Justin Brown

00:035 4 3 2 1 and we're live with Justin Brown Justin first of all I'm very upset they gave you such a small badge what's up with that yeah I know it's nice and Tiny there not law enforcements though seems like you should have like like youve there's some badge there there's some enforcement right it sure looks like it doesn't it but no law enforcement on my end I'm just a biologist so well listen man i' I've read about your work in um an online article I don't remember where it was but about coyotes in the urban area all around Los Angeles and I've been fascinated by this since I moved to LA the first time I saw a coyote was in 1994 when I first moved here I was in Burbank and uh I had an apartment and you know one of those um they have those uh pre- furnished Oak Woods Gardens apartment on Olive Street you know where that is uh not off top of my head but

00:55it's where people always when they they transition to La they get one of these pre- furnished apartments you know anyway yeah I'm driving up Olive and I saw these coyotes and it was the first time I'd ever seen a coyote and I was like this is crazy like this is in Burbank This is in a residential area and they were just hanging out and I pulled over and I stopped and I rolled down the window and I I was staring at them and they're staring at me and they didn't give a about me they were so calm and they didn't run and I just remember thinking this is so strange he are like a wild dog that live like right amongst us and then from then on I've had some encounters I had a coyote steal a chicken from my yard I watched him hop the fence with a chicken in his mouth had quite a few encounters with coyotes but I'm I'm absolutely fascinated by them I mean they've been amazing I've been working

01:47with them now for almost 15 years actually a little bit more than that now and I've seen them do some amazing things I mean they're able to live in some of the most Urban environments we can imagine I mean I'm tracking them right next to I don't know if you know where the Westlake neighborhood is in Downtown LA but I had a coyote running that neighborhood which when I first drove through there so I worked in Chicago for a long time we were tracking coyotes in some incredibly urban areas there like right along Lakes Shore Drive in Chicago and but in Chicago there's some green spots where when you get down in La there's not a lot of open spots there's some little vacant lots and stuff um but I tracked this coyote for about nine months down there in that area and she was just amazing like she was running the streets she'd came of hang out in these little vacant lots and

02:25what was even more amazing is that no one was really complaining about her we actually talked to people in some of the and stuff they were actually fascinated to see them versus yeah being like they're in my backyard what are they doing well people have always had a weird relationship with coyotes I had um Dan Flores on the podcast last month who's the author of coyote America and uh he's a a wildlife historian and has just some amazing insight into like the relationship the coyotes had way back with the Native Americans you know they thought they were gods in in a lot of ways yeah I I actually listened to your podcast with Dan that was great Dan's got some pretty interesting facts just in this book in general things I didn't actually know about before it's it's kind of nice to have a historian tie in some of the facts like I get lot ask lots of questions about where the

03:08coyotes came from how they're moving around yeah um and so it's nice to have something like Dan's book to kind of reference people to I think most people in the downtown LA probably welcome something like a kyote because it's kind of cool you know to have this thing like hanging around you as long as you don't have a dog or a cat that it snatches yeah and that's definitely the case a lot of people think it's cool but they do cause problems um I'm actually dealing with one in the silver lake neighborhood that's keeps going up to people walking their dogs and trying to it's got a D in somebody's backyard it's actually dinning under their deck so the deck's open and she put all seven pups underneath this Den whoa yeah so it's pretty crazy um but she was basically anybody gets close with a dog she comes out and tries to run them off and this is pretty common during pupping season

03:51this is like the time when most people have issues with coyotes cuz they're trying to protect their dens I mean we're all obviously protective of our Offspring so right so they they think that the dog is going to find the pups and kill them or something uh I mean we don't really know why they're doing it we assume that's probably the case they come up and they most of the attacks have been where they just come up behind the dog and start trying to like nip it its back and W the dog the people move on people freak out um as far as I know there hasn't been anywhere that K would actually like draw blood on the dog so it's almost more like it's like get the hell out of here right so they're just scaring them they're not trying to they're not actually being Predators that's what it seems like for the most part I mean they definitely do kill little dogs occasionally end up fighting

04:30with big dogs as well but that's that's rare wow so these what are they eating like especially the one in downtown yeah so that's that's interesting um we've actually been doing this study using working with a bunch of Citizen scientists and I don't know if that's the story you read or not but we're basically having people collect coyote scat from around downtown LA and we're actually breaking the coyote scat up to look what's in it and we're seeing a huge variety of things I mean lots of fruits and stuff they're actually big time into veget vegetation type stuff a lot of fruits and there environment obviously we've got peaches and plums and all kinds of crazy fruity and stuff that they take advantage of um but they're also eating rats and squirrels cats um insects we seen things like earwigs and those big old potato bugs that people see I mean there's eat

05:16almost anything you could think of they're taking advantage of human trash well I I've had him in my yard for a long time and one of things that surprised me is how much coyote scat that I find with berries in it like I didn't know that they were omnivores I mean they they really are omnivores they're it's not like uh like a dog or a cat I mean they eat pretty much everything yeah I mean coyotes can take advantage and that's why they're able to live amongst us I mean because even when there's not a lot of prey available they they're able to take advantage of these different fru and trees yeah you know I was talking with a friend about it and he was uh saying that he hates them and you know he wants to kill them all and all this stuff and I was saying but yeah but ever noticed that you don't see any rats like we we hardly have any rats like it's so rare that you see a rat or

06:00a mouse in my area and I think a big part of that is cuz you hear coyotes all the time and I think they're eating them all I mean they definit will take advantage of them I mean there's other Predators too I'm not sure where you live exactly but owls and Bob Cats and all those different things definitely take advantage of those prey as well but yeah coyotes I mean they're amazing yeah they they're they are really are a fast an animal so this this one that got to Downtown LA do you know like when it arrived I don't know when it arrived so I I kind of drove through there looking to see where I might be able to call her a few animals so we could kind of see what's going on and how these animals are persisting down there and actually how do you do that uh how do I see if where they're persist how do you collar them oh how do I collar them so first we have to capture them so we'll put out

06:44traps we'll capture them and then once I get them in a trap I'll go out with a pole I'll pin them to the ground and then I'll hold them down Jesus I'll I'll put a muzzle on them and hold their feet together and then we'll throw a collar on them we'll take blood to look for disease you don't them we don't tranquilize them wow that's crazy yeah they actually go very docile they're a lot like a dog once you kind of show them that you're the dominant thing they they kind of just lay over I mean you still have to be careful obviously they can turn and bite you if you don't muzzle them right but usually once you get them down that first time they usually just lay there until you're done no kidding yeah and it usually takes me somewhere 35 40 minutes to do the whole thing and they just lay there they're not fighting me you video of that uh I'm sure I do I want to see that that's got

07:29to be a trip yeah know I would think that they would be like a wild cat like I've had a feral cat before um and I had her when she was a kitten or he rather when he was a kitten and he was like a spaz like you couldn't even hold on to him you'd freak out and climb the curtains and hiss and sputter at you and that was like a little domestic cat that was born outside oh yeah we do drug any of our cats we catch so we catch um Bobcats it's another study that we're doing a lot of uh we've actually had a bobcat project going on since 1996 and so we've been cering those guys for a long time they're not docel they're not docel we don't trust them raccoons are another species you don't handle those guys undrugged oh yeah I would imagine they'll make you pay the price is that crazy like people don't realize that raccoons are predators yeah well they're they're they're definitely omnivores

08:16like just like the coyotes are they actually eat a lot of fruit and stuff they take I mean part of them living in an urban environment is they're just taking massive advantage of our garbage right raccoons just I mean we've I've seen amazing photos of like 13 14 raccoons and one garage Gage can all feasting down I have uh chickens in my backyard and this one raccoon was by my chicken Co the other day and I flashed a light on him and he walked towards the light I was like look at this cocky he just started walking at me and I got nervous I was like I don't have a weapon on me or nothing I thought a flashlight he'd be like whoa let me get out of here he's just looking right at the flashlight walking towards me you know trying to get to the chicken coop yeah well you'd be amazed how many people feed them oh because they're so dang cute big old mask on them people

08:59are like oh they're starving out there they can't find their own food and so they feel like they need to feed them and same thing with coyotes too it's people feel like these animals can't f for themselves which is ridiculous cuz they're not able to make it they're because we're feeding them they're making it because there's resources for them to take advantage of yeah I would imagine they probably play I mean like I said I think in my neighborhood they do play an important part of keeping the rodent population down but in downtown there's got to be a ton of rodents as well I mean downtown for people who don't know is like the only area in all of La that really looks like a city yeah definitely I mean I like I said I drove through there I mean after tracking coyotes and Chicago I didn't think they'd be in some of the areas they are in La they're seem to be everywhere I

09:41look I get photos of coyotes on our cameras or get people reporting them to us and this one that's in downtown is just a single coyote by herself no actually she's got a whole pack so I CED her and then within a couple she was actually lactating when I caught her so I know she had pups and then we ended up seeing her with five pups probably a week later and there was actually a uh ambulance that drove by and she just started howling and all the pups were out there yipping and this is all like in this little vacant lot between two houses wow yeah so they just find these areas where people aren't yeah and so before we colored them the one thing I always heard is oh the coyos are coming in from Griffith Park or they're coming in from allean Park and coming into our communities and they're just here for a night or two night causing problems and leaving well that's not what we're

10:28seeing and definitely once we threw these collars on these animals we're like no they've got pretty small home ranges they're kind of living just in the urban environment they're not going back and forth they're living with us so do you feel like it's a good thing or a bad thing to have them around or just a thing I think it's just a thing I mean depends on your perspective um I think it's bad when people think we need to feed them we need to do these things like to encourage them and make them more comfortable with us that's not a good thing because that's when bites and that kind of stuff happen but if when it comes to the coyotes and stuff living in these Urban environments it's really all about us it's more about managing people getting people to quit feeding them or quit I mean one thing I encourage people to do is scare the stupid coyote off like cuz there's lots of people that

