Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

Summary

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The MeatEater Podcast

Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

Release Date: November 24, 2025
Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: James Campbell, author and conservation advocate

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the complex world of jaguar conservation, the fascinating natural and cultural history of these legendary cats, and how their fate intertwines with broader themes of wildlife management, politics, and history. Steven Rinella is joined by acclaimed author James Campbell to discuss Campbell's latest book, Heart of the Jaguar, and to share first-hand stories from jungles—both literal and metaphorical—across the Americas and the Pacific. The conversation weaves personal adventure, ecological science, indigenous worldviews, and the thorny realities of wildlife policy, all with the candid, sometimes irreverent tone that defines The MeatEater Podcast.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ghost Mountain Boys & Papua New Guinea

[04:36–22:09]

• James Campbell’s Previous Work
  Rinella praises Campbell’s book The Ghost Mountain Boys for its portrayal of the harrowing WWII campaign in Papua New Guinea, highlighting the underestimated toll of tropical diseases and personal stories of suffering and love.
  • “Most your casualties are tropical diseases.” — Steven Rinella [06:42]
  • Campbell tells how newly found wartime love letters led to a rewrite of his book:
    • “These are too beautiful. I have to completely rewrite the book and write in this character and write in his love letters. Cause they're just so heart wrenching.” — James Campbell [08:04]
• Personal Connections & Historical Legacy
  • Both men reflect on how WWII veterans only later began sharing the darker, grittier realities of combat.
  • The impact of Campbell’s interviews on surviving veterans, some of whom found catharsis in sharing stories after decades of silence.
• Recent Return to New Guinea
  • Campbell discusses his ongoing relationship with Papua New Guinea's communities and efforts to bring medicine and recognition to the historic Ghost Mountain Trail.
  • Idea of making the “Kappa Kappa Trail” a national historic route, akin to Australia’s Kokoda Trail.

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2. Jaguar Natural History and Conservation Status

[24:22–48:21]

• Population Numbers & Range

  • Estimates of jaguar population range from 63,000 to 173,000—with most in the Amazon and Pantanal.
    • “About 80% of those Jaguars, let's say 100,000, are in the Amazon or the Pantanal of Brazil. Outside that... they’re considered endangered or critically.” — James Campbell [24:31]
  • Historic range extended as far north as Colorado, California, and even potentially Alabama and Louisiana up to ~1900.

• Jaguars as Ecological Generalists

  • Jaguars adapt to multiple environments, from parched Chaco to snow in Arizona, thriving in surprisingly diverse habitats.
  • “They didn’t evolve as like a warm weather tropical species. No—they’re complete generalists. Just like a mountain lion.” — James Campbell [32:02]

• First Encounters and Awe

  • Campbell’s first wild jaguar sighting in Brazil’s Pantanal is described with reverence:
    • “He just said jaguar, and all he had to do was whisper it. And, man, my whole body was tingling.” — James Campbell [35:58]
  • Rinella’s own near-miss with a jaguar in Guyana underscores these cats’ elusiveness.

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3. Jaguar Conservation: Corridors & Challenges

[48:21–68:08]

• Cultural Significance

  • In Mesoamerican civilizations, jaguars were worshipped as cosmic figures and spiritual totems.
    • “They believed the jaguar escorted the sun from day to night and back to day.” — James Campbell [47:24]
  • Reverence didn’t preclude hunting for pelts and teeth.

• Corridor Concept

  • The visionary “Jaguar Corridor” seeks to preserve genetic flow and habitat connectivity along a 5,000-mile swath from Argentina to Arizona.
    • “Because jaguars are the only wide-ranging predators without a subspecies—that’s to preserve the DNA...as a single ecological unit, as one species.” — James Campbell [65:58]
  • The Darien Gap (Panama/Colombia) emerges as a key pinch point, now complicated by human migration and violence.

• Jaguar’s Return to U.S.

  • A few male jaguars, such as Cochise, have been documented in southern Arizona, their source population only ~125 miles south in Mexico.
  • Politics and management in Arizona are contentious—restoration efforts meet resistance over land use, “core habitat” designations, and anxieties about predation and land rights.

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4. Wildlife Politics & Controversies

[68:08–103:55]

• Reintroduction vs. Natural Return
  • Discussion of possible reintroduction in Arizona/New Mexico, modeled after wolf restoration in Colorado; met with strong opposition from ranchers, hunters, and state officials.
  • Key Insight: Jaguars are likely to shift—not double—predation from mountain lions rather than increase overall pressure on deer and elk.
    • “I think the mountain lions would pay the price.” — Steven Rinella [75:58]
• Historic and Recent Hunting Pressure
  • The “Tigriadas” fashion craze (1960s–70s) led to mass slaughters—over 180,000 jaguars in Brazil alone between 1962–1975—until CITES cracked down on trade.
• The Macho B Incident
  • Detailed retelling of the Macho B saga, a controversial death of an old male jaguar collared (and subsequently euthanized) in Arizona under ethically and procedurally murky circumstances.
    • “Jack Childs said it put jaguar biology in Arizona back into the Stone Age.” — James Campbell [101:21]
  • The fallout continues to affect agency openness to jaguar research and conservation in the region.

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5. The Life and Work of Alan Rabinowitz

[49:36–64:46, 85:26+]

• A Pioneering Biologist
  • Alan Rabinowitz, Campbell’s friend and the primary subject of Heart of the Jaguar, was a fearless cat biologist and foundational figure in corridor conservation (and an adventurer nicknamed the “Indiana Jones of wildlife ecology”).
  • Rabinowitz insisted on the importance of field notes and direct action in troubled regions, regardless of politics.
    • “The pen is the weapon against oblivion.” — (as quoted from George Schaller via Rabinowitz) [87:20]
  • His legacy endures through organizations like Panthera and the ongoing corridor project.

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6. Ecology and Behavior of Jaguars

[68:08–79:51]

• Solitary & Widespread

  • Males can range up to hundreds of miles; females exhibit “range fidelity.” Jaguars live at low densities and are highly generalist predators—eating everything from deer and peccaries to frogs and turtles.

• Physical Power and Presence

  • Largest individuals can reach 300 pounds (especially in Pantanal).
  • They’re renowned for their strength, swimming ability, and ability to break turtle shells with their jaws.
  • The awe of physically encountering a living, breathing jaguar—"Laid a hand on one. ...just solid muscle." — James Campbell [106:22]

• Melanism and Myths

  • Black (“melanistic”) jaguars are real but extremely localized (cihado in Brazil); persistent myths about black panthers in North America are debunked.

• Camera Trap Revolution

  • Modern conservation uses distinctive spot “rosettes” to individually identify and track jaguars—trail cam data informing both science and policy debates.

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7. Hope – and Worry – for Jaguars’ Future

[81:58–85:26]

• Conservation Status
  • Biologists are cautiously optimistic, citing increased habitat protection, international collaboration, and public support.
    • “Hope can be hard to come by. But...they have hope that jaguars will continue to persist, if not thrive.” — James Campbell [82:14]
  • However, Amazonian agriculture (e.g., Chinese demand for soybeans), deforestation, and fragmentation remain immense threats.
  • “Jaguars cannot live, you know, in a bean field.” — James Campbell [84:29]
• Intersection of Conservation and Politics
  • Wildlife management and conservation are inherently political:
    • “What's not political?...There’s no world in which you can talk about wildlife and have it not intersect with politics.” — Steven Rinella [84:29]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If I owned New Guinea and I owned hell, I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea.” — Bob Hartman, WWII veteran, as shared by James Campbell [13:48]
• “They absolutely worshiped [the jaguar]...part of their religion, part of their art, part of their iconography.” — James Campbell on Mesoamerican cultures [47:24]
• “You look at the character’s transition. His last letter home is like, I try not to let it happen. But I have the blues. That’s why I haven’t been writing.” — Steven Rinella, on Simon Warmanhoven [09:20]
• “They are so magnificent...their heads are like that. And they live in trees, they swim rivers with cayman in their mouths for a mile. They’re like the most athletic beast there is.” — James Campbell [77:42]
• “I feel this is just my ballpark...I don’t think you’d see, because this is all mountain lion country...I think you’d probably see it shift.” — Steven Rinella on potential jaguar reintroduction [75:35]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:36 – Campbell’s WWII book, disease in Pacific campaigns
• 14:13 – The distinction: Papua New Guinea vs New Guinea
• 24:22 – How many jaguars exist? Population data
• 29:22 – The jaguar corridor: concept and implementation
• 32:02 – Jaguar ecological flexibility/generalist behavior
• 35:58 – Campbell’s first wild jaguar sighting (“Onsa”)
• 39:59 – The “Tigriadas” pelt craze and impact
• 46:58 – Black jaguars, myths, and Mesoamerican iconography
• 65:58 – “One species” genetics and corridor rationale
• 69:33 – Source populations for Arizona jaguars
• 72:42 – Rewilding controversy, politics in Arizona/New Mexico
• 91:52 – The Macho B incident: capture, scandal, and consequences
• 85:26 – Alan Rabinowitz’s philosophy and legacy
• 82:14 – Predictions and hope for jaguar populations

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Tone & Language

• Conversational, candid, and steeped in personal anecdote.
• Frequent irreverence and humor, especially as Rinella ribs both his guest and his crew.
• Passionate advocacy for nature blended with honest appraisal of the messy intersections with history, economics, and management.
• Quotes and stories are presented with emotional depth—veterans’ trauma, authorial struggle, and conservationists’ battles all feel immediate and real.

