0:00

In North America, the actual number

0:02

of people that have been killed

0:04

by wolves is at a grand

0:06

total of one in the

0:08

last 125 years. You are

0:10

literally more likely to have

0:12

a vending machine fall on

0:15

you, to be killed by

0:17

a mule deer buck, to

0:19

be killed crossing the street,

0:21

going to the grocery store,

0:23

like just about anything other

0:25

than being attacked and killed

0:27

by a wolf. A lot

0:30

of it is just simply

0:32

misinformation,

0:35

which

0:38

we know

0:41

today is

0:43

becoming even more

0:46

prevalent. This week we sit

0:48

down with Canadian wildlife photographer

0:50

John Marriott. I've been following

0:52

John for a long time,

0:54

and I'm super excited that

0:56

I was finally able to

0:58

get him onto the podcast.

1:01

I love his views, his

1:03

ways of thinking, and his

1:05

approach to photography. I think

1:07

you're going to love our

1:09

chat, so stay tuned. Before

1:11

we begin, I wanted to give

1:14

a big shout out to our

1:16

recent supporters on Patreon, including Bill

1:18

Bombary, Craig McCord. Nancy Thicken and

1:20

Jay Tag. These wonderful humans stepped

1:22

up to support the show financially

1:24

to help keep it going. On

1:27

any given month, my expenses to

1:29

produce this show range from $400

1:31

to $1,000, which doesn't even account

1:33

for my own time. Since I

1:35

produce and edit every single episode,

1:38

it's a lot. Patreon is the

1:40

best way to support the podcast

1:42

and give back. If you

1:44

find any value in these

1:46

conversations, please consider joining us.

1:48

just go to patreon.com/f-stop and

1:50

listen or find a link

1:52

in the show notes. P.S.

1:54

You can also find a

1:56

really fun bonus episode on

1:58

on Patreon, where John and

2:00

I talk about all of

2:02

the financial side of making

2:04

it work as a wildlife

2:06

photographer in 2025. Okay, let's

2:08

get to this week's conversation

2:10

with John Marriott. All right, John

2:13

Marriott, it's great to have you

2:15

on the podcast. Yeah, thanks for

2:17

having me, Matt. Yeah, of course.

2:19

I was so happy when my

2:21

friend Anna Morgan introduced us over

2:23

email, and you're somebody I've actually

2:25

known about your work for a

2:27

long time. I used to subscribe.

2:29

to a magazine that no longer exists that Darwin

2:31

Wiggett produced a while ago? I can't even

2:34

remember what it's called, but I think in

2:36

the very first issue, he kind of like

2:38

awarded you with like Canadian Conservation Project photographer

2:40

or something like that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah,

2:42

I'm trying to remember what the name of

2:44

that magazine was too, but yeah, well he

2:46

was on my podcast him and Samantha, we're

2:48

like way back, so. Yeah, it was quite

2:50

a while, quite a while ago. Darwin's more

2:52

or less retired now at this retired now

2:54

at this, doing a, doing a bit of

2:56

writing and stuff, doing a writing and stuff.

2:59

Right. Yeah, so I've known about you for

3:01

a long time. I think I've immediately

3:03

followed you on Twitter and I love

3:05

how confrontational you are on Twitter. It's

3:08

exciting to me. Anyway, so that's kind

3:10

of how I got to know you. So I'm

3:12

really excited for this podcast. For

3:14

people who aren't familiar with you and

3:16

your photography, why don't you go ahead

3:18

and tell us a little about yourself?

3:20

Sure, so I started photographing while I

3:23

was a six-year-old I got a Kodak

3:25

instamatic for my six birthday Went out

3:27

a lot I was not a it

3:29

was a normal child in some aspects

3:31

not normal and many others I would

3:34

go out and build my own wildlife

3:36

blinds in the woods and go sit

3:38

out there all day long waiting for

3:40

a deer to walk by So I

3:42

have actually have photo albums as a

3:44

kid of all these tiny little specs

3:47

off in the distance and thankfully I

3:49

kept Thankfully I kept captions so I

3:51

can tell what the heck it is.

3:53

It's like a little moose and deer

3:55

and bears and stuff. I was pretty

3:57

lucky as a kid. I grew up

3:59

in salmon. British Columbia, Canada, which is

4:01

a small rural town of about

4:03

10,000 people at that time, surrounded

4:06

by lots of wilderness, got to

4:08

come to the Canadian Rockies quite

4:10

often as a kid, so camping

4:12

in Banff and Kootney and Jasper

4:14

National Parks places that most people

4:16

have heard of around the world.

4:18

And then in my teens kind

4:20

of forgot all about. photography

4:22

and you know, I was

4:25

interested in girls and basketball

4:27

and all that kind of

4:30

stuff and ended up circling

4:32

back to photography. When I

4:34

first moved to BAMP in

4:37

in Alberta, Canada, which was

4:39

1992 and in 1993 I

4:41

got a job with Parks Canada

4:44

and Part of my job was to

4:46

go out and take pictures of people. In

4:48

the interview, my new boss had asked me,

4:51

you know, are you comfortable with a camera?

4:53

And I said, oh yeah, I used to

4:55

photograph a lot as a kid. So it

4:57

was kind of a bit of a

4:59

white lie because I hadn't photographed in

5:02

probably 10 years at that point. So

5:04

they gave me all this camera gear

5:06

and said, okay, go out and take

5:08

pictures. And so that was kind of

5:11

the start of at 1993 at 1993.

5:13

Pentax Emmy Super, which was one of

5:15

those old metal heavy cameras that you

5:17

could literally drop off a cliff and

5:20

it wouldn't break. And then I had

5:22

Vivatar lenses. I had like a 400mm

5:24

lens that weighed about 10 pounds and

5:26

would go out and take slide

5:29

film and do photos of wildlife

5:31

in Bamp with that. So that

5:33

was kind of the start of

5:35

really getting into wildlife. It was

5:37

1994. 1996 I sold my first

5:39

image to Canadian geographic magazine kind

5:42

of expected that oh geez the coffers

5:44

are going to open I'm going to

5:46

start my business I got a trade

5:48

name I opened a bank account and

5:50

that very first year I brought in

5:53

a grand total of seven hundred and

5:55

seventeen dollars and ten eleven thousand dollars

5:57

so you know pretty typical balance sheet

5:59

for us starting out photographer, but by

6:01

the year 2000 I was able to

6:04

go full-time. So I'm now in my

6:06

25th year as a full-time wildlife photographer

6:08

professional, which is pretty lucky. I mean

6:11

nowadays when you consider to have a

6:13

25-year career as a wildlife photographer, there's

6:15

not a lot of people out there

6:17

that are lucky enough to be able

6:20

to say that. So I feel fortunate

6:22

that I've been able to... you know,

6:24

sort of ride with the different waves

6:26

of business as it's coming gone and

6:29

things have ebbed and flowed. But yeah,

6:31

there are other stuff. I live in

6:33

Canmore, Alberta, Canada now on the edge

6:35

of Banff National Park. So it was

6:38

minus 14 Celsius this morning when I

6:40

woke up, so about zero Fahrenheit.

6:42

And... beautiful, crystal clear day

6:44

and when I got up this morning

6:46

I thought, jeez, I should have been

6:49

out there tracking wolves or cougars or

6:51

something this morning. I live with my

6:53

wife and my son Porter who's five

6:55

years old and are two cats. I

6:57

guess the only other thing of note

6:59

is I'm a gigantic Canucks fan,

7:02

NHL fan. So probably not surprising

7:04

to people knowing that I'm from

7:06

Canada that I love hockey. So

7:08

yeah, that's the quick Cole's Notes

7:10

version. Yeah, that's amazing. I didn't

7:12

put this in my questions but

7:15

it just I was just reminded

7:17

that I feel like maybe two

7:19

or three years ago you had

7:21

a pretty significant health scare? Yeah

7:23

so two years ago right right

7:25

around this time November 3rd in

7:27

2022 I went in for kidney

7:30

and colon cancer surgery had a

7:32

seven-hour surgery removed my left kidney

7:34

and 15 inches of my colon.

7:36

Then went through chemotherapy all the

7:38

way till June 2023, so just

7:40

a year and a half ago.

7:43

And now I'm into, they just

7:45

gave me the two-year free

7:47

of disease marker, so that's

7:49

a huge step towards, I

7:51

gotta get to the five-year

7:53

mark, and then they stopped

7:55

monitoring me. I just returned

7:57

to the normal person category.

7:59

So yeah, it was a big

8:01

health scare obviously impacted my photography

8:03

for a year So I'm kind

8:06

of have a year where there

8:08

was not much that I was

8:10

able to do but But my

8:12

business survived and I'm back at

8:14

it. Just finished off two months

8:16

of basically racing around the world,

8:18

doing photo tours and workshops and

8:20

going and accepting a ward in

8:22

London, England and throwing a quick

8:24

family vacation in there to Italy.

8:26

And so I just returned Sunday

8:28

a week ago. It's just sort

8:30

of getting back to level here after

8:32

two months on the road. That's amazing.

8:35

Well, congratulations on recovering so far and

8:37

that's exciting. It's a wonder what you're

8:39

able to do and you have a

8:41

nice health care system that can support

8:44

you through those really troubling times. I'll

8:46

just say that. Yeah, it was amazing

8:48

here in Canada. As a jealous American,

8:50

I'm just saying. Well, cool man. So,

8:53

like, we have so many different things

8:55

to talk about. You know, you recently

8:57

won the best animal portrait in this

8:59

year's wildlife photographer of the year competition.

9:01

I'd love to you for you to

9:03

tell us about that photo and kind

9:05

of the experience that you had just

9:07

winning that particular award. Yeah sure so

9:09

it's my third time being awarded

9:12

or nominated in wildlife photographer the

9:14

year I've been entering since 2008

9:16

so not a huge success rate

9:18

three out of 16 so far

9:20

but that's pretty much power for

9:22

the course for most wildlife photographers

9:25

I mean most don't even get

9:27

awarded three times so I feel

9:29

pretty lucky there so I found

9:31

out in February last year or

9:33

sorry February February this year earlier

9:35

this year that I had won

9:38

the animal portraits category for this

9:40

year and so had to you know was

9:42

embargoed I had to keep it secret I

9:44

was able to tell my wife and basically

9:46

a couple family members and that was it.

9:49

So the photograph is of a family of

9:51

links that huddled together against the cold against

9:53

a really plain muted willowy background that they

9:56

blend right into and it happened in February

9:58

2020 so right before COVID started. I

10:00

had pitched an idea to a magazine

10:02

called Canadian Wildlife, which is run by

10:04

the Canadian Wildlife Federation. And they don't

10:07

really do photographers on assignment very much,

10:09

but they said to me, well, if

10:11

you can go up there and get,

10:13

it was to follow a links researcher

10:16

for a week, and they said, if

10:18

you can follow her and get some

10:20

interesting stuff, and then also get some

10:23

actual links, then yeah, we'll publish it.

