year?

• 29:41Speaker 07

  Uh, up until maybe nineteen hundred, maybe, maybe mid eighteen hundreds. Um, but their range, their, their range is now five thousand latitudinal miles from southern Arizona. Right now, there's one jaguar roaming the mountains of southern Arizona.

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the US is usually good for like one.

• 30:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, one or two, right. His name is Cochise. And he was discovered in, uh, I think late, uh, twenty twenty-three. But, um, so it all the way down to the Ibera in northern Argentina. But of course, one.

• 30:16Steven Rinella?

  Is that how you say that word?

• 30:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, the Ibera.

• 30:18Steven Rinella?

  No, I've been there.

• 30:18Speaker 07

  Oh, have you?

• 30:19Steven Rinella?

  I thought it was the Ibera. No, I fish down there.

• 30:21Speaker 07

  Oh, really?

• 30:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, the Ibera wetlands.

• 30:24Speaker 07

  Well, maybe it is. I, I've called it Ibera. Well, well, we'll ask a Spanish expert, I suppose. But yeah, so in where they're actually doing a reintroduction of jaguars now, but.

• 30:36Steven Rinella?

  That's like near the, that's where like that, that deadly triangle, Paraguay, Uruguay.

• 30:41Speaker 07

  That's exactly right.

• 30:42Steven Rinella?

  They all come together. It's like kind of a little bit of a lawless.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  What kind of fishing were you doing down there?

• 30:48Steven Rinella?

  Golden Drado and piranha.

• 30:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, wow. So, once upon a time, yeah, they, I mean, they migrated, obviously, over the Bering land bridge like a million years ago. And then they saw a bunch of ice in front of them, so they, they, they stayed for many generations in kind of the Yukon, Yukon territories. And then as that, as that ice begin to, began to melt during the Pleistocene warmups. I mean, what were they, like twenty or something like that? The jaguars started moving south, moved into Canada, then into Montana, you know, the grasslands of North and South Dakota and Kansas. And then continued to move down to, you know, uh, almost the tip of South America.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  So they didn't evolve as like a warm weather tropical species?

• 31:32Speaker 07

  No, they're, they're, they're complete generalists. You know, they can, they can live anywhere.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  Just like a mountain lion, kind of.

• 31:38Speaker 07

  Like a mountain lion or, uh, so I was down in southern Bolivia in the Grand Chaco. Um, the Grand Chaco is like. parched country, brittle parched country and the Jaguars thrive there.

• 31:55Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 31:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. They thrive in the Sierra Madres of Mexico. They thrive in the Madrean Sky Islands of Arizona. They're really, they're remarkable creatures.

• 32:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I know there's a picture. I have this book called Candid Critters.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:12Steven Rinella?

  And it's like influential trail cam photos.

• 32:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:16Steven Rinella?

  Um, and there is, I think at the time, it was maybe the only known photo taken in Arizona of a Jaguar standing in the snow.

• 32:25Speaker 07

  In the Huachuca Mountains, I think.

• 32:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay, yeah. But you're saying that was not, that's not a problem for the Jaguar?

• 32:32Speaker 07

  Well, I don't, I don't know about snow. Snow might be pushing it.

• 32:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 07

  But, um, he was obviously, not she, but likely he was obviously in the Huachuca Mountains. You know, you get snow there and, you know, in late April.

• 32:47Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 32:47Speaker 07

  So, but I'm familiar with that photo.

• 32:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:51Steven Rinella?

  I, uh, I've seen a bunch of tracks, Jaguar tracks, not in the US.

• 32:57Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 32:58Steven Rinella?

  One time we were, um, can't remember where we were. Well, we were, it was in Guyana. And we were, there's this big sandbar where the turtles were.

• 33:08Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:09Steven Rinella?

  Nesting.

• 33:10Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 33:11Steven Rinella?

  So, we went there with native people to dig turtle eggs.

• 33:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:17Steven Rinella?

  And you could see where the Jaguars were digging the turtle eggs out and probably also hunting um, the turtles when they come out of the water.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:27Steven Rinella?

  Right? We go back to our camp and then a couple of guys went back to the sandbar to take a bath.

• 33:33Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 33:34Steven Rinella?

  And there's tracks all over. I was dying to see one. I was dying to see one.

• 33:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:37Steven Rinella?

  There's tracks all over. They turn around and go right back to take a bath and they're like, as soon as we got there, there's a Jaguar standing on the gravel bar. I'm like, son of a bitch, man. I missed him by like, I'm not kidding, I missed him by 20 minutes.

• 33:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, just because he didn't want to take a bath.

• 33:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, whatever. But no, I've never laid eyes on one, man. I would.

• 33:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, they're incredible.

• 33:54Steven Rinella?

  You've no doubt laid eyes on them. When was the first time you saw one?

• 33:57Speaker 07

  In the Pontin. So the Pontanal is kind of like Kruger National Park of of Brazil. So the Jaguars there have become habituated to to people. And this was during this was during covid, so there were almost no other tourists. But um, we were, we were on on the Quiaba River uh in in motoring, motoring down the river into one of the tributaries. And um, all, you know, we're all looking at the banks of the river. And all of a sudden, I spotted, I spotted one, you know, kind of lounging in the sand underneath the tree. And just then the guide, you know, the the boat captain and guide also also saw that Jaguar.

• 34:39Speaker 07

  And I'll never forget, he's he's he was like, barely whispered, he said, Onsa. And Onsa, you know, Pantera Onsa is is, you know, the the name for the Jaguar.

• 34:51Steven Rinella?

  What was that? What is that word?

• 34:52Speaker 07

  So Pan- Pantera is the genus and then Osa. I mean, um, Onsa is the, is it, would it be the family name? I'm not sure.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  No genus. But I mean, what does that word mean?

• 35:07Speaker 07

  Jaguar. Ja- so he just said, he just said Jaguar. And all he had to do was whisper it, and man, my whole body was. And this hue, we we we anchored the boat just offside, just uh uh outside the bank, the riverbank. And all of a sudden, this Jaguar rose. Just this absolutely enormous Jaguar, absolutely beautiful, and came to the river to drink. And he was just unperturbed, you know? It wasn't, it wasn't like he he moved quickly. In I think in the book, I describe it something like music. I mean, like every part of his body just operated so beautifully.

• 35:51Speaker 07

  And he stood there drinking, then he looked up at us, and then he walked kind of broadside to us down the river. And it was just, I mean, it was magnificent.

• 36:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's just like a, uh uh like having not seen one, I'm just fascinated by them, and it is just a different critter, man.

• 36:09Speaker 07

  Even people who've seen. How do they compare to a mountain lion?

• 36:16Speaker 05

  A burlier, right?

• 36:18Speaker 07

  So I think the biggest.

• 36:21Speaker 07

  There, I was with this, um, this Brazilian trapper. He, he, he traps and, you know, collars jaguars. The biggest one, he's, I think, trapped in collared a hundred. His name is Joe R S May and he's famous. And he's trapped about three hundred, you know, maybe a hundred and twenty jaguars. The biggest one he's ever trapped was three hundred pounds.

• 36:42Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 36:42Speaker 07

  You know, like a, you know, like a lioness in Africa.

• 36:46Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:46Speaker 07

  And, but in the, in the Pontanal, they grow them big. In the Amazon, they, they grow them big. Um, but, you know, if you get one in northern Mexico, or say one in Arizona, they're gonna be maybe a hundred and thirty or a hundred and forty pounds.

• 37:02Steven Rinella?

  Like a lion.

• 37:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, like, yeah, exactly, like a lion. So they're much, much smaller. Same species, but just much, much smaller. Um, and I don't know if it has to do with habitat or food. I mean, jaguars eat like eighty-five different species, everything from frogs to skunks, you know, to javelinas. But, um, I think Teddy Roosevelt, he, he hunted jaguars in the Pontanal with his, with his son Kermit. And I think, um, there's one account, he said, uh, Kermit shot a jaguar with a four oh five Winchester and it was as big as a small male, you know, African lion. So I imagine that was three hundred pounds or maybe even more.

• 37:46Speaker 07

  Do they have, um, like, uh, leopards and tigers in India, so do they have a reputation for attacking people or not really? That's, that's the thing, just no, almost no accounts of unprovoked attacks. And, um, Alan Rabinowitz, the guy I wrote about, called them the reluctant warrior. Um, he said they were much, much more comfortable kind of eluding man. And there's a biologist down in Brazil who said man was never part of their prey template for one thing, and also there's something called the tigriadas, which was the jaguar craze, which Jackie Onassis, um...

• 38:30Speaker 07

  Set off when she stepped out of a limousine in a knee-length, double-breasted Somali leopard coat, and she started this, this fashion craze for spotted cat accessories. So.

• 38:48Steven Rinella?

  God, you're making me like Kennedy.

• 38:50Speaker 07

  So, so what happened during the Tigri Yadas maybe is like what happened during, to grizzlies in the United States.

• 39:00Steven Rinella?

  Can you tell me the word? What is the word?

• 39:01Speaker 07

  It's T I G Tigri Yadas.

• 39:05Steven Rinella?

  The tiger.

• 39:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, the tiger craze. Yeah. And.

• 39:09Steven Rinella?

  And that set off a market hunting campaign.

• 39:11Speaker 07

  Huge.

• 39:12Steven Rinella?

  In the 60s.

• 39:13Speaker 07

  In, in the 60s to 1975, when Cides finally stepped in and tried to eliminate the trafficking. But in, in, from 1962 to 1975, 180,000 Jaguars were killed in Brazil alone.

• 39:30Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 39:31Speaker 07

  For, for the fashion, maybe not all for the fashion industry, but for far, part of the fashion industry, more Jaguars than we have now. It total.

• 39:40Steven Rinella?

  During what years?

• 39:41Speaker 07

  1963 to 1975 during the.

• 39:44Steven Rinella?

  They were not running a quota program.

• 39:45Speaker 07

  They were not running, no. Everybody was out trying to kill Jaguars. Alan Rabinowitz said they had the dollar sign on the back right next to the bullseye.

• 39:56Steven Rinella?

  What was the, at that time, what kind of money was a Jaguar hiding? Like, it must have been extraordinary to drive that level of commitment. Cause it's not like they're like hanging out in alfalfa fields.

• 40:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, right. Maybe $200, but $200 for, you know, I hate to say lowly, but $200 for someone living in a village in Bolivia or Jag, or, or, or Brazil is a lot of money. And they, they killed them like snakes. That's what, that's what George Schaller said. They just killed them like snakes.

• 40:27Steven Rinella?

  Even, but, but mostly all black market?

• 40:29Speaker 07

  All black market. Yeah. They, until Cides stepped in in 1975 to try to shut down the, the, the traffic, which they did to a certain extent. Yeah, there was a, there was a lively black market in, in Jaguar pelts.