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Closing Reflections

• Campbell, now completing Heart of the Jaguar, reflects on his journey—balancing reporting with passion, historical curiosity, and the complications of writing about another’s legacy, namely Alan Rabinowitz.
• Rinella and Campbell both grapple with the ongoing tension between storytelling and advocacy, recognizing that tough stories (like Macho B) can’t be ignored if the truth and lessons are to be honored.
• The episode wraps with mutual appreciation and a hint at the next great conservation story—perhaps Alaska’s collapsing salmon runs—which may one day fill another of Campbell’s books.

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Further Reading & Next Steps

• James Campbell’s Books:

  • Heart of the Jaguar: The Extraordinary Conservation Effort to Save the America’s Legendary Cat
  • The Ghost Mountain Boys (WWII in Papua New Guinea)

• Organizations Mentioned:

  • Panthera
  • IUCN
  • WCS - Wildlife Conservation Society

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

This summary brings you on a global and historical journey—from WWII jungles to the rivers of the Pantanal, from Mayan temples to the wildlife corridors of Arizona. It blends adventure, science, controversy, and reverence for wildness in both animals and people. You’ll gain a vivid view of the jaguar’s world—past, present, and possible future—while understanding how conservation is as much about people, politics, and persistence as it is about saving a great spotted cat.

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Transcript

[James Campbell]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Steven Rinella]

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[James Campbell]

Auto parts.

[Steven Rinella]

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[James Campbell]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Steven Rinella]

You can't predict anything. Brought to you by first light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out@first light.com. that's f I r s t f l I dot com. When's the play start? Phil H. Second week in December, I think. Oh, you're going to miss it. Got. No, no, I got tickets. Yeah, we got tickets. We're doing date night. Oh, Randall, it just came up in here. It came up in here and we followed through. Turn the machine on, Phil. Machine's on, Steve. It always is. It's the Cratchit Report. Here we go again. The Cratchit report. Phil the engineer. How you feeling, Phil?

[Phil]

I'm feeling great.

[Steven Rinella]

By the time this airs, we're a week or two away from opening. I'm excited. I've got like 75% of my lines down. I know that that's an important stat for you. Hit me with. Just give me a line. Give me a line. I saw your script was open on your desk the other day. A shilling for a farthing.

[Phil]

Yeah, Scrooge.

[Steven Rinella]

He seems unaffected by the season, sir. Even on Christmas Eve. Oh, that's your British accent. Hit me with it again.

[Phil]

Oh, no.

[Steven Rinella]

This is a bad time for you to be doing this to me. Hit me with it again. He sits by the fire after work and goes over the firm's accounts. Might want to work on a little bit. Okay. I'm not buying it. You're not buying it because it doesn't sound like this, does it?

[James Campbell]

He wants you to sound like a.

[Steven Rinella]

Cab driver, same as any other knot. I'd say he'd have a point of the Hound and Thorny with. Yeah, bring it, man, bring it. To be a henchman from Braveheart.

[Phil]

More Harry Potter. More Harry Potter.

[Steven Rinella]

What night are we going to be there, Randall? It's this. It's the Sunday performance, I believe the 13th. So on the third. I don't care what you're doing, I'm not there on the 13th. I want you to just come in hard. Okay? So scratch your previous notes about. About all American accents, American currency. You don't want that. You want full blown. I did, but changed my mind. I want you to bring it now. And I want you to sound like what I expect. A old timey English guy. An unwell Cockney man.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Joined today by the author, James Campbell, who's got a ton of books, man. Books that would be a very. Of high interest to listeners. James Campbell, he's a magazine writer for a long time, but he wrote the Final Frontiersman, which if you haven't read it, you've seen it around, I'm sure. He wrote the Ghost Mountain Boys, which I just finished two nights ago. Here's the problem. I run and I always. I'm always honest with guests.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I didn't get to the Jaguar book yet because I got sidetracked by Ghost Mountain Boys.

[James Campbell]

Well, I'm not sure what I should think of that, but thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm getting there. It's like the stack. The stack. See, I got onto. And Randall's been on one too. I got onto a Whiskey Whiskey two book. Kit. Kit. Yeah. We spent a lot of time in the Pacific. Well, it was a two book. So I read the Battle. The Battle for Manila. The Battle of Manila, of course. Like an academic title that just came out and that got me all fired.

[James Campbell]

Up about World War II and this.

[Steven Rinella]

Just about the Pacific theater. My old man was European theater.

[James Campbell]

Oh, he was.

[Steven Rinella]

So. I know that. Well.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But then I got to. Then I. I just. It just kind of opened up this whole world of suffering.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Just like it's like World War II.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

With malaria.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. With dysentery.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. It's just like the disease function. Yeah. Just stuff I wasn't like. I was familiar with all his stories, you know, like people freezing their toes off and everything. And then. And of course, I was aware, you know, my. My. My wife's grandfather was a marine on Iwo Jima.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I was aware. But anyways, I got into the Battle of Manila. Then I got into this, and I never got to the damn jaguar book. We're gonna talk about. I'm like, super interested in jaguars. Sure. But what hasn't dissuaded you from continuing.

[James Campbell]

On to the jaguar book? No, no, no.

[Steven Rinella]

But the. The Ghost Mountain. The Ghost Mountain Boys. What year did this one come out?

[James Campbell]

2008.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The Ghost Mountain Boys tells the tale of the. The campaign in Papua New Guinea.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And a lot of them were from your country. From southern Michigan. Lots of the guys.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

Company G. Company. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Tons of them from my. The county I came from.

[James Campbell]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

And the thing that. There's a couple of things that like about it that really stuck me. One, just the disease factor. Like, most your casualties are tropical diseases.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Which MacArthur never took into consideration when he sent those guys over the mountains. You know, they had. They had dysentery, they had jungle rot, they had trench foot, they had malaria. Hookworm. Hookworm. And he never considered that that would happen.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

How could he not after having been in the Philippines. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, it's just an end. In the end, you realize they're taking these guys, and I don't know if. If listeners. I'm sure you've been on malaria medication.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, malaria litigation leads to, like, its own little form of psychosis. Like, there's people that can't take it.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's right.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, it gives you, like, wild dreams. It can send you into bouts of depression. Especially the stuff they used to use larium. They take these guys and like, there's this one guy that you follow through the book who's writing all these loving letters with his wife. He's got kids waiting at home.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Then they go to treat him for malaria and they dose him so heavy with this drug, they didn't understand the psychological effects. They start dosing them with this drug and he shoots himself in the head.

[James Campbell]

Adebran psychosis, it was called. So he. He was the division surgeon, a guy named Major Simon Warmanhoven. And he was an amazing guy. So I'd finished the book completely ready to turn it into my publisher. And Simon Warman, Warm and Hoven's two daughters happened to find my number. And they called me up and they said, I want to send you the love letters that my dad sent to my mom from Papua New Guinea. Would you be willing to look at them? And I said, yeah, I'd love to see him. So I read all hundred love letters and then I called my publisher and I said, stop the press. These are too beautiful. I have to completely rewrite the book and write in this character and write in his love letters. Cause they're just so heart wrenching. And my publisher gave me an extra two months to their credit. Oh, really? That's not much. So I wrote hurriedly. But can you imagine, first of all, the courage of his daughters? Because obviously there's a stigma attached to shooting yourself. But it was Atterburn psychosis, and they had a lot of that. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, I didn't know him, but you look at the characters transition. And then he even said his last letter home, and he's on the treatment. His last letter home is like, I try not to let it happen.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But I have the blues. That's why I haven't been writing.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And he had to. He had. He was in Brisbane at the end, just outside of Brisbane, at the. At the 32nd Division Hospital. And he was caring for all these men, you know, who'd been wounded in battle and who had various diseases, tropical diseases. And I mean, he was just overwhelmed. In addition to taking Atabrin and having atebrine psychosis. Yeah. It's just a horrible story.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, another thing that came out, reading this and reading that book about the battle for Manila and also just documentaries I've been seeing and stuff is it seems like we're kind of running out of them now. It seems like as a lot of veterans from World War II got to a certain age.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They became more ready to discuss. I Don't want to call them, like, what would. What would be regarded as war crimes, but I don't even want to, like, condemn it.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But it became like, later in life, like, I watched this. Watch this series, and there. And I was watching these old guys being like, they're talking about the. The concentration camps.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And they're like, anyone that worked at a concentration camp, we just lined them up.

[James Campbell]

Shot him, huh? Right.