11:13have little issues that occur with the coyotes their cats get taken or the coyotes start just sitting there watching them I had somebody complain recently because a coyote was sitting behind their yard looking at their wife in the jacuzzi oh Jesus Christ Sky's a pervert yeah exactly so it's like come on like all he has to do if he really doesn't want it there go back there and run the thing off but he's not call you and tell you that a kyo's staring at their wife yeah you'd be amazed the calls we get about coyotes people just people are still not comfortable with them being there even though they've been there for a long time it's just people cannot get comfort with the idea of they're being a a mediumsized predator in these Urban environments they're like the perfect size to almost get away with it too you know like they it's not like a wolf like if a wolf was

11:55around everybody'd be freaking out like it's too big coyote is like you know 40 lbs something like that that's that's a big coyote what's a small one uh so our average is around 25 to 27 lbs wow okay so you're not pry small they are and that's why I'm always like when people are so scared of them like it's really not that big of an animal I mean there's a lot of small dogs are bigger than that they're smart though man they're really clever one of them um he or she essentially uh what you would say honey my dog and tricked my dog into uh do you know what um what it's like when a chicken molts yeah I actually have chickens as well okay cool yeah so uh my chicken was molting so I had to separate her from um the rest of the chicken so she wasn't in a nesting box and I put her in a cage by herself if you let them sit in the cage for a few days they figure out that they don't really have

12:45an egg and then they go back to their normal behavior so um this coyote was too small to knock over the cage but my Mastiff is big enough to do it so she literally tricked my Mas into coming out with her towards where the chickens are he knocks over the cage she steals the chicken and hops over the fence wow did you see all this happen I caught him with another Chicken in his mouth and uh I was like you and then I see the coyote jump over the fence with the chicken like he was with the coyote right next to it he thought it was his friend like he was treating the kyot like this is my friend she's cool we hang out together and she tricked him into knocking over this small pen you know he's like 140 lbs he just smashed that thing and broke it open and she grabbed the chicken thanks and hopped over the fence and I watched her I was sitting there I was playing like

13:42Monopoly or something with my wife and my kids were sitting in the living room and I see the coyote running across the backyard with the chicken in its mouth and hopped over this 5 foot fence like it didn't even exist just Bo just right over the top of it I was like wow that's crazy yeah they're incredibly smart I mean heck to living downtown they've got to be I se like Crossing roads it's amazing like I watch them walk up to these busy roads they stop about 10 feet shy kind of sit there listening then they'll peek around the corner and look both ways and then they'll run across well I've heard that they understand traffic lights now there was an article I read yesterday about coyotes and traffic lights that there's real evidence that coyotes understand when that beep beep you know that beep sound that they use for uh blind people that coyotes understand that that means the

14:28cars aren't allowed to go and that's when they walk huh I haven't seen that one that's interesting it doesn't surprise me I mean they're it's incredible watching them move around this Urban environment and just dealing with us and dealing with traffic like they they get around I mean they'll come out in the street all a suddenly somebody will peek out in the street to go on their car and they'll cut between the cars and go down the sidewalk like they they figure out our movements and how to avoid us pretty quick how many do you think there are in the greater LA area oh I get asked that question a lot and it's it's a hard one to answer because we don't know because they are pack animals so you could end up with easily it could be just two animals in an area or it could be two adults with seven young or it could even be five six seven 10 adults together with with a

15:12pack of young as well because a lot of times the Young from the year before may not disperse if there's enough food available they'll keep hanging in there until they are able to find their own territory so whenever someone would give an estimation it's really just a rough guess it's a very rough guess a lot of times what they'll do is they'll just try to be like okay this is how big of an area coyot uses and then be like okay there's this much area in LA and throw a number out there but there's a lot of variables that come in and has the do you feel like the numbers increased over the past few years or definitely not over the last few years um it's possible over the long run because I know there are some reports of places that there weren't coyotes like the Baldwin Hills there was some work done where they identified all the different animals there and coyotes weren't in their list

15:56H um they use trail cams like what did they use to identify the animals um back then I think they were doing a lot of track surveys and just going out there into the field and looking for them track surveys meaning like looking at the ground exactly yeah and with coyotes they leave enough scat different places like if they were looking hard for them they would have found them how can you tell the difference between coyote scat and dog scat um usually so dog scat is almost always just dog food um and it doesn't these coyote scats end up getting more c um spiraled inside and so they'll be really t tapered on the ends where dog scat can be tapered but it's usually just drastically different huh why is it tapered um it's partially just the way their digestive system works and they're getting all this hair in there because they're eating these animals and so it gets more and more spiral as it

16:41comes out and we can tell them apart from like Bobcats cuz Bobcats kind of get this they're more almost I don't want to call it a pellet but they're they're smaller segmented and they're kind of just one Sid's concave one sides convex of each pellet and so you can tell them apart that's actually can be more difficult for some people than the dog and the coyo I found some Mountain Li once in Santa Monica not in Santa Monica excuse me uh Santa Barbara and it was very disturbing cuz it was a rope like a fat rope of hairy and I was like what is this from and I sent it to a friend of mine who is uh he's very knowledgeable about animals he's like it's almost definitely a mountain line I like whoa like somebody got got here it was it was pretty thick rope like a hum siiz log with with uh all this hair in it we actually have a lion study going in our mountains too we've been calling

17:30our mountain lions for a long time I'm sure you probably heard a P22 in Griffith Park I have yeah that's actually an animal that one of my colleagues collared oh yeah that's the the famous photo of the Hollywood Hills exactly that is an amazing photo of that enormous cat with that collar on yeah that was Steve wyers with National Geographic got that photo I mean it's pretty impressive he worked hard between him and my colleague Jeff they they did a lot of work to get that photo J am gonna pull that photo up we take a look at it now that is that is an iconic photograph man you know what I think we should have that photo in the new studio we should get a print of that can we buy a print of that you know where could and someone could buy a print of that um I believe you can get it from Steve wers let's Jamie make a note of whoever this gentleman is and if he sells that cuz

18:15that is like that seems so crazy it doesn't even look like a real photo cuz the Hollywood sign is so perfect in the background and the cat is huge you know what's amazing about the Hollywood Sign there's no lights on the Hollywood sign he got that photo because he was able to do enough camera work that he made the Hollywood Sign glare out that's just from lights from the city really yeah if you look at the Hollywood sign of night it's not lit up like that wow look at the forearm on that thing yeah I mean that's like a thigh yeah God it's a huge cat Y how big do you think that is it's a big male I think the last time so we've captured him three or four times now and I think the last time he was about 10 oh 120 130 I believe I don't not positive of that but it's somewhere in that area so yeah he's a good sized cat I mean what's amazing he's running in Griffith

19:07Park he never leaves the Griffith Park general area because he's blocked by freeways and yet there hasn't been any conflicts with him and people besides the time he got underneath that guy's house God look at the size of him but yeah Jesus Christ that's so weird so joggers no one gets interrupted by him interrupt is a funny word jacked is a better word he doesn't doesn't it mess with people at all no we get sightings everywhere while people report it but yeah we haven't had any any conflicts with him which has been it's amazing I mean he's for he's got the smallest home range of any mountain lion male mountain lion that we've know of like so what is like a square mile is he just the park he's just the park I mean he goes he's been up by like Universal Studios right in there once or twice like in some green strip through there but for the most part yeah he's just hanging in the

19:53park and then some DWP property next to the park how big is the park I wish I could call that number off the top of my head rle if you had a guess oh yeah I'm not good with that Griffith Park yeah I looked up it's like 4300 Acres or something like that okay it's like the biggest in America or maybe the world Urban Park uh double check it's a pretty big park it is but what is he eaten but when you compare that to mountain lions in our main mountains we usually think two mountain lions can live in the Santa Monica Mountains which is about 150,000 Acres so his range is pretty small 4,300 compared to about 75 th000 Acres that's incredible and he's mostly eating deer he eats some coyotes um raccoons but it's almost most of the most of all of our mountain lions all their diets deer well that's one of the reasons why there's so few deer in California I hear that I we don't we

20:44don't know if that's truly what's going on uh mountain lions they do kind of self-regulate so the big Ms usually kill the smaller mes and so they they do kind of control their own populations at some level oh that's interesting so the competition they kill compet they're not they're not uh cannibals though uh I don't believe they eat them um they usually just kill them that's interesting so do they kill them to bring the females to estris or they do them just because they're competition we believe it's just because it's competition because they're usually killing those yearling okay males so they killing once they're independent exactly so um but they also we have had them kill a female lion as well so really it's not that simple hm that's interesting and is this in the park you found this yeah wow so you find a dead Mountain line in the park I mean they

21:30have radio callers on them so we kind of know what's going on now is there any concern like does anybody make the argument that they shouldn't be there does anybody ever say Hey you know this is where I live I don't want this cat here why do you guys let this thing is a giant Predator wandering around our neighborhood yeah I mean we definitely hear that but we also get the other side as well a lot where they want to protect every lion I mean we hear the same thing with coyotes people don't want the coyotes there with coyotes even more tricky because we've tried to kill coyotes for a long time to try to get them out of areas and we have not been successful I mean places like Chicago with coyotes I mean they'll go through and do removals like a lot of the land owners will do removals and the coyotes just come back pretty quickly interesting so it's really not that

22:15effective when you start trying to remove these animals yeah especially coyotes right they're they're so crafty um I read a really disturbing article about Mountain lines where they were talking about the number of mountain lines that get killed every every year by um professional Mountain Li Hunters that the government hires because they're praying on cats and dogs and that they said that 50% of these animals this is around the San Francisco area that 50% of their diet was was domestic animals like domestic cats and dogs yeah I'm not familiar with that one but we definitely haven't seen that with ours so this one has just got a good supply of deer and that's just what it's eating on a regular basis that's what it seems like I mean even Griffith park that's what they're focused on I mean like I said they also kill the coyotes and raccoons and stuff as well but sure that