• 40:46Steven Rinella?

  If you look over your left shoulder, you see that? That's a bobcat right there.

• 40:51Speaker 07

  Right, right.

• 40:52Steven Rinella?

  Now, here's, here's an interesting thing about Cides and spotted cats. So, that's from Texas.

• 40:58Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 40:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 41:00Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 41:01Steven Rinella?

  There's no close season on Bobcats. Bobcats are non-game. No close season on Bobcats, no bag limit on Bobcats.

• 41:09Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 41:09Steven Rinella?

  Part of it is because Tex- those south, like Texas Bobcats aren't valuable.

• 41:15Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay, like a Bobcat up here.

• 41:17Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, I mean, you're.

• 41:19Steven Rinella?

  A Bobcat up here could be like five, six, 700 bucks.

• 41:21Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 41:22Steven Rinella?

  Right? A Bobcat from certain areas, like high desert country, could be a thousand dollars.

• 41:27Speaker 07

  Right.

• 41:27Steven Rinella?

  But those cats are effectively valueless. So there's not like a huge push on it. But what's interesting is you have it, you have it in Texas, here's an animal that's non-game, no close season, no bag limit. But you can't move that cat out of Texas without a CITES tag.

• 41:41Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 41:41Steven Rinella?

  And you'd be like, well, why? The state doesn't even manage them. And it's because, because like spotted cats.

• 41:48Speaker 07

  In general.

• 41:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 41:50Steven Rinella?

  So any spotted cat is gonna have regulatory pressure on it because it's so easy to be like, oh, no, that's not that.

• 41:58Speaker 07

  Uh-huh.

• 41:59Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow what I'm saying?

• 42:00Speaker 07

  Sure, sure.

• 42:00Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, like they're trying to regulate the movement of spotted cats because there's so many imperiled spotted cats. They just wanna be that if it's a spotted cat, it's a pain in the ass.

• 42:12Speaker 07

  Even if it's worthless.

• 42:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, if it's got spots, we just don't know what it is. Is it like, is it that? Or is it a snow leopard?

• 42:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 42:20Steven Rinella?

  You know, or whatever, right?

• 42:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, you've had Dan Flores on, you know, in, in, you know, his book, American Serengeti. He talks about, you know, what they did to predators, you know, in

• 42:32Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 42:33Speaker 07

  colonial America and Jaguars were one of the things they just, you know, they just shot.

• 42:38Steven Rinella?

  Would they, would they poison Jaguars too?

• 42:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, they, I think they poison all predators, you know, wolves, bear, coyotes. In, in Brazil, in, you know, South America, sure, they used to poison them, poison them all the time. You mentioned colonial America.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  Are are do you think black Jaguars in colonial America are responsible for the continued sightings of like claim sightings of Black Panthers?

• 43:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  Wherever in southern the southern United States.

• 43:09Speaker 07

  Oh, that's interesting. There oh, there's the black Jaguars only come from one place.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  Is that right?

• 43:16Steven Rinella?

  Tell me more.

• 43:16Speaker 07

  One place.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  So like the colonists would not have seen that.

• 43:20Steven Rinella?

  I hope Taylor Sledge and Clay's dad are listening. In the entire state of Mississippi, I hope was listening right now. I don't know if you know, but they have on their hands right now a black Jaguar.

• 43:30Speaker 07

  Who does?

• 43:31Steven Rinella?

  He's just roaming or it's a cat. It's a house cat. There was just a picture that our buddy in Mississippi sent us and he's like.

• 43:40Speaker 07

  It's a black Jaguar.

• 43:41Steven Rinella?

  He's like, the whole state's panties are on fire. And you kind of look and you're like, maybe it's like a house cat. It's like a guy has a picture of a cat standing on the side of the road.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  But it's also people like black mountain lions.

• 43:52Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 43:54Steven Rinella?

  But everybody knows there's no such now that now that word's out.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:58Steven Rinella?

  There is no, never has been. There's no such thing as a Black Panther. A Black Panther is a wet panther. So then the Black Panther crowd hit on the thing that there is melanism in Jaguars.

• 44:10Speaker 05

  Right.

• 44:10Steven Rinella?

  So as Taylor Sledge was saying, he even had a veterinarian tell him, it's gotta be a melanistic Jaguar.

• 44:19Speaker 07

  In Mississippi.

• 44:20Steven Rinella?

  Yes. Terrorizing Mississippi as we speak.

• 44:24Speaker 07

  Well, maybe that's the second Jaguar. We got Cochise in Arizona and whatever the black Jaguar is named in Mississippi. But there's a place in Brazil called the Cerrado. It's it's C E R R A D O, but they pronounce the double R like Hado.

• 44:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  In the Cerrado, and that's the only place that black Jaguars are.

• 44:44Steven Rinella?

  So there's like a melanistic Jaguar.

• 44:45Speaker 07

  Jaguar in the Cerrado.

• 44:46Steven Rinella?

  Is he like flat out black? Or has he got like dark spots?

• 44:50Speaker 07

  No, I I have a.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  I pulled up a picture.

• 44:52Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:54Steven Rinella?

  Pull this up.

• 44:55Speaker 07

  Of your friend in Mississippi or of.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, sorry. I can't read your mind. Send me a picture. I'll put it up there. Like they show.

• 45:02Steven Rinella?

  If Phil ever gets more serious about theater, you know, quits.

• 45:06Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 45:06Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna get a guy that's just pummeling pictures on that screen, man.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  They show pictures of like jet black ones.

• 45:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  But also like like spots show through. The rosettes.

• 45:16Speaker 07

  Oh, really?

• 45:18Speaker 05

  Barely like, yeah.

• 45:19Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, uh, it's it's like those black bears.

• 45:24Speaker 07

  You know, like the the Spirit Bears or whatever in Canada.

• 45:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 07

  It's it's like a very localized expression of some sort of gene. Yeah, that must be. Yeah, I don't.

• 45:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, look at that sucker, man.

• 45:36Speaker 07

  I expect that's what it is. Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  So you can see the.

• 45:39Steven Rinella?

  Phil, I take that back. I don't think you should do that.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  No, okay.

• 45:42Steven Rinella?

  Because some places I've been on, they do it and it gets a little annoying. Like every damn thing you talk about is up on the screen.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  Great. Well, I'm glad you've had a complete 180 in the last 17 seconds.

• 45:51Speaker 07

  Your your your little instincts were correct, Phil. Don't put it up.

• 45:57Steven Rinella?

  What was the what was the? Give me some of the um like of the in let's say, let's take Mesoamerica.

• 46:07Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:07Steven Rinella?

  Okay, just something familiar like like Mayan culture, different Mesoamerican cultures. Pre-context, so pre-Columbian cultures.

• 46:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:15Steven Rinella?

  What was their? Is there a way to generalize about like what was their understanding of the animal? Like like the Amerindian indigenous understanding of the animal? Was it like a prize thing to get? Was it like what? You know, if you had to sort of typify the relationship?

• 46:33Speaker 07

  They worshipped it. I mean, metaphysically, there was like no more important animal. But it was it represented to those people what say the grizzly bear represented to um you know, northern Native American tribes. Um, it was part of their religion, part of their um art, part of their architecture, part of their iconography. They absolutely worshipped it. The Mayans believed that the jaguar escorted the sun from day to night and back to day.

• 47:05Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 47:05Speaker 07

  Um, the Olmecs um would would would mutilate their heads so they resembled jaguar heads. And um but at the same time, they did kill jaguars because they valued their pelts. They valued their teeth, you know, etc. But they had, I mean, it was, you know, it was their totem.

• 47:25Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 47:26Speaker 07

  It was something, you know, that was important to every aspect of their lives.

• 47:30Steven Rinella?

  But they didn't regard it as a like as one of their predators.

• 47:37Speaker 07

  Um, you, you mean it has something to be feared?

• 47:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, like when you went out, you know, like, let's, you talk about the northern plains, right? And the northern plains, um, you knew people, everyone would have known people that were killed by grizzlies.

• 47:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 47:53Steven Rinella?

  Right? And so, but there wasn't like an element of that, like a thing that was you were afraid of.

• 47:58Speaker 07

  No, no, I, I, from all the reading I, I've done and, you know, the traveling I did, I never got, I never got that impression.

• 48:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, they, they were worshipped.

• 48:09Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:11Steven Rinella?

  So what, what, at what point did you go from being like, kind of interested in Jaguars to being that you're gonna do a whole book? Like, I'm familiar with that little transition.

• 48:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, right, right. Well, let's see, I, I read, I was living just above Boulder, Colorado, in a little mining town called Jamestown. Um, and I was going to grad school at CU, and I read Jaguar for the first time in like 1990. It came out in 1986 or something like that, and I was bowled over.

• 48:44Steven Rinella?

  What is that book?

• 48:45Speaker 07

  I'm not familiar. That's Alan Rabinowitz's first book. He wrote Jaguar. It was about his experience in Belize when he, he was there for a year and a half, and he radio collared the first Jaguar in the rainforest. But he dedicated himself to, to this, this Coxum Basin in Belize. He dedicated himself to the Jaguars of Belize. And I read that book and I was like, man, this guy's my hero. He's incredible. He's like fierce and fearless. He'll go anywhere. He'll do anything. And, uh, he brought his weights. He was like, he was a, he was a martial artist and he was a weightlifter, brought his weights to this little, tiny little Mayan

• 49:29Speaker 07

  village down in Belize, and he would do his weights. And he had green eyes and a hairy chest. And the Maya, the people, the Maya people didn't know, they, they were, they feared him initially. And they thought he had the eyes of a Jaguar. But anyway, I would go around and... You know, I would, I would hike around the mountains, fish or hunt or backpack and I would pretend like, like I was looking for jaguar tracks. And then like fast forward to 2000, I don't know, one or two, I did an, I did an interview with Alan Rabinowitz for, I think it was Outside Magazine.

• 50:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 07

  And I talked to him at length.

• 50:10Steven Rinella?

  What year was this been?

• 50:12Speaker 07

  Like 2001 or two.

• 50:13Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I was writing there then.

• 50:14Speaker 07

  Oh, you were?

• 50:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah. I started writing there in 2000.

• 50:17Speaker 07

  Oh, well then.

• 50:17Steven Rinella?

  I'm sure I read it.

• 50:18Speaker 07

  Huh. Were you in Santa Fe at the time?

• 50:20Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no, no. I was just a, like a, what'd they call it at the time? Contributing editor.

• 50:25Speaker 07

  Contributing editor, oh yeah. Yeah, so, um.

• 50:28Steven Rinella?

  I was never under contract.

• 50:29Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:30Steven Rinella?

