title: Guest Ep: Grouse
author: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
contenttype: podcast
publication: Timber Wars Season 2: Salmon Wars
published: 2020-11-21T18:19:37-05:00
sourceurl: https://pds.cdnstream1.com/p/opb/timber-wars-season-2-sal-760bb5/guest-ep-grouse/audio.mp3
word_count: 3022
Hey there Timberwars listeners, Aaron here. I want to tell you about a bird. Its numbers are declining across the west and protecting it may come at an economic cost and that has people taking sides and arguing over what's to be done. Spotted owl, you say? Actually, this time I'm talking about the greater sage-grouse. And here, the spotted owl has served as a warning and a lesson as the two sides try to work things out. There's a great new podcast focused on the struggle. It's called Grouse. The host, Ashley Aherne recently moved to sagebrush country to try to better understand rural America and what this weird troubled bird can tell us about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world. If you liked Timberwars, we think you'll like Grouse. So this week we're sharing the first episode of Ashley's series. It starts on a summer night. My husband and I moved into the little cabin in early June. It was hot I remember and I was washing dishes with the window open over the kitchen sink, looking out over the acres and acres of wide open sagebrush that surrounds our house in rural Washington state. It's dusk and the dogs outside roaming around and I hear this chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits chits. And silly city slicker me thinks, gee, I didn't know this house came with an automatic sprinkler system and then I almost dropped the plate and raced out onto the deck because Bernie, our labradoridol who has only ever encountered squirrels was under the deck messing with a large, very irate rattlesnake. So I screamed at him to come and got him inside and then all that night, I just lay in bed picturing the snake coiled against the foundation of the house feet away from where I was sleeping So I waited until the morning when the temperatures are cooler and snakes are less active And it took some deep breaths and a big sip of coffee and again myself a pep talk and grabbed a long two by four and crawled under the deck The snake was about 10 feet away from me still coiled against the foundation of the house Maybe just waking up for another day of Labrador hunting I slammed the two by four into it mashing it against the side of the cement foundation and it started Riving and I'm just squealing and sweating with fear in that cramped dark place under the deck with the snake So I pinned it and I pushed it along the foundation of the house until we came out the other side of the deck And the carpenter Luke takes a sharpened shovel and chops off its head He told me after the fact we had to bury it right away because snakes can bite even after they're dead And I figured he was bullshitting this you know newcomer city slicker, but look it up. It's true So now there's a snake head buried under the corner of the deck I'm Ashley a heron and this is Grouse a show about the most controversial bird in the west And what it's taught me about hope compromise and life in rural America We will get to the sage grouse I promise over the next seven episodes We will be going deep on this strange wonderful bird But first I want to tell you a bit about how I got here I've been covering the environment for public radio since I graduated from college All I've ever wanted to do is tell stories about science and nature I guess when I started out in this work I operated from the belief that if people knew more about what we were doing to the planet Then they'd change their behavior or elect better leaders to make better policy So I threw myself into stories about climate change melting glaciers toxic algal blooms dying orgas drought wildfire salmon diopts coal mining oil spills Whew the news on the environment beat is never or at least very rarely good But I felt like I was doing some good in the world and I was winning awards and climbing the NPR career ladder I was living in Seattle at the time and my husband Michael and I would get out for hikes on the weekends So I told myself things were fine But the truth was after I filed a story if I heard myself on the radio while driving home Glaciers in the North Cascades have shrunk by 50% since 1900 I'd turn it off Oh boy well tell you actually it's a lot worse than it was last time Ashley a heron has the story of this little frog and its shrinking habitat I didn't want to hear the news I was reporting It was just so depressing and hopeless Snow glaciers means warmer rivers and that's bad news for salmon NPR was requiring that stories be shorter and shorter so that meant I'd only have about three and a half minutes to explain some Super complex problem When someone has ever seen a die-off as big as the one taking place on the west coast Maybe get a few different perspectives on it One's arm is hanging on by a single, narrowed string of flesh Tell people basically how screwed we are the young orca appeared to have been dead for up to a week before she washed ashore And then sign off for NPR news. I'm Ashley a heron in Seattle It was a fight every day not to become numb And then in 2016 everything changed President Trump was elected and the day after the election I went to cover the pipeline protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota So I'm walking through Walking through camp Like and smell sage There's a lot of sage being burned around here And you can hear fireworks and singing and cheering Kind of joyful just joy It's so cold and there's so many stars About the flags anymore. I want you lacking a flag You want to walk along the flags? They sing it! They are singing isn't that beautiful? They're praying We're praying for the water and the earth It's really quiet in camp. There's been an amazing night of singing and drum circling And I'm crawled up in two sleeping bags because it's really fucking cold here and my breath is still clouding in the tent. I'm so happy to be here and I'm so happy To be hearing the voices of all the people that have come from all around the world To support the tribes that are fighting this pipeline Have you ever spent years working on something or believing in a basic premise And then lost faith in that premise or found it to be untrue That's what standing rock did for me We're going to renegotiate some of the terms And I say this no matter where you are on the pipeline issue or environmental activism I had built my career around the belief that good journalism helped the public and held the powerful accountable And standing rock blew that premise apart Trump took office and the pipeline was approved We can get that pipeline built a lot of jobs Great construction jobs I started feeling unsettled You know when you can feel a big life change coming even though you don't know exactly what it looks like yet Almost like a thunderstorm rumbling on a distant horizon I had started to question what I was doing with my life And if I still believed in the basic premise of journalism and what it's supposed to accomplish for our society My husband Michael tends to clam up when I try to record conversations with him So I sneakily turned on my iPhone while we were driving through a snowstorm last winter Sorry about the road noise and he said I could share this with you I asked him if he remembered that period of time When I was doubting everything It was right after standing rock because it was like it doesn't matter Yeah, like there were all these beautiful Like wonderful people that came from all walks of life like we pulled out all of the stops And it just doesn't matter It was like the tower of Babel like all these people from all walks of life just In this place believing in something and then To come home and just I didn't even know what to do with that date because It didn't amount to anything And the 2016 election brought another realization for me Living in the liberal echo chamber that is Seattle I felt like I didn't know my own country I didn't understand how Trump had won For a journalist there is nothing worse than feeling like you're in the dark or you're not getting the whole story And that's how I felt after the election I was covering the environment so natural resources wild things salmon livestock logging wildfire But I was doing it from a city for city listeners I think I just had this feeling of hopelessness that my journalism or any journalism really Wasn't making a difference in this post-truth era we live in since if utility that came after After the election yeah, not only do people not want more bad news About the environment stories But like the people that elected Trump don't even they're in a completely different media Yeah exactly exactly It's like a devil you know it's like the first one was like you know a stab to the heart and the next one was like the nail in the coffin It's like okay Ship you know ship that idea like bury that idea and that like Things will magically get better just through like more Information reporting in the environment Yeah That was a hard realization though Over the years Michael and I had spent a bunch of time hiking and camping in a little valley on the east side of Washington's cascade mountains about four hours northeast of Seattle It's called the Met How Valley and all told they're only about 5,000 people that live there and the valley is only about 60 miles long It's an interesting mix of people multi-generational ranchers and farmers go to the grocery store and town meetings with Amazon and Microsoft money from Seattle And then you've got retirees and back to the land or hippie types mixed in with chiseled young rock climbers There are salmon in the rivers and some wolves in the nearby mountains And people get worked up about both The Met How Valley is an Okinawgan county which is one of the most conservative poorest and largest counties by landmass in Washington state So if I was looking for a place to get outside of that NPR filter bubble in the liberal Seattle echo chamber And try to understand what's going on in the other America This was a place to do it So we made the jump we packed up our things I quit my job and we left the city I went from filing news stories on deadline to hurting cows on horseback Come on go let's get those cows pistol Let me get pistol So that's pistol She's my girl She's a little Arabian mayor that I got a lady in the valley gave her to me for free when I started riding her and she could see that Pistol and I clicked or both kind of stubborn ornary um Hustle and ladies That don't take a direction All the time and tend to have our opinions about things so Sometimes she moves cows for me when I ask her to