On Air with Tiger Expert Dr. Ullas Karanth

An Audio Interview with Julie West, MLF Broadcaster

In this edition of our audio podcast ON AIR, MLF Volunteer Broadcaster Julie West interviews Dr. Ullas Karanth. Their conversation introduces the high stakes conservation challenges and successes impacting another majestic cat: the endangered Bengal tiger, whose survival is threatened by large scale poaching, competition for resources, and diminished habitat and prey from human encroachment. Though a different species than our American lion, the two cats face many similar struggles in a rapidly urbanizing world.

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Listen to the interview from MLF’s ON AIR program, podcasting research and policy discussions about the issues that face the American lion.

Transcript of Interview

Intro: (music) Welcome to On Air with the Mountain Lion Foundation, broadcasting research and policy discussions to understand the issues that face the American lion.

Julie: Hello. I’m Julie West, your host for OnAir. If you are tuning into this program and you support the Mountain Lion Foundation in other ways, you do so because you care about protecting North America’s big cat, the cougar. Our program today introduces the high stakes conservation challenges and successes impacting another majestic member of the big cat family: the endangered Bengal tiger, whose survival is threatened by large scale poaching, competition for resources, and diminished habitat and prey from human encroachment.

Join me as we travel to India to speak with Dr. Ullas Karanth, leading tiger expert and Director for Science Asia with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Karanth has conducted important longitudinal research on tiger ecology and other predators, pioneered camera-trap and radio-collar technologies, modeled wildlife populations, and advised conservation policy. He has published over 100 scientific papers and several books including The Way of the Tiger and Science of Saving Tigers. Tiger populations, in dire straits across India, have nevertheless revived in Nagarahole National Park and other protected areas across southern India and the Western Ghats of Karnataka thanks in no small measure to his passionate research. You can learn more about Dr. Karanth by visiting wcsindia.org.

Please give a warm welcome. I am with Dr. Karanth now. Greetings. Hello, Dr. Karanth.

Dr. Karanth: Thank you very much, Julie.

Julie: Yes, hello. Well, let’s start broadly. The tiger needs an enormous range with access to a sufficient prey base to sustain itself, yet India is developing rapidly, and its habitat is dwindling. What are the variables needed for tigers to thrive, and what are the key factors threatening their well-being?

Dr. Karanth: To answer your first question. If you look at the distribution of tigers across their entire range, it has shrunk by 93 percent in the last two hundred years. That’s the grim view. The positive view is there is still a million square kilometers of tiger habitat left in the world where potentially tiger numbers could come back. And India alone has about 300 thousand square kilometers, or say, 250,000 square kilometers of tiger habitat potentially recoverable.

So that means, although the situation is grim now, if we do the right things, India could potentially hold 10 to 15,000 tigers, not just 2000 or something like that right now. So I view it, in a sense, as us doing the right thing rather than sitting back and wringing our hands and saying the tiger is doomed.

Julie: Nice, I like that — the hope side. And what about the key factors threatening their well-being.

Dr. Karanth: The key threats to tigers across their range globally, if I have to rank them, I would say the biggest threat in the last 300 or 400 or 500 years was actually massive expansion of agriculture. So that converted tiger habitats to completely unsuitable habitat.

But right now in the last 100 years or so in or within the remaining tiger habitat — because a century ago onwards we have started earmarking areas that won’t be converted to agriculture, so that will remain forest — now within this large area, which is about a million square kilometers now, the biggest threat has been hunting of the tiger’s food, that is deer, wild pig, wild cattle . . . the big hoofed animals that the tiger needs. Hunting of it by local people has been the big driver.

The biggest long-term challenge is the tiger habitats of human settlements in India. These are villages that are slowing growing into towns. People’s aspirations are changing. They want highways. So if we don’t have a strong policy to incentivize people to move away from these larger landscapes, or at least from the critical landscapes, that constitutes a threat.

Then, in the last 30 years or so, the rising affluence of China and other far eastern countries and the traditional belief — at one time affordable only by the super rich that tigers’ body parts have some medicinal or other sorts of values — that has driven direct killing of tigers big time. So these three sets have come in different stages. Right now I think the killing of prey species and direct hunting of tigers where there are reasonable numbers of them left, constitute the two big threats.

Another threat that looms large is that Asia is growing very rapidly. Countries like India and China are growing at the rate of six percent annually, and they support a quarter of the world’s human populations. So in the long run, developmental projects like infrastructure, highways, dams . . . these also loom as threats. They’re also beginning to impact tigers. So we need to prioritize our problems.

We are very clear that you cannot stop development everywhere, so we have to earmark high priority areas — at least five to 10 percent of the country and protect that. Then there are other conservationists who are very confused, who agree with the fact that industry and the infrastructure do damage and fighting those, but when it comes to abuse of the land or misuse of the land by local people and overgrazing of cattle or hunting by local people . . . they are deafeningly silent.

So there are a lot of them who make the noise only against the industrial development but are absolutely silent about the damage from local hunting, cattle grazing, forest fires, illegal encroachment that are not driven by big industry but driven by local forces. I think the fight has to be uncompromising. It has to be against both types of pressures. I consider only such people as true conservationists.

Julie: Ullas, tell us about the Wildlife Conservation Society and why it is an important hub for tiger conservation.

Dr. Karanth: Wildlife Conservation Society is over 100 years old. It’s based in New York. It runs the Bronx Zoo and other zoos, but it’s got this international side that very few people know about because we don’t publicize ourselves too much. But we work in 50 or 60 different countries. And we have major programs in India, Thailand, Russia, Malaysia and Burma working on tigers. And this program has played a key role.

Most of the big tiger biologists who are in the world today, tiger conservationists, have been a part of this program — either in the past or continue to be. So WCS is unique in the sense that all of the solutions are science based. We don’t create things top down. We do the science bottom up and say the animals need this. This is what the tiger needs, and we build solutions around that.

Secondly we are very strongly locally rooted. We don’t export solutions from New York to these situations. Our country program directors are all very strong, charismatic people from those countries who have their deep social feel for the context. And they’re able to deliver solutions by working with government as well as local people. So it’s kind of combining science with implementation.

