TWI_011_Kaitie_Schneider
Mon, May 19, 2025 9:07AM • 42:49
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Wolverines, conservation biologist, Defenders of Wildlife, Colorado reintroduction, habitat fragmentation, Endangered Species Act, public engagement, wildlife corridors, genetic diversity, human-wildlife conflict, environmental education, legislative approval, species restoration, public lands, stakeholder engagement.
SPEAKERS
Anders Reynolds, Bill Hodge, Voiceover, Speaker 1


Voiceover  00:00
ANNOUNCER. The following is a production of wild idea media,


Bill Hodge  00:04
and welcome back to the wild idea podcast, where we're exploring the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature coming actually. Anders, for a rare occurrence, you and I are in the same time zone, though, thankfully, we still have a fair amount of distance between us, but we're actually in the same time zone for a change. Oh,


Anders Reynolds  00:25
hi, Bill. This is gonna make for an awkward interview, because I don't really feel like talking to you today. Matt, are you upset


Bill Hodge  00:31
that I'm in the south and I've been spending the last few weeks in the South? Is that grating on you? A little


Anders Reynolds  00:37
bit more than a little bit. I cannot believe some of the stories I've heard about the people you're talking to and the places you've visited and the food you've eaten. I am pretty upset. I'm pretty hot. I'm not gonna lie.


Bill Hodge  00:53
That is the state I like to leave you in anyway. So that works out pretty well. But could you leave me hot? That's true or No, upset was actually the motion I was going for. You know,


Anders Reynolds  01:03
it's two sides of the same coin. Yeah, I don't want to make this a platform on which you can defend yourself. So I'm just gonna ask you some questions about your road trip, and you just say yes or no. Okay, okay, sure. Did you or did you not visit my favorite state, Arkansas,


Bill Hodge  01:19
I did spend some time? No, no,


Anders Reynolds  01:22
no. These are yes or no, yes or no. Have you eaten some really good food, like raw bars and New Orleans po boys and Memphis barbecue? Yes, I did. All right, finally, and remember to be honest, because we have some savvy listeners. Are you using an Elon Musk related product to do some of this work.


Bill Hodge  01:42
Gosh, that's bad. Yes, I am. I am using a certain satellite based internet service owned by by Mr. Musk. Yes. All


Anders Reynolds  01:51
right, I'm giving you a hard time about that last one, but I really do want to hear more about some of the people in the places you're visiting, and why? Yeah, so


Bill Hodge  01:58
coming up, we've got a special series we're going to do as part of the wild idea podcast that we're calling we're calling southern currents. Right now, I'm having a lot of those conversations in the future. I'm sure Anders will be having them too, but I have, well, let's see. Started out in Ponca, Arkansas, having a conversation about the history of the Buffalo River with the folks with the Ozark society. Ended up in New Orleans having a really deep conversation with the journalist Bob Marshall about the loss of coastal wetlands in southern Louisiana and just the devastating effects it's going to have, obviously, has had on all species, but about to have on humans. It's been great. Yes, I got to have some fresh oysters last night here in Apalachicola, the self proclaimed oyster capital of the world, where instantly enough, they no longer harvest oysters because of the loss of fresh water. Not enough fresh water coming down through the Apalachicola, and therefore the water's too the salinity is too high. So ironically, in the oyster capital of the world, you can still have oysters, but they are from Texas and from Apalachicola, so, but yeah, look for southern currents. It's coming up. We'll probably start releasing some episodes, even as we're still working our way through season one. Here the wild idea. But I think there's more great conversations to be had coming up. But I know it crushed you that I got to talk Arkansas and you weren't there for it.


Anders Reynolds  03:18
Well, lucky, luckily for all of us, I can, I can hold two emotions in my head at the same time. So I'm very, very jealous, but also very, very excited about what's going on. Good for you.


Bill Hodge  03:27
Nice, well enough, enough from us, right? So let's, let's get to what we're here to talk about today. We're really excited to be joined by Katie Snyder, who is a conservation biologist, both through her education and her work in working on human wildlife conflict, in her work, and we're gonna talk about a very specific species today, and some work she's doing, and her role at Defenders of Wildlife in the state of Colorado. So without further, ado, Katie, just wanna bring you to the conversation. And thanks for joining us on The wild idea podcast.


