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get informed and inspired. Learn

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more in the support tab

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at NTPR.org. Back in the 1700s, a

0:18

French thinker with a super long name

0:20

really peeved off Thomas Jefferson. I'm pretty

0:22

sure I'm butchering this so French speakers

0:24

bear with me, but the guy's

0:26

name was Georges Louis Lecler Comte

0:28

de Buffet de Buffen. I'll just call

0:31

him Buffon. He was... This towering

0:33

figure in 18th century natural history.

0:35

That's Mark Barrow. He's a professor

0:38

in the Department of History at

0:40

Virginia Tech, and he'll be guiding

0:42

us through this saga of Jefferson's

0:45

Brush With Extinction, because Buffon had

0:47

published this really influential

0:49

idea. The notion was... The environment

0:51

shapes, the organisms that live there

0:54

in some very profound ways. This

0:57

theory of degeneracy, that there were

1:00

a certain number of species that

1:02

existed and that as a result

1:04

of the particular environments that they

1:07

found themselves in, they would change

1:09

form over time. According to this

1:11

idea, species adapt to their environments.

1:14

This is something we've shown to

1:16

be the case today. But back

1:18

then, Buffon took that idea in

1:20

a very different direction than we're

1:22

used to. Nasty environments he

1:25

thought. would sort of produce nasty

1:27

creatures. There was kind of a

1:29

moral element to it. And in

1:31

particular, he thought the environment of

1:33

North America, because it was presumably

1:36

colder and damper, that the species

1:38

that were existing there would become

1:40

smaller, more feeble, less fertile over

1:42

time. So this theory of degeneracy,

1:45

as it became known, was kind

1:47

of menacing if you lived in

1:49

the newly formed United States, especially

1:51

because other theorists applied this idea

1:53

to people. There were some really

1:56

terrible racism bound up with it,

1:58

but the notion was America... his

2:00

damp climate would make all

2:02

of its people small and

2:04

weak just like our birds

2:07

and our deer. So as

2:09

a country fighting for its

2:11

freedom from a colonial power,

2:13

this really didn't bode well

2:15

for us if true. Thomas

2:18

Jefferson really respected Bufon, but

2:20

he hears this idea and

2:22

he's like, oh hell no!

2:24

He must have thought this

2:27

Bufon's a buffoon! He knew

2:29

America held these magnificent species,

2:31

deer, elk, moose, bison, all

2:33

of them enormous. If we

2:36

were to succeed in the

2:38

international order, Jefferson thought, we'd

2:40

need everybody else not to

2:42

think we're a bunch of

2:44

puny, fragile, weaklings. So we

2:47

did everything possible to just

2:49

try to refute it. From

2:51

Montana Public Radio in the

2:53

Montana Media Lab, this is

2:56

the wide open. I'm Nick

2:58

Ma. On today's extra, how

3:00

Thomas Jefferson's quest to prove

3:02

America's wildlife was bigger and

3:05

better and better than anywhere

3:07

else led him to face

3:09

off with the idea of

3:11

species going extinct. Stay with

3:14

us. it would turn up

3:16

at all these wild historic

3:18

times. At the same time

3:20

that Thomas Jefferson was drafting

3:22

the Declaration of Independence, he

3:25

was taking notes on the

3:27

animals of North America. While

3:29

he was deep in correspondence

3:31

about urgent matters affecting our

3:34

fledgling democracy, he was frantically

3:36

writing hunters and explorers, even

3:38

other founding fathers, begging them

3:40

to find an animal that

3:42

could save the country. Specifically, he wanted

3:45

to find a moose, the bigger, the

3:47

better. In 1784, he wrote a letter

3:49

to fellow founding father and declaration signer

3:51

William Whipple. Here's part of that letter,

3:54

read by reporter and voice actor John

3:56

Hooks. A complete skeleton of one is

3:58

what I would wish to procure. Or

4:00

if this cannot be got, then the

4:02

horns, hoof, and such bones as would

4:05

enable me to decide on its size.

4:07

I am with very great esteem, dear

4:09

sir, your most obedient, humble servant." You'd

4:11

think back then it wouldn't be that

4:14

hard to track down a moose, shoot

4:16

it, and ship it abroad, but the

4:18

affair proved surprisingly difficult for Jefferson. He

4:20

bugged Whipple again a couple years later.