23:03the other thing that was really disturbing about that article cuz they were it was the the author was trying to make a connection between missing children yeah they were talking about uh several cases over the years where children were missing and never found again and these the same areas where these Mountain lines were roaming and they were wondering whether or not that had been the case and that makes you just go whoa yeah I mean I think it's probably more likely human caused than Wildlife caused I mean maybe we're we're way creepier than these animals are that's true but do you remember about two years ago uh there was a case in copertino right near the Apple campus where a mountain lion attacked a kid and uh the father had to fight the mountain lion off I mean these stories definitely pop up every once in a while but we also have lots of places where there's lions

23:47and there's no issues right our mountains we've haven't had a light uh human lion issue I mean we've had light stock taken but that's about it and we're talking a park that gets huge amount of visitors grith lion well Griffith but also the whole Santa Monica Mountains so we're part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and we've got at any given time we could have 12 to 15 lions in there wow really and we've never had a human lion issue besides livestock what is the big issue when they do attack people because it's always like someone either running or on a bike is it they think that the person is trying to get away is it like a cat thing like a regular cat you know like if you roll a ball a yarn in front of a cat they just jump on it yeah I don't think we really have a full understanding but it probably has something to do with a prey drive yeah

24:36because I've I've read a few uh mountainline attacks on people that had to do with mountain bikes and I was I was thinking like why would they want to attack someone on a bike it seems like a bike would be scary yeah I mean they're an ambushed predator and they're they're big animal so they're not used to having anything bigger than them take them on so right they're not they're not that fearful of most things I mean a lot of times when people see the Lions they they don't run and so people freak out but that's it's actually not that uncommon for them just to kind of sit there and look at you and judge your situation yeah try to figure out what they can do with you or whether or not they should eat you hope that's not what they're thinking but right most likely not right yeah most likely not but how like what are the numbers of attacks on people do you know like if you yeah

25:17you'd have to talk to my colleague I'm definitely not the lion guy in our office I'm much more focused on coyotes do you remember the last time you heard of a lion attack on people um no and off top of my head I mean the might have been that Apple thing or there was there was aack in Orange County quite a while back um but that's really it it's not that common there's a Mally for not the number of lions that are here there's a mountain lion in San Juan Capistrano that's been attacking this Farm a buddy of mine uh Ian McCall who's a UFC fighter has a friend who owns this farm and this mountain line has been hitting this Farm every now and again and the other day it killed 37 ducks and a goat just goes on a rampage yeah and doesn't even eat him just them up and leaves yeah so what we usually see with them is I mean cuz they almost always eat what they kill it's just when they

26:08kill something in a farm they usually end up being uncomfortable afterwards cuz we come in we see the situation things change and so they don't come back because they'll feed on a deer for a week or more right so it's it's I think it's more of a factor when they leave those things it's more that they just all like oh crap what I do I got to get out of here why' they kill 37 then it's just prey drive I mean can't helps yeah they get in there's times when they get in pins with bigger animals too things like llamas and stuff where they'll end up killing multiple animals just because they get in this pin and then all a suddenly they're jumping around making all these noises and so then the animals get excited and I mean it's just like a dog dogs that get in after chickens all a sudden the dog goes in and kills the whole flock of chickens right it's the same type they just can't

26:49help themselves yep yeah there's that one that's in the Santa Monica Mountains what is it p52 is that the name of it uh p45 I'm guessing if that's what you're talking about is that the one that killed a bunch of llamas and the woman got a depredation permit to kill the mountain line then people freaked out started sending her death threats yeah he got a little out of control yeah it's like it was really creepy listening to This Woman's position because she didn't know what to do cuz she's you know she lives there she's got this farm and this big old cat just keeps coming in up like 10 llamas in a in a setting yeah so us at National Wildlife Federation actually started working with her to try to help pin her anal up better cuz a lot of it just comes to making sure your animals are secure at night is that what it is like you have to figure out a way to close the area so the mountain line

27:35can't get into exactly and it doesn't take anything that complicated we actually held a workshop for people in the the local vicinity and we'll be holding more to teach livestock owners how to secure their animals so that that stuff doesn't happen is there a way they can um do something that like uh emits a sound or something that scares them off so there are some devices out there that are being tested and being used in some vicinities but nothing's 100% the problem with a lot of devices is you've got livestock moving around so they're going to be triggering the devices all night oh right and so it it's it's kind of a tough situation the best thing is to try to pin the animals up so you have to put something with a roof on it so the mountain line can't get in over the top exactly so when you're talking about an animal like that like when they they sometimes they

28:18capture them and then they move them to a new area right um that is very rare to happen is it really yeah like when we capture animals we don't move anybody you just let them go right back to where they are after we C them we take blood we do what we need to do to them and then we just let them go right there so is the idea like mess with them as little as possible exactly yeah if we didn't have to capture them we wouldn't capture them we would just throw if there was a way to get a collar on the animal without touching it we would do that like maybe a dart that shoots a GPS unit in them or something yeah whatever the technology is if it ever comes up that way most Wildlife people would prefer because the least we have to do to them the more we're going to understand their behaviors yeah I would imagine this cat in Griffith Park you said it's been captured three times yeah

29:00that's kind of crazy might even be four I can't remember I'm not like I said I'm not the guy that does all the lion work so I just help out the cat must be like Jesus Christ they got me again the third time he's probably like I'm so tired of wearing the stupid jewelry they keep putting on me yeah well I don't know you might have saw the pictures too where he got he was really sick with mange oh yeah that's right yeah and so they got a medication so we caught him and we have a topical medication that we can give animals we do it to Bobcats and stuff so what we found with this mange disease is that it's caused by rodeno sdes so all these rat poisons we put out there basically ends up getting into the mountain lions and the Bobcats and the coyotes and there seems to be some sort of correlation between those poisons and why these animals get sick oh is that

29:44him right there with mange yep that's him yeah that's fascinating that is a real issue with people poisoning um these animals so that it also affects owls apparently rat poison is causing uh drop in the owl population because the owls are getting a hold of these rats that are sick from the oh that's interesting yeah well it's amazing I mean to think of a mountain lion getting rat poisons it's not like they're out there hunting rats but it's because they're killing the coyotes that then that are eating the rats that are sick is what we believe is happening so a mountain line wouldn't eat a rat I mean they might but for them to eat enough rats they're not just sitting there focusing on rats it's really not a big prey source for them right so they're they're definitely focusing more on the coyotes and the bigger prey I can't believe there's that many mountain lines

30:28than the Santa Monica Mountains that's crazy yeah and the these are collared Mountain lines correct not all of them there's definitely some out there that are uncolored we can only get what we can capture so and so like when you make an estimate of like what you say 15 is that what you said that we think that's our upper size limit how many of them are collared um I think right now we're around eight or nine yeah I wish I wish Jeff was in here he could answer these questions a lot better than me CU like I said I'm I'll get Jeff in here next time yeah it's so fascinating cuz California is such an a unique area in that we are very Urban you know but we're real spread out and we've got these Santa Monica Mountains right there like in Tanga right there I mean Tang I have a buddy who lives in Tanga you go in his backyard you would swear to God you're in Colorado or something I mean just it

31:17it seems like the Wilderness you know the mountains are amazing I mean it's 155,000 acres oh Jamie's got a a map he pulled up of all the mountain lies ah look at them all Jesus so obviously the the Santa Monica Mountains are just there south of the 101 um basically so the park is basically from the Hollywood Hills AL the point Meo and then incorporates most of Malibu and then it goes a little bit up into seami Hills um but the mountains themselves are mostly south of 101 this is such a unique place to live that we're so s sort of surrounded by nature in a lot of ways Y and there's so many different places like you could go to Big Bear in an hour and a half and you're in the woods I mean you are literally in the wilderness that's a great thing about La that's why we all like living here right it's pretty cool it's pretty cool but people are super uncomfortable with the fact

32:07that this Wildlife sort of interfaces with our Urban environment and that's where guys like you come in right yeah I mean we're we're hoping to help reduce some of these conflicts and a lot of it comes to what we do it's not so much with animals I mean with coyotes a huge amount of the issues are because somebody next door to you is feeding them and so the Coyote's hanging around more than like the people leave out food yeah sometimes it's intentional sometimes it's not like feeding your dog outside it's never a good idea having fruit trees in your back yard that are just dropping fruit constantly and no one's picking it up or cleaning it up that's all attractant so it's all bringing in coyotes raccoons possums skunks all these animals are coming in take advantage of that stuff so do you think they eat olives uh have we seen olives probably would take advantage of them here and

32:51there but I don't think it's like a super big food source Forum I haven't seen any spots so we've been doing this diet study for a little while now and olives are not one that pops up regularly cuz my dogs eat them that's why I'm asking my dogs catch them when they fall out of trees and it's the same yard obviously where the coyotes had been visiting yeah I mean I wouldn't rule it out but definitely if you have anything like figs we find tons of figs in their scat yeah figs are big they really like figs they do and figs fruit twice a year a lot of the varieties of figs and so they're they're a lot so the coyotes just kind of learn to key in on them oh okay and probably a lot of calories there too for them right exactly what are those little tiny red berries that they like to eat uh Pantha maybe is that what it is I think so that's not even edible to humans right

33:33not I don't think so but kyos can eat them yeah they I mean whether it's edible to us or whether we would want to eat them is the different question I guess yeah they're they're out there grinding exactly they're eating a lot of things that we would not touch yeah no kidding I mean they they go off pick stuff up off the road nasty little it looks like just putty on the road I've seen them grab stuff I've seen I mean coyotes they're just they're crazy I mean there's a lot of these talk about about kides going after cats and all that and there's no question they eat cats I've seen them one of our Collard animals was actually eating a cat it and two of its packmates were sitting there just eating this cat in somebody's front yard which I'd never seen I knew they ate them have you seen that video of the coyote eating the cat that someone captured in Los Angeles uh I don't think