Pistol and I are by ourselves in a little ravine moving about 30 cows on a local ranch with my friends Dave and DK and Amber off in the distance We're just out for a day bringing these guys down from one pasture into another one And then we come to a creek Pistol hates water So that you don't do it Come on like no really does not want to cross creeks Come on down we go pistol All right, this is me failing getting off the down horse because she won't cross a fucking creek Come on no self-respecting cowboy ever gets off his horse Every day a new challenge that I'm ill equipped for So we get back on after dragging pistol on foot across the creek and meet up with Dave and DK and Amber as we push the black Angus cows toward the crows at the bottom of a steep ravine Hey Good man good man. Come on sweet man. This way. Go girl The four of us riders come together around the herd like pulling the drawstring of a change perstite And the cows flow like a black mass into the crowd Can your day in the distance? Yep, fuck out Nobody saw me flailing to get pistol across the creek so we'll just keep that little secret between us The truth is I screw up every time I move cows But I love doing it and I'm learning every day Some of the most interesting conversations I've had since moving to this part of the country I've happened on horseback in wide open sagebrush I get to spend time with people who maybe disagree with me politically But we've become friends Dave and DK are the first people I call now when my car gets stuck in the snow or I need advice on putting in fence or grading the dirt road But I think in a way I'll always be an outsider Michael and I will never be of this place as much as we love it We may never be able to wash the city off of us There are very real divisions between country people and city people in the US right now coastal liberals and rural conservatives And unfortunately environmental issues the kind of issues I've always loved covering as a journalist often become symbols of those larger divisions Which brings us finally to the star of our podcast the greater sage grouse the bird some refer to as the most controversial bird in the west You don't hear about them much in other parts of the country But out here they are a big deal They're part of the history of the west And today they become a symbol of all that is still wild and under threat But man are they goofy sons of guns I gotta say Especially during the mating season when the males puff up these giant airsacks on their chests And they strut around making the craziest sounds to attract the ladies It's like nothing I've ever recorded before They're a funny looking bird many of us may never see up close Because they're disappearing and no one knows what to do about it It's it's almost like you're documenting the The demise of a species in a given spot as a reporter I'd heard about the sage grouse for ages But I'd kind of avoided covering the issue to be honest mainly because I didn't know how to get people to care Maybe I didn't know how to get myself to care anymore either But living in sagebrush country it's clear to me how much these birds mean to people out here So as I settled into rural life I got inspired I started recording people all over the west who have a stake in this bird's future From people in the industries working in sage grouse country People in my family have lost their jobs because of what we're going through today And it's undurable at times To environmentalists fighting to protect sage grouse country For those industries Benton destroying western public lands or their own rough. I talked to ranchers who want to graze their cattle in sage grouse country Do you value them as much as cows? Well now you're talking to a rancher To indigenous people whose ancestors were here before any of these other voices arrived in sage grouse country What happens to them is what will happen to us as people If they don't have the right kind of Environment they will disappear This bird gets a lot of different people worked up for a lot of different reasons But really the sage grouse and the way it divides us It says a lot about our country right now So I'm on a mission to learn about this troubled but deeply western bird And like the bird I'm trying to see if I can figure out how to get by in this strange landscape I hope you'll join me Next episode trudging through the snow in search of sage grouse Oh what's this one? Is that more coyote here? Not a very distinct track but it looks like it could be It could be a grouse We did I just beat the scientist to finding the grouse tracks I'm not surprised I'm not wearing my glasses Everybody can see better than me now baby This podcast was edited by Whitney Henry Leicester sound design by Liza Yeager Kima Lennigan did our artwork Thank you to the Willow Grove Foundation the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources for their support This show is brought to you by Boise State Public Radio and the Mountain West News Bureau With support from Laurie and Paul Aherne who I should note are not related to me Grouse was produced in partnership with Bird Note and was made possible with support from Jim and Beard to Faulkner I'm Ashley Aherne thanks for listening Now is the first episode of the podcast Grouse If you like to it you heard we totally recommend that you check out the rest of the series Wherever you get your podcast