4:22

I am emboldened to renew my application

4:25

to you on the subject of the

4:27

moose, the caribou, and the elk. The

4:29

skin, skeleton, and the horns of each

4:31

would be in acquisition here more precious

4:34

than you could conceive. I am with

4:36

very great esteem, dear sir, your most

4:38

obedient humble servant. Jefferson, in addition to

4:40

ending all these letters with my new

4:42

favorite email sign off, your most obedient

4:45

humble servant. Is hell bent on disproving

4:47

the theory of degeneracy. He

4:50

devotes part of the only book

4:52

he ever writes to refuting the

4:54

phone head on. In the book,

4:56

notes on the state of Virginia,

4:58

he documents the size of America's

5:00

wildlife and compares it to the

5:02

size of European animals. America has

5:04

bison, beavers, elk, and bears way

5:06

bigger than anything comparable in Europe,

5:08

he argues. And at the top

5:10

of his list of enormous American

5:13

fauna is the mammoth. That's

5:16

because for years people have been

5:18

digging up these curious giant fossils.

5:21

Here's Mark Barrow again things like

5:23

the teeth the molars large bones

5:25

the thigh bone and other bones

5:27

What the heck are these things

5:30

they were finding them among the

5:32

theories were that they might belong

5:34

to a group of giants human

5:36

giants that that had been talked

5:38

about in the Bible before the

5:41

great flood, but they really didn't

5:43

know what these things what these

5:45

things were A group of slaves,

5:47

when they unearthed fossils in South

5:50

Carolina, realized they resembled the teeth

5:52

of elephants in their home country.

5:54

So the theory became, these things

5:56

are mammoths. Today, we know these

5:58

creatures actually turned out to be

6:01

mastodons, which are a little bit

6:03

different than mammoths. But the fossils

6:05

seize Jefferson's imagination. Jefferson started collecting

6:07

them and was very interested in

6:10

the possibility that they belonged to

6:12

one of these creatures that was

6:14

really large and would help to

6:16

refute Buffon's theory of degeneracy. Now,

6:18

there's a big leap here, because

6:21

these bones, if you found them

6:23

in your backyard, you might think

6:25

they're from something that's extinct. But

6:27

Jefferson gets a hold of these

6:30

bones. and it occurs to him

6:32

that these things might still be

6:34

plotting around the country, somewhere remote

6:36

and unexplored. So Jefferson, like most

6:39

Westerns at the time, firmly believe

6:41

that extinction could not take place.

6:43

That extinction violated basic notions about

6:45

the balance of nature and violated

6:47

notions about the great chain of

6:50

being. I'm going to get back

6:52

to Jefferson and his search for

6:54

the mammoth and of course that

6:56

moose to send over to Buffon,

6:59

but I need to make a

7:01

little tangent here on this idea,

7:03

the great chain of being. It

7:05

was part of this belief system

7:07

that had shaped Western culture for

7:10

thousands of years. You could take

7:12

every organism from the lowest organism

7:14

to the most complex and usually

7:16

humans were at the top of

7:19

this chain and you could line

7:21

them up and there was this...

7:23

continuous series from the most simple

7:25

to the most complex. God in

7:27

this very Christian worldview was perfect.

7:30

So the great chain of being

7:32

didn't leave room for any of

7:34

God's creatures to stop existing. He

7:36

created the world as it should

7:39

be, and as it always would

7:41

be. Humans were right at the

7:43

top of that hierarchy in this

7:45

order, closer to perfection than any

7:47

of the plants and animals around

7:50

us. but we still didn't have

7:52

the power to change the world

7:54

in such a fundamental way as

7:56

making a species go extinct. Thomas

7:59

Jefferson, like many thinkers of his

8:01

day, buys right into this system

8:03

of thinking. was trapped by his

8:05

mental conceptions of the world like

8:07

we all are. We have ideas

8:10

some of which are unexamined assumptions

8:12

about how the world operates and

8:14

he's trapped within those and he's

8:16

finding these these fossils and he

8:19

becomes later recognized as the founder

8:21

of paleontology in North America, but

8:23

he doesn't believe extinction could exist.

8:25

And he thinks in fact that

8:27

the remains that they are finding

8:30

are the fossilized remains are remains

8:32

of creatures that still exist somewhere

8:34

out in the West somewhere that's

8:36

unexplored. And at the time, very

8:39

little of the Western part of

8:41

the United States had been explored.

