- [Person Off-Camera] Warning, viewer discretion advised.

(uptempo music) (cows moo) (calm music) (horse's hooves clatter) - Yeah, we're good to go, bud.

(calm music continues) (projector whirs) - [Narrator] Wolves have sometimes been enemies and sometimes rivals.

Early humans and wolves were predators that hunted the same animals to survive.

One time, wolves occupied most of the Northern Hemisphere.

Those times have changed.

(man yells) (wagon wheels clatter) - [Person Off-Camera] When European and American settlers streamed West, they ejected Native Americans from their land and made dramatic changes to the landscape.

Put simply, they believed they had a Manifest Destiny.

(cows moo) And it had to be fed.

(cows' hooves clatter) The wolf did attack cattle and sheep.

Eventually, the US government would sponsor the mass slaughter of wolves throughout much of the Northwest.

They were killed by the tens of thousands.

- [Person Off-Camera 2] The last wolf was killed in Yellowstone in the 1930s.

Now, an inter-agency team is reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park.

- I think wolves are very much the embodiment of wildness for us.

They are something that we can never own.

Wolves have been gone and what's happening is their return home.

- [Newscaster] Wolves are back in Washington for the first time in 80 years, and some of them are eating livestock.

(dramatic music) Somewhere in these woods, gray wolves and cows are trying to coexist.

But only one is a protected species under the active management of Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife.

- Tonight, it was standing room only as more than 200 Stevens County residents gathered tonight to voice their concerns about how the state is managing wolves in Northeast Washington.

A meeting was held in Colville in Stevens County.

That's an area where 10 of Washington's 15 confirmed wolf packs live, and where wolves killed sheep over the summer.

- Our losses, many of 'em go unconfirmed.

And those losses come right out of our bottom line.

- [Newscaster] Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, meanwhile, has ordered the death of up to two wolves in Ferry County after some repeated attacks on cattle.

The department says they will kill one or two wolves from the Togo pack to discourage them after the pack has been tied to three injured calves and a death since late June.

- The burden of returning the nature to "balance" will not fall on those living in the hills of L.A.

or in the concrete canyons of New York.

Instead, the costs and the risks of harboring an apex predator will fall upon those of us who live in rural America.

(bird calls) (flies buzz) - My goal is to prevent that wolf from losing its life and then prevent this rancher from having to not have his livelihood affected negatively by the presence of wolves.

A range rider, it's a balancing act.

It's like a cowboy that instead of pulling out a rifle to deal with that wolf, it's a cowboy that pulls out something else, a non-lethal tool out of the toolbox before a lethal is ever grabbed.

Wolf recovery happens when we've cultivated that want for the community to have wolves in the landscape.

(contemplative music) (door bangs) - [Daniel] How you doing?

- Good.

- [Daniel] Quiet?

- Yeah.

- [Daniel] Good.

Is Mike, is he gonna be gone for a while or is he coming back?

- No, he's coming back.

We're gonna take the chains off the truck and then we're gonna go up and get a load of hay.

- Oh, okay.

Do you wanna look at camera footage now or do we?

- Yeah, we can, let's look at it now.

- Okay, okay.

- So I think he might have to leave.

- Mike?

- About 1:00.

- Okay.

- So let's get that done and.

- A little lower rain.

- And if we have to do the hay, we can do that hay tomorrow.

- Okay.

- I don't wanna buy a whole load if I don't have to.

- Yeah, I figured that's what you're.

- But Nick will be on the other side of that.

He'll want me to.

- All right, so that's the big boy.

I mean, it's like they came out of a circus car.

It's so coordinated.

There's a young one, that's two.

- [Mike] Really young.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- [Jerry] Same size, yeah.

- [Daniel] Then he has got a big, big girlfriend.

So there's number five.

- [Jerry] These are just one right after the other.

- Yeah, this is a second apart.

- Another young one.

- Six.

- [Jerry] That one looked like a pregnant female they collared a year ago.