  But I did like cover stories and, you know.

• 50:32Speaker 07

  Sad what's become of Outside.

• 50:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, well, it's different now.

• 50:35Speaker 07

  Too bad.

• 50:36Steven Rinella?

  They're not sending you over to the Philippines for a month.

• 50:38Speaker 07

  Nah, they got no budgets now, no.

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• 51:09Steven Rinella?

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• 51:49Steven Rinella?

  Listen, we're all trying to save up for something. I got buddies saving up to buy their new house. I got people eyeing a new boat. I know buddies that are trying to switch out trucks and get an upgrade in their truck, whatever. People are always saving up for stuff. In reality, though, we see that it can be hard to actually save money. But that's what's great about the One Pay app. It makes saving money easy. First, you earn 3% cash back on up to $150 in monthly spending. You choose categories, okay, like Walmart, gas, or dining, and then get rewarded when you spend in those categories. So you're rewarded for what you're already buying. And with high-yield savings, your money keeps growing.

• 52:31Steven Rinella?

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• 52:53Speaker 07

  So anyway, I interviewed him at length, and I proposed writing a biography at that time of him. And he kind of entertained the notion. And about six months later, after we had long, long conversations about his life, he'd just been diagnosed with chronic lymphatic leukemia, which the doctors told him would eventually kill him. And they told him not to get like amoebic dysentery or malaria or whatever, because it would, you know, it would, it would set him back. But of course, he didn't, you know, he didn't listen.

• 53:27Steven Rinella?

  And where was this guy from?

• 53:28Speaker 07

  He was from, he was from New York. He grew up in Queens, New York. But there was nowhere he wouldn't go and nothing he wouldn't do. He, I mean, he studied tigers in Burma and Thailand. He studied clouded leopards on the island of Formosa.

• 53:42Steven Rinella?

  Like a big cat guy?

• 53:44Speaker 07

  Oh, big, big cat. The most, you know, they called him the Indiana Jones of wildlife ecology. He was, he was super fit. He's super courageous, would do anything. But anyway.

• 53:55Steven Rinella?

  You know what's, I gotta tell you something that's nuts, man, that I feel like lines up with this?

• 53:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 53:59Steven Rinella?

  So in, it would have been around 90 or 91, no, like 91 or 92.

• 54:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:05Steven Rinella?

  I went to a National Trappers Association convention. Okay?

• 54:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:10Steven Rinella?

  Might have been in Iowa. And I go to a lecture by a prominent trapper. His last name was Brown. I'm sure I feel like his name was Jerry Brown, but that's like the old governor of California. There's probably a million Jerry Browns. He's a predator trapper, like a coyote trapper, cat trapper.

• 54:26Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:27Steven Rinella?

  He was giving a lecture. I'm not shitting you. He's giving a lecture.

• 54:32Steven Rinella?

  He had been contracted and had been down in South America with researchers trying to figure out how to get collars on Jaguars.

• 54:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:43Steven Rinella?

  Using foot snares.

• 54:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:45Steven Rinella?

  And other things. And cause he's like, he's like a big cat trapper.

• 54:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 54:48Steven Rinella?

  And he was like talking about his experiences. Like that dude had to have somehow been lined up with the guy you're talking about because the timing is right.

• 54:54Speaker 07

  Oh, I'm sure he was. I'm sure he was. Was his name Darren Simpson?

• 54:58Steven Rinella?

  Definitely not that.

• 54:58Speaker 07

  Definitely not that. Okay.

• 55:00Steven Rinella?

  No, and he was like, he was just a consultant.

• 55:02Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 55:03Steven Rinella?

  On a guy that knew his way around cat trapping. And he was talking, I remember him talking about they were developing because he's trying to hook them.

• 55:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 55:12Steven Rinella?

  And he just gave this lecture about, and I remember at that time even thinking like, that's badass. Cause those professional trappers are always trying to find ways to round out their income.

• 55:19Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 55:20Steven Rinella?

  And that was what he was doing.

• 55:21Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:22Steven Rinella?

  And I wonder if he like lines up in some way.

• 55:23Speaker 07

  Oh, I bet. I'm sure. They first started trapping Jaguars in the Pontenale in, um, in the early, like late seventies or early eighties. But then it, but it wasn't prominent. It wasn't a, you know, common practice.

• 55:37Steven Rinella?

  And how did they catch them?

• 55:38Speaker 07

  They, well, cable snares.

• 55:40Steven Rinella?

  On the foot?

• 55:41Speaker 07

  On the foot. Yeah.

• 55:42Steven Rinella?

  Like a loaded snare on a bait?

• 55:43Speaker 07

  Loaded snare, right. No, no bait. No bait.

• 55:46Steven Rinella?

  Blind sets?

• 55:47Speaker 07

  Blind sets. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way.

• 55:50Steven Rinella?

  Cause you gotta be good, man.

• 55:51Speaker 07

  You gotta be really good. So this Joe R S May, he's a veterinarian and a big cat trapper that I spent, um, you know, considerable amount of time with in Brazil. Guy's amazing. He's like my cousin, Hymo trapping Wolverines, you know, up in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I mean, he's, he's, he traps oslet, he traps mained wolves. He traps Jaguars over a hundred and it's really pretty simple, but.

• 56:16Steven Rinella?

  And trail sets?

• 56:18Speaker 07

  Trail, yeah, yeah. And he, and it's, it's, it's amazing. I don't know.

• 56:23Steven Rinella?

  Like lay out what he, how he goes about, like, what is he doing?

• 56:26Speaker 07

  So you have the, so he sets the, he sets a piece of, um, you know, the base plate. He uses rebar and he anchors it like two feet down. Then he has, then he has swivels and springs and then he attaches that to the thrower. And then there's the cable snare. So, and then there's the pressure plate just outside. You know, the cable snare, which is just a sponge with, with dirt on top. And, um, and then he makes this little lane.

• 56:59Steven Rinella?

  And that's the trigger is the weight on the pressure.

• 57:01Speaker 07

  Exactly. That's the, that's the trigger as the way, is the weight on that. And then he makes this little trail. It's amazing. I don't know how he, and, and they don't worry by, about scent, human scent, which, you know.

• 57:14Steven Rinella?

  They don't give, they don't care.

• 57:15Speaker 07

  They don't care.

• 57:15Steven Rinella?

  That's kind of true of like cat trapping in general.

• 57:18Speaker 07

  Oh, is it? Yeah.

• 57:19Steven Rinella?

  They're not like canines.

• 57:20Speaker 07

  They're not like, yeah.

• 57:21Steven Rinella?

  No, they don't care.

• 57:22Speaker 07

  Watching my, my cousin, Hi-Mo trap wolves. I mean, you know.

• 57:25Steven Rinella?

  No, cats like bare hands. You don't, you don't even, a lot of guys don't cover the pan.

• 57:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. So, um, so then he made this kind of trail, um, of leaves, uh, to the, to the snare. And then he got out all the, all the stuff in the middle of the trail because Jaguars like to walk si- Jaguars like to walk silently. There can't even be a leaf. There can't be a twig.

• 57:51Steven Rinella?

  You're offering him a quiet place to put his foot.

• 57:53Speaker 07

  Exactly. Offer him a quiet place to put his foot.

• 57:56Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 57:56Speaker 07

  And then, um, and then they have a little like fishing line attached to the cable snare, which runs up a pole, which attaches to a magnet in a transmitter. So when the cat trips that, you know, you have a receiver, you know that that, that.

• 58:15Steven Rinella?

  No kidding, man.

• 58:16Speaker 07

  That, yeah, you know that that trap has been tripped. And, um, it's.

• 58:21Steven Rinella?

  And you got like a tape here or a white lip pecker or a Jaguar or something.

• 58:25Speaker 07

  You don't know what's in there. Sometimes you gotta taper, right? Is there some urgency to get? There so they don't hurt themselves. Yeah, you know, they they they have a catch in the catch circle. You clear everything out of the catch circle. Otherwise, they will tear the thing up like a Wolverine or something.

• 58:42Steven Rinella?

  And hurt himself.

• 58:43Speaker 07

  And hurt himself. Yeah. In fact, in the book, Alan Rabinowitz, one of the the first Jaguar he traps is Ipuk, which is the Mayan god of death. Um, it tears tears off his tears off his canine in one of the in one of the traps in it. So, um, yeah, so it does. It does happen. Is he using trail cameras to zero in on specific Jaguars or just to like keep? Yeah, they use they use lots of lots of trail cams to zero in on Jaguars. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, they they start establishing the big cats routine and then they'll put, you know, then they'll put the.

• 59:23Steven Rinella?

  Also, they're like targeting a cat.

• 59:25Speaker 07

  They're targeting a cat. Yeah, they're targeting a specific cat.

• 59:29Steven Rinella?

  How many countries you been to in your life?

• 59:32Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, in my life?

• 59:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like a hundred?

• 59:36Speaker 07

  No, probably not. No. Um, I don't know. I for the for the book, I traveled, you know, all over South America and Central America. You know, they my my friends laugh, my friends joke that I only write books when I so I can travel to those places. So I guess there's an element of truth to that. But, um, uh, yeah, I'd have to get I have to think about it. You know, been to Africa, been to, you know, all over Southeast Asia. Now, South America and Central America, probably not as many places as you.

• 1:00:08Steven Rinella?

  No, I bet more.

• 1:00:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't know. I've I've repeatedly gone back to New Guinea.

• 1:00:12Steven Rinella?

  So you keep burning up opportunities in the same place.

• 1:00:16Steven Rinella?

  So, so, uh, when we got off on a couple, not tangents, because they're very relevant. You were warming up to you were warming up to your subject. And he got sick.

• 1:00:26Speaker 07

  Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. So he got he got sick, but ultimately he said, um, you know what?

• 1:00:34Speaker 07

  This has been great. We remain friends, but I'm gonna write my own book. See, by that time, he'd already written Jaguar.

• 1:00:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:41Speaker 07

  Chasing the Dragon's Tale about um, um, trying to find the Formosan, the mythical Formosan-clotted leopard, which he never found.

• 1:00:50Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Well, I don't know what that is.

• 1:00:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, a clotted leopard is a little, is a little, you know, small little leopard.

• 1:00:56Steven Rinella?

  Out of where?

• 1:00:57Speaker 07

  Very elusive. Thailand, um, um, Formosa, you know.

• 1:01:03Steven Rinella?

  And it's, it's not an actual thing, or it is?

• 1:01:05Speaker 07

  No, it is. It is. But they, I say mythical because they thought it existed, but oh, you know, it probably died a hundred years before.

• 1:01:13Steven Rinella?

  Oh, like, he thought maybe it was like a Lazarus species?