[Steven Rinella]

You know.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And guys in here, they're like guys that are talking about stuff late or whatever. It just seems like for a long time, a lot of that stuff was just not mentioned.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. They don't get their day in court.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. And now it seems like more people are like, no, man. I mean, we didn't. We didn't deal with prisoners. Yeah. Or we didn't like to deal with prisoners.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. I mean, you're talking about the Jap, the wounded Japanese. They would just stick them with their bayonets.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

And of course, they didn't talk about that until a lot later, but a lot of those guys I contacted ultimately contacted about 80 guys that fought on the island of New Guinea. And I interviewed a lot of them. And a lot of them, I drove over to Michigan, you know, to interview these guys. And typical story, you know, they never told their stories about World War II. I think James Bradley in Flags of Our Father said they came home and they got on with living. You know, they didn't want to remember, so they, you know, they deliberately just repress this stuff. And I started talking to them, and initially they'd tell funny stories, you know, and I'd go to their Old Timers Division meeting, and they'd tell jokes and listen to bad polka music, you know, and play cards all night. But slowly they started to, like, reveal stuff. And then it was like. It was like this gusher of emotion you can imagine after, you know, 50 years. This trapped inside, you know, they never talked about it. And sometimes their wives would call me up and say, you know, so. And so you gotta. You can't interview him anymore. He's. He has nightmares every night.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you're kidding me. It was bringing it back up, and it's haunting him.

[James Campbell]

And I said, okay, that's the last thing in the world I want to do, you know, is put him through this again. But then they would call back and they would say, no, man, I gotta talk about this. This is the first time I've been. Ever talked about this in my life. My kids don't even know these stories. I have to keep talking. So it was. Yeah, it was pretty. It was pretty emotional. Yeah, it was.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, I don't like. You know, I usually. I don't like any. No, not any. I think the only. Yeah.

[James Campbell]

What?

[Steven Rinella]

I'm a Bob Service fan when it comes.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. I love Bob Service.

[Steven Rinella]

He's a poet. I. Poet.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And Clay Bailey. Bailey used to.

[Steven Rinella]

Where's this poem this dude wrote?

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, it's the first time we ever read a poem. Possibly.

[James Campbell]

Quite possibly, yeah. Reads books.

[Steven Rinella]

Bob Hartman.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Bob Hartman, Right.

[Steven Rinella]

This is a veteran, Grand Rapids. Did he write this much after the war?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, he did. He did.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. I laid him down by the bend in the stream and erected across at his head his funeral song was a cockatoo's scream as if they knew my buddy was dead I've evened the score Yes, a dove a dozen times over but no matter the distance between My mind wanders yet and I'll never forget his grave by the bend in the.

[James Campbell]

Stream yeah, it's poignant. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It's got a Bob Service quality.

[James Campbell]

It does.

[Steven Rinella]

It does.

[James Campbell]

It does have a Bob Service.

[Steven Rinella]

These poets that don't even bother rhyming.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

It's just that Bob.

[James Campbell]

Bob Hartman is the same guy that said, if I own New guinea and I owned hell, I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea.

[Steven Rinella]

But you just got back from New Guinea.

[James Campbell]

I just got back.

[Steven Rinella]

So we're going to get. Don't worry about. We're going to get to this jaguar. We're going to get to the jaguar situation.

[James Campbell]

I love talking about New guinea, but.

[Steven Rinella]

But what were you doing there?

[James Campbell]

Now, so two things.

[Steven Rinella]

You help me understand something.

[James Campbell]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Why do. What is the difference between saying Papua New guinea and saying New Guinea?

[James Campbell]

So the entire island is called New Guinea. Papua New guinea is a separate nation on the eastern half. Formerly an Australian colony, German colony. Once upon it, it was called Kaiser Wilhelmsland way back when. And the other side is owned by. Is part of Indonesia, and that's called West Papua. Oh, so the whole island is called New Guinea.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. No idea.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[James Campbell]

So I've been going there since 1989. My brother and I first went there on a, you know. You know, young men's adventure or misadventure, but somewhere. And I took my wife there for our honeymoon, by the way, and she got malaria. How romantic. Her parents wanted her to ditch me.

[Ryan Seacrest]

So fast.

[James Campbell]

So fortunately she did, and three daughters later. But I discovered for the first time I didn't even know the story.

[Steven Rinella]

You Stay up close to your mic, okay?

[James Campbell]

I didn't even know the story of the war in Papua New Guinea. But Anyway, so in 2006, I repeated the trek that the Ghost Mountain Boys did for the first time since World War II. And I became interested in the villages and just the World War II history. So on the most recent TR, we brought in people there. In the villages, isolated villages, they die of skin infections. You know, they're dying of malaria. So we brought in $4,000 worth of medicines that the one health clinic can give out to the people. You know, they have a little cut, you know, that they eventually lose their leg or lose their life. So, you know, it doesn't have to be dramatic stuff, but medicines to help them and that. The Ghost Mountain Trail used to be called the Kappa Kappa Trail because there was a village called Gabba Gabba. The soldiers couldn't pronounce it. It became Kappa Kappa. It was called the Kappa Kappa Trail. And we want that to be a national historic trail, like the Kokoda Trail. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. That's where the Australians fought the Japanese on the island of New guinea on the Kokoda trail. And now 5,000 trekkers come every summer to Papua New guinea to trek the Kokota Trail, where their, you know, grandfathers or great grandfathers or great uncles fought the Japanese. So it's a big deal. So we want to try to bring Americans over to Papua New guinea to walk this trail. It's 21 days. It's over the own Stanley Mountains. It's tough.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, you'll run that son of a bitch.

[James Campbell]

What's that?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, you need to run it.

[Phil]

How many miles is it?

[James Campbell]

130 miles, but it is straight up and straight down. Straight up. You know, you go out to 90ft. Are you a runner?

[Steven Rinella]

Little bit by a little bit. Like 100 miles at a time. 30,000ft of elevation at a time.

[Phil]

What's the elevation when you say up and down?

[James Campbell]

Well, the plane we tried to find on this trip was at about 10,000ft, but the own Stanleys get up to about 12,000. But you're going through solid jungle. I mean, absolute solid jungle. I remember, I don't want to go astray here, but I was reporting in 2006 for National Public Radio, and I was doing. I was calling them and doing interviews with them from the jungle. And my first interview I was late for, so I grabbed the sat phone and I wandered out into the jungle and I did my interview, and then I Thought, I don't know where the hell I am. I have no idea where I am.

[Steven Rinella]

You lost your direction quick.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, I lost my direction that fast. I was probably like 40ft from pictures.

[Steven Rinella]

You're not being deliberate?

[James Campbell]

No, not being deliberate at all. And so I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. And fortunately one of the villagers or one of the carriers that was with us happened to find me. Otherwise, who knows is there?

[Phil]

When you say trail, Yeah, I can have a lot of different definitions. So at this point, what is it like just a regular old hiker follow.

[James Campbell]

Now it's like 21 days, like a deer trail or a rabbit trail through the woods. And the people of New guinea are the most like physically fit people you've ever seen. Like the people of the Andes or something. They, they, they live in the mountains, so they're accustomed to it. They just walk straight up and straight down. No national park switchbacks. So, yeah, I mean, it's tough, but if you ever want to come in.

[Steven Rinella]

You need to organize a big.

[James Campbell]

You can't run it, so you need.

[Steven Rinella]

To organize like one of them races. Yeah, it was called the Malaria 130.

[Phil]

Oh, I'm sure with the recent explosion in participation in these endurance races, you could very easily get. That's a couple hundred people to go and fast hike, run your. That trail.

[James Campbell]

Hadn't even considered it. But just to finish the story, we were. My, My partner, my co partner in Australia found a plane called the Flying Dutchman, you know, the Ode to the Michiganers at 10,000ft. He found it last year and it hadn't been seen since, I think like 1967. So we were taking a small group up into the mountains to identify the plane, see the plane, touch the plane and retell the story of.

[Steven Rinella]

Are the remains in there still?

[James Campbell]

No, they're gone. They've been taken. They were taken out, I think in. I can't remember the date, but the plane has this really poignant story about it crashed. And I think six of the guys were killed. Fifteen of the guys were too injured to get out. But two parties tried to make it out. One party marched to the north coast. It took them about 30 days to get through the jungle. And another party marched, a guy named Ed Holloman from just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, found safety after about 30 days and they tried to court martial him for leaving the plane and he did. I mean, he saved these guys lives.

[Steven Rinella]

What happened to the guys that went the other direction?

[James Campbell]

The other guy? They actually. Two of the guys drowned. They Tried to ride logs on the river to the north coast. And two of the guys drowned. The other two guys made it to safety, tried to get a rescue party to come back to save the guys on the plane. The rescue party stopped one day short because they ran out of food and ultimately all the guys on the plane died. So in fact the chaplain died in the arms of the villagers who found the plane on January 7, 1943. So it's. Yeah, it's really. It's a terrible story.

[Steven Rinella]

So what was the plane? What was it? What were they doing at the time?

[James Campbell]

So you read about the ghost mountain boys who walked over the mountains. They were trying. They'd found usable airfields on the north coast of Papua New guinea near the battlefield of Buna. And they were trying to fly the guys over instead of having them walk. And they were probably trying to punch holes in the clouds because they hadn't, they hadn't really flown over the Owen Stanley's very much. They called it the Hump. Like in Burma, they called it the Hump. And you know that that plane crashed up there at 10,000ft. So. But they were. The intention was to fly him over to the battlefield. Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. By way of a transition into Jaguars. That's why you're here, right? Yeah, sure.

[James Campbell]

But I love talking about Papua New guinea and the Ghost Mountain Boys.