We are working very intensively with local communities. We are doing proper analysis of where the tigers are, where the meta-populations are, and then we are going in there and talking to these remote communities who are in some of the prime tiger habitats in the long run, which will get ripped apart if these communities are developed by delivering them power and roads or whatever, and we are convincing them to accept relocation packages that are available and incentivizing them to move out.

We have worked on this for two decades and succeeded in convincing nearly one thousand families to move out of some of these key areas so that the tiger habitat becomes free, better connected and there is less conflict, less opportunities for hunting. This is one powerful approach that solves multiple problems at one shot. And we have been working very hard at it, and this involves working as much with local communities as with the governments.

Julie: Does the economic security of villagers affect wildlife conservation?

Dr. Karanth: Yeah, absolutely. There are a number of things here, but first question is if people are landlocked within prime tiger habitat, then conflict is inevitable, killing of tigers is inevitable and occasionally killing of humans by tigers becomes inevitable, so the solution is to improve their livelihoods and improve their economic security but not where they are — but maybe 10 miles away or 20 miles away, and this is extremely doable. And this is the approach we have taken.

The second set of issues is on the edge of the protected areas. This is where, I could even say surplus tigers spill over and sometimes cause conflict. So there you have to have measures for protecting livestock and compensating people when there are losses . . . it’s a different set of issues. But certainly economic issues affecting the farmers are a critical part of the solution to the larger crisis of the tiger.

Julie: So you would then work with government officials in the relocation project to make sure that things like houses, running water, access to schools — that their basic needs are being met if they move out of the forest?

Dr. Karanth: Yeah, absolutely. We act as advocates of these people. We go to not just government officials, to local religious leaders, local political leaders, the entire society . . . bringing their plight and the solutions to their attention so proper solutions are developed. For example, one of the beneficiaries of our relocation efforts has been a tribal young leader. And he is now so articulate that the government has put him on the National Tiger Conservation Authority as a member.

So we are very proud of actually supporting local communities in the right way and solving their problems rather than — as some conservationists do — condemning them to this existence of perpetual conflict with tigers in the middle of nowhere. So we are very proud of this approach.

Julie: Right. No, it really does seem like the Wildlife Conservation Society is an important hub connecting so many groups of people — wildlife scientists like yourself, you mentioned forest park officials, tribal people, NGOs, villagers . . . It must be quite a process of negotiation. Do you find that process to be challenging?

Dr. Karanth: Yeah, it is challenging. I have been involved in it for 26 years. And it’s been like running a marathon for 26 years. The marathon is also 26 miles long. So it’s not easy. One has to sacrifice some of the immediate scientific accomplishments to make time for all these other interactions.

But it’s not me alone.

Let me be very, very clear. It’s a group of local conservationists from small towns in Karnataka who were initially involved with me as volunteers in my field projects and today they are the stalwarts who are delivering these solutions. There is Girish who is a coffee planter. There is Muthannah who used to be a journalist. There is Vinay, who used to be a government official. There is Samba who used to be a management consultant. So all these guys have gravitated, settled down and built a strong non-governmental presence that works with the people. So in a sense I give them ideas and they implement it.

Julie: Let me ask about efforts that I know have been made and are being made to link lands considered to be important migratory corridors. How well connected are existing, protected tiger reserves, and are you involved in expanding these efforts?

Dr. Karanth: There are a few reserves such as Ranthambore, which are out on the western extremity of the tiger range, which kind of stand out with poor connectivity. But if you look at the large tiger landscapes of India — that is the Western Ghats, the central India forests, the deciduous forests, then again in the strip called Terai in northern India at the foot of the Himalayan Hills . . . these are pretty well connected.

We have good documentation of tigers moving through. And that connectivity will remain. And that’s where the threat from these infrastructure projects is coming from. Because the most likely threat to this connectivity is likely to be not hunting or any of these other traditional pressures but these new multi-laned highways, irrigation projects . . . this is where the threat comes to connectivity from. And fighting those has been a real uphill battle because in recent times in pursuit of economic growth.

India has had a good tradition of conservation compared to any other country in Asia. But we seem to be in the last ten years really abandoning it and going for the old model of growth for growth sake without caring much for nature.

Julie: Tell me, India’s Minister of Environment and Forests, Veerappa Moily, seems to be batting for industry more than for the environment. I know he’s controversially cleared an unprecedented number of high impact mining and manufacturing projects that would severely affect elephant corridors and tribal rights in addition to critical tiger habitat, so how does WCS address these kinds of decisions.

Dr. Karanth: See, we have to remember — although there is a lot of publicity suddenly being given — this process of giving environmental clearances and batting for the industry as opposed to nature did not start with Mr. Veerappa Moily. It’s been going on from the time — I would say at least 10 to 15 years ago and at least the last four or five environment ministers, have basically, if you look at the statistics, gone on clearing projects.

In some cases, a pile of them got stymied by courts, legal battles, etc. So the present minister represents a continuum. He’s not something unique, and it’s not as though before him there were people who were very friendly to the environment. The only political leader in India who had a real concern for conservation who put in very strong laws was Mrs. Indira Gandhi. And these laws were put in in the early 1970’s and then again another spell in the early 1980’s — the two times that she was in power.

And ever since then, any party, all politicians, have been trying to dismantle the strong nature conservation laws that she put in. The Congress party guys who succeeded her praise her and her greenness yet continue to do the same dismantling, whereas the opposition party guys don’t even see that. So I don’t see this getting any better. It will only get worse. This is what I see.

Julie: Now what about the role of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, Ullas?

Dr. Karanth: National Tiger Conservation Authority was set up in 2005. Its predecessor was a small compact committee called the Steering Committee of Project Tiger. I’ve been a member of that at times, and I’ve been a member of this Authority, and I think Authority is too big. It is too inflated; it is too bureaucratic. And in fact I think the old steering committee approach was a better approach then this bureaucratic set up that’s been set up. This is my personal view after being a participant in both things.

Julie: I see. Are they the ones who come up with something called the Tiger Conservation Plan?