34:15so it's a great video because these people from their car are filming this coyote that's right there on the street in busy LA and it's just staring at people chewing on this cat yeah it's like woo Jesus J Christ we played it for Dan Flores and Dan has the opinion he's of the opinion that uh a lot of these cats that are getting killed by these coyotes like here some coyotes just wandering across the street I mean this is really crazy because this is as Urban as it gets I mean busy street and this coyote is just hanging out and so these people followed this coyote all around the street does it look like that has a collar why did I see a no um but it Dan thinks that the coyotes are eating the cats because they're competitive Predators um so that has definitely been seen with things like foxes there he is so just chilling eating a cat right in front of everybody I mean that's crazy did they

35:12actually see it I'm guessing they didn't see it actually catch the cat no because the cat's stiff yeah see how stiff that cat is that cat looks like it's been dead for quite a while but he's just chewing on that cat in front of everybody yeah that coyote actually you see how its face looks kind of bald that coyote may actually have and you think that could be from rat poison uh with the coyotes it's a little more complicated than that um we think it's a different type of mange they get so we don't think that's directly tied to rat poisons it could be still but we're just it's kind of Uncertain with those guys and some of it is because of bugs as well right so mange is actually caused by a m yeah and it just irritates their skin and they end up scratching their own fur off oh that's it yeah really yep I thought it just look at that one cat it's like H that's my

35:54friend uh dude that cat is so crazy he's just sitting there watching this coyote yeah what a dumb cat well I saw a cat in the middle of a street a coyote was walking down the street I thought it was a bag of garbage I was about 100 yards away and I was sitting here watching this coyote go to it I was like a the Coyote's going to get in this garbage next thing I know this kyot circles it three times walks off all a suddenly the thing jumps up and walks away I was like whoa did I just see that wow could not believe it like cuz even like I know it's complicated but I was like that was a pretty easy prey they could have just grabbed it so are coyotes much faster than cat is that what it is well in that scenaria it didn't have to be faster the cat was just laying there right like it could have grabbed it at any point yeah I wonder why the cat felt calm enough to

36:38do that yeah I don't know and why the Kyo didn't go after it I have no idea I think it's just it's just not that simple that they go after every single cat yeah well they obviously don't right yeah now you so you say that it is fairly common that people feed them it is I've just with tracking these animals I've been to a bunch of places where people feel like they need to put dog food or cat food out on the street just for the coyotes or the skunks or the raccoons or whatever they're feeding something intentionally out there and then the coyotes are taking advantage and do you talk to these people do you have to have so I will occasionally usually I just tell Animal Services about it and they'll talk to them or if it's somebody I'm like already having some sort of communication with I'll definitely be like H you don't really need to feed these guys they're they're

37:18doing fine on their own yeah all you're doing is encouraging them to come here yeah do they get that do you deal with some nutty animal people that don't get that yeah we definitely deal with some people that don't understand they feel like these animals are going to starve to death or or die of dehydration if they don't put that bowl of water out there that's so crazy so yeah Dan Flores had a woman who came to him and was doing a documentary on saving the coyote yeah and he was like I don't think you understand like they're doing great yeah they've expanded their range incredibly like they're living in every Big City around I mean from New York Chicago um Toronto yeah it's crazy they're everywhere yeah they they literally are in every state in every city in the entire country except Haw why except why yep but what that is so bizarre that they think that

38:08they're in Queens they're they they've found them in the Bronx oh yeah what's amazing they've expanded their range over a fairly short time span too I mean it's really just since Europeans have been here that they've been able to kind of expand out and do that and that's through all this time I was trying to kill them and all that M and so I get a lot of people that want to remove coyotes from the urban envir I'm like well we've been trying to do that for a long time and it's not working what is the solution then the solution is just to of sort of mitigate their impact on us well I think we need to change what we do yeah I mean it's about not making sure we don't have food out there I mean if the more food they have it's been shown coyotes can increase their litter sizes and so they produce more coyotes and so it's it's really about trying to reduce the amount of food that we are

38:50responsible for that's also what I read in Dan flores's book that the more we impact the coyotes as far as far as like people trying to push them out and pressure them the more they produce extra babies like especially if they do that roll call thing when they scream out in the night and you hear them which is amazing that is one of my favorite things about kyotes man when I'm out at night and like you know like you're sitting on the deck like having a cup of coffee or something you hear you're like wow this is wild like they are really out here like grinding yeah it makes you feel you're actually out in the wild a little bit yeah little bit even though like you're sitting on your deck listening to music exactly also tis are going off yeah drinking a nice cup of coffee or something it's just um it's just it's such a a unique relationship that we have with that one

39:40Predator where it's like I like them around like I would be really weird if that was uh you know any other kind of like scary Predator but coyotes are kind of cool to have around yeah yeah I mean definitely I think the same way a lot of people may not feel quite the same when they're dinning in their backyard but I don't know yeah I get that yeah I do too I I mean I'm I'm a dog lover I've got chickens I've got all these things that coyotes could could affect me as well but I also realize that there's things I can do to make sure that they're not going to get to my chickens or they're not going to get to my dogs well I have a puppy right now and that's my my big fear it's cuz I have a golden retriever puppy and he is like golden retrievers I don't if you ever had one they they are like the most nonog dogs like they don't bark at anybody they're terrible Watch

40:29Dogs they love everybody and they just have zero Killer Instinct like zero they're just sweethearts yeah and I'm just worried that he's going to get jacked yeah I mean I would definitely keep him secure until he gets up to that 40 50 pound range once he's there they're generally pretty safe yeah so now they do sometimes Ambush him though right it happens it's rare usually most of the attacks are smaller dogs however there are definitely cases where they've gone even after something as big as your Mastiff that's crazy I mean it's pretty rare that happens um the whole coyote dog thing is complicated I bet you if you Googled dogs and coyotes playing on YouTube you would find a dozen videos very quickly yeah yeah cuz we've actually looked at some of that and it's just like that that relationship's not as simple as just like they're going to go after the dogs no they play around

41:18together but then they'll kill them and eat them which is just like what kind of relationship do we have man yeah well and we don't know how often they actually eat them we think sometimes they just kill them and carry them off cuz that's same thing they do with foxes really yeah so like gray foxes and red foxes the kotes will kill them but they generally don't eat them which when you start thinking ecologically it makes sense right like they're so related that there's lots of diseases that could be transmitted between them so it's kind of a risk anytime you eat something that's very closely related to you oh that's fascinating so essentially the same thing is like a mad cow disease exactly which is comes from the prons which is we feed cows material and then they get that what is it called Jacob's crutz Feld disease I think that's right yeah which is the same disease that they find in

42:06cannibals in um where is it what country is it that they find that in Indonesia I forget where it is um but that's interesting that's essentially the same thing the same yeah yeah I mean anytime you start and that's just one disease I mean there's lots of parasites and stuff too that if you're they transfer between similarly related species much easier than it does to say between a cat and a dog wow so I mean there's a lot of spillover and zuno diseases between wildlife and domestic animals um luckily we have lots of vaccinations for things I'm sure you've heard of like parvo and diser um and so there's there's vaccinations we can give our animals to take care of that obviously these wild animals just have to deal with it yeah distemper is very common right I had a dog that put down yeah and parvo it's also deadly to puppies right they get that exactly yeah Parvo is very common

43:02in this area we actually not just right down the street here we lost some pups to parvo and is this uh something that's transmitted through Wildlife as well it can be yeah so we're not exactly sure if it's only Wildlife to domestic it's probably both it's probably being moved between the different populations so I mean luckily if we vaccinate well we can reduce that spread but people have to be good about vaccinating their animals so do you guys have a mandate like when it comes to studying uh coyotes and when it comes to dealing with them like what is the overall emphasis on is it on just understanding their range where they are or is it do you try to do something with them so our role is to try to help protect Wildlife within National Park areas um and so what we try to do is we try to get as most understanding we can so we can help reduce conflicts help

43:54reduce disease transmission help just basically help the whole Ecology of these animals to make sure there's not things coming into our populations that are are going to end up affecting them it's interesting because you I would think like when people start cutting budgets and they start looking for like well where can we reduce spending like there might be a few people that come along go hey why do we give a about these coyotes MH you know does that does that come up I mean that always comes up anytime budgets are dealt with but but for us for the important thing for us is just to make sure that we do everything we can to protect our resources within our park and so we we've identified that this is a potential risk for our local wildlife and so that's why we've started studying the things like the mountain lions the Bobcats so our park is completely surrounded by urbanization um

44:44we have lots of influences I mean our mountains are about 50% of it is privately owned and so there's a lot of chances for development so it's important for us to understand how development is affecting the wildlife so we can help try to mitigate that in the future that's awesome now when you're dealing with uh these animals and you're uh collecting data and information do you guys share it with people that maybe uh other peers that you have that work in much larger areas and do you find like similar patterns and Sim similar results so we generally share through scientific Publications this is usually how stuff is shared kind of between us um that being said we definitely talk to other Parks like eity I just recently went there to help them do some Rec stuff um and so we will definitely share information to try to help deal with similar issues I mean know so I was up

45:32there for about three or four days and we talked about lots of different things but one of the things they've had with coyotes is people feeding them out of the car so like people will drive through they'll take food because the Coyote's hanging off nearby and they'll throw it out the car to the Coyote Well the coyote got so habituated to that it would just be coming up to every car and start jumping up on cars whoa and so they're like this is they end up having to remove the animal because all these people just end up feeding it they would go up and scare the thing and they would I think they even tried I think they said they tried to paintball it um but it ended up learning who they were like they it learned their cars it learned who they were so every time they would come up the Kay would disappear back into the bushes even if they tried it in their own cars but it they came in their

46:14own cars the coyote recognized them yeah over time it ended up learning to recognize the people they're too smart they are wow that's so interesting yeah and I definitely noticed that even like with trapping and stuff when we're to capture these animals I feel like there's times when they definitely kind of avoid the area cuz some of these animals have been on the air for years and so we we try to capture them as many times as we can to keep them on there so our collar only generally last somewhere between a year and three years depending what kind of collar we put on them and so a lot of times we want to keep them on long term so we actually understand the whole life cycle what's going on um and so we'll go in and try to capture them again but they're they're they're smart they kind of learn to avoid once I start going into an area well according to Dan Flores a big part of their