[Steven Rinella]

It's gonna be a gradual transition because two things. So, so, so James's books are. Are for reading, ours are for cooking. We got. Just letting people know here. So we took our two cookbooks, our Meat Eater, Fish and game cookbook, and our outdoor cookbook and made like a gift box. You get both of them right here in this sweet box. Two for one great gift item. We signed. We signed a whole mountain. Yeah.

[James Campbell]

Only place you can get the sign ones is on the Meat eater website.

[Steven Rinella]

Not true. Where else you get in the stores?

[James Campbell]

Oh, the two retail stores.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we just signed a whole mountain of them and then. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very economical way of getting both our books for summer, for Christmas. I'm not even going to get into effed up old trucks, but look at this. That make you want to get a calendar. Hell of a calendar. Not getting into that. The other plug is this. A while back on the show we ran an episode of something called Blood Trails. It was about that dude who was turkey hunting, got shot in the back while he's turkey hunting. And they've like interviewed all these guys. They've definitely interviewed whoever did it, but they have yet to how many years has it been? Like, 17 years, 18 years? Yeah, something like that. So we got a whole series out now called Blood Trails, a podcast, and it's about hunting and fishing, related, like, murders, cold cases, mysteries. It's really good. Jordan Sillers has been doing a phenomenal job on it. So check out and subscribe to the Blood Trails podcast feed. It turned out. I'm very proud of it. It turned out very, very good. It's. It's well worth listening. He did a phenomenal job and rather, like, a lot of that kind of stuff. It's like some dude will go read, like, a Wikipedia entry or read somebody else's book, and then they'll make like, a podcast where they basically, like, regurgitate some stuff they just read. It's. It's like interviews. It's interviews with. It's interviews with investigators. It's interviews with victims, families. It's. It's. It's very well done. Like, a ton of original reporting in it. It's a great series. All right.

[James Campbell]

Jaguars.

[Steven Rinella]

Jaguars. Is this stuff good here, Phil? Yep. How many jaguars are floating around in the world right now?

[James Campbell]

Well, there's a big discrepancy between the numbers. One number is 63,000. The other number is 173,000. Most. Most Jaguar biologists think the lower number is the more accurate number, but about 80% of those Jaguars, let's say 63,000, let's say 100,000, are in the Amazon or the Pantanal of Brazil. Outside that. So in the iucn, the jaguar is considered threatened or near threatened. But if you eliminate the Amazon and the Pantanal, they're considered endangered or critically.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

Would be true of a lot of wildlife species. I mean, if you eliminate their core range.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, good point.

[Steven Rinella]

Then it looks grim.

[James Campbell]

It looks grim, yeah. However, you know, with, with the corridor, there's a reinvestment of time and effort into the corridor. There's something called the 2030 roadmap that a lot of the environmental organizations have signed onto, including Panthera, WCS, lots of other IUCN. And by 2030, they want to. They want to solidify 30 Jaguar conservation units and connect 30 more potential Jaguar units. So there's a big. Across Latin America and South America, there's kind of this new appreciation of what the jaguar represents.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, like. Like explain their historic range a little bit. And while you're doing that, can you touch on. Did court. Do you believe Coronado ran into jaguars, like, way up in Kansas?

[James Campbell]

First of all, yeah, I do believe Coronado ran into jaguars. Yeah, I think that. When was Coronado? What was the date?

[Steven Rinella]

Late 15.

[James Campbell]

Late 1500s, definitely. Yeah. I think jaguars were pretty much spread across much of the United States because.

[Steven Rinella]

He talks about, he talks about leopards.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Steven Rinella]

And he talks about lions.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And you're like, the lions. Mountain lions. But then people are like, what in the hell is he talking about? Yeah, when he mentions seeing leopards.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I do think up until, up until probably 1900, they were in, you know, Colorado, in California and West Texas. Alabama, Louisiana.

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You think that Alabama and Louisiana, you think legit?

[James Campbell]

I think it's legit. I mean, you look at their hat, look at the habitat. I mean, that's the, that's the ideal habitat for a jaguar until what year? Up until maybe 1900, maybe. Maybe mid-1800s. But their range, their, their range is now 5000 latitudinal miles from southern Arizona. Right now there's one jaguar roaming the mountains of Southern Arizona.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, the US is usually good for.

[James Campbell]

Like one or two. Right. His name is Cochise and he was discovered in, I think, late 2023. But so all the way down to the Ibera in northern Argentina. But of course, once.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that how you say that word?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, the Ibera.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I've been there.

[James Campbell]

Oh, have you?

[Steven Rinella]

I thought it was the Ibera. No, I fished down there.

[James Campbell]

Oh, really?

[Steven Rinella]

No, the Iberia Wetlands.

[James Campbell]

Well, maybe it is. I've called it Ibera. We'll ask a Spanish expert, I suppose. But so where they're actually doing a reintroduction of Jaguars now, but that's like.

[Steven Rinella]

Near the, that's where like that, that deadly triangle. Paraguay, Uruguay.

[James Campbell]

That's exactly right.

[Steven Rinella]

All come together. It's like kind of a little bit of a lawless.

[James Campbell]

What fishing were you doing down there?

[Steven Rinella]

Golden Dorado and piranha.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. So once upon a time, yeah, they, I mean, they migrated obviously over the Bering land bridge like a million years ago. And then they saw a bunch of ice in front of them. So they, they stayed for many generations in kind of the Yukon Territories. And then as that ice began to melt during the Pleistocene warmups, I mean, what were they, like 20 or something like that? The jaguars started moving south, moved into Canada, then into Montana, you know, the grasslands of north and South Dakota and Kansas, and then continued to move down to, you know, almost the tip of South America. So they didn't evolve as like a warm weather tropical species. No, they're complete generalists. You know, they can live anywhere. Just like a mountain lion. Kind of like a mountain lion or. So I was down in southern Bolivia in the Grand Chaco. The Grand Chaco is like parched country, brittle parched country. And the jaguars thrive there. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. They thrive in the Sierra Madres of Mexico. They thrive in the, in the Madrean Sky Islands of, of Arizona. They're really, they're remarkable creatures.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I know. There's a picture. I have this book called Candid Critters.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it's like, it's like influential trail cam photos.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And there is, I think at the time it was maybe the only known photo taken in Arizona of a jaguar.

[James Campbell]

Standing in the snow in the Huachuca Mountains, I think.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Yeah, but you're saying that was not, that's not a problem for the Jagu.

[James Campbell]

Well, I don't, I don't know about snow. Snow might be pushing it. Yeah. But he was obviously not she. But likely he was obviously in the Huachuca Mountains. You know, you get snow there and you know, in late April, so. But I'm familiar with that photo.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, Yeah, I, I've seen a bunch of tracks, jaguar tracks. Not in the US One time we were. Can't remember where we were. Well, we were. It was in Guyana and we were. There's this big sandbar where the turtles were.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Nesting. So we went there with native people to dig turtle eggs.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And you could see where the, the jaguars were digging the turtle eggs out and probably also hunting the turtles when they come out of the water. Yeah, right. We Go back to our camp. And then a couple guys went back to the sandbar to take a bath, and there's tracks all over it. I was dying to see one. I was dying to see one. Yeah, there's tracks all over. They turn around and go right back to take a bath. And they're like. As soon as we got. There's jaguar standing on the gravel bar. I'm not kidding. I missed by 20 minutes. Yeah.

[James Campbell]

Just because you didn't want to take a bath.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, whatever. But no, I've never laid eyes on one. Man, I would.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, they're incredible.

[Steven Rinella]

You've no doubt laid eyes on.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

What was the first time you saw one?

[James Campbell]

In the Pantanal. So the Pantanal is kind of like Kruger national park of. Of Brazil. So the jaguars there have become habituated to. To people. Oh, and this was during. This was during COVID So there were almost no other tourists. But we were. We were on. On the Cuyaba river in. In motoring. Motoring down the river into one of the tributaries. And we all looking at the banks of the river, and all of a sudden I spotted one kind of lounging in the sand underneath the tree. And just then, the guide, the boat captain and guide also saw that jagrar. And I'll never forget, he was like, barely whispered. He said onsa and onsa. Panthera. Onsa is the name for the jaguar.

[Steven Rinella]

What is that word?

[James Campbell]

So panthera is the genus, and then osa. I mean, onsa is the. Is it. Would it be the family name? I'm not sure.

[Steven Rinella]

No genus, species.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But I mean, what does that word mean?

[James Campbell]

Jaguar. So he just said jaguar, and all he had to do was whisper it. And, man, my whole body was tingling. And this. Hugh. We anchored the boat just outside the bank, the river bank, and all of a sudden, this jaguar rose. Just this absolutely enormous jaguar, absolutely beautiful. And came to the river to drink. And he was just unperturbed. You know, it wasn't like he moved quickly. I think in the book, I describe it something like music. I mean, like, every part of his body just operated so beautifully. And he stood there drinking. Then he looked up at us, and then he walked kind of broadside to us down the river. And it was just. I mean, it was magnificent.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, it is just like. Like having not seen one. I'm just fascinated by him. And it is just a different critter, man.

[James Campbell]

Even people who've seen a lot of. How do they compare to a mountain lion?

[Phil]

Yeah. What are their sizes?