10:25

We'll publish it. We're not going to

10:27

do assignment. We're not going to guarantee

10:29

it. But if you can get it

10:32

all. We'll do it. Here's what we'll

10:34

pay you. So I, you know, calculated

10:36

it all out and said, okay, that's

10:38

worth it. So, went to my chances

10:41

and got up there and I booked

10:43

two weeks and the first week I

10:45

went out with the Links researcher and

10:47

there's been a 30-year link study going

10:50

on outside of Kloani National Park in

10:52

the Yukon, which is right beside Alaska

10:54

up in Northwestern Canada. So went up

10:57

there February 20 to cold. Most mornings

10:59

it was minus 20 Celsius. So in

11:01

the range of minus 5 to minus

11:03

10 Fahrenheit Got as low as minus

11:06

35 all I was there which is

11:08

about minus 30 Fahrenheit. So Extremely cold,

11:10

but I love that kind of stuff.

11:12

So I went out with the links

11:15

researcher for the first week and I

11:17

knew going in it was going to

11:19

be challenging because we had hit a

11:22

low in the links population cycle. So

11:24

links and snowshoe here go on a

11:26

boom bus cycle of 10 years in

11:28

this particular area of the Yukon. And

11:31

they had just busted. Snowshoe hair had

11:33

crashed the year before. Links had crashed

11:35

this particular year that I was there.

11:37

And so I went on with this

11:40

links researcher for a week and we're

11:42

checking all of her cage traps. We're

11:44

snowmobeling and snowshooing and driving all over

11:47

the all over the place. And we

11:49

couldn't find a links to save our

11:51

lives. So I was starting to get

11:53

pretty worried. I'd done sort of lots

11:56

of documentary type stuff of her driving

11:58

through snowstorms and snowshoeing out to check

12:00

these traps and stuff. But I had

12:02

no actual, I didn't even have links

12:05

tracks, let alone a links in a

12:07

photo. So on the second week, which

12:09

I was by myself. I went and

12:11

I concentrated in this one area where

12:14

I'd seen some tracks of links in

12:16

previous years. And so I went back

12:18

there and on the second day of

12:21

my final week I found this set

12:23

of three links tracks. And so I

12:25

knew there was a mother with kittens

12:27

in the area. And so for five

12:30

days straight I just focused all my

12:32

efforts in that area snowshooing around driving

12:34

back and forth on these couple little

12:36

roads that were in the area. second

12:39

to last day I drove down this

12:41

road and as I'm coming back on

12:43

it there's fresh tracks crossing in the

12:46

10 minutes since I've driven down and

12:48

back again so I immediately grabbed my

12:50

pack through it on I took a

12:52

snapshot of my phone because it was

12:55

minus 29 degrees Celsius when I left

12:57

my car so it was about minus

12:59

20 felt Fahrenheit so really cold and

13:01

had all my winter gear on I

13:04

take you know up a satellite device

13:06

in case I'm, you know, fall through

13:08

ice or something terrible happens and I

13:11

can hit 911 right away. I've got

13:13

all my warm weather clothing, electric gloves,

13:15

electric socks. I throw my snowshoes on

13:17

and I start traipsing after the links

13:20

tracks and it took me about a

13:22

half an hour to catch up to

13:24

them and... When I did catch up

13:26

to them, this happens at any time

13:29

I track wildlife, so I have sort

13:31

of my own ethical guidelines that I

13:33

follow. And if I catch up to

13:35

an animal and it looks at me

13:38

and immediately looks tense or runs or

13:40

just doesn't look comfortable, I just abandoned

13:42

immediately. Regardless of how long it took

13:45

me to catch up to that animal

13:47

and how much effort, that's just the

13:49

simple guideline that I go by my

13:51

own ethical rules. Now I was lucky

13:54

in this case I caught up to

13:56

them and I saw the mum and

13:58

she glanced over at me, looked around,

14:00

and then just started walking slowly again.

14:03

And so I was able to just

14:05

walk along parallel to them and they

14:07

caught two snowshoe hairs. So it was

14:10

a mum and two adult. kittens, which

14:12

is not normal, but in a bust

14:14

year, often they won't kick out the

14:16

kittens. They'll keep them with them. Kittens

14:19

will stick around and help hunt. And

14:21

so they kind of grow as this

14:23

little pack of three going around of

14:25

three adult-looking links. So they caught two

14:28

snowshoe hairs, but unfortunately both times it

14:30

was kind of in this dense thicket

14:32

of spruce and willow and stuff. Oh

14:34

yeah. I could have crawled in, but

14:37

I didn't want to... I didn't want

14:39

to break that barrier of, you know,

14:41

they were comfortable with me, I just

14:44

wanted to leave it like that, so

14:46

I just had to be patient. And

14:48

eventually at about four o'clock in the

14:50

afternoon, they walked out and walked across

14:53

through some sort of open areas and

14:55

then ducked into, I knew there was

14:57

this big open area and I circled

14:59

around to the other side of it

15:02

hoping to catch them come across it.

15:04

And they didn't. So I thought, well,

15:06

where did they go? So I walked

15:09

back into the open area and I

15:11

spotted them at the far side laying

15:13

down in the lee of the wind

15:15

against these muted willows. And it was

15:18

a really cool kind of a camouflage

15:20

effect. And so I crept in, didn't

15:22

get too close. I got to about

15:24

40, 45 meters, 45 yards. And I

15:27

just took a bunch of photos for

15:29

probably about 10 minutes. And I knew

15:31

they were good. I didn't know that

15:34

they were, you know, award-winning or anything.

15:36

It's funny because when I submit photos

15:38

every year to the competition, I sort

15:40

of have five to ten that I

15:43

think, oh, that's got a really good

15:45

chance. And then the rest of that

15:47

you're allowed to submit 20. And so

15:49

the rest of them, I kind of

15:52

go, okay, what might be different enough

15:54

to appeal to judges? And this was

15:56

one of the ones that went into

15:58

that got her right, because I thought,

16:01

you know, because they're kind of hidden

16:03

in behind mum and they kind of

16:05

just have an eye poking out behind

16:08

her butt on each side. So that

16:10

was one of the ones I submitted

16:12

as a maybe, you know, might work

16:14

and sure enough it actually won a

16:17

category. So in October this year I

16:19

I was on a grizzly bear trip

16:21

up until October 6th and I flew

16:23

into Calgary, Alberta, got there at 5.30

16:26

p.m. ran out to the parking lot

16:28

where I had a bag packed for

16:30

London and Italy because London is where

16:33

these awards were. and I swapped bags,

16:35

changed clothes, ran back into the airport

16:37

and jumped on an eight o'clock flight.

16:39

So I had a two and a

16:42

half hour turnaround to run out to

16:44

the parking lot, grab all my stuff,

16:46

change, run back in, clear customs and

16:48

go through all the rigmarole. And anyways,

16:51

made the flight, joined my wife and

16:53

son on the flight and my mother-in-law

16:55

and flew over to London and then

16:58

had a... We arrived, it was an

17:00

overnighter, arrived the next day, had some

17:02

media stuff right away, and then had

17:04

a meet and greet that evening, which

17:07

was a fancy sort of dress-up event.

17:09

And then the following evening was the

17:11

awards, and it was a full-on black

17:13

tie gala hosted by Chris Packham, who's

17:16

a very famous UK TV presenter, did

17:18

nature shows all through the 80s and

17:20

90s that every kid in Britain grew

17:22

up watching. So he's super famous there,

17:25

he's kind of like a, you know,

17:27

you know, Mr. Rogers, if you will,

17:29

but of the nature and wildlife, then

17:32

he's like a mini David Attenborough, or

17:34

a younger David Attenborough. Like over here,

17:36

we've got that, um, Marty Stoeffer is

17:38

like, yeah, like that kind of, yeah,

17:41

exactly like the Stoeffers, yeah, so, so

17:43

it was a... quite an intimidating event

17:45

like it's although it's funny because all

17:47

the photographers felt the same other than

17:50

ones who'd been there before both times

17:52

I got nominated before or awarded before

17:54

I did not go because I hadn't

17:57

actually won a category I just had

17:59

placed I was runner up in the

18:01

animal portraits in 2012 But I kind

18:03

of regret now not going because it

18:06

was such a cool event and it

18:08

was so interesting to meet all the

18:10

other photographers and it ranged from photographers

18:12

that have a million followers on Instagram

18:15

and are super well known to, you

18:17

know, amateur. that had never won anything

18:19

before and were pumped to be there.

18:21

And it was really cool to see

18:24

that cross section because there are 20,000

18:26

photographers that enter the competition from around

18:28

the world. There's 60,000 entries this year,

18:31

91 or something like that. So to

18:33

be one of the 11 winners was

18:35

pretty cool. And then... We know that

18:37

one of the 11 category winners. We

18:40

know that we have to go give

18:42

a speech Which was which was cool

18:44

And then we also know that one

18:46

of the 11 wins the whole grand

18:49

title, but they don't we don't allow

18:51

then they get down to the grand

18:53

title thing And they said you know

18:56

from Canada And so we knew right

18:58

away it was down to two of

19:00

us me or Shane gross and then

19:02

the next sentence was in a super

19:05

unique environment and I knew right away

19:07

it wasn't me Royal Forest is not

19:09

a unique environment, you know, up in

19:11

Northern Canada. It's interesting, but it's not

19:14

unique and special. So it was cool

19:16

to see another Canadian wind though, and

19:18

to have two of us up there

19:21

as the 11, it was pretty awesome.

19:23

And then actually the youth who won

19:25

the wildlife target for the year under

19:27

20s was actually as Canadian citizenship too,

19:30

even though he lives in Germany. So

19:32

there's actually technically three Canadians out of

19:34

the 11, which was pretty... Pretty crazy

19:36

when you consider, you know, there's only

19:39

100 photographers get awarded or nominated in

19:41

any single year and there were actually

19:43

eight Canadians all together that were in

19:45

those hundred spots, which was pretty crazy

19:48

for a year. I mean, there's been

19:50

some years. Like the year I was

19:52

awarded in 2012, I was the only

19:55

Canadian. So that was really interesting. And

19:57

then just to get to meet all

19:59

the other photographers was super cool. You

20:01

know, all sorts of people that people

20:04

may have heard of in the US,

20:06

Larry Taylor, Randy Robbins. I got to

20:08

meet lots of cool people. It was

20:10

really surreal to be able to go

20:13

up and give a speech and I

20:15

was able to get a conservation message

20:17

in there, which is for me always

20:20

the... you know, sort of the end

20:22

goal of my photography at this point.

20:24

You know, besides paying my mortgage, the

20:26

sixth most important thing to me is

20:29

conservation and dealing with wildlife issues, which

20:31

I'm sure will get lots into. Yeah,

20:33

that's amazing. You know, and I think

20:35

if you... I think of you've used

20:38

like one of the most passionate and

20:40

outspoken photographers that I've seen online and

20:42

I'd love to hear you talk more

20:45

about that passion for wildlife photography and

20:47

the projects that you engage in aimed

20:49

at protecting the wildlife that you're so

20:51

passionate about. How was that passion sparked?

20:54

Yeah, so. In a couple of different

20:56

ways, like I do remember as a

20:58

teenager still being absolutely fascinated with wildlife.

21:00

So to give you a couple of

21:03

quick examples, I was on my high

21:05

school basketball team and we go play

21:07

all over the place from California, Western

21:09

Canada, traveled all over because we were

21:12

quite a good team at the time.