46:54cleverness and also their adaptability comes from them being prayed upon by Grey Wolves and their relationship with greywolves that greywolves had left and then come back to North America and in the meantime coyotes had kind of thrived and when they came back there was a period of thousands of years of them being prayed upon by these greywolves so they've adapted all these different sort of mechanisms in order to stay alive and to avoid predation and one of them being that they expand their range so as we've tried to kill them one of the things that Dan was saying is that when they do that roll call thing if someone's missing the female will actually have larger litters and then they'll expand the range so when you shoot one you think like well keeping the coyote population down no you probably raised it up by like 10 15% and you expanded their range by a few miles yeah I don't

47:46know if it's just based off the calling I've heard that before and there's some dispute about whether that's the full case or not but definitely because there's lower numbers there's definitely more food resources is available and so it makes sense that they would then reproduce more CU we definitely know if food resources go up coyotes can increase their numbers so oh that's interesting cuz he was saying that it's a direct result of them being prayed upon you you think that's probably in dispute well the prayed upon I mean how shot or killed or you know removed I mean truthfully it doesn't matter how the animals how the population decreases the fact is that it's down so then prey numbers go up oh and so then there's more prey and so then they reproduce more danam was implying there's a direct correlation between there's a physiological event that happens inside

48:30the female that when the the population grows smaller their litter grow larger in response to the population being smaller not necessarily in response to the increase of food supply um as far as I know the only things I've read it's usually they Associated somehow with food supply so it's probably maybe a combination of those factors it very well could be I mean it's complicated right these animals are are crazy with what they can do it's it is absolutely fascinating how adaptable they are though is there anything like them um I mean you start thinking of things like crows they can be pretty adaptable to they can live in a wide variety of areas but they move through 3D space they move through the air that's a different sort of bargain yeah no I mean the coyotes they definitely there's not any other species that's been able to move around the country like they have um they're

49:19able to live in the most Urban environments we can imagine I mean places that people generally think of maybe raccoon be to live I know in Chicago they've gone into areas where they have coyotes living and they did not have raccoons living in those same locations or if there were they were raccoons were very rare and yet the coyotes seem to be able to persist which is amazing for an animal that size um it just shows how intelligent they are to be able to move around us and be able to take advantage of us is it because they they run faster they're just it's probably a combination of things they learn how to deal with roads I mean anytime you get in these Urban environments right like one thing I always like to say is like the Westlake neighborhood it's one of the most dangerous neighborhoods for pedestrians yet this Coyote's running this neighborhood all the time and it didn't

49:59have any signs of ever being struck by a car do you think the smartest coyote is smarter than the dumbest person yeah whoa that's deep nice yeah that is deep yeah I mean they live in places that I don't know if I could live there wow so now what city has is there any city in the country that actually has a legitimate problem with coyotes depends who you talk to I mean La we definitely have our issues I mean there's been bites there's been other situations been bites people have been bitten yeah Legion Park had some bites there's been bites down in Orange County had some bites are they biting homeless people are they biting people who take naps what are they what are they doing um it's all over the board usually it seems to be tied to people been feeding it and so it's almost coming up and biting like people on the hands or people on the leg um I don't

50:48think any of them none of the ones I've heard have been like where they're trying to take the person down really type thing they've all been more like where they're coming up up andone of none of them have Yes you heard about that woman who was a folk singer in Canada that got killed a couple years back by Coyotes yeah I actually went up there couple years after that they actually got a study going on coyotes up there they radio cered a bunch and I went up there and helped him capture the first couple animals to kind of see what's going on and that's just a crazy scenario up there it's way different than what we see down here the coyotes first are their Eastern coyotes so they're a little bit bigger um but they're also they they kind of there's very few food sources up there they're dealing with Snowshoe hairs which their Cycles kind of fluctuate up and down and

51:27so sometimes there could be tons of food and other times there could be almost none but they've learned that they can take advantage of moose during the winter and they're actually killing moose in the snow which you'd think of this little 40ish pound animal taking on this huge moose but they're seeing it they do these snow um surveys and they're finding these dead moose that were very clearly killed by Coyotes wow so a full grown moose yeah that's insane yeah a full grown moose is like more than 1,000 lbs yeah yeah yeah I know it's it's amazing I mean obviously these moose in the winter the snow gets deep so they're they're definitely they can get stuck in things and that type of scenario how do they know that it's coyotes that kill them and not wolves there's no wolves there wow yeah that's crazy yeah I did not know that a coyote could kill a moose yeah well and they had them radio

52:16cered so they were able to see the coyotes at the carcasses and stuff too wow so when they have the radio caller how much information are they getting do they get like a full like if you could see a map would you see like the trail like everywhere they go um it depends so the callers have different settings so they're GPS units so you're there's always a trade-off between battery life and the number of locations you can get so you could if you only cared about a two we span you could have that GPS unit take a location every 30 seconds oh and you could map it out but generally we're interested in a broader time frame so a lot of times we're getting so like the Lions a lot of times it's about eight locations a day and that's a pretty good size collar on the coyotes I usually do somewhere around six um and then I'll do these little bouts where I'll do 20

53:02minute locations a day and so then I'll get more intense dat and then I can map out like where they come up to roads or where they do different things where they're feeding um so yeah you can get some pretty detailed data on how they're moving so what kind of a Battery Source are you using on these collars that you can get such a long like how long does a like if you stretch it out the longest how long can they last so there's different sizes the collars and so like the lion collars are they can be two diesel batteries in them which are just lithium diesel batteries um and those go about two years with a two deel battery wow um you can put them on tiny little things I mean people have done not with GPS yet I don't believe but they've even done like little bugs where they've put the so the cers have two different things they have a GPS and they have a VHF function the VHF allows us to

53:48actually go out and track the animals so when you see biologists out there with those antennas oh you literally know where they are they are yeah so that's how like lot of these observations I've talked about that's how I see them is cuz they have that little Beacon that goes off in their collar and so I can track them with that antenna and see where they are and get pretty close to them and see what they're doing that's incredible so they they they literally last two years with two diesel batteries yep and then when the two years are up then you don't know where he is exactly that well what's amazing about the Lions is that we can recapture them we have really good success getting those guys back and so Jeff's been amazing I mean he's been able to get these animals Time After Time After Time and that's why like P22 has been C for so many times cuz we have to replace the collar

54:27right so it's usually about every two years we have to replace the collar so God so how are they tring that cat um I mean they're we've done multiple things we've gotten lucky one time and he was actually down in a hole and me and Jeff were actually there and we darted the thing and it just fell asleep in the hole which was pretty sweet so you saw in a hole like a hole in the ground it was kind of a a drainage channel was kind of eroded away and he was kind of down in this and there was a bunch of brush covering it and so he felt pretty comfortable I guess and he just stayed there and so we were hiking into I don't know if we were looking for a kill or if we were just checking on him I can't remember what we were doing but whatever we saw him and so we're like well let's try to Dart him and so I stood there and waited for Jeff to go get the stuff and Jeff was able to Dart

55:12him when he came back and the cat just laid there like we put a dart in him he growled at us he laid back down and fell asleep and we were able to process him how creepy is it when a cat growls at you uh it was actually pretty freaking cool like I mean it's it's pretty amazing being that close to such a big animal how far away were you uh probably from me to your wall oh no really yeah oh my God so pretty close oh my god do you have a backup gun or a taser or we carry pepp Captain America shield Captain America sh nice yeah I'm out there my Captain America shield come on I got you I would think that that would actually be a good move for a cat right like a big old Like Gladiator Shield they' probably be confused they' try to Jack you bang they run into the shield what where is he nice yeah I don't think I want to carry that through the brush though it's a good point um no we we do

56:06carry bear spray does that work I mean we haven't had to use it so could tell you but it should use it once and tell me cuz I was thinking like I I run through the hills I was thinking you know I there there's an area where I run where it's really desolate there's no one out there and I know there's Bobcats there um but I also now know that there's a line there cuz a buddy of mine saw a mountain line there and it had a collar and then he heard about a mountain line that got killed on the five freeway and he checked a website is there a website that shows you the track like where where the animals been um there are that we can see we don't share that with other people but I wonder how he found out he he knows a lot of people maybe he asked somebody but but found out that it was the the was the mountain line that he saw in his neighborhood and he lives pretty close to the five okay

56:58and so uh he was uh explaining that you know like he saw it yeah I me we don't have many cats that are up there near the five so probably he could have probably just looked at that map that you guys put up there even it could have easily been one of those cats okay cuz there's just not many up in that area we have collared but they do occasionally get hit by cars right yeah that's actually one of our biggest causes of mortality these days is them getting hit by cars so we we work a lot with Caltrans to try to improve permeability of the roadways for wildlife and protect them from being hit by cars I know there was a ramp that was being proposed that they were going to put a ramp over the highway right oh here it is yeah calr proposes Wildlife overpass on the 101 freeway now where were they kind of try to put that so this is supposed to be near Liberty Canyon this is where's

57:39Liberty Canyon um it's just a little bit West of here near uh Agora oh okay um yeah so this this overpass will be big for M liines but also lots of other Wildlife on our mountains um so we we have seen that the 101 freeway is a major barrier to gene flow and so things like even coyotes even though they able to live in this super Urban environment that 101 and the development along 101 is serving as a barrier that they're not getting across regularly enough to keep the population genetics up so genetic diversity south of the freeway is a lot lower than genetic diversity north of the freeway right right now and that's for Bobcats mountain lions and coyotes I have a friend who works at the tone Ranch do you know where that is yeah I have a Budd that works there oh do you yeah I was actually just there this weekend and they were explaining to me that they had a camera trap on one of