[James Campbell]

Earlier Right. So I think the biggest. There I was with this, this Brazilian trapper, He, he, he traps and, you know, collars jaguars. The biggest one, he's, I think, trapped and collared a hundred. His name is Joe R.S. may and he's famous. And he's trapped about 300, no, maybe 120 Jaguars. The biggest one he's ever trapped was 300 pounds. Wow. You know, like a, you know, like a lioness in Africa, but in the Pantanal they grow them big. In the Amazon, they, they grow them big. But, you know, if you get one in northern Mexico or say one in Arizona, they're going to be maybe 130 or 140 pounds.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a lion?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, like. Yeah, exactly like a lion. So they're much, much smaller. Same species, but just much, much smaller. And I don't know if it has to do with habitat or food. I mean, jaguars eat like 85 different species. Everything from frogs to skunks, you know, to javelinas. But I think Teddy Roosevelt, he, he hunted jaguars in the Pantanal with his, with his son Kermit. And I think there's one account, he said Kermit shot a Jaguar with a.405 Winchester and it was as big as a, you know, African lion. So I imagine that was £300 or maybe even more. Do they have like leopards and tigers in India, say, do they have a reputation for attacking people or. Not really. That's the thing. Just almost no accounts of unprovoked attacks. And Alan Rabinowitz, the guy I wrote about, called him the reluctant warrior. He said they were much, much more comfortable kind of eluding man. And there's a biologist down in Brazil who said man was never part of their prey template, for one thing. And also there's something called the tigri yadas, which was the jaguar craze, which Jackie Onassis set off when she stepped out of a limousine in a knee length double breasted Somali leopard coat and she started this fashion craze for spotted cat accessories.

[Steven Rinella]

You're making me like Kennedy.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. So what happened during the Tigriadas maybe is like what happened to grizzly?

[Steven Rinella]

Can you tell me in the word, what is the word?

[James Campbell]

It's T I G. Tigri yadas. The tiger craze. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And, and that set off a market hunting campaign.

[James Campbell]

Huge in the 60s, in, in the 60s to 1975 when CITES finally stepped in and tried to eliminate the trafficking. But in, in from 1962 to 1975, 183 Jaguars were killed. In Brazil alone, for the fashion. Maybe not all for the fashion industry, but for part of the fashion industry. More jaguars than we have now total during what years? 1963 to 1975. During the.

[Steven Rinella]

They were not running a quota program.

[James Campbell]

They were not running. No. Everybody was out trying to kill jaguars. Alan Rabinowitz said they had the dollar sign on the back right next to the bullseye.

[Steven Rinella]

What was a. At that time, what kind of money was a jaguar hiding? Like, it must have been extraordinary to drive that level of commitment, because it's not like they're like hanging out in alfalfa.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right. Maybe $200. But $200 for, you know, I hate to say lowly, but $200 for someone living in a village in Bolivia or Brazil is a lot of money. And they killed them like snakes. That's what George Schaller said. They just killed them like snakes.

[Steven Rinella]

But mostly all black market.

[James Campbell]

All black market? Yeah. Until CITES stepped in in 1975 to try to shut down the traffic, which they did to a certain extent. Yeah. There was a lively black market in jaguar pelt.

[Steven Rinella]

If you look over your left shoulder, you see that. That's a bobcat right there.

[James Campbell]

Okay. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Now, here's an interesting thing about cites and spotted cats. So that's from Texas. Okay.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

In Texas, there's no closed season on bobcats. Bobcats are non game. No close season on bobcats. No bag limit on bobcats.

[James Campbell]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

Part of it is because textile, those south, like, Texas bobcats aren't valuable. Okay. Like a bobcat up here.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You mean a bobcat up here could be like 5, 6, 700 bucks?

[James Campbell]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Right. A bobcat from certain areas, like high desert country, could be a thousand dollars.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But those cats are effectively valueless. So there's not like a huge push on it. But what's interesting is you have it. You have. In Texas. Here's an animal that's non game, no close season, no bag limit. But you can't move that cat out of Texas without a cites tag. Oh. And you'd be like, well, why? The state doesn't even manage them. And it's because. Because, like, spotted cats in general. Yeah. So any spotted cat is going to have regulatory pressure on it because it's so easy to be like, oh, no, that's not that.

[James Campbell]

Huh.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you follow what I'm saying?

[James Campbell]

Sure, sure.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's like, wow, like, they're trying to regulate the movement of spotted cats because there's so many imperiled spotted cats, they just want to Be that if it's a spotted cat. Yeah, it.

[James Campbell]

Pain in the ass. Even if it's worthless.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. If it's got spots, we just don't know what it is. Is it like. Is it that or is it a snow leopard?

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, or whatever. Right.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Well, you've had Dan Flores on, you know, in, you know, his book American Serengeti, he talks about, you know, what they did to predators, you know, in.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[James Campbell]

Colonial America. And jaguars were one of the things they just, you know, they just shot.

[Steven Rinella]

Would they put. Would they poison jaguars to.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, I think they poison all predators. You know, wolves, bear, coyote, coyotes in. In Brazil, in, you know, South America. Sure. They used to poison them. Poison them all the time. You mentioned colonial America.

[Steven Rinella]

Are.

[James Campbell]

Do you think black jaguars in colonial America are responsible for the continued sightings of black Like. Like claim sightings of black panthers? Yeah, wherever in southern. The southern United States. Oh, that's interesting there. Oh, there's. The black jaguars only come from one place. Is that right? One place. So, like, the colonists would not have.

[Steven Rinella]

Said Taylor Sledge and Clay's dad are listening. In the entire state of Mississippi, I hope was listening right now. I don't know if you know, but they have on their hands right now a black jaguar.

[James Campbell]

Who does.

[Steven Rinella]

He's just roaming or. It's a cat. It's a house cat. There was just a picture that our buddy in Mississippi sent us. And he's like, it's a black jaguar. He's like, the whole state's panties are on fire. And you kind of look and you're like, maybe it's like a house cat. It's like a guy has a picture of a cat standing on the side of the road.

[James Campbell]

But it's also people like black mountain lions. Yeah, sure.

[Steven Rinella]

But everybody knows there's no such. Now that. Now that words out.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There is no. Never has been. There's no such thing as a black panther. A black panther is a wet panther. So then the black panther crowd hit on the thing that there is melanism in jaguars. So as Taylor Sledge was saying, he even had a veterinarian tell him it's got to be a melanistic jaguar.

[James Campbell]

In Mississippi.

[Steven Rinella]

Yes. Terrorizing Mississippi as we speak.

[James Campbell]

Well, maybe that's the second jaguar we got. Got cochise in Arizona and whatever. The black jaguar is named in Mississippi. But there's a place in Brazil called the sajado. It's. It's C E, R, R, a D, o, but they pronounce the double R Like hado. Okay. In the cihado. And that's the only place that black jaguars are.

[Steven Rinella]

So there's like a melanistic jaguar.

[James Campbell]

Jaguar in the.

[Steven Rinella]

Is he like, flat out black or has he got, like, dark spots?

[James Campbell]

No, I have a photo. I pulled up a picture. Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Pull this up of your friends. Sorry, I can't read your mind. Send me a picture.

[Phil]

I'll put it up there.

[Steven Rinella]

Like they show Phil ever gets more serious about theater, you know, quits. Yeah. I'm going to get a guy that's just pummeling pictures on that screen, man.

[James Campbell]

Like jet black ones. Yeah. But also like.

[Phil]

Like spots show the rosettes.

[James Campbell]

Oh, really?

[Phil]

Barely. Like.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, so it's like, it's. It's like those black bears, you know, like the. The spirit bears or whatever in Canada. It's like a very localized expression of.

[James Campbell]

Some sort of gene. Yeah, that must be. Yeah, I don't know. I expect that's what it is. Yeah. So you can see that.

[Steven Rinella]

Take that back. I don't think you should do that.

[Phil]

No.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Because some places I've been on, they do it and it gets a little annoying. Like every damn thing you talk about up on the screen. I'm glad you've had a complete 180 in the last 17 seconds.

[James Campbell]

Your.

[Steven Rinella]

Your original instincts were correct. Phil, don't put it up. What was the. What was the. Give me some of the like, of the. In let's say, let's take Mesoamerica.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay. Just because I'm familiar, like, like Mayan culture, different Mesoamerican cultures, pre contact, so pre Columbian cultures.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

What was there. Is there a way to generalize about, like, what was their understanding of the animal like. Like the Amerindian indigenous understanding of the animal. Was it like a prize thing to get? Was it like, what. You know, if you had to sort of typify the relationship.

[James Campbell]

They worshiped it. I mean, metaphysically, there was like no more important animal. Maybe it represented to those people what say the grizzly bear represented to northern Native American tribes. It was part of their religion, part of their art, part of their architecture, part of their iconography. They absolutely worshiped it. The Mayans believed that the jaguar escorted the sun from day to night and back to day. The Olmecs would. Would. Would mutilate their heads, so they resembled jaguar heads.

[Steven Rinella]

And.

[James Campbell]

But at the same time, they did kill jaguars because they valued their pelts, they valued their teeth, you know, etc. But they had. I mean, it was, you know, it was their totem. It was something, you know, that was important to every aspect of their lives.

[Steven Rinella]

But they didn't regard it as a, like, as one of their predators.

[James Campbell]

You mean as something to be feared.

