Randall

I think there's a lot of ways we could start this one, but I think, cause we can take coyotes anywhere.

They go everywhere.

But, um, as you point out, this is one story in which the animals win.

Yeah.

And so if I were to unpack that a little bit, because it's a fun, it's a fun idea to play with.

Yeah, and I think another point that's stood out to me here is when you're talking about coyotes moving into South America.

Yeah.

and whenever you're reading environmental history and you're thinking about these giant large-scale movement of animals around the world you know without human help right to say you know ignoring the the old new world exchanges when you think about animals moving across the siberian land bridge or the bering land bridge uh

or you know like bison moving east and then moving back west um i often find myself thinking like wow i wonder what that would have looked like

It's almost unimaginable.

But in fact, as you point out, we're witnessing what we would think of as like this ancient sort of unimaginable phenomenon right now.

And it just looks like, you know, a coyote showing up in someone's backyard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Another aspect of this story is when we think of wildlife politics today, we often imagine rural residents and urban dwellers.

And it's sort of a social issue.

But you introduce here the role of just...

institutional inertia and government agencies in sort of steering the course of history right with the bureau of biological survey needing something to hold on to as as a sort of organizing mission or organizing principle and yeah and it's coyote eradication predator eradication more broadly but um

The role of the government in this story is striking, just in terms of government intervening in the natural world in a way that's unimaginable to us today.

And one final question, speaking of surprises, I'm usually never surprised when I learn something new about Richard Nixon in environmental politics, but his statement about the use of poisons for coyote control was fantastic.