Dr. Karanth: No, the Tiger Conservation Plans . . . there is a guideline given by the National Tiger Conservation Authority . . . it’s kind of a template. And the state government, park managers who actually manage the land come up with the plans according to that template. But the problem is the template is so inflated, has so many loopholes. If you won’t believe it . . . the management template itself is a 150 pages. So these management plans look like a New York telephone directory.

There are hundreds of pages of it, and a lot of it is completely unscientific. A lot of it emphasizes needless management and manipulation of vegetation. It’s very sad, actually. With all the good will in the world, we can’t produce a 10 page or 15 page or 20 page decisive management plan based on science for a tiger reserve after creation of the Authority five years ago.

Julie: Yes, so how do you get government leaders on board with the science, then? And maybe this is a good segue to also ask you to explain more about your camera trap technology and what we can learn about tigers from data gathered from these traps?

Dr. Karanth: One of the things is . . . for a long time there was no research on tigers. And in recent times . . . I began my work with tigers in 1988, and until 2005, there was very little research on tigers. Suddenly, you know after the crisis in Sariska where a whole . . . tigers went extinct in a park using an obsolete method called the pugmark census; they were still saying there are tigers. That’s when the task force was constituted by the prime minister, which said that ‘You should have more research.’

So now they are throwing a lot of money at research and monitoring. I’m not sure how much of it is good research because there is very little coming out by the way of high quality publications anywhere from all this money that’s being spent, but at least it’s better than the earlier days when there was absolutely no research and, in fact, an attempt to keep out researchers. That has changed. So I’m hoping, in future, that better research will feed into better management, but that needs a whole change in the management culture of generally respecting science and scientists, which still isn’t there.

Julie: And your camera trap technology . . . does that help with a census of tigers . . . that they identify?

Dr. Karanth: Yeah, absolutely. See, if you have tiger populations that are vulnerable, small, scattered . . . their position is like they are patients in an intensive care unit in a hospital. So you need to monitor them really, really closely — how many are there each year, and how many are added to the population each year, and how many are lost from the population each year? These are all very, very difficult things to estimate for an elusive species like the tiger, which you don’t see, which hunts at night and avoids people. How do you get this information? And the camera trap has been a brilliant tool for doing that.

Because once you are able to get these pictures and identify individuals, all the complex statistical models that allow us to estimate growth rates, death rates, birth rates, recruitment . . . all these complicated mathematical statistical models can be applied once you have the power to identify individuals and monitor them over longer periods.

And the camera trap techniques does that. It allows you to unobtrusively enter the world of the tiger, get their pictures, get them ID’d, give them numbers. In my study now we have identified over 750 tigers in this landscape over the last couple of decades. And it’s fantastic data because you don’t have to catch the animal. You don’t have to chase the animal, track it, or any one of those expensive things like radio telemetry. It is simply placing some cameras in the habitat, but using some smart models, not just cameras. The statistics is equally important.

Julie: Yes, important tools indeed. Ecotourism has been described as being a double-edged sword for conservation because on the one hand it educates and raises awareness of the issues, and on the other hand it involves the presence of humans, which in and of itself often contradicts conservation goals. So how does ecotourism impact tiger conservation, and what’s going on with ecotourism in the tiger reserves of India today?

Dr. Karanth: My view is that ecotourism is potentially an incredible ally of conservation. If done right, it can be of great help to tiger conservation because it does two things: One is, if it’s priced reasonably, it allows people who live next to tigers to actually see the tiger, see the habitat — that’s the inspirational part. That is how people start feeling pride in something; people start caring for tigers. So its role in education is very, very high for India, because India is an industrial, developed country.

It’s not like some countries in Africa where tourism revenue is the main revenue. That’s not important at all for India. What is important is to use the nature reserves to get local people to feel a sense of pride in the tigers or rhinos or elephants. That’s clearly its fundamental role.

Its secondary role, which I think is also equally important — because, the kind of educational tourism I talked about does not generate a lot of money. It generates good will for the tiger — There’s another kind of tourism, which is the high-end tourism, because India now has a growing middle class, tremendous affluence, so there’s a large market, a growing market for people who want a high-end experience of wildlife. This is the kind of expensive tourism you have in South African lodges and all that. That’s also coming up in India.

Now this is a double-edged sword. On the negative side: Number one, is that to recover tigers, sometimes activities of local people have to be curtailed, like cattle-grazing, firewood collection, entry into the forest . . . all sorts of things. Now when you do that, you build some resentment, and on top of it if you take super rich or very well-off people inside — illogical though it may seem because these people are not necessarily always impacting negatively — sometimes they do because their resorts draw water from parks and there are those issues — but basically it creates a feeling that we are kept out of the park from doing ordinary livelihood things because rich people have to go in.

This to me is quite dangerous, so the first type of tourism has to be there. Now the positive side of this high-end tourism is, if we phase it out of the tiger reserves and encourage farmers outside the tiger reserves to turn their lands over to this type of high-end tourism — this is sort of like what South Africa has done; they have big Kruger Park with access to middle class South Africans, and high-end lodges fringing it all round where people pay a lot more but get a better experience — this has led to actually expansion of wildlife habitat.

I think that the power of high-end tourism is to actually expand these tiger reserves, but unfortunately, the tourism industry has no vision. They just go on putting more pressure on the existing parks like you see in Ranthambore or Kanha or any of these areas. They are not working with local landowners to get land use change outside so that this high-end tourism can be outside and budget tourism can be inside, and that way we end up educating people and also expanding tiger habitat. But I think tourism has potential, provided it’s managed wisely. Right now, unfortunately, it’s not managed wisely.

Julie: And how many tiger reserves are there in India right now?

Dr. Karanth: Right now around 40 or 41. But tigers are found outside tiger reserves, also. It’s not that tiger reserves . . . there are good areas, which are not tiger reserves, where there are tigers, not many, but a few. And there are many tiger reserves, which don’t have tigers, which are actually in a very pathetic state. The laws that actually, effectively protect nature is the Wildlife Protection Act, and there are two kinds of areas — called wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. The tiger reserve is an overlapping label on those.

