Conservation and Outdoor Recreation for the spokesman review which is washingtons second largest newspaper so hes a busy guy. His one place would bespokane washington. Despite his workload he has saved some of his writing energy to write a book about a phenomenon he was seeing something larger happening while he was reporting that her return of the wolf and has he covered for the paper i found the publics passionate response revealed a more complex story he followed to create this book. Hes joined by erica barry, the author of wolfish, a book that tries to understand our myths about wolves tracks rtone through the mountains of oregon. If you think of a good question during the conversation keep it, all on to it because hopefully we will have time for a question and answer and as you have noticed cspan is here ontonight so if you have questions wait for audio to put the microphone therefore you. Finally, afterwards eli will be up here to sign books for you so youre going to wind up here and be able to leave that way. Reminder we do close at 8 55 so lets welcome eli. [applause] thank you for coming, appreciate it n, great to be here and host this event in a great place to be reading a book i wrote. Im going to read a short section before it comes up. Like most born to this age nature is a distant amenity to me. I like to go hiking, skiing, hunting and even occasionally birdwatching but theres no urgency in my relationship with the natural world, no deep communion. My times outside our sojourns between the next sojourn and warm netflix series. A horse requires a different level of commitment. We were hiking and encouraging vegetation and we stopped often and i track his raven. Its hard work made harder by a son that burns through the morning clouds and left that air heavy with moisture. Curry describes horses and 1000 pounds third graders and treats them as such employing progressive discipline that would make the most conscientious parents look like fools o. An animal can toss me from his back before i could call her in surprise on the little lax with discipline. It turns out raven, like many handsome creatures used to skating bound good looks does not like to work out her bird is compared to care foolish reporters he likes toes eat. We take a few steps and then he stops. Bent his graceful neck andnd elbows boatright making the little kissing sounds or whateverit performs thanks raves attention as of a gun is gone off smooch, smooch ago. Raven just keeps on chowing down. A goes for several hours. Meeting often in heating my requests. 1000pound thirdgraders led me too live another day we turned around i breathe easier. Raven two is excited to go home and suddenly the lethargic pace he has maintained turns into an excited trot. He is leading away on his horses keeps raven from bolting altogether. Its quickly evidence ive lost what ever little control i had. Having that one particular steep hill raven guns that, it drags me through lowlying tree branches pretty squeeze my eyes shut, the branches whipping my pacesetter by myself i have medical insurance. Smooch, smooch. I was on curry the perfect picture of obedience. He is not happy. Fac scratched i am just pleased not to have been turned to the ground both raven needs to listen to you but you only listen if you he respects cheaper to respectct you need to trust you. A pulse of woody debris for my hair over the next hour we work on discipline walk the same section of trail over and over ask him to stop. He does not listen to nay which mostly doesnt ask him to back out. Silly raven gets the picture. This is important. We are out in the real mountains on treacherous terrain raven must obey otherwise raven might get hurt. Troy left the hill drops steeply 50 feet to raging creek jammed with logs which makes him wonder what trulyn treacherous terrain that looks like or youou might t hurt but slow frustrating work for both raven and me curry for his part teachers with extraordinary amount of patients. Raven cannot get the settle off, get raven cannot wait to get the saddle off, getth under the tarp and need some hay. Unfortunate for him the south the plan. Ab said we will rest for about an hour and head out again. Curious government crash course in horsemanship after all. For the end of our break room which i eat the rain return too. Raven is tethered to the horse trailer with a thick line of rope. I approach him to put his reins noon a job i have by now learned to do somewhat efficiently. First time try that thicker light retire in the back of his neck press or to place the reins on raven. I thick loop of stout rope that lays on sensitive snouts. He snorts, shakes his pretty head and backs up. The thick line of tides on the back of his neck rising up on his hind legs and confused before. Curry sense of the disturbance of the other side of the trailer and yells get away from them no need to say it twice. Room bucks again he starts to run. Will be a beautiful sight if i werent so worried about the hooves. Curry waste no time he felt raven not running but not exactly walking come on calm down. Raven worsegh of the camp briefy becoming entangled in the lines holding up and ripping himself free again. Curry follows. In the woods are so large hole. One of the old wells now full of trash. Curry gets a between raven and the deathtrap using stumps and smooches he pushes a set up animal away from camp and uphill due thicker brush and out of my sight. I am left float burying my mistake will hurt korea raven or both of them dared im soaking wet. My pants are torn, boot saga, this is not the kind of drama expected to find when i came looking for wolves. But not. Im so glad you read that portion. It is a really good advertiser for journalism i think. An advertisement for this book. You walk away with such a comprehensive understanding of how he got into where we are. And also looking at the future. But also it is joyful to read stories are. You are very much not writing that book but you are on the ground and we are with you in a way that such a compelling example of storytelling to thank you for this book break works really good to hear britt is hoping to make it engage. Its going to resonate with so many people excited to him this to the taxidermist, arrived from farcical uncle and my conservationist uncle which i think speaks the project of this book. I wrote a woeful book that came out in february. My publicist said theres someone else wrote another wolf book my First Response was like oh gosh, are there enough Wealth Effects to go around . And i have to say in reading your book i was jealous. I feel like this is a really a vital book. Is very full of wolf books and yet eliza wolf books takes its own territory there. I think about this book is a solution to the task forward you offer. The portraits we get of like daniel curry we t briefly lead o one meal a day among other details about his life. First i should ask, how are you feeling . It has been out a fewew weeks. We are talking little bit before this. Ive read this book so many times but even now and it reading it i think i dont want to read that again. Ive been over it so many times. I am thrilled other people are reading it and liking it. Quick school. I want to talk more about how you put together this book, reported that her goals with it how you ripple in resonate. People come and yell at you about your wolf reporting and you decide like going to leave this topic behind im going to write a whole book about it for quicksort for regional newspaper in eastern washington. I am in a city there we are covering original area thats quite rural mostly. Whenever i would write a wolft story or a newspaper story about wolveses often i would get flack from both sides which that means youre doing thebo right thing with people yelling at you, the summer in the middle there. Like that is a hard thing to realize that you kind of have to live without. And in the wolf topic in particular that just kept happening i felt i was missing some deeper story there that he wanted to get out. To do that and get the story as scheduled interview or a day with a biologist, a rancher, and a politician who is representing ranchers in that region. So we spent the day driving on the dusty Forest Service road like a hot august day. It was fine and i learned a lot of facts like you mentioned about wolves. It did not feel like there is any necessity there it was sitting in the truck looking up at the hills werewolves have once been. And towards the end of that day we came across this camp. I will never forget it. There were two horses tethered under the only spot of shade and attend to the blazing sun. We pull up on this guy all muscle from outdoor runs out of the tent to see who we are. He spent most of his youre basically out in the woods in northeast washington trying to keep wolves from attacking cattle. Ng hes not working directly for the ramp search hes working for a nonprofit. Io he struck me you could tell he had serious integrity he was on the ground during the work in the way i had not seen and living this very intense life. And like doing it, living that life. Just as the story, as a character i was hooked on him immediately wanted to get to know them better. That was sort of the beginning of this but that turned into a newspaper story then morphed into thiss book. I am curious what your process was like following him around and Building Trust and immersing yourself the way you did . Al ror journalism is funny. You spend a lot of time and tried to get to know them but youre not just hanging out with them. You are there to do a job. As very upfront with them right off the bat i want to write a story about you and the way i want to do is spend a lot of time witho you. But i need you to be okay with that thats quite a lot of access and daniel is a private guy. Use of the best subjects are stories are not promoting themselves. I had to explain and be really upfront with him i spent three years and i like him a lot we could be friends at a different scenario but i always had to remind him and myself i am doing a job here. My initial thing was to be very honest and veryo. Upfront about what we were trying to do and he responded well to that, he respected that. There are moments of a book where you disagree with daniel and you vocalize that. I think an example of how conflict exists in this book which is it does not need to be a breeze turned away from each other rex daniel is an idealist. He has been living this life or for10 years and he is very critl of how washington and other western states have handled Wolf Management. Even though if you look at the more rational invite numbers wait washington is doing pretty well in the broader Wolf Management world. We had some disagreements there. But it was never a blow up. Blowup. The beginning of thehe sectin you talk about your relationship with the outdoors and so many huts, someone who goes climbing. When is work on my wolf book people thought i must love it wolves or hate wolves try to understand people are so fascinated. Your particular identity help shape the b book how you interacted with the wilderness. I grew up in Northern Idaho on t the tail end of the Silver Valley which is a rich mining district from gold and whatnot. Its politically conservative area at my father is University Professor and my mother owns a yoga studio seo you could guess their policy. I kind of grew up it was sort of in two worlds in some ways. I think that, more than anything set the stage for how i think about the journalism i do what michael what this book was to try to understand polar opposites and arguments. And try to figure out where both sides are coming from and find htthat middle ground speed evenf you may not agree with him at the end of the day but at least listen. I think that really informed her growing up in that context. Yes it makes me think one of first reporting trips that i took and i had family that are livestock producers in some ways. I also lived in portland and i remember going to report in Eastern Oregon and someone said to wear flannel and dont say you are from portland. And also really far away and walk. And i am curious how you dealt with going into the situations where it is such a heated topic your reporting on worlds and people instantly and i dont know. What was that process like navigating again yes it came down to time spending the time. I talked to ranchers and talk to them right off the bat. I had to sort of prove to them i wasnt just flying in and flying out that it action wanted to understand and spend the time with them. I think that is the main thing. I found that most people if you give them that respect they will respond. Not everyone of course. Even if youre very different from them wanting to be listened to. So for the most part it was showing i was willing to put the time in and really listen to them. You appear in the book in a certain way short avatar for the reader or we can imagine that first seen you all heard were on the horse show the real challenges for Wolf Management. There is not a wolf and that seemed at first it was like this is a surprising first seen this not a wolf in the book about wolves but it is about the actual challenges of doingng th. It in a place like northeast washington or oregon youre most likely not going to see a wolf. I know people who live in a wolf country and want to see b wolves and have not seen when i was lucky enough to see one. So i think in a way its necessary to tell the story that way. The first chapter you have a line wolves and cite the kind of passion usually reserved for war and infidelity. Passions that highlight deep political and social divide. You do such a good job of overviewing how we got to this polarization points. But also what wolves and humans are like a species and why we are in competition potentially that social, cultural and somer, of these biological realities. This is a very large questions o answer however you want. Why art wolves and humans in a special relationship . It is a huge question pricks i heal people ask me and thats imm asking you at. [laughter] works maybe you can solve it. We coevolved we are both general species through our pack oriented rely on social connections to survive. Humans are not the strongest or fastest wolves are neither. But on paralleled pads just an evolution. N. Wolves could mess up your life particularly from a wolf attacking the sheeps like a big deal you could starve to death. Some of the case so much anymore. The cultural memory is still there. I so sing to something today from dannaa lopez he wrote a great book. He is talking about the fact we have domesticated dogs. They arett reflecting us back to ourselves in some way and this is maybe a little more philosophical we are seeing our relationship with this animal and our pet dog is not our pet dog it is a wild animal that has strong reactions on both sides great love and great hatred. There is an uncanny i thought that phrase you are either with us or against us. And this idea of the wolf is not the dog it doesnt care what we are doing by and large in that its hard for humans. Its hard to put aside their ego to face that. You mentioned being agnostic about wolves i could not understand the strong feelings either will let things a little i was driving on the forest on t service road early in the morning on this flash of movement running off the road so i jumped out the car walked down between these two roads there is a wolf may beat 100 yards downhill we made eye contact for a second or two but it felt a couple minutes. Thats a common denominator when people who have seen wolves they lose all track of time and proportion. At that. It was a strong connection we were staring at each other. Itin was kind of intense. My heart was going wolves are predators and they have their own wills and desires. Its not connected to what human ones in the and looks super similar to dogs and i i think tt triggers something. Phillipe talk a lot about the moment of eye contact its willing to say its bigger than we can understand it away. We started think about this is a book coming out of the pandemic. That speaks out to the reporting are doing but also the ways the wolf conversation has potentially changed to the last few years. Give a lot more urban folks moving out. We see political tides that areh everchanging. Give a great quote its clear the old model of coexistence, you live there, i live here will not work therere is no there anymore. Nono here. I amow wondering your perspectie on how to write this book at the last fewyo years how is the pandemic, to give a couple examples how that may be influence wolf conversation. I really got into the meat of this reporting for this book and writing like in june 2020 i think a sabbatical from my day job and work so book. The pandemic was still unknown the political dimensions are starting to come up on the new saw this thing generally speaking higherin income people were moving into rural areas and working remotely. Thats changing the dynamic. Theyre getting a lot of tension and generally speaking there is attention. N. That infused that wolf debate was a metaphor in some ways that was preexisting. There is a great quote wolves are just reflecting that felt super relative and true particularly that time. That miss anything under question there . Think that is so true. Makes me think of people i talked to say ranchers may be carried wolves but if you have people moving out and buying a ranch is gone out of business and subdividing it, suddenly youve got roads. Stars also harming wolf habitat in a way i was sort of interested. I not thought of the sides before. He talked about chronic wasting disease the relationship between that and covid19. Chronic wasting disease is a neurological disease that impacts deer and elk and moose. Its really i bad. It is similar to mad cow disease it is similar to that effect. And it can destroy it, it has destroyed deer population at different parts of the u. S. As the pandemic was happening isan ongoing concern for wildlie managers as trikes keep chronic waste disease rooms writing further west to present a Washington State yet i dont think its an organ. Anyway it is a Wildlife Disease that has some very clear pellet up to covid19. The whole body of research. A few studies and a lot to learn still wolves were quite good at controlling chronic waste abuse has been Interesting Research in montana or the wolves will select animals that are sick with cw even that they are asymptomatic. The question is how did they know that . Somehow they are reflecting this animals and killing them and that the natural buffer on them. Thats an obvious tide in parallel. What if you think about a said it came out of wisconsin the wolves in the road. It was something about the deer were afraid of the road because there are wolves inng your it ws causing far for your car fewer s and they calculated how much interesting their studies about the ripples you would