S7. E20: Jim and Jamie Dutcher: Living with Wolves
“The alpha female dug a den and had puppies. And we got there as they were squealing in the pack. And what was just amazing is to see how the pack reacted to this. They were so excited. Even when she started digging the den, the other wolves start digging other holes… they weren't helping at all, they were just caught up in it.”
– Jim Dutcher
I've talked about this before and I'm going to talk about it a whole lot more: there is a mass slaughter of wolves taking place in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
This is the first episode in a series that will hopefully get more of us to care and then do something to stop this madness before it's too late.
And, as you will hear in this conversation, there are real things that we can do. But first, wolves need as many of us as they can get on their team, and they need us to fight like crazy for them, or in the very near future, they'll be gone.
This conversation is with the two people that have made humans care about wolves more than anyone that I know of. Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years in the nineties living with and filming a pack of wolves called the Sawtooth. Since then, they've focused their lives on the study and documentation of wolf social behavior, and their photographs, books, and Emmy Award-winning films documenting the lives of these remarkable animals have changed the way that many people see these deeply social and family-oriented animals.
Please listen and share.
In gratitude,
Elizabeth Novogratz
Learn more about Living with Wolves
How you can help wolves
Follow Living with Wolves on Instagram
Like Living with Wolves on Facebook
Follow Living with Wolves on Twitter
Transcript:
Jim: [00:00:15] The alpha female dug a den and had puppies and we got there as they were squealing in the pack. What was just amazing is to see how the pack reacted to this. They were so excited. Even when she started digging the den, the other wolves started digging other holes.
Elizabeth: [00:00:37] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask. If you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. I've talked about this before and I'm going to talk about it a whole lot more. There is a mass slaughter of wolves happening in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. This is the first episode in a series that will hopefully get a whole lot more of us to care and then do something to stop this madness before it's too late. As you will hear in this conversation, there are real things that we can do. But first, we need more people to care. Wolves need as many of us as they can get on their team, and they need us to fight like crazy for them, or in the very near future, they'll be gone. This conversation is with the two people that have made humans care about wolves more than anyone that I know of. Jim and Jamie Dutcher spent six years in the nineties living with and filming a pack of wolves called the Sawtooth. Since then, they've focused their lives on the study and documentation of Wolf's social behavior, their photographs, books, and Emmy Award winning films documenting the lives of these remarkable wolves have changed the way that many people see these deeply social and family oriented animals. Hi, Jamie. Hi, Jim. Thank you both so much for this, for being here. It's really awesome. It's great to be with you. I want to start with the Sawtooth pack and the work that you did in the nineties that really changed the world for wolves. So can we start there with how it even happened?
Jim: [00:02:53] We're wildlife filmmakers, and Jamie and I specialized in animals. You rarely get very close to the very elusive beavers, undersea subjects, mountain lions before wolves. The wolf being an endangered species, being very elusive and afraid of humans, it was a challenge to make a film that people would care about. So we realized right away, seeing wolves far away. They were so far away that they were just little specks. I felt that if you wanted to change the way it was for wolves and for people to care, they needed to be able to see it in their eyes. Just to explain that project a little bit more is that we built this enclosure after we raised these puppies and bottle fed them and created the trust. For the first three years of the project, we had our camp outside the enclosure. But we realized that every time we went through the gate the wolves would stop doing what they were doing and come over and greet us. So we didn't want to interrupt all this wonderful natural behavior. So we moved our camp into their territory and set up a yurt, a platform and a sleep tent, and then surrounded it with a chain link. Not because we were afraid. Because they would steal our things.
Jamie: [00:04:20] Yeah, they steal stuff.
Jim: [00:04:21] They steal our boots and such. the same problem. As we slept with these wolves and they were out there, we could see certain behaviors and how they woke up in the morning and how they greeted each other and went from one wolf to another, starting with the alpha, just all this different behavior.