So in national parks and sanctuaries, there is stricter control against hunting, there is money earmarked for relocating people, there is zonation to keep out tourism . . . all these things are there in some reserves, well-managed reserves. Some of the bad ones don’t have any of this.

Julie: In what ways is tiger conservation similar, perhaps, to mountain lion conservation in terms of some of the issues at stake?

Dr. Karanth: I would say that in terms of issues at stake, conservation of leopards is very similar to the mountain lion situation. Leopards are about the same size; they also can live completely outside the protected areas. You can have thriving populations without having large national parks or sanctuaries where they will live off small prey, unlike tigers, which can’t live on small prey.

Leopards can live off feral dogs, white-tailed . . . animals smaller than the white-tailed deer . . . so I think there’s a lot of similarity between leopards and mountain lions. And we have seen a resurgence of leopard numbers in India — pretty substantial. Once the massive hunting that was widely prevalent was abolished, now leopard populations are doing very well, well outside protected areas, sometimes in complete farmlands. This requires a new approach for protecting livestock.

My student, Vidya Athreya, has been working on this for building more tolerance to the presence of leopards, and I think this is where a lot can be learned about mountain lions. I think there’s a very hostile attitude towards mountain lions in the U.S., whereas the typical Indian villager or the society has much more tolerance. If a leopard is there, people will not necessarily go after it ’til the last one is wiped out. They don’t do that, unless it starts eating cows or some problem erupts, but generally people ignore the fact that there are leopards, because they’re not causing any harm.

I think that . . . and particularly given that the U.S. is overrun with white-tailed deer in so many parts, there’s so much prey for these mountain lions. I think the society should develop more tolerance for mountain lions. I would say that is the biggest cross-cultural transmission that can take place.

Julie: The tiger figures so prominently in ancient Indian texts and folklore and customs. It’s a national symbol. It’s venerated as divine protector, noble warrior. Do these myths matter? Do these stories and rituals play a part . . . or can they play a part in persuading . . .

Dr. Karanth: No, no, absolutely. They may not play a part right now in doing something. But that thinking . . . that psychological view of nature . . . the traditional Hindu view of nature — that we are a part of nature and nature is not created for man, and this traditional reverence . . . it’s got a huge amount to do with the fact that India has so much wildlife, despite having a billion strong human population and one third the land area of China.

You just compare China and India and look at India’s wildlife abundance, despite more poverty, despite an equally large human population, despite all the challenges, India has so much wildlife . . . so much social tolerance for loss that still through modern conservation, compared to any other Asian country, perhaps more than any other country in the world. So that certainly is a critical part of why we have succeeded.

I still see India’s wildlife conservation story as a tremendous success in the last fifty years compared to whatever else that has gone on anywhere in Asia.

Julie: Beautiful. What do you consider to be one or two of your greatest accomplishments in championing the rights of tigers?

Dr. Karanth: I think in terms of science, the methods that I developed for studying tiger populations — they are widely used now, not just for tigers, jaguars, cheetahs, but for a variety of species. I am very happy that it took a long time, but it did yield a result that is applicable widely.

The second thing that I am somewhat pleased — I am 65, so at this age I am a little pleased — is that when I post for this solution of incentivizing people to move out of tiger habitats with the voluntary relocation model as the win-win solution in 1993, Wildlife Conservation Society pushed this idea. I was very strongly behind the idea. We were very highly criticized at that time. No other conservation NGO talked about it. Even now they are very gingerly talking about it. We went ahead, developed this idea, implemented this idea and showed that it worked. So I am really proud of that.

And the third thing I am proud of is that I grew up as a village boy in my landscape in Malnad region of Karnataka. And in this landscape when I was born, when I was a teenager 50 years ago, tigers were on the verge of extinction. They were almost gone. Forests were being wiped out. Through all this . . . it’s not just my effort. All the effort that has gone on . . . the credit for the recovery of wildlife from the 70’s to the 80’s is not . . . I had very little role.

At that time I was observing, growing, learning. So whatever I have done is post 1980’s. So that original recovery credit must go to the forest service, to Indira Gandhi, and to naturalists of my earlier generation. My contribution in all this has been that through my work, I have created a number of local conservation groups and conservation leaders who are playing such a vital role. So kind of mentoring them and growing them has been a very, very rich experience for me. So these two or three things are really important for me.

Julie: Well, final question, Dr. Karanth — what would you like to leave us in thinking on tigers? What is the prognosis for tigers in India? What would you like us to take away?

Dr. Karanth: I think India should have 10 to 15 thousand tigers in 20 years time, and the world should have about twenty-five to forty thousand tigers. I think it’s extremely doable. We have all the resources.

We have more capability now. We still have sufficient land. We just have to be smart, and we can have a world with forty thousand tigers.

Julie: Nice! Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today in this conversation. It was a pleasure!

Dr. Karanth: Thank you, Julie. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk to all the big cat fans in North America.

Julie: You’re welcome.

Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use. For more information visit mountainlion.org.

MORE ABOUT DR. ULLAS KARANTH

Dr. Ullas Karanth is the leading tiger expert and Director for Science Asia with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Karanth has conducted important longitudinal research on tiger ecology and other predators, pioneered camera-trap and radio-collar technologies, modeled wildlife populations, and advised conservation policy.

He has published over 100 scientific papers and several books including The Way of the Tiger and Science of Saving Tigers. Tiger populations, in dire straits across India, have nevertheless revived in Nagarahole National Park and other protected areas across protected areas across southern India and the Western Ghats of Karnataka thanks in no small measure to his passionate research. You can learn more about Dr. Karanth by visiting wcsindia.org.

On Air with WDFW Officer Jones

An Audio Interview with Julie West, MLF Broadcaster

Listen Now!

Listen to the interview from MLF’s ON AIR program, podcasting research and policy discussions about the issues that face the American lion.

Transcript of Interview

Intro: (music) Welcome to On Air with the Mountain Lion Foundation, broadcasting research and policy discussions to understand the issues that face the American lion.