• 1:01:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 1:01:16Steven Rinella?

  I got you.

• 1:01:16Speaker 07

  Right. And then he wrote a book about, uh, two books about Burma, one called, um, Life in the Valley of Death, and one called Beyond the Last Village. So he, he, he's a great writer, and I mined all his books, you know, and did lots of interviews with friends and his wife to, to write the book. But ultimately, he decided he, you know, he didn't need me to write a book. But we remained friends. We remained friends for a long time. And then, um, you know, as some, some of these friendships do, you know, we, we just, we stopped talking for no other reason than we just got busy. And in 2018, I went to New Guinea, and we'd been in touch, and I, talking again about doing a documentary

• 1:01:58Speaker 07

  about him or a book about him. And we'd been talking and, you know, in, in, back in touch, and I was elated because, you know, he's an amazing guy. I got back from, I got back from New Guinea, and, um, one of the people at Panther, the communications director, called me and told me he died. So, um, so, you know, he died way before his time.

• 1:02:20Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Well, of leukemia?

• 1:02:22Speaker 07

  Of, actually, leukemia together with, with a skin cancer.

• 1:02:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:02:27Speaker 07

  Yeah. So, I, he died.

• 1:02:29Steven Rinella?

  And that was what year?

• 1:02:30Speaker 07

  That was in 2018. I think he was sixty, sixty-three at the time.

• 1:02:34Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:35Speaker 07

  But, you know, he was just, he was fearsome and, you know, fearless. He was someone to be admired.

• 1:02:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Steven Rinella?

  So eventually, you decided to... I mean, obviously, I'm looking at it right now. You picked up the project.

• 1:02:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I picked up the project and, um, you know, got in touch with Panthera, the organization he kind of helped establish. And there was this other guy named Howard Quigley, um, who was a famous Jaguar biologist and also Tiger biologist. He, he was one of the first people to, to collar, uh, Amir Tigers in Siberia. Amazing guy, too. So he helped me, you know, kind of find places along the Jaguar corridor, you know, along that 5,000 miles to visit. You know, people, people that wanted to talk, people that were doing amazing things and also people, places where I might have a chance of seeing Jaguars.

• 1:03:26Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Steven Rinella?

  Along that corridor, I imagine the Darien Gap's gotta be a real bitch, huh? Like, that's gotta be like the problem, right?

• 1:03:34Speaker 07

  That, that is the, yeah, exactly. I feel like the Darien Gap only gets brought up in the context of it being a problem.

• 1:03:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 07

  For, for various reasons.

• 1:03:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, and then, and then at the height, like, at the height of the Biden administration, when there was so much illegal immigration.

• 1:03:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Steven Rinella?

  It like brought in tons of people into the, into the Darien Gap.

• 1:03:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Steven Rinella?

  And then the, the Darien Gap kind of became like a, almost like a conflict zone.

• 1:03:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, wasn't there a New York Times reporter who went down there and walked the Darien Gap? With the people, I mean, can you imagine like four-year-old children going through the Darien Gap?

• 1:04:08Steven Rinella?

  And people in there preying on them.

• 1:04:10Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:11Steven Rinella?

  And it like this, this like very isolated place became also like a very visited place.

• 1:04:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, right.

• 1:04:18Steven Rinella?

  And, and a lot, a lot of violence coming out of that.

• 1:04:20Speaker 07

  A lot of violence, yeah, a lot of trafficking.

• 1:04:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, but for, yeah, for the Jaguar, that, that's like a pinch point. And when they were first establishing the Jaguar corridor, that was something they really worried about, is the Darien Gap.

• 1:04:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Steven Rinella?

  I guess, I guess through that context, let's talk about the, this corridor, like, like, the objective presumably is to get Jaguars back into the northern, their northern range, right? Back into Mesoamerica.

• 1:04:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, that's part of it, but the the the the the major point is that because Jaguars are the only wide-ranging predators without a subspecies,

• 1:04:59Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:00Speaker 07

  that's to preserve, that's to preserve the DNA.

• 1:05:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:05:04Speaker 07

  You know, there are no taxonomic differences between Jaguars, you know. When when when that was discovered in 1999, Alan Rabinowitz was elated. He's like, you know, we can try, treat Jaguars as a single ecological unit, as one species. So that was the idea, you know, is the genetic flow.

• 1:05:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:05:26Speaker 07

  Genetic freedom, make sure that Jaguars could move throughout the corridor, you know, and spread their genes.

• 1:05:33Steven Rinella?

  What is the, what are the the corridor? What are the, what's the northern terminus and the southern terminus? Like, what is the corridor?

• 1:05:40Speaker 07

  So the corridor is this kind of loosely connected, um, they call them Jaguar Conservation Units, the the kind of the the avenues, or the trails, or whatever you want to call them, the passageways by which they connect the Jaguar Conservation Units, which are just, um, areas that produce a lot of Jaguars, that are just, you know, good habitat for Jaguars. But it goes from, again, the Ibera or Ibera.

• 1:06:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 07

  Um, all the way up to essentially the Sierra Madres of of

• 1:06:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:16Speaker 07

  of Mexico or to southern Arizona. Essentially, everything below Highway 10 in southern Arizona, in in Arizona.

• 1:06:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 07

  That's the corridor. So it's a huge corridor. It's one of the biggest corridors of any animal on Earth, except the leopards may be a little bit bigger.

• 1:06:34Steven Rinella?

  Just for, like, as far as their, um, their range, like, of an individual animal and their social lives, is it fair, like, what we'd expect, like, males roam and they're fairly solitary creatures? I mean, is there anything unique? In terms of Jaguars and how they move around the landscape and relate to one another?

• 1:06:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I mean, they're, first of all, they're, they're solitary.

• 1:07:00Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:00Speaker 07

  Um, you know, they get together to mate and that's pretty much it.

• 1:07:05Steven Rinella?

  Jim, stay up close to your mic.

• 1:07:06Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, sorry. Um, and the, the females, they have what they call range fidelity, so they don't move that far. But the males, particularly a male in what they call natal dispersal, a male that has not mated, um, like, like Cochise or like this, this famous Jaguar, El Jefe, you know, they'll come out of, they'll come out of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico, the northern Jaguar Reserve, which is like 125 miles south of the border, and they'll, they'll roam all the way into, you know, the Santa Rita Mountains of, of southern Arizona. So they have huge ranges, particularly-

• 1:07:49Steven Rinella?

  So that's, that's where those Arizona cats are coming from?

• 1:07:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know that that was that close to the border.

• 1:07:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, 125 miles-

• 1:07:56Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:07:57Speaker 07

  -south of the border, and that's, you know, kind of like the, a waning, well, I wouldn't say waning, but the last population, the, the farthest north breeding population of Jaguars.

• 1:08:10Steven Rinella?

  And are we talking like 10? Are we talking hundreds?

• 1:08:13Speaker 07

  No, you're probably talking like 30 or 40.

• 1:08:17Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:08:18Speaker 07

  Um-

• 1:08:18Steven Rinella?

  In the Sierra Madre?

• 1:08:19Speaker 07

  In the Sierra Madres, yeah.

• 1:08:21Steven Rinella?

  Eating coos deer?

• 1:08:22Speaker 07

  Eating coos deer, yeah, yeah, exactly. I know you've had Jim-

• 1:08:25Steven Rinella?

  Good cat.

• 1:08:25Speaker 07

  Jim Heffelfinger. I know you've had Jim Heffelfinger on it. He, I talked with him at length. He's a great guy. We've discovered that we grew up like 10, 10 miles from each other.

• 1:08:33Steven Rinella?

  Is that right?

• 1:08:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:35Steven Rinella?

  So I was just, I wasn't gonna bring up Heffelfinger by name, but let's talk a little bit about wildlife politics in Arizona.

• 1:08:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure. Well, you can't avoid it.

• 1:08:42Steven Rinella?

  All right. So-

• 1:08:45Steven Rinella?

  The like, there's a sort of, I don't know, man, there's a sort of battle. Okay, there's a, there's a management battle. Where in Arizona, there are, there are forces, there are powers that be that want to just kind of wash their hands of this whole Jaguar thing. And they want to say, sure, like, maybe now and then. A male would wander up into Arizona, but you can't call this. Core habitat. Because once someone says, no, bro, this is core habitat, then they're gonna be like, it'd be like the same thing, like Colorado.

• 1:09:25Steven Rinella?

  Them saying, you know what, we have a mandate, we're gonna, we're gonna reintroduce wolves in Colorado. The fear is that someone down the road. Says, and this is not my fear, I think it's a great idea. The fear is that someone down the road, someone says, hey, this is historic Jaguar range. This is core habitat for Jaguars, we have a legal responsibility to restore Jaguars in Arizona. Which I think is a phenomenal idea. I'd like it even more if I lived there.

• 1:09:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Steven Rinella?

  That's a cool.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  You want to see one, because you didn't see.

• 1:09:56Steven Rinella?

  I just like all that, I like, I like all that, like.

• 1:10:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Steven Rinella?

  I like looking over my shoulder.

• 1:10:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Steven Rinella?

  You know, and um, and even though they're passive and all that, I just like the whole thing about them. And you're never gonna have, it's not gonna have like enough Jaguars where you're having like, you, you, it's not gonna have like a, it's not gonna be that all of a sudden predation goes up.

• 1:10:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Steven Rinella?

  Because what, it's gonna come, it's gonna come at the expense of mountain lions.

• 1:10:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Steven Rinella?

  So I, I think it's a phenomenal idea, I'm just throwing that out there, but that's like the wildlife politics end. And so these guys came up with this great map.

• 1:10:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Steven Rinella?

  It's every known, and, and so it's in the, in the United States of America, it's this map of like every known instance. And they tracked down stuff, even like photos and bars.

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Steven Rinella?

  Like some old photo of bars, like a dude with a dead Jaguar, like. What is that all about? They're like, oh yeah, my grandpa, he shot it.

• 1:10:55Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Steven Rinella?

  Does anyone know? No. It's just like a picture in the bar. But then they get to interview people like legitimately at some point in time, like it seems like this dude's grandpa, no joke, shot a Jaguar. And so on the map. And people argue about the map. And on the map is also Jaguars that dudes trucked up there.

• 1:11:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Steven Rinella?

  To turn loose for Jaguar hunts.

• 1:11:18Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:11:19Steven Rinella?

  And so the map is like a contentious map where there, there, there's people going like, not legit, not legit, not legit. And other people are going like, no, these are all legit sightings.

• 1:11:30Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Steven Rinella?

  And it boils down to is someone someday gonna say, we're gonna do a release of Jaguars.

• 1:11:38Speaker 07

  Well.

• 1:11:39Steven Rinella?

  You seem to not like this subject.