[Steven Rinella]

Like when you went out, you know, like, let's you talk about the northern plains, right, and the northern plains, you knew people, everyone would have known people that were killed by grizzlies. Yeah, right. And so, but there wasn't like an element of that, like a thing that was. You were afraid of.

[James Campbell]

No, no, I, I, from all the reading I, I've done and, you know, the traveling I did, I never got, I never got that impression. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, they, they were worshiped.

[Steven Rinella]

So what, what, at what point did you go from being like, kind of interested in jaguars to being that you're gonna do a whole book? Like, I'm familiar with that little transition.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right, right. Well, let's see. I, I read. I was living just above Boulder, Colorado, in a little mining town called Jamestown, and I was going to grad school at cu, and I read Jaguar for the first time in like 1990. It came out in 1986 or something like that. And I was bowled over.

[Steven Rinella]

What is that book? I'm not familiar with?

[James Campbell]

That's Alan Rabinowitz's first book. He wrote Jaguar. It was about his experience in Belize when he, he was there for a year and a half and he radio collared the first jaguar in the rainforest. But he dedicated himself to this, this coxhome basin in Belize. He dedicated himself to the jaguars of Belize. And I read that book and I was like, man, this guy's my hero. He's incredible. He's like, fierce and fearless. He'll go anywhere, he'll do anything. And he brought his weights. He was like, he was a, he was a martial artist and he was a weightlifter. Brought his weights to this little tiny, little Mayan village down in Belize. And he would do his weights and he had green eyes and a hairy chest. And the, my, the people, the Maya people didn't know. They were, they feared him initially and they thought he had the eyes of a jaguar. But anyway, I would go around and, you know, I would, I would hike around the mountains, fish or hunt or backpack. And I would pretend like I was looking for jaguar tracks. And then like, Fast forward to 2000, I don't know, one or two. I did an interview with Alan Rabinowitz for, I think it was Outside magazine. And I talked to him at length. What year would this have been like 2001 or 2.

[Steven Rinella]

I was writing there then.

[James Campbell]

Oh, you were?

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah. I started writing there in 2000. Oh well then I'm sure I read.

[James Campbell]

It in Santa Fe at the time.

[Steven Rinella]

I was just like what they call it at time. Contributing editor.

[James Campbell]

Contributing. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So I was never under contract, but I did like cover stories and yeah.

[James Campbell]

Sad. What's become of outside.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, well, it's different now.

[James Campbell]

Too bad.

[Steven Rinella]

But not sending you over to the.

[James Campbell]

Philippines for no, they got no budgets. Oh no.

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[James Campbell]

So anyway, I interviewed him at length and I proposed writing a biography at that time of him. And he kind of entertained the notion. And about six months later, after we had long, long conversations about his life, he'd just been diagnosed with chronic lymphatic leukemia, which the doctors told him would eventually kill him. And they told him not to get like amoebic dysentery or malaria or whatever because it would, you know, it would. It would set him back. But of course, he didn't, you know, he didn't listen.

[Steven Rinella]

And where was this guy from?

[James Campbell]

He was from. He was from New York. He grew up in Queens, New York. But there was nowhere he wouldn't go and nothing he wouldn't do.

[Ryan Seacrest]

He.

[James Campbell]

I mean, he studied tigers in Burma and Thailand. He studied clouded leopards on the island of Formosa.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a big cat guy.

[James Campbell]

Oh, big, big cat the most. You know, they called him the Indiana Jones of wildlife ecology. He was. He was super fit. He's super courageous. Would do anything.

[Steven Rinella]

But anyway, you know, what's. I gotta tell you something. That's nuts, man. That I feel like lines up with this.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So in. It would have been around 90 or 91. No, like 91 or 92. Yeah. I went to a National Trappers association convention. Okay.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Might have been in Iowa. And I go to a lecture by a prominent trapper. His last name was Brown, I'm sure. I feel like his name was Jerry Brown. But that's like the old governor. There's probably a million Jerry Browns. He's a. He's a predator trapper. Like a coyote trapper. Cat trapper.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He was giving a lecture. I'm not you. He's giving a lecture. He had been contracted and had been down in South America with researchers trying to figure out how to get collars on jaguars.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Using foot snares.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And other things because he's like, he's like a big cat trapper.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And he was, like, talking about his experiences. Like, that dude had to have somehow been lined up with the guy you're talking about because the timing is right.

[James Campbell]

I'm sure he was. Was his name Darren Simpson?

[Steven Rinella]

Not. Definitely not that.

[James Campbell]

Definitely not that. Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

No. And he was like. He was just a consultant.

[James Campbell]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

On a guy that knew his way around cat trapping. And he was taught. And I remember him talking about they were developing because he's trying to hook him.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And he just gave this lecture about. And I remember at that time even thinking like, that was badass because those professional trappers are always trying to find ways to round out their income. And that was what he was doing.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And I wonder if he.

[James Campbell]

Like, they first started trapping jaguars in the Pantanal in. In the early. Like late 70s or early 80s. But then it. But it wasn't prominent. It wasn't a, you know, common practice.

[Steven Rinella]

And how to catch them.

[James Campbell]

They will cable snares on the foot. On the foot? Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like a loaded snare.

[James Campbell]

Like a loaded snare, right. No, no bait. No bait.

[Steven Rinella]

Blind sets.

[James Campbell]

Blind sets. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way.

[Steven Rinella]

You gotta be good, man.

[James Campbell]

You gotta be really good. So this Joe R.S. may, he's a veterinarian and a big cat trapper that I spent considerable amount of time with in Brazil. The guy's amazing. He's like my cousin Jaime, trapping wolverines up in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I mean, he traps oslid. He traps maned wolves, he traps jaguars over a hundred. And it's really pretty simple, but.

[Steven Rinella]

And trail sets.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing. I don't know, lay out how he.

[Steven Rinella]

Goes about, like, what is he doing?

[James Campbell]

So you have the. So he sets a piece of the base plate he uses rebar. And he anchors it like, two feet down. Then he has swivels and springs. And then he attaches that to the thrower. And then there's the cable snare. And then there's the pressure plate just outside, you know, the cable snare, which is just a sponge with dirt on top. And then he makes this little lane.

[Steven Rinella]

And that's the trigger, is the weight on the pressure.

[James Campbell]

Exactly. That's the trigger, is the weight on that. And then he makes this little trail. It's amazing. I don't know how. And they don't worry about scent. Human scent, which, you know, they don't give.

[Steven Rinella]

They don't care. That's kind of true at, like, cat trapping in general.

[James Campbell]

Oh, is it? Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They're not like canines.

[James Campbell]

They're not like.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, they don't care.

[James Campbell]

Watching my. My cousin haimo trap wolves.

[Steven Rinella]

I mean, you know, cats like bare hands. You know, you don't even. A lot of guys don't cover the pan.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, exactly. So. So then he made this kind of trail of leaves to the. To the snare. And then he got out all the. All the stuff in the middle of the trail because jaguars like to walk sideways. Jaguars like to walk silently. There can't even be a leaf. There can't be a leaf.

[Steven Rinella]

You're offering him a quiet place to put his foot. Exactly.

[James Campbell]

Offer him a quiet place to put his foot. And then they have a little, like, fishing line attached to the cable snare, which runs up a pole which attaches to a magnet in a transmitter. So when the cat trips that, you know, you have a receiver. You know that. That.

[Steven Rinella]

Kidding, man.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. You know that that trap has been tripped and it's.

[Steven Rinella]

And you got like a tape here or a white lip peccary or a jaguar.

[James Campbell]

You don't know what's in there. Sometimes you got a taper. Right. Is there some urgency to get there so they don't hurt themselves? Yeah, you know, they, they. They have a cat in the catch circle. You clear everything out of the catch circle. Otherwise they will tear the thing up like a wolverine or something.

[Steven Rinella]

And hurt himself.

[James Campbell]

And hurt himself. Yeah. In fact, in the book Alan Rabinowitz, one of the first jaguar he traps is Ipuk, which is the Mayan God of death. Tears off his canine in one of the traps. So. Yeah, so it does happen. Is he using trail cameras to zero in on specific jaguars or just, like, keep. Yeah, they use lots of. Lots of trail cams to zero in on jaguars. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, they. They start establishing the big cat's routine, and then they'll put, you know, then they'll put the.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, so they're, like, targeting a cat?

[James Campbell]

They're targeting a cat. Yeah, they're targeting a specific cat.

[Steven Rinella]

How many countries you been to in your life?

[James Campbell]

Oh, my God. In my life?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like a hundred.

[James Campbell]

No, probably not. No. I don't know.

[Steven Rinella]

I.

[James Campbell]

For the. For the book, I traveled, you know, all over South America and Central America. You know, my friends laugh, my friends joke that I only write books when I. So I can travel to those places. So I guess there's an element of truth to that. But, yeah, I'd have to get. I have to think about it. You know, Been to Africa. Been to, you know, all Over Southeast Asia now South America and Central America. Probably not as many places as you.

[Steven Rinella]

Not that more.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

I don't know. I've repeatedly gone back to New Guinea.

[Steven Rinella]

So you keep burning up opportunities.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So. So when we got off on a couple. Not tangents, because they're very relevant.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You were warming up to. You were warming up to your subject.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And he got sick.