21:14

And on every single one of those

21:16

trips, I would sit right at the

21:19

front of the bus and... spend my

21:21

entire time looking outside trying to see

21:23

what wildlife was along the road. So

21:25

this is, you know, all the rest

21:28

of my teammates are back talking about

21:30

girls and games and all this sort

21:32

of stuff. Half the time I'm looking

21:34

out the window going is there a

21:37

bear around the next corner or a

21:39

deer or a moose or whatever. And

21:41

so there's a lot of that kind

21:44

of stuff for my teens and then

21:46

I... If I look back at what

21:48

I was interested in in school, my

21:50

grade 10 thesis was on grizzly bear

21:53

hunting in British Columbia, which is where

21:55

I grew up, and my grade 11

21:57

thesis, so at the end of each

21:59

grade we had to write a thesis

22:02

of something we were interested in, it

22:04

was on the wolf call that was

22:06

going on in Northern British Columbia 1984,

22:08

1985. You know those were things conservation

22:11

was already something that was of interest

22:13

to me even though I didn't really

22:15

know it I ended up going to

22:18

university into mathematics because that's what I

22:20

was good at but I very quickly

22:22

realized that that's not what I was

22:24

actually interested in. Both my parents had

22:27

been math teachers so I was just

22:29

naturally good at it. But I fairly

22:31

quickly shifted over to a Bachelor of

22:33

Science in Forestry at the University of

22:36

British Columbia and I pretty quickly discovered

22:38

even within that that I was not,

22:40

I didn't want to be a forester.

22:43

What I was interested in was wildlife

22:45

and parks and sort of that side

22:47

of thing. And so I had actually

22:49

got to a point where I was

22:52

going to quit forestry. and I had

22:54

one professor that I really liked and

22:56

I told him before heading home for

22:58

the Christmas break in 1990 that I

23:01

was going to, that I was going

23:03

to quit university altogether, that I was

23:05

so disgruntled with, you know, there wasn't

23:08

anything really conservation oriented and he said,

23:10

you know, hang on, give me two

23:12

weeks, don't quit, let me see if

23:14

I can find something for you. And

23:17

he was from the US and he

23:19

started scouring US programs and he actually

23:21

found this, exchange program that was just

23:23

starting up between the University of British

23:26

Columbia and the University of California and

23:28

their nine campuses, which is Berkeley, UCLA,

23:30

UC Davis, and Santa Barbara, and so

23:32

on. Anyways, he got back to me

23:35

the day after Christmas and said, I

23:37

found something. It's this exchange program. The

23:39

only problem is you got to apply

23:42

by tomorrow. He said, I'll take care

23:44

of everything if you can write the

23:46

essay. And so my dad and I

23:48

are looking at this and we're supposed

23:51

to write a six page essay on

23:53

why you think this program would be

23:55

right for you. And so we stayed

23:57

up till like three in the morning

24:00

and wrote this essay of why it

24:02

was so important to me. And what

24:04

my professor had told me, he said,

24:07

you know all those textbooks you love

24:09

in my class? The professors that wrote

24:11

them are all at UC Berkeley. And

24:13

so that's where I applied to. And

24:16

so they were taking one exchange student

24:18

and I actually won it. So for

24:20

1990, I got to 1990-91, I got

24:22

to go to UC Berkeley and take

24:25

all these wildlife courses and conservation courses

24:27

because they had this resource management program

24:29

that was exactly what I wanted to

24:32

do. And so I ended up staying

24:34

another year after that and tried to

24:36

graduate from Berkeley. him four courses and

24:38

then just couldn't afford to keep paying

24:41

the out-of-state fees so eventually went back

24:43

to to UBC and by then that

24:45

the California the way of just that

24:47

they did their classes so for instance

24:50

I went to this summer camp up

24:52

in the Sierra Mountains by Quincy California

24:54

and it was a two-month summer camp

24:56

and we got each got given a

24:59

plot of land and you had to

25:01

develop a management plan for it that

25:03

included wildlife, species at risk like spotted

25:06

owl, all sorts of stuff and so

25:08

it was super fascinating for me to

25:10

have all this planning and think about

25:12

long term because none of that was

25:15

really covered at UBC at University of

25:17

British Columbia when I went there. It

25:19

was just all about just log as

25:21

much as he can and and you

25:24

know harvest the resource and and it

25:26

was all about the science of doing

25:28

that. and that just didn't interest me

25:31

at all. So that was really what

25:33

sparked me. And then when I finally

25:35

did graduate from University of British Columbia,

25:37

finished those four courses I had to

25:40

come back and take, which was torture,

25:42

I fairly quickly after that moved to

25:44

BAMF and within a year got a

25:46

job with Parks Canada as a guide

25:49

naturalist, so giving talks at slide shows

25:51

and. doing guided hikes for people and

25:53

telling people where to go at the

25:55

information center and things like that, got

25:58

me just more and more interested in

26:00

the park side. And when I first

26:02

started that job, that very first summer,

26:05

I went out, I saw on the

26:07

bulletin board that there was a grizzly

26:09

bear out near Lake Louise, which is

26:11

a pretty famous area, kind of world-renowned.

26:14

And so I drove out there with

26:16

a couple of people that I'd met

26:18

at the hostel and, you know, sort

26:20

of early friends in Bamp. and we

26:23

saw this grizzly and we got to

26:25

watch it for like two and a

26:27

half hours as the sun kind of

26:30

said and then it started getting dark

26:32

and she had a big mail with

26:34

her and her name was Field. Well

26:36

within a month of seeing Field she

26:39

got into a campground and had been

26:41

moved by Parks Canada 200 kilometers. so

26:43

but 120 miles north within two days

26:45

she'd come back again and got into

26:48

more trouble. She was then moved 700

26:50

kilometers north completely out of the park

26:52

system so 450 miles north way into

26:55

the boonies and within a week she

26:57

got into an oil and gas camp

26:59

and was shot and killed. Wow. And

27:01

to me that was like that's sort

27:04

of the defining moment that I look

27:06

back and go that's when I decided

27:08

that conservation was super important to me

27:10

and that even if I... I was

27:13

already thinking about becoming a wildlife photographer

27:15

at that point, or trying to, and

27:17

I thought if I'm ever lucky enough

27:19

to do that, you know, that's something

27:22

I would love to get into conservation.

27:24

And then just the way that my

27:26

wildlife photography career kind of unfolded, by

27:29

about 2007, 2008, when I was seven

27:31

or eight years into being a full-time

27:33

professional, I started realizing that social media

27:35

as it became bigger as Facebook started

27:38

to grow. that there was a way

27:40

for photographers to have a voice that

27:42

they didn't really ever have before in

27:44

conservation. And so that's where I kind

27:47

of really started focusing more and more

27:49

efforts on conservation. And that's just grown

27:51

and ballooned from there to the point

27:54

where now I have my own charity,

27:56

the exposed wildlife conservancy. which I co-founded,

27:58

which is a voice for Apex Predators

28:00

in Western Canada, and really throughout the

28:03

world, because we're tackling some issues that

28:05

apply everywhere, like trapping, trying to reform

28:07

trapping regulations, because if we can get

28:09

it done here in Canada that it

28:12

can apply in the US, it can

28:14

apply in Europe, it can apply in

28:16

Russia, etc. And then I'm also on

28:19

the board of the Grizzly Bear Foundation,

28:21

which is one of the biggest non-profits

28:23

in the world that deals with strictly

28:25

grizzly bears in their conservation. And then

28:28

I'm also on the board of the

28:30

Canadian Conservation Photographers Collective, which is sort

28:32

of a mini me of the International

28:34

League of Conservation Photographers, which I'm an

28:37

associate fellow of, which is very specific.

28:39

Specifically photographers that concentrate on conservation projects

28:41

and helps us amplify our messages Love

28:43

it. Yeah, man that brings me to

28:46

a question that I think might help

28:48

frame the next part of the conversation

28:50

and it's a simple question Why should

28:53

we even care about these animals to

28:55

begin with it? It's a great question.

28:57

So I think as we're going along

28:59

as a society right now I think

29:02

people can realize, most people, the ones

29:04

who believe in science anyways, that we

29:06

can all agree that there is something

29:08

going on with the climate, that there

29:11

is a biodiversity crisis happening with much

29:13

of our wildlife. We've never seen an

29:15

extinction event basically since the dinosaurs of

29:18

what we're experiencing right now around the

29:20

world. And we see it with a

29:22

look with a microscope at a very

29:24

tiny area. So for instance here in

29:27

Alberta where I live, you know, it's

29:29

this fairly small population wise, there's 5

29:31

million people live here in Alberta, but

29:33

it's a huge area, you know, it's

29:36

the size of Texas. Within that area

29:38

we have wolverine which are struggling are

29:40

a threatened species, caribou, mountain caribou, which

29:42

are a threatened species and on the

29:45

decline, grizzly bears which are a threatened

29:47

species, so we have all kinds of,

29:49

you know, just in this little microcosm

29:52

of here. all this biodiversity that's threatened

29:54

and then we've got all these forest

29:56

fires wildfires happening like crazy you know

29:58

devastating our ecosystems but then also rejuvenating

30:01

them but they're there fires that we've

30:03

never seen before that are devastating towns

30:05

you know Fort McMurray in the oil

30:07

sands was devastated by wildfire in 2016

30:10

that burned 2000 homes and then just

30:12

recently in August this year Jasper National

30:14

Park the town of Jasper which is

30:17

a one of my favorite towns in

30:19

the world. I've spent probably a year's

30:21

worth of time there over the past

30:23

30 years photographing leading photo. workshops and

30:26

tours and all kinds of stuff. And

30:28

that town, 30% of it burned down.

30:30

So almost another 2,000 homes with a

30:32

wildfire that reached 300 feet in height

30:35

and covered nine kilometers or five and

30:37

a half miles in just a half

30:39

hour before it actually hit the town.

30:42

So it's impossible to stop. And that's

30:44

a wildfire that's been created by conditions.

30:46

we humans have created both with our

30:48

climate and with our wildfire suppression and

30:51

so it has huge impacts on biodiversity

30:53

and on wildlife and you say well

30:55

why should we even care about these

30:57

animals? Well for one thing if we

31:00

care about what our children You know,

31:02

forget about us. You know, I'm 55.

31:04

I'm getting up there. But I got

31:06

a five-year-old kid. I know that sounds

31:09

crazy. The 55-year-old has a five-year-old kid,

31:11

but trust me, it's normal for Canmore

31:13

where I live. It's career first, and

31:16

then the kids are an afterthought. Right.