Julie: This is Julie West with the Mountain Lion Foundation. Today’s guest is Officer David Jones. David is a game warden with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Born and raised on the east coast, he graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1992 and moved to Washington in 1994. In 1995, he started his WDFW career as a hatchery worker for Cedar River Hatchery and additionally worked for other hatcheries until 2002, including Soos Creek, Bird Creek, and Merwin.

In his current role as game warden, Jones serves Washington citizens by overseeing laws relating to fish and wildlife, resolving conflicts between humans and wildlife, and forming partnerships with the public and other agencies to benefit fish and wildlife.

In 2007, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife began a pilot program to use Karelian Bear Dogs to resolve conflicts between humans and wildlife. Officer Jones is paired with the Bear Dog, Indy, and together they address a number of public safety and wildlife issues. He’s here with me today. Thank you so much, David, for joining me.

Officer Jones: Thanks for having me, Julie.

Julie: Karelian Bear Dogs have been proved effective for deterring and repelling bears as a non-lethal wildlife control strategy, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are now using them to deter mountain lions as well. Why don’t you give us a little history. Tell us what led to that decision.

Officer Jones: What we decided to do: we have some ongoing projects regarding collaring some cats and having some biologists that are working on it to bring a little more science to it, a little more data which a lot of folks often want.

For now, the stage we’re at is the dogs were primarily envisioned as dogs for working with bears. We’ve had a number of issues regarding cat conflicts, showing up in the same place the bears are showing up. The activity’s a little different. Not so much getting in the garbage, but getting some deer or getting elk, which is what their supposed to be doing. But often times that brings them a little bit closer to society. I look at it as — we as a team, all the folks that have dogs — look at it as another tool how best to deal with these cats.

What we do with these dogs, and it’s the same idea what we do to the bears, we do what we call “hard releases.” There’s a couple different ways of doing the “hard release.” One is the traditional way of removing the animal from the area and bringing it up to an area where we hope that it’ll stay. Of course, they’re a lot of factors that dictate whether that a cat or bear will stay where we put them based on quality of habitat and is there a dominant animal already in the area. Those are things that we don’t always know. Of course, there is science there but there is also a little bit of art and some luck thrown in there as well.

What we do is: choice one is you trap the cat, and you bring it out to an area where you’re hoping it will stay, within reason, and you release the cat in that area. Of course, when we do that we do some rubber bullets, bean bag bullets, some cracker shells, and we have the bear dogs there that are agitating the cat.

What we’re trying to do is just make the cat’s experience with us as unpleasant as possible and with the hopes that it’s going to minimize contact with humans in the future. So you keep the dog attached to you, and the dog is barking at the cat the whole time. Then once you release the cat, you do some pyrotechnics and some bean bag stuff. They hear the dog barking, and the hope is they don’t like it.

Julie: Got it. And so the cat will, I guess, just run into the area. Is there any effort to track it or to monitor it to make sure it’s not coming back?

Officer Jones: Right. So what we have, we have two different things. The biologist, they have about ten cats, the gentleman’s name is Brian Kertson. He’s kind of the lead on the project. His job is to find some cats down in Kings County, and put collars on them and literally track through GPS what these cats are doing. Where they are going, how often they’re going places and how much time they spend and where they spend it. That’s a very science based approach.

What we’re doing with our cats, we don’t always have time to put GPS collars on them. As a matter of fact, generally we don’t have the time, so we put a tag in their ear. While we cannot track where they’re going, if they do in fact show back up, we at least know that, okay, this cat has a tag in its ear and it’s shown up somewhere before. That helps us to track them a little bit

Julie: Obviously dogs typically bark at and are prone to chase cats, but why this breed? What is it about this breed that makes them so suited for the job?

Officer Jones: Every dog has a different personality, folks need to understand that. All these dogs are matched with their handlers. Apparently mine is full of energy and stubborn, and I’d have to agree with the breeder that that dog is, in fact, exactly like its owner.

I’ll give you a general sense. These dogs are fearless. They’re not generally afraid. They’re aggressive in the sense that towards the animals, they’re not afraid of them. They’re aggressive, they’ll bark, they’ll chase them. But then when you bring them out into society, with folks, with people, they can dial it back down, because our dogs spend an awful lot of time around kids and people. You need a dog that can dial it up when it’s dealing with animals. Then you need the same dog to dial it back down when it’s dealing with the folks. That’s something that we like.

The nose on these dogs are incredible. The challenge I have is deciphering what it is he smells. Is it bear scat verses a bear. That’s something he and I will probably be working on for years. He has to know what it is I’m looking for, so that’s a bit of the challenge that I have with him.

The energy level, the fearlessness, the loyalness, the desire to want to hunt which is what they were bred to do out of Finland, was to hunt. The challenge here is, as opposed to historically where the dog was released and could take off for miles and track down the object of the hunter’s desire, I need my dog to stay closer to me because if he goes off too far, that’s not really helpful. Hopefully, I’ve articulated some of the things that we are looking for in these dogs.

Julie: Yeah. They’re not working in packs or with another dog. Individually they bring those traits that are needed to deter a large predator.

Officer Jones: Yes. Historically they would hunt on their own, and most of the time with the handlers, they’re hunting and searching on their own. There are occasions where they will hook up with some hound dogs and work with the hound dogs a little bit more. We may actually get all our dogs together or maybe two dogs together, but that is probably less then ten percent. So, you’re correct. Generally, the vast majority of the time, they’re working on their own.

Julie: In some states, the mountain lion is considered to be a predator that can be shot on the spot regardless of circumstance or proven threat. So, how does the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife manage cougars differently from other states, number one? And number two, what are some of the measures in place when dealing with an unwelcome predator?

Officer Jones: The best thing my dog does for these cats is education. Beyond the fairs and the school meetings, and the Hunter Ed classes, we know we can actually touch a group of 20, 30, maybe 50 people at a time. Sometimes on T.V. you can reach hundreds of thousands.

But it’s at a local level where folks insist that any time an animal in the neighborhood dies, that it’s got to be a cat, where the vast majority of times in this neck of the woods, it’s coyotes that do a lot of grabbing the farmer’s animals. What this dog does is — I can bring it to the scene and I can, based on the evidence I see — no different then a crime scene. And based on the way my dog is acting, it can help indicate whether there was a cat responsible for that kill or not, and thus I educate.

