YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Phillips

lines on the record: 101
first: 2019-08-21
most recent: 2019-08-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, a couple of things is a great question. I know from my own work over now going on 40 years that restoration is an alternative to extinction. I know that. I know that we can choose to be different. I know that we often act as misguided gods, but I also know that we can choose to act otherwise. And when I was a little kid, I was six and seven and eight and nine. When I was becoming me, My family really only did one thing. Man, I'll tell you what, Tim, we played baseball. My dad played pro ball before I was born, and my brothers and I played baseball. I played baseball until I was 20 years old. I was going to play professional baseball. That was what was going to move me forward. And when you looked at how I played the game, I was always the kind of kid that helped manufacture runs. My brothers were deeply gifted athletes. They just showed up and they were rock stars. The only thing...”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Extinction crisis should matter. Let's assume for a moment that you're a person of faith. How can you love the Creator and not love the creation? And how can you stand by and watch something you love be destroyed needlessly without rising up in defense? Or let's assume for a moment that you're a secular humanist and you believe rather than faith, it's facts and data and logic and empiricism that matter. Well, Tim, the best science tells us that the fate of humanity has always been and will always be decided by the health of local landscapes the world over. The extinction crisis makes clear those landscapes are not the least”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Measuring something like six miles across and traveling at something like 45,000 miles an hour. And in a geological instant, Tim, that asteroid ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Well, now the sixth great extinction crisis began during the anthropocene era, the era of man. And the anthropocene began in the late 18th century, if not centuries earlier, the current extinction crisis is worldwide. Species are disappearing at probably a thousand times faster than the background rate that you would assume if things were more settled. And in this case, it's not a speeding asteroid that's causing the problem, but rather it's us with this relentless pursuit of dominating the planet for one end to advance the cause and the prospects of humanity. So I would say to you. All your listeners, no matter who you are.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a life that you or I or anyone else would choose to live. But they're still living. They're still alive. They're still a sentient carbon-based organism out there trying to make ends meet. I think what we're doing is so deeply fouling our nest that we've got a serious problem. So that's the one thing that we get wrong. But back to your question, the real startling fact now is the pace of change and the scale of change. 500 million years, this planet has supported multicellular life and across those 500 million years there have been five previous great extinction crises. The first occurred about 435 million years ago during the Ordovician era. The most recent one occurred about 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous era when an asteroid slammed into the planet off the coast of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the pace of change, Tim. Of course, extinction is simply the death of a species, and that's happened since the dawn of time. But it's the rate of change and the scale of change. So let's think about that. But I want to go back. You asked one question. What do conservationists get wrong? And we speak about the extinction crisis. Here's the one thing that everybody gets wrong, that humans could go extinct. Humans aren't going to go extinct. Humans and cockroaches and coyotes are going to inherit the earth. It may not be an earth worth living on. And there could be masses of people that lead lives of outrageous desperation.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Store imperiled plants, birds, fishes, mammals, amphibians, reptiles on and on. I'm so proud to be a member of Team Turner.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Head is a hero of mine, and he is a great big slice of Americana, bigger than life with a great, big heart and an even bigger imagination. And Ted and I, over the course of about 18 months, found a way forward that together we could illustrate beyond doubt the power of private land and private assets employed in collaboration with state and federal governments to advance the restoration of imperiled species as a bona fide redress for the extinction crisis, which is a crisis, and we need to speak to that today, Tim, because it's the ultimate backdrop for all of this work. But I left the park in 97 to co-found with Ted Turner, the Turner and Endangered Species Fund and Turner Biodiversity Divisions. They have from day one has the most significant private effort in the world to use reintroductions to”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right after release from the great assemblage of public lands that is Yellowstone and the National Forests that surround the park, number three went to private land. And I began to think, holy mackerel, even in the big western public landscapes of Montana and Wyoming and Idaho, private land can matter. In 1995, I had the good fortune of meeting Ted Turner.