• 1:11:42Speaker 07

  Well, I'm telling you, you called it controversial, man. That's hitting the nail on the head and it's been going on for a long time. Since pretty much 1996, when two ranch, when one rancher, Warner Glenn, guy straight out of.

• 1:11:58Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna ask you if you ran into Warner Glenn. He caught that one.

• 1:12:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, straight out of Central Casting, you know, saw, saw one in 1996 and this other guy named, he, he and his wife, Jack Childs, and he was a, he was a, um, you know, he ran lions with his, with his dogs.

• 1:12:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 07

  And.

• 1:12:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we, we've had like, our colleague Clay has done a lot with him.

• 1:12:21Speaker 07

  Oh, oh, Jack.

• 1:12:22Steven Rinella?

  Video. No, with Warner, not with Jack. Yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 07

  Well, with Warner.

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, they're both, they're amazing, amazing guys. And probably pretty middle of the, middle of the road guys as far as Jaguars are concerned.

• 1:12:35Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. If you go into like, even in those years, like back then, not a little bit later than that, no, as much as in the 2000s.

• 1:12:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Steven Rinella?

  Uh, there's a guy that knew those guys that, that me and Yanni are friends with Floyd Green. And you went into his optic shop and there's a picture of that Jaguar.

• 1:12:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Steven Rinella?

  And I was like, what's up with that Jaguar? And it's like the Warner Glen Jaguar.

• 1:12:55Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. He talked about the shiny green, shining green eyes.

• 1:12:59Steven Rinella?

  You're thinking Leopold.

• 1:13:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. There in Leopold, Leopold love, ultimately loved Jaguars. He wrote a lot about Jaguars, but I won't, we won't go that far astray, but so, I mean, this is really, really complicated. And I won't give you too much history, but there is, there was an effort called CANDRA, the Central Arizona, New Mexico Recovery Area. And this group, that this group that you're called, you were talking about, wanted to set aside 20 million acres from the Alda Leopold, Alda Leopold Wilderness in the Gila, all the way up to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, along the Muggian Rim,

• 1:13:42Speaker 07

  as Jaguar historical, historically, it was probably Jaguar habitat. So they wanted to do a reintroduction of Jaguars, 90 to 120 Jaguars in that area, which was shot down by Fish and, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretary of the Interior.

• 1:14:02Steven Rinella?

  Dude, you want to talk about people's panties getting on fire, man? Oh, my goodness.

• 1:14:06Speaker 07

  You know, you can imagine the Cattlemen's Association, et cetera. But, you know, and the hunters too. I mean, I hunt, so I, you know, it's a tough thing, but Jaguars don't.

• 1:14:16Steven Rinella?

  And I wasn't like, here's the deal.

• 1:14:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Steven Rinella?

  I feel, and I'm not a cat expert.

• 1:14:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Steven Rinella?

  I feel, this is just my, me ballpark, or like crystal balling it. I don't think you'd see, because this is all mountain lion country.

• 1:14:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Steven Rinella?

  I don't think you'd probably see an increase in predation. I think you'd see it shift.

• 1:14:41Speaker 07

  From what to what?

• 1:14:42Steven Rinella?

  I think the mountain lions would would pay the price.

• 1:14:45Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, like if you if you introduce a second species, you don't all of a sudden double your big cat population.

• 1:14:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like when you put, so if you put wolves in with mountain lions, you get like additive predation has been very demonstrated. I just have a hard time picturing it, throwing another cat in the mix.

• 1:15:02Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 1:15:03Steven Rinella?

  Maybe I'm wrong. Throw in another cat in the mix. I still think you're gonna see X number of dead deer killed by cats.

• 1:15:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, not not double or triple.

• 1:15:12Steven Rinella?

  No, I don't think so. Well, what do I know? I don't know.

• 1:15:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Makes sense, though. I can see it both ways, to be honest.

• 1:15:18Speaker 07

  It makes complete sense. Well, first of all, um Jaguars live in really low, low densities. Um, second of all, they they eat eighty five species. You know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna just eat coos deer and elk. They're gonna eat frogs, they're gonna eat skunks, they're gonna eat armadillos.

• 1:15:36Steven Rinella?

  Turtles.

• 1:15:36Speaker 07

  They like turtles. Yeah, they love turtles. No turtles in Arizona. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, they're real generalists, you know, so they're not gonna concentrate, um, you know, on the deer or on the elk. Um, and I think Jim Heffelfinger has said that, you know, I don't think that predation would be increased that much.

• 1:15:59Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:16:00Speaker 07

  Right?

• 1:16:01Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to drag him into this.

• 1:16:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Steven Rinella?

  Matter of fact, I can't remember what his take on this whole thing is.

• 1:16:05Speaker 07

  Well, I think he, I think his take on, I think his take on critical habitat and reintroduction is very, is negative. I mean, he's like, it's a, it's a powder keg and also why waste endangered species money on a cat that may or may not want to live.

• 1:16:24Steven Rinella?

  Cause they got spots.

• 1:16:25Speaker 07

  Cause they got spots, yeah.

• 1:16:28Steven Rinella?

  And they got jaw muscles.

• 1:16:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, and you see one of these cats, I mean, they are so magnificent. I mean, their heads are like that.

• 1:16:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:16:37Speaker 07

  And they're so powerful. I mean, and they live in trees, they swim, you know, they swim rivers with caiman in their mouths for a mile. I mean, they are like, they're like the most, they are like the most athletic cat there is, or athletic beast there is.

• 1:16:53Steven Rinella?

  When I get attacked by a lion or a grizzly, I usually pull their upper and lower jaw apart so they can't clamp down on me.

• 1:17:01Steven Rinella?

  Like, I don't know with the Jag, man.

• 1:17:02Speaker 07

  Hundred and fifty.

• 1:17:04Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if that moves gonna work.

• 1:17:06Speaker 07

  Pounds of pressure per square inch.

• 1:17:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm gonna start working out so I can hold them.

• 1:17:10Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:17:11Speaker 07

  They, they, they say. Billups and calluses, too. Yeah.

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  I've never seen a Jaguar, but I think it was at a Denver Zoo, they had some sort of tigers. I don't know if they were the Bengal tiger or what tiger, but I remember having that, that, this sense of awe that you're describing.

• 1:17:28Speaker 07

  Oh, man.

• 1:17:28Speaker 05

  And it was only, you know, there was a pane of glass between me and this giant cat, but when you look at it, it's just.

• 1:17:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Speaker 05

  It gives you a weird feeling, you know?

• 1:17:38Speaker 07

  Well, what you said earlier is like, when they move, every part of their body is activated. Yeah. They're not like my lab where they're kind of walking and there's like.

• 1:17:48Steven Rinella?

  It's legs are down.

• 1:17:49Speaker 07

  Like, there's shaking and jiggling, like, when a cat moves, it's like, it's almost like a snake. It's like, the whole thing is.

• 1:17:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they're like a runway model, dude, where like, just the whole thing's in.

• 1:17:59Speaker 07

  There's not a muscle out of place, yeah. That's exact, that's exactly right. You see one of those things, it's something to behold. People, biol, Jaguar biologists who've seen, like, you know, dozens in their lives, still think it's like a dream to see a Jaguar. Hmm. And, yeah, they are, they are just incredibly beautiful and they're such magnificent athletes. You know, they're just, you know, I mean, you know, they tw, jumped twenty feet, you know, standing jump into a tree. And then they can live in trees in certain parts of the Amazon. When it floods, they live in trees for months.

• 1:18:36Speaker 07

  It's crazy.

• 1:18:37Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

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• 1:19:10Steven Rinella?

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• 1:19:55Steven Rinella?

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• 1:20:52Steven Rinella?

  So with the, with the society's protections, with more awareness, with the corridors, are we like, has the decline in Jaguars been reversed or is it, are they still a species in decline? And is there, is their territory still shrinking?

• 1:21:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, um, that's, that's a good question. Um, I think Jaguar biologists have hope, you know, they have to have hope, you know, it's in, in, you know, conservation, you know, hope can be hard to come by. But yeah, I think that, I think that people are hopeful that the Jaguar will persist, that they can kind of lock down these Jaguar conservation areas and they can defend the corridor. So I think they're, yeah, I think, I don't know what's happening to the population in general, but I do think that they have hope that the Jaguars will continue to persist if not, if not thrive.

• 1:21:50Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:51Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Steven Rinella?

  So you didn't have, like, in, in your book, you didn't have a, um, through all that reporting, you didn't come up with like a strong personal opinion about what's gonna happen with the animal? It just seems like, it's like a legitimate question?

• 1:22:08Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, I'm, it's, it's, it's tough. I mean, it's tough. I hate to be, you know, I, there were times when I was pessimistic and there were times when I was optimistic.

• 1:22:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 07

  You, you go to the Pontenal and you're filled with optimism because you, you see, you see a lot of Jaguars and they're, you know, there, there are a lot of Jaguars there. But the Amazon, you know, the, the, the Amazon is imperiled, you know, and that's where the bulk of Jaguars, maybe 70 to 80% of Jaguars live. And, um, the Amazon, I could see, you know, when I was in Brazil, when, when, when, I don't mean to be political, but when Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese goods, Chinese, you know, reciprocated or retaliated, slapped tariffs on soybeans. So, you know, our soybean farmers couldn't

• 1:23:02Speaker 07

  send soybeans to China. So what did the Chinese do? They went to Bolivia and they went to the, they went to, they went to Brazil and-

• 1:23:10Steven Rinella?

  To invest in soybeans.

• 1:23:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, and they just raised forests for, you know, 30, 40 miles. You see nothing but bean fields. And that's where they, that's where they got their beans. So, um, and Jaguars cannot live, you know, in a bean field, but you-

• 1:23:25Steven Rinella?

  You don't need to apologize for being political, because what's not political?

• 1:23:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, particularly these days, right?

• 1:23:30Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, like, well, no. I mean, like, wildlife is political.

• 1:23:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:23:34Steven Rinella?

  It's like you can't- There's no world in which you could talk about wildlife and have it not intersect with politics. It's just, it's like, it is political.

• 1:23:41Speaker 07

  Yeah. And Alan Rabinowitz worked in Burma shortly after the generals crushed the pro-democracy movement. And he worked there and he was criticized. He was criticized by fellow biologists. He was criticized in the newspapers. He said, you know, since when do, you know, tigers get a vote? He said, I'm gonna go save tigers.

• 1:24:00Steven Rinella?

  Well, they expected him to withdraw from Burma.

• 1:24:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, they expected him to withdraw from Burma and he wouldn't. And, you know, in some cases, he was dealing with generals, you know, who were, you know, pretty unscrupulous people. But his commitment was to, you know, was to the jaguar.

• 1:24:16Steven Rinella?