And usually when it’s more than one animal where people are coming over and the neighbor is coming over, you can actually educate whole blocks of people just by going out and visioning a kill-site. That’s one of the biggest things, if I’m answering that question right, that my dog does as far as I’m concerned.

Julie: How interesting. I was focused more on the deterrent itself, but you’re saying there is a little sleuth work involved. Their using their K-9 skills to act actually help determine if the cat was the killer in the first place.

Officer Jones: You’re absolutely correct. When it comes to doing hard releases, that’s helpful. I rarely have animals come back. There’s some science and some luck involved there, so that’s a good thing. We assume, based on the recidivism rate which is limited, that we’re doing something right.

Actually, there’s a whole other area that my dog is touching on and all these Karelian Bear Dogs touch on. Every county’s a little different, every community’s a little different. What folks expect in eastern Washington as apposed to western Washington is going to be a little different, every county is a bit different.

To answer your question — it may have been a backward approach — but in the state of Washington, you have to articulate that there is some sort of fear. Either you are afraid for livestock, animal, yourself, or family member. Then based after my investigation — an officer has to investigate it — was it all right to shoot him. We have open seasons for the cats, and we have some permit situations where we give out if there’s a nuisance cat that’s causing an awful lot of trouble. We’ll get some hound hunters out and try to remove the cat if we can. Or I can use whatever it is that cat has killed, generally it’s a deer, goat, or a sheep, and I can use that to capture it in a trap.

Generally, I remove the cats without killing them. It’s non-lethal to the best of my ability. Occasionally, we do have to euthanize them, but for the most part I try give the cats the benefit of the doubt. It’s a bit of a referee balancing act. You have to weigh public safety, versus the cat being released. I’m coming in the backdoor on your question, but for me, it’s the education portion of it, because when one neighbor says there’s a cougar that killed my sheep, that spreads like wildfire. Now eight people know it, and 28 people know it, and 108 people know it, and it’s false information.

Julie: They all want that cat dead as a result of it.

Officer Jones: Generally they do. They want the cat removed. I guess they don’t so much care if it’s dead or not. They just want it gone. And nine times out of ten, it’s not even a cat. Now, on occasion, it is a cat. It’s not that it doesn’t happen, it does, and I do my best to handle the situation. But generally, a vast majority of the time, it’s not even a cat. So that public information, trying to get the cougar off the public enemy list is a little bit strong but it’s always the boogey man, right? It’s always the cougar. So that’s what Indy does, and that’s what I try to do is kind of disprove some of these falsehoods that gets spread awfully quick in some communities.

Julie: Now, you mentioned your dog’s name, Indy, just now. Tell us about your partner, Indy. You mentioned that he was stubborn.

Officer Jones: This character here, he is a small dog. He’s on the small size, mid 50’s, full of energy, fast as can be, intelligent, an incredible nose. But if you don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll be two counties away in a very short period of time. You have to keep an eye on him. He is high energy, and because of his nose and because — he’s only 16 months old, he’s going to spend three to four years — because he rides with me every day. We do a little bit of training. I wish we could do more training. Most of his training is on the job: Where’s the animal? Let’s go figure it out. Let’s handle this. He doesn’t get as many classes as I like to give. The breeder gives him some initial instruction which is very helpful.

He’s versatile. Helps with bears, deer, elk, cats. He helps with all kinds of different things. The challenge, especially as a young puppy, is for me to understand what he is reacting to. When we go to a kill site, he’s going to react to the smell of a coyote. He’s going to react to the scat. Number one, he needs to learn that I don’t care about those things; and number two, I need to learn to read what it is he’s seeing.

When he sees a cat or a bear, something of imminent threat, the hair raises right up on his back, like a ridgeback hog. He gives me a visual, which is helpful. I can tell by the way he’s acting if there is something in the immediate area. But that’s something that’s going to be honed over years and years and years of him and I hanging out, so he’s a great partner to have.

He does a lot more than people think as far as finding poached animals and those types of things that they don’t get credit for. He’s a good partner to have. The folks out in the field realize that it’s kind of a two-man team, it’s an officer and a dog, not just an officer so he’s all around helpful. He is time consuming, and he takes energy out of me because he’s so full of energy, but he’s a good partner to have.

Julie: I’m so glad. And the Wind River Bear Institute has partnered with the agency. How did that partnership come about, and are they the ones actually training the dogs?

Officer Jones: Right. That’s Carrie Hunt who is over there in Montana, and that relationship initially started about eight to ten years ago. We had a biologist named Rocky Spencer who had a tragic accident several years ago with a helicopter. He’s no longer with us. He was dealing an awful lot with problem wildlife, and he was looking into some options. There was a biologist that worked for the forest service that he bumped into, and she had a Karelian Bear Dog.

So he just kind of back tracked where that dog came from, and wound up talking to the folks at Wind River Bear Institute. That’s how the relationship started. He was the first one, a biologist, to have one of these dogs. When he passed away, that dog went to one of our enforcement officers. The program has grown a little bit to six dogs total since then. That’s a little bit about how that got set up.

Julie: I guess within your enforcement network, and assuming that non-lethal is the goal, your colleagues will know to call you or to call one of your other partners with a dog if there are instances where the dog is needed.

Officer Jones: Yes, that is absolutely correct. We have five of them on the I-5 corridor, and we have one in eastern Washington. Sometimes time just doesn’t allow for it. The dog is a tool. It’s not this perfect, invincible, solve-all choice. It’s an option, it’s a tool in your tool box. It’s an option.

All the officers know locally — certainly within the I-5 corridor — that I’m up on the north end of the I-5 corridor. If they need a hand, maybe you’ve got a school lock-down and the folks are afraid there’s still a bear in the area, you can roll the dog around there. If the dog doesn’t find the bear, you can open the school back up. There’s all types of applications with dogs. But yes, some officers are too busy. They don’t have the time to call you. Some stations don’t have a massive amount of problem wildlife issues. But the folks that do know what we have often opt to use it.