58:30the water holes and they saw 16 different Mountain lines wow they've got 16 photos of 16 different cats that are on that mean huge Ranch 270,000 Acres it's enormous Ranch yeah yeah I um I don't know how they could identify each individual lion that's my first question how do they know the individual um but yeah I mountain lions they can be quite a few of them I mean a lot of times mountain lions will come back obviously especially with a thing like a water source there right um so I would I would question whether it was different or not but yeah I mean it's a place like theone I mean it's amazing right there's lots of different prey animals there they from Elk to Deer to uh that's a special place it is it's really crazy and just I mean everything the wildlife the flowers the the pigs like it's just a crazy crazy place there's so many pigs there it's it's a Nutty Farm I mean a Nutty

59:20ranch ranch it's so large it's just it's amazing like my buddy he like a cowboy up there and so he took me for a tour to kind of see the ranch and it's it's amazing yeah well it's the biggest uh Ranch in California yeah 270,000 acres is almost hard to like wrap your head around how big it is but when you're there and you go how far does it go and then they go see that third mountain range we go to that like what yeah over to the desert over yeah it's crazy it's everywhere and then the water for Los Angeles goes through it if see that gigantic water pipe that goes through the uh the ranch yeah and you go what that's where all the water goes It goes through this thing like it's just it's just crazy yeah it's amazing yeah well it's weird that we have a place that's a hour and a half outside of La that has elk I know and that's like we're so lucky like it's it's such a unique spot

60:10know in a lot of ways yeah it's amazing I mean used to be tons of elk here right like all the Tuli elk I mean they used to cover the whole area the stories of Tuli elk out in the swaen valley there is just amazing numbers of elk so yeah well also grizzly bear and Grizzlies yeah that's what there's a uh there's a town up near toone that's named after the last guy that got killed by a grizzly bear in California before they wiped him out God I'm trying to remember I'm trying to remember the town's name damn it but the uh it's been confirmed that he was killed they actually exed his body and found it you know broken up into pieces and one of his legs was chewed off like it was wow like he really did get jacked by a grizzly bear apparently we had enormous Coastal bears and that's why they wiped them out it was just like when the settlers came here they were like okay

61:02this we got to kill these goddamn things because they were like you know Kodiak sized enormous bears but obviously they did a good job since we don't have a single Grizzly left in California yeah that's one animal Lebec thank you Jamie Lebec that's that's one animal where people are not clamoring for a reintroduction yeah you know like well truthfully there's no area left for them yeah like the area that Grizzlies occurred we've developed turned in agriculture urbanization so bringing Grizzlies back I mean you hear it every once in a while somebody say that but I'm like it's they're too big and they need too much food yeah and too much of that food is living animals and uh that would be a problem yeah well even if that's I mean even all that if there's no habitat where do you put them like they're not they're not going to go live up in the high mountains that's what we

61:48have that's what we have protected is the sieras and those type areas that's not grizly habitat so well we do have quite a bit of black bears right we do but they can live up in the mountain they do much better in that scenario yeah it's really fascinating to me how the whole thing is sort of like a like a balanced system and they all sort of keep each other in check you know californ is a good example of that because it's one of the few states that that has a a large healthy mountainline population but they don't allow hunting of mountain lines so because of that you have less deer but and people will complain about that Hunters but also because of that you have less car accidents with deer yeah like if you live in like I have a buddy who lives in Iowa you have to drive slow cuz the deer just jumping out in front of the road every 50 100 yards I mean

62:35it's crazy how many especially during the rut when they're breeding and they get silly you see just dead deer every couple miles see a dead deer on the side of the road yeah I mean we're a lot different obviously than the Midwest like you're talking about too we got a lot less vegetation or a lot a lot less rain so we have a lot less of that good quality vegetation for the deer so our deer numbers are also going to be in in check partially just because we don't have the the highest quality habitat for deer in most of our areas is what like what they just eating grass and stuff right like what are they eating they eat a lot of brows a lot of brush Sage right they eat a lot of sage they can definitely eat Sage um there's a lot of like deer brush and just lots of variety of type of BR I mean you walk through there there's tons of different varieties that they eat um we actually

63:16have a couple deer radio collar right now that we're following and they're they're always browsing on something when I see them usually something taller and how do you capture them we Dart them so you do you um do you set like do you trap them and then Dart them like how do no we free Dart them okay so how do you do that um you basically just try to find where they're at I mean it's basically hunting we're basically hunting with a dart rifle so it's a lot like archery basically I me your range has to be like really short right like yeah so somebody really go with the dart rifle can probably get up to 70 M or so oh really um I'm not that person I'm about 30 m with mine um how many deer have you darted I've only darted two here uh um but we're hoping we still have four more we need to do so is it an air rifle uh so there's two different types there's one that's basically

64:01powered off a a 22 shell um then there's another one that's powered off CO2 hm and so do you practice with this thing like how do you get good at it yeah you practice I mean it's it's like a rifle you got a scope and all that so you can kind you get it all sighted in but the ballistics must be terrible oh they're bad and it's even more complicated cuz you want it to arch really lightly you want to hit the anal as soft as possible cuz if you hit them hard they're going to run right and the drug it's not like the drug takes them down immediately we usually have about 10 minutes for the animal to go down and oh Jesus you'll never find them exactly so it's really about like arching that shot in there really softly hit them as soft as possible and then a lot of times they don't go very far wow so like what's the feet per second of the dart oh I don't know we I haven't we don't have the

64:45chronograph or you don't have a radar thing that you shoot it through we don't you want to borrow mine sure yeah I'll let it to you I want to know cuz I think that's interesting like what like cuz you must have like a the drop must be huge it is like how do you sight in a scope for something for people don't know what we're talking about like if you shoot a rifle rifle a bullet goes very fast so you could shoot out to 100 yards and it essentially is going to go exactly where you're aiming at but then when you go to 200 yards it gets a little tricky and you have to adjust your scope because it'll drop a little bit you get to 300 yard it'll drop a little bit more 400 yards in out is where it gets really weird like you're dealing with Wind Drift you're dealing with drop so I would imagine that a dart is not going very fast so it probably drops quite a bit it does and it's heavy

65:34they're fairly long they're I don't know how many grain and half inches I don't know how many grains they are um they don't come in those measurements and I've never weighed one so I'm not positive um but obviously because they are going so slow they're dealing with Wind Drift at yeah five meters they can start doing it so if you're not aerodynamic either right it's not horrible I mean it's basically looks like a syringe yeah with a needle on the end and we have some feathers on the end oh so you have like fletchings to make sure you I wouldn't call it fletchings it's that's what it looks like yeah exactly like that 20 ml air for 10.0 ml Dart what does that mean so that's a you can put 20 milliliters of air for the tin the dart that's holds 10 milliters of drug oh I see so that's that's not the exact drug we use we use one called uh it's nudeart um it's a

66:25little different it actually has a so ours at least the ones we use for the deer we use these type as well um but for the deer we use ones that have a little charge in them so when it hits it discharges basically by like a a shellwood has a little bit gunpowder in there that Trigg triggers off Jesus Christ wow so you have to sneak up on these deer and then do this yeah so what I was going to tell you kind of how we adjust for that distance cuz that's the last question you were asking so the nice thing about our rifles versus a regular rifle so you get one Shi and that's what you go with with us because it's air powerered we can adjust our pressure so to account for that distance we know at 20 yards we do two bars of pressure at 30 yards we do three bars of pressure that type of thing wow so we have a little bit more adjustability than typical rifle would

67:11so you walking around with a rangefinder yeah and then you're you're changing it on your rifle as you go along yeah as we make our decision we cuz we don't like we don't walk with it charged we I mean our darts in there ready to go but we don't fire I mean we don't have our our pressure up until we know what deer we're taking and the distance and are you just aiming for Center Mass or no hip hip huh why hip cuz that's where the biggest muscle is oh I see okay so the D the drugs inact um intramuscularly so you need the so if you accidentally hit the ribs it's not good um it's not great no it's it still will probably put them to sleep the needles aren't long enough that it should do much damage it's not going to hit a vital right not going to you can't ever say never but yeah it shouldn't but it's not going to kill him it shouldn't no and that we practice a lot to make

68:06sure we hit where we want to hit yeah how do you practice that do you have a rubber deer that you shoot at uh we have archery targets that we shoot at yeah wow that's interesting and do you use a regular rifle scope or do you have like a scope specifically designed for darts no it's a regular rifle scope no kidding y wow so how often are you practicing um before we do it I practice quite a few times I go out like I don't practice daily like you do with the archery right but I I practiced pretty regularly when I right before I was starting these last two we're kind of taking a break right now because they're fawning and so we don't want to Dart them while they're of course um get pregnant and dropping fawns we want wait till the fs get a little bigger that's interesting man have you ever missed one um I haven't taken that many shots did I miss any of my shots how many of

68:53you started just the two just two yeah and we this is our first time doing deer stuff so fishing game came out and helped us with these guys and which was great and you have to Dart two more is that what you said four more four more yep and why six is that just like you just want a good study number that so we're looking at roadways and trying to identify Crossing points for I mean we're not just doing deer we're doing other species as well um but we're trying to identify where we can make improvements things like that Wildlife overpass uh in other areas so that's why we're we're doing that and so we're just trying to get a sample size that we can kind of work with and the callers aren't cheap so it's it's about resources and what we have that we can use towards the project and what and what are you trying to gather like what what what data so it's all movement based data so they

69:39these are GPS callers they transmit us um can be anywhere from I think the caller 60 points a day down to I think my low is 8 points a day and so it'll tell me it'll give me an idea of where the deer are approaching the roadways and how they're moving relative to the roadways so we can help come up with mitigation to improve their ability to get across oh okay so it's all about their migration and where they're moving around and keeping them away from danger yeah I mean I wouldn't quite call it migration but close enough that's the idea is just to help them be able to get across now are they Columbia Blacktail these are not these are mu deer in our mountains mu deer no kidding yeah and are they they're like a pure mu deer I believe so hm yeah the blacktails start a little bit north of us I don't remember exactly where the cut off line is but so like right around here like in