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's not much of a shift. Well, here's what happened. I had grown fascinated about the role of private land and private assets to advance the recovery of endangered species because two wolves, two wolves showed me private land matters. One was a little wolf in the southeastern United States known as 351, the first red wolf born in the wild in decades. And by the time we finally got around to studying 351, realized she spent most of her time not on the alligator river National Wildlife Refuge, but rather on private land. And then fast forward to my time in Yellowstone, another young wolf known as number three.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. Thank you because it was a very difficult period in my life. I left the park in the early summer of 1997. And you might think, well, can you tell me you wanted to work there since you were 12 years old? You land in a park in the fall of 94.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Named Aldo Leopold, and he wrote this essay entitled Thinking Like a Mountain. And he was the first to poetically observe that only the mountain has lived long enough to understand the howl of the wolf. Only the mountain knows that too many elk is a big problem. And the only way to address too many elk is to make sure you've got good predators in place doing their job. If life matters, so too does death. It's fascinating. It's fascinating the way nature is stitched together. It is redundant and it is hard to understand. But sometimes it reaches up and smacks us upside the head and says, Holy mackerel, wolves can change rivers.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ready for release. So yesterday I went back to one of these acclamation sites. My Lord's Tim, it could not be more different over the last 20 years than if it tried. It is now supports this rich, robust aspen forest. It supports a rich, robust willow community that lines this active beaver stream. None of that was in place 20 years ago. Of course that video has been watched 40 million times because you know nature can be pretty dramatic and that's a beautiful portrayal that largely gets it right. Predators matter. Predators matter. Now in Yellowstone to be fair gray wolves made a big contribution, but so do grizzly bears and so do black bears and so do cougars and so do coyotes. Predators matter and they matter because they help ensure that there's a depth, there's a breadth to any particular system. You can go back one of the greatest ecologists of all time.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Yellowstone Park, we would bring the wolves from Canada. And in Yellowstone, we put them in pins so they could grow acclimated to the release site. It took about 80 or 90 days before we thought that they would.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were parts of Yellowstone that were, oh, my heavens, they should have just been an elk farm. There were so many elk in the system. 19,000 animals to be specific on a stretch of the northern quarter of the park that's known as the Northern Range. Entirely too many elk. I couldn't take a step on the northern range without stepping on elk tracks or elk shit. My lord, there were elk everywhere. Too many for the system. And by the time we began releasing Grey Wolves in 1995, and then when the years passed, the system began to change because elk became less common. They started behaving differently. I was in the park just yesterday visiting one of the old acclamation pins where the ecological consequences of predation are most manifest.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had done good work and I had established relationships with people that came to know they could count on me and I'd have you believed him the best way forward in life is to not let people down so that they know they can count on you. Well, in the Yellowstone project popped, I had friends in high places and they knew they could count on me. And so I was able to lead the Yellowstone Project. Hell, I didn't even apply for the job. It was simply an interagency transfer. The Fish and Wildlife Service just shuffled me from the Red Wolf program off to the National Park Service for the Yellowstone program. Both agencies operating under the Department of Interior, which helped. And so we did go forward in 1995. We began building that reintroduction program. Animals were released in 1995. And I can tell you what, Tim. When we began the work,”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's a long story as to how I got to lead the Red Wolf program in the southeast, which was for folks listening. They should note it. It was the first attempt in the history of mankind to restore a carnivore species that had been declared extinct in the wild. It is a fascinating story. But because I had...”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Far northeastern corner of Minnesota in the Superior National Forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe area. So when I began my work with Grey Wolves in 1980, it wasn't long after they had first been listed under the Endangered Species Act in the mid-1970s. It was nearly a low point. When I began the work, my work, I worked in Minnesota. My first opportunity there might have been maybe a thousand gray wolves on the ground. But they were nowhere else. Since that low point in the mid-70s, many of us have been working tirelessly over the last many decades to restore the gray wolf to suitable habitat. So it's no longer threatened or endangered with extinction.