- Yeah, so this is right up, I mean, technically on the ranch right there, there's 10 of 'em just.

Pretty pleased with the camera placement.

You couldn't ask them to go by any better, so.

- But I wanted him to show you that because you could see that dog is a year older since you saw it and said it was so huge.

- Well, it just looked huge through the binoculars laying there in that road after.

- Yeah.

- They hadn't gone up to it yet.

It was just, like they tracked it.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- But they hadn't gone up to it yet and it's just laying there on the road.

And I'm like, holy crap, that's a big animal.

- And this is right after the video before this.

Remember Jerry, we had one, two, three, we had five that were kind of coming through here.

- [Jerry] Yeah.

- And then went out this trail.

- All those animals that we just saw are within 300 yards of where we're standing right now as the crow flies.

- [Mike] Yep.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- [Jerry] You know, it's not anything to be afraid of, really, because for the most part, you know, they don't want to have anything to do with you.

- [Daniel] Yeah, yeah.

- [Jerry] You know, but you need to be cautious.

- I remember meeting you guys, you guys taking me out to that pasture in the back.

I don't know, from that garage door to about that wall, whole length, you couldn't walk without stepping on wolf tracks.

And it was just like, wow.

- All that one cow, she had that calf down there.

- [Mike] Right as she was having it down on the creek bed?

- Yeah.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- [Mike] We never saw it.

We never found any semblance of the calf.

- I think she had it and she defended it and, but there were wolf tracks twice the size of this building.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- And not a sign of a calf anywhere.

- [Daniel] And then, yeah.

- And she was never the same.

- Yeah, it just takes, just patrolling, putting human presence out there, using things like fladry, having, you know, people, they're willing to use these air horns and stuff like that, so.

- Like you say, it's evolved to the point to where I guess once you get familiar with their activities and understand them, that they aren't just mass killers that are gonna kill you the first time they see you.

- [Daniel] Yeah.

- [Jerry] You know, and they've learned that I'm not gonna kill them.

- [Daniel] Yeah, they're like, we can go, yeah.

- [Jerry] We've come to a standoff now that has to change.

(tranquil music) (snow crunches underfoot) (tranquil music continues) - Good luck, cam.

Tell me what's going on out here.

(tranquil music continues) (melting icicles drip) (running water splashes) You guys wanna treat?

Giant one goes to you.

Go chew your chews, boys.

Make myself a cup of coffee.

See if I can fit this guy in there.

(flames crackle) Oh yeah, you just gotta get a good lean back and start kicking at it.

For all my 20s, 42 now.

(Daniel laughs) For all my 20s, I worked with wolves in captivity at a world-renowned wolf sanctuary.

I was their lead animal care.

Amazing opportunity, amazing people to work with.

In 2012, there was an incident up here in the Wedge.

It's the whole triangular shaped plot of land that abuts the Canadian border.

There was a pack of wolves in there that was lethally removed because the rancher lost a bunch of cattle, supposedly.

And I just kept hearing about wild wolves and the plight of wild wolves.

And hearing them, you know, that they're being shot from a helicopter from our state agency and people are shooting them themselves.

And nothing was really being done to prevent any of that conflict.

And so I literally took out a map of my home state of Washington and plotted every known wolf pack that the public was told about from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and plotted it on this map.

And it created a really dense pocket that was clearly all concentrated in the Northeast corner of our state.

So, put my finger there and I was like, you know, I'm gonna move up to this Colville area.

I had never been up here.

Like, how do I put my wolf knowledge and my horse knowledge and my livestock knowledge together to produce something that'll actually stop conflict?

(flames crackle) All right.

(ducks quack) There they are.

Team trouble.

Team trouble.

(ax crashes against wood) (ax crashes against wood) (wolves howl) These guys were all shot shortly after this.

So before I started this nonprofit Project GRIPH, I'd been range riding just as myself, primarily.