Jamie: [00:04:42] It's important to note that we had the largest wolf enclosure in the world. You know, if we were lucky enough to find a pack of wolves in the wild, we would have to habituate them to our film gear. That meant that the next time they saw humans, somebody might be pointing something else at them besides a camera, and that would have been completely irresponsible. So we used a captive pack and really all behavior studies and social studies done on wolves have been done in enclosures, but very small enclosures of 1 to 3 acres. Like I said, ours was the largest in the world at 25 acres. This really allowed the wolves to live out their lives, even though we bottle fed them. They were not pets. If they came, it was on their terms. Everything was very neutral. We never dominated them and they never tried to dominate us. That really allowed us to see into their lives and bring that to an audience that wouldn't see it otherwise.
Jim: [00:05:52] We started with puppies. We bottle fed them from the moment they opened their eyes so that they would trust us. We camped with them there in the Sawtooth Mountains for six years. When a mountain lion killed one of our wolves I witnessed or we both did, how the pack reacted and how sad they were. That changed me. I realize I probably wasn't a wildlife filmmaker anymore that my whole life would be about casting a positive life on this misunderstood animal.
Elizabeth: [00:06:35] Will you talk about when you witnessed their grief, it was Mottaki that died, right? Will you talk about that and what you witnessed and how that changed you?
Jim: [00:06:44] The most important thing of this lesson that we learned from this event was how the pack reacted. For the next six weeks, they didn't play. Now anybody watching a pack of wolves would see play probably all the time. Like if an hour went by and you didn't see play, that would be a very unusual hour. They're always pulling tails, chasing each other. They love to find a stick or something and keep away. But they didn't play for six weeks and they stopped howling the way they usually did. There are howls used to be very energetic with lots of yips and whines. They would get together and howl as a group. Or after this happened, they would hardly even stand up to how it was a lone howl and very searching and in the way it sounded. About a week or so after I walked through that territory with the pack with me, they left me and went over and sniffed the ground and you could see every wolf in the pack, even the alpha, who always got his tail up and was pretty perky. His ears went back, his tail went down and they were sniffing and they were remembering her. They mourned her and that's something we have witnessed. But other biologists have told us stories of where they lost a wolf that they were studying and the pack would search and figure out patterns and howl like that, too.
Elizabeth: [00:08:25] It's heartbreaking, but it's so important to know this and to see it. The same with the play and the same way that some wolves babysit the pups and take care of them. Everyone is always kind of watching out for each other. It's a family. It's 100% a family.
Jamie: [00:08:46] Yeah. When you look at your family dog, you know, all dogs are descended from wolves. Dogs have the same kinds of behaviors. They mourn the loss of other pets in the family, and they certainly mourn the loss of human family members. So that's where it comes from.
Jim: [00:09:03] So, Beth, we're talking about compassion. Jamie and I have seen this in other places. We're up in Alaska filming Wolves, and we went into a fish and game necropsy room where they had the skull of a wolf that had broken its jaw and healed and then lived on for quite some time until it was trapped and the Fish and Game Department had this skull there. It was interesting to see this broken jaw. Yet the wolf lived on for many years now how that happened, the pack had to have brought it food. It wouldn't be able to participate in a kill and it wouldn't even be able to pull flesh from a carcass. So the pack took care of it.
Elizabeth: [00:09:54] That's incredible. I have kind of a random aside question. So the six years you spent with the Sawtooth, that was the first real six years of your marriage relationship, right? Was that where you guys were first? That's a really big test.
Jim: [00:10:06] Yeah.
Jamie: [00:10:07] We knew each other before, but yeah, then we really dived in.
Elizabeth: [00:10:15] That really could have gone one of two ways. I mean, you lived in a wolf enclosure for six years. That's love. That's awesome.
Jamie: [00:10:26] It will make or break you.
Elizabeth: [00:10:27] Yeah. What was it, it must have been so shocking to everything in your system when it was over, you know, that's what you did every day and who you were surrounded by and now you're like, what? You go back to the real world.