[James Campbell]

Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so he got sick. But ultimately he said, you know what? This has been great. We remain friends, but I'm gonna write my own book. By that time, he'd already written Jaguar Chasing the Dragon's Tale about trying to find the Formosan, the mythical Formosan clouded leopard, which he never found.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, I don't know what that is.

[James Campbell]

A clouded leopard is a little. Is a little, you know, small little leopard.

[Steven Rinella]

Out of where?

[James Campbell]

Very elusive. Thailand.

[Steven Rinella]

Formosa, you know, and it's not an actual thing or. It is.

[James Campbell]

No, it is. It is, but they. I say mythical because they thought it existed, but, you know, it probably died 100 years before.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, like, he thought maybe it was like a Lazarus species.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I got you.

[James Campbell]

Right. And then he wrote a book about two books about Burma, one called Life in the Valley of Death and one called beyond the Last Village. So he's a great writer, and I mind all his books. Books, you know, and did lots of interviews with friends and his wife to write the book. But ultimately he decided he, you know, he didn't need me to write a book. But we remained friends. We remained friends for a long time. And then, you know, as some. Some of these friendships do, you know, we. We just. We stopped talking for no other reason than we just got Busy. And in 2018, I went to New guinea, and we'd been in touch and I talking again about doing a documentary about him or a book about him. And we'd been talking back in touch, and I was elated because he's an amazing guy. I got back from New guinea, and one of the people at Panthera, the communications director, called me and told me he died. So he died way before his time of leukemia, actually. Leukemia. Together with. With a skin cancer.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. So I. And that was what year that was in 2018. I think he was 60, 63 at the time. But, you know, he was just. He was fearsome and, you know, fearless. He was someone to be admired. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So eventually you decided to. I mean, obviously, I'm looking at it right now. You picked up the project.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, so I picked up the project. And you Know, got in touch with Panthera, the organization he kind of helped establish. And there was this other guy named Howard Quigley who was a famous jaguar biologist and also tiger biologist. He, he was one of the first people to, to collar Amir Tigers in Siberia. Amazing guy too. So he helped me, you know, kind of find places along the jaguar corridor, you know, along that 5,000 miles to visit that, you know, people, people that wanted to talk, people that were doing amazing things and also people. Places where I might have a chance of seeing jaguars. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Along that corridor. I imagine the Darien Gaps got to be a real. Huh? Like that's got to be like the problem, right?

[James Campbell]

That, that is the. Yeah, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

I feel like the Darien Gap only gets brought up in the context of.

[James Campbell]

It being a problem.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. For various reasons. Well, and then, and then at the height, like, like at the height of the Biden administration when there was so much illegal immigration.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It like brought in tons of people into the, into the Darien Gap. And then the Darien Gap kind of became like a, almost like a conflict zone.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, wasn't there a New York Times reporter who went down there and walked the Darien Gap with the people? I mean, can you imagine like four year old children going through the Darien.

[Steven Rinella]

Gap and people in there preying on them?

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it, like this, this sonic, very isolated place became awesome. Like a, a very visited place.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Steven Rinella]

And a lot, a lot of violence coming out of that.

[James Campbell]

A lot of violence. Yeah. A lot of trafficking. Yeah, yeah. But for, yeah, for the jaguar, that, that's like a pinch point. And when they were first establishing the jaguar corridor, that was something they really worried about. Is the Darien Gap.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, I guess through that context. Let's talk about this corridor. Like, the objective presumably is to get jaguars back into the northern, their northern range. Right back into Mesoamerica.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. But the major point is that because jaguars are the only wide ranging predators without a subspecies, that's to preserve, that's to preserve the DNA. You know, there are no taxonomic differences between jaguars. You know, when that was discovered in 1999, Alan Rabinowitz was elated. He's like, you know, we can treat jaguars as a single ecological unit, as one species. So that was the idea, you know, is the genetic flow, genetic freedom. Make sure that jaguars could move throughout the corridor, you know, and spread their genes.

[Steven Rinella]

What is the, what are the corridors? What are the, what's the northern terminus? And the southern terminus. Like, like what is the corridor?

[James Campbell]

So the corridor is this kind of loosely connected. They call them jaguar conservation units. The, the, the kind of the, the avenues or the trails or whatever you want to call them, the passageways by which they connect. The jaguar conservation units, which are just areas that produce a lot of jaguars that are just, you know, good habitat for jaguars. But it goes from, again, the Ibera or Ibera, all the way up to essentially the Sierra Madres of Mexico or to southern Arizona. Essentially everything below Highway 10 in Southern Arizona. In Arizona, that's the corridor. So it's a huge corridor. It's one of the biggest corridors of any animal on earth. Except the leopards may be a little bit bigger just for like as far.

[Steven Rinella]

As their range, like of an individual animal and their social lives. Is it fair, like, what we'd expect? Like, males roam and they're fairly solitary creatures. I mean, is there anything unique in terms of jaguars and how they move around the landscape and relate to one another?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, well. Well, I mean, first of all, they're solitary. They get together to mate and that's pretty much it.

[Steven Rinella]

Jim, stay up close to your mic.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah, sorry. And the females, they have what they call range fidelity, so they don't move that far. But the males, particularly a male in what they call natal dispersal, a male that has not mated like Cochise or like this famous jaguar, El Jefe, you know, they'll come out of. They'll come out of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico, the northern jaguar reserve, which is like 125 miles south of the border, and they'll roam all the way into, you know, the Santa Rita mountains of southern Arizona. So they have huge ranges.

[Steven Rinella]

So that's the, that's where those Arizona cats are coming from. Yeah, I didn't know that that was that close to the Bor.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, 125 miles south of the border. And that's, you know, kind of like the. A waning. Well, I wouldn't say waning, but the last population, the farthest north breeding population of jaguars.

[Steven Rinella]

And are we talking like 10, are we talking hundreds?

[James Campbell]

No, you're probably talking like 30 or 40.

[Steven Rinella]

In the Sierra Madre.

[James Campbell]

In the Sierra Madres, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Eating coos deer.

[James Campbell]

Eating coos deer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know you've had Jim Good cat, Jim Heffelfinger. I know you've had Jim Heffelfinger on it. He. I talked with him at length. He's a great guy. We've discovered that. We grew up like 1010 miles from each other. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So I was just. I wasn't gonna bring up Heffelfinger by name, but let's talk a little bit about wildlife politics in Arizona.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, sure. Well, you can't avoid it.

[Steven Rinella]

All right. So the, like, there's a sort of. I don't know, man. There's a sort of battle. Okay. There's a. There's a management battle. Where in Arizona. There are. There are forces. There are powers that be that want to just kind of wash their hands of this whole jaguar thing. And they want to say, sure, like, maybe now and then a male would wander up into Arizona. But you can't call this core habitat.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because once someone says, no, bro, this is core habitat, then they're going to be like. It'd be like the same thing, like Colorado. Them saying, you know what? We have a mandate. We're gonna. We're gonna reintroduce wolves in Colorado. The fear is that someone down the road says, and this is not my fear. I think it's a great idea. The fear is that someone down the road, someone says, hey, hey. This is historic jaguar range. This is core habitat for jaguars. We have a legal responsibility to restore jaguars in Arizona.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Which I think is a phenomenal idea.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I'd like it even more if I lived there.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a cool.

[James Campbell]

You want to see one? Because you didn't see.

[Steven Rinella]

I just like all that. I like. I like all that. Like.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I like looking over my shoulder. Yeah. You know, and. And even though they're passive and all that, I just like the whole thing about them. And you're never gonna have. Have. It's not gonna have like, enough jaguars where you're having, like. It's not gonna have like a. It's not going to be that. All of a sudden predation goes up.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because what it's going to come. It's going to come at the expense of mountain lions.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know what I mean?

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So I. I think it's a phenomenal idea. I'm just throwing that out there. But that's like the wildlife politics end. And so these guys came up with this great map.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It's every known. And. And the. So it's in the U. In the United States of America. It's this map of, like every known instance distance. And they track down stuff. Even like photos and bars.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like some old photo in a bar where it's like a dude with a dead jaguar. And, like, what is that all about? They're like, oh, yeah, my grandpa, he shot it. Yeah. Does anyone know? No, it's just like a picture in the bar. But then they get to interview people, like legitimately at some point in time. Like, it seems like this dude's grandpa, no joke, shot a jaguar. And so on the map, and people argue about the map. And on the map is also jaguars that dudes trucked up there. Yeah. To turn loose for jaguar hunts.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

And so the map is like a contentious map where they're, they're. There's people going like, not legit. Not legit. Not legit. And other people are going like, no, these are all legit sightings.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And it boils down to, is someone someday gonna say, we're going to do a release of jaguars? Well, you seem to not like this subject.

[James Campbell]

Well, I'm telling you, you called it controversial, man. That's hitting the nail on the head. And it's been going on for a long time since pretty much 1996 when two ranch. When one rancher, Warner Glenn guy, straight up.

[Phil]

I was going to ask you if you ran into Warner Glenn.

[Steven Rinella]

He caught that one.

[James Campbell]

One. Yeah, yeah. Straight out of central casting. You know, saw. Saw one in 1996. And this other guy named he. He and his wife, Jack Childs. And he was a, he was a. You know, he ran lions with his, with his dogs.