70:27the hills and like in Ceno and stuff like that those are mu deer those are mu deer wow that's interesting yeah yeah I always thought that too cuz I I've deer hunted for years and I always thought black H but now once I got here and started working with them I was like oh these are all mu deer and now how do they make the differentiation how do they understand that there's some just physical characteristic differences and I think there's been some genetic work done as well because traditionally when you think of mu deer you think of a large deer with a big rack like mu deer have enormous racks like that deer right there that's a mu deer like if you saw one of those around here you'd be like holy like you never see a deer that big around here no I mean there's some decent deer in these mountains but yeah it's I mean but mule not all mule deer are that big there's lot places where

71:11there's mule deer that are still quite small and that's just what we're deing with here is the smaller and do you think it's because of the the Predators like they never really get a chance to get that big cuz there's the population are pretty small or it's a genetic issue we think it's a genetic issue I mean they this population's been kind of isolated for a long time from others but California generally is not thought of to have monster bucks even though there's plenty of mu deer in this state right so it's more just a a factor of what's here and so north of us is where the Blacktail are yeah and what like where did that where does that range begin I wish I could I'm not sure off top of my head I some sort of inter breeding correct I'm sure there is yeah yeah and they're viable or are they hybrids I would assume they're viable but I I not positive hm yeah I'm not I'm

71:55definitely not fully up on all the deer literature so what other animals are you guys concerned with like their there their safety and populations so I mean we're worried about the whole Community I mean we do things with frogs salamanders we do surveys for snakes um we actually have a red-legged frog reintroduction right now A reintroduction yeah so there's people complaining not enough red-legged frogs well they used to be here and we had a a well we don't really know why they disappeared but they disappeared 30 years ago or so and they were left in one little pool in one place and so we're just trying to help them get reestablished dude don't let Donald Trump find out about this he'll cut funding red legged frog what we need that money to go to Bankers yeah I mean it's just seems it's it's fascinating to me that we do have these programs to like help out like a

72:44frog mhm yeah I mean it's all considerable manh hours right uh it takes some but it's not huge amounts I mean it's one person going out and doing these projects and it's not like that's their only job they have lots of different things they do so it's just one small part of their job so they just bring like a bucket of frogs and throw them into the bushes it's not quite yeah it's not quite that simple they have to move egg masses basically is what they do oh is that's what they do yeah oh so then when they move the egg masses do they move the mom as well and or the the the frogs just develop independently in this new area yeah they develop independently they even do that in their own area the mom doesn't care for their frogs or any of that lazy so when they do that when they um when you drop off these egg masses in this place so this frog will be born or

73:29hatch in this area rather and they just assume this is where they live yep oh that's interesting so if you took a fully developed frog and put it there probably wouldn't know what to do with the area because it would be a new area for it it'd be like why am I here yeah this isn't my project either so I'm not 100% on it but from my understanding is that they will try to move back towards their Nal range and then they don't end up making it so it's better to do the Tad poles or the eggs and then they'll hopefully stay there that's cool so what is the benefit of having these red-legged frogs around they're just a part of the ecosystem we think it's a good idea to exactly it's just trying to protect overall ecosystem we don't really I mean we like to think we understand all this ecology and all that but there it's it's complicated right we don't know the interaction between a lot

74:13of these species so a lot of it's just trying to make sure that our full sweetest species is there so our ecosystems act as healthy as possible so when you reintroduce the red FR will there then be subsequent studies about the impact of the reintroduction of the red frog redleg frog and it's hard to know at this point I mean it's all based off funding like there we there's potential there but right now we we don't really know all right let me uh propose this to you what if you had an unlimited budget what if I made Justin Brown king of the world and I said listen dude you can do whatever the you want with uh all this money and what would you do like you make any promises here no I wish I could I wish I could obviously I don't have that kind of power of course if I did though if I said listen man I'm going to give you an unlimited budget to take care of this

74:56Wildlife as you would see fit what would you like to have done well one of the first things would be that wildli overpass you see for our at least if you're talking about doing things for what's good for the local ecology here that would be probably the highest thing on my priority list because that is something that's not just affecting one species it's affecting everything that's within our mountain range which is fairly large 150,000 Acres that there's just completely being disconnected from other Wildlife so to me that that's our number one thing the other thing is so we have lots of issues with these poisons there I would try to find alternatives to these poisons that are being spread throughout the environment because that's a major issue for our Wildlife yeah that is a giant issue when you see the mange that's on that cat and you you think that that all comes

75:40somehow or another from rat poison like whatever happen to rat traps like how about just use a trap yeah people don't like to see blood is that what it is that's my best assumption cuz people you try to recommend traps and they just won't do it there's such a trickle down though when you're using those toxins I know that's that's that's frightening to me because that gets to people in some way shape or form yeah definitely yeah yeah it's it's my worry as well it also leaks into the ground like there's there's all sorts of weird effects that you can get from poisons yeah and we don't even understand the effects we put tons of toxicant out there that we have no idea the actual long-term effects or how it's going to change things I mean like these rat poisons there was a long time they said it wouldn't move up the food chain but we are quite clearly seeing it move up the FI food chain to

76:22have a mount lion diet rat poison is crazy yeah do they die of it yeah we've had three Mountain lines die of rat poison wow and you believe this is from coyotes that's what we think yeah so one of them they went back to a few kills that it made right before it died and they found that it killed a couple coyotes oh wow wow and it doesn't kill the coyotes uh who knows the coyotes could have been really sick at that point just that's how the mountain L got it anyway exactly so cuz with these poisons a lot of times these animals don't die for four to 10 days oh God so they're walking circles I don't know if you've ever seen like rats walking circles out around any buildings like I've seen it a couple times out walking around and that's generally what they're dying of they're D they're they're dying of dehydration basically because they're just Bleeding Out internally yeah so well that was

77:07actually in Dan flores's book is that they had developed certain types of coyote poisons that were slow acting so that they could trick these coyotes into eating this stuff and the other coyotes wouldn't know where the coyote got sick from cuz it took so long for them to die it wasn't like strict n where you eat it you watch the other one die and that's also what rats do did you ever see that rat document on Netflix I heard you mention it but I still haven't seen it yet dude you got to watch it it's amazing it freaked me out it's nuts like when when they show the amount of rats that are in New York City and they show all the people dealing with them and they show them in the sewer system and everything it it's mindboggling and then they talk about how the rats will literally send a young dumb rat over to the poison and they watch that rat eat the poison and die

77:58and they're like this rat here and they all take off like they've got a whole system for dealing with poisons yeah well because they did the same thing with rat poisons from my understanding they they kind of gone through different morph of the poison to try to make them last a little longer so because the rats will do the same thing the coyotes do in not eat it so that didn't surprise me they saw that in documentary I'll have to watch that there's no way to to mitigate the problem now I mean the the rat population is so large in New York City they think there's as many rats as there are people or more yeah I believe it I mean I've been in little intersections down in La at night and just rats looks like the ground's moving at times in these crazy locations like most of the places you see go you don't see that many rats but then all a sudden you'll hit this call it a honey hole for rats

78:41and they'll just be like whoa look at what the hell's going on here I was in New York City way back in the day it was so long ago there was payones and uh I uh had to make a phone call and I was getting gas so I pulled up to this gas station I I put the you know pump in I'm filling up my car and I go over to this pay phone to make a call and as I mean in the time it took me to walk from the pump to the pay phone I'm watching rats jump onto the wheels of my car like they're jumping on the wheel and crawling up and down they're like I don't know if they're looking for food or they're looking to get in the engine for warmth or whatever but apparently people have a real issue with rats getting inside the hood of their car and like nesting they like climb in there for the Heat and they stay warm inside the hood of your car good Lord yeah I mean they're so adaptable but they

79:34instantaneously did it I mean I pulled the car up put the pump in walked turned around like what the I'm not talking about like one rat I'm talking five six seven rats just hopping up and another one would hop up and one would hop down it was terrifying cuz I was trying to figure out okay am I going to be driving there's going to be a rat on the floor and then I'm going to hit the gas instead of the brakes and I'm going to freak out like a little girl yeah it was terrifying yeah that would be creepy but there they're just so adaptable I mean and it's it's another essentially we don't like to think of him as a wild animal but a rat is a wild animal that lives in this weird symbiotic relationship with people in urban environments yeah I mean it's amazing they're that is the one species that's probably more adapted to us than the coyotes are obviously because they are

80:17able to live in almost everywhere that we live yeah and they're I mean they serve a purpose in some sort of a weird way I mean if they were removed I wonder what the impact would be yeah I mean I'm sure we'd probably have more nesting birds and some of that kind of stuff because we know that rats definitely impact bird species yeah um and who knows there may not be if there was wasn't rats whether coyotes or some of these other small Predators would be around the urban areas because they're obviously another pre Source we just don't know but trying to get rid of rats is a whole another ball game good luck yeah yeah that's that's the one that's probably harder than coyotes to get rid of the nuke that's City you'd have to get everybody to agree and then they'd probably move back in within a couple of years yeah yeah it's just you're not going to do it so this um proposed

81:02Bridge across the 101 what is is there a road block to that is it a funding issue is there is there anybody that is against it uh as far as we know there's not anybody really against it there might be a few people in the nearby community that's worried about more mountain Lies coming in or something but that's we don't think that's a realistic thing because our population's at holding capacity from as far as we understand so we don't think that's going to be a major issue um but it's really about funding we're trying to National Wildlife federation's leading the charge to try to raise I think the cost it's over $50 million to do this yeah so it's a it's a big price tag um the bridge is going to be quite wide it's going to be natural covered and it's going to has to go over the the Agora Road and the 101 both and so it's going to be a big bridge so how wide is

81:49that oh I wish I could call that off top of my head I yeah sorry you'd have to look it up I think it's probably on that thing you had up earlier so you're probably dealing with a few hundred yards or something yeah I mean it's almost as wide as it is long oh wow yeah so it's going to be big it's going to also have it's going to be used for hiking during the day as well so it's not just for wildlife it's Al people can go across it exactly because currently there's no easy way to go from the the Santa Monicas in the South to the SEI Hill in the north which are all public property so there's no way to get across there so people can hike they to go down onto um Liberty Canyon Road and cut across there which is kind of sucky so how does one raise money for something like this do they try to have like a GoFundMe or do they just rely on the the state budget no it's all they're