  Or there, the tiger.

• 1:24:18Speaker 07

  I mean, to the tiger. Yeah, yeah, thanks.

• 1:24:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Do you focus mostly on his work with jaguars or do you get into his work with other cats?

• 1:24:26Speaker 07

  I get into his work a little bit with tigers in Burma, but mostly I focus, you know, on the jaguar, just because it was so kind of, you know, revolutionary, the notion of the jaguar corridor. You know, that swath of land, you know, five, 5,000, 5,000 miles, just hadn't been attempted before for one species.

• 1:24:49Steven Rinella?

  And then, what, how much did he live through? By the time he died, was it clear that his vision was gonna carry, was gonna be effective?

• 1:24:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, definitely. He inspired, I mean, the jaguar corridor was essentially his idea and the jaguar corridor lives on today. And there are countless biologists and countless environmental organizations who are dedicated to it. So, yeah, it, it, it lives on and I think that he was aware before he died, you know, that, that there was a commitment to maintaining the jaguar corridor.

• 1:25:32Steven Rinella?

  Do you think he's looking down and he's pissed that you wound up writing the book after all? After he told you not to?

• 1:25:37Speaker 07

  I hope he'd be thankful.

• 1:25:40Steven Rinella?

  He's like, "Son of a bitch, I asked him ten times."

• 1:25:43Speaker 07

  His, his wife was really, really helpful and it was, I think it was still a painful experience for her. Because she still hadn't taken all his journals out of his closet. George, he, he was a, he was a protege of George Shaller. And George Shaller said, "Your job is at the end of every, first of all, take field notes and at the end of the day revisit those notes. And write about the sights and sounds and smells." You know, he said, I think his quote was the, the, the pen is your, is the weapon against oblivion. So Alan Rabinowitz followed that and he was a, he was a, he was a, a very careful and dedicated note taker.

• 1:26:26Speaker 07

  So his, his wife, um, you know, was pretty brave to allow me to, to, you know, to dive into some of, yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:37Steven Rinella?

  Karen, when we were in Africa, wasn't it, wasn't those guys from Pantera that we were talking, the, the lion guys?

• 1:26:42Speaker 06

  Yep, yep, exactly.

• 1:26:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we were with some dudes that were, uh, we just shared a camp with them. And they were coming in to set up a, they were coming in to set up a huge camera trap array.

• 1:26:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:26:55Steven Rinella?

  We call them trail cams in our circles.

• 1:26:56Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:26:57Steven Rinella?

  They were coming in to set up a huge, uh, trail cam array around lions, leopards.

• 1:27:06Speaker 06

  I think mainly, I think mainly those two, yeah.

• 1:27:09Speaker 07

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah. I used to call them trail cams too, but I've been around Jaguar biologists for so long, I call them camera traps. All my hunting buddies would be pissed.

• 1:27:22Steven Rinella?

  You had to assimilate.

• 1:27:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:27:24Steven Rinella?

  Like, I got a thing like, um... Like coyote coyote.

• 1:27:28Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:27:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Steven Rinella?

  There's very like you don't meet many people who um you don't meet trappers and stuff.

• 1:27:34Speaker 07

  Who call coyote, no, it's a coyote.

• 1:27:37Steven Rinella?

  You got a code switch. Yeah, trail cams, you kind of know where they're coming from, camera traps, you kind of know where they're coming from.

• 1:27:44Speaker 07

  You don't call mountain lion, mountain lion, you call them cats, right? Right.

• 1:27:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so that's a, yeah, it's funny, you could tell someone's background there, but it's been um what an amazing tool, though. And my understanding too is with with leopards and also with jaguars, the rosettes are identifiable.

• 1:28:03Speaker 07

  Completely.

• 1:28:03Steven Rinella?

  So it gives you the ability to um to to name them and know them.

• 1:28:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how that's how they Jack Childs identified a jaguar in two thousand and five. He caught him on his trail cams and in two thousand and five. And he looked at the rosettes and said, these are the same rosettes that I saw on the jaguar that we photographed in nineteen ninety six.

• 1:28:32Steven Rinella?

  And what year was it?

• 1:28:33Speaker 07

  Two thousand and five.

• 1:28:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:28:35Speaker 07

  So so he recognized there was one that resembled Pinocchio and one resembled um a cartoon character called Betty Boop. I don't know, I I don't, I'm not familiar, but that's how we identified that cat. So that cat had been living in Arizona from nineteen ninety six through two thousand and five.

• 1:28:54Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:28:54Speaker 07

  So, yeah, so that is the the no, no.

• 1:28:57Steven Rinella?

  That lived in Arizona that long without getting in trouble?

• 1:28:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, without getting in trouble. Yeah, yeah, pretty amazing.

• 1:29:04Steven Rinella?

  Man, you know, uh.

• 1:29:05Speaker 07

  They're they're one thing, they're grow, they're jaguars have this modified hyoid bone in their throats. So they can roar unlike any other cat in the United States. And so every jaguar's roar is different, too. That's kind of their auditory sig- signature. None, no, no roar is the same.

• 1:29:24Steven Rinella?

  Huh, really?

• 1:29:25Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Steven Rinella?

  Do you know the story? This was another controversial one. Did you, in the book, do you tell the story of the jaguar that gets killed by researchers in Arizona? Tell that story real quick.

• 1:29:37Speaker 07

  Oh, man, that's a, that's a

• 1:29:39Steven Rinella?

  That's a sore one, right there.

• 1:29:40Speaker 07

  That's a complicated one. So that, that's called, that's Macho B. That, um, so in 2008, oh, man, this is gonna be tough. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security set aside, or made it known, they had $50 million to give to agencies who were studying, who wanted to study the effects of the border wall on endangered species. And, um, there was a group called the, um, Jaguar Borderland Detection Group, and they set up

• 1:30:22Speaker 07

  trail cams all over southern Arizona, from the Chiricahua Mountains, or, or the Anamass Mountains, and in, in New Mexico, all the way to the Babakheveries, you know, in, um, uh, southwest of, of, of Tucson. And, um, I've kind of lost my thought for a moment.

• 1:30:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh, we're talking about that cat that turned up, got killed?

• 1:30:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, so, so, they, they, what, what the Arizona Game and Fish Department wanted, they wanted to, they wanted to capture and collar a jaguar. Now, there was a group called the Jag, the, the Jaguar Conservation Group, which was made up of guys in the government, conservationists, ranchers, et cetera. And the environmentalists in that group said, if you're not going to set aside critical habitat and refuse to, why do we have to collar a jaguar? Because that's essentially what you want to know. You want to figure out what his range is and where he's

• 1:31:30Steven Rinella?

  But then you're not gonna do anything with the info.

• 1:31:31Speaker 07

  But you're not gonna do anything, you're not gonna do anything with the info. So, um, so, the

• 1:31:40Speaker 07

  So there was a surreptitious um um plan to capture a cat, this macho bee, um in an area where they were also trying to trap mountain lions and bears.

• 1:32:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:32:01Speaker 07

  So I in February 18th, 2009, Macho B was captured. And he was captured in a snare which they baited with the scat of a female jaguar in heat.

• 1:32:22Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is this is a long, this is gonna be a long story.

• 1:32:26Steven Rinella?

  No, I know, there's like some little ring, no, you're doing phenology, when you pulled that date out, dude, I was impressed.

• 1:32:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's it's still a sore point.

• 1:32:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get into it, yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 07

  And so um there was this guy named Amo McCain, who um was work, had studied in Brazil with with learn, and was an amazing tracker. Well, he had set up this snare with these two other biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. And he said, everything had been cleared, everything was above board. Well, it turns out it wasn't above board. So this jaguar, Macho B, was snared in February 18th of 2009. Two biologists said he was extremely frail at the time.

• 1:33:17Speaker 07

  And um so the the the they collared him and then they waited six hours for for the telesol to drift out of his body and then the jaguar stumbled off. But he already was in bad condition.

• 1:33:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:34Speaker 07

  And then about two weeks later. They weren't getting a signal from Macho B from the collar. So about two weeks later, some Arizona game and fish people went to check on Macho B and they said he was extremely frail and stumbling around.

• 1:33:53Steven Rinella?

  Check on him how if they're not getting a signal from the collar?

• 1:33:56Speaker 07

  They went back to that, that, that site, the snare site, and essentially he hadn't moved. The Jaguar hadn't moved. So then, like, a couple days later.

• 1:34:09Steven Rinella?

  So they're not getting a move, they're not getting movement off the collar?

• 1:34:12Speaker 07

  They're not getting any movement off the collar.

• 1:34:14Steven Rinella?

  I'm with you.

• 1:34:15Speaker 07

  So then, um, on, like, March 2nd, 2009, a whistleblower came out. This woman named Janaye Brun, who was working with the Borderland Detection Group, said that she had placed the female scat at the snare site to lure Macho B. So, right there, the Arizona game and fish, essentially rationale went out the window. Because it was a deliberate.

• 1:34:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because their deal was that it just inadvertently got hooked in a lion set.

• 1:34:53Speaker 07

  It was an incidental inadvertent thing.

• 1:34:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Speaker 07

  But.

• 1:34:57Steven Rinella?

  But they had baited it.

• 1:34:58Speaker 07

  But they had baited it.

• 1:35:00Steven Rinella?

  For Jaguar.

• 1:35:01Speaker 07

  For Jaguars. And.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  I'd like to know what it takes to get, um, female Jaguar in heat scat.

• 1:35:08Speaker 07

  That's a great, I, I have no idea. It's a great question. I have no idea. That should be asked. Um, but then, a day later, um.

• 1:35:19Steven Rinella?

  And what, how is that a whistleblower? That seems more like an admission.

• 1:35:23Speaker 07

  Well, because the, the, the game and fish department was trying to cover up the, that it was, you know, an incidental inadvertent.

• 1:35:32Steven Rinella?

  Oh, and so she was like, hey, it wasn't. In fact, I did it.

• 1:35:36Speaker 07

  And then she wrote, eventually wrote a book called, um, Cloak and Jaguar.

• 1:35:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:35:43Speaker 07

  It was actually, it was actually a pretty good book.

• 1:35:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, come on. Sounds like a podcast.

• 1:35:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, right, right. So, anyway.

• 1:35:51Steven Rinella?

  Back when we had good titles.

• 1:35:52Speaker 07

  So, anyway, on, on, let's see, March 3rd, another party.

• 1:36:00Speaker 07

  Went out to check on Macho B and captured him because they could tell that he, you know, he was

• 1:36:09Steven Rinella?

  Hurt.

• 1:36:10Speaker 07

  He was hurting and hurting bad. So they brought him to the Phoenix Zoo and they did the bunch of tests and they were like, this Jaguar's gonna die. So they thought about, they thought about putting-

• 1:36:21Steven Rinella?