8:43

And so it wasn't completely unreasonable

8:45

to make the claim that if

8:47

we have these fossilized remains of

8:50

creatures that there's a good chance

8:52

that they might still exist somewhere

8:54

out in the West that we

8:56

haven't yet explored. Jefferson still thinks

8:59

he can prove Buffon wrong. These

9:01

mammoth fossils keep getting found, so

9:03

he thinks that think it still

9:05

be out there, and he's got

9:07

these hunters looking for a huge

9:10

moose. In 1778, good news comes.

9:12

Jefferson gets word that a friend

9:14

of his, after a treacherous winter

9:16

in Vermont, finally had an opportunity

9:19

to take a moose. Killing and

9:21

transporting the thing was a weeks-long

9:23

project involving a team of 20

9:25

men and miles of plowing. Eventually,

9:27

a bulky box arrives on Buffon's

9:30

doorstep in Paris. Attached is a

9:32

letter. I am happy to be

9:34

able to present to you at

9:36

this moment the bones and skin

9:39

of a moose, the horns of

9:41

another individual of the same species.

9:43

Travel in processing has been rough

9:45

on the animal's remains. Its fur

9:47

is falling off and clumps on

9:50

the scragally bits of pelt that

9:52

haven't decomposed. Somehow, its original antlers

9:54

had been lost, so another set,

9:56

from another moose entirely, has been

9:59

thrown in the box with the

10:01

animal's bones. Jefferson isn't happy with

10:03

these replacement parts. The horns of

10:05

the elk are remarkably small. I

10:07

have certainly seen of them, which

10:10

would have weighed five or six

10:12

times as much. It's funny to

10:14

me to hear a founding father

10:16

this way, insecure and posturing. It's

10:19

way bigger normally, I swear. I

10:21

wish these spoils, sir, may have

10:23

the merit of adding anything new

10:25

to the treasures of nature which

10:27

have so fortunately come under your

10:30

observation. Sir, your most obedient humble

10:32

servant. Even though the whole affair

10:34

has sitcom levels of mishaps, Jefferson

10:36

still hopes this shipment will be

10:39

the nail in the coffin of

10:41

Buffone's theory of degeneracy in America.

10:43

But Paphone dies shortly after he

10:45

receives the moose and the other

10:47

bones. He never has a chance

10:50

to publish if this gragily, piece-together,

10:52

ungulate, changes his mind. Instead, in

10:54

the decades that follow, the theory

10:56

of degeneracy dies a quiet death,

10:59

as ideas around the natural world

11:01

undergo drastic change. Another scientist looks

11:03

at those very same mastodon bones

11:05

Jefferson is so curious about. And

11:07

this scientist gets another idea about

11:10

the animals' animals fate. It's an

11:12

idea that shakes up our collective

11:14

understanding of our planet. In 1796,

11:16

this young scientist, a Frenchman named

11:19

George Cuvier, gives a public lecture

11:21

in Paris. Those bones, he claims,

11:23

are from a species that no

11:25

longer exists. That mammoth is extinct.

11:27

The idea spreads across the world,

11:30

but Jefferson still isn't convinced that

11:32

extinction could even happen. Even with

11:34

Buffon dead and this new idea

11:36

taking hold, he's sure that the

11:39

mammoth could still exist, and he

11:41

wants to find it. As part

11:43

of his instructions to explorers out

11:45

in the West, including Lewis and

11:47

Clark, he orders them basically to

11:50

keep an eye out for large

11:52

elephant-like creatures. He doesn't use those

11:54

words exactly in the Lewis and

11:56

Clark. expedition orders, but he does

11:59

in some of the others. Basically,

12:01

keep an eye out for species

12:03

that are presumed to be extinct

12:05

and bring back remains of them

12:07

if you can so that we

12:10

can document that they actually exist.

12:12

Those explorers find Bison. Elk, grizzly

12:14

bears, wolves, a landscape teeming with

12:16

bounty that seems limitless at the

12:19

time. But much to Jefferson's chagrin,

12:21

they didn't find any mammoths. Today,

12:23

the possibility of extinction seems so

12:25

obvious. But back in Jefferson's day,

12:27

passenger pigeons darkened skies. Brilliant flashes

12:30

of green and orange could signal

12:32

Carolina parakeets in the south. Caribou

12:34

roamed in the northern states. America

12:36

seemed so large and full of

12:39

infinite bounty. I sort of get

12:41

how Jefferson could so obstinately deny

12:43

extinction. America was enormous and mysterious.

12:45

The West in particular was laden

12:47

with desert canyons and mountain ranges.

12:50

It was a labyrinth that seemed

12:52

endless. But Jefferson also lived as

12:54

the Industrial Revolution began, as we

12:56

began using more resources more rapidly.