82:37doing fundraising trying to get people to kick in I believe the anenberg has already offered to donate a million dollars matching so they've got to raise another million to get that amount um it's all for the most part I believe it's all from either conservation agencies or from private donations so if you were King in the world that would be the first thing that you would work on as far as wildlife and California um definitely for our region yes what about other issu other issues I mean habitat protection is just obviously incredibly important if we want to keep all of our species so protecting more land is is always a valuable thing to make sure that or at least to make sure what development we do is done in a proper way now when you say Protect more land would that be like buying up available private land when it comes for sale and then turning it into public land um to

83:25some level I would consider that I don't know if that would be my ultimate goal to me it's more important to lock it up so it's natural versus prob public versus private oh so like to stop uh developments stop major developments from going in and putting things right in places that are going to be major blockages to Wildlife movement yeah Boulder is kind of interesting in that way where they buy up all the available property and then turn into open space yeah so you can't develop on it ever yeah they're really smart with that CU they think Boulder is an amazing place in that they've really recognized that they have this incredible sort of beautiful little Community that's surrounded by this inescapable beauty of the the mountains the Rockies well you don't get much more a beautiful place in around Boulders so makes sense I mean if you want to keep your communities the

84:10way they are you kind of have to protect some of the land yeah they're not into anybody developing there they're like n no it's not do that it's really wise of them but it's amazing that they've imag uh managed rather to go so long without being co-opted by money you know mhm yeah I mean that's kind of the name of the game I mean obviously we need developments cuz our populations keep growing so to me it's not always realistic to say we need to protect every piece of land we can protect but what development we do we need to do it smart and make sure that things are protected in the proper places is there any other Wildlife issues in and around this area that uh are being addressed right now um I mean that's that those are the two biggest things going on that we're we're we're actively trying to deal with um yeah I can't think of too many I mean there's always the little nuisance

85:00issues that everybody's trying to deal with where a coyote is in somebody's yard or going after dogs or whatever that we try to deal with but those are the two major ones would be connectivity um habitat loss and then just poisons and are there a lot of raccoons in this area um a lot I would it depends what you're comparing it to healthy population yeah there's a decent number of raccoons if you're comparing it to somewhere like Chicago no we don't have Chicago's larger population of raccoons yeah they're just much more Adept there there just the way the landscape is a lot more mature trees mature Forest which is what raccoons like a lot more water um which are all things that attract raccoons where we're a lot drier um raccoons can occur within like our mountains but they do seem to be more Focus near roadways and some of that stuff taking advantage of whatever

85:50resources are there well they're big garbage Hunters too right they definitely take advantage of garbage um they'll also eat lots of fruits and stuff so some of the scats you see in your yard that you think are coyotes they could be Raccoon as well um they eat a lot of berries and stuff so yeah I found some skunk poop my friend yeah my friend who recognized the uh mountain lion poop I sent him some stuff and I said what is this he said that's skunk poop skunks are amazing like I before I started tracking these coyotes in Downtown LA I would have never thought skunks could be down in that area there's actually a decent number of skunks like in that Westlake neighborhood I could not believe how many skunks I would seen I smelled skunk in Hollywood last night I was driving through it could have been strong weed but I don't think it was I'm pretty sure it was an

86:29actual skunk I was leaving The Comedy Store and it just stunk of skunk and I was like how weird that these animals have figured out a way to live right here in like right near Sunset yeah I know and they're I mean little short legs not super mobile but yet these Stripes skunks seem to have figured it out yeah they they they were going after my chickens too the little creeps really yeah yeah they're they're apparently they like to eat chickens H that's interesting yeah one night I actually had U we were sitting in the house me and my wife just hanging out and all a sudden I hear my chickens going crazy out there and I'm like we both got up and took off running we have a lot of feral cats around our house and I was like oh this D cats are in there we go looking around our chickens are flying all over the yard CU we hadn't gone out and closed the door yet cuz my chickens

87:10can kind of free range my yard and we're looking around we don't see anything all a sud I open up the CE door and there's a big old Pome just sitting there grinning at me oh creep oh yeah so it didn't get anything it didn't affect didn't grab one my chickens even though one of my chickens was just sitting there like looking at it and squawking it's like you should be he was trying he was trying but he just didn't they're not very fast they're not yeah they're with pawsum you like for me they're another species you don't need a drug to handle I can just you just grab him up by the tail usually and oh really hold on to him yeah now you could just run up to him and grab them people do there's definitely there was a guy doing his master's work on possums and he would drive around town and when he saw one he'd jump out of his car he'd be out hanging out with his friends he see a

87:53possum jump out grab it and cram it in his trunk oh Jesus Christ he throw it in his trunk yeah that's that's dedication right there what did he do with it once he got it in his trunk he was cering them he's doing kind of like what we do here trying to identify their movements and what's going on with him what did they find out anything unusual I don't know I've never saw his talk I wasn't like I ran into him at a conference one time and we got chatting about what he did and I was like that's pretty hilarious it is really weird how many animals we live around I mean it's it's really weird there's so many different yeah and such a wide variety especially when it comes to birds you know one thing that I see a lot of is um there's a lot of hawks in my neighborhood and we did this thing in our backyard where we had a a rot iron fence and we changed part of it and put a glass fence and

88:39these Hawks hadn't figured it out and they would swoop down and slam into the fence head first we ko'ed quite a few these poor Hawks yeah I could imagine yeah but it's just amazing how many you find out there and how many predators mhm and there's the occasional Golden Eagle in this area too right we get reports of them coming through every once in a while yeah it's they're not super rare by any mean or super common by any means but they come through now and when you how would one know whether or not you're looking at a golden eagle just because it's really big it's really big there's some other little characteristics that I'm not as good with but they're significantly larger than like the red tills which would be the one you'd be most likely to confuse it with yeah it's just the wide variety of different Raptors and these yeah it's it's amazing I mean Red shouldered Hawks

89:26every once in a while we'll be trapping for Bobcats and we'll catch a red shouldered hawk on our traps it's like w this is so cool we've even caught a great horned owl once and so it's pretty neat seeing some of these animals up close yeah I'm worried that the owls in my neighborhood have been poisoned because I used to have quite a few of them and you used to hear them all the time you used to hear them you know hooting all the time and one time I went out in my back porch and there was one sitting on the fence and it was huge huge I mean I don't know how big it really was cuz I'm sure I was kind of freaked out by it but I I was shocked it was at least 2et tall and it was just sitting on this back I mean at least that tall I mean no exaggeration but it looked like it was like four feet tall it looked it looked I couldn't believe how big it looked great owls are huge

90:10huge yeah I mean they can carry away foxes uh there's a study in Bakersfield that they've documented how coming down grabbing the kit foxes and carrying them up to their nest sites I had a video on Instagram it's still up there um that I got online of this uh owl swooping down and jacking a hawk in its nest oh have you ever seen that I haven't but I've heard about it my one of my co-workers actually is a falconer and he when he released or what did he do one of his Hawks got away from him and he said the tree was just being sworn by gr horns he stayed there all night trying to keep the trying to help his Hawk stay alive no kidding isn't it crazy that owls eat Hawks yeah I didn't know that until he was telling me that like that's crazy I mean great horns are huge though check out this video cuz it's it's really nuts I was going to show you a picture I saw

90:57the other day did you know how long 's legs oh yeah look at those legs never seen that before that's crazy hard to find something even close to it but wow yeah they're amazing I got the I worked at Cal State Bakersfield in there they had a raptor rehab thing and I got the handle great horned Isles when those guys flop their wings it's like whoa it was pretty crazy like comparable to the the golden eagle the Eagle is definitely more powerful but that gold the long or the great horned owls were pretty amazing well our perception of them is so interesting because they're a serious Predator but if most people don't think of an owl as a predator they just think of them as some wise Forest creature that gives advice on fire yeah well they're obviously not a threat to you or me but obviously your cat they could potentially grab your c% right and who knows as people get smaller and smaller

91:50dogs watch this because you see the eyes in the distance see the eyes oh yeah check this out I love this video Bing wow the other Hawk doesn't even know what happened he's like what's up what's going on look what's happening man is that a juvenile I do not know I don't know they look a little fuzzy yeah they do a little bit right especially the one in the back the one that gets jacked jacked wow but the way it gets jacked it's like boy that thing's dead before it leaves the nest those Claws and towns are so gigantic they are they're amazing well that's kind of why we want them around right control rabbits and rats and everything else they're and also cuz they're cool yeah I mean I think that's a big thing about coyotes too and I I I wish some of these shortsighted folks that don't want them around cuz they're worried that they're going to get their dog and all this

92:41different stuff like man we're really lucky that we can see these things I mean nature is cool it's cool to see yeah well it's amazing now I mean being in downtown LA a lot of these people that live down there they don't ever get to see wildlife right now all a suddenly there's this mediumsized carnivore running around their neighborhoods that they get to see and some people I mean it's funny I talk to one person that's like scared to death of this thing and the next person's like it's the coolest thing they've ever seen in their life right and it's always that Balancing Act I mean I to me I've always been pretty fascinated with them yeah I identify more with the people think it's cool it's just it's we're we're really like we were talking about we're really lucky we live in a very unique area in that we have this big city huge City and then just outside of it we have all this

93:26Wildlife like real legit Wildlife you can get from downtown LA to 100% Wilderness in an hour oh yeah that's crazy yeah or less I mean you get yeah you can get into like Santa Monas pretty quickly from most spots in LA and that's you get in there and it's pretty amazing well listen man I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing all your information and and and educating us on this stuff it's super cool and thanks for everything you do and uh it's just it's really interesting that you get to share all this stuff that you're learning about these things appreciate it man thanks for having on folks we'll be back tomorrow with uh my pal Al magical see you then byebye