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they can dan in tough defined places. But boy, you start spreading poison across the landscape and lace carcasses. And my gosh, the gray wolves just don't have a response to that. You know, Tim, by the late 1950s, you'd taken this most common carnivore that's really quite easy to coexist with. We had taken this most common carnivore by the late 1950s.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There certainly was. Now, first and foremost, the approach was applied with great determination. The approach was durable. It extended across centuries. And for a long time, the approach was supported and actively implemented by the federal government. And there were a lot of gray wolf shot, hundreds of thousands, probably well into millions of gray wolves were shot. They were trapped. Dens were located. Puppies were dragged out of dens and clubbed to death. There were lots of murderous means applied to whip the wolf. But what really pushed the war to conclusion and pushed the gray wolf to the brink of extinction in the continental United States was broadcast use of poison. Grey wolves can get pretty smart and they can avoid traps and they can avoid getting shot.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We simply were zealots determined to wring the wildness out of this country. And my gosh, Tim, if you can find a better symbol of wildness than Grey Wolf's eye, I'd like to know what it is. So they got rid of Grey Wolves on purpose. They got rid of Grey Wolves on purpose because it didn't fit their sense of what this landscape, this great country should be.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that our early settlers of this country, the European settlers, had this sort of zealot's embrace of a manifest destiny to tame the wilderness. We had to make the land predictable so it could deliver for us in one way to promote predictability is to remove those pieces that operate against their own set of sensibilities. You can remove wild and self-willed nature from any landscape and it becomes more predictable, far less interesting, far less diverse in the long run, far less capable of supporting humanity. But nonetheless, in the short run, you might think, oh, this is better, this is better country now that we don't have graywolves and it's better country now that we don't have bison and better country that we don't have Indians anymore. We're going to tame this landscape. We're going to make it work for us. And that is fundamentally the essence of the manifest destiny that settled this country.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course, it is. I mean, you've got it. It's pretty logical. One of the reasons that you start with something like a gray wolf, they're absent. Grey wolves used to be very common in the country back in the day. They were the most common large mammal in the United States. You could find gray wolves from coast to coast, east to west and north to south. You could find them on the grasslands. You could find them in the forest. You could find them in the swamps. You could find them in the deserts. They were widely distributed. And we launched a war on the gray wolf that lasted home. Gee whiz Tim 300 years. And eventually...”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Other parts of the system to change, that's where you get this cascading effect through the trophic system, through the food chain, through the food pyramid. That's all it speaks to. There's a rhythm to nature. And if you remove one piece, the rhythm can be interrupted.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can see more willows in parts of Yellowstone Park. You can see more aspen in parts of Yellowstone Park, those woody species have had a chance to experience a release, a liberation, if you will, because there aren't quite so many elk, keeping them at two or three inches above the ground through heavy browsing, but rather those aspen and willows can grow up. And as they grow up, there's other wide effects in the system. pastor and birds become more common, though dicky birds that migrate from the neotropics to the northern rockies and back again, all of that woody structure of an aspen forest, for example, provides great habitat for those pastor and birds. The increase in willow can provide forage for beavers that can now make a go of it when they couldn't before. So because the gray wolf, uncommon, is impacting a relatively more common prey species in a manner that causes”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question, Tim. Thank you. It's easy. Trophic is just a word that refers, you can imagine, the food pyramid and a trophic cascade is when species at the top of the pyramid, relatively uncommon. Animals like gray wolves begin to have such a profound effect on the next section, next layer of the food pyramid, that those consequences cascade down through the rest of the pyramid. So for example, if there's enough gray wolves in place killing enough elk in Yellowstone Park and causing elk to change their behavior, the reduction in elk numbers and the change in behavior can bring about cascading effects through that food pyramid by changing the vegetative structure of the system.