31:18

to be able to go for a

31:20

drive or a hike and maybe he

31:22

doesn't even see a grizzly bear or

31:25

a cougar or a wall for a

31:27

wolverine but just to know that they're

31:29

out there like there is something so

31:31

special about being able to go into

31:34

the wilderness you know whether it's Glacier

31:36

National Park in Montana or Yellowstone or

31:38

whether it's here in my backyard and

31:41

to be able to know that we

31:43

have these large apex predators at the

31:45

top of the food chain where the

31:47

biodiversity you know feeds down from it

31:50

in a pyramid, that trophic cascade, and

31:52

you have a great biodiversity ecosystem that

31:54

is working properly. And so anytime it's

31:56

not working properly, anytime we have over

31:59

hunting, over trapping, we have habitat loss,

32:01

things like that, those are issues that

32:03

really stand out to me. as things

32:06

that I need to care about and

32:08

I need to figure out a way

32:10

to make everybody else care about them

32:12

too because it's so critical that we

32:15

build a critical mass that will then

32:17

affect change so that we can change

32:19

how our wildlife is managed and we

32:21

can ensure that down the line we

32:24

have different wildfire suppression methods. We have

32:26

different ways to look at climate change.

32:28

We have different ways to look at

32:30

biodiversity change and tackle some of this

32:33

head on. And so you may go,

32:35

what difference does it make then if

32:37

someone is using such and such a

32:40

trap and killing a bunch of wolves?

32:42

You know, who really cares? The wolves

32:44

are going to come back anyways. And

32:46

I go, well, you know, as we

32:49

are doing that, as we get very

32:51

specific about certain topics and certain conservation

32:53

issues, it all feeds into that larger

32:55

umbrella of, you know, how are we

32:58

as a human species caring about the

33:00

other animals we're sharing the earth with?

33:02

And so it's going back to more

33:05

of an indigenous view of life of

33:07

where humans were viewed as coexisting with

33:09

the wildlife that was around them. That

33:11

didn't mean that they didn't still... kill

33:14

a deer or a moose or a

33:16

bison or a bear and eat it

33:18

and use it and worship it and

33:20

respect it. But it was totally different

33:23

than this kind of colonial system we

33:25

built in now where really all of

33:27

wildlife management is run by the hunting

33:29

and trapping community. And to be honest,

33:32

I've got nothing wrong with people hunting

33:34

and putting food on the table. But

33:36

it's that trophy hunting and that just

33:39

way of going about managing wildlife that

33:41

We're giving the voice to the consumptive

33:43

users those people that are killing wildlife

33:45

as a resource when they only make

33:48

up 5% of our population 95% of

33:50

us don't hunt or trap and we're

33:52

we get no voice in how our

33:54

wildlife is managed And so that's one

33:57

of the big things that I want

33:59

to change and I think that'll have

34:01

a huge impact If we're able to

34:04

do that if we're able to move

34:06

to more of a system like what

34:08

California has where California is the first

34:10

state or province in North America where

34:13

the wildlife board and people who manage

34:15

wildlife is actually made up of more

34:17

non-consumptive users than consumptive users. And you

34:19

go look at that board and you'll

34:22

see not only is it diverse... and

34:24

full of Asians and blacks and whites

34:26

and indigenous people and everything, but it's

34:29

also full of men and women. Whereas

34:31

you go and look at somewhere like,

34:33

well here in Alberta for instance, it's

34:35

a bunch of old white men, who's

34:38

making all the decisions. And so we

34:40

need to change that because the population

34:42

is no longer a bunch of old

34:44

white men. And you know, here I

34:47

am speaking as an old white man.

34:49

You know, I think that that message

34:51

will be pretty clear to people when

34:53

they go and read what we have

34:56

on exposed or what I post on

34:58

my social media You know, there's very

35:00

specific things that I tackle, but there's

35:03

a bigger picture issue That I think

35:05

conservation photographers in general are working at

35:07

and whittling away at and slowly building

35:09

this army of more educated people Yeah,

35:12

I had how we got connected actually

35:14

is I had shared a story with

35:16

Anna Morgan about an experience I had

35:18

this winter where I was leading a

35:21

workshop in Yellowstone. And I got really

35:23

lucky and fortunate in that we stumbled

35:25

upon a pack of wolves taking down

35:28

a bicycle. We could only stay for

35:30

like three hours because we had to

35:32

get back to, you know, we were

35:34

on a schedule, but... Apparently it lasted

35:37

for like 24 hours straight. I don't

35:39

know the exact words for it, but

35:41

they were basically exhausting the bison until

35:43

it gave up and they were taking

35:46

turns. And it was fascinating to watch

35:48

from my perspective. Someone who loves nature,

35:50

just raw power, raw beauty, raw nature,

35:53

just witnessing that in person and being

35:55

able to photograph it and video it,

35:57

was just one of the highlights of

35:59

my year. Maybe even my photography career

36:02

was just incredible. And I was so

36:04

excited about what I had witnessed that

36:06

I was actually recording in slowmo on

36:08

my. my Sony and so I posted

36:11

this slowmo video. It probably lasted like

36:13

25 seconds of just the process of

36:15

these wolves taking turns and coming out

36:17

coming around the back side of the

36:20

bison and biting it in the back

36:22

and then the bison would lay down

36:24

again and all of this stuff. It

36:27

was just awesome. And of course, like,

36:29

all of my friends who were photographers

36:31

are like, wow, that's amazing, that's amazing,

36:33

that's amazing. Well, somehow the Facebook algorithm

36:36

picked it up and all of these

36:38

anti-wolf people started commenting, like, only good

36:40

wolf as a dead wolf and why

36:42

didn't, if I was there, I would

36:45

have shot the wolves. How could you

36:47

let that poor bison die? Like, you

36:49

have a responsibility to protect the bison.

36:52

And I was just like, whoa, I

36:54

clearly am missing. a completely different subset

36:56

of the population who feels like they're

36:58

in control of nature, like that us

37:01

as humans have a responsibility to oversee

37:03

how everything should work in nature. And

37:05

I just thought that was fascinating. So

37:07

my question for you, and I know

37:10

you are very vocal about practices of

37:12

trapping, hunting, killing wolves and bears in

37:14

Canada. Why do you think there's so

37:16

many people out there who not only

37:19

don't care about these animals, but actively

37:21

go out of their way to eliminate

37:23

them? Yeah, there's a few reasons. So

37:26

one, with the wolf in particular, there's

37:28

been centuries of... of folklore, myths, Hollywood

37:30

movies, you know, I think of that

37:32

Liam Neeson movie that I can't remember

37:35

the name of it, but just a

37:37

terrible, terrible depiction of wolves. So, you

37:39

know, it starts with Little Red Riding

37:41

Hood and onward. And back, I've six,

37:44

800 years ago, wolves in Europe that

37:46

did occasionally attack people. But in North

37:48

America... the actual number of people that

37:51

have been killed by wolves is at

37:53

a grand total of one in the

37:55

last 125 years. You are literally more

37:57

likely to have a vending machine fall

38:00

on you, to be killed by a

38:02

mule deer buck, to be killed crossing

38:04

the street, going to the grocery store,

38:06

like just about anything other than being

38:09

attacked and killed by wolves. A lot

38:11

of it is just simply misinformation, which

38:13

we know today is becoming even more

38:16

prevalent. But if you think of the

38:18

hunting and trapping cultures and people that

38:20

grew up in the hunting trapping cultures,

38:22

they've been taught since they were little

38:25

kids that wolves are bad, that apex

38:27

predators are bad, that they kill our

38:29

deer, our elk, our moose, and they

38:31

stop us from putting food on the

38:34

table. And we now know with science

38:36

that that's not actually true. We also

38:38

know that it's not beneficial to go

38:40

out and randomly kill wolves through trapping

38:43

or through trophy hunting. And same with

38:45

grizzly bears. We know that that doesn't

38:47

reduce conflict, it doesn't reduce livestock conflict,

38:50

it doesn't increase populations of ungulates. stop

38:52

hunting and three kill all the predators.

38:54

So you know we can sort of

38:56

see as you know if you're a

38:59

sensical common sense type of person you

39:01

can probably go well it doesn't make

39:03

sense to kill all the predators. It

39:05

probably doesn't make sense either to stop

39:08

all the hunting whether some people would

39:10

like that or not. I mean it

39:12

is a good organic way for people

39:15

to get to get meat. And then,

39:17

you know, number three with habitat loss,

39:19

a lot of times we don't have

39:21

control over that. We can try to

39:24

have control over it and try improve

39:26

habitat, but that's not always something that's

39:28

within our reach, particularly in the short

39:30

term. So then there come, you know,

39:33

where's the balance then? And so this

39:35

is where with the management, we really

39:37

need to overturn. That's why I talk

39:39

about sort of slowly building this army

39:42

of educated people. that can argue back

39:44

and fight back and say, well, you

39:46

know, that's not true. You know, killing

39:49

wolves outside Yellowstone National Park just because

39:51

you hate them actually does nothing for

39:53

increasing ungulate populations. And so that hatred

39:55

that's built in, that's something that at

39:58

this point, I really just don't even

40:00

deal with anymore. It's an insta block.

40:02

If I get people coming in and

40:04

misinformation or posting hatred for them. I'm

40:07

not going to change their minds at

40:09

this point. My goal is to change

40:11

the minds of all the people or

40:14

to educate the people that don't even

40:16

know this is going on. With trapping,

40:18

for instance, if I go out there

40:20

and I say to people, you know,

40:23

did you know that there's... 1600 trap

40:25

lines in Alberta, for instance. You know,

40:27

that's a mind-boggling statistic when you actually

40:29

show a map and it shows 75%

40:32

of Alberta is within trap lines. Really,

40:34

the only part that isn't is like

40:36

the farmland way out in the middle

40:39

of the prairies. Now, everywhere else has

40:41

trap lines on it. And so that

40:43

means that there's actually more trap lines

40:45

than there are. So, you know, there's

40:48

some pretty concerning stuff when you actually

40:50

start looking at the science. And that's

40:52

where I'm... you know trying to have

40:54

the science backup whatever I say and

40:57

and just get ahead of some of

40:59

this misinformation you know there's that one

41:01

of the ones I hear all the

41:03

time particularly from American hunters or trappers

41:06

is that we know we pay for

41:08

wildlife conservation the hunters and trappers and

41:10

that's simply not true The Smith mold

41:13

study in 2016 or 2018 in New

41:15

Mexico actually showed that 94% of wildlife

41:17

conservation is paid by non-consumptive users. You

41:19

can go Google that and look up

41:22

that study and they did a really

41:24

in-depth study or in-depth look at New

41:26

Mexico at wildlife conservation, wildlife management, and

41:28

it is almost entirely funded by the

41:31

non-hunters and non-trapers. And they extrapolate that

41:33

across the country. and into Canada, and

41:35

it's pretty easy to see when you

41:38

look at, like for instance, when I

41:40

was fighting the grizzly bear hunt in

41:42

British Columbia, it was really easy to

41:44

put the numbers together and go, okay,

41:47

the amount of money that's coming in

41:49

from the tags and licenses being sold

41:51

does not even equal the amount that

41:53

they're paying the grizzly bear biologists, let

41:56

alone the admin fees and the enforcement

41:58

from conservation officers and then any supposed

42:00

money going back into wildlife. management or

42:03

conservation, like it just suddenly doesn't exist.