I'm hopefully gonna be breaking ground next year on an educational facility and training range riders there.

Gonna be equipping them, I'm gonna be deploying them all over these areas like California, Oregon, my home state of Washington, Colorado.

I started it to produce results that will help basically keep wolves alive and keep these cultures thriving.

(tranquil piano music) How do I not mess this up?

How do I ensure that by investing into this, it's actually gonna produce the results that I know could happen?

You're working your butt off while you're dumping your literally mortgage payments or power bills or car payments into gas tanks so you can get to the sites, hay bales so you can actually, you know, ask your animals to work without, you know, being a horrible person and not feeding them.

So if I didn't believe that this would work, I wouldn't have done this in the first place.

And by that I mean I wouldn't have moved up into an area that I didn't know.

I wouldn't have started a business that's super hard and controversial.

I wouldn't have gone through the wringer on, you know, my personal finances, my personal life in general.

If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have done that.

Now the fact is I know that it works.

So I don't know if I could quit.

(tranquil piano music continues) (birds chirp) (tranquil piano music continues) (birds chirp) - It's okay, come on, it's okay.

(cows moo) Yeah, they're gonna be nervous.

(cows moo) (cows' hooves clatter) Yeah, I thought that might happen.

There's Millie here.

Don't know what to think, do you?

Monkey ears, huh?

How are you today, huh?

Doing okay?

You gonna have a calf soon?

819, are you gonna have a calf?

So you know that calf behind that cow, there's that little calf and then there's a steer there, that's gonna be a locker beef next year.

But he's following that, a cow, which is 050, she's cycling.

So, she's open.

So she's not gonna have a calf this year, but she's either a candidate to be culled or we'll have to find out if she breeds back.

Like this old cow over here, she's done.

She hasn't had a calf in two years.

You can see she's old.

Sometimes you get attached to 'em and then you don't sell 'em in time.

(cows moo) The theory is to cull mercilessly every year, so sometimes you do that and sometimes you don't.

(birds chirp) The last time I saw that wolf, that one wolf that's always hanging around here, it was walking through the swamp and it actually, a couple cows chased it off into the woods.

And I came down here and then I saw it back up behind the house.

But that was the last time we seen him or heard him.

Although the Game Department did call and say that the collars were up here.

So they've got two of them collared in this area here.

And they're good enough to call up at times and tell you keep a lookout.

- Let's put you in here, actually.

And then we'll run this one out.

- One second here.

(metal scrapes) (tires crunch on gravel) (fladry rustles) - Yeah, dig into that, okay.

- [Jerry] Here.

- [Daniel] Okay.

Let me tie it and I'll fix that.

It's like visually, when it's windy, especially, there's all these little points of movement.

So when you're a large carnivore, you're always looking for that potential threat or danger.

So it's just too many.

That's like hundreds of potential, like what the hell's that, you know?

And then the sound, little.

(Daniel whistles through teeth) And on top of that 'cause there's so much activity, we've made this one hot, it's called turbo fladry.

So if they did happen to touch it, that'll kind of add a little sting to 'em they won't like.

If we pull this tight, it'll stand out okay.

There's a lot of tension.

Yeah, play a tune on here later at night.

(Daniel and Jerry laugh) - [Jerry] What happens if this doesn't work?

- If this doesn't work?

- [Jerry] Yeah, what do we do next?

- You gotta keep stacking up the risk, make sure it's just not worth it.

And then it depends on how it doesn't work.

Are they just coming in?

Are they causing trouble or are they just passing through?

It seems like it didn't take much to offset that behavior.

Just putting this up made it a little bit scary to come in here for that single animal.

- Yeah, the other side of that, we didn't have anything on the cameras.

- Yeah.

- So I don't know if they moved on or what the deal was.

A lot of people don't do this is because of the amount of time and effort it takes, and there's some expense involved with the stuff.

You know, the, but the maintenance on it is almost a daily thing.