Speaker 1  03:58
Thanks, guys. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. Always happy to talk about Wolverines. Love


Anders Reynolds  04:03
it, Bill, this is sort of a litmus test for our generation. I noticed in the notes that you tend to reference, like a certain 80s movie when it comes to Wolverines, and I tend to focus on a character, you know, first revealed in the uncanny X Men, cartoons of the 90s and later played by huge Hugh Jackman, or, I want to emphasize his name is huge act man.


Bill Hodge  04:29
Yeah, I my wife didn't even remember when I brought up the movie Red Dawn and the graffiti Wolverine that they would leave on the Russian tanks that the the local high school kids had blown up. So, yeah, sorry, it's where my head goes. But I also am a fan of Wolverine and specifically his interactions with Deadpool. So there is that.


Speaker 1  04:48
Yeah, it's funny. There's actually an interview with Hugh Jackman where he was explaining that he didn't know what Wolverines were when he took the role, he spent weeks studying about gray wolves. Yeah, and they started filming that first, it was that X Men movie, I think, and he was making all these, like, gray wolf kind of, like, movements and stuff. And the director was like, What are you doing? And he's like, I'm being a wolf. He's like, don't You're a Wolverine. So if anyone didn't know Wolverines exist, you are in good company with with Wolverine himself. Well, that's


Anders Reynolds  05:21
huge act man's origin story. But we, we want to hear a little bit more about yours. What brought you into this work, or as a biologist in general, and with some specificity on this species, you know, what brought you to the Wolverine in particular? Yeah, that's


Speaker 1  05:36
a that's a great question. You know, I've wanted to work with endangered species since I was a little kid. I mean, I'm of the generation that grew up watching the Wildcats and zabuma Fu and these folks that just got kids really, really excited about wildlife. And I saw that and went, Oh, that's it. That's what I want to do. And I kind of just stuck with it the rest of my life. You know, there's a lot of people that will say, that's not a job. You're gonna have to figure something else out, and I just kind of didn't listen to it. That was really my constant guiding star through my whole life. And then got to go get my bachelor's degree at Colorado State University. I only recently graduated in 2021 from there, so got a little bit of the COVID college experience, unfortunately. But you know, everyone in the wildlife field tends to have like their animal, you know, that they're just really jazzed about. For me, it's always been weasels. I was doing reports about black footed ferrets and Wolverines when I was in third grade. And now to be able to work on these species in my career as an adult is just not to be cliche. It is a dream come true. Before I worked on wolves and Wolverines, I spent a lot of time with the black footed ferret conservation program that's here in Colorado, just north of us, taking care of some some captive ferrets that are in Fort Collins, doing a lot of education and outreach around those guys and so really excited to get back into mustelids and help kind of Shepherd this reintroduction of Wolverines back to the southern Rockies, before


Bill Hodge  07:07
we actually get to the sort of the policy work and the exciting idea of the reintroduction to Wolverines in Colorado, I wanted to ask you if you could maybe give our audience a little better understanding of the species, like, can you share the your love for The species you spoke to there, but also what they need to understand about the species, maybe a little bit about the habitat that's important to the species, and why Colorado's a good fit for continuing to bring back the species.