12:59

As the world shrunk in the

13:01

mystery of the vast expanse in

13:03

the West diminished as the landscape

13:05

was explored and mapped. a moment

13:07

and that he says you know

13:10

the scales have fallen from my

13:12

eyes and I repudiate everything I've

13:14

ever written but toward the end

13:16

of his life he does kind

13:19

of quietly accept the notion that

13:21

extinction it may have taken place.

13:23

He does in the face of

13:25

increasing evidence gradually come to the

13:27

realization that extinction probably has taken

13:30

place. So Jefferson dies and over

13:32

time so does this idea that

13:34

extinction couldn't happen. Scientists speculate that

13:36

extinctions come from large-scale natural phenomena.

13:39

A giant volcanic eruption, that kind

13:41

of thing. By and large, even

13:43

as we collectively reckoned with the

13:45

idea that species like the mammoth

13:47

no longer existed, we still couldn't

13:50

accept that we, as humans, had

13:52

the power to manipulate the natural

13:54

world in such fundamental ways. About

13:56

three decades after Jefferson's death, one

13:59

scientific expedition near Iceland, changes that

14:01

forever. In the late 1850s, these

14:03

two British ornithologists set out looking

14:05

for great ox. These large... flightless

14:07

birds with big black beaks. These

14:10

scientists try everything looking for ox,

14:12

but they can't find any, and

14:14

nobody they interview seems to know

14:16

of any living birds either. The

14:19

species, it turns out, is extinct.

14:21

It had been hunted for its

14:23

feathers and tasty meat. Rich European

14:25

collectors wanted ox carcasses and eggs

14:27

for their collections. Back in 1844,

14:30

fishermen had encountered the last known

14:32

pair of the birds. They rung

14:34

their necks and stomped on their

14:36

egg. This tragedy leads to a

14:39

new hypothesis that fundamentally alters that

14:41

old theory of extinction. Humans can

14:43

cause species to cease existing, these

14:45

scientists argue. For the great Ak

14:47

and for other critters too, we

14:50

were the catastrophe. Extinction is happening

14:52

in real time and people are

14:54

causing it. Looking

15:01

back on Jefferson's tangle with extinction,

15:04

what's most striking to me is

15:06

just how recently we came to

15:08

grapple with this problem that seems

15:10

so entrenched in our reality. Extinction

15:13

is a fact Jefferson lived with

15:15

only briefly, but it's a part

15:17

of all of our lives now.

15:19

Today, nobody really knows exactly how

15:22

many species we've lost to human-caused

15:24

extinction. At least hundreds, maybe thousands.

15:26

A 2019 report from the United

15:28

Nations estimated that about a million

15:31

species of plants and animals faced

15:33

the threat of extinction across the

15:35

globe. It doesn't take a dug-up

15:37

molar or a box of skeletons

15:40

in our doorstep to wake us

15:42

up to the reality that extinction

15:44

is occurring at unprecedented rates, thanks

15:46

to us. The question now is

15:49

how do we agree on what

15:51

to save, and how to save

15:53

it. Thanks

16:04

so much to corncates carny

16:06

for the stellar edits. Mary

16:08

Ald for the production support

16:10

and John Hooks for the

16:12

unrivaled Thomas Jefferson voice acting.

16:15

Jesse Stevenson created art for

16:17

the season and our theme

16:19

music is by Isaac Opats,

16:21

arranged and produced by Dylan

16:23

Rodriguez featuring Jordan Bush on

16:26

Petal Steel. Other original music

16:28

is by Dylan Rodriguez. Special

16:30

thanks to Mark Barrow, author

16:32

of Nature's Ghost from the

16:34

Age of Jefferson to the

16:36

Age of Extinction, and also

16:39

to Lee Allen Dugatke. who

16:41

wrote a fascinating book called

16:43

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant

16:45

Moose. This project was produced

16:47

in collaboration with the Montana

16:50

Media Lab at the University

16:52

of Montana School of Journalism.

16:54

The lab is a center

16:56

for audio storytelling and journalism

16:58

education that elevates perspectives from

17:00

underserved communities in the West.

17:03

Learn more at Montana Media

17:05

Lab.com. The wide open is

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also a production of Montana

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programming. More information at MTPR.org.

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The wide open is supported

17:22

by the Murray and Jan

17:24

Ritland Fund, the Cinnabar Foundation,

17:27

and Humanities Montana.