You must listen to Doug Peacock, world-renowned writer, naturalist, veteran, and defender of the Wilderness, for his perspectives on the Yellowstone grizzly and what may happen if the recent removal of endangered species protections (delisting) is not reversed.
Doug met grizzlies up close and personal after spending two tours in Vietnam as a green beret medic, Doug returned a bit of an emotional wreck, and sought out solace of wilderness in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains and then in and around Glacier Park. Doug has since spent over four decades documenting and filming grizzlies in the wild. He’s written two books on grizzlies, Grizzly Years and The Essential Grizzly, as well as other books, including Walking It Off about his relationship with author Edward Abbey, and most recently, In The Shadow Of The Sabertooth.
This from the interview: “In my opinion, climate change will, in itself, along with the lost protections, the absence of efforts to establish any kind of connectivity or linkage or genetic exchange with other grizzly bear ecosystems to the north -- that hunting season is going to plunge the Yellowstone grizzly, this little island ecosystem of bears, into a terminal decline. So I feel this is the most important moment of all in our decades-old battles to save the Yellowstone grizzly. The combination of climate change and a proposed trophy-hunting season is the end of the Yellowstone grizzly -- so we’re going to have to win this one.” In court.
Listen to the whole interview, for more on his friendship with author Ed Abbey, the hairy story of the Black Grizzly and more.
Check out www.dougpeacock.net, and www.savetheyellowstonegrizzly.org
INTERVIEW EXCERPTS
"And so I feel this is the most important moment of all in our decades-old battles to save the Yellowstone grizzly. The combination of climate change and a proposed trophy-hunting season is the end of the Yellowstone grizzly -- so we’re going to have to win this one."
"The sheer arrogance that -- even with this administration, with flat earth science roaming around the globe -- to dismiss the importance of climate change to Yellowstone grizzlies is the most blatant, over mis-statement I’ve ever seen a federal agency do."
"The only viable success story for Yellowstone grizzlies is for the population to expand onto existing habitat and complete the linkages – under, over freeways, it doesn’t matter -- but our culture happens to have enough management, enough biology, enough engineering, we can do those kinds of things."
"In my mind at least, the grizzly is the most important animal in North America for the simple reason that it’s one critter that informs the most arrogant, myopic species in the history of the earth, humans. It informs us of our true place on earth and in nature, which is not at the top."
"We need to recognize that the reality is grim, that the fight is uphill…The important thing is to fight and just because – I am willing to do this up until I’m pushing up daisies or bear grass, I have to be optimistic."
MORE READING
Books By Doug Peacock
For more about what you can do, also visit Save the Yellowstone Grizzly
In the Shadow of the Sabertooth: A Renegade Naturalist Considers Global Warming, the First Americans and the Terrible Beasts of the Pleistocene
The Essential Grizzly: The Mingled Fates of Men and Bears, Doug and Andrea Peacock