Julie: There are specific circumstances where using dogs makes more sense than other strategies?

Officer Jones: Sure. I’ll give you a couple of examples. For my dog, specifically, when I go looking for a problem bear, sometimes they won’t go in my trap. So we do what we call a free-range darting where because he won’t go in my trap for one reason or another, I’ve got to dart that bear, and I know that bear is going to take off. A lot of people think that as soon as you dart the animal, it just falls right there in its tracks. Not true. Depending on all kinds of conditions you could be in for a little bit of a hike.

I can now free-range dart those bears and instead of spending the time, setting up the trap, waiting for him to come into the trap, coming back day after day, I can free range dart him. That bear’s going to take off, tip over, and take a little nap out in the woods. Now I can release my dog, and he’s going to find that bear. When he gets to the bear, he barks so I know exactly where he and the bear are at. Here in western Washington, with the terrain the way it is, you can’t really spot and see from a distance. You’re dealing with some thick cover. For me, that’s my first hand example of when my dog is very helpful.

Julie: In playground situations, where there are children and people, is it common for mountain lions to show up in urban environments throughout Washington state?

Officer Jones: You’ve got different definitions of what urban is. You might have a different opinion of urban. Certainly Seattle would be considered urban. A year or two ago we had a cat show up almost in straight up downtown Seattle. We used the dogs to find that cat and remove it and put it back out a little farther in the woods, not so close to Seattle.

Is it common? To answer your question directly, it’s certainly not common. The cats kind of work the fringes. The only time they get into trouble is sometimes the populations of deer start to increase, particularly in areas where there’s not hunting allowed based on population. Therefore those cats, of course the young cats are often sucked into coming into some areas where they have some conflicts with the people, but it’s not common.

Even though most of the time they roll through there, we’ve done studies in the past where we collar the cats, and you can see the cat’s movements. They spend a lot more time than you would think in areas where they’d be likely to have some human contact, but based on their skills and abilities, they’re generally not even seen. So, yeah, not common, but it does happen.

Julie: It’s sounds like you’re a believer in there being win-win solutions in negotiating public safety with the needs of wildlife.

Officer Jones: I do. Sometimes I think I should wear a black and white striped uniform because I’m a referee. I’m basically kind of the balance there between society, human beings, and the animals. So I have to balance that. And the more tools and knowledge and assistance and science that I have on my side, the better.

I don’t always make the right choice. I don’t always make the right decisions, but I do the best I can. Having the dog there at least for four or five different types of applications is very helpful, because the community, they enjoy it. They appreciate it. I can use his nose and his actions to help me form an opinion, beyond what it is this cat has done, how often is this cat here, where was the cat, what did the cat do.

Beyond that, the dog brings some tools and some options regarding how I deal with the animals. I believe in the dogs, and I believe in trying to do this little balancing act. I’ve been fortunate enough thus far to be lucky enough to have — at least to my knowledge — I haven’t had any problems with my animals that I’ve released, so I’m happy with that as well.

Julie: Are you all encouraging other agencies to adopt Karelian Bear Dogs? Can you all be champions for this kind of option?

Officer Jones: I don’t know that we proactively go out and try and encourage people to do it. We take any opportunity we can to talk about it and discuss the pros and the cons and the good stuff and the bad stuff regarding having these dogs. We’ve had various agencies contact us and talk to us about it. We just try to shoot them straight on what our experiences have been, mostly positive. And we explain it to them. We just say “Hey, consider it.” That’s all. We’re not trying to make money off it. There’s nothing in it for us to gain.

If you’re in a state like Washington, where you have wildlife regularly meeting in that zone where a lot of people hang out, it’s an option that needs to be considered. That’s how I look at that.

Julie: Is Washington currently the only state using the dogs?

Officer Jones: That’s a great question, and I’m going to take a pass on it because I don’t want to give you bad information. I know up in Canada, up in Ontario, those folks up there have a lot of bear activity through Banff and Jasper and those places. They use Karelian Bear Dogs, but I don’t want to give you incorrect information, so I’m not going to answer that specifically because I don’t know the answer.

Julie: Sure. I don’t want to end on a negative, but you did mention there was a downside to having the dogs. Are they ever aggressive with the animals or try to hurt the animals or what would some of those downsides be?

Officer Jones: The downside is veterinarian bills. Somebody has to pay for that. It’s definitely not free. You’ve got to feed them. They take energy. It’s not like a truck that you can just park. It’s a responsibility, it’s a big-time responsibility.

No problems with kids, they’ve been fantastic. Occasionally, they might nip at another dog to just kind of cover his own territory, but they’re great with the public, great with the kids. That’s one of the reasons why we use them. Folks need to understand they cost money, they take time, they take energy, they take training. My dog, in particular, is stubborn, so we got to work through that just a little bit, and we’ll use whistles and food to try to convince him that my way is the right way, if I can.

That’s the kind of negatives that I’m talking about. They take energy, and they cost money, and people need to realize that.

Julie: Tell us about some of your agencies outreach programs that educate the public about the dogs and the challenges that face cougars.

Officer Jones: We’ve got some facebook activity. We’ve got our webpage. Those things are on there, hunter ed classes, the local classes that we give. We often go to different schools and do presentations there.

Specifically, down in King County, where you have a lot of activity where the houses are being built right up into the hillsides, so the officers down there have a lot of work with the local people. But I will tell you that the best thing we do is talk on interviews like this, let folks know that this is an option out there and getting to talk about it.

And then, for me, the local work that I do, just dealing with one neighborhood at a time, seeing my dog, asking me questions about the dog, watching my dog at work, seeing some stuff that he does in the newspaper. That, for me, is the best outreach, dog specific, that we do.

Julie: Walk me through how the dogs interact with the cats. If there’s a problem cat, what happens?

Officer Jones: Keep in mind now, we’ve got, let’s say I wrestle 6 bears and 3 cats a year. I don’t have hundreds and hundreds of animals I’m rolling through. I’ll give you last year’s example which is the most recent one in my mind. September, I get two cats. I set up a trail cam on a trap. Often times, it’s not the cat’s fault. People want to blame the cat. Often times, there are things that the folks are doing, like bears and leaving trash out.