Speaker 1  07:32
Absolutely. Yeah, when we start to talk about Wolverines, people typically either go, is that a baby Wolf? Or what do you mean? That's a real thing, kind of opposite to some species like wolves, where everybody knows a lot about the species. We don't grow up hearing a lot about Wolverines, and so there's not a whole lot of familiarity with the species as a whole. And part of that is because they're solitary. They're really, really elusive. Some people spend their whole lives just trying to glimpse a peek at Wolverines in the lower 48 and they're also in some really remote habitat. So Wolverines are a very cold and snowy adapted species. They spend most of their time near or above Timberline. So in that high alpine, in some really high elevation, very remote, cold habitat where people don't typically like to be. And so that means seeing them is not very common. Collecting data on them can be really difficult. They kind of become that, you know, out of sight, out of mind, kind of species compared to some of the other ones that are a lot easier to watch and a lot easier to be excited and engaged in Wolverine spent a lot of time kind of under the radar. And so in the late 1800s early 1900s I'm sure you both and a lot of the listeners know there was a widespread effort to eradicate carnivores, kind of across the board. In the lower 48 we focus a lot on like wolves and grizzly bears when talking about this, but animals like Wolverines that are primarily scavengers, were really vulnerable to these efforts too. They were putting out meat that was poisoned. And so before we really knew a lot about what this animal was and where they were, how many we had, we lost them at a really, really alarming rate, along with most of our other kind of carnivores in the States. And so they were eradicated out of Colorado by about 1919. Is, you know, estimated to be kind of the last Wolverine. Now, they're just found in pockets of the Northern Rockies, because they like that really deep snow path in that kind of high elevation. They're in these, like, pockets of the peaks of our mountain ranges, right? And so if you look at a map of their range in the lower 48 it's a lot of those strips of our of the Rocky Mountain ranges. And so right now they're up in parts of like Montana and Idaho, parts of the Pacific Northwest. Historically, they were also found in pieces of California, in Colorado and Utah. And so Colorado remains to be. See some of the best and biggest remaining Wolverine habitat left in the lower 48 and so like I mentioned earlier, they are mustelid, so they're part of the weasel family. They're related to animals like black footed ferrets and Martins, and they are the biggest terrestrial weasel actually, so they're beat out by giant river otters on the aquatic side, but they get to be about 35 pounds, so the size of, you know, smallish dog. But as far as weasels go, they're they're pretty big. They're known for being very ferocious. But just like every other animal, they just want to defend their territory, defend their family. They are solitary. They don't come in contact with each other very often, kind of outside of mating. Just another reason they're not seen very often. That's


Bill Hodge  10:45
a great understanding. One thing I'd like to know a little bit deeper, and I've actually something I've been paying attention to in Montana, as we as some of the national forests maybe are revising over snow travel again, you talk about there being a pretty isolated animal. I'm assuming that means, sort of, the extenuation of the species through breeding is almost happenstance when we don't have that many of them. Could you talk a little bit about specifically within the habitat requirements, how and why maternal denting habitat is so critical for the species? Yeah,


Speaker 1  11:13
absolutely. And so in the lower 48 we estimate that there's probably around 300 Wolverines left now because they have really big home ranges, because they're solitary, it's kind of normal that they have naturally kind of small populations. There was probably never 1000s and 1000s of Wolverines in the lower 48 but it's still pretty few individuals, and because we're seeing a lot of habitat fragmentation for a lot of species across the board, right? But especially in these snowier habitats, researchers think that there's maybe only 35 individuals that are actually breeding in that in that population. And one of the reasons that they can't get down to Colorado on their own, and that they're having a lot of difficulty in the Northern Rockies too, is that females don't move very far away from where they're born. Females have very low dispersal. Males can travel quite a ways, but females won't. And so when we have a lot of this fragmentation, when we have a lot of warming and changing climate, a lot of development in these areas that used to be dispersal corridors or movement corridors, we're seeing that growth potential shrink when it's already really small. Katie,


Anders Reynolds  12:22
you've mentioned that Wolverines are solitary creatures. They sort of seek out remote habitats, and last I checked, they also don't know how to read a map. So given those three virtues, they're obviously going to end up on some remote and rugged public lands that may come with some management restrictions. I'm not just talking about wilderness here, but I'm certainly including wilderness in those public lands. What opportunities and challenges does that bring? I could imagine something like wilderness to be somewhat inviting to a species who seek a little distance from humans that you were talking about, but maybe that designation also offer some management challenges too. Could you talk about that a little bit?


Speaker 1  13:04
Yeah, you know, with all animals, they don't know our borders right in Colorado is is no different. We have quite the mosaic of different land ownership and management in the state. And so I think when we look at restoration as a whole, we have to consider those different management practices, but have that kind of philosophy around restoration, kind of overarching when we're looking at the species, and I think a lot of that comes from kind of public perspectives, really listening and figuring out management styles that are going to work, and have a lot of buy in. And so regardless of whose land they're on, that we know that these are shared landscapes with people and wildlife. Sometimes livestock. It's a little bit easier with an animal like a Wolverine, that's typically really far away from people and livestock. There are some areas where they may encounter some sheep allotments and things like that. But for the most part, Wolverine habitat here in Colorado is largely protected in different public lands, and so we don't imagine there to be a lot of conflict in these different land management uses, at least in Colorado, but it does take that awareness, right and that having the opportunity for people to engage and feel heard as they're getting restored back to the state. But we don't imagine a whole lot of conflict with different land uses in Colorado.