42:05

Like it's the taxpayer that's paying for

42:07

everything else. And that taxpayer, as I've

42:09

said, is 95% non-consumptive users. So that's

42:12

where we really need to just sort

42:14

of flip things and get to a

42:16

wildlife management system that benefits people as

42:18

a whole and benefits to the ecosystem,

42:21

biodiversity, climate change, much more impactfully than

42:23

what's currently going on. I've heard those

42:25

arguments from people that say that getting

42:27

her to the epics, predators helps the

42:30

populations of the young gullets that they

42:32

want to hunt for their food and

42:34

all that stuff and their sport and

42:37

all that. But my understanding is that

42:39

by and large the predators are hunting

42:41

the weak and the young or the

42:43

diseased, the ones that are too weak

42:46

to fight back or to escape or

42:48

to run away. And by doing so,

42:50

that actually strengthens the overall population. It

42:52

makes it for a healthier herd of

42:55

elk, it makes for a much healthier

42:57

herd of bison and yellowstone, and it

42:59

eliminates the diseases. And when you don't

43:02

have those apex predators, then you start

43:04

to run into stuff like chronic wasting

43:06

disease and all of those things. So

43:08

like, it's kind of counterintuitive, but like

43:11

if you actually study it, like science,

43:13

you start to realize that having a

43:15

balanced ecosystem is actually... better for the

43:17

overall health of the animal that you're

43:20

that you purport that you think should

43:22

we should be protecting so I you

43:24

know I think once people start realizing

43:26

that stuff hopefully it can change their

43:29

minds I don't know but like you

43:31

said a lot of those people have

43:33

very set in their ways there's some

43:36

pretty obvious science that so for instance

43:38

if you go look at one of

43:40

the Yellowstone studies that was quite recent

43:42

cow elk between the ages of two

43:45

and 14 are almost impervious to wolf

43:47

predation So they're too healthy They're they're

43:49

living in that herd of other cows

43:51

and all the calves and when they

43:54

get to that age of two and

43:56

right up till 14 there's almost no

43:58

predation unless they do something, you know,

44:01

break a leg by accident or something

44:03

like that. So it goes to show

44:05

you that a healthy animal, really tough

44:07

and really rare for a wolf pack

44:10

or other predators to take down. And

44:12

I remember... One of my first wolf

44:14

projects, I've been lucky enough to do

44:16

two five-year wolf projects that turned into

44:19

book projects. And on the first one

44:21

that I did, which was on the

44:23

Bow Valley Wolves, ended up being a

44:26

book called The Pipestone Wolves, Rise and

44:28

Fall of a wolf family, that was

44:30

between Banffin Lake Louisiana and Banff National

44:32

Park. And I remember following them one

44:35

day, and the researcher that I normally

44:37

went out with was not around, so

44:39

it was just me. and I was

44:41

following the seven wolves and I drove

44:44

ahead of them. They were kind of

44:46

walking along a ski trail and I

44:48

drove up ahead of them and I

44:50

spotted this cow moose laying down with

44:53

her new calf. Your calf was like

44:55

six months old so it's like November

44:57

right about this time of year and

45:00

I could see the wolves heading right

45:02

towards them off in the distance. I'm

45:04

like oh my gosh here we go

45:06

I'm gonna see this. Finally I'm gonna

45:09

get to see some predation up close

45:11

like surely they're gonna and the wolves

45:13

came right up. Moose cow and calf

45:15

and skirted around them and kept on

45:18

going and I was like what that?

45:20

What just happened there? And so for

45:22

three years I watched seven times they

45:25

encountered that cow and calf just that

45:27

I saw like who knows how many

45:29

dozens of other times. And not once

45:31

did they ever try and get her

45:34

or her calves, because there were different

45:36

calves, like her calf went from being

45:38

a year of calf to a yearling

45:40

calf to graduating to being on its

45:43

own. And then she had another calf

45:45

and it was fine. And then eventually

45:47

she reached an age where I didn't

45:50

know her really beforehand, but she obviously

45:52

reached an age where she started becoming

45:54

a little more prone to predation and

45:56

she started. traversing in different terrain and

45:59

staying out of the wolf habitat after

46:01

that. And then I kind of lost

46:03

track of her so I don't know

46:05

if she eventually got predated on or

46:08

not, but you know it just goes

46:10

to show you that even a healthy

46:12

cow with a little calf is still

46:14

able to protect themselves from a pack

46:17

of seven healthy wolves. It's, you know,

46:19

and they don't even try and challenge

46:21

that. You know, they'd obviously probably when

46:24

the when the calf was younger tried

46:26

putting a run on it. discovered mom

46:28

was pretty healthy and dangerous and go,

46:30

okay, you know, we're hands off here.

46:33

Yeah, we got a few of them

46:35

else. Yeah, it just takes one smack

46:37

in the face with those giant antlers

46:39

to realize that you're outmatched. And I,

46:42

I, like, you know, I get what

46:44

you're talking about with the bison of

46:46

the, you know, the, and sometimes it's

46:49

long drawn out deaths and that's nature,

46:51

you know, it's, that's, that's how wolves.

46:53

weaken their prey so that it's less

46:55

dangerous for them to kill a bison

46:58

or a moose or whatever. They slowly

47:00

peck away and weaken it and tire

47:02

it and you know nip at the

47:04

the hamstrings and and calves and things

47:07

like that and get the slow bleed

47:09

going and it seems horrible to someone

47:11

watching from a far but trust me

47:13

not every hunting kill out there with

47:16

a rifle or a bow is a

47:18

nice clean kill where the animal doesn't

47:20

suffer even in a clean lung shot

47:23

with an arrow or a bullet. You

47:25

know still five minutes for that animal

47:27

to die So it you know, it's

47:29

a fallacy that that either one is

47:32

a painless death Like I said, I'm

47:34

okay with people hunting to put food

47:36

on the table Just as I am

47:38

110% okay with wolves going out and

47:41

chasing a bison around for 10 hours

47:43

to tire it and eventually making a

47:45

clean kill without injuring any of their

47:48

family. Yeah, I think, I don't know

47:50

what it's like in Canada, but I

47:52

know here in the United States, a

47:54

lot of the beliefs around these animals

47:57

is rooted in livestock kills and I'd

47:59

be curious, where your thoughts are on

48:01

like, how can we partner with ranchers

48:03

and others to address their concerns? also

48:06

protecting these animals from persecution? Yeah, so

48:08

great question. So defenders of wildlife and

48:10

a couple other groups in the US

48:13

have done some pretty in-depth studies on

48:15

actual livestock predation and in the US

48:17

as a whole it's extraordinarily low. Point

48:19

2% is attributed to predation. You know,

48:22

having said that, so the biggest killer

48:24

by far is illness and disease and,

48:26

you know, things like that, harsh weather,

48:28

you know, all the big events back

48:31

in the early 1900s that killed off

48:33

tens of thousands and even hundreds of

48:35

thousands of cattle, we're all weather related.

48:37

There's nothing to do with predation. You

48:40

know, predation is generally... small and here

48:42

and there and in most places where

48:44

it does happen, whether it's coyotes or

48:47

wolves, there are compensation programs in place.

48:49

Now that still doesn't mean you can

48:51

discount that a rancher is trying to

48:53

make a living off of their cattle.

48:56

It's a resource. It's something that they're

48:58

often near and dear to. So we

49:00

have to look at other ways to

49:02

coexist and make sure that wildlife and

49:05

in particular predators can coexist with ranchers.

49:07

in situations, you know, outside Yellowstone, in

49:09

Montana, in Alberta, in British Columbia, you

49:12

know, throughout the range, Oregon, Washington, where

49:14

wolves are moving back into Colorado. So

49:16

to do that, there's a number of

49:18

different things that can happen. One... could

49:21

be the rancher taking proactive steps on

49:23

their own, using things like flattery, which

49:25

is a type of flagging used to

49:27

discourage predators, using fencing, using range riders.

49:30

You know, some of it involves additional

49:32

expenses, but if you look back at

49:34

how ranching originally operated, there always were

49:37

range riders. They're all, you know, we've

49:39

moved to an area where ranchers have

49:41

kind of gotten away from that and,

49:43

you know, just kind of put the

49:46

cattle out there on the range and...

49:48

hope for the best and yes there's

49:50

going to be predation. There's also... to

49:52

be predators feeding on cattle that just

49:55

die out there and getting the taste

49:57

for it. And so... There are ways

49:59

to, you know, carcass disposal using the

50:01

range in a different manner. So, for

50:04

instance, there's a rancher south of Calgary

50:06

called Joe Englehart, who's been for, you

50:08

know, a couple decades now, really well

50:11

known within the conservation community, because he

50:13

runs six different ranchers, heads of cattle

50:15

on his ranch, on his leasehold, and

50:17

he's got... six to eight grizzly bears

50:20

on any given day in the spring,

50:22

you know, huge number of predators, and

50:24

yet he hardly ever deals with livestock

50:26

losses. And if you go and chat

50:29

to him, it's a couple of things.

50:31

One, he puts range riders out, he

50:33

watches what's going on, he has figured

50:36

out what's going on in his land

50:38

with, oh, there's a wolf down over

50:40

there, so I'm not going to go

50:42

put calves. out anywhere near that. I'm

50:45

going to use a totally different range

50:47

for the calves when they're young and

50:49

little. And then I'm going to have

50:51

them calve near the barn here and

50:54

then I'm going to put them out

50:56

in that range and I'm going to

50:58

have someone watch over them. Whereas the

51:00

adult cows, well I'm fine to put

51:03

them in the wolf territory. These wolves

51:05

do not bug me so I don't

51:07

ever shoot them. Now he has had

51:10

instances like I think a decade ago

51:12

or so we had a couple of

51:14

livestock kills. They went in and removed

51:16

a couple of the wolves and you

51:19

know what in those instances I'm okay

51:21

with that. You're going and you're very

51:23

specifically targeting a wolf or wolves and

51:25

you're saying you know what we gave

51:28

them a couple chances we've been doing

51:30

all this other stuff. At some point

51:32

you also have to have some balance

51:35

and help out the rancher. And so

51:37

I totally agree with that kind of

51:39

thing. What I don't agree with. is

51:41

ranchers that are not making any effort.

51:44

So we see that a bit in

51:46

Oregon with ranchers that are actually doing

51:48

the opposite and sticking their cattle with

51:50

brand new calves right in the middle

51:53

of wolf range so that there will

51:55

be predation so then they can call

51:57

in the... and say, oh look, we

52:00

had a calf killed, can you come

52:02

get rid of these wolves now? So

52:04

kind of the opposite of ranchers that

52:06

want to coexist. They're going out of

52:09

their way to not coexist. So that's

52:11

just going to come with education and

52:13

showing examples of other ranchers that have

52:15

made it work. There are ranchers around

52:18

yellowstone that are really good, that have

52:20

learned to coexist with predators. And again,

52:22

as long as you have it in

52:24

place where if they're the biggest thing

52:27

that I see happening happening happening. is

52:29

a rancher will see a wolf on

52:31

their property and immediately think it has

52:34

to be killed. This actually goes against

52:36

what you, there are studies now showing

52:38

that if you go out and you're

52:40

randomly kill wolves you actually can potentially

52:43

increase livestock conflict or other types of

52:45

conflict with pets and things because what

52:47

you're doing is you're maybe you're disrupting

52:49

that family dynamic of the wolf pack

52:52

and you may take out the wolf

52:54

that like when a wolf pack there's

52:56

often one or two that are really

52:59

good at doing the killing. And if

53:01

you take out one of those ones,

53:03

if you take out one of the

53:05

alphas, one of the leading male or

53:08

female, you disrupt the social dynamic and

53:10

then you may actually cause the wolves

53:12

to split up and form even more

53:14

packs, or you may cause these younger

53:17

wolves to go out and they don't

53:19

really know how to kill deer or

53:21

elk properly and they go for the

53:24

easier prey, which can be livestock or

53:26

pets. And so it actually, and there's

53:28

science showing the exact same thing with

53:30

cougars. Where if you go and you're

53:33

continuously disrupting the social dynamic by killing

53:35

the big Tom cats, you're creating all

53:37

these younger cats that are competing and

53:39

half of them don't know what they're

53:42

doing and they get into conflict with

53:44

humans and pets and livestock and so

53:46

on. So the lesson to be learned

53:48

here is that if you actually just

53:51

leave the dynamic, if you've got a

53:53

wolf pack on your ranch, but they're

53:55

not killing any livestock, leave them. Just

53:58

let them be. And if something happens

54:00

five years down down the road. Sure,

54:02

then go in and deal with that.

54:04

But if not, just let it be.

54:07

And let those big Tom caps. Cougars

54:09

roam around, don't disrupt that social dynamic

54:11

if everything's going well and you're not

54:13

getting predation on your livestock or your

54:16

pets or any conflicts. And I guess,

54:18

you know, here in the States, I

54:20

don't know how comprehensive it is, but

54:23

the program where they compensate ranchers for

54:25

livestock loss from predation, I feel like

54:27

if that's happening and the main reason

54:29

why people get upset is because it

54:32

disrupts their livelihood. Like, shouldn't that just

54:34

be solved? You know what I mean?

54:36

Like, that's the thing that I just

54:38

don't understand is, like, there's a program

54:41

in place to make you whole, you

54:43

know? So, I mean, yeah, you have

54:45

to fill out some paperwork, probably, but,

54:47

like, is it worth killing another animal

54:50

so that you prevent that, having to

54:52

go through that process? That's the piece

54:54

where I'm just, like, it's hard for

54:57

me to connect with their issue, because

54:59

it's, like, it's like, it's been, it's

55:01

been, it's been, it's been, from the

55:03

rancher's side would be twofold. I don't

55:06

want to have to keep going through

55:08

this over and over again. And two,

55:10

you know, the predators kill way more.

55:12

I just can't prove it. Oh, right.

55:15

Yeah. You know, the hearsay sort of

55:17

a thing. And that's partly, you know,

55:19

if you don't have range riders out

55:22

there and you just are out one

55:24

day and you see wolves feeding on

55:26

one of your cows, well, who knows

55:28

how the heck the cow died. So

55:31

if you talk to somebody like Carter

55:33

Nemeyer, who I've interviewed quite a bit

55:35

and, you know, read all of his

55:37

books, and so he was involved with

55:40

the wolfry introduction in Yellowstone and... was

55:42

also working for wildlife services and is

55:44

probably one of the most proficient trappers

55:47

that is in the US and did

55:49

all kinds of wolf trapping and so

55:51

on and ran these predator compensation programs

55:53

in Idaho and you know chatting to

55:56

him and it's like you know these

55:58

guys would go out of their way

56:00

trying to prove that it was they

56:02

would fake all this stuff and he

56:05

said I'd go in and be like

56:07

no that's not predator like I don't

56:09

know how this died but it's not

56:11

predator it's not grizzly it's not coog

56:14

So stop trying to rig the system

56:16

and he has just countless examples of

56:18

that. So it, you know, there's some

56:21

sympathy to be given, but at the

56:23

same time, unless you see ranchers starting

56:25

to take some steps to coexist. I

56:27

kind of lose patience at a certain

56:30

point and go, you know what, all

56:32

you're doing out there is just continuously

56:34

killing predators and you're just perpetuating the

56:36

system of just new wolves rolling in,

56:39

new cougars rolling in and of course

56:41

you're going to just continue having conflicts.

56:43

Yeah, that all makes perfect sense to

56:46

me. Back to the photography side of

56:48

things, you know, as a conservation photographer,

56:50

do you feel that your work can

56:52

realistically accomplish the goals you've set out

56:55

to achieve relating to protecting these wild

56:57

animals? Yes and no. I think that

56:59

we've got some pretty major hurdles to

57:01

overcome with wildlife management and sort of

57:04

educating the masses and making them care

57:06

and making them want to care as

57:08

much as, you know, I'm sure we've

57:11

all seen the anti-wolf, you know, they're

57:13

very vocal, that crowd, and there's the

57:15

same sort of thing with anti-bear and

57:17

anti-cougar and so on. And so making

57:20

the conservation side just as vocal, if

57:22

not more so. And that's a slow

57:24

build. It's just slowly educating as many

57:26

people as possible, making them care enough

57:29

about it, and continuously putting these issues

57:31

in front of them. So they go,

57:33

okay, this is fricking ridiculous. What do

57:35

I do I help? How do I

57:38

get in now? How do I start

57:40

making my voice heard? Where do I

57:42

donate my money to? etc. I think

57:45

social media has made it much more

57:47

easy for photographers now to get messages

57:49

out. You know, a pretty picture goes

57:51

a really long ways in making people

57:54

look at your post and then read

57:56

what might be there. So that's really

57:58

changed the game for conservation photography rather

58:00

than just relying on books and films

58:03

is now, you know, something comes across

58:05

my desk and I can have it

58:07

out instantly on social media. And again,

58:10

this is just this slow build of

58:12

educating people. I often in my comment

58:14

sections will briefly engage with some of

58:16

the hunting and trapping community and just

58:19

quickly disarm the information that they're putting

58:21

out there so that my followers can

58:23

see, oh, okay, well, that argument's not

58:25

true. John just debunked it right there.

58:28

And so I spend a lot of

58:30

time kind of doing that. You know,

58:32

a lot of people don't engage. I

58:34

do engage in, you know, that's kind

58:37

of sort of what I'm well known

58:39

for, as I don't hesitate to engage

58:41

and argue with the hunting and trapping

58:44

community on just with the way our

58:46

wildlife has managed. Yeah, it's interesting. I've

58:48

seen that approach work and a little

58:50

bit, but at the same time I've

58:53

also found that it can just be

58:55

super polarizing. My colleague who's a co-instructure

58:57

with me from Lynch Workshops, he is

58:59

a really strong advocate for coyotes and

59:02

wolves in New Mexico, and he actually

59:04

grew up on a ranch and was

59:06

a rancher himself, and his whole family

59:09

was as well. And he told me

59:11

a story about how he went to,

59:13

I think it was almost like a

59:15

county fair situation like that, where he

59:18

set up a booth for like a...

59:20

basically like an alliance to protect the

59:22

gray wolf of the New Mexico gray

59:24

wolf and he had his neighbors come

59:27

up to him and spit in his

59:29

face. I mean that's how vitriolic it

59:31

was and he actually his dad told

59:34

him you cannot represent our family this

59:36

way like this is our livelihood at

59:38

stake. So it's a very controversial. issue

59:40

for some of these communities where they

59:43

had, it's that the idealology is so

59:45

entrenched. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing

59:47

we're up against here. You know, ranchers,

59:49

it is their livelihood, but it's my

59:52

livelihood too. Why is my livelihood discounted

59:54

more than theirs? You know, so that

59:56

to me... I get quite mad when

59:58

people bring up that point and I

1:00:01

go, what about me? You know, and

1:00:03

when I'm dealing with like hunting and

1:00:05

trapping communities, so that's not the livelihood

1:00:08

of most people, you know, there's the

1:00:10

odd person is a hunting guide. And

1:00:12

there's the odd person is a full-time

1:00:14

trapper, but hardly any of them. You

1:00:17

know, particularly in trapping, it's a recreational

1:00:19

hobby. You know, the average Canadian trapper

1:00:21

makes less than $1,000 a year. The

1:00:23

average American trapper makes less than 500

1:00:26

US a year. You know, this is

1:00:28

not a livelihood. This is you going

1:00:30

out and killing things for fun. You

1:00:33

know, it's a weekend hobby. So whenever

1:00:35

that argument comes up, like, I get

1:00:37

pretty furious. Like, for me, it's easy

1:00:39

to argue back with because... Hey, it's

1:00:42

my livelihood too. How come I can't

1:00:44

drive down a road outside of a

1:00:46

national park and try and photograph a

1:00:48

wolf? I can't because they all just

1:00:51

run away instantly because they get shot

1:00:53

at by everybody else. So it's, you

1:00:55

know, like that. Yeah, you want to

1:00:58

get into that with me. Go for

1:01:00

it. Good luck. Yeah, I was going

1:01:02

to say. That's why I like following

1:01:04

you on Twitter because you're very in

1:01:07

your face. Let's just say that. For

1:01:09

those people who are looking to use

1:01:11

their photography for similar causes, how can

1:01:13

we remain optimistic about our work when

1:01:16

it seems so many powerful groups are

1:01:18

against us as it relates to protecting

1:01:20

species like wolves and pairs? Well, there

1:01:22

are a lot of groups against us,

1:01:25

but there are a lot of groups

1:01:27

with us, and there's a lot of

1:01:29

people with us, and there's a lot

1:01:32

more people, you know, if you think

1:01:34

of, again, I'll go back to that

1:01:36

stat once again, hunters and trappers make

1:01:38

up 5% of the population. 5% you

1:01:41

might be able to sway a few

1:01:43

of them. Like I know some some

1:01:45

trappers and I know quite a few

1:01:47

hunters who love predators and would not

1:01:50

ever consider killing a bear, killing a

1:01:52

wolf. Trappers a little less so, but

1:01:54

I do know some trappers that are

1:01:57

really good conservation voices and certainly have

1:01:59

to give kudos to some of the

1:02:01

community. There's a lot of when you

1:02:03

see that vitriol and you see that

1:02:06

hate and it is easy to get

1:02:08

caught up in, you know, we're never

1:02:10

going to make a difference. And I

1:02:12

would say to other photographers, you know,

1:02:15

there's probably been very few photographers in

1:02:17

the game as long as I have

1:02:19

that have dealt with as much as

1:02:21

I have, and I'm still in it,

1:02:24

and I'm still pushing to inspire people

1:02:26

to keep following and to keep pushing

1:02:28

as well. And so... If they ever

1:02:31

get down in the dumps, go look

1:02:33

at my feeds and go look at

1:02:35

what I'm doing and take inspiration from

1:02:37

that and know that, hey, if John

1:02:40

Marriott's not quitting, he's the one who's

1:02:42

right in the thick of it, then

1:02:44

I shouldn't quit either and I should

1:02:46

keep on going forward and helping out

1:02:49

nonprofits and charities, you know, donating images,

1:02:51

writing stuff, not being afraid once in

1:02:53

a while to wait in and argue

1:02:56

back with... with people that don't have

1:02:58

the same opinions as you. I mean,

1:03:00

that's how we learn. You know, that's

1:03:02

how I know that there is a

1:03:05

lot of good that hunters do, for

1:03:07

instance, in conservation, but it's not the

1:03:09

end-all-be-all. They're not the ones paying for

1:03:11

wildlife conservation. That's a myth. That doesn't

1:03:14

mean, though, that they're not doing a

1:03:16

lot for conservation and habitat loss. So,

1:03:18

yeah, it's a big end game. I've

1:03:21

often said that... in my career I

1:03:23

may not be the one that actually

1:03:25

makes a difference but hopefully I inspire

1:03:27

someone that that will be the difference

1:03:30

maker in the end and maybe it's

1:03:32

you know literally someone like my five-year-old

1:03:34

son who you know down the line

1:03:36

is is the one that's truly making

1:03:39

a difference or maybe it's some young

1:03:41

photographer that's following along right now and

1:03:43

says you know I want to get

1:03:45

into that I want to educate myself

1:03:48

I want to go out and you

1:03:50

know I've got a bachelor science and

1:03:52

wildlife management so I'm pretty well qualified

1:03:55

to talk about wildlife issues and then

1:03:57

I've gone out of the way. way

1:03:59

to educate myself. I spend a lot

1:04:01

of time with wildlife biologists reading papers,

1:04:04

scientific papers, and just looking into what

1:04:06

the arguments are from the various industries

1:04:08

that don't agree with me and coming

1:04:10

up with counterpoints to that. So if

1:04:13

you follow along with the exposed wildlife

1:04:15

conservancy or with me and social media,

1:04:17

you'll start to get some of those

1:04:20

talking points and some of the arguments.

1:04:22

as to why we need to care

1:04:24

about our wildlife and what we need

1:04:26

to do to make change happen. Perfectly

1:04:29

said, yeah, that the inspiring others, I

1:04:31

think, is so understated. And, you know,

1:04:33

my background is, I was a therapist,

1:04:35

I was a counselor, and a lot

1:04:38

of times you wouldn't see the fruits

1:04:40

of your labor in that industry either,

1:04:42

like, you know, you're helping people, you're

1:04:44

helping people, and maybe 20 years down

1:04:47

the road, like something you said, like...

1:04:49

Spark something in them to change their

1:04:51

behavior. So it's kind of similar in

1:04:54

that way Yeah, I would also say

1:04:56

to people to photographers that are posting

1:04:58

a social media Don't be afraid to

1:05:00

block like just because someone throws something

1:05:03

in a comment Doesn't mean it's true

1:05:05

doesn't mean you have to sit and

1:05:07

argue it You know my Facebook page

1:05:09

right now has just over 5,000 blocked

1:05:12

people on it and my Instagram has

1:05:14

over 3,000 so I've had to spend

1:05:16

a lot of time blocking and hacking

1:05:19

people out of there, but it's been

1:05:21

worth it. It doesn't mean I want

1:05:23

an echo chamber, but really I'm at

1:05:25

the point now in my career. I'm

1:05:28

educated enough. I know the talking points.

1:05:30

I know what the misinformation is, and

1:05:32

I'm just not going to stand for

1:05:34

my page being used to voice concerns

1:05:37

that are not truthful. So I do

1:05:39

let the odd person argue a bit,

1:05:41

and I'll counter their arguments. But by

1:05:44

and large I just block and just,

1:05:46

nope, move on. And I would recommend

1:05:48

that to a lot of photographers to,

1:05:50

you know, again, don't create a full

1:05:53

echo chamber, but you got to protect

1:05:55

your mental health too. Yeah, I mean,

1:05:57

my philosophy on that is if someone

1:05:59

can. engage with me in a civil

1:06:02

way, like civil discourse, and we can

1:06:04

have a nice conversation, and you can

1:06:06

make some points, and I can make

1:06:08

some counterpoints, and it's a peaceful discussion,

1:06:11

like, I'm fine with that, but if

1:06:13

you're going to come in and like,

1:06:15

I had this one guy that was

1:06:17

like, if I was there, I would have

1:06:19

shot you, because you're filming it, and

1:06:21

I'm just like, wow, you are out

1:06:23

there, man. I mean, that's the kind

1:06:26

of stuff I'm sure you get. I'm

1:06:28

sure you get. all the time, you

1:06:30

know, so I definitely blocked quite a

1:06:32

few people that day. Necessary evil. Yep.

1:06:34

Well, you had talked a little

1:06:36

bit about it earlier, but I'd

1:06:38

love for you to spend a

1:06:40

little bit more time talking about

1:06:42

the nonprofit that you co-founded. Yeah,

1:06:44

sure. So it's called the Exposed

1:06:46

Wildlife Conservancy. And it's funny. I

1:06:49

have a client slash good friend,

1:06:51

almost best friend who... has come

1:06:53

on about 20 trips with me.

1:06:55

One of my revenue streams is

1:06:58

a small tour company that runs

1:07:00

wildlife photography tours and workshops in

1:07:02

Canada primarily, a little bit elsewhere,

1:07:04

but mostly Canada. And I've got

1:07:07

a client that's come on all

1:07:09

these trips. And you know, my

1:07:11

trips are... somewhat similar to other

1:07:13

photographers but also a bit different. You

1:07:16

know, it's dawn to dusk photography and

1:07:18

then there's a real social aspect to

1:07:20

my trips. I don't generally go into

1:07:22

light room or Photoshop or any of

1:07:24

the the super technical stuff. People generally

1:07:26

come on trips with me because A,

1:07:28

they like my company, they like the

1:07:31

dawn to dusk, no interruption photography stuff,

1:07:33

and then they love the social aspect.

1:07:35

So sitting around having a glass of

1:07:37

wine, eating good food and chatting about

1:07:39

everything, not just photography. And so my

1:07:41

friend Kim Audlin had been on all

1:07:44

these trips and you know hearing all

1:07:46

these conservation issues and he finally goes

1:07:48

to me Monday's like you know I

1:07:50

just can't believe this stuff still going

1:07:52

on in Canada and elsewhere is like

1:07:54

you know like how do we let

1:07:56

people know and so it's sort of

1:07:58

planted the seed and then a years

1:08:00

later he continued to kind of go on

1:08:02

about this and a couple years later he

1:08:04

emails me and he says it's 2015 he

1:08:06

says I'm gonna be in Canmore tomorrow he

1:08:08

doesn't live here he lives in the same

1:08:10

province as me but about four hours away

1:08:13

and he said do you want to be

1:08:15

for lunch I have this idea and so

1:08:17

we meet for lunch and he says he

1:08:19

came from a he runs that company that

1:08:21

does TV commercials so from the production side

1:08:23

of things and he said I kind of

1:08:26

think we need to make a

1:08:28

TV show about conservation issues And

1:08:30

so we spent the next year

1:08:32

pitching TV networks this idea of

1:08:34

kind of a duck's dynasty mixed

1:08:36

with wildlife conservation photography of like

1:08:38

all these characters that I deal

1:08:40

with and we actually got pretty

1:08:42

far with, oh I can't remember the network

1:08:44

now, a US network, where we got

1:08:47

into like a set of meetings with

1:08:49

them and then they wanted to totally

1:08:51

turn it to the duck dynasty side

1:08:53

of things and we just were like,

1:08:55

no. So we backed out of that

1:08:58

and we decided, okay, well, we're going

1:09:00

to do a couple of YouTube shows

1:09:02

then. So we started this YouTube channel

1:09:04

called Exposed with Johnny Marriott. And the

1:09:06

idea was to expose wildlife conservation issues

1:09:08

to the average person. And so we

1:09:10

started doing them on the grizzly bear

1:09:13

hunting British Columbia and on trapping Wolfcullin

1:09:15

Alberta, you know, things that were sort

1:09:17

of Canadian focused. And then in 2020,

1:09:19

we actually turned it into

1:09:21

a non-profit called the Exposed Wildlife

1:09:23

Conservancy. And then just earlier this

1:09:26

year we became a registered charity

1:09:28

in Canada, unfortunately not for the

1:09:31

US, but we have a base of

1:09:33

supporters now and we, as I

1:09:35

mentioned earlier, sort of the focus

1:09:37

of it is on Apex predators.

1:09:39

So specifically, grizzly bears, wolves, cougars,

1:09:42

wolverines, lynx, are sort of our,

1:09:44

would be our big five. And

1:09:46

in particular the apex predator predators,

1:09:48

so the wolf, cougar, and grizzly

1:09:50

bear. And the idea is just

1:09:52

to provide a voice for what

1:09:54

different wildlife conservation issues exist here

1:09:57

in Western Canada, but also that

1:09:59

can be... more globally. So for

1:10:01

instance we just did a documentary

1:10:03

series called Trapped in the Past

1:10:05

which is three documentaries split into three

1:10:07

parts that deals with the fact

1:10:09

that trapping in both Canada and the

1:10:12

US is literally trapped in the past

1:10:14

in terms of its regulations. So to

1:10:16

give you an idea hundreds of

1:10:18

years ago, 150 years ago, if you

1:10:21

were a trapper in the Canadian wilderness

1:10:23

you would build trap line cabins

1:10:25

along your trap line because you were

1:10:27

snow showing out into the middle of

1:10:30

the wilderness, you know, 10, 15,

1:10:32

20 miles at a time following your

1:10:34

trap line going deep into the wilderness.

1:10:36

You had no sap phone. You had

1:10:39

no way of communicating without the

1:10:41

outside. You had to take all your

1:10:43

supplies on your back. Well, those regulations

1:10:45

still exist. If I'm working at

1:10:47

a logging company. and I go and

1:10:50

take a weekend trapping course and pay

1:10:52

my $20 licensing fee, I can become

1:10:54

a registered trapper in Alberta, and

1:10:56

I can then go out and buy

1:10:59

a registered fur management area, which... can

1:11:01

go all the way from like

1:11:03

a hundred bucks up to fifty thousand

1:11:05

bucks depending where it is and what

1:11:08

kind of views it offers and

1:11:10

then I can build cabins along my

1:11:12

trap line and I can snowmobile in

1:11:14

and take my family there and I

1:11:17

can drive on roads that are

1:11:19

closed to the rest of the public

1:11:21

and I'm treated just like an industry

1:11:23

owner as if I owned a

1:11:25

logging tree farm license or an oil

1:11:28

and gas well. And I get to

1:11:30

have all these special rights on

1:11:32

the land. And so this has not

1:11:34

been updated in the last 150 years.

1:11:37

And there are hundreds of these types

1:11:39

of regulations, both throughout Canada and

1:11:41

the United States, that have never been

1:11:44

updated. And they all date back to

1:11:46

these old ancient archaic, unethical, all

1:11:48

sorts of different stuff related to traps.

1:11:50

And both Canada and the US still

1:11:53

allows killing neck snares, which have never

1:11:55

been accepted. that did any international

1:11:57

agreements on trapping, and yet they're still

1:11:59

used in the hundreds of thousands in

1:12:02

both of our countries. And what

1:12:04

they are is just a metal loop

1:12:06

that can be handmade, or you can

1:12:08

go buy them at Cabellos or

1:12:10

Bass Pro or wherever, for like eight

1:12:13

bucks each, or a pack of eight

1:12:15

for like 30 bucks. And you tie

1:12:17

him to a tree and you

1:12:19

put this loop out there and you

1:12:22

put a bunch of bait in the

1:12:24

middle, it can be a dead

1:12:26

cow, dead pig, whatever, there's no regulations

1:12:28

on that. And then you put all

1:12:31

these snares everywhere, like 30 of

1:12:33

them around this bait site, and anything

1:12:35

that walks in gets captured and chokes

1:12:37

to death, or sticks an arm in

1:12:40

and gets caught, or whatever. So

1:12:42

you catch everything from endangered caribou, or

1:12:44

endangered grizzly bears. to the things you're

1:12:46

actually trying for, wolves and coyotes,

1:12:48

to links, wolverine, whatever. They're completely indiscriminate.