Jamie: [00:10:47] Yeah. It was heartbreaking. The project was conducted on Forest Service land, and we renewed our permits until we could no longer renew them. We knew that at the end of the project we'd have to find a permanent home for the wolves. So we talked to the Nez Perce tribe in northern Idaho and we built a similar situation there on Nez Perce tribal land so the wolves could continue to live out their lives. We had trained caregivers to go with them as well to live there. It really was heartbreaking. It was like giving up your kids.
Jim: [00:11:21] When Motsi followed me to the gate and then just curled up and laid there, like, I'll wait until you come back. It just broke my heart. We tried to go up there as often as possible and see them.
Elizabeth: [00:11:37] How were they when you would visit?
Jamie: [00:11:41] Oh, excited. Really excited.
Jim: [00:11:42] Oh, yeah. They jump all over us. We took a crew from CBS up there one time after we hadn't seen them and turned them over to the tribe and they were out in the field. Snow was falling and we didn't know how they would treat us. We called Motsi’s name and he just lit up, and the whole pack ran towards us and jumped up on us and licked our faces as if to say, where have you been?
Elizabeth: [00:12:13] Yeah, that's almost more heartbreaking, right?
Jamie: [00:12:22] Right. It was hard. I mean, still, I mean, to this day, if I'm sleeping and suddenly I hear big wind gusts coming through, I panic because I worry about trees, trees on the enclosure fence. I'm like, wait a minute, it's not there anymore. You know, it's just a hard thing. You know, every time you hear a hard rain, the memory goes back to raindrops on a tent. That's that sound and it's just just with us all the time.
Jim: [00:12:55] We write books about the wolves, quite a few of them. We're writing one now. Every time we recycle these stories, it brings up a lot of emotions. It was the most important thing that I ever did in my life.
Jamie: [00:13:09] Well, both of us, I think.
Jim: [00:13:10] Yeah.
Jamie: [00:13:11] But yeah. So, I mean, all the pack members have passed away and really we just tell their stories and continue to try to get people to understand wolves now more than ever. So their memory lives on.
Jim: [00:13:25] Ambassadors and their stories live on.
Elizabeth: [00:13:28] Their stories are so full of life that just me I had read them a long time ago and this week rereading like they're so alive. You do fall in love with everybody.
Jim: [00:13:43] The climax of the whole story is that eureka moment was when the pack mated themselves, the alpha male and the alpha female. There's only two wolves in the pack that normally mate, and if there is not enough prey in the area, they won't mate at all. So anyway, the alpha female dug a den and had puppies and we got there as they were squealing in the pack. What was just amazing is to see how the pack reacted to this. They were so excited. Even when she started digging the den, the other wolves started digging other holes. They weren't healthy though.
Elizabeth: [00:14:30] That is awesome.
Jim: [00:14:33] So Jamie and I arrived there early in the morning and we could hear the squeals of the newborn pups coming from the den. We had talked about this after filming for a while and seeing the pack all excited. As the hours went by we felt everything was calm and Jamie went over to the den, kneel down, and the alpha female came out and sat right with her and just like, What do you think? Jamie pulled out of her pocket a flashlight and showed it to Chinook and she sniffed it. Then Jamie got down on her belly and crawled into the den and the den was amazing. With roots coming down and how she navigated around the big boulders and roots into a chamber. Instead of finding the little pups on the floor of the den, they were up on a shelf. She kept them high and dry. You know, it was really slushy and wet outside. But everything inside this den was bone dry and she saw the pups they heard her. Then she started to back out. When she got out again, the alpha female licked her on the nose. They licked Jamie on the nose and then went back to see her puppies. It was absolute trust. You know, Jamie had raised that female from birth and she had a bond with her.
Elizabeth: [00:16:10] Well, and she wanted to show them off to you, too, right?
Jamie: [00:16:13] Yeah. I mean, the other wolves weren't allowed in the den, so I felt very honored.
Elizabeth: [00:16:24] So you saw them before any of the other wolves? That's awesome.
Jamie: [00:16:13] Yes. No other wolf went into that den, but she let me and I was ready to get bit on the rear end. That was going to be my badge of honor.
