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Becoming | Stained by History Apr 04, 2023

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Glacier has a history of oil extraction. We travel to Many Glacier to see the consequences, and the causes of climate change. Along the way we talk to young people about how it feels to live with the weight of history. Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J Rising Voices Poetry Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [wolves howling] Narrator: It’s the winter of 1902, and I’m cold and content. Each night seems to grow longer, and each storm brings more snow—a welcome break after a hot and sweaty summer. I usually have this place all to myself... [sparse and eerie music begins, with strings plucking] But not tonight. A flash of orange erupts from the valley below, a ball of fire and billowing black smoke—leaping flames joined by a chorus of shouting, desperate men. It all started a few years ago with the sound of footsteps in the valley below. Men sharing around a campfire the story of what brought them here: [crackling of a campfire] rumors of bears covered in petroleum. “If we can find where the bears wallowed,” they said, “we’ll be rich.” I’d never seen men like this before, and I’m not sure if they saw me. But they did find what they were looking for: black puddles seeping out from the rocks along the lake... Oil. [sounds of water lapping at a lakeshore] Not long after came hooves: twenty horses loaded with clanking metal, and twenty men clamoring with excitement. [men’s voices in the background] From my perch on the mountainside, I watched trees crash to the ground. I heard the thumps and scrapes of hammers and saws that built cabins, boats, and a small sawmill. The sizzling of a cookstove; grumbling about canned food. Noise was constant. [squeaking of a drill; men’s voices quietly in the background] But the most frequent sounds were the hopeful conversations of men as they stood around a massive drill. Through the wind and snow, they looked to the ground—some dreaming of a better life, others of power and riches. [wind howls] Eventually, their drill reached a bubble of flammable gas that inflated their hope to new heights. Profitable oil cannot be much deeper, they thought. [men’s voices; the roar and crackle of a fire] Tonight, in a flash of fire, the promising gas is accidentally ignited, and all their work burns. Their cabins, their tools, their dreams, glow red as they die. [a driving drumbeat begins, adding to the music already playing[ I am Kintla Glacier, and I have watched over this valley for thousands of years. I grew to my largest in the 1800s, in an era of rainy summers and blizzard-rich winters. Those times are gone, but I am finding a new equilibrium at the dawn of the 20th century. I’m smaller, but stable. I could survive for centuries more… Unless something changes... [drumbeat finishes suddenly; crackling of a fire slowly fades under Headwaters Season Three theme: Wild West, by Frank Waln, which begins with a haunting flute line] Daniel Lombardi: [a drumbeat begins, and strings layer in with other instruments] Welcome to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. I'm Daniel. This is season three, and it's all about how this place became what it is today. [theme song continues to play, then finishes] Daniel: There's a thing that people say: “Oh, that's ancient history.” Meaning that because it's history, it can't be relevant anymore—that something buried in the past doesn't have the power to impact the present, let alone the future. But I don't buy that. History is the study of what happened in the past. But it's also a study of the present and how we got here. This episode is about the search for oil here around 1900. Before this place was known as Glacier. But this story is also about how the past in the future can get tangled up. The climate crisis has a history here. It goes back more than a century. The very first oil well in Montana was drilled in what is now the park. Gaby Eseverri: It's a surprising story about the way history is always closer than we think. This season, we're looking at history from different angles. And before we turn back the clock, I want to start with the world today. Daniel: This is Gaby. Gaby, you've been talking and interviewing young people all summer long. Gaby: Yeah. To talk about climate change and to learn how they cope with it. And it varies. Some use poetry, some use humor. [footsteps walking on concrete] And a good place to start is a trip I took to Browning High School right outside of the park. I'm walking up to Browning High, and I'm wearing my favorite sweater vest, because I'm hoping it'll make the high schoolers that I'm about to talk to think I'm cool. It's this blue vest, and it's covered in geese, strutting and honking all over the place. [sound of a doorbell] I like to think that some of them are mid honk. Employee, through an intercom: Pull on the door. Gaby: [in the field] Thank you. Student: Oh, my God. I love your sweater. Gaby: [in the field] Thank you. Gaby: My goose gamble paid off. I'm here to meet with the Rising Voices Poetry Club. I'm introduced by their librarian and advisor, Amy. Amy Andreas: Guys, this is Gaby. Gaby: And they introduce themselves to me. [sparse music in the background, playing just a few haunting notes] Amy: I'll just have you start and you guys go around and introduce yourselves. Sovereign Smith: My name's Sovereign Smith. Trysten Hannon: Trysten Hannon. Emily Williams: Emily Williams. Rebecca Edwards: Rebecca Edwards. Emaeyah Bird: Emaeyah Bird. Kiera Big Horn: Kiera Big Horn. Lily Crawford: Lily Crawford. Amy: My name is Amy Andreas, and I’ve graduated. [all laugh] Gaby: We gather in this cozy little space called the coffee shop, which is the usual meeting place for the club. Student: This room is the coffee shop. Gaby: [in the field] Because there's coffee? Student: Because there's coffee-- Student: We usually run a coffeeshop Student: --sometimes, sometimes we sell. [all laughing] Gaby: [in the field] Wait, wait. Can someone please read that? Amy: Well, she wrote it. So I made her write it up there this morning cause I was like, I love this. Rebecca: I had to write a small poem about a very minor incident that I still remember, for my English class. Gaby: [in the field] What was the incident? Rebecca: It-- [laughs] It's, it's called "Milk." I don't trust it. It's weird how it curdles How it's fine one day and spoiled the next The horrendous aroma emanating off the milk Burned my nostrils. [the group chuckles] [sparse music from before plays briefly] Gaby: At the beginning of the episode, we imagined the past, our history of oil exploration, but these students are trying to imagine what that history means for their futures. Student: I don't really like thinking about climate change too much. I start getting scared and then angry. And so I usually just like push it aside and I feel like, it's really unfair because we're so young. Student: It's—it's just it's a lot of pressure for young people to take on. [sparse music plays briefly] Gaby: I reached out to Amy a few weeks ago to ask if any student would be interested in writing and sharing a poem with me. And I'm glad they agreed. Articulating our feelings about climate change is hard. Student: It took me until, until I had, like, five days left to actually sit down and write it because I wasn't in the headspace until that day. Our society like, their past mistakes and just—”you're our future generation. You got to fix this when you're older,” like—[distressed noise] [sparse music plays again] Gaby: Surveys show that Glacier County, where these students live, ranks the highest in the state for concern about climate change. And you can hear that in their poems. Lily: "Terminus" by Lily Crawford. Her air whispers of decay Melting the Arctic's frozen waters, breathing fumes Through branches traveling with every howling wind Increasing slowly Soon becoming Over time like dominoes slightly too far apart Just close enough to gently knock over the next Every crash gets closer and closer Then all at once Noticeable within one's own lifetime Things begin to shift Gaby: [in the field] Lily, so what was that about? Lily: The world is kind of dying, a little bit, and that makes me sad. Daniel: Okay. Gaby. Gaby: Daniel. Daniel: We looked forward—you talked to young people about their futures. But now let's look backwards. How did we get here? Gaby: Of course, the climate has changed naturally in the past, but today the biggest cause by far is burning fossil fuels like oil. Daniel: Yeah, this is a good place to start. I think of Earth's atmosphere, it's like a blanket surrounding the planet. And when we burn fossil fuels, like oil, that releases greenhouse gases into the air, gases like carbon dioxide. Gaby: And those gases trap heat. Daniel: That's, I guess, why they call them greenhouse gases. They get added to the atmosphere and they make that blanket thicker and thicker, trapping more heat. Gaby: And what's wild is that those gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time. Daniel: Yeah, at least hundreds of years, sometimes as long as a thousand years. Anyway, the point being, history does not stay in the past. Digging up and burning fossil fuels here in Glacier, even way back in 1901, that has consequences today. Gaby: And because greenhouse gases are still accumulating, there is even greater impact on young people and future generations. [swainson’s thrush calls] Let's see what more of this history we can find if we head into the park. [swainson’s thrush singing repeatedly] Daniel: [in the field] So this is my kind of list of things I want to talk to everyone about today, introduce myself, and then talk about the consequences and causes of climate change. Gaby: We're here to meet students visiting through the University of Montana. They bring a group to visit Glacier every summer to learn about climate change. [more birds singing] Gaby: [in the field] Why that order? Daniel: [in the field] I think I just want to get out of the way—the consequences, which are the things that I think everyone expects to talk about here, which is like melting glaciers and more wildfires. Gaby: [in the field] Right. More fire, less ice. Daniel: [in the field] Exactly. So we'll talk about that a little, but then I think the more interesting, bigger focus of today will be the causes of climate change. Gaby: Usually these students would come here to see shrinking glaciers, a consequence. Which makes sense. Over the past 50 years or so, every glacier in the park has gotten smaller. But we have something different in store for them today. [western tanager singing] Instructor: Good morning. Welcome to day two of our trip to Glacier. And they are—Daniel's going to be taking a group around to look at some scenes and talk about an oil seep, and the connection between the petroleum industry and the park that's a little surprising. Gaby: But before that, we're going to try to see one of the most famous glaciers in the park, Grinnell. [bird songs fade out] [sparse electronic music from earlier plays briefly] Gaby: [in the field] To start off, can you tell me your name, age and what you're studying? [outdoor sounds in the background; birds singing: yellow-rumped warbler singing, robin tutting] Claire Ferguson: So my name's Claire Ferguson. I'm 20 and I'm studying history and then also environmental studies. You know, I've gotten to sit on rocks and look at the stars for hours, and, like, the only sound around me was wildlife. It was nature. And I feel guilty, you know, being able to have those experiences and appreciate nature. I feel guilty not doing enough. I feel guilty by not trying my hardest to save it. Gaby: [in the field] So all that being said, how do you or do you think you contribute to climate change? Claire: Honestly, I think it's almost impossible to not contribute to climate change in our society. Gaby: [in the field] So do you feel like you're part of the solution? Claire: I want to be able to say that I helped and that's why, like, like we have a future on this earth. [yellow warbler singing; footsteps crunching on a trail] Gaby: So we're hiking along the shore of Grinnell Lake, and I'm getting distracted trying to spot a yellow warbler that I can hear but can't see. [yellow warbler continues singing] But the students are looking for a very specific spot. [bird songs and footsteps continue] Student: One of these photos was taken in 1888. The other was taken in 1914. And they're both looking at Grinnell Glacier from this bend in the stream. And we're trying to repeat those photos. Gaby: [in the field] But it's kind of hard to find. Student: It is kind of hard to find. And that's what we're trying to do right now. And we're going to do some bushwhacking down the stream and hopefully get to the spot where those photos were taken. But a lot of the vegetation is different, so we're having a hard time finding it. Gaby: [in the field] Yeah. Gaby: We love repeat photos here. Basically they're before and after pictures of glaciers. The older historic photo shows what the glacier looked like back in the day, and then we take a new picture, perfectly lined up to match the old one. As a kid, I was obsessed with playing those “spot the difference” games in magazines at the doctor's office. This is kind of like that. Except I'm not left feeling the same pride for my attention to detail, because spotting the difference today is really easy. [fox sparrow singing] Student: Looking at Grinnell. Daniel: Jack just-- Student: yeeted himself Daniel: --yeeted himself into the willows. Student: Yell every once in a while so we know you're alive. [plants crunching and swishing past the microphone; birds continue to sing] Gaby: [in the field] Because Jack just started walking into all these plants. Now we're kind of following him and we're bushwhacking a little bit. But there are like plants and shrubs as tall as me. I'm five four. Oop! [splashing, birds singing] Gaby: [in the field] Cool, we made it to a little clearing now. Student: What do you see? Gaby: [in the field] Oh, there it is. Daniel: [in the field] A yellow warbler. You wanna look through the binos? Student: Oh, sure. It's yellow? Daniel: [in the field] Yes, right. Student: Oh, geez! There it goes. Now he's in the back one. Daniel: [in the field] This is, that's what-- That's it. Singing right there. They say it's “sweet, sweet, sweet. I'm so sweet.” Gaby: Someone needs to cross the stream to get the exact right spot for the photo and Jack, the cool guy of the group, is quick to volunteer. [sounds of running watter] Daniel: [in the field] Jack is taking off his clothes, this is getting serious. He popped his shirt, I think somewhat unnecessarily. Gaby: [in the field] He's perfectly dry. Daniel: [in the field] The water is up to his knees. [all laughing] Gaby: Most people take off their shoes and socks to get into a stream. Jack also took off his shirt for good measure. So he has a camera in one hand and a laminated copy of an old photo in the other. He closes one eye and holds up the photo, trying to line it up just right. He has that look on his face of, yeah, I'm making this look easy, but it's harder than it seems. To his credit, it's harder…

Full show notes at the publisher

Becoming | Prologue Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

Consider this an extended warm up for season three of Headwaters. This episode includes two interviews about time, landscape, and history, that set the stage for the next nine to come. Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy Kowalski: Headquarters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Daniel Lombardi: You're listening to Headwaters. [a drumbeat plays briefly in the background] My name is Daniel, and we're about to release our third season. We're calling it Becoming. You're going to hear important, unknown and often misunderstood stories from Glacier's past. This is not a complete history, but a look at how the park became what it is today. These episodes will take you into the field and weave together conversations with dozens and dozens of experts. Each episode is framed by the theme music and the show's cover art, which is a beautiful mosaic of all of the stories we set out to share. [drumbeat plays again] Daniel: This is episode zero. I'm thinking of it as a bonus episode that sets up the rest of the show. Or you know what? If you want, you could skip this episode for now and come back to it at the end. I think it works either way. But this episode is two interviews that illustrate the philosophy and the approach we took to making this season of the show. The first interview is with the native hip hop artist Frank Waln, and the second interview is with the illustrator and archeologist Eric Carlson. Frank and Eric helped us set the tone for season three, so I sat down with them to talk about some of the themes and philosophies, the deeper ideas that went into making the show. Season three is all about history and looking at our past from different viewpoints. Talking with Frank, he encouraged us to think about history with a less rigid understanding of time. [flute music begins to play] All of the music you'll hear in Season three of Headwaters was made by Frank Waln. But personally, I think I'm probably most excited about the theme song. [Headwaters season three theme continues to play—drums, mandolin, and other instruments layer in] Daniel: So hey, Frank, will you introduce yourself? Frank Waln: I'll introduce myself in my language first. [Speaking in Lakota] Hello, relatives. I just introduced myself in my language, Lakota. I said my Lakota name is [Lakota Name], which translates to Walks with the Young Nation, or Walks with the New Nation. And I said that I welcome you all with an open heart and an open handshake. I'm also—I also go by Frank Waln, I'm a Lakota music artist, music producer, audio engineer, curator from the Rosebud Reservation in South Central South Dakota. Daniel: Tell me about where you grew up. The Rosebud Reservation. Frank: Actually grew up on a ranch ran by Lakota women. So I had a very close connection with not only the land but animals. And so the landscape on the reservation I come from, it's out on the Great Plains. So it's it's—if you stand almost anywhere on a reservation and look out, your eyes will see as far as the horizon goes, like it's not flat in a lot of places. You know, the skies are big, the sunsets are great. The sunrises will bring a tear to your eye. And it's very rural, too. It's very rural. And then, you know, outside of the land, sure, the reservation deals with a lot of issues like poverty and just a lot of the aftermath of colonialism, having, you know, our homelands colonized. Daniel: Yeah like how do you—because I think we're going to come back to this as a concept, so just how do you define colonialism? Frank: Well, I think as an indigenous person, I define colonialism from the lens of the experience my people had with colonialism. So it is the displacement of an indigenous population in order to colonize or resettle the land for various reasons. But, you know, it could even happen with animals and plants. So it's not just a human thing. It also happens in nature in many ways. Daniel: Yeah. So it's like a violent displacement of people, as well as plants and animals from home. [flute music from the theme song plays briefly, marking a transition] Daniel: A complete shift: so did you like growing up on a ranch? I didn't really like it as a kid, but I really appreciate it now. Frank: You know, I kind of feel the same way because I think, you know, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do music and be a creative person. And a lot of my family, all my family still ranches or rodeos. But I think I still also didn't completely despise it because I love being outside. With me and my mom it was always a struggle because I wanted to be inside, like playing an instrument, writing a song, and she'd be like, “No, we need to go—we need to go work cause we need to go do ranch stuff right now.” So it was always a back and forth between me and my mom. Daniel: You're living this, uh, rural ranch life, and you, you somehow stumbled upon playing the piano. Is that right? Frank: I found the piano when I was in elementary school. My mom was a teacher, and so she had to be at a high school super early. So the elementary school I went to, she would drop me off and I was always one of the first kids at my school. And there was an old piano in our classroom, out of tune, everything. And I ended up just messing around and I loved it. I love the way just pressing, pressing a button and hearing, you know, hearing some music made me feel. And I just started teaching myself to play piano and haven't stopped since. Now I play, you know, a handful of instruments and produce and, and I've actually written music that has been performed by an entire orchestra. I still can't read written music entirely. I got my own way of reading and writing and figuring out music. [sparse, but joyful music begins to play] Daniel: Wow. And so you you'd go into the classroom and there was a piano there. And you just taught yourself. Frank: Yes. Yes. I learned by ear and by sight. And I remember I was really stubborn and I wanted to learn something very difficult first. So I one of the first, like four pieces I learned was Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. And I remember I, like, found my own way of transcribing it. I don't even remember how I did. It was it was probably all over the place and wild. But I wrote out the whole song so I could read it and I memorized it and I can still play it now. But yeah, I learned by, by sight and sound. Daniel: Mmm yeah, that's cool. But then, so tell me, how did you go from that to rapping? Frank: [laughing] Yes, actually, you know, it was for me anyway, at the time, it felt like a very natural progression because, you know, when I started to get into to middle school, I was actually interested in like getting my own CDs and stuff, my reservation is so rural that we had to drive at least 2 hours to, you know, find a—to get to a CD store to even buy music. And so a lot of the music that I consumed was from my family. A lot of my cousins, my older cousins who I looked up to, a lot of them were listening to hip hop. And so I was exposed to a lot of different hip hop, and I just resonated with the music. And so a lot of what hip hop was in the beginning and the source of it, to me, has a lot of Indigeneity. And I'll give you some examples. An element of hip hop is called the cipher. It's like where everyone circles up and it's really dope, if you're a dancer, you're beatboxer, you have an instrument, everyone kind of starts vibing and someone lays down a beat, and then you go around the circle, and whether you sing a rap or even dance or play an instrument, everyone takes turns and kind of does a little performance over the music everyone's creating together, and that is Native. [a beat begins, with flutes and other instruments layering in] Whether it would make you look at power or you look at our ceremonies, that's what we do. We circle up and through song and dance, we share our energy together. [music continues to play] At the time, I was I was struggling a lot with a lot of mental health issues. A lot of people in my family and people where I’m from struggle with a lot of things like addiction and mental health issues and just a lot of violence and stuff like that. So music was my escape too. So it was like a, it was a way for me to get away from all of that and kind of be in my own bubble. [Frank rapping in a song] Let me try to paint a scene of chasing lonely rez kid dreams, with nights banging out beats on that laptop screen. With nothing but your heart telling you you’re right, I spent years in the dark just to find my light. Shout out my mother and my aunties cuz they raised us all in a setter colonial state that called them s*****. I'm from the Rez. That means I've bled to shed all the things I saw. So I ain't one to judge when loved ones doing time and everyone on drugs. We used to run around the rez now we pray and smudge. Now I understand why ancestors prayed for us. In the beginning the reservation... [music fades out] Daniel: You were seeing people struggle in your community, and I read then that that kind of made you want to go into medicine. Is that right? Frank: Yes. Yeah. So I actually thought I wanted to be a doctor for a couple of years, starting when I was 18. So I didn't even tell anyone about my music. I actually kept it a secret from for most of my teen years, it was just something that I did because it made me feel good and helped me cope. And, you know, I never thought, ever, ever I would be able to make a career out of it or, you know, be able to do anything substantial with it. And so I thought the only way I could help the world and help people heal and help my home community and the people I loved heal was being a doctor. Daniel: I'm curious how that might influence your music even now or if it if you think it does. Frank: Yeah, definitely. I didn't realize that, you know, healing can, can mean more than just Western medicine at the time. When I started going into music, I had a conversation with an elder back home that I never forget. And I was, I was in a gas station on my reservation. I was, I was gassing up and getting some things and this, this elder I know, he was behind me in line and he started talking to me. And so he always would ask me when he'd see me, “What are you up to now? You know, you're going off to college?” And so I told him that I wasn't going to do medicine anymore. I didn't want to be a doctor. I really want to pursue music. And when I told him that, he kind of he stopped and he shook his head. And, you know, I didn't really expect too much. But then he said something really, really profound to me. He said, “you know, sometimes music is the best medicine.” And I think it kind of set something off in my brain and just kind of widened my perspective of what medicine can be. You know, it can also be creative, it can be spiritual, it can be emotional medicine. And I think that's what music is for me. I did it to help myself heal. So very naturally, you know, using my music to help myself heal, I would write songs about things that I needed to heal from. And once I started putting my music on the internet and putting myself out there as an artist, I realized a lot of other people, especially Native people, felt the same way and, you know, started resonating with my music and sharing it and listening to it. Creating music that helped me heal, helped me set the foundation for my career. And it even led to doing things like I did a residency for seven months at a children's hospital in Delaware, a place called Nemours Children's Hospital. I did music therapy there for seven months and I helped patients create a song from the ground up. And so, you know, just doing things like that, I know I wouldn't even be in a position or in a mindstate to use music in that way if I wasn't coming from that background of studying pre-med. Daniel: Music is, it has been healing for me and it sounds like it was getting into hip-hop was itself a healing experience for you. And like, what wounds do you think you're trying to heal with your music? Frank: Whenever I present and perform, I talk a lot about healing, and I talk about healing as multi-generational and also timeless because I don't think time exists linearly, at least Native People, Lakota People don't look at time in a linear fashion. We look at time right now, we carry the past, the present and the future with us at all times. Our ancestors are always with us. And so the wounds that I'm healing are the wounds of colonialism. And so I'm healing the wounds of genocide. And I 100% believe, and I tell this to Native communities when I present, perform for them, that whenever we heal ourselves, we also heal our ancestors because we are connected to that history. And when you heal yourselves, you also heal future generations. Daniel: Wow, Frank, that's really powerful. You have a lot of themes of history, and so now that kind of makes sense to me why you're like approaching music from outside the traditional Western understanding of time. Frank: Yes. Exactly. You nailed that right on the head. And that's another way that I also create music and do what I do from an Indigenous perspective, because, you know, some of my songs are rooted in and some of our oldest stories, you know. So just carrying that history in our art is a very Native thing as well. Daniel: Okay, so then let's dig into some of the music for our podcast, for Headwaters. This year we're working with you to use a track you wrote called Wild West as our theme song. Do you remember writing that, because you didn't originally write it for us? It was something that you wrote for you, right? Frank: Yes, for sure. So the theme song for this season actually started out as a song idea that I had called Wild West. I created the beat using a lot of different flute samples that I created. I laid down the drums. It's a really powerful track. And at the time I was really—I think this was around like 2016, 2017. I was really struggling with the pain, the anger, and the frustration I was feeling as I was learning about the specific details of the atrocities, the horrible things and the genocide that happened to my ancestors and also to me. You know, like one of the things that was just weighing heavy on me when I wrote this song was, I was reading this book about different policies, IHS (Indian Health Services), which is the branch of the US government that gives Native communities health care. And one of the chapters, they talked about how the US government tested vaccines on babies without the mothers’ knowledge at the IHS on my reservation the exact two years when I was first born and going in to get my vaccines as a baby. You know, so realizing that the government tested vaccines on me without my mom's consent or knowledge, and then learning that when you're in your twenties, just, you know, just like what that does to you as a human. And so I was I was feeling a lot of heaviness, and I ended up putting it in those lyrics, Wild West. And the concept was like, you know, kind of flipping that old Wild West concept on its head that cowboys and Indians and just being like, this is what the contemporary Wild West is. Daniel: That's a powerful story. The name of the track, Wild West, it's a big concept. It's a big idea. You and I both grew up in the American West, and it's interesting to think about what that term is supposed to evoke and what it d…

Full show notes at the publisher

Becoming | Trailer Mar 22, 2023

Show notes

Season Three of Headwaters is a history of Glacier National Park. From whiskey running and the war on wolves, to drilling for oil and dreaming of riches, this is a collection of stories about how one place in the Rocky Mountains became what it is today.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy: Headquarters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Daniel: This is Headwaters. A show about the connections between Glacier National Park and everything else.

Expert 1: The past isn't dead. It isn't even past. It's still here. It's still happening today.

Daniel: Season three is called, Becoming.

Expert 2: They entered a homeland that was known and loved.

Expert 3: One people's hope is in another culture's, doom.

Daniel: These are stories about history refusing to stay in the past. From whiskey running and the war on wolves, to drilling for oil and dreaming of riches.

Expert 4: If you had to send a message 12,600 years into the future, what would it be? And how would you know anyone would even understand it?

Daniel: This is a collection of stories about how one place in the Rocky Mountains became what it is today.

Whitebark Pine | Chapter Five Feb 13, 2022

Show notes

Trees, fish, and ferrets—what is our relationship with nature? The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/ Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/ Revive and Restore: https://reviverestore.org/ Pictures of whitebark pine: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWJ2S4F Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/ See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [upbeat music begins] Peri: This season, I set out to learn about a tree, I started by meeting Illawye, the Great Great Grandparent Tree. And I learned how ShiNaasha Pete, a CSKT Tribal Forester, views that tree as an ancestor, with knowledge and power to share. I followed Clark's nutcrackers, red squirrels and grizzly bears and saw how everything in this place is tied to everything else. I cored a tree with Professor Diana Six, and she showed me what we have to lose, and how close we are to losing it. And I followed a whitebark pine seed on its journey through the park's restoration program. Witnessing the passion and dedication of the people trying to save this tree. [Headwaters season two theme begins, somber piano music] Peri: Now I want to explore how our relationship with nature has changed over time. To understand how we got here and how I might build a deeper relationship with the world around me. [theme plays, and ends] Peri: Welcome to Headwaters, a podcast made in Glacier National Park, which is the traditional lands of many Native American tribes. Andrew: That's our host, Peri, and I'm Andrew. This is Chapter Five, the last in the season. Michael This season is called Whitebark Pine, a whole series about a special tree, but it's also the story of Glacier National Park and how we relate to this landscape, how we protect it and how we fit into the world around us. Peri: I've grown up with this idea that people are bad for nature, that we are the scissors snipping apart the strands of the ecosystems around us. And then we have to keep people out of nature to protect it. [jaunty music begins] But where does that idea come from? Michael We have spent all season with whitebark pine on top of mountains. But this story, Peri, takes us to the lowest elevations in the park—to the lakes, rivers, creeks and streams that fill our valley floors, and that make up much of the park's boundary. [music ends] Michael: So I want to start off asking, are you much of an angler, are you good at fishing? Peri: The last time I went fishing, I was five with my granddad and an alligator ate my bobber. [Michael laughing] I have not fished since. Michael: Ok so, so no. And to be honest, me neither. I'm not very good at it, but I think the story of fish and fish management here in Glacier is interesting because it shows how we're always re-examining how much to intervene in natural processes. The park's mission has always been to preserve and protect this place. But how do you actually do that? What is our role here? [water rushing] Let’s start in the very first years of the park over 100 years ago, a scientist named Morton J. Elrod—who would later become a naturalist for the park—started the first aquatic research project here. And as he studied our lakes and streams, he saw a problem: not enough fish. Peri: Not enough fish? Michael: Not enough. So he took depth measurements, and samples of possible fish foods, to determine which lakes people could add fish to. Peri: What? Michael: Introduce them, to take them from somewhere else and stock them in lakes where they weren't previously found, or to add to an existing population. All with the goal of enhancing recreational or sport fishing opportunities. Peri: Gotcha. Michael: When Glacier was founded in 1910, virtually anyone could apply for a fish stocking permit with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. If they approved your application, the bureau would provide you with fish and the necessary permission to place them throughout the park. Peri: So correct me if I'm wrong. But this wasn't unusual at the time, was it? Michael: No, not at all. Fish stocking, with the intent of improving sport fishing, was extremely common in mountain lakes across the West. Stocked by state and local governments, individuals, even environmental groups like the Sierra Club. And Glacier, too, was fully on board with the practice. The park cooperatively managed the Glacier National Park Fish Hatchery with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which raised in captivity all the native and non-native species that would be introduced to park waters. Peri: But doesn't this clash a bit with the whole preserve our national parks unimpaired idea? Michael: Well, they didn't think so. [pensive piano music begins] Our mission, the NPS mission, is to preserve and protect these places for future generations to enjoy. So the park wanted to make sure that if you came here hoping to catch a fish, you would! The thought was the more fish you and your kids hook while you're here, the more you'll enjoy and appreciate the park. And it's worth noting that this is the same time that the park was poisoning coyotes to ensure that the wildlife people like to see, like deer, would survive. So we were protecting the things about this place that people liked and that they could easily see on their visit. Peri: Ok, I guess I see the logic in that. But couldn't I use that same logic to build a roller coaster at Logan past? Michael: Hmm. Peri: How does this all tie back to Whitebark Pine? Are you saying that planting nursery raised whitebark seedlings is the same as stocking hatchery raised fish? Michael: Well, no. For one thing, whitebark pine is a native species that we're careful to only plant in areas that we know they used to grow, using seeds that come from this ecosystem. There was nothing at all careful about our fish stocking program. [Peri laughs] Native species, non-native species. It didn't matter. They put them all over the place, often into places that never had any trout at all. So by 1945, nearly 50 million fish had been introduced here, averaging more than a million fish a year every year since the park was founded. [music ends] Peri: Wow. Michael: This was massive in both scale and ambition, attempting to bend our fisheries to our will. Peri: Well, we don't do that anymore. So what changed people's minds? Michael: Well, the first reason people began to question this practice, was that from a sport fishery perspective, it wasn't really working. Peri: Which was the whole reason they were doing it in the first place, right? Michael: Yeah. Despite introducing millions of fish here, they had not created the recreational fishing utopia that they'd long dreamt of. But on top of that, there was a growing understanding that stocking was a harmful practice to native species, and that losing native fish could have negative consequences that extend far beyond our waterways. [water rushing] Glacier has 21 native fish species, and few are better known than the bull trout. Bull trout are listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened—one step below endangered—because they've declined so dramatically over the past 100 years. In Glacier, the practice of stocking non-native fish is one of their biggest threats. Lake trout were stocked outside Glacier in Flathead Lake, and despite never being introduced directly into the park, they migrated here and have become bull trout’s enemy number one. They are bigger, the largest member of the salmonid family, and reliably out-compete bull trout for food and for space. Peri: That kind of sounds like a recipe for disaster. Michael: Yeah. And in the 1970s, the park began to realize that an iconic Montana fish, and an important link in our ecosystem, could disappear. So it prompted a bit of an identity crisis. Peri: It sounds like we had to decide exactly what we're protecting here, native species or just things people enjoy. Michael: Exactly. And the park decided that our sport fisheries, while important, couldn't take priority over our native biodiversity, let alone harm it. And in 1972, Glacier ended its fish stocking program, adopting a do no harm approach to our fisheries. Peri: But they were stocking fish in the park for, what 60 years? Wasn't the damage kind of already done? Michael: Yeah. Peri: Cat out of the bag, the fish out of the net? Michael: [laughing] Oh gosh. [somber piano music begins] Michael: Well, biologists recognized at the time that these impacts from fish stocking would be hard to undo, and things continued to get worse for bull trout. By the 21st century, lake trout had found their way into well over half of the lakes were bull trout are found, which in the park, is only 17 to begin with. Nearly 40 years after ending the fish stocking program, it became clear that do no harm wasn't going to cut it if we wanted to preserve bull trout. So in yet another reexamination of our mission, the park decided that preserving this place required undoing the harm of our predecessors. Peri: How do we go about doing that? Michael: Well, just like whitebark pine, the effort to restore native fisheries goes way beyond Glacier's boundaries. Down in Yellowstone, in Flathead Lake, lots of other places, biologists are undertaking a years-long project to physically remove lake trout from waters where they threaten native species. Around here, Quartz Lake is kind of the prime example. Every year, with funding from the Glacier National Park Conservancy, the fisheries crew heads up to Quartz Lake in the North Fork, hops on a boat and lowers gill nets into the lake. If they catch a bull trout, they let it go. But if they catch a lake trout, they kill it. Peri: And it seems like it's working. Michael: It has been. While in Quartz lake they haven't removed Lake Trout entirely, they have successfully suppressed their numbers, which has allowed bull trout populations to stay steady, where before they started this, they were collapsing. But to me, perhaps the most interesting technique to restore bull trout is taking fish from one place and adding them to places where they weren't found before. Peri: We're fish stocking again? Michael: Well, almost? Glacier and the USGS have worked together to conduct what's called conservation introductions, so kind of stocking by another name. Conservation introductions take the same premise, moving fish to a new place, but instead of enhancing a sport fishery, the goal is to create a safe haven for a threatened native species. [uplifting music begins] Michael: The NPS even made a video about these efforts this year, following a crew monitoring one of these introductions. NPS Video: [birds chirping] We are headed up to Grace Lake, which is upstream of logging lake, protected by a barrier falls to sample some bull trout that were introduced in 2014 as part of a conservation introduction. Michael: There's a natural barrier, a waterfall between Grace and Logging lakes, so they know the bull trout they introduced there won't have to compete with lake trout. NPS Video: [music continues] We’ve seen nothing but benefits from this project. To see big fish that we're seeing in different age classes that we're seeing, that we know we put here and that are doing really well. And it feels good knowing that we're doing good. Michael: And this is important because like whitebark pine, bull trout are threatened by more than just invasive species. They are also faced with climate change. Peri: Of course. Michael: Bull trout require cold water, but climate change is altering our watersheds, and our lakes and streams are slowly warming up. This isn't great for bull trout, and we know that if they have any chance of adapting to these changes, it's in a place where they're not also fighting with lake trout to survive. Because I get so excited about this stuff, I was invited even to be a part of this NPS video. Michael, on the NPS Video: The goal of this is to provide a refugia. Knowing the threats that these species face: warming waters, decreasing runoff or changes to our peak runoff times. The lakes that were selected to place these fish, they were deliberately chosen, carefully chosen for where they sit, what influences them and the risks posed by non-native species. Peri: Look at you, your film debut. Michael: Yeah, I mean, I wish I'd trimmed my beard a little bit, but—I think the big takeaway for me from the story of bull trout and what connects this to the rest of our series is that it is a story of us deciding what the National Park Service is really here to do. We have always had the mission of preserving and protecting this place for future generations, but how we interpret it has changed over time. That used to mean introducing millions of fish so that anglers who visit Glacier would leave happy, and it meant focusing on recreation. But today that means saving a native species like bull trout, even whitebark pine, and undoing the harm we have done in the past. Fighting to save entire ecosystems at risk. Peri: So the park isn't working from a list of rules set in stone. It's actively deciding what it means to protect these million acres. Michael: Exactly. [pensive music begins] Peri: I guess in one way, this story seems like a lesson about how messy it can get when we meddle in the ecosystems around us and how much work it takes to undo that. So it's easy to see where I got this idea that people are bad for nature. When we started interfering with the fisheries here and introducing new kinds of fish, things went totally awry. This story about fish looks at the past and how we got to where we are today, but what's next? Where might the future lead? [music ends] Andrew: There are about half a dozen species native to Glacier National Park, including bull trout, that are currently listed under the Endangered Species Act or ESA. Lynx, grizzly bears and meltwater stoneflies are other examples, Peri: And whitebark could possibly join that list. Andrew: Now, every species listed under the ESA gets a recovery plan, and the goal of every recovery plan is the same: save the species from extinction. But how you actually go about doing that can vary wildly depending on the species. By looking to other restoration efforts, I hoped I could better understand what the future has in store for whitebark pine, and for conservation more broadly. Ben: My name is Ben Novak. Andrew: Ben is the lead scientist for a conservation nonprofit called Revive and Restore, and I called to ask him about ferrets. [somber music begins] Ben: She was 21 days old. She only even opened up her eyes. Yeah, that's really the only time where you can hold them without them tearing your flesh off. Because they're small, but they're ferocious little predators, Andrew: Not just any ferrets. Black-footed ferrets. [black-footed ferret chattering] Andrew: Up to two feet long with black feet and a cream-colored body, they look somewhat similar to domestic ferrets that people might have as pets. But the Black-footed Ferret is the only one actually native to North America. Ben: Which lived on the Great Plains from North Dakota, Kansas and those areas out west to the foothills of the Rockies, including the Blackfeet Nation, right next door in Glacier National Park. Andrew: And they're specialized predators of prairie dogs, who make up 90 percent of their diet. Ben: They preyed on prairie dogs, they were ubiquitous across the Great Plains. Andrew: But in the middle of the century, things started to change for the black-footed ferret. Ben: By the 1950s, due to agricultural land conversion, predator control and a government campaign to eradicate…

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Whitebark Pine | Chapter Four Feb 06, 2022

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Collecting pinecones, planting seeds, and other acts of hope. The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/ Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/ Pictures of whitebark pine: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWJ2S4F Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/ See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [pensive guitar music begins playing] Doug: You get a really unique perspective being in the top of them, looking at these like big, beautiful cones. Nothing like a whitebark pine cone. Peri: Back in July, I found myself high on a ridge on the east side of the park, overlooking the Blackfeet Reservation, listening to climbing gear jingle like wind chimes. [climbing gear clacking together] Annie: Doug has nice long arms to reach out on those branches. Doug: You think I have nice arms Annie? Annie: You have nice arms, Doug. [everyone laughs] Peri: Doug Tyte is a member of Glacier's revegetation crew. Every summer, the park sends Doug, with his long arms, and the rest of the reveg crew to find and then climb healthy whitebark pine trees that have lots of cones. And because whitebark pine cones grow way at the end of the top of their branches, Doug had to climb way up and reach way out to get them. Dangling from Doug's harness were homemade wire mesh cages, the size and shape of a gallon Ziploc bag that he slid over the ends of cone laden branches, crimping down the edges and locking the cones off from the world. Doug: Three! Reveg Crew: Three. Three! Peri: Each time he put on a new cage, Doug would shout down to everyone below the number of cones in it. Doug: Five! Reveg Crew: Five! Five. Peri: But that was back in July. It's a few months later now in September, and I'm revisiting the tree with Doug, only to find that not all of the cages did their job. Peri: [in the field] Yeah, you can see the claw marks all the way up the trunk. Peri: The fresh claw marks showed that a bear had taken interest in this tree and its cones. Levi: See how deep the nails went in. Peri: [in the field] Yeah, wow. Levi: Dang. Doug: It's pretty cool. Peri: [in the field] It is impressive. Doug: You can see there's tons of old claw marks too on this thing. Levi: Yeah, this one has claw marks every year, it seems like. Peri: After confirming that all bears had vacated the tree, we got set up to climb the tree again. [guitar music plays softly] Doug: [climbing gear jingling and clacking] Alright. Lanyards,. Carleton: Four inch, you good? Doug: Got my four inch. Carleton: Some webbing? Doug: I got webbing. New fancy one. Peri: [in the field] So how long have you been climbing trees Doug: Since I could walk. [laughs] But for the government for two years. Peri: [in the field] So Doug's climbing up the tree, he's making it look pretty easy, actually. How many cones do you think are on this tree? Doug: Total? I think we got an estimate when we climbed it. Carleton: 215. He caged 107. Peri: [in the field] Wow. Carleton: Using twenty two cages. Peri: [in the field] How does that compare to other trees? It's just like... Carleton: It's pretty—it's a high number. I think our highest number of this season was 200... Peri: The trees they climb are special. Most whitebarks I see around the park do not have hundreds of cones. It's pretty rare for these trees to start producing cones before they're at least 50 years old. And even then, the younger ones usually only manage to grow a handful. Doug: I mean, this tree isn't that large. Peri: [in the field] No. Doug: But it's like a good cone producer. Peri: After all we've learned about how many species rely on whitebark pine seeds, it seems a little strange that we're actively preventing animals from accessing them. But even on these trees, only about half the cones are caged. Peri: [in the field] Doug actually told me a story on the way up that once he was caging cones on a tree that had sort of two main trunks coming up, and this nutcracker landed in the one next to him and was just kind of harassing him: “caw, caw, caw”—like, "what are you doing? Those are supposed to be my cones!" Peri: Perched in the top of the tree, Doug pulls off the cages with the cones inside, then carefully tosses them down to the crew waiting below. Kind of like a bride tossing her bouquet to the waiting bridesmaids. Doug: Okay, this is gonna be a tricky throw. Levi: Yup. Doug: Ready? Levi: Yup. [catching sound] [Headwaters season two theme starts playing: somber piano music] Peri: So everyone is kind of packing up all their gear, and someone hands me this big burlap sack with all of the cones in it from this tree. And it's pretty light, but it kind of makes me think that there's a lot in this bag. The seeds in these cones are our answer to blister rust—they're the hope for our future forests, and they have a long journey ahead of them. [Theme music ends] Peri: Hi, I'm Peri. Andrew: I'm Andrew. Michael: And I'm Michael. This is Season Two of Headwaters, a podcast from Glacier National Park. Andrew: This is Chapter Four of a five-episode season, which is all about whitebark pine. In the past three episodes, we've learned about why this tree is important to people and our cultures, how so many pieces of our ecosystem are connected to it, and why it's at risk. Peri: Now we're going to meet the people trying to save it. [short segment of guitar music plays to mark a transition] Peri: The world of whitebark pine is full of giants. Everywhere I turn, I encounter another brilliant ecologist who's been studying these trees for longer than I've been alive. Luckily for me, a group called the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation has gathered all of these giants together. In 2021, the High Five conference, as in five-needle pines, was hosted virtually, and with help from the Glacier Conservancy, I registered to attend. Rob: We have a terrific conference planned for you... Peri: The conference is a three-day event with over 100 different talks, all in service of saving a tree. Sitting in to listen, I got to hear about all the work still being done to shape the future of whitebark pine restoration. Diana T: [fading in under Peri’s narration, then back out] I look forward to seeing you all at the question and answer panel discussion, after... Peri: And who better to talk with about the history of whitebark pine restoration than two leaders in the field? Diana T: [voice over the phone] I'm Diana Tomback… Peri: Diana is a professor in Integrative Biology, and one of the foremost names in whitebark pine. Diana T: [laughs] pulling it off my shelf Peri: Reaching up to grab it early in her video call, Diana literally wrote the book on whitebark restoration. But when she started her career in the 70s doing research on whitebark pine and Clark's nutcrackers… Diana T: There was nothing on my radar screen, nothing on the horizon to indicate that this species would be in the trouble that it is today. We have to thank Steve Arno and Jim Brown for the foresight back in the 1980s to realize that the Northern Rockies was losing its whitebark pine. Peri: I also connected with Bob Keane, a now-retired Forest Service scientist that has worked on whitebark for decades. Bob: [voice over the phone] I was working with Steve Arno and his research that he was doing in the high elevations, and well, what I saw was the fact that there were many whitebark pines that were dead. And I just thought it was, this is what happens up high when plants grow, they often die because it's so cold and icy and snowy up here. But Arno said, no, no, these plants can easily handle the ice and cold. These trees are dying because of an exotic blister rust. [slightly ominous banjo music begins playing] Peri: There was no single turning point that woke everyone up to the decline of whitebark pine. Instead, it was this slow accumulation of new science and growing concern. That said, one moment did stand out. In 1998, Bob, Diana, and other leaders in the field gathered for a conference and presented data that showed just how rapidly whitebark was declining. But it was what happened after the conference, after the talks ended, and the posters were packed up, that Diana said was pivotal. Diana T: And that conference, Restoring Whitebark Pine Ecosystems, is the one that really made a bunch of us think, “Where do we go from here?” So I recall when the conference was over, it was that afternoon, and everyone had picked up and gone home except us. [laughing] We were sitting around with a can of beer or something asking each other, “Where do we go next?” And a suggestion was made by Dana Perkins, who's with the BLM, that perhaps we should consider forming a nonprofit. Peri: That casual brainstorming turned into the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation, which has been a key advocate for whitebark pine science and restoration for the last 20 years. They're the central guiding organization for whitebark pine restoration, and the group hosting this conference. Diana T: A number of us who came out of that era came to realize that the ecosystems that we were studying, they were deteriorating from various anthropogenic problems. Peri: [to Diana] So once you recognized that blister rust was kind of the key problem and you knew you needed to take action, how did you know what to do? Did you have to start from scratch? Diana T: Well, the tools were there already. Peri: A stroke of luck, if you want to call it that, is that blister rust affects most five-needle pines, not just whitebark, including some important timber species like sugar pine and white pine. So people had already been thinking about how to fix this problem as early as the 1950s. So there was a bit of a road map for how to address this problem. What Diana and Bob had to do was adjust it to work for whitebark. Diana T: Bob Keane was lead author, I was second author, on what became the restoration manual for whitebark pine. Peri: The key was that some whitebark pine showed natural resistance to blister rust, just as scientists had observed with other five-needle pines back in the 50s. So the plan was to identify those resistant trees, grow their seedlings, and plant them back on the land, increasing the overall amount of resistance in the population. Bringing in all these different agencies and different disciplines is key to get the restoration plan right, especially considering that whitebark pine could soon be listed under the Endangered Species Act. As of fall 2021, it's already listed as endangered in Canada and is proposed for listing in the U.S. Diana T: Well, my attitude is this is important work. It's probably a capstone piece of work for all the work that I've done on Whitebark Pine. But it's not over until the nutcracker caws or whatever, cracks. [both laugh] [sweet, hopeful piano music plays] You can't assume that things are going to tick along just fine. You have to keep putting that energy and that push there. So it's these kinds of things that have galvanized a number of us to actually act to do something. Bob: I think it would be sad that for a person who's worked in that ecosystem for so long, if we didn't do anything, I would feel unbelievably guilty that I spent my career studying an ecosystem that was doomed to be absent from the landscape in the future. And I think we have a responsibility to actually restore this because we—humans—were the reason that the rust is actually here. Peri: I also asked Bob what other conservation efforts could learn from whitebark pine. Bob: It takes the zeal of others in order to get things done. And of course, I worked for the Forest Service all my career, I've seen this big agency and saw how things get done, and it's glacial. And if I look at all the great things that the Forest Service has done, it is all because of some dedicated zealous individual that went out despite everybody else, and on top of their regular job, went out and did something good for the land. [piano music resolves and ends, marking a transition] Peri: But having a plan is just the start. For every Diana Tomback and Bob Keane, who are figuring out how these trees work and creating a plan to restore them, you also need people like Doug Tyte, with his long arms, to climb the trees and harvest the cones, and Rebecca Lawrence, to shepherd the seeds on their journey and get them planted back on the landscape. Peri: [in the field] This is a bag of cones that we collected the other day. Rebecca: Yes. Peri: [in the field] Cool. Rebecca: Yes, it is. Peri: [in the field] These are very sappy. Rebecca: They are starting to dry out a little bit. Peri: [in the field] Oh yeah, you can see some of the— Rebecca: So you can you can peel off the scales and then you see the seeds sitting right in there. Peri: [in the field] Oh, cool. Peri: That's Rebecca, who's been coordinating Glacier's native plant restoration program for years. I met with her at Glacier's native plant nursery, this remarkable garden-like compound and greenhouse where they grow thousands of native plants. Rebecca and her team raise dozens of different species, which allows the park to restore plants after disturbances like construction projects. And like so many things at Glacier, the native plant program benefits from the support of the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Harvesting the cones is just the start of these seeds' journey, and Rebecca helped take us through the process. We send most of our whitebark cones, like the ones we collected at the start of the episode, to a Forest Service nursery in Coeur d'Alene Idaho, which is about four hours west of here. That nursery has special expertise in growing whitebark pine seedlings, and they can grow 300,000 of them a year, from all across the Rocky Mountains. After the cones arrive, Rebecca explained that the first step is also the messiest: opening the tough, sappy cone to get the seeds out. Peri: [in the field] What's that like to open up a whitebark pine cone and get the seeds out? [laughs] Rebecca: I really wish I had a beak [both laughing] to do the same thing that the Clarks Nutcrackers do very effortlessly, so it's definitely... [Rebecca’s audio fades out as Peri starts narrating] Peri: Without beaks to rely on, nursery workers have another solution: heat. They store the cones at 105 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes them to dry and helps the scales open up a little bit, so the seeds can be shaken out. [shaking sound] The most challenging part is simulating the combination of environmental factors you need to get the seeds to actually germinate. Rebecca: They're trying to mimic what it would go through in nature. They found that if they put the seeds in a warm stratification and then a cold stratification... [Rebecca’s audio fades out as Peri starts narrating] Peri: Figuring all this out wasn't easy. It was kind of like having all the ingredients to bake a cake, but not knowing what temperature to bake it at or for how long. After 30 days in the warmth and 90 days in a walk-in cooler, seeds are ready to be planted in a little carrot-shaped pot. Rebecca: They will plant that into the cone. Usually, they put one to two seeds per cone. Peri: [in the field] And so when you say cone, you're not talking about pinecones, you're talking about the little— Rebecca: Right. Sorry, that's confusing, isn't it? Yes, it's the cone-tainer [Peri laughs] is what it often gets called. Peri: The seeds stay in their cone-tainers in the nursery for two years while they develop a root system strong enough to survive in the wild. Rebecca: At one year, the…

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Whitebark Pine | Chapter Three Jan 30, 2022

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Mountain pine beetles, an invasive fungus, and climate change—is whitebark pine doomed? The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/ Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/ American Chestnut book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520259942/american-chestnut Documentary about Ranger Doug: https://www.instagram.com/rangerdougfilm/ Pictures of whitebark pine: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmWJ2S4F Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/ ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [pensive guitar music playing] Emma: They kind of look a little bit like nicotine patches for trees [giggling]. Like sugar packets, I guess might be a nicer thing to say. Peri: [amused] Wait, what is going on here? Michael: Well, recently, Andrew and I tagged along on a hike to Scenic Point with the veg crew, the park's plant people. And shortly after reaching the top, I was handed a Bosstitch heavy duty stapler and a small white packet. Peri: The nicotine patch, a.k.a. sugar packet. Michael: Yes, which, turns out, it's actually a packet of a synthetic pheromone called verbenone, which is a defense against one of the west's most infamous forest pests: mountain pine beetles. Peri: Ohhhh. Michael: We don't want them killing our whitebark pine trees, so we were sent out there to staple verbenone packets, these synthetic pheromones right onto the trees themselves. Here's re-veg crewmember Annie Gustavson walking me through it. [quiet, joyful music begins] Annie: OK, you're going to take the packet of verbenone and you're just going to put two staples up top and then one down below. Michael: OK. How hard do you have to swing this thing to get it to. Annie: Five miles an hour. Andrew: [Laughs] Michael: [laughing] That's impossible to judge, by hand? Oh, it even says "staple here.". Andrew: Here we go. Michael: Don't hype it up. [Staple sound] Andrew: Nice. [Staple] Andrew: [deadpan] Ok, now here's the tough one, bottom staple. [Staple] Michael: Is that good enough? Annie: Yeah Andrew: So what grade would you give him? [everyone laughing] Annie: You got a B-plus. Michael: Easier said than done. [Stapling sounds]. Andrew: Oh no! Michael: That was a misfire, [everyone laughing] there was no staple! Annie: That one was a D. Peri: So how do these packets keep the beetles away? Michael: Well, I'll let Rebecca Lawrence explain. She runs the re-veg program around here and is an excellent verbenone stapler, I might add. Rebecca: Well, it tells the beetles that other beetles have occupied that tree—no, no vacancies—so that they'll go somewhere else to another tree. Peri: Very clever. So they're using the beetles' own language against them. Michael: Exactly. And the goal is to place these no vacancy signs at the outer edges of important high-elevation forests, a sort of “great wall of sugar packets” that keeps the beetles out. Peri: [laughing] Okay, I like it. And did it work? Michael: It seemed like it. I mean, we never saw any beetles when we were up there. But we did see evidence of a different threat. Here's Rebecca again. Rebecca: This is active rust where the cankers are opening up and releasing the spores. And it's a bright orange that looks like your Kraft mac and cheese powder. Michael: Throughout the Rocky Mountains, whitebark pine trees are dying, and here in Glacier, beetles are far from the largest problem. Rebecca: Basically, the bark starts to just erupt open and then the spores pop out. Michael: These trees are being protected from beetles because up until now, at least, they've been doing great at surviving an entirely different disease: white pine blister rust, which has already killed over half of the whitebark pine trees in the park. These big, mature cone-bearing trees have been showing resistance to the disease for decades, and the crew has been visiting and “verbenone-ing” them since 2007. [Headwaters Season 2 theme begins to play: somber, dramatic piano music] But today, the crew noticed blister rust on several, turning what should have been an annual wellness check into a sort of inevitable goodbye. Rebecca: It's—it's sad to see, you know… I don't like to see them dying off, but it's not surprising. Even if just a fraction of them survive, hopefully we can maintain a little foothold up here. [theme music finishes] Peri: My name is Peri, and this is season two of Headwaters. We're calling this season Whitebark Pine. But this story is also about so much more than a tree. It's about the purpose of national parks and our relationship with the places we love. Andrew: I'm Andrew. Michael: I'm Michael. Andrew: Hopefully, you've already listened to chapters one and two. But if you haven't, those are a great place to start. Michael: This is chapter three of a five-part season. Peri: So far, we've introduced you to whitebark pine, learned about its cultural significance, and heard about the intricate web of life that's connected to this tree. Now we meet the things trying to kill it. So, Michael. Michael: Mmhmm? Peri: Hearing about your field day with Rebecca makes me think of this quote by Aldo Leopold, the famous conservationist. He said "one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." [sparse, sad music begins to play] I'm realizing that a lot of this whitebark pine story is invisible, something that a layperson wouldn't even notice, but that's a catastrophe to an ecologist and the world's they study. Michael: Definitely. I mean, I would have never noticed the blister rust on those trees if Rebecca hadn't pointed it out. Peri: And I'm no ecologist. But as I learn more about whitebark pine, I think I'm starting to get a glimpse of what it feels like to see these hidden tragedies unfolding. In chapter one, I asked hikers on the Piegan Pass trail if they knew what whitebark pine were, and most of them didn't, even though we were standing right next to a ghost forest of dead whitebark. I felt like I was seeing a world they weren't. [music finishes] Peri: Professor Diana Six is an ecologist at the University of Montana who studies the threats facing whitebark pine. And today, I'm going to hike back up the Piegan Pass trail with her. We're going to find a big, healthy whitebark pine and core it, to look at the rings, see what it's been through, and ask why it survived. [pensive music marks a transition to the field] Diana: So, yeah, my name is Diana Six, and I'm a professor of forest entomology and pathology. I really did start my love of nature in insects as a little kid. I was camping when I was in diapers. I've been out in the forest, in the desert, you know, all my life. Peri: [in the field] So I'm just envisioning five year old Diana. [expansive synth music beings] Did you bring all these bugs into the house? What did your parents think about it? Diana: Oh yeah, everything came in the house. I collected, the most famous thing that put some controls on me was I brought home all these little wigglers and put them in my aquarium. And of course, they were mosquitoes. And when they hatched, I was in big trouble, and after that I wasn't allowed to bring live stuff in the house anymore. You know, I begged for a microscope for years and I always got these stupid dolls. I am old enough that in those days, women were not encouraged in science. We weren't even allowed to be in the science club, so I never, ever considered that it could have been a career that I could have gone on to do science or bugs, for sure. Peri: You might think of a forest entomologist and pathologist as a bit of a nerd, but Diana is very cool. She has all this amazing, insect-themed silver jewelry and listens to heavy symphonic metal, works all over the world, and is very far from the stereotype I imagined. As we hiked up the trail, I asked her what whitebark pine is up against. [pensive synth music begins] Diana: So the three main threats really to whitebark are climate change, blister rust, and mountain pine beetle. And the fact that we have those three, and they're all big, makes this a particularly wicked problem. And wicked problems are those kinds that are not only difficult to solve, but they have multiple facets. And so one aspect could be really difficult to fix. But if you come up with a solution for that, you're still going to lose what you're focused on, because you still have these other threats that have to be dealt with. Peri: And the other thing that makes this a wicked problem is that these threats interact. For example, climate change is enabling beetles to attack whitebark pin. Diana: Mountain pine beetles are native, which surprises some people because they've killed so many trees. They act like some invasive, but they're native Peri: In a way, mountain pine beetles are new to whitebark. Beetle larvae are killed by really cold temperatures, which used to be common in the high elevation areas where these trees live. Diana: But with climate change, it's allowed things to warm up, the beetles could move up the mountain now, and now they're—it's warm enough on the tops of the mountains all of the time that the beetles can persist there, pretty much as residents now. And this is a big problem because whitebark, having been protected for so many years, has never really had to evolve strong defenses against this insect. And so when this insect shows up, it doesn't have a really good way of fighting back. So if you go to lower elevation trees, they've got all this resin they produce. They drown the beetles, they produce all these toxic chemicals. Whitebark doesn't do that. It's a sitting duck. And the beetles just bore in, they don't get drowned. Doesn't take very many beetles to kill the trees, and it's just a disaster—because, well, so many of the trees are so susceptible, and we've seen millions of acres now killed by the beetles just in in the last 10 years. Peri: [in the field, talking while walking—sounds of footsteps, out of breath] I feel like you could definitely see pine beetles as the villain in this story, or the bad guy. Do you see it that way or no? Diana: [while walking, out of breath] Ultimately, they're just doing what they do, right? They're native. They have, in the past, always been actually good guys because they regenerate forests, they're a natural disturbance agent, just like fire. And so the forests that have evolved with them really need them periodically to kind of stay vigorous and healthy. Now that we're seeing these really big outbreaks, this is outside their norm. And the root cause of that is not them. It's us. And with a changing climate, these beetles are responding to warmer temperatures, weaker trees, by blowing up. Peri: Mountain pine beetles have killed a ton of whitebark pines, especially where they grow in mostly uninterrupted stands of just whitebark, like in the Yellowstone area and in parts of Idaho. And they kill them really dramatically and quickly. Whole hillsides of whitebark will turn red and then die within a couple of years. But here in Glacier, blister rust is an even more insidious threat. Diana: This is a really serious situation because of course, it's a it's an invasive disease. It is not meant to be here. The tree really has very little resistance. This is this is a tough one. Peri: Blister Rust is a fungus, but not like mushrooms you might picture on the forest floor. Blister rust grows inside the living tissue of other organisms, and its spores are spread through the air, entering through pores on the trees needles. [somber synth music begins] Diana: So when a tree gets blister rust, the infection begins in the needles and then will move down through the branches. And at that point, it's really not a big deal. It might kill a branch or something, but once it gets into the main stem of the tree, that's the problem, because there will begin to move horizontally around the tree, which causes something we call girdling. And it will kill this phloem layer that conducts the nutrients for the tree. And once it does that all the way around the tree, everything above that point on the tree dies. And so even if, like the bottom half of the tree is still alive, it's not going to produce cones anymore, so it becomes what we call ecologically dead. It's still alive, but it's not reproducing, it's not passing its genes on, and it's not helping the population survive. And eventually that part of the tree'll die, too. [music finishes] Peri: Blister rust spores spread under cool, damp conditions. So Glacier's climate is perfect for it. And it's killed between 50 and 90 percent of the whitebark in the park. Diana: And there's been a lot of work on it, and luckily people are finding resistance. Peri: That is, that a small percentage of whitebark pine are naturally resistant to blister rust. Diana: They're having success at developing trees that can be planted out that have more resistance. So that's promising, but it's a real uphill battle. Peri: In addition to pine beetles and blister rust, the third threat whitebark pine are facing is climate change. Which is a threat all on its own, but it also makes the other two worse. [sad music begins to play] Diana: I personally think climate change is the very biggest threat because that that's really the hardest to deal with, right? If we could find enough resistance to blister us, if we can find enough for the beetles, if they have that evolutionary adaptive capacity, they could probably persist. But then you throw climate change and makes the beetles worse. It can make blister rust worst in some places if it increases conditions for infection, but it is very much going to affect the range of where this tree can live. And so if you have a greatly changed climate, and it's too warm, it's too dry—even if you had all resistant trees, they can't live under those conditions. And you know, it kind of seems like a no brainer, but the forests that you have in a certain place are what they are because of the climate. So if you change the climate, you change the forest. [music finishes, marking a transition] Michael: To set the stage, white pine blister rust is a fungus native to China, and it affects white pines, which is a term that describes whitebark, pine and all of its closest relatives, like western and eastern white pines, limber pine, etc. It arrived in North America around 1900, but it didn't cross the ocean on its own. It hitched a ride on American pine trees growing in Europe. Peri: Why were American trees growing in Europe? Michael: They were being grown as timber species in nurseries, tree nurseries, which were a new concept at the turn of the century. Many people began to fear that the once limitless forests of North America were being depleted—turned into homes, paper, railroad ties. People like Gifford Pinchot, who would go on to become the first director of the U.S. Forest Service, began to advocate for the idea of modern forestry. Peri: What would make it modern forestry? Michael: Well really just forestry in general. It was kind of a revolutionary idea to treat forests like farms instead of like mines, you know, replanting things instead of just harvesting them. So in the early 1900s, you could raise seedlings in an American nursery, but it was expensive. There just weren't that many in this country yet. It was a lot easier and cheaper to send them to Europe. So you could send a white pine seed to a German nursery, and they would raise it into a tree and ship it back across t…

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Whitebark Pine | Chapter Two Jan 23, 2022

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An entire ecosystem held together by one tree. The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/ Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/ Tree Huggers Comedy: https://www.treehuggerscomedy.com/ Picture of Clark’s Nutcracker: https://flic.kr/p/2mqRdzH Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/ See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [car driving by] Peri: If you've ever driven the length of Going-to-the-Sun Road, you've crossed the Baring Creek Bridge—on the east side of the park. [dynamic piano music playing] You might have been staring up at the mountains and not noticed it, but it is worth checking out. Built in 1931, the bridge is huge. One of the largest on Going-to-the-Sun Road. It's so big that there's a path you can work on that takes you under it next to the creek. And if you look up, you can see all the beautiful red and green local rocks it was built with. The rocks stack on top of one another to form a single long arch that touches down on each side of the creek. And at the apex of the arch is a single stone that's bigger, and more prominent than the rest. And that's called the keystone. If you pulled out the keystone, the rest of the stones would collapse into the creek. [music ends] Peri: Well, not really, in this case. The rocks on the Baring Creek Bridge are just a facade for a concrete arch. But keystones have held bridges and arches together for thousands of years. One iconic stone that transforms to unstable stacks of rock into one of the strongest and most important shapes in all of architecture. [Headwaters Season Two theme begins: somber piano music] Peri: In the late 1960s, ecology borrowed this concept and started using the term keystone species. The idea is that some species—like whitebark pine—are so important that they hold up the rest of the ecosystem, the way the keystone holds up the arch. If whitebark pine go extinct, then all the other species dependent on them could go extinct as well. Peri: My name is Peri, and you're listening to Headwaters Season Two, a story of a tree over the course of a summer in Glacier National Park. Of course, this story is also about a lot more than whitebark pine. It's about the purpose of the National Park Service and our relationship with nature. Michael: I'm Michael. Andrew: I'm Andrew. And the three of us are Rangers here in Glacier. Michael: You're listening to Chapter Two of Five, although we'd recommend starting with Chapter One. And if you haven't already, you could listen to season one of this podcast for an introduction to Glacier National Park. Peri: Last time, I met whitebark pine. I spoke with foresters, rangers, artists and more to see what we can learn from a tree. Today, I'll meet the plants and animals that depend on whitebark pine. [jaunty piano music begins] Michael: Could you introduce us to Piney? Brad: Yes! So yes, I have a puppet here with me, I'll pick her up. Piney is like an artificial Christmas tree that's been truly gussied up. Whose trunk has been painted white because she is a whitebark pine. [Michael laughs] She has been giving a beautiful sequined evening gown with some pretty profound pine cone... [Michael laughs again] A pine cone bosom situation, which I will say… Peri: Glacier has an Artist in Residence program: a way for the park to invite and host artists to visit for a month at a time, while working on a project about the park. Michael: So she's about three and a half feet tall, three feet tall, green sequined dress, looks kind of like a– Brad: I would say, like a lounge singer, perhaps. She's got one hand that's perpetually on her hip and one hand that she gesticulates with. Peri: This year, one of our artists was Brad, who came to our studio with a handmade whitebark pine puppet named Piney, whose plastic needled branches have been squashed into a quasi-feminine form. Brad: My name is Brad Einstein and I am a federally recognized forest comedian. [Michael laughs again] Peri: Brad and his friend Kyle Neimer started Tree Huggers Comedy, where they make nature documentaries that they describe as a little John Muir and a little John Oliver. One of the videos they're working on explores a relationship, specifically one between whitebark pine and a bird called a Clark's Nutcracker. Brad: So the whole play with this noir was that the detective was a Clark's Nutcracker, who had a very good memory for triangulating and finding things. Peri: Clark's Nutcrackers are a beautiful gray bird that's related to crows and ravens. And they have black wings and a huge black beak that they use to crack into white bark pine cones. They extract their seeds and then cash them for the winter. Here's a clip from Brad and Kyle's video. Video Clip of Bird Puppet: [a film reel spinning, a countdown beeps, and a playful bass line begins] The name's Clark. Clark S. Nutcracker. From nine to five, I'm a private detective. The rest of the time [caw caw sound], I’m a bird. Why am I a detective? I have a nose for it. More specifically, a beak. There's not a case this thing can't crack. More specifically, seed cases. More and more specifically [a whip cracks], pine cones. And while I’ve cracked lots of cases from lots of pines, there's only one case [romantic music begins], that cracked my heart into two. Peri: In this bit, Clark S. Nutcracker is a detective, sporting a three-piece suit and a felt fedora. The joke is that, like a detective, these smart birds use their excellent memory to remember all the places where they've cashed whitebark pine seeds. Brad: He was a private eye, and we kind of had a “Beautiful Mind” sort of conspiracy theory wall of him doing this triangulation. And of course, in that relationship, the whitebark pine was the stemme fatale. Video Clip of Bird Puppet: [somber music plays] Of all the mountainside she could grow on for centuries. She had to pick this one. She had a voice like the wind [wind blows] Video Clip, Woman’s Voice: Hey there, Clark Video Clip of Bird Puppet: Which on second thought it probably was. Holy Crow...Three hundred years old, she had roots for days. In short, a real stemme fatale... Brad: And hence, [Michael laughing] hence she's a little mysterious. Sassy. I don't know. A tragic female protagonist. Oh no. Her base fell off. [pensive piano music begins] Michael: What would I after watching this bit, you know, what, what would you hope I would get from it? Brad: Hmm. One, I... I think the whole goal always is to kind of remove the otherness of the natural world, and use irreverence in a variety of different ways to promote reverence. Whether that is a feeling of awe towards the grandeur of the natural world, or a feeling of intimacy that like, these creatures, these relationships, this inner-species union is not so different from the relationships that we as humans have. Peri: When I think about relationships, I see my loved ones—my family, my friends. I don't usually think of the natural world. The way plants and animals interact, the food chain we're all taught in high school, it can feel very transactional, kind of unfeeling. But is that really true? How do the bonds between plants and animals compare to our human ones? How can we relate to them? Or, as Brad said, share a feeling of intimacy with the world around us. Peri: Biologists call an intimacy between species “symbiosis.” The literal translation from its Greek roots means “living together,” and that describes most life on Earth. Depending on one another. As humans, we depend on plants and animals to survive and to add richness and beauty to our lives. Symbiotic relationships take many forms. Sometimes, like a tick on a deer, only one member of the pair benefits. But when both benefit, like with whitebark and nutcrackers, it's called mutualism. They each gain something and they help one another. [soft music begins] Lisa: [wind rustling] I’m Lisa Bate, I'm a wildlife biologist here at Glacier National Park. I mean, I've talked with some other biologists when we mentioned Clark's Nutcracker, they’re like, Oh, what's that? And it's like, oh, ok. [birds chirping] You know, not everyone is aware of birds, and the important role—ecological role—they play in the ecosystem, so… Peri: You might remember Lisa from season one of Headwaters, in our story about harlequin ducks. Well, she studies a lot of other species, including Clarks Nutcrackers. You've already heard a bit about their unique relationship with whitebark pine, and how they use their specially adapted bills to open cones, extract the seeds, and cache them in the ground. Lisa: But you mentioned that bill, and it is stout. It's powerful, and it has to be for a reason—because most pine cones open on their own to disperse its seeds. Not whitebark. The only way it opens is with that Clarks just clobbering it. And it's just amazing to watch. And so when it opens it, that allows it to become available to all these other species, too. Peri: One of the fun things about talking to Lisa is her enthusiasm for the animals she works with. Lisa: And the amazing–OK–this is like the most amazing thing [others laughing] about Clark's nutcrackers to me, when I first started working on this proposal. They are the only bird in North America with a sublingual pouch. That means a pouch under the tongue. It’s, and they have co-evolved with whitebark pine to collect those seeds, they put them in that little pouch, and if you're lucky enough to see that start bulging, you can actually see the definition of the individual pine seeds. Peri: I have to say, I've talked with a lot of people who love these birds, and no one has been so excited about their sublingual pouch. Andrew: Yeah, no kidding. So it's basically the bird version of a squirrel stuffing food in its cheeks? Peri: Pretty much. Lisa: But then they use that little pouch to go fly off, and then they bury those seeds like two or three at a time. And they are, their memories are phenomenal. And they can remember, like 98 percent of the places where they... Peri: Each individual can cache anywhere between thirty and a hundred thousand seeds in a year. And in a win-win scenario, the birds like to cache the seeds and open areas, like recent burns, where the terrain is easy to memorize and there's no shade to block the growth of young trees. Lisa: They are so smart that they can remember where 98 percent of those seeds have been cached. But it's the two percent—the one to two percent that they can't remember or they don't get to—that's what germinates into the next generation of whitebark pine. So it is, it's just this fabulous mutualistic relationship that's evolved over the millennium. Peri: So whitebark pine depends on Clark's nutcrackers to reproduce. They need the birds to distribute and plant their seeds for them. But it might go the other way too. Nutcrackers can survive without whitebark pine seeds, they can eat other foods and get by, but the fewer whitebarks there are, the fewer nutcrackers there tend to be. And scientists have observed that in years with very small cone crops, nutcrackers are less likely to reproduce. Peri: You've probably heard of the birds and the bees, but this is the birds and the trees. It's a beautiful thing, these birds and trees in this ancient, balanced and mutualistic relationship. In a way, I almost feel jealous. I'd love to have that close connection with the world around me. And I don't think I'm alone in that... Humans need community, and we all want to feel like we belong. [pensive music begins] But being part of a community means that you need to give back as much as you receive, whether with friends and family or with your natural environment. There has to be taking and giving, or else you slip from mutualism to something else... Instead of the bird and the tree, it's the tick on the deer. Like any relationship, it's a balancing act. When there aren't enough whitebark pine cones, nutcrackers can end up eating every last seed, turning them from seed dispersers into seed predators. [music ends] Andrew: Clark's nutcrackers and Whitebark Pine have this mutualistic relationship where the bird feeds on the seeds and the tree depends on the bird to plant the seeds and to sow the next generation. But lots of other species depend on whitebark too. [upbeat banjo music begins] Kate: Whitebark pine seeds are an excellent food source for a variety of birds and mammals; woodpeckers, jays, ravens, chickadees, nuthatches, finches feeding on whitebark pine, as well as grouse, ptarmigan, chipmunks, ground squirrels and of course, the red tree squirrel. Mice, I’ve, I've found whitebark pine seeds in coyote scats, and I've even seen evidence of deer feeding on them. Andrew: That's Kate Kendall. She worked for decades studying grizzly bears here in Glacier, as well as all around northwest Montana, and in Yellowstone National Park. In addition to all those birds and mammals that will eat whitebark seeds, bears—and especially grizzly bears—love to eat them too. Kate: It's a highly preferred food. I even know of a study in northern or central British Columbia, where there are spawning salmon. Bears choose to go up and feed on whitebark pine seeds when they're available, even when there are spawning salmon in the creeks below. Andrew: How did you realize that grizzlies were using whitebark pine seeds? Kate: Well, first of all in Yellowstone we had a lot of radio-collared bears, and we could see their movements moving to whitebark pine stands in the high elevation, uh, late summer and fall. We also paid a lot of attention to bear scats, or their feces. And it was very obvious when bears had been feeding on whitebark pine seeds, there's almost nothing else in their scats, and so it's very easy to tell what they've been eating. Andrew: But while Kate knew that bears were eating whitebark pine seeds, there were still a few mysteries. For starters, how were they getting the seeds out of whitebark pine cones? No one had seen it happen in person, so Kate took a bunch of whitebark pine cones to the Boise Zoo to find out. Kate: So, I took a bunch of cones and then a individual pile of seeds that I had laboriously extracted from the cones [upbeat music begins] to the Boise Zoo, where there were two 10 year old grizzly bears that had been orphaned when their mother died in Yellowstone, when they were just cubs. They had gone through one year of feeding with her, and then the next spring, the mother died and they were put into a zoo, so they had been in captivity for nine years. Andrew: Kate hope these two orphaned cubs would show her how bears accessed whitebark pine seeds. Kate: And they still had their regular food which were apples, carrots out there. And as soon as they release those bears into the enclosure, they just absolutely made a beeline to the pile of cones, sat down and started crunching them up. They break them up by biting them, and then they'd let that fall to the ground and they rake out the debris and just very dexterously lick up just the individual seeds. And if they got a cone scale in their mouth, they, it would come get ejected out of the side of their mouth. It was just unbelievable that that... Andrew: This behavior couldn't have been learned in captivity. The bears remembered the trick that their mom had taught them that one fall, nine years earlier. However, they didn't touch the seeds that Kate had carefully extracted from the cones. Kate: And…

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Whitebark Pine | Chapter One Jan 16, 2022

Show notes

Journey across the Flathead Indian Reservation to the most important tree you’ve never heard of. The Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/ Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation: https://whitebarkfound.org/ Pictures of Ilawye, the Great Great Grandparent Tree: https://flic.kr/p/2mtQsSH Ben Cosgrove Music: https://www.bencosgrove.com/ Claire Emery Art: https://www.emeryart.com/ See more show notes on our website: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/photosmultimedia/headwaters-podcast.htm ---TRANSCRIPT:--- Lacy: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy. [harsh, scratchy calls of a Clark’s nutcracker] [pensive piano music begins] ShiNaasha: This tree knows a lot about me. Every time I do come up here, I'll pray to it. I'll talk, I'll cry. Mike: You met Ilawye. So that's you know, to me, the other side of that. I mean, Ilawye is not alive, but it still has to me, it's like power or spirit. Just when I talk about it, I mean, I get kinda the goosebumps and the chills. But being able to put your hand on it or even hug it, and just knowing that this tree has been here for over a thousand years. ShiNaasha: This tree has been here longer than me and knows more than me. It's like a lifeline. It's like a lifeline to that, to that other side, to that spiritual realm, you could even say. Imagine if we were to lose this tree, this species—you lose a lot more than just a tree. [music slowly fades out] Peri: This story begins on top of a mountain, sitting at the foot of the largest whitebark pine tree I've ever seen. It's called Ilawye, the Great, Great Grandparent Tree. I feel a sense of awe at this tree and what it's seen over the years, and I'm wondering how many generations of trees have grown from its seeds. But this tree is dead, like so many other whitebark pines. More than half of all the whitebark in Glacier National Park and across the western U.S. have died, and we're losing more each day. [Headwaters Season 2 theme begins to play: somber piano music] Meeting Ilawye was my introduction to whitebark pine and the start of a relationship I didn't expect. [music fades out as Peri starts talking again] Peri: My name is Peri, and this is season two of Headwaters, a five episode story about my journey with a tree over the course of a summer in Glacier National Park. But this story is about so much more than whitebark pine—it's also a story about the purpose of national parks and our relationship with the places we love. Andrew: Hi, this is Andrew. Michael: And I'm Michael. We're all rangers here in Glacier. Andrew: You don't need to listen to season one to understand this story, but if you're planning a visit to the park, last season will be a great place to start. Michael: This season is all about whitebark pine, an incredible tree that could soon disappear. Over the course of five chapters we'll learn why it matters, why it's dying, and meet the people fighting to save it. Peri: It's about a lot more than just a tree. Let's start simply, though. [sounds of a pencil scribbling on paper] Here's Claire Emery, who created the cover art for our podcast this year. We went into the park to find and sketch some of these trees. [quiet, pensive guitar music begins playing] Claire: One of the things that caught my eye first about whitebark pine was the silver branches that all reach in the same direction to model what way the wind is blowing, and how they would all just… “phewsh.” It's like they're all, it's like they're flying in the wind, but they're... but they're not moving, you know, and how can they be both at once? It's just so amazing to me that something so static can look so alive. Peri: When I think of conifers, I usually picture a Christmas tree shape—that classic spruce or fir silhouette. But whitebark pines aren't really like that. They sort of have a wise old, tough look about them. The tops are bushy, with their branches reaching up like a candelabra, and they're not too big as far as trees go. The tallest ones are about 50 feet tall and their bark is white-ish gray—hence the name. Whitebark is part of a group of closely-related trees called five-needle pines, just like the western white pine and limber pine, which also grow in Glacier. What sets whitebark apart, though, is that they only grow at high elevation near treeline, that they have tasty, nutritious seeds, and that they can live for over a thousand years. Claire: I actually think that's the thing that's the most compelling about it is that it's like... It looks... it is this embodiment of vitality. The shape of those branches, the twist of the wood. It just—they're muscular. They're strong, they're beautiful and they're graceful. They're all of it. Peri: [in the field] Like a dancer. Claire: Yeah, yeah. Like a wind poem. I think seeing their brushiness in life, their tuftiness in life—and then their silver poetry in death. [drawing sounds] I think that they're kind of a nice combination of both of those things. [fun, jaunty piano music begins, marking a transition] [bird sounds and footsteps begin to play] Peri: So I'm walking up the Piegan Pass Trail, which is a place in Glacier with a lot of beautiful whitebark pines, and I'm hoping to see how many park visitors have even heard of this tree. Peri: [in the field] So have you guys heard of whitebark pine? Visitor 1: No. Visitor 2: No. Peri: [in the field] Have you ever heard of a whitebark pine? Visitor 3: No. Visitor 4: Uh, no. Visitor 5: White pine, for sure. Visitor 6: Yeah, but I don't know if I could identify it. Peri: [in the field] Have you heard of whitebark pine? Visitor 7: I have not. Visitor 8: You graciously pointed one out, however, had you not pointed one out, I would have been clueless. [music finishes, marking a transition] Kaylin: 99.9 percent of visitors that attend my program have no idea what a whitebark pine is. Peri: That's Kaylin Brennan, who's an interpretive park ranger here. She does her evening campfire program on whitebark pine. And for a lot of park visitors, that's their first introduction to this species. [expansive synth music begins to play] Kaylin: [giving an interpretive program] So you come around this corner, right when you're getting really tired, you're so ready to take a break. You come around this corner, you see this tree, and it looks like it's floating above the trail, and you're like, “whoa.” So you sit down underneath this tree. It's about 20 to 30 feet high and you hear this bird, you watch it fly to the top of this tree. [Clark’s nutcracker calls] That's the Clark's nutcracker. Kaylin: [in an interview setting] The trees don't get as much recognition as all the other animals and aspects of Glacier, but yet they're the foundation of all of that. Peri: Kaylin has been doing her evening program about whitebark pine since her very first season 12 years ago. When she heard we were doing a whole season of the podcast about this tree she couldn't wait to talk to us. Kaylin: I was wildly excited, like jumping up and down, excited. I was just excited that a bigger audience could learn about the story of this tree. Peri: [in the field] So you've been giving this program for, what, 12 years now? What do you hope that visitors take away from this story? Kaylin: I think it's that when humans choose to make a positive impact on the landscape and come together, we can. Peri: So Andrew, what do you think about that? Andrew: It's a really nice sentiment. You know, I think it's a pretty commonly held belief that in nature, humans are a bad influence, that we're a virus on the planet. Peri: I mean, that was more or less the reason behind creating the National Park Service, right? Andrew: Yeah. There's this idea that in order to keep a place wild and to keep it natural, you have to keep humans out of it. Right? Like a national park. Peri: Right, or a national forest or... Andrew: ...a wilderness area. Peri: Sure. Andrew: But this is a fairly recent conception, maybe only in the last hundred years have we started to think this way. Once these areas seemed like a limited resource, it became popular to try to protect them by excluding people. It's an idea called fortress conservation, Peri: like trying to keep that place quote unquote pristine. Andrew: Yeah, keeping that human influence out because it's seen as a bad thing. But Kaylin seems to think that whitebark pine tells a different story. [echoes of Headwaters Season 2 theme playing] Peri: So as I begin this project, I really don't know whitebark pine very well, and most other people don't either. But those who do know these trees love them. And I wanted to find out why. Peri: [in a car] We've been driving south through the Flathead Valley down onto the Flathead Reservation. Peri: It's my first day working on Glacier National Park's podcast. But the park is in the rearview mirror. Michael: [in a car] First field day! Peri: [in a car] First field day! Peri: The stories we tell on this show revolve around Glacier, but whitebark pine doesn't recognize lines on a map. These trees are a key piece of the park, but they also occur throughout the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, which Glacier is just a tiny piece of, and at high elevations throughout western North America. Andrew: [in a car] I think we're going to make a turn in three miles off of the main highway. Peri: So today we're driving across the Flathead Indian Reservation. It's even bigger than the park, and it covers a lot of Flathead Lake and the Mission Mountains. The reservation was established in 1855 and is home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, or CKST. I'm here because I'm curious what it's like to have a relationship with whitebark pine that goes back thousands of years. To find out, I spoke with Tony Incashola Jr., the head of the CSKT Forestry Department. Tony: Whitebark pine is a first food for us. Peri: Mike Duglo Jr., who is the head of the Tribal Historic Preservation Department, joined our conversation as well. Mike: The story that I've heard is that when we went over Lolo Pass, for instance, they would gather some of the cones that had fallen on the ground and put them by the fire. And when those roasted up and were made easier to open, then they would eat those seeds. Peri: So I asked if they'd tried whitebark pine seeds themselves. Tony: Yeah, it's—it's very, very tasty, very good. And that's kind of our goal is to collect enough seeds not only for our reforestation efforts, but also to help introduce it into our cultural feeds again. Peri: Mike said he hadn't, but— Mike: I'm looking forward to, you know, having that little bit of a taste someday, too. Peri: I hadn't heard the term first foods before, so I asked Tony if he could explain that. Tony: So first food, it's a traditional food for our tribe. Our tribe would follow the seasons nomadically, so to say, and harvest different plants and roots and berries at different seasons of the year. And so first foods would be something our tribe would traditionally use in their diet. Peri: So in addition to these trees carrying nutritious seeds, they also carry stories and cultural meaning. Tony: The culture committee has hundreds, thousands of hours of tapes where they've recorded elders and learned from them and their conversations, kind of like we're doing right now, to preserve those stories and that history. And they, they let us know that historically those were used on hunting trips, camping trips and just generally in those high elevation areas. You know, I like to call our tribe a forest tribe. A lot of our ceremonies, a lot of our traditions happen in the forest and especially the high elevation forest—it holds a special meaning for us. [car noise] Michael: [in the car] Peri, where are we? Peri: [in the car] We're several miles up a forest road towards Ilawye. Peri: A forester with the CSKT Forestry Department named ShiNaasha Pete kindly offered to take us up to meet Ilawye, the Great, Great Grandparent Tree. Michael: [in the car] How would you describe the road? Peri: [in the car] It's been pretty bumpy, pretty windy. Some big drop offs on one side, which I didn't love. [beeping sounds as the car parks] Daniel: So you think this is it? Michael: Must be. Peri: I mean, I hope so. [seatbelts unbuckling, doors opening] Peri: We made it! ShiNaasha: I know, that is such a haul. Peri: It is a haul! ShiNaasha: Yá’át’ééh, I am ShiNaasha Pete. I am Navajo and Shawnee. I am a reforestation forester for the CSKT tribal forestry. I've been working on whitebark pine since 2014, as an intern graduating out of SKC, which is Salish Kootenai College, and I am very blessed to be working for the tribal forestry now. Peri: I have this mental image of foresters as gruff, no nonsense types of folks who carry hatchets and are covered in tree sap. Andrew: [in the field] Were you into trees and plants and stuff even as a little kid? ShiNaasha: Oh my gosh, yes, [laughing] I was such a nerd. My friends would be like, “Do you want to go ride bikes and go over to the playground?” And I'd be like, “Do you guys want to go collect mint? I found this really nice patch and we can make sun teas!” And they're like, “what?” [everyone laughs] Peri: In a cruel twist of fate for a forester who works on pines, ShiNaasha has a pretty vicious pine allergy. ShiNaasha: I have a real honker, too. [laughing] It's like “what's that goose in the background? Some goose in the mountain, a mountain goose!” [everyone laughs] Peri: ShiNaasha is incredibly bubbly. Like, she jumps back and forth between rattling off scientific names of the plants we're seeing, telling stories about her son, and how different generations of her family are connected to trees. [pensive, sparse acoustic guitar music begins to play] ShiNaasha: My grandpa, he was a logger. And so, yeah, so on my maternal side of the family, my grandpa had a logging business, and everybody worked in it. My grandpa, you know, he'd come home and he'd smell like chainsaw and trees and the forest, and I loved it, it was Grandpa. He talked about whitebarks, big whitebark back in the day. How huge it was. It was really cool actually to hear his stories about it and him seeing it and and how, you know, even then, he didn't ever cut it. And then my grandma, she would do all the books and stuff like that. So she was always at home. And when I would hang out, we would go for these long walks in the woods. She would teach me all the trees and all the species, and we'd pick flowers and make bouquets. Peri: Now ShiNaasha is the one passing this knowledge on to a new generation. Michael: How old did you say your son was? ShiNaasha: He's 12. Michael: What does he think about what you do? ShiNaasha: I go, “Let's go on a hike.” “No.” “No? Come on!” “Every time we go for a hike, it just turns into a plant lesson.” [laughs] But yeah, he sees that I love it. But what's really cool with him is I can connect it to the cultural side. And then it's more of like, okay, you know, instead of like, “Oh yeah, that's cool.” That's more just like, like understanding or like a realization like, “Oh okay, that that's why—the purpose of it.” Peri: [in the field] So it's not just trivia, like, “that's what this plant is.” That's why this matters. ShiNaasha: Exactly. Peri: She now focuses her work on whitebark pine. [music finishes playing] ShiNaasha: When this project started to come together and they brought elders together to ta…

Full show notes at the publisher

Whitebark Pine | Trailer Oct 20, 2021

Show notes

Season Two documents the generational effort to restore whitebark pine in five chapters. It’s also a story about the purpose of national parks and our relationship with nature. We ask, can people have a positive impact on their environment? Coming January, 2022.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Peri [00:00:00] If you've ever been to Glacier National Park, you've seen a lot of trees.

Peri [00:00:06] Have you ever heard of a white bark pine?

Hiker [00:00:09] No!

Peri [00:00:10] I'm Peri. And in season two of Headwaters, the Glacier National Park podcast, I set out to understand the most important tree that you've never heard of.

Expert 1 [00:00:19] And we could lose the tree. A lot of forests are in big trouble.

Expert 2 [00:00:23] I'm telling you it was like bombs had gone off all over the whitebark pine stand.

Peri [00:00:30] In this five-part series I'll learn why these trees are so critical, why they're dying, and meet the people trying to save them.

Expert 3 [00:00:35] The musclebound jocks from the university were now carrying cans of poison on their backs and squirting that poison right into the white pine trees, trying to save them.

Peri [00:00:48] All that and more, in season two of Headwaters.

Confluence | Goat Haunt Dec 06, 2020

Show notes

You should always bring food, water, and plenty of layers when you go hiking in Glacier—but sometimes you might even need… a passport? In this episode, we’ll learn about the friendship that led to the world’s first International Peace Park. After that, two stories about how that designation has affected those that live and work here. Featuring: Natalie Hodge, Tracey Wiese, Lisa Bate, and Justin and Kim McKeown. Voice acting from Bob Adams. For more information, visit: go.nps.gov/headwaters ---TRANSCRIPT:--- INTERNATIONAL PEACE PARK INTRODUCTION Michael: All right, Andrew, my first season working for Glacier, I was a receptionist at Park Headquarters. Andrew: Okay. Michael: Lowest paid position in the park, mind you, answering questions people had via phone, email and letter. Andrew: Gotcha. Michael: Occasionally we had people in person come to the front desk with a question. And one of the most challenging questions we ever got was: "where is your World Heritage Site plaque?" Andrew: [laughs] Our what? Michael: We are a world heritage site—recognized by the United Nations for protecting natural and cultural resources that are important to the whole world. And every world heritage site gets a plaque to commemorate this designation. Andrew: Okay. I don't think I've ever noticed this before. Where was it? Michael: Well, that's the thing. Nobody knew. I told them I'd never heard of it and neither had my coworker. So they described to us a two foot by three foot bronze plaque. And we started asking around. We asked our boss who coordinates exhibits around the park, he didn't know. We asked facilities management, they didn't know. We asked the superintendent... Nope. We asked everyone in headquarters, and started calling all over the park to see if anyone had any idea where it might be. And then—it turned out it was in Canada. Andrew: Oh, that explains it. Michael: Glacier national parks in Northern boundary is the 49th parallel. Also known as our border with Canada and right across the border in Alberta is Waterton Lakes National Park. And the World Heritage Site plaque was displayed at a pavilion in Waterton. So I wanted to call up somebody who works there. Natalie: No, that's a great question. And I don't know that I fully know the answer to that. Um, we've recently redone the pavilion in Waterton. So I don't know if the plaque is actually still visible there or not. That's something I'll have to go and look for now. Michael: The mystery continues! Natalie: Exactly. Michael: That's Natalie Hodge. Natalie: My name is Natalie Michael: Who works for parks, Canada, the Canadian counterpart to the NPS. Natalie: I am the interpretation coordinator in Waterton Lakes National Park Michael: Waterton, a literal stone's throw away has been Glacier's neighbor since the very beginning. Natalie: Yeah. Waterton was actually created in 1895 and it was originally entitled the forest park reserve Michael: Two years before glacier was established as a forest preserve in 1897. Andrew: Wow. That's really early. Michael: Not to mention that Parks Canada—the Canadian counterpart to the NPS—also beat us to the punch Natalie: Parks Canada was actually founded in 1911, and it actually became the world's first national park service. Andrew: Predating the National Park Service by five years! Michael: The two parks administered separately and their respective nations oversee a contiguous landscape that doesn't recognize the political boundary that separates them. Natalie: There's many jokes about animals, not needing a passport in order to go back and forth between the two nations. We see blackberries go back and forth across the border with no issue. Um... Andrew: [Laughs]. Michael: [Laughs] Natalie: Sometimes same with moose as well. Michael: Now that elusive plaque that I mentioned... Andrew: yeah? Michael: If you managed to find it, wherever it is, it wouldn't say Glacier National Park on it. Michael: So we refer to our park, each of our parks is kind of abbreviated names: Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park... But what is the full name of our parks together? Natalie: The full name of our parks together would be Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Michael: Our two parks share more than an international border Waterton and Glacier National Parks agreed that this incredible landscape deserves our cooperation. Setting aside political divisions to cooperate in the management of everything from invasive or endangered species to wildland fires. Natalie: For example, if there's a fire in Waterton Lakes National Park, often fire crews from Glacier will come down and help, and then vice versa. Andrew: And while there are over a hundred international or transboundary parks and protected areas today, back in 1932, we were the first ever international peace park, Michael: Which on top of signaling management cooperation was a symbol of goodwill between nations. A statement of unity that—in 1932 in between two world wars—must've been refreshing. With a passport, Waterton is just a few hours away from most places in glacier. And there are a lot of ways to experience it. Andrew: Yeah, there are some remarkable hiking opportunities in Waterton that range from short trips to all day outings. Michael: And a personal favorite of mine is to visit some of the phenomenal restaurants in Waterton Townsite. Andrew: Yeah, we don't have quite the same variety down here, Michael: But Natalie leads, what I think is the coolest way to see the place, a way to really experience the international part of our title: the International Peace Park Hike. Natalie: I have definitely been fortunate over the years and have been able to lead that Peace Park Hike. And it's probably one of the coolest elements of my job working for Parks Canada. The hike is unique really in the sense that participants start out hiking in Canada, get to cross an international border by foot, and finish the hike in the United States. And our audience members are generally quite excited about the opportunity to be able to hike in two countries in one day. Michael: It's so cool. They even hold a little hands across the border ceremony. Natalie: And this is where our participants line up on either side of the international border, and they shake hands as a sign of peace and Goodwill with those across from them. And this is a long-standing tradition of the hike, and it's been ongoing since the creation of the hike in 1978. Michael: The International Peace Park hike or IPP is 14 kilometers long, or just over eight and a half miles. You essentially walk the length of Upper Waterton Lake to wind up back in Glacier, where you'll finally catch a ride on The International, a 200 passenger boat that's ferried people across Waterton lake since 1928. Andrew: Yeah. And from having taken that ride myself, it really stands out as one of the most unique experiences anywhere in either park. Michael: Yeah. I agree. Andrew: Even just looking into the other country, let alone getting to hike or boat into it is... Powerful. Michael: Now again, you do need a passport to visit and you need a reservation to ride the international or to join the IPP. But no matter what you do on your visit, seeing both sides of the border will only enrich your experience. So the next time you come to visit, make sure you visit our sister park, keep that spirit of goodwill alive. And maybe if you're lucky, you could even find that plaque. Michael: Welcome to Headwaters - a Glacier National Park Podcast. Brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy, and produced on the traditional lands of many native American tribes, including the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Selis and Qlispe people. Andrew: We’re calling this season: The Confluence, as we look at the ways that nature, culture, the present and the past all come together here. Michael: I’m Michael. Andrew: I’m Andrew. Michael: And we’re both rangers here. Now, we've mentioned so far that Glacier has a lot of titles. Andrew: National park world heritage site... Michael: But today we're going to focus on just one of them: International Peace Park. An agreement between the NPS and Parks Canada to cooperatively manage our shared resources. Andrew: And no place better represents the International Peace Park than Goat Haunt, one of the most remote and least visited regions of Glacier. Michael: Okay, real quick. What's with the name? Goat haunt? Andrew: Yeah. It's kind of an archaic term, but a haunt is a place where someone or something hangs out. So essentially Goat Haunt is a place where the mountain goats like to hang. Michael: I see. Well, odds are, even if you've been to Glacier before you probably haven't made it to Goat Haunt. And for good reason! Andrew: Yeah, there are no roads leading to it. And the shortest hike to get there is 22 miles Michael: Shortest hike from the U S that is.. So you can either backpack for a few days South of the border, or you can drive to Canada. Andrew: Yeah. Goat Haunt sits at the Southern tip of upper Waterton Lake. One of the largest lakes in either part, which stretches across the border into both Canada and the U S Michael: Meaning Goat Haunt is just about three miles from the Canadian border. Andrew: Yeah. So people overwhelmingly access Goat Haunt from Waterton lakes National Park. Michael: Oh, now I understand where the name comes from. Waterton Lake, Waterton Lakes N--. Okay, whatever. Andrew: [laughing] Yeah. So some people get there on foot, uh, like on the International Peace Park Hike, but most people arrive to Goat Haunt by boat, Michael: including even the Rangers that work there. Andrew: Talk about a commute. Michael: In this episode, we'll be looking at what it means to be an International Peace Park; how it happened in the first place and how it has affected those that live and work here. BACKCOUNTRY Michael: All right, Andrew, where is our border with Canada? Michael: I think it's about 20, 30 miles north of here, as the crow flies? Michael: Yeah. Well, could you be even more specific? Where is the border? Michael: It lies on the 49th parallel. Michael: Yeah, exactly. The 49th parallel was first proposed as a border by the Hudson's Bay trading company in 1714, which is a story for another day, but it was ultimately adopted by the U.S. and British governments, because at the time, Canada was still under British rule. Now, British and American teams surveyed the border in the 1860s, with brief interruptions for the Civil War and monuments were erected that cemented a border nearly 4,000 miles long. Michael: But did you know that that survey was actually wrong? Michael: Wait, really? Michael: Yeah. The border was first surveyed when we still thought the earth was a sphere, but it's actually an oblate spheroid. Michael: What?? Michael: Essentially it's a sphere that bulges at the equator due to rotation. All that to say, the original line doesn't perfectly follow the 49th parallel. Michael: Really! Michael: No, it's close, but it's not exact. Michael: Spheroid and all, it does transect present-day Waterton Lakes and Glacier National Parks. Michael: And visiting the border between the parks today, you'll notice the only thing separating the two countries is a swath of cleared trees - a 20-foot-wide unvegetated line, continuing into the horizon. Michael: And as far as this area is concerned, the most meaningful discussions of that symbolic boundary occurred not in the halls of Congress or Parliament, but on the trail and around the fire. Michael: Two of the earliest proponents of a jointly managed park were John "Kootenay" Brown and Albert "Death on the Trail" Reynolds. Michael: Big fans of nicknames. Michael: Yeah. Brown was the first superintendent of Waterton Lakes National Park. Michael: Reynolds was the first ranger stationed in the present day Goat Haunt area. Michael: Yeah, and it was these two that hatched the idea that two parks in two countries could be managed together. Michael: And the story of their friendship is an origin story of the Peace Park itself. Michael: We actually know an awful lot about John "Kootenay" Brown. He was raised by his grandmother in Ireland during the great famine and led a colorful life. After leaving home, he joined the Royal Militia in 1858, but never saw combat. In search of excitement, he chased a fortune in the gold fields of British Columbia, working as a prospector, constable, trapper, guide, mail carrier, swamper. Michael: Swamper, what the heck is that? Michael: Someone who steers canal boats. 50 years later, he had garnered a reputation for knowing the region as well as anyone, which led to his appointment in 1910 as the first supervisory forest ranger of Kootenai Lakes Forest Reserve, which is now our northern neighbor, Waterton Lakes National Park, at age 70. He earned $75 a month to manage the whole area. Michael: Wait, only $75? That's like the highest ranking position in the whole park. Michael: Yeah. It's $2,000 in today's money. Michael: All right. Now much less is known about Albert "Death on the Trail Reynolds." Born in Wisconsin in 1847, he and his wife moved to Montana's Flathead Valley in 1871 so he could work at a lumber mill. And to escape the nervous strain of work, 30 years later, he retired from being the supervisor at the lumber mill to become a ranger at the then-Flathead Forest Preserve. When that preserve was converted to Glacier National Park in 1910, he was stationed on the Southern end of upper Waterton Lake. And while there have been biographies written of Brown, most of what we know about Reynolds, we learned from his diary. Take this entry from 1912, where he's looking for poachers. Bob Adams: Found where some hunters had camped and hauled down a sheep or deer from the mountains. But it was in Canada about six miles from the boundary line. Michael: Which had been brought to life here by the voice talent of ranger Bob Adams. Reynolds lived in one of the most undeveloped and least visited areas of the park, often with only wildlife as his company. Bob Adams: Friday, October 25, 1912. When I arrived at camp, a bear had been there last night and he raised hell all aroound camp he went, looking into all three windows, took a bath in the wash tub and stood in front of the looking glass and combed his hair with a scrubbing brush. Michael: His nickname "Death on the Trail" was self-described, and his disdain for horses led him to walk everywhere. He regularly walked 17 miles south to get his mail. Michael: I walk just about one mile to get my mail. And I thought that was rough. But Reynolds would also walk north to visit Waterton, where he befriended Brown. Michael: Yeah. He walked the full 12 mile length of upper Waterton Lake, which starts in Montana at Goat Haunt, and ends in Waterton townsite in Alberta, walking that whole way to visit his friend Kootenay Brown, unless he could catch a boat ride. Bob Adams: Sunday, October 20, 1912. Left the camp 7:00 AM in one of Mr. Hazzard's boats. Went as far as Weeks' Landing, where I walked to the post office, got some mail, then went to Mr. Browns. Michael: His duties as a backcountry, ranger included looking out for poachers, forest fires and other "threats to the park." Michael: Okay. So what constituted a threat to the park? Michael: Well, in the early years, the Park Service was guided by a fundamentally different understanding of ecology than it is today. And Reynolds' writing illustrates this really well. Early park managers were especially eager to protect ungulates like deer. He would actually follow deer in order to chase them towards better foraging habitat. Bob A…

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