You have to go out and take care of it and you have to make sure it's a little hot.

And if you leave and it's dark in the wintertime and you come back and it's dark in the wintertime, you don't have a lot of time to go out and see where a short is on something.

You don't have time to hardly do anything.

You feed your cows and get ready to go tomorrow.

- I've worked with a lot of ranchers in all three of these counties up in Northeast Washington.

Not everybody, like you're a very smart guy to have seen the writing on the wall, I guess is what I'm saying.

- [Jerry] Yeah.

- They're gonna be here whether you want them or not, they're gonna be here.

- [Jerry] Yeah.

- And it's like, would you rather figure out a way that, you know, you can keep your culture, keep your livelihood going?

A lot of people just don't want 'em is the other fact, you know?

- It wasn't all of a sudden the light came on.

It was because the necessity, had animals that were being killed and they were being harassed.

And there had to be something I could do.

- This is part of the ranch's husbandry now.

This is what we do to survive.

Not just survive.

This is how you have to do it to exist with these animals.

I mean, right there is a wild place, right in that tree line - Yeah, I mean, you know, it's worth the effort.

You only have so many places you can put animals too.

And if you're weaning calves, you take all that effort to separate the mamas from the babies.

You know, if you get something running through there and causing troubles and you gotta dump 'em back in with the mother cows, all that effort's gone.

So, you know, putting a mile of fladry up is - [Daniel] Worth it.

- Small, small change to working for two weeks to wean calves and get 'em back on feed, you know, so.

- But I've gone to public meetings and things like that.

None of the ranchers that I work with are there.

- [Jerry] Yeah.

- They're like, why would I do this?

It's a waste of time, it doesn't do any damn good.

- I went to several of those and one guy stood up and said that they're taking DNA and making T-Rex and they're gonna drive us from the, this was the first step.

- What is it?

Agenda 21 or whatever to get everybody into the city.

- Back into the cities, yeah.

You know, and these aren't regular wolves that have been here.

They're dire wolves.

- [Daniel] Yeah, yeah.

- From the Pleistocene or something, you know?

- Then you explain like, wolves don't come to the Canadian border and like, oh, I forgot my passport, better.

(gentle music) It's like they have been crossing back and forth between that invisible line for longer than we've been here.

It's a really complicated subject when you get down to it.

And very little of it is actually wolves and cows.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - I will put 'em in order here.

So she would be here and Dad would be here and then Steve would be here.

And of course I would be here.

So this would be Hoomnist's wife, Sophie, that would be my great-grandmother.

Next generation of course is grandma, offspring is Dad, Alex, who inherited the ground from John Francis, who was Ida's husband.

And he inherited the ground from Sophie and Hoomnist.

So then Dad ranched over there.

And then he married my mother and found this place here.

And that's when it was purchased in 1962.

With the exception of my mother, we were all enrolled at Colville Confederated Tribes.

Pioneers came in and they had to register, you know, with the reservation and stuff.

And that's when my great-great grandfather, they gave him his last name of François.

People that lived around here, the white settlers, had difficulty pronouncing François, so the name was shortened somewhere along the way to Francis and that's what it is today.

Except for on the enrollment records, we're still François.

(emotive piano music) It's really not a job, it's just a part of you.

It's just like those wrenches on that wall over there.

You can grab one and you can remember working with your dad.

(Jerry clears throat) Or you can grab one and you can remember your brother telling you you're using it wrong, you know?

That's the type of attachment you get, you know?

And it's like going out and having a fence post that we put in 40 years ago, remembering having to burrow the rocks out of it or do something like that.

I mean, you literally pour your life into these places and they become that.

You become that attached to 'em.

It does mean something that from generation to generation, you know that that's part of you and part of your parents and maybe another generation earlier are all built into that piece of ground.

They made it possible for you to be able to do that.

You almost feel a little bit of obligation in that way sometimes, to make 'em feel like they would be proud of what you do.

(emotive music) - This is the longest I've ever lived in one place.

Growing up poor, we were doing good if we had a meal on the table and we were doing really good if that meal wasn't pancakes.

When you're struggling to have food security, the thought of having land is something that's like a pipe dream.

It's like a unicorn in your life.

You're like, that exists for other people, but it's just not for me.

(chainsaw buzzes) When I'm out here, I always am grateful.

I always am thankful.

I never wanna look at this and take it for granted because of where I came from.

Gonna cut it and go that way, okay.

This property used to be owned by a gentleman named Bill White.

He was the first guy that we know of, at least in Washington state, that was poaching wolves when they first came back.

I realized when moving over here that these rural cultures and those wolves are, they're intertwined.

Those moments I try and reflect on and people like Jerry helped me.

(chainsaw buzzes) I moved up into the middle of nowhere, into a place that hated what I loved, and found a way to love the people in that place and grow together.

It's like a beautiful turn of events.

Timber.

(wood cracks) (tree crashes) (falling branches thud) (emotive music continues) (birds chirp) (peaceful music) (horse's hooves clatter) You ready to go play with some cows and move them?

You gotta get these guys across the street all safe and sound.

All right?

Let's go.

(horse's hooves clatter) (cows' hooves clatter) (Daniel shushes cows) (water splashes) (cows moo) Let's go.

(water splashes) - Now that they've had a drink, hopefully, did they just walk up there?

- Yeah, they were just like, I am freaking thirsty.

(Daniel shushes cows) Back, back, back, quicker, quicker.

(cows' hooves clatter) (cows moo) There you go.

(cows moo) (peaceful music continues) (birds and insects chirp) All right, buddy.

Cookie, all right, Cookie.

(horse's hooves clatter) (horse snorts) (insects chirp) (horse whinnies) Bless you.

(insects chirp) Up at this peak right here, that's the northern boundary of the allotment.

That's Molybdenite Mountain.

So everything on the southern aspect of that, to everything we can see east of us, everything visible in front of us is all part of the federal grazing allotment.

And when you look out there, it's, I mean for me, the first time I saw it it was like, well, this just doesn't look like a place where I would normally see cows or think of cows.

And it does lead to part of the deal that we're dealing with.

I mean, we're riding in some arduous terrain that's heavily forested.

I mean there's probably two, there's two packs in there, probably consisting of not positive yet, but 10 wolves, somewhere in that chunk of land with 150 cattle.

It could be a little daunting when you look at it.

A lot of space to cover, especially for one guy and his horse.

(leaves rustle) (horse whinnies) There you go.

(Daniel kisses horse) Gimme a kiss?

(Daniel kisses horse) Love you too.

(birds chirp) (engine rattles) So this is part of the deal right here.

Everybody, their whole focus is us right now.

Which to me means that there's not something that's stressing 'em out besides just our presence here and that car that just zipped through pretty quick.

(cows moos) You guys will be good here tonight.

What's up big fella?

Haven't seen you in a while.

Hey, you got a little bit of something on your lip there, bud.

(cow moos) Majority of the job is find the cows, know where they are.

If you know where every cow is, you can guarantee that there's not gonna be a depredation if you're watching the cattle.

Other than that, it's start finding those wolves.

(dramatic music) (engine rattles) (dramatic music continues) They are going down the road.

(dramatic music continues) (wolves howl) (gunfire bangs) See, I wanna keep listening, but they probably have a rendezvous set right there.

I'm gonna grab a camera, I'm gonna walk in there for a minute.

(branches snap) Hold up one second, be quiet.

I'm gonna howl, see if they respond.

(Daniel howls) (wolves howl) (Daniel howls) (wolves howl) All right, guys, loud noise, you guys.

(wolves continue to howl) The pups are like right by us.

(wolves continue to howl) Right there.

You guys stay there.

(wolves continue to howl) Sorry guys to disturb you, but you're not in the safest spot.