Elizabeth: [00:16:35] That is so cool.
Jim: [00:16:33] You can imagine you just couldn't do this in the wild because wolves are so afraid. If you go close to a den, they may desert it and leave. But they trusted us. It was the only way to make a film that people would care about this animal, you know? That's what we were trying to do, is to show an emotional side to these animals.
Elizabeth: [00:17:02] Well, and in so many ways, I mean, not only in their actions and their relationships do they care. Like you said, their eyes, but also their expressions. I mean, they really like the joy when it snows and how their bodies express themselves. It's very similar to our expressions. Right.
Jim: [00:17:24] Yeah. When the pack was gathered around the opening of the den, they would kind of walk stiff legged, like almost on tiptoes.
Jamie: [00:17:32] Going from one foot to the other side by side, like, oh, we're so excited.
Jim: [00:17:35] They would lean against each other shoulder to shoulder, and they would vocalize in a way that we called it their Chewbacca language from Star Wars. We have no idea what they were saying.
Elizabeth: [00:18:02] Wow and speaking of vocalizations, like with their howling, why do they howl?
Jamie: [00:16:12] Oh, gosh. You know, we like to say wolves howl for more reasons than we'll ever know. It's the iconic vocalization that everybody thinks about with wolves. But like we've said, they have so many more vocalizations that people don't hear, but they'll howl after a good meal. They'll howl to gather each other together, together as a group. They'll howl to see who's out there and just joyously howl. They will not always howl at the full moon. The moon may be full when they are howling, but they don't howl for the full moon. But just from regular howls to bark howls if they're upset or distressed, you know, the whines, the yips, the very quiet vocalizations, the Chewbacca sounds that we call them, it's really an extensive, crazy combination of sounds.
Jim: [00:19:27] Jamie was able to put her microphone outside the tent and then run the cable into where we had our bunk. She would have her tape recorder right with her in bed. So when they started to howl in the middle of the night, she was there. There was one wolf who was very aloof. He was a pup with the third generation of pups that we raised there. He was very aloof during the day, but at night he seemed to get comfort and being as close to us as possible. So with us in the bunk, the tent right next to our heads and the chain length, a few inches from that, he was really about two feet away and you could hear him roll over and moan and such but when the other wolves started to howl from the distance and he started howl, it launches right out of bed.
Elizabeth: [00:20:25] I can imagine. Like he was under the bed. What a gift that you gave the world. But what a gift those six years were to you as well.
Jamie: [00:20:48] Yeah, those wolves gave us so much.
Jim: [00:20:49] We went on to tell their story and did presentations around the nation and even overseas to Europe and Jordan and South America. The story of the Sawtooth pack has been very much appreciated and that makes us feel really good about what we did.
Elizabeth: [00:21:10] Well, so while you were doing this, the wolves were reintroduced during the same time, right? Am I right on that?
Jim: [00:21:16] That’s right. Yeah.
Elizabeth: [00:21:17] So Wolf, hatred had already begun. I guess it's been going on for hundreds of years. But this new version of it you know, the modern day wolf hatred, I guess. Did that affect you and your project? Just the anti wolf people.
Jim: [00:21:32] No, not really. In fact, we met with biologists and fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service and they thought a wolf film coming out just before wolves were reintroduced would be a fantastic idea, you know, to educate people about this animal before it was released to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.
Jamie: [00:21:55] But I mean, at the same time, we would get hate mail in the mailbox. We would get threatening phone calls, you know, move the wolves or we will. Yeah, you tried not to take it too seriously, but the anger was visceral as wolf reintroduction was becoming more and more of a reality. People were more and more angry.
Jim: [00:22:24] We were so afraid of somebody throwing poison into the pack or shooting through the fence that we actually took the precaution of hiring a company from Montana out of state to come and put up the original enclosure. So we just didn't want locals to know where this wolf pack was. Good friends would say, I want to go see. But, you know, and it really upset them when we said we can’t.
Jamie: [00:22:53] Because even though we were on Forest Service land, we were surrounded by private land. So unless you were trespassing on the ranchers land, you couldn't get to us and there were trespassers. People did find us, but everything seemed to.
Elizabeth: [00:23:11] Right. It feels like and seems like everything is worse right now for wolves, especially Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Is that true?
Jamie: [00:23:20] You know, not having experienced the extermination of wolves firsthand when it finally ended, I can't say. But what I can speak to now is the incredible anger and uncontrollable hate that people have not only for wolves, but for the federal government. The federal government reintroduced wolves and I hate the federal government, so I hate wolves. It really makes no sense. When people talk to us about why there is such a hate for wolves, it's really difficult to explain because it doesn't come from any kind of a point of reality. You know, the reality is that wolves account for less than 1% of all livestock predation. The majority of livestock are on the open range, which is owned by all of us, not ranchers. You have other issues: lightning strikes, illness, other predators, domestic dogs, weather, animals being hit on the highway, all account for more livestock loss than wolves. This idea that wolves are killing all the deer and elk that hunters like to hunt, well, you know, wolves hunt to sustain themselves. The idea of wolves hunting for sport is ridiculous. One kick from an elk or a moose or gore from an antler and that wolf is dead. Nine times out of ten, they miss. They only generally hunt, you know, every 5 to 7 days, depending on how big the animal is. They take the weakest, the sickest animals and where human beings take the prize animals. Wolves and their prey have lived together forever, you know, and wolves have never decimated the populations. This idea that, you know, a hunter might say, well, you know, I used to go to the same place every time to get my elk, and it's not there anymore. Well, wolves are doing what wolves are meant to do. They're the only predators in North America that keep ungulates herds like deer, elk moving. Because that's not only good for the ungulates, it's good for the health of the land. So you might have a guy who went to the same spot every year and they're not there anymore. But they're over the next hill where some poor guy who was never able to get an elk now can get one. So it actually takes hunting skill. You actually have to look for your animal.
Jim: [00:26:21] It's not a fair chase anymore. You know, they're using bait and traps.
Jamie: [00:26:25] Now, yeah. Traps.
Jim: [00:26:28] They're being paid bounties for dead wolves. They're allowed to hunt at night with night vision scopes.
Jamie: [00:26:36] They're talking about aerial hunting. Now, you know, what I was talking about was just the general hate of wolves from the myth. But what's going on now is just such an unbelievable slaughter, a senseless slaughter for no reason.
Elizabeth: [00:27:03] Will you talk about, I read this in your books, but when you hunt wolves and they're slaughtered and packs get broken up. How much worse that is for the wolves, of course, but for everyone else, too, the prey, the livestock.
Jim: [00:27:13] Yeah. If you have a pack of wolves, maybe ten, twelve wolves, and you kill them. We have observed any perceived danger. The alpha usually steps up and checks out what's happening, what's coming into their territory. They're first to be shot and you break up packs that are a dozen or so into small little groups of twos and threes. Well, those two or three wolves really have a hard time bringing down a large ungulate like an elk. Usually if they have pups, one of those three will have to stay back with the newborn. So they can't can't bring down elk or deer, so they go after what is easier to feed upon. So really shooting wolves is making it worse for ranchers.
Elizabeth: [00:28:09] There's a lot of things that like just actual facts and numbers, like they only kill so many livestock or this whole thing about when you break up a pack, how much worse it is, it's just numbers and facts, but it feels like no one believes them. That's anti wolf.