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More resilient, more diverse, more capable of perpetuating itself going forward. If life matters, then so too does death. And if you are a deliverer of death, you have to matter.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That survives by delivering death, you have to count. There's just no way it works otherwise. Now, that said, for some of these ecological effects to be manifest, the carnivore in question, whether it's a great white shark or a gray wolf, for them to serve as ecological engineers, for them to perform this mighty important role of delivering death, they have to be common enough for a long enough period of time to matter just quite simply, Tim, one gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park for one day does not make a wit of ecological difference. But now imagine, oh, about 100 gray wolves in the park over the course of 20 plus years, that begins to create this change, this change that leads to a system that's held.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the system becomes seriously compromised. And here's why, and we don't have to make reference to complicated science. We can just make it simple. Common sense really matters. So let's start with the premise that life is the most important force in the universe. It seems like a reasonable thing to assume. We know life is powerful. We know that. We know it has this great drive to find its way forward. Well, if that's the case, then death has to be almost as equally powerful. And if you are a species, you're an organism, you're an individual.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep an eye out. I listen. I look. If I'm in a restricted view shed, I go slow. I sometimes sing. I got a Jerry Jeff Walker tune that I sing in Grizzly Bear Country that would scare anything away. That's some more good advice, I think, Tim.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she'll leave you alone and you can wait and she'll leave and you can get up and go get help. Just one more thing, Tim. If people are hiking in Grizzly Country, another thing that is always a good idea, if you stay on established trails, the grizzly bears know where those trails are. They know where the people are. They know that you don't represent anything but a bunch of trouble. And so if you're where you're supposed to be and they know it, that's another way to hedge your bets. My Lord, my family and I have camped along Yellowstone Lake in the park and we'll wake up in the morning and move out of camp to the main trail 30 yards away and there's fresh grizzly bear tracks right on the trail. And the bear knew we were in camp and knew that there was nothing there that people have for a long time now kept clean camps. And if you do go off of the established trails, if you're excited by bushwhacking, I know I am, then I'm especially careful to...”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you don't have bear spray, and she's coming? Get down. Yeah. Now, bears will false charge. I've been party to that. The false charge will stop. They'll start stomping on their front legs. They're clearly agitated. They'll start wolfing at you and chomping their gums. When they do that, they're really upset. They're really frustrated Lots of times these false charges, Tim. Well, serious. Don't result in physical contact, but what you just described, you want to get down, you want to accept whatever's coming, protect your soft spots to the best of your ability. And if the data mean anything, she'll give up”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could be considered predatory behavior. You want to fight as hard as you can fight in that situation because that bear has a different motive. But the fact is, folks, grizzly bears are no reason not to go enjoy your great big wild country. They're a magnificent part of the world. You give them half a chance. They're going to avoid you. They don't want anything to do with you. You don't represent anything but trouble. So for heaven's sakes, hike smart. Hike in groups, be prepared with bear spray. But for heaven's sakes, above all else, go hike”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to pay attention to where you are, you want to pay attention to your surroundings, you want to be cautious when you go into an area where the viewshed is limited. There's great value in hiking in a group. I don't know of any cases where a group of hikers that's four strong or more has been confronted with a physical encounter with grizzly bears. Mindful, most of these encounters, nearly all of them. It's not the grizzly bear's fault. They're startled. They're scared. They're frightened. They just react. And so you should be mindful that you're probably at fault. Use your bear spray. If there's going to be physical contact, you do not want to fight back in a case like that. You want to protect soft parts and you want to lay still as hard as you can. You don't want to move. You don't want to fight back almost all the time. Tim, the barrel beat you up a bit and they'll leave you alone and they'll leave. The exception to that is if the bear comes into your tent. If the bear's coming into your tent, that's different behavior.