Loud noise, guys.

(gunfire bangs) (Daniel howls) (branches snap) So we just got done putting some pressure on 'em just 'cause they're in some private land areas and they're right adjacent to houses.

And that sounded like the whole family unit.

With it being this moist, this looks like a good rendezvous site with this much brush cover.

So, trying to avoid them looking at this as a rendezvous site.

This is a good way for wolves to get killed by private residences.

(Daniel howls) (wolves howl in distance) Hear how far down they are?

They're going the wrong way, though.

(wolves howl in distance) Right there's a good one.

Toe pad, toe pad, toe pad, heel pad.

Heading that way.

(wolves howl) So we did disrupt them.

They broke.

(wolves howl) They might be like right on the road.

Oh, there's one right there, see him?

Right in the road.

All right, I gotta scare him though.

He is looking at us too much.

(gunshot bangs) You guys gotta move.

(gentle music) It's not a safe spot for you babies.

See how long that animal stood there though?

That's not what we want.

I wanna put some fear of humans in him or else somebody will take a shot at one of those guys like that.

Oh, there he is.

He's running down it now.

Loud noise, guys.

(gunshot bangs) This is all I have so we're just making an audible negative stimulus and moving past and going to pursue them.

God, I just hate to scare him though.

It's like this is your house, you know?

I just kicked in your front door and scared you.

Little buddy's just running down the road.

You can tell he's just this year's young.

He doesn't know what to do.

That was actually a positive thing, to encounter them like that.

Try one more time.

(Daniel howls) (birds chirp) That one encounter could have saved that whole pack's life right there.

(cows moo) (geese honk) (sheep baa) What you doing?

You're a good boy.

My special boy, I got three special boys, don't I?

I'm getting ready to go to Colorado.

There's a commission meeting, a Wildlife Commission meeting down there that I'm gonna go and testify on behalf of wolves and ranchers and try and advocate for a better way forward.

My nice pants are going so I look kind of appropriate, not just covered in blood and cow poop and stuff so things can be done better there.

So I'm basically going there to just inform CPW that I really want to help this situation, let them know that Project GRIPH will be starting a chapter in that community and trying to help and work directly with those folks and those animals and kind of pull this out of a nose dive, to be honest.

(emotive music) (airplane engine hums) (emotive music continues) (traffic hums) (emotive music continues) (insects chirp) (emotive music continues) - [Diana] Haskett.

- [Haskett] Here.

- [Diana] Otero - [Otero] Here.

- [Diana] Reading - [Reading] Here - [Diana] Robinson.

- [Robinson] Here.

- [Diana] Chair May.

- [Chair May] Present.

Thank you, Diana, we do have a quorum.

And Commissioner Haskett.

- Thank you, Chairman May.

Unfortunately this was a forced reintroduction.

This is a great example of why wildlife management should be left to the professional biologist and not the ballot.

- We've had 24 confirmed depredations and many more that we are unaware of.

We hope we can solve some issues we are dealing with now before more wolves are on the ground.

We've been doing all kinds of non-lethal methods ranging from fox lights, critter gitters, intensive grazing, cracker shells, spotlights and range riders.

- When I was a range rider two years ago, I saw a fladry buried in the snow and fox lights still in a bundle that was never put up.

This sets the wolf up for failure.

- There are other success stories in the US and Canada of livestock producers who are able to coexist with wolves using non-lethal techniques.

- And I feel like there's a middle ground.

Everyone keeps talking about lethal and non-lethal hazing.

What about non-lethal removal?

I think that should be considered as an option.

- Exhausting non-lethal options before resorting to lethal control seeks to ensure that the root of the problem is being addressed for the sake of both the reintroduction and the rancher.

Otherwise, if the wolves are removed, it's likely that other wolves will eventually come along and find that exact same vulnerability.

And particularly with only one brand-new breeding pack, each removal is a significant setback to the restoration effort.