Anders Reynolds  14:22
So speaking of that engagement, I know Colorado's Governor Jared Polis signed the bill allowing for the reintroduction of Wolverines almost a year ago, right in May 2024 before that, I know that advocates and lawmakers worked to build a broad coalition of support that included, you know, wildlife advocates, the ski and timber industries and the general public tell us that story. When did that start? Who built the coalition and, like, how did they do it? What were the nuts and bolts of building something like that that found success in the end? Yeah,


Speaker 1  14:53
it's been a long road to this point. It really has. You know, when we talk about Wolverine reinstruction in Colorado. A lot of people think, you know, we just started with wolves. Now you're moving on to another W animal, like, what? Why? And the truth is, you know, this has been decades in the making. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has wanted to restore Wolverines to the state since the 90s. Is when they first started looking into this, the same time that they were looking to restore Canada lynx. And so they originally wanted to do them kind of at the same time, and then they got started and said, Maybe we should just focus on one at a time. And they chose Lynx. So they went forward with the Lynx reintroduction, kind of at that same time, kind of late 90s, early 2000s a lot of environmental groups and experts were trying to get protections for Wolverines on the Endangered Species Act. And so that's when they first started to get petitioned for listing. And that kicked off a lot of back and forth, a lot of legal back and forth over the last couple decades to get us to the point where they're now protected under the Endangered Species Act. So at the end of 2023 they were listed as a threatened species. Federally, they've been considered endangered in the state of Colorado for for several decades, and so they had some some amount of protection. But in Colorado, we have a law that Colorado Parks and Wildlife needs legislative approval in order to reintroduce a threatened or endangered species, and so they had to get that legislative approval first before they could really start planning anything. I mentioned, they wanted to do it at the same time as LINCS. So they got through the LINCS reintroduction, they started planning for old rain reinstruction again around kind of 2010 2013 that's when this kind of coalition started to get back together, to do a lot of that stakeholder engagement, figure out what that process was going to look like, in a way that environmental groups felt was supportive of the protection of the species and the restoration of the species. Wolverines are a lot more sensitive than an animal like a wolf, and so there's a few more considerations that go into that, but it was a really broad coalition, and so that got back together after Wolverines got their listing in 2023 that's a big piece that CPW is kind of waiting to see what would happen at the federal level before moving forward at the state level with a reintroduction. And so once they had that listing, they kind of renewed this interest in pursuing that management plan that they developed back in 2010 and so the coalition got back together to get a bill passed. Like you said last year in 2024 had bipartisan support, had broad support from the public, from environmental groups, from the ski industry, from hunting groups, and in the midst of a lot of division in the nation as a whole, but in wildlife in particular, it was really awesome to see just not a lot of opposition and a lot of broad support for this species that really needs our help and that we can do a lot of good for


Anders Reynolds  17:50
solitary, sensitive and somewhat skeptical of people, I feel like I see a lot of myself in Wolverine.


17:57
They are relatable, aren't they,


Bill Hodge  17:58
and yet, like the Wolverine, you need a better PR firm. So, I mean, one thing I wanted to ask you about, if you could just touch on, you know, we just had an episode with Tim Manley, who spent his career as a wildlife manager in Montana, managing human conflicts with grizzly bears and just managing the grizzly bear population. Could you talk about the difference between a threatened species and an endangered species. If, if you could a little bit about what those two terms mean, because a lot of our you know, a lot of our audience, a lot of the public, they've maybe heard of the Endangered Species Act, but the nuts and bolts probably go over some people's heads. Could you talk a little bit about the difference between a species being threatened versus endangered?