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when I did my work with Grizzly's in the Far Arctic, it was back in the 80s. There was no bear spray back in the day, but we wouldn't carry handguns. We carried shotguns. And on more than one occasion, I should have been killed by grizzly bears. I'm really fortunate to be here. I got lucky because I made some bad decisions and put myself in a compromised position. And if the bear had beat me up, it would have been completely my fault. And it was such a remote set area that I wouldn't have been. Ah, shoot, man. I probably never would have been found. But nonetheless, so today, here's what we know. Here's what we know about grizzly country. Bear spray works. You got to keep it at the ready. So you want it holstered on your belt. You want to practice with some placebo cans? So because when the shit goes down and you got to act, you don't want to be acting for the first time. Novelty can kill a hike with an awareness.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got that. We got that. I may be the only wildlife biologist, well, but one of the few wildlife biologists that had radioactive material showed up on my doorstep in this lead box with a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the wild to a life of self sufficiency. How did they scent Mark? We know Greywell is so very social, they'll advertise their presence through scent marks, either yearn or feces, scats or shit. And so I purposely made Red Wolves radioactive Thank you.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, the craziest study. Oh, Tim, that's easy, buddy. So when we let Red Wolves go back in mid 1980s, these were all captive-born animals. And I was intrigued by the notion, how would they transition to life in the wild? How would they transition from a life in captivity where they were fed, for example, to a life of self-sufficiency in the wild? And so I got up with the nuclear regulatory commission and a friend of mine, and we developed these radioactive shards. Radioactive shards, it looked like a little piece of glass that we could implant subcutaneously between the shoulder blades of the red wolves, just a small incision, tuck it under the skin, sew up the incision. And so we were making the red wolves radioactive so that when they would shit on the road, and I'd pick up their scats, I could identify a scat to an individual based on the radioactive signature. And I could look at how individual wolves, males and females with a known history coming out of captivity, how they individually transition to life.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was the concern the crossbow and the work would have been done in Denali Park and there was some concern that visitors would see me shooting crossbows at grizzly bears thinking I might be trying to hurt him when in fact I was. So probably I would have done the work deep in the backcountry. And then there was some concern about safety because a crossbow is a pretty powerful weapon and could be a pretty good delivery tool. But still, I'd have to be relatively close. And I'm purposely sort of agitating the bear to see if I can elicit a payway. To make a long story short, the study never got funded.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grizzly Bear Country. As it turned out, I wasn't able to get funding for the study. There was some concern that I wouldn't be good enough with my crossbow.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And with a small rock, I was going to take a small rock and I was going to affix to the rock a proper amount of spagnum moss, something that would or cotton, something that I could then dip in paraffin and create a small waxy ball that I could then take the menstrual fluid and inject into the small ball that was designed to be fired from a crossbow so that when hit the ground near the grizzly bear, the little ball would, the paraffin would blow up and expose the mescle. And of course, we would have had placebos in. We would have shot water and we would have shot, there was concern that toothpaste got grizzly bears all excited. So it was an attempt to see just what kind of behavior could be elicited from grizzly bears odors from non-food items. And we were most intrigued about whether menstruating women should hike.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, now, Tim, we are talking about women in Alaska. But back in the day, back in the early 1980s, there was this sense that menstrual odor, menstruating women, shouldn't hike in grizzly bear country. And interestingly enough, there was some research that showed that menstrual fluid, actually the blood from menstrual fluid, elicited as strong a response in polar bears as the odor of their primary prey, the ring seal. So as I was building out my graduate research, I thought, well, maybe I could somehow test this on grizzly bears. And I thought if I could get women to help me, they would donate used tampons. I would then take the tampon and I would distill from that mostly blood, but the menstrual fluid. And then I would take that fluid and I was going to create these little, the story gets more interesting as we go. I was going to take that.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not one that was naturally occurring but uncommon, Craigheads and grizzly bears. I was actually working to restore a species that had been extirpated. So this was a”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, teaching is valuable and important serving as an attorney. We're a country guided by laws. That's important too. Those are wonderful ways to contribute. But I am at my core an outdoor guy. I knew when I was 12 years old back in 1970, I saw on my parents little black and white TV. You know, back in the day, you got ABC, CBS, NBC, or PBS. That was it. I saw in 1970 on that little black and white TV the National Geographic Special on the pioneering grizzly bear research being done in Yellowstone Park by John and Frank Craighead. And I said to myself at 12 years of age, I want to do that. And I would have you believe, Tim, that I might have vested the Craigheads about 18 years later. I was in Yellowstone National Park. I was studying a large carnivore.