1:12:51

And so this is one of the

1:12:53

things we've been shining a light on

1:12:55

and going like, what the F

1:12:57

people? Like, this is something we know

1:13:00

exists out there and that we need

1:13:02

to change. And so we're working

1:13:04

on actually a federal campaign here in

1:13:06

Canada. that if we're successful and I'm

1:13:09

not going to go too much

1:13:11

in the details because I honestly don't

1:13:13

want the trapping industry to know what

1:13:15

we've got going on behind the scenes

1:13:18

but it's substantial and if we're

1:13:20

successful it's going to send ripple waves

1:13:22

around the world and we might be

1:13:25

looking at 10 20 years from

1:13:27

now where snares are illegal worldwide and

1:13:29

that to me would be I mean

1:13:31

that would be the crowning achievement

1:13:33

of my career if we were to

1:13:36

get to that point. Wow I mean

1:13:38

I could see using a snare if

1:13:40

like... It's like zombie apocalypse time

1:13:42

and you're trying to like survive in

1:13:45

the wilderness or something but come on.

1:13:47

I mean the reason they're used

1:13:49

so they're so prevalent is because they're

1:13:51

cheap and there's no regulation on them.

1:13:54

You know they have literally been slipped

1:13:56

in through loopholes and backdoor agreements

1:13:58

and you know Canada for instance is

1:14:00

a member of a signatory of the...

1:14:03

on international humane trapping standards, which

1:14:05

the US did not sign. So that's

1:14:07

another, like, totally separate issue of what

1:14:09

the heck US, why not? But

1:14:11

in Canada, we signed this agreement with

1:14:14

Russia and the European Union, but only

1:14:16

under the exclusion of killing next years,

1:14:18

because Canada was unable to provide

1:14:20

scientific proof that they would kill under

1:14:23

five minutes, which you have to be

1:14:25

able to prove for all the

1:14:27

traps you're using for this agreement. So

1:14:29

Canada said, hey, we'll sign this agreement.

1:14:32

but only under the condition that

1:14:34

we get to exclude this one type

1:14:36

of trap because we can't prove that

1:14:38

it's ethical. It's like, oh my gosh,

1:14:41

well, what's the point of even

1:14:43

signing in this point? And why have

1:14:45

we 25 years later still not ratified

1:14:47

this agreement and come back and

1:14:49

reviewed it? It's supposed to be reviewed

1:14:52

after three years and still hasn't been

1:14:54

done. So there's things like that we're

1:14:56

making a federal push for that

1:14:59

if successful we'll have ripple effects into

1:15:01

the US and elsewhere. cogent or logical

1:15:03

argument against removing them. I mean,

1:15:05

it doesn't seem like a humane way

1:15:08

of... Makes it harder, make it more

1:15:10

expensive, and when you're dealing with

1:15:12

a hobby, that can have a big

1:15:14

impact on guys that want to be

1:15:17

out there killing stuff. Fascinating. Yeah. I

1:15:19

mean, it's this, this is, and

1:15:21

I just have to say this one

1:15:23

phrase because, you know, people have to

1:15:26

keep in mind, killing is not

1:15:28

conservation. Right, yeah, no, God. Don't buy

1:15:30

into a trapper telling you that there,

1:15:32

oh, there were, we're stewards of

1:15:34

the land and we, you know, conservationists

1:15:37

and like there is the odd trapper

1:15:39

who is? The vast majority are not.

1:15:41

They're just out there killing things

1:15:43

and doing it for fun on a

1:15:46

weekend. That's a whole other podcast about.

1:15:48

like trophy hunting and like how

1:15:50

like trophy hunting and how like it

1:15:52

lifts up these poor communities in Africa

1:15:55

and blah blah and their economies would

1:15:57

fail if... You know, Africa is

1:15:59

a different story altogether than North America.

1:16:01

The trophy hunting is not lifting up

1:16:04

any communities in North America. Let's

1:16:06

be clear about that. What is lifting

1:16:08

up communities is the wildlife viewing economy.

1:16:10

You know, in places like Gardner,

1:16:12

Montana, or places like where I live,

1:16:15

Ken, or Alberta. Photographers. Millions of millions

1:16:17

of dollars get spent in Bamp and

1:16:19

Jasper from tourists coming here to

1:16:21

view wildlife. You know, the wolf viewing

1:16:24

economy in Yellowstone alone is worth 25

1:16:26

million dollars a year. You know,

1:16:28

there's not a trophy hunting business out

1:16:30

there in the world that brings in

1:16:33

25 million dollars a year. And

1:16:35

there's certainly not a, not an argument,

1:16:37

you know, you, there was a great

1:16:40

study done in British Columbia fairly recently

1:16:42

by Stanford University in 2017 that

1:16:44

looked at the economics of bare viewing

1:16:46

trophy. bear viewing, you know, going out

1:16:49

viewing the bear versus trophy grizzly

1:16:51

bear hunting. And the economics of it

1:16:53

just absolutely, the viewing just dwarfed the

1:16:55

hunting. The number of jobs it provided

1:16:58

was 50 to 1 and the

1:17:00

economic benefit was 12 to 1. Wow.

1:17:02

And you don't have to kill something

1:17:04

in the process. You don't kill

1:17:06

it. It's there the next time you

1:17:09

go back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've never...

1:17:11

I mean, what's interesting is, like,

1:17:13

as photographers, I feel like we get

1:17:15

the same rush and the same thrill

1:17:18

that hunters do, and we're tracking animals,

1:17:20

and we're finding ways to photograph

1:17:22

them in creative ways. Like, it's a

1:17:24

very similar... vibe in terms of like

1:17:27

what you get out of it

1:17:29

as a hobby and so like when

1:17:31

people argue about like well it's exciting

1:17:33

and stuff I'm like why try

1:17:35

to use a camera like it's basically

1:17:38

the same thing I do like I

1:17:40

said before I've got lots of good

1:17:42

friends that do hunt and I

1:17:44

can relate to lots of the lots

1:17:47

of what they talk about and you

1:17:49

know to me one of the

1:17:51

reasons they're my friends is they're good

1:17:53

ethical hunters. They're after sustainable meat. They're

1:17:56

not concerned with persecuting predators. So those

1:17:58

to me are the hunters like

1:18:00

what my dad was. and my uncle

1:18:02

and my grandpa were all hunters and

1:18:05

they all just hunt to put

1:18:07

food on the table had no desire

1:18:09

to be out there killing predators or

1:18:11

anything like that under the false

1:18:14

premise of increasing ungulate populations. You know,

1:18:16

as you alluded to earlier, you

1:18:18

know, just going out and

1:18:20

persecuting predators on mass leads

1:18:22

to things like CWD. You

1:18:24

know, it leads to all

1:18:26

sorts of diseases and, you

1:18:28

know, and then we see

1:18:30

in areas like Maine. where

1:18:32

they're just overrun by deer

1:18:34

because there's no predators left.

1:18:36

So there's so many biological

1:18:38

and ecological and ethical issues

1:18:40

with going out and just

1:18:42

randomly persecuting predators. It doesn't

1:18:44

make sense from a science

1:18:47

perspective. It doesn't make sense

1:18:49

from an ethical perspective. It

1:18:51

doesn't follow common sense reasoning.

1:18:53

There's really no argument for

1:18:55

it that they can really

1:18:58

stand behind that isn't easy

1:19:00

to break down. Yeah, yeah. Well, I thought

1:19:02

it might be fun. We could do

1:19:04

a bonus episode for our

1:19:06

patron supporters on kind of

1:19:08

the commercialization aspect of your

1:19:11

photography because I think there's

1:19:13

probably some aspects to that

1:19:15

that are worth exploring. All

1:19:17

right, John, I have a

1:19:19

last question for you.

1:19:21

Who do you recommend for

1:19:23

the podcast? From a conservation

1:19:26

standpoint, I love Melissa Grew,

1:19:28

she's a prominent American photographer,

1:19:30

female, full-time professional, extremely outspoken

1:19:32

about the ethics of wildlife

1:19:34

photography. So many of your

1:19:37

American listeners and Canadian listeners

1:19:39

and actually people around the

1:19:41

world may have heard of

1:19:43

her from her involvement in

1:19:46

setting ethical guidelines with some

1:19:48

of the big US photography

1:19:50

organizations, including NANPA. She is

1:19:52

just really well spoken and

1:19:54

an interesting person to chat

1:19:57

too. I also think of

1:19:59

a couple. Aussies that just have

1:20:01

interesting stories, Charles Davis, Douglas Gimzi, and

1:20:03

then another American that I follow quite

1:20:06

closely and is quite prominent on social

1:20:08

media and just an interesting person is

1:20:10

Max Waugh, who many people may know

1:20:13

from his Yellowstone work and he does

1:20:15

a lot of international photo tours and

1:20:17

things like that. So yeah, I just

1:20:20

think there would be a lot of

1:20:22

interesting interviews in there amongst those four

1:20:24

people. Perfect. Yeah, I've been following Melissa

1:20:27

for a long time and I love

1:20:29

how outspoken she is about game farms

1:20:31

and that whole aspect and how she's

1:20:34

taking them on head on and I

1:20:36

just super love that. I think that's

1:20:38

amazing. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.

1:20:40

Yeah, I mean, it's also putting your

1:20:43

neck out there, you know, it's kind

1:20:45

of like I do it a bit

1:20:47

in a different way, but she really

1:20:50

puts her neck out there and, you

1:20:52

know, it was dealing with a lawsuit,

1:20:54

you know, Well John, this has been

1:20:57

tremendous. I can't thank you enough for

1:20:59

taking the time out of your busy

1:21:01

schedule to join us for the podcast

1:21:04

and I'm really looking forward to seeing

1:21:06

what comes next in your fight against

1:21:08

your fight for the animals. Let's put

1:21:11

it that way. Yeah, thanks Matt and

1:21:13

thanks for having me on. I'm glad

1:21:15

we could finally arrange it. Yeah, absolutely,

1:21:17

man. Well,

1:21:24

thank you to John for the

1:21:27

wonderful conversation and for sticking around

1:21:29

to record our 30-minute bonus episode

1:21:31

That's exclusive to patron supporters You

1:21:33

inspire me tremendously John and I

1:21:36

know that our listeners will have

1:21:38

also loved to hear your story

1:21:40

So thanks for all that you

1:21:42

do. We really really appreciate it

1:21:44

Listeners, if what John said struck

1:21:47

you in any way, I encourage

1:21:49

you to go check out the

1:21:51

show notes and help John's nonprofit,

1:21:53

Exposed Wildlife Conservancy. Thanks for stopping

1:21:56

in, collaborating with us, and listening.

1:21:58

See you you next

1:22:00

week! week!