Speaker 1  18:38
And so let's clarify. We're talking about the federal level. So a lot of states also have their own list of threatened endangered species. That definition can kind of vary from state to state. But at the federal level, we're talking about the the Endangered Species Act, which was passed in the 70s, bedrock conservation law that's been replicated by many countries since then, is responsible for the restoration and protection of all sorts of species, like the bald eagle, the gray wolf. There's just so many great examples of how this endangered species works, and so protected species can be listed, like you said, as threatened or endangered. Endangered is a bit higher level, they're quite literally on the brink of extinction. And so they have more protections that come with that protect them from what the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who administers the Endangered Species Act, they consider take. So take can mean harm, harass, kill has a really broad definition in order to make sure that that species, that population is being adequately protected, threatened is closer to, you know, they could become endangered in the near future, but there's maybe a lot more potential to reverse things while we can. And that's kind of where we're at with Wolverines. Like I said, they are kind of naturally rare, and in Colorado, because we have this big chunk. Of suitable habitat left here, we actually have a really big potential to reverse course for this species and actually increase their population in the lower 48 by 20 30% potentially, which would do a lot in the recovery of the species in the lower 48 as a whole. I keep emphasizing lower 48 because that's kind of all their listing pertains to. They're not considered threatened in Alaska, where there are quite a few more Wolverines. They're also up in Canada, the biggest issue down here being they're not well connected to those Wolverines in Canada and Alaska, and they're not well connected to other parts of their habitat in the lower 48 and so having them listed provides those protections. It awards a lot more just attention and resources to be able to meaningfully work on restoring this species. Like I said, Colorado was was waiting for a while to to see if they would be listed at the federal level before pursuing the reintroduction. But a lot of experts, and I think even in the listing itself, says that a successful restoration of Wolverines in Colorado in the southern Rockies is potentially the biggest thing that we can do to help this species down here.


Anders Reynolds  21:17
Katie, you've talked a lot about habitat fragmentation. I'm curious if, if you could speak to if you're aware of any plans to do better work and connecting those fragmented habitats via corridors from, you know, southern Rockies to Northern Rockies, maybe even up into Canada. Could you speak to that a little bit Sure?


Speaker 1  21:36
Yeah. You know, I think a big issue we see with a lot of species in Colorado is that there's a bit of a Wyoming is a hard state to get through for a lot of wildlife. It's true for Wolverines. It's true for wolves. It's true for all sorts of animals that have to cross through, not only a large landscape of not very many people, but a lot of ranches. It's lower elevation, the terrain is quite a bit different. And because of a lot of the policies we see in Wyoming, it's really hard to find things that we can change in a meaningful way until, I think a lot of the philosophy and policy changes in Wyoming, and so that's a big disconnect from getting kind of to the Northern Rockies to the southern Rockies. For Wolverines, they have to go down through a lot of really unsuitable habitat. At least one male has done it. There's only one Wolverine that we know of that has gotten to Colorado since they were eradicated in the early 20s. His name was m 56 he was collared, so researchers were able to kind of track his movements all the way down. He started, kind of around Grand Teton National Park, came all the way down into northern Colorado, into one of the areas that is considered that really good suitable habitat for Wolverines in the state, and could potentially have more Wolverines here in the future. But he's the only one that we know of that's really been able to make it down, and because, like I mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of dispersal from females, even if we have some males make it down, they're not going to have any females down here to mate with, right? And actually make a population. And that's kind of what M 56 ran into, spent about three years in the state, and eventually bopped back up to the Northern Rockies because he was probably trying to find a mate. And the other concern is, even if a couple females were able to make it down with males and stay in Colorado, they don't reproduce very quickly. And so we'd run into an issue probably pretty quickly with genetic diversity. And so by having a formal reintroduction effort, not only are we able to craft a management plan with a little bit more predictability anticipation, getting people up to speed on what's going to happen, how fast it's going to happen, to have more buy in at the public level, we're also able to restore Wolverines in a way that's going to set them up for success in the long term, and Trying to get that genetic diversity up front so that we're not relying on the couple founding individuals that may get here on their own. As far as you know, connectivity in the Northern Rockies, I know there's a lot of growing interest around wildlife corridors, which is really great to see. And you know, I think just the the cooperation that we've had with Canada recently, with with gray wolves. Canada is probably where we get Wolverines as well. Hopefully. You know, what we're hoping for is that this process in Colorado really spurs a lot of hope and excitement around more restoration efforts more broadly, and kind of puts Wolverines back on the map, literally and metaphorically, I guess, so that maybe more things can start happening in the Northern Rockies too. To reverse some of that habitat fragmentation, it


Anders Reynolds  24:47
is just so amazing that we can track these things over miles and miles. We've come so far from Tim Manley's improvised game camera that he told us about. Just amazing.