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, since 1980, when I began gray wolves were very, very, very uncommon. And I was seduced. I was seduced him by this notion of restoration, taking something that was amiss and putting it back together again. That's what kept me fixated, if you will, on carnivores and restoration.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm intrigued by rariness as an ecologist. I'm intrigued by rareness. And by definition, just the way every natural system is structured, the way energy flows through a system, carnivores are always relatively uncommon. Certainly far more uncommon than the prey that they consume. And of course, the prey are more uncommon than the plants that they consume. So I've been intrigued by predation for a long time. I'm intrigued by carnivores because of rareness. And early in my career, Tim, even before I did grizzly bear work, I was deeply situated in the world of wolf conservation. And while gray wolves are fantastic, and I'm fascinated by gray wolves, I'm fascinated by lots of native life forms. Gray wolves gave me the chance to focus on restoration because when I started gray wolf work back in 1980, and I've been working on wolf recovery nearly daily.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Caribou calves without a lot of country to hide in. Oh boy, they give birth to followers and those calves get up and go in short order are very capable at following the herd. So capable they can outrun a grizzly bear at two or three or four days of age. And so the bears have this very narrow window of opportunity as that calf is beginning to get his hooves underneath him, so to speak.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is tough. It is barren ground country. There are no trees. You're well north, the tree line. Some of the shrubs are big enough. They begin to resemble trees. This work was done in the Brooks Range. So you and I spent time in the same country. It is a tough place to make a living. The bears don't have access to a long growing season. They've got to be smart about what they do. And the smart bear understands that while I might kill a few caribou calves over the course of a couple of days, and when you understand caribou, caribou give birth to what would be called followers. A caribou calf within short order a day or two is able to follow the herd without any problem. In contrast, other ungulates hoofed mammals like white-tailed deer, white-tailed deer give birth to hiders. It takes a whitailed deer fawn longer to mature. So their strategy is to be very good at hiding.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Subsist on vegetation. They eat so much vegetation that their teeth are stained green, at least animals I handled in the Arctic. In contrast, that flash of animal protein in the form of a few caribou calves across a few days gives you this dramatic portrayal of predation with blood on the muzzle. Ah, but gee whiz, for the ecology of the great bear, they're mostly living on plants. Sometimes things aren't as they seem.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wet blood and the muzzles were bloody because at that time of the year, grizzly bears were making extensive use of caribou calves. The porcupine caribou herd 140,000 animals strong. They calve en masse on the coastal plain of northern Alaska. Well, grizzly bears know this and interest in a pulse of animal protein in early summer, so they go out to the coastal plain and they hunt these caribou calves and quite successfully for at least a few days. So every one of these bears had a bloody muzzle. And you think, well, this is what a fantastic carnivore. Bloody muzzles. But every bear that I handled, that I pulled the tooth from when I would pull the lips of the bear back to get at the teeth, their teeth were all green. Their teeth weren't bloody. The teeth were stained a deep green. And the message to that story or the lesson from that story is looks can be deceiving. Grizzly bears all over the world.”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“why that is that's a great start Tim thank you well many years ago I was studying grizzly bear behavior and habitat use in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in anticipation of oil and gas development but for a period of time I was part of a capture crew we would we would dart grizzly bears from helicopters the drug would take effect the bear would lay down and go to sleep and my job on the capture crew was to was to extract a pre-molar if you take a tooth from a grizzly bear or many other animals for that matter you can section the tooth very finely and just like with a tree you can come up with a good estimate of age by counting annuli yearly growth rings so my job was to be the local dentist and pull a tooth from this grizzly bear every bear that i handled tim the muzzles were bloody dried blood or”
2019-08-21 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT