#383: Mike Phillips — How to Save a Species

I'm a cybernetic organism living this year over metal endoskeleton.

Lead him Paris show. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Last year, I focused on dramatically improving a few things. Surprise, surprise. Most notably, the quality of my sleep, which seems to affect just about everything. This led me to revisit, you name it, my daily routine, morning routine, exercise, diet, all the way to what I slept on. And I ended up getting all new beds here in Austin, Texas, including mattresses from helix sleep. Helix has built a sleep quiz that takes two minutes to complete, and they use the answers to match your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress. Whether you're a side sleeper, hot sleeper, cold sleeper, or you like plush, you like firm with Helix, there's no more guessing or confusion. Just go to helixsleep.com tim. Take their two minute sleep quiz and they'll match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life. That is their promise. 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And right now, Tim Ferrissow listeners get to try shipstation free for 60 days. When you use promo code Tim, it's risk free. You can start your free trial without even entering your credit card info. Just visit shipstation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Tim T-I-M. That's shipstation.com. Enter promo code Tim check it out. Shipstation.com promo code Tim well, hello boys and girls, dingoes and wombats. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show. And I am mentioning more animals than usual for a reason. My job every episode, as some of you may know, is to deconstruct world class performers and or people who are extremely well known in their respective fields to deconstruct how they do what they do, the thinking, behaviors, influences, and so on that make them different. And my guest this episode is Mike Phillips. And there's really something for everyone in this episode. Whether you want to get a better understanding of the natural world in ecology or you just want to avoid being mauled by bears, if you're in bear country, there's something for you. Mike Phillips Mike has served as the executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and the advisor to the Turner Biodiversity division since he cofounded both with Ted Turner in June of 1997. Before that, Mike worked for the US Department of Interior, leading historic efforts to restore red wolves to the southeastern US and gray wolves to the Yellowstone National park. If you've seen the video online, how wolves change rivers on YouTube with 40 million plus views, that is a short story, a reflection of those efforts. He also conducted important research on the impacts of oil and gas development on grizzly bears in the Arctic, predation costs for grey wolves in Alaska, and dingo ecology in Australia. In 2006, Mike was elected to the Montana House of Representatives. He served there until elected to the Montana Senate in 2012. His service in the Senate will extend through 2020, and Mike received his master's in science in wildlife ecology from the University of Alaska and his bachelor's of science in ecology from the University of Illinois. So this episode and past conversations with Mike have led me to find the opportunity that I'm currently most excited about. Aside from psychedelic research at places like Hopkins and Imperial College and elsewhere, this has become what I'm most excited about, and we'll get to what that is in the episode. But I had the same feeling with this, and it's not a common feeling, but the same tingle in the belly feeling that I had when I was first looking at getting involved with some of the startups that I've been involved with in early stages. Duolingo, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify. So when you say engage or meet, I should say a small team, like the Shopify team at the time, which was something like ten or twelve people, there's sometimes a tingle in the belly that reflects the feeling, the realization that this could be really, really big, this could really be huge, and it makes sense. And so we will talk about in this episode something that triggered that same response in me, where I'm going to be applying a lot of focus. And without further ado, please enjoy a at times very hilarious, at times very profound, and certainly wide ranging conversation with Mike Phillips. Mike, welcome to the show.

Tim. It's my pleasure to be here. I couldn't remember that I'd done all those things. So thank you for reminding me of where I have been in the past.

Well, I may do more of that.

That'd be helpful. As I get older, I get forgetful.

And one of those old memories that I thought we might stoke is related to grizzly bears. And you and I connected through another scientist who recommended we speak, which came about because long ago, I saw a video, and we'll probably talk about this, but how wolves change rivers, which led me to reach out to my friend Sanjan, who's been on this podcast before, conservation International, and he led me to Kevin, who led me to you. And that's the background for people listening. Grizzly bears. I'm looking at one of these bullets, and it says that their muzzles are bloodstained, but their teeth are green. Could you explain why that is?

That's a great start, Tim. Thank you. Well, many years ago, I was studying grizzly bear behavior and habitat use in the arctic National Wildlife Refuge in anticipation of oil and gas development. But for a period of time, I was part of a capture crew. We would dart grizzly bears from helicopters, the drug would take effect, the bear would lay down and go to sleep. And my job on the capture crew was to extract a premolar. If you take a tooth from a grizzly bear, or many other animals for that matter, you can section the tooth very finely. And just like with a tree, you can come up with a good estimate of age by counting annuli yearly growth rings. So my job was to be the local dentist and pull a tooth from this Grizzly bear. Every bear that I handled, Tim, the muzzles were bloody, dried blood or wet blood. And the muzzles were bloody because at that time of the year, grizzly bears were making extensive use of caribou calves. The porcupine caribou herd 140,000 animals strong. They calve en masse on the coastal plain of northern Alaska. Well, grizzly bears know this and interested in a pulse of animal protein in early summer. So they go out to the coastal plain and they hunt these caribou calves and quite successfully for at least a few days. So every one of these bears had a bloody muzzle. And you think, well, this is what a fantastic carnivore, bloody muzzles. But every bear that I handled, that I pulled a tooth from, when I would pull the lips of the bear back to get at the teeth, their teeth were all green. Teeth weren't bloody. The teeth were stained a deep green. And the message to that story, or the lesson from that story, is looks can be deceiving. Grizzly bears all over the world