- When chronic depredation occurs, selective lethal control may become necessary.

This not only prevents future livestock loss, it reinforces predators' natural aversion to people, which in turn makes non-lethal tools more effective.

- Okay, thank you Matt.

- Thank you.

- [Diana] Next we'll have Daniel Curry, followed by Aaron Carney Spar.

- Welcome.

- Hey, thank you guys, my name's Daniel Curry.

I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to this commission.

I'm honored to be here.

Just a little background on me.

I've been working with wolves for 22 years.

I've been doing human-wildlife conflict mitigation in Washington state with the best success rate so far for over 12 years.

What I foresee that needs to happen is that we need to have a standardized range riding practice in place to help this community and help these wolves succeed in the landscape together.

That's something that I don't think is the responsibility and should not be put on the livestock producers at that point, nor the CPW.

I've worked with families for years now that they'll be the first ones to tell you like, I don't have this capacity to do this.

I'm working more than a full-time job.

These communities are hardworking people.

And to throw that on top of them, like, "Hey, go do a 12-hour range riding day now," and succeed, that's just something that can't happen.

So from what I've seen is if we have a standardized project out there, standardized version of range riding that actually offers certain criteria that must be met, success can be made.

I've got a ranch that I'm working with now, for instance, that has three solid, confirmed active wolf packs around them, no problems.

We have another one that's forming close to him.

No problems, working with my team, we've had zero conflict except when we haven't been there in one year when we didn't have funding.

Their neighbors are utilizing their own range riding services, you know, from depredation cost share agreements and other forms of income.

But they just cannot meet that and they're having constant problems and were having to go lethal.

And that's something that we don't want to continue to repeat that cycle.

So I hope that CPW will take a stand and take a different look at how this can be done to benefit all that are experiencing this conflict, 'cause we don't have to have conflict.

This is something that we can choose a different path forward.

So thank you very much.

I don't know if we're about to dong, so thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you guys, and.

- Daniel, I appreciate it.

I do have a question for you.

- Absolutely.

- Do you think if Colorado would have had a more organized range rider program in place before reintroduction we could have alleviated some of the problems?

- That is a beautiful question, Chairman.

And yeah, 100%.

I think we, if we had that service in place, and that was something I was trying to do to help Colorado, that we would've been not in this situation currently and we'd be having a different dialogue.

And I have full intent to start a chapter of the nonprofit that I founded last year here to assist.

But right now, we're kind of running behind the ball.

But that's a really good question.

This is a very proactive approach.

Like, this is not a reactive option and if we do this proactively, we can prevent conflict.

It's not something that I just believe in.

I've seen it, I've seen people going from tearing their hair out to, I've got ranchers that'll send me videos interacting, like wolves interacting with his cattle and he's like, they're beautiful animals when you take the conflict away.

But when they're sitting there, you know, their livelihoods being absolutely threatened, it's hard to see that forest through the trees, so to speak.

So thank you for that question.

- I 100% agree with your thoughts and I've seen the same thing happen that hopefully that's something we can learn from our past mistake is to be prepared with a (gentle piano music) a very organized range rider program for the next time this happens.

(gentle piano music continues) (car engine hums) (gentle piano music continues) - Going to Colorado to testify at that commission meeting was like time traveling back in time 12 years.

See those same issues that people are having, you know, like Jerry was having when I first met him.

You know, I'm also at the point in my path on this, I'm tired of talk, I'm just tired of that.

I'm tired of hearing about the same old, same old.

I'm tired of hearing about the same issues that aren't being solved.

I'm tired of hearing about range ridings, this great tool.

Then you find out that, wait, why are range riders being used incorrectly?

Or why are certain people being empowered to be a range rider that probably should never have been?

Tired of that talk.

I'm tired of hearing about potential funding while I scrounge for food and talk to my lead rider and try and keep 'em on based on a volunteer basis.

I mean, we're doing a lot of volunteer hours.