Jamie: [00:28:29] Well, yeah, we're living in the age of alternative facts and misinformation. People generally like to believe what they want to believe. It's sort of like, you know, one of the big myths about wolf reintroduction is that the wolves that were brought, that were captured in Canada and reintroduced Yellowstone National Park in central Idaho was this giant super sized wolf, £300 wolf, and it doesn't belong here. Well, okay, the last time I checked, there is not a wall that separates the United States from Canada. These are the same wolves. They go back and forth and back and forth and it's like when you have a conversation with somebody who says something like that and you're like, well, wait a minute, so how does that happen? They just stop at the border. They're like, Oh, yeah. If they took the time to actually think about it, you know, it doesn't make sense. It's really a shame because the reintroduction of wolves has been so good for the landscape. You know, nowhere can you see that better than Yellowstone National Park. Before Wolf Reintroduction, you had so many elk, they were all over the place and yeah, it was fun for people to see crazy herds of elk, but they were hanging out in the riparian areas along the rivers and streams and just browsing down every new growth of Willow, Aspen, everything. It was devastating. Well, when wolves are reintroduced to the park, they call it the ecology of fear. Suddenly the elk had to kind of watch their backs. So rather than hanging out in these riparian areas that are so delicate, they're more a little more up on the hillsides where they can see what's going on. That's allowed willows to grow back, aspens to come back, which has made the water cooler. So it's made the trout population better. Songbirds have come back. Rodents that feed, you know, small animals and birds of prey. It's just that everything is better because of wolves. But with wolves gone, you kind of got used to seeing something that was not natural. Here's a cool fact. Pronghorn Antelope are not preyed upon by wolves. They just don't bother. They're too fast. They don't even go after the calves. But they are hunted by coyotes.
Jim: [00:31:00] Specialized feeding on the newborn.
Jamie: [00:31:03] Yeah, on the newborns. So Pronghorn Antelope will seek out areas where wolves are to give birth, to keep them safe because coyotes won't go near wolves.
Elizabeth: [00:31:19] That's amazing.
Jamie: [00:31:03] So the pronghorn population goes up and, you know, where they had been faltering. So it's all good. It's the trophic cascade, the top down in the bottom up. It all works together where wolves are one of those keystone species that hold everything together.
Jim: [00:31:34] So now you can hunt wolves year round here.
Jamie: [00:31:39] In Idaho.
Jim: [00:31:40] We have more cattle and sheep in this state than we do people. But visitors don't come here to see cattle and sheep. There are 2.5 million cattle and sheep. Wolves have killed only 173 of them in a year. You know, such a small percentage and they are reimbursed the ranchers are reimbursed by the states for any loss to wolves.
Elizabeth: [00:32:12] I mean, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Jim: [00:32:15] No, it doesn't.
Elizabeth: [00:32:16] It is hatred, but is it also fear?
Jamie: [00:32:18] Yes. It's that myth. I mean, you know, when wolves were first reintroduced, I can't remember the name of the town. They had the school bus stop where the kids waited for the school bus. They surrounded it. They made it a cage because they were afraid wolves were going to come and eat the children. I mean, it is completely insane. Completely insane. There's been one possible documented death caused by a wolf.
Jim: [00:32:49] There's been two.
Jamie: [00:32:51] Two, in 120 years. That usually had to do with things like habituation to a garbage dump and things like that. Things that are unnatural. Wolves are terribly afraid of people. They're very curious about us. If you were in the wild and you were actually lucky enough to see a wolf, it's only because they want you to see them. Otherwise you won't and it's a shame what we're doing to the mother of all dogs.
Jim: [00:33:19] It's a national treasure. So many people go to Yellowstone to see wolves and now the wolves are leaving the park, as they always do, to follow the elk. Now the government of Montana has taken away the buffer zones that were close to the border. You are only allowed to kill one more zone. They took away that protection. Now Yellowstone has lost about 20% of their wolves.
Elizabeth: [00:33:50] It's devastating. It's completely devastating. Most wolves are on public land, correct?
Jamie: [00:33:58] Yes. Yes.
Elizabeth: [00:34:00] So public land is owned by everybody in this country. So it feels like we would have more say than we do now.
Jamie: [00:34:09] Yeah, that's the biggest issue is when we do our presentations around the country and you get somebody like in New York who says, well, you know, those wolves are out west, what can I do? It's like, you know, you have to remember, these wolves, for the most part, are living on federal land, your land. They were reintroduced with your tax dollars. You have a say and the states don't want to hear it. You know, if they get a comment period, and they get stuff from out of state, they'll throw it out. But you really have to be vocal. You can't can't sit back and go, well, it's not my state because they are your wolves.