With cats, they do things like this last situation I dealt with in September, where the homeowners didn’t really want the goat up by the house, making noise and digging up the dirt. So they put it down on the back 40, down by a creek bottom and tied it to a tree. In cougar country, that’s probably not the wisest thing to do. The cat, as it turned out, was accompanied by a sub-adult, and she was showing the juvenile the ropes. They found the goat just sitting right there. So they killed the goat, and it’s my job to catch the cat.

At the time, I didn’t know there were two cats, but I had a funny feeling there might have been. We put up trail cams so I could see that once we caught the one cat, there was actually a second cat outside the trap. We ended up catching them both. We caught them one at a time; one on one day, one the next day.

My dog’s job is to address the cat at the scene. I bring my dog down, and I’m doing two things. Number one, I’m introducing my dog to these cats, and I’m letting him know this is something I’m interested in, and he’s going to know that smell. I want to introduce him to the cat, smell that smell. He’ll bark at the cat, and nip at the corners of the cage. He’s just barking at the cat. He’s not being completely aggressive, but the cat clearly is not comfortable with the situation.

Then I dart the cats. I load my dog. I load the cat, and we bring the cat out in the woods. We give him a reversal on the drugs, and that cat starts coming to. There comes a point where we’re going to release that cat. This is just hard release activity.

When we deem the cat’s ready to go, its got a tag in its ear and it looks good to go, we check to make sure there’s no visible injuries. Of course we checked it prior to its coming to, naturally. We open up the gate of the trap, and off that cat goes. My dog has been barking at the cat the whole time and then once we release the cat the dog is — if you would have let the dog go he would chase that cat. At my dog’s age right now, I’m not in a big hurry to let my dog go off harness with the cat right now, so I would keep the dog attached to a harness and a leash. He’s just nipping at that cat, and that cat takes off. That cat’s desire, from what I have seen, to return is very limited.

Julie: So it’s really at the release stage when the dogs are involved, not so much the capture?

Officer Jones: That’s the first half of it, and then we can roll over to the other section and this of course has two problems. When you’ve got an animal that’s dead in a pasture, we’ll go there and decide what it is based on the evidence and based on how he reacts. Do we have a cat? Do we have a coyote?

In the instance of a cat, then it’s going to be my dog’s job to find the cat and to tree the cat. In 16 months of his existence with me, he has not had to find and tree a cat. Now he does do some work with Brian Kertson, the biologist I mentioned earlier, who was in the business of finding these cats and collaring them. My dog would do some work with those hounds and those dogs and in all honesty, it is the houndsmens’ dogs that, at this stage, are doing all the work.

As my dog gets more experience and a little more age to him and understanding and maturity, then he can do some more of that activity. For now because he’s so young, I’m not comfortable letting my dog go after some of these cats just yet.

Julie: Did you care to share a personal story of an encounter with a cougar in the wild, either with or without Indy?

Officer Jones: I’ve had several of them. I get a little bit complacent with the cats. I love the cats, I respect the cats, and I maybe should be a little more respectful and fearful of them than I am. I’m just so used to dealing with them. I enjoy seeing them.

My favorite story dealing with cats, a cougar in particular, is when I first moved to this state, I saw one cross the road up ahead of me. I didn’t quite realize how close it was, and how big it was. I pulled over to the side of the road. I had a different dog with me, it was one of my hunting dogs.

I was just trying to see if my dog could find that cat. Now, I’m coming from Boston where you don’t really see cats around. I’ve never seen one in my life, so I wasn’t really familiar with them. But I was curious.

My assumption was that cat had run up the hillside, and I assumed wrong. That cat was right in the bushes probably 15 feet away from me.

When my dog came up to it, he froze like a statue. I was kind of concerned that I bit off more than I could chew. Fortunately, as is typical, that cat was more afraid of me than I was of him, although that was probably a 50/50 push.

After hissing and howling and making a bunch of noise, it went straight up the hillside. That was basically my first interaction with a cougar which was kind of the highlight of my outdoor activity that I enjoy.

Julie: Okay. Well thank you so much David, for taking the time to speak with us today.

Officer Jones: Thank you, Julie. I appreciate the opportunity to try to explain to as many folks as I can what is it that I do as a game warden and what kind of help my dog provides for it.

Julie: The Karelian Bear Dogs are a unique animal, for sure, and I’m so glad to know there are alternatives like this, non-lethal alternatives, that agencies such as yours are utilizing. Fantastic work, David.

Officer Jones: Thank you.

Julie: Thank you so much for sharing what you know about the Karelian Bear Dog. You’ve been listening to a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast program. Thank you for joining us.

Closing: [music] This has been a Mountain Lion Foundation On Air broadcast. On Air is a copyrighted production of the Mountain Lion Foundation. Permission to rebroadcast is granted for noncommercial use. For more information visit mountainlion.org.

As mentioned during the interview, the dogs can be expensive. Washington’s KBD program is funded entirely by donations from the public.

To help support their work, donations can be mailed to:

WDFW — KBD Fund
16018 Mill Creek Blvd
Mill Creek WA 98012

MORE ABOUT OFFICER DAVE JONES

Dave Jones is proud to say that he was born and raised on the East Coast. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1992 and moved to Washington in 1994.

In 1995 he started his WDFW career as a hatchery worker for Cedar River Hatchery. From 1995 to 2002 he worked at several hatcheries including Soos Creek, Hurd Creek and Merwin. In 2002 he finished his career as a hatchery manager at Wallace River Hatchery.

In October of 2002 Officer Jones escaped from CJTC and was sent to Eastern Washington for field training. After a cup of coffee in Tri-Cities he transferred to Sultan where he worked for three years.

Officer Jones then took the Newport duty station in an attempt to do more big-game work. That station did not work out as planned and in 2006 he transferred to Bellingham, at which point he was loaned out to the Marine Division for 18 months.

Officer Jones now resides in Lynden where he says he “does his best to be a Game Warden.” He is partnered with Karelian bear dog, Indy.

Learn more about the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Karelian Bear Dog Program.