Bill Hodge  24:58
Yeah, I'm curious. Uh. We talk about, Anders needs a better PR professional, just like the Wolverine. It's sort of like Wolverines don't have a PR professional, and wolves occasionally have a bad PR professional, right? Like wolves generate, you know, they generate a lot of emotion on the on both sides. And I'm just, I don't know, I'm thinking out loud here, but whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, that Wolverines probably don't generate an emotion like maybe it is almost fun to connect them to Hugh Jackman's character or something, because I think a lot of people, unlike you, they're on the other end of the spectrum. They don't know anything about the animal. You know, the unique needs, the high elevation, the really, really remote habitat, that the breeding process is so slow and but, yeah, it's just kind of interesting that the difference, you know, because obviously, I think in Colorado, was pretty the wolf reintroduction thing was pretty much a hot, hot button topic, right? So still is,


Speaker 1  25:50
still is a hot button topic. It's really interesting working on both. Because, yeah, they have the opposite problem. I'd say that wolves probably just have too many PR firms happening at once, rather than maybe one bad one. And yeah, Wolverines don't really have anyone speaking up for them. And so on one hand, it's tough that we have to lay a lot of that foundation and groundwork to just clarify a lot of kind of misunderstanding around what the species is and what they need. But at the same time, it's a huge and really exciting opportunity to be able to kind of paint the picture for what this species is and do it in a way that's really, really positive. So one of the things I've been trying to do is just get into schools and talk about talk about animals in general, but talking about Wolverines, kids just get so excited


Anders Reynolds  26:40
us. Gig, yes, hard to talk to kids about cuddly animals.


Speaker 1  26:44
I love talking to kids. When I was, you know, in elementary school, I remember the folks that would come in and talk to my classes, and that being the most memorable part of of science class or history class or whatever, right? And so now that I'm old, I feel like it's my responsibility, I guess, to, like, pay it forward for what those people did for me back then. And hopefully, if we talk about Wolverines a little bit younger in life, you know, we just start that connection early and with the the timeliness of what's happening in Colorado, a lot of teachers are like building units around wolf reintroduction, Wolverine reintroduction, will probably do the same thing, kind of exploring different perspectives and why this is happening and why they disappeared in the first place. And I think it's really a lot easier to to get people excited early and maintain that momentum, rather than, you know, working with adults that have maybe already kind of set in their ways. So yeah, it's really exciting to be able to kind of carve out what the future of Wolverines looks like in Colorado and do it in a way that's positive.


Anders Reynolds  27:53
Katie, that idea of giving back and acting on something that you received in your childhood, and like, the power of representation when you do this is something that we also talked to Karina Newsome about, and I think it's, like, a really wonderful theme I'm hearing in a lot of the conversations we're having.


Speaker 1  28:11
Yeah, I listened to that episode actually. That was an awesome conversation. And I think she said something that really resonated with me too, is that, you know, growing up and being interested in animals just you're just not exposed to any career opportunities, right? Like I was told, SeaWorld trainer, veterinarian and Zookeeper, and I, like, wasn't about any, any of those options. And so even if I go in and have the conversation is look at these hundreds of different ways you can support wildlife in your career, and even if, if your skill, if the thing you're really into is, you know, graphic design or administration or communications, like all of these things, can still be used to benefit endangered species. When I'm not working my day job, I do a lot of graphic design and wildlife photography, and so I try to weave that into a lot of work that I do and show kids that, you know, there are opportunities in wildlife, there is opportunity with art, and there is a way to use both of those things together to do some really powerful things for science.


Anders Reynolds  29:17
That is fantastic. What a great clarion call, Katie. I do want to touch on something you said earlier, about like, the commonalities and the differences between Wolverine campaign the gray wolf campaign. In your mind, does Wolverine reintroduction reflect a common playbook for species re introduction out there? What legal and legislative tools are out there to make these kinds of projects possible. Where does the science come from to support it? That's