Elizabeth: [00:34:44] So who are you being vocal to? The federal government?
Jamie: [00:34:49] Yeah and still the state governments, I mean, you know, flooding them with letters they don't want to see is always a good thing. You know, it gets to be a pain in their neck. But really, for any change to happen, it's lost in the states. It's going to have to come from the federal level. So to put wolves back on the endangered species list for the short term, until they can get a better plan, a better protection plan not only for wolves, but also other predators, you know, a Predator protection act. So they're not treated as vermin, but as important functioning pieces to a healthy ecosystem. That's the only way we're really going to get anywhere. There are also ways to punish the states who have indiscriminate killing of wolves. States receive quite a lot of funds from the federal government and some of those funds come with strings attached to protecting the natural world, the environment and wild spaces, and they're not doing that. So that funding could be pulled.
Elizabeth: [00:36:04] So on your website, is there a place to go to learn more about?
Jim: [00:36:02] Yes, there is. You know how you can help. It’s Livingwithwolves.org. There's addresses of all the fish and game departments in the Western states and the governors phone numbers and senators and all that is listed right there.
Elizabeth: [00:36:22] Awesome.
Jamie: [00:36:23] Writing letters really does help. Some people say, oh, no one's ever going to see my letter. It really does help writing the Interior Department, writing Deb Haaland, you know, President Biden, just everybody, they just need to hear what people really think because it's a minority. It's an American minority that is anti Wolf.
Elizabeth: [00:36:49] They're just really loud and really effective.
Jamie: [00:36:50] They're very loud. Yeah. Like the gun lobby.
Elizabeth: [00:36:51] The two of you have for years been giving presentations and talking to large groups of people about this. Are the majority of the people that come hear you talk already pro woof or are you changing minds while you're doing this as well? Do ranchers or anybody like that show up?
Jamie: [00:37:06] Yes. I'm glad you asked that. Yes. I would have to say the majority of people that do come to our presentations are pro-wolf. But the amount of people who are anti wolf or on the fence is pretty amazing. When we give a presentation and somebody comes up to us and says, you know, I always wanted to kill a wolf and I can't now, I didn't know they were family animals. It's like, that's it. That's the most gratifying. It's great when you see the army of people that are there to help you. But when you get new recruits that were on the other side, that's pretty terrific.
Jim: [00:37:46] Or kids that we talked to a decade ago who will write to us and this has happened quite often lately. They will write to us and say, you know, you took the time to talk to me and I saw your presentation and I just want you to know that I'm graduating from college and wildlife management and it was you who inspired us.
Jamie: [00:38:08] Or wolf biology.
Elizabeth: [00:36:51] How cool.
Jim: [00:38:11] Yeah, it's happened, you know, four or five times since the beginning of the year.
Elizabeth: [00:38:17] Wow, that's awesome. I love it. Well, Jim and Jamie, thank you for this. But thank you also for the past 40 years of what you've done for us. It's awesome. To learn more about Jim and Jamie Dutcher and to learn more about wolves, go to our website Species Unite. We will have links to everything. I'd like to thank Jamie Dutcher for letting us use her wolf recordings. She won a primetime Emmy for Sound in their films. We are on Facebook and Instagram, @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare moment and could do us a favor, please subscribe, rate, review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. If you'd like to support Species Unite, we would greatly appreciate it. Go to our website, Species Unite and click Donate. I'd like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Caitlin Pierce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santina Polky, Bethany Jones and Anna Connor, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day.
Become a Species Unite member!
You can listen to our podcast via our website or you can subscribe and listen on Apple, Spotify, or Google Play. If you enjoy listening to the Species Unite podcast, we’d love to hear from you! You can rate and review via Apple Podcast here. If you support our mission to change the narrative toward a world of co-existence, we would love for you to make a donation or become an official Species Unite member!
As always, thank you for tuning in - we truly believe that stories have the power to change the way the world treats animals and it’s a pleasure to have you with us on this.