  And what did the tests reveal? Had he been drugged bad or he was starving?

• 1:36:25Speaker 07

  He was starving. He, he, he was-

• 1:36:28Steven Rinella?

  Or had already starving?

• 1:36:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, already starving, physically in bad condition and his kidneys were shot.

• 1:36:33Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Well-

• 1:36:34Speaker 05

  Old? Old animal?

• 1:36:36Speaker 07

  So he would-

• 1:36:37Steven Rinella?

  Kidneys were shot from the drugs?

• 1:36:39Speaker 07

  No, kidneys were shot, um, from dehydration.

• 1:36:43Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:36:44Speaker 07

  Um, when, when they found him the first time, uh, he was hypothermic. I think he, his core pressure was, his core temperature was like 90 degrees or something like that. So, so, yeah, I mean, this, if I want, so I'm trying to give you some kind of broad brushstrokes, but ultimately they had to put the Jaguar down.

• 1:37:06Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:07Speaker 07

  And when they put, had to put the Jaguar down, um, on March 3rd, all the, you know, papers across the country covered the death of Macho B. And then the whole, the whole kind of, um, I hate to say guys, but the, the whole thing just blew up.

• 1:37:25Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:37:26Speaker 07

  And two, two reporters for the Arizona Daily Star, a guy named Tim Stellar and I think Tom Davis, waded into this for, for months, um, waded into all the, all the, all the literature and ultimately decided that, um, what had happened was that the Arizona Game and Fish Department did not have an incidental take permit from the US Fish and Wildlife Service for Jaguars. They had no Jaguar protocol, handling protocol.

• 1:38:00Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:01Speaker 07

  So they just, you know- Because ultimately, there was another reporter who reported on this and said it was driven by greed, driven by environmental politics, and driven by a desire to get some of that homeland security money that for that they had set aside for endangered species.

• 1:38:24Speaker 05

  Hey Jim, can you get closer to your mic?

• 1:38:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure. They, they, they thought if they could capture Macho B, they would be able to get, you know, some of that homeland security money. Does that all make sense?

• 1:38:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but here's the one part, here's the one part doesn't make sense.

• 1:38:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:38:39Steven Rinella?

  Not, nothing, nothing chrisizes your storytelling. If this jag, there seems to me like a little bit like, what was the result of and what was before? If this jaguar is on death's door.

• 1:38:51Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:38:53Steven Rinella?

  How much does he give a shit about a, a, a female dropping?

• 1:38:58Speaker 07

  Oh, you mean, does he have the urge?

• 1:39:00Steven Rinella?

  I'm saying, he's out doing jaguar stuff.

• 1:39:03Speaker 07

  Uh huh.

• 1:39:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay, he got himself, like, he gets himself to the snare location.

• 1:39:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:09Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:39:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Steven Rinella?

  And they might have had a great set, a great trail, but he's there, he's enough to be interested, he's got curiosity, he gets hooked. But then all of a sudden, it's like, oh no, he was half dead already. It's like, are you sure? Because he showed up there, but never left.

• 1:39:28Speaker 07

  Never left, right.

• 1:39:29Steven Rinella?

  So you caught him at the moment, at the, his last gasp, was stepping on that plate.

• 1:39:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Steven Rinella?

  He's like, I'm good for one more step.

• 1:39:41Steven Rinella?

  It's just, I feel like there's a little, you know, like, you could say like, oh no, he was all, he was in rough shape, he was all beat up. It's like, could have been that bad a shape, dude, you caught him.

• 1:39:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, right.

• 1:39:50Steven Rinella?

  If he's in bad shape, he's laying in a thicket.

• 1:39:52Speaker 07

  Right. Well, I should, and the second printing of my book.

• 1:39:57Steven Rinella?

  You'll interview me.

• 1:39:58Speaker 07

  I will incorporate.

• 1:39:58Steven Rinella?

  And I'll be like, having not been there, and having no real idea. Brief consideration of the facts of the case.

• 1:40:05Speaker 07

  No, so that, that was a real, that for me, that was a real conundrum about, do I include that story? Do I dredge up all that old crap?

• 1:40:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, you have to.

• 1:40:18Speaker 07

  Yeah, but

• 1:40:19Steven Rinella?

  Cause you got, you're trying, you gotta, you gotta, cause it's a new story.

• 1:40:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's right. But there were a lot of people, you know, who, who were kind of injured by, by the story and Jack Childs said it put, put Jaguar biology in Arizona back into the Stone Age. So I really, really thought long and hard, or thought long and hard about whether I wanted to tell that story. And ultimately I decided to because I mean, that pretty much has set the course for Jaguar conservation in the Southwest.

• 1:40:53Steven Rinella?

  In what, in what way?

• 1:40:54Speaker 07

  It just, it just, it's a stain. It's a stain that, you know, that nobody, nobody wants to dredge up and no, right now, nobody really wants to touch. The Jim Heffelfinger, that the Arizona game and fish department may be a little more receptive to Jaguars in Arizona had this not happened. But they're just, they just don't like talking about it anymore. Rightfully so.

• 1:41:22Speaker 07

  You look skeptical.

• 1:41:23Steven Rinella?

  Well, no, I'm just picturing the email. That's what I was thinking. I was literally thinking of, I was literally thinking of the email. We will get email. Yeah, I'm not saying who, but there will be emails.

• 1:41:32Speaker 07

  Yeah, there will be emails. It's a, I mean, it's a, it's a complicated, unfortunate, tawdry story. You know, it just, it just, I think there are a lot of people who meant well and things just went bad.

• 1:41:48Steven Rinella?

  But, but I mean, just, just to talk shop a little bit.

• 1:41:51Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 1:41:52Steven Rinella?

  Not even about Jaguars, just to talk shop a little bit. The, the, as a writer, whatever.

• 1:41:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:41:59Steven Rinella?

  Podcaster, writer, researcher, the, um, why do you gotta go bring in this up thing?

• 1:42:06Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:42:07Steven Rinella?

  I understand it, but it's like, the answer's kind of like, cuz.

• 1:42:11Speaker 07

  Cuz, right. So I should apologize.

• 1:42:14Steven Rinella?

  You know what I'm saying? It's like, cuz it mattered, it mattered.

• 1:42:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:42:18Steven Rinella?

  Mattered, matters.

• 1:42:20Speaker 07

  It matters. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a big, big deal. And a lot of, a lot of Jaguar biologists were like, I didn't give a shit about a geriatric old Jaguar that died in Arizona. But, um, but because...

• 1:42:36Speaker 07

  You know, they

• 1:42:37Steven Rinella?

  But it's also

• 1:42:38Speaker 07

  The cover up was worse than reality. Yeah. Yeah. And it was the only one in the country at that time.

• 1:42:44Steven Rinella?

  So, uh, uh, trust me, if that had been, if they had hooked a mountain lion and it died, we wouldn't be talking about it.

• 1:42:49Speaker 07

  We wouldn't.

• 1:42:50Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:42:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Steven Rinella?

  But it's like

• 1:42:51Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:42:52Steven Rinella?

  The only one.

• 1:42:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Steven Rinella?

  There's just, I mean, you, you can't

• 1:42:57Steven Rinella?

  well, like, bad stuff happens. There, I have a dear friend who's, I'm not gonna name his name because what he said to me in private, he said this one time. He was doing a marking, recapture project. I'm not gonna tell you what kind of, because people will put it together. He's doing a marking, recapture project with, with, with wildlife.

• 1:43:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:15Steven Rinella?

  He said

• 1:43:17Steven Rinella?

  his advisor once said to him, if you're not killing shit, you're not working hard.

• 1:43:22Speaker 07

  Hmm. Hmm. Wow.

• 1:43:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cause he initially was like so afraid

• 1:43:29Speaker 07

  Of

• 1:43:30Steven Rinella?

  and he's supposed to be getting collars.

• 1:43:33Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Steven Rinella?

  On, right?

• 1:43:35Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:43:35Steven Rinella?

  And he was so afraid that it was crippling.

• 1:43:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Steven Rinella?

  And eventually someone said that.

• 1:43:41Speaker 07

  Just wow.

• 1:43:42Steven Rinella?

  If you're not, if you're not killing stuff, you're not doing it.

• 1:43:45Speaker 07

  It's hands on work.

• 1:43:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. It's like you got, there's a, there's an inherent meaning. There's like an inherent risk.

• 1:43:50Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Steven Rinella?

  That becomes very different. One, there's one.

• 1:43:55Speaker 07

  There's one. Yeah.

• 1:43:56Steven Rinella?

  It's a different conversation.

• 1:43:58Speaker 07

  Well, the protocol for capturing Jaguars in, for instance, Brazil is like super complicated.

• 1:44:04Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:44:04Speaker 07

  Yeah. And if you're gonna do, if you're gonna do a capture and collaring program, which I was part of, um, you thought, you were talking about seeing this magnificent Jaguar. You know, just behind the glass and what it, how it made you feel. You know, we had prepared night after night after night for per, the, the chance of capturing a Jaguar.

• 1:44:24Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:25Speaker 07

  And when it finally happened, no one had ever told me about what an emotional experience it would be. When they presented that Jaguar and laid him on the back, you know, of the truck and said, okay, now you can touch that Jaguar.

• 1:44:41Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:44:42Speaker 07

  Oh my God. I mean, I still, I still like, I still get a little shaky. Thinking about it, it was just like, you know, as the jaguar is breathing, like touching, you know, touching the belly and just moving my hand, you know, moving my hand along the jaguar on the tail.

• 1:44:58Steven Rinella?

  Trying to get one of those teeth out.

• 1:45:02Steven Rinella?

  That anyone knows.

• 1:45:03Speaker 07

  Everybody would love a jaguar tooth to hang from their neck, but it was really.

• 1:45:08Steven Rinella?

  And you like the thing of it is, he's still alive.

• 1:45:12Speaker 07

  Yeah. So I mean, but that was, that was pretty overwhelming.

• 1:45:16Steven Rinella?

  Well, yes, you laid a hand on one.

• 1:45:17Speaker 07

  Laid a hand on one. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty.

• 1:45:21Steven Rinella?

  And that's gotta feel just like muscle, man.

• 1:45:24Speaker 07

  Oh, just complete muscle. Yeah. Like the hindquarters, you know, that's, oh man. Yeah. Just solid muscle. Solid muscle.

• 1:45:33Steven Rinella?

  That's cool that he's breathing, you know?

• 1:45:35Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty, pretty special experience.

• 1:45:40Steven Rinella?

  What's Jaguar smell like? Just nothing probably?