Speaker 1  29:48
a great question. So like I mentioned earlier, in Colorado, Colorado Parks and Wildlife need that legislative approval before they can even talk about reintroducing endangered species a federally protected. Species, I should say. And so you can kind of do that one of two ways. There's representative democracy, where senators and representatives at the state level can pass a bill to reintroduce a species and give CPW that authority. You can also do it through a direct democracy, which is what was done with wolves, and so put it on a state ballot. That's the first time that that's been done, that the people of Colorado, or, you know, voters anywhere, have decided, okay, let's reintroduce an endangered species. But it did open up a new pathway, right? And so the way that reintroduction was approached in both of these scenarios on the legislative end was a little bit different when it comes to hammering out the rest of the policies. That's still largely brought up by CPW and approved by the CPW commission. Most states have some version of a commission. Ours is an 11 member governor appointed board of volunteers that set all of the rules and regulations around wildlife in Colorado, and so those pieces are are the same, I think, where you're probably going to see a lot less division, a lot less argument about Wolverines, thankfully, because they don't get into conflict too much, They don't pose much of a threat to livestock. I think there's been two cases of livestock conflict with Wolverines in the lower 48 ever that we know of. And so we're seeing a lot less opposition. All of the press has been really positive. I think it's just engaging people early and giving them an opportunity to have their voice heard. And so part of that, we're running a series of events this summer around Colorado to bring people up to speed on Yeah, what is a Wolverine? Why are they coming? Why does this matter? And I think what we're gonna see is a lot of that Colorado pride that comes through. This is not our first time doing this, even with wolves, was not our first reintroduction. Colorado has a great track record of restoring and reintroducing species to the state, so CPW is up for the task. They know what they're doing. They've been working thinking about this for decades. They've also got some stellar staff that they've hired to lead up this project. So again, I just, I hope this is just kindling for more restoration projects around the country. Katie,


Bill Hodge  32:30
I want to go back to something you said earlier. It's kind of related to the campaign question, but you said that you do a lot of like design and layout work. I'm looking at the vintage cameras over your shoulder. You do some photography work. I think that's one thing as we think about maybe future advocates or people who are looking at a career as a as an advocate or a biologist, we're all advocates at some level, right? And we almost all have to be that multi tool that you may get spent part of your day actually analyzing the the travels of a certain member of the Wolverine family, but you may also be having to put together the brochure or the lesson plan for the kids, right? Could you talk about that a little bit more, just like how we have to be sort of that multi tool to be an advocate in the 21st Century?


Speaker 1  33:18
Yeah, I've always felt like the jack of all trades, master of none, and just recently, I learned the rest of that saying, which is, sometimes that's better than a master of one. And that really is what it's like being in the wildlife field. It's a little bit easier at an organization like defenders, that's really big, and we have a lot of teams that can make me a map can make me a brochure. We have a lot of support that way. But oftentimes, yeah, we are in the field, tons of zoom meetings, making all of these, you know, presentations and outreach materials, and organizing the events ourselves, and putting it together and getting this, all of the things. And I think that's why I always harp on, like, the biological sciences is great. It is the foundation you need. It's why we get into this. But so much of this work is soft skills. Most of the work is working with people, rather than the animals themselves, right? And so going into this, you know, I thought I'd be, you know, rehabbing animals, or cuddling, cuddling wildlife, or whatever. A lot of people come into the field for those kind of direct interactions, and you end up staying for the people. And you never expect it. You don't think you're gonna like it, but it's really, really rewarding to see some of that behavior change. I love doing, like the outreach materials and putting these presentations together, and learning just as much about kind of education theory as much as kind of the latest Wildlife Science, right behavior changes a lot of what we do. And for a lot of a long time, I. We've maybe been doing it in not the most effective way. And so the traditional route of kind of environmental education, and what we see a lot of you know, basic presentations be is, here's a lot of words on a screen. I'm going to talk at you for 50 minutes, and then assume that you needed that information, assume that you absorbed it all, and that my work is done 10 minutes for questions, and that's all we get. And so as we learn more about kind of how people learn, how people engage, what gets people excited, I use a lot of these kind of public presentations and these classroom presentations as kind of my guinea pig experience experiments of kind of tweaking it one by one to add in more dialog to add in more activities. I frame all of my slides as questions rather than statements. There's all these kind of little things that you can do to make things sink in a little bit more and always trying to kind of target, target what you're saying to the audience you're saying it to. And so obviously a presentation for third graders is going to be different than a presentation different than a presentation for for adults, but when I'm talking to ranchers about wolves, is going to look a lot different than when I'm talking to recreationists about wolves. And so being able to read the room is a really big skill, but also having empathy, I think, is really important for for human wildlife conflict, and is really where I try to lead in a lot of my work. I


Bill Hodge  36:23
love it. My wife and I have a funny phrase we will share with each other all the time, and it's, it's straight out of an experience of going on an interpretive walk with with a ranger in a in a in a title zone. So this, this Ranger was, was sort of talking about the species in the critters that you know live in the tide pools. And let's just say that she was pretty used to talking to school children and not used to the collection of retirees that were on this walk. And she held up a starfish at one point and she said, Who's the sheriff in your neighborhood? And that phrase has been stuck in our family ever since, whenever somebody is kind of not reading the audience, we always look at each other and go, who's the sheriff your neighborhood? I had to share my learning how to read the room, and it was a sweet moment. We learned a whole lot. So let me be clear, we learned a whole lot. But yeah,