Whether you're a conservationist or you're a rancher, you're trying to win the fight.

I don't wanna win a fight.

I wanna stop a war.

(gentle piano music continues) - Are you okay?

(cow moos) Yeah, are you okay?

You are just like the only dog I got.

Yeah.

(cows moo) Shaver, yeah, you're a good dog.

(gentle piano music continues) (engine rattles) (gentle piano music continues) - Just lemme see that shovel real quick.

Square one.

- So how'd your trip to Colorado go?

- Oh, pretty well.

I liked what the commissioner asked when I was done.

He is like, "Do you think, Mr.

Curry, that if we had a service like what you're offering here in place before wolves ever got here that would've been beneficial?"

And I said, "Absolutely, sir.

I think we'd be having a way different conversation if that was the case."

- And then on nightly news, they talk about Colorado and having their issues and they're wanting more wolves and.

- I know, they're getting more, like December, they're gonna release.

- Getting 30 more or something like that.

- Yeah, and I think the tentative plan is 15, like before Christmas.

- Before Christmas, oh.

- Which is, I don't know, like when that Copper Creek pack, he got hurt.

You heard that got moved.

What happened right after that?

The other wolves that were adjacent filled that void like we've always talked about.

So they came back in and started depredating on cattle and it was like, that's a telltale sign for me.

That's like, well, something needs to change in the ground human-wise.

- Yeah.

- It's like there, if you just keep putting new wolves in there, you're gonna keep having those problems and those people are gonna suffer and the wolves are gonna suffer.

- That's the boat they missed here in Washington.

- [Daniel] Correct, yeah.

- Because they.

- I think they sunk it, they didn't miss.

- They were just.

(Jerry and Daniel laugh) So unprepared and nobody knew what they were doing.

And it sounds like the same thing down there in California or Colorado.

- But I think that Colorado could be the state that sets a good example of how we can you know, get ahead of this, so.

- I was wondering, is that cool now?

Or is that.

- Yeah, I can.

- How long do you have to?

- I can click that at two minutes.

- It's gonna be dark soon and I'm afraid of the dark.

(peaceful music) Well, Daniel, I appreciate all the help you're giving me and look forward to working together.

It's good to have a friend and colleague at the same time, so just wanted you to know that.

- Well, thanks Jerry.

- Hopefully we'll have some more good times.

- Yeah, man, we'll get this off the ground somehow and.

- Yeah.

- I guess, well I do want to say, I sure appreciate the hell outta you, man.

That's.

- Yeah.

- This is not an easy thing to be working on and I wouldn't want, couldn't ask for a better buddy to get to know and work on this subject with.

- Well, we, it's been a synergistic relationship, you know, to coin a overused term.

- Yeah.

- We've had the opportunity to help each other out.

- Yeah.

- That didn't, makes it even better.

And then just, you know, having to do the job.

- Yeah, so.

- I appreciate you saying that, man.

I just continue, every time I come out here, I just learn more and more, so.

- All righty, well.

- Thanks, Jerry.

- Oh.

- Watch out for the nasty wire.

- Yeah, hold on.

- [Jerry] There we go.

- [Daniel] That'll just get you.

(peaceful music continues) (engine rattles) (peaceful music continues) (birds chirp) (engine rattles) (peaceful music continues) - [Daniel] Looks like the feet are just starting out.

- She's looking around, pretty soon it'll all come out here.

She's gonna move a little bit, I know.

- [Daniel] He's got his feet on the ground.

There we go.

- [Jerry] Yeah?

Come on.

- [Daniel] Just about.

- [Daniel] Let me out.

(calf thuds) - [Daniel] There you go.

- [Jerry] There we go, bang.

And mama.

- [Daniel] Good job, mama.

- And we've got a calf on the ground, they say.

- Nice, no complications it looked like too.

- Nope.

- Came out.

(peaceful music continues) (cow moos) (camera shutter clicks) (peaceful music continues)