• 1:45:43Speaker 07

  No, in fact, in, in that Jaguar oddly didn't smell, but there's this guy named Eduardo Correo in, in Costa Rica, who said, he was talking about how elusive Jaguars are, you know, cryptic. And he could, he said, he could be crawling through the jungle and he knew that Jaguar was close because his trans, he, he, because his, his receiver, he was getting beeps. And he said, what he does is, he said, you know, Jaguar could be three feet away from you and you wouldn't see him. He'd listen for the monkeys or he'd use his nose.

• 1:46:21Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you're kidding me.

• 1:46:22Speaker 07

  No, he said Jaguars reek. So he would use his nose and smell them out.

• 1:46:28Steven Rinella?

  Yanni got to do that with lions.

• 1:46:30Speaker 07

  Oh, you did?

• 1:46:31Steven Rinella?

  With collared lions and Yanni was saying, it's amazing, man. Like tell him like you get close to that sucker and you don't know he's there.

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  Oh, that, yeah, I thought you were talking about the part where we had him drugged and then we were handling him.

• 1:46:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no. The part where you're like, how is he letting me get this close?

• 1:46:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, but no, we, he was doing a study where he was, uh, basically seeing if hay, repeated hazing would cause like, would be a deterrent for mountain lions, uh, proximity to humans, right?

• 1:47:00Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:00Speaker 05

  If, if that makes sense in, in, in one broad brush stroke. And so to do that, they were collaring them and then walk, once they had him collared, walking towards known locations of lions, uh, coincidentally playing the Meat Eater podcast at 80 decibels on a speaker.

• 1:47:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:47:16Speaker 05

  And then he's watching the GPS as he walks towards it and he's like, okay, we're at 50 meters, we're at 30 meters. And the closest one we got to, I think, was 12. And I'm like, are we gonna keep going? And he's like, no, at this point, we stop. Like, it's right there.

• 1:47:34Speaker 07

  Please stop.

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  And what was amazing is that it's literally right there.

• 1:47:37Speaker 07

  And

• 1:47:37Speaker 05

  He says, it's in that copse of trees and he goes, oh, now it's moving and you're looking right there and you never see it.

• 1:47:44Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:47:45Speaker 05

  You never see the cat.

• 1:47:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, right. So amazing. Yeah.

• 1:47:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:47:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, so amazing.

• 1:47:51Steven Rinella?

  Are you gonna retire now?

• 1:47:53Speaker 07

  Oh, man, no, you know, I'm a writer. I can't retire.

• 1:47:56Steven Rinella?

  There's no plan for that, is there?

• 1:47:58Speaker 07

  I'll be retiring when I'm pushing up daisies.

• 1:48:01Steven Rinella?

  So what are you gonna, what are you gonna write next?

• 1:48:03Speaker 07

  I'm not sure. Uh, you, you know, that's a good question. Usually I should have a book, you know, another book project ready to go, but I don't.

• 1:48:10Steven Rinella?

  And that, that, looking for that plane is just for the hell of it?

• 1:48:14Speaker 07

  Look, looking for that plane is about, you know, a passion project.

• 1:48:19Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:48:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Steven Rinella?

  Should say the hell of it. It was not a book. I assumed it was a book project.

• 1:48:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, you know, I, it could be, you know, it could be like a long form story or something like that, but I'm not sure if it's a book project. But I'd love to write about New Guinea again. Maybe, maybe next book will take me back to Alaska. I don't know. I got a few ideas, but this book, this book, because, um, well, for a lot of reasons, because of COVID. Eventually, the, the guy who filled, who became the new Alan Rabinowitz, who was a great friend of Alan Rabinowitz, a guy named Howard Quigley, he died in the middle of my research and it just, you know,

• 1:48:57Steven Rinella?

  Of what?

• 1:48:57Speaker 07

  Um, he did, um, um, cancer too. Yeah, yeah. And so this project took me way longer than it should have. And it became, ultimately, it became a passion project, you know, not a, not a, not a pain project.

• 1:49:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you spent too much time on it.

• 1:49:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some, you know, not unnecessarily, but necessarily, but um.

• 1:49:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like the, the, the economics didn't make sense.

• 1:49:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, which, you know, a lot of writers will tell you these days, it's hard, hard to make, for the economics to make sense. But, uh, you know, I got a couple of ideas, but you know, we'll, we'll, we'll see.

• 1:49:35Steven Rinella?

  Just hit me with one, I'll tell you if it's a good one or not.

• 1:49:38Speaker 07

  I was thinking that.

• 1:49:39Steven Rinella?

  I save you tons of time right now.

• 1:49:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I was thinking I'd tell.

• 1:49:43Steven Rinella?

  But don't give it away. Too much, because then someone else will do it.

• 1:49:47Speaker 07

  If it's a good idea, we'll cut it out of the podcast so no one jumps in. You're right. I better not talk, I better not say a word.

• 1:49:51Steven Rinella?

  Just give me a hint.

• 1:49:52Speaker 07

  Alaska.

• 1:49:55Speaker 07

  It's a good idea. About as vague as, yeah.

• 1:49:58Steven Rinella?

  The collapse of the Yukon salmon collapse.

• 1:50:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a great story.

• 1:50:04Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I got it.

• 1:50:05Speaker 07

  Well, that is, no, but that's a great story, yeah.

• 1:50:08Steven Rinella?

  Somebody should do a book on that.

• 1:50:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, somebody should. That's, you know, I know a lot of guys who ran fish wheels on, on, on the Yukon and they're, you know.

• 1:50:16Steven Rinella?

  You know what the answer is that they're leaning toward?

• 1:50:18Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:50:19Steven Rinella?

  Hatrees.

• 1:50:20Speaker 07

  Oh, is that right? Really? In Alaska, of all places?

• 1:50:25Steven Rinella?

  That's the political, that's the, that's what they're coming in with, is like, oh, that's easy, hatrees.

• 1:50:30Speaker 07

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:50:31Steven Rinella?

  Fix that, no problem.

• 1:50:32Speaker 05

  Oh, that's the fix, not the, not the, not the reason.

• 1:50:36Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:50:37Steven Rinella?

  It's, it's, it's like, because it's the whole thing of, it's, it's just like, what's the problem? Everything.

• 1:50:46Speaker 07

  You're right.

• 1:50:47Steven Rinella?

  Hammer and fish in the sea, like hammer and fish in the sea, intercept fisheries, water temperatures. It's like, it's just too big and too, it's, it's, it's, you can't unravel it.

• 1:50:58Steven Rinella?

  Everybody's got, it's this, it's that. There's a real problem. And it seems to be that there's a real problem with like intercept fisheries, like hitting those fish, hitting, hitting those fish before they're in the, in the fresh.

• 1:51:11Speaker 07

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:51:12Steven Rinella?

  So, you know, and they got like even like subsistence people, like subsistence people living along the river, like native Alaskan subsistence fishermen aren't able to put their wheels out. It's bad.

• 1:51:22Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 1:51:22Steven Rinella?

  And, um, I guess like the way that they're, you know, as people at high levels in the state look at, they're like, well, it's easy.

• 1:51:32Speaker 07

  Hmm, fishery.

• 1:51:33Steven Rinella?

  Hatcheries.

• 1:51:34Speaker 07

  Hatcheries, yeah. Yeah, well, Alaska, yeah, right. I mean, the public lands issue up there is pretty dire now, too.

• 1:51:41Steven Rinella?

  Right now it is.

• 1:51:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:51:43Steven Rinella?

  Right now it is.

• 1:51:43Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:51:47Steven Rinella?

  Ah, that's a good book.

• 1:51:53Speaker 07

  Thanks.

• 1:51:54Steven Rinella?

  Come back out and finish it.

• 1:51:55Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:51:58Steven Rinella?

  Tell us what you find out.

• 1:51:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:52:02Steven Rinella?

  How I saved the salmon. I think we just nailed the back cover copy.

• 1:52:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:52:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we can get, we can get on this right now. I'll blurb it right now. Hell of a book.

• 1:52:10Speaker 07

  You guys are amazing.

• 1:52:14Steven Rinella?

  Hell of a book.

• 1:52:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Steven Rinella?

  Author of, well, James Campbell, thanks for coming on.

• 1:52:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.

• 1:52:20Steven Rinella?

  I got one more for you.

• 1:52:21Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 1:52:22Steven Rinella?

  What's your favorite book that you wrote? Like one where you had the height of your powers.

• 1:52:27Speaker 07

  At the height of, I'd like to think I'm still at the height of my powers. Um, you know, I wrote a book.

• 1:52:34Steven Rinella?

  I'd say this one because it's for sale right now.

• 1:52:35Speaker 07

  Well, that's true. I mean, thank you.

• 1:52:39Speaker 07

  Apparently I'm a really.

• 1:52:40Steven Rinella?

  We have an in-house marketing firm as well.

• 1:52:43Speaker 07

  Yeah, my publisher's gonna kill me. Yeah, I mean, this was a real passion project. There's no question about it. But, you know, I, I, I love, you know, I love writing all my books. I got another one about, um, my daughter and I doing a bunch of stuff in Alaska, including building a cabin with my cousin Heimokorth and, you know, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That was a particularly personal one. But um yeah, all of them, you know, you know how it is. I mean, you're a writer. Um, it's all, you know, it's all really meaningful stuff. All of them.

• 1:53:16Steven Rinella?

  You love them all like little babies.

• 1:53:17Speaker 07

  You do.

• 1:53:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:19Speaker 07

  And then when you're done, you're like, kick them out of the house. They're like, I'm tired of that book. Yeah.

• 1:53:27Steven Rinella?

  All right. Well, the latest, the latest is uh Heart of the Jaguar, the extraordinary conservation effort to save the America's legendary cat. And then um if you're into whiskey, whiskey too, I highly recommend Ghost Mountain.

• 1:53:44Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 1:53:44Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Ghost Mountain Boys, right? I can't see the covers.

• 1:53:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:47Steven Rinella?

  That's the proper title. Ghost Mountain. Oh, there it is right here. Ghost Mountain Boys about the um, you know, the Pacific Theater during World War II, particularly uh the Battle of New for New Guinea.

• 1:53:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Steven Rinella?

  Um, oh, that rips your heart out, dude.

• 1:54:01Speaker 07

  It sure does. Still, still rips my heart out.

• 1:54:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:54:05Steven Rinella?

  Lot of suffering, a lot of heroism, a lot of sacrifice. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:54:09Speaker 07

  Ah, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, guys.

• 1:54:12Steven Rinella?

  Thanks, Dan.

• 1:54:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com.

• 1:55:20Steven Rinella?

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• 1:56:03Speaker 03

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• 1:56:18Steven Rinella?

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• 1:57:02Steven Rinella?

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• 1:57:08Speaker 00

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