Anders Reynolds  37:16
you guys are both touching on something that I think is really particular to wildlife conservation work, and that is that it demands different messages for different audiences. I think more than land conservation, does water conservation any of those things. And at the heart of that is because you can have public facing messaging that you change for five year olds, or maybe don't change for five year olds versus adults. But there's also sort of the decision maker facing messaging. And the heart of the problem there is that animals can't vote, and so it's you've got to make the connection for the lawmakers on why this is important, right? Like you're right. These aren't your constituents, like, they're not people, but there's a reason that they are important for people's experience and and let us make that connection for you. And so I, Katie, I'm really impressed, like, You've obviously done, like, a lot of really careful and deep thinking about this, and I appreciate that a lot.


Speaker 1  38:18
Thank you. Yeah, I think, I think it's always nuance, and I think that's why starting as early as we can, building up that foundation so that we can have that more nuanced conversation, is really when we get into better conversations, more constructive thinking, and we just think of better solutions. I think I've seen it with wolves. I've seen it with Wolverines, and I think a lot of times we want to oversimplify. We want to make it black and white. And all of this field is is gray area, right? And conservation looks different with each species and each place. I'm one of five staff that work at defenders on wolves. We all approach our work completely differently because of the, you know, the public attitude, the management plans. It really does take that nuanced conversation in every single room you walk into. But like you said, focusing on the why for that person, if you're with a, you know, an environmental type audience, the why is a lot of that, you know they're endangered, and you know this is what we can do, and focusing on the value to the species. When you're talking to a group of folks like ranchers or hunters that want to have you know you have to focus on a different why? Why does this matter to you? Why can this make a difference in your life? My job is not to make you love wolves or love Wolverines. My job is to make sure that we can move forward and see progress for this species in a way that we can find some common ground and reduce that opposition. And I guess, I guess, have more longevity with a project as a whole in a more sustained. Possible way than just saying doesn't matter what you think, we're going to do this anyway and just create that divide, continue that divide that we see with with a lot of areas,


Bill Hodge  40:09
boy, that those last four or five sentences of yours is a is just sort of needs to be summarized and put out to a lot of people who do this work, like the why is going to be different for people, and we do tend to get caught up in the why that's in our head, whether we're an environmentalist or whatever. So it's been just an absolute pleasure. We've been having a great conversation with Katie Schneider. She is with Defenders of Wildlife. She is all about the Wolverine, the RE introduction of Wolverines to the beautiful state of Colorado, as you heard, she is truly a jack of all trades and a Master of several. I'll put it that way, and it's just been just an absolute pleasure, Katie, having you with us today. Hopefully people can learn a little bit. You know, I think it's fun to think about charismatic species like wolves, but Anders and I both have a love for a slightly less charismatic species and the help Ender salamander that's also threatened in the southern Appalachians, and it's maybe not as warm and cuddly looking, but but also has a different why, right? So why? Why? It's important. But Katie, thanks so much for your conversation. This has really been great. Thank you, Katie,


Speaker 1  41:14
thank you guys. Yeah, thanks. This has been awesome. Like I said, happy to talk anytime, and hopefully in the next few years, we'll have some exciting news about pause hitting the ground again.


Bill Hodge  41:27
Yeah, love it. Looking forward to see what happens with the Wolverines in Colorado and the rest of the Northern Rockies. And if you want to check out Katie's work and the work of defenders, you can go to defenders.org and check out their amazing work that they do. Anders and I both have got to work with defenders over the years, and super excited to see that work continue. We also hope that you, our audience, that you will continue to reach back out give us feedback. At the wild idea.com we're hoping that you'll say, Hey, have you guys thought about asking this question, or I'm curious about this issue, because you may help us. We're getting a lot of great ideas of folks we should talk to. So hope you'll do that, folks, and we'll look forward to talking to you on down the trail.


Voiceover  42:07
The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds, production and editing by Brent Russell at podlab. Digital support by Holly wilkoshevsky at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skeehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com you


Transcribed by https://otter.ai