[Steven Rinella]

And yeah, we. We've had like, our colleague Clay has done a lot with him.

[James Campbell]

Oh, oh, Jack Video with Warner, not with Warner.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, he.

[James Campbell]

Well, with Warner. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, they're both, both. They're amazing, amazing guys. And probably pretty middle. The middle of the road guys. As far as jaguars are concerned.

[Steven Rinella]

If you go into like, even in those years, like back then. Not a little bit later than that. No. As much in the 2000s.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There's a guy that knew those guys that me and Yanni are friends with, Floyd Green. And you went into his optic shop and there's a picture of that jaguar.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And I was like, what's up with that jaguar? It was like the Warner Glenn jaguar from Arizona.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. He talked about the shining green eyes.

[Steven Rinella]

You're thinking Leopold.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

Leopold loved, ultimately loved jaguars. He wrote a lot about jaguars, but we won't go that far straight. But. So, I mean, this is really, really complicated. And I won't give you too much history, but there is. There was an effort called canra, the Central Arizona New Mexico Recovery Area. And this group that. This group that you were talking about wanted to set aside 20 million acres from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in the Gila all the way up to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon along the Muggian Rim as jaguar. Historically, it was probably jaguar habitat. So they wanted to do a reintroduction of Jaguars. 90 to 120 Jaguars in that area, which was shot down by fish and US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretary of the Interior.

[Steven Rinella]

Dude, you want to talk about people's panties getting on fire, man? Oh, my goodness.

[James Campbell]

You know, you can imagine the Cattlemen's association, et cetera. But, you know, and the hunters, too. I mean, I hunt, so, you know, it's a tough thing.

[Steven Rinella]

But jaguars, I'm not. And I wasn't like, here's the deal.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I feel. And I'm not a cat expert.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I feel this is just my ME ballpark or like crystal ball in it. I don't think you'd see because this is all mountain lion country.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't think you'd probably see an increase in predation. I think you'd see it shift.

[James Campbell]

From what to what?

[Steven Rinella]

I think the mountain lions would. Would pay the price.

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like if you, if you introduce species, you don't all of a sudden double.

[James Campbell]

Your big cat population.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Like when you put. So if you put wolves in with mountain lions, you get like, additive predation has been very demonstrated. I just have a hard time picturing it. Throwing another cat in the mix.

[James Campbell]

Huh.

[Steven Rinella]

Maybe I'm wrong. Throwing another cat in the mix. I still think you're going to see X number of dead deer killed by cats.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Not. Not double or triple.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I don't think so. But what do I know? I don't know.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Makes sense, though. I can see it both ways, to be honest.

[James Campbell]

It makes complete sense. Well, first of all, jaguars live in really low, low densities. Second of all, they, they eat 85 species. You know, they're not gonna, they're not gonna just eat coos, deer and elk. They're gonna eat frogs. They're gonna eat skunks. They're gonna eat armor.

[Steven Rinella]

Turtles. Turtles.

[James Campbell]

They like turtles. Yeah, they love turtles. No turtles in Aries. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, they're real generalists, you know, so they're not going to concentrate, you know, on the deer or on the elk. And I think Jim Heffelfinger has said that, you know, I don't think that predation would be increased that much. No. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't want to drag him into this. Yeah. Matter of fact, I can't remember what his take on this whole thing is.

[James Campbell]

Is. Well, I think he. I think his take on. I think his take on critical habitat and reintroduction is very. Is negative. I mean, he's like, it's a. It's a powder keg. And also, why waste endangered species money on a cat that may or may not want to live?

[Steven Rinella]

Because they got spots.

[James Campbell]

Because they got spots.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, they're bad. And they got jowl muscles.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. I mean, you see one of these cats, I mean, they are so magnificent. I mean, their heads are like that. Oh, and they're so powerful. I mean, they. And they live in trees. They swim. You know, they swim rivers with cayman in their mouths for a mile. I mean, they are like. They're like the most. They're like the most athletic cat there is or athletic beast there.

[Steven Rinella]

When I get attacked by a lion or a grizzly, I usually pull their upper and lower jaw apart so they can't clamp down on me. Like, I don't know what The Jag, man.

[James Campbell]

150.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know that move is gonna work.

[James Campbell]

500 pounds of pressure per square inch.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm gonna start working out so I can hold them.

[James Campbell]

Well, they say build up some calluses, too. Yeah.

[Phil]

I've never seen a jaguar, but I think it was at a Denver Zoo. They had some sort of tigers. I don't know if they were the Bengal tiger or what tiger, but I remember having that.

[James Campbell]

That.

[Phil]

That. This sense of awe that you're describing. And it was only. You know, there's a pain of glass between me and this giant cat, but when you look at it, it's just. Yeah, it gives you a weird feeling.

[Steven Rinella]

It's just what you said earlier is, like, when they move, every part of their body is activated.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

They're not like my lab, where they're kind of walking and there's like, legs, like, there's shaking and jiggling. Like, when a cat moves, it's like. It's almost like a snake. It's like the whole thing is. Yeah, they're like a Runway model, dude. We're like just. The whole thing. There's not a muscle out of place.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's exact. That's exactly right. You see one of those things. It's something to behold. People bio jaguar biologists who've seen, like, you know, dozens in their lives still think it's like a dream to see a jaguar. And. Yeah, they are. They are just incredibly beautiful. And they're such magnificent as athletes, you know, they're just, you know, I mean, you know, they jump 20ft, you know, standing jump into a tree and then they can live in trees in certain parts of the Amazon when it floods, they live in trees for months. It's crazy, huh?

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[Steven Rinella]

So with the with the CITES protections. Yeah, with more awareness with the quarters are we like has the decline in Jaguars been reversed or is it, are they still a species in decline and is there, is their territory still shrinking?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's a good question. I think jaguar biologists have hope. They have to have hope in conservation. Hope can be hard to come by. But, yeah, I think that people are hopeful that the jaguar will persist, that they can kind of lock down these jaguar conservation areas and they can defend the corridor. So I think they're, Yeah, I think, I don't know what's happening to the population in general, but I do think that they have hope that the jaguars will continue to persist, if not, if not thrive. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So you didn't have like in, in your book, you didn't have a, through all that reporting, you didn't come up with like a, a strong personal opinion about what's going to happen with the animal? It just seems like it's like a legitimate question.

[James Campbell]

Well, yeah, I'm, it's, it's, it's tough. I mean, it's tough. I hate to be, you know, I, there were times when I was pessimistic and there were times when I was optimistic. Yeah, when you, you go to the Pantanal and you're filled with optimism because you, you see, you see a lot of jaguars and they're, you know, they're, there are a lot of jaguars there, but the Amazon, you know, the Amazon is imperiled, you know, and that's where the bulk of Jaguars, maybe 70 to 80% of Jaguars live. And the Amazon I could see, you know, when I was in Brazil, when. I don't mean to be political, but when Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese goods, Chinese, you know, reciprocated or retaliated, slap tear San soybeans. So, you know, our soybean farmers couldn't send soybeans to China. So what did the Chinese do? They went to Bolivia and they went to the, they went to, they went.

[Steven Rinella]

To Brazil to invest in soybeans.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And they just raised forests for, you know, 30, 40 miles. You see nothing but bean fields. And that's where they, that's where they got their beans. So. And jaguars cannot live, you know, in a bean field.

[Steven Rinella]

But you don't need to apologize for being political because what's not political?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, particularly these, you know, I mean.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, like, well, no, I mean, like wildlife is political.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, it is.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like you can't, there's no world in which you can talk about wildlife and have it not intersect with politics. It's just, it's like. It is political.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And Alan Rabinowitz worked in Burma shortly after the generals crushed the pro democracy democracy movement. And he worked there. And he was criticized. He was criticized by fellow biologists. He was criticized in the newspapers. He said, you know, since when do, you know, tigers get a vote? He said, I'm going to go save tigers.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, they expected him to withdraw from Burma.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, they expected him to withdraw from Burma, and he wouldn't. And, you know, in some cases, he was dealing with generals, you know, who were, you know, pretty unscrupulous people. But his commitment was to, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Was to the jaguar or they're the tiger.

[James Campbell]

I mean, to the tiger. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you focus mostly on his work with jaguars or do you get into his work with other cats?

[James Campbell]

I get into his work a little bit with tigers in. In Burma, but mostly I focus, you know, on the jaguar just because it was so kind of, you know, revolutionary. The notion of the jaguar corridor, you know, that swath of land, you know, five, five thousand, five thousand miles, just hadn't been attempted before for one species.

[Steven Rinella]

And then how much did he live through by the time he died? Was it clear that his vision was going to carry, was going to be effective?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, definitely. He inspired. I mean, the jaguar corridor was essentially his idea in. The jaguar corridor lives on today, and there are countless biologists and countless environmental organizations who are dedicated to it. So, yeah, it lives on. And I think that he was aware before he died that there was a commitment to maintaining the jaguar corridor.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you think he's looking down and he's pissed that you wound up writing the book after all?

[Odoo Advertiser]

After.

[Steven Rinella]

After he told you not to?

[James Campbell]

I hope he'd be thankful.

[Steven Rinella]

He's like, son of a bitch. I asked him 10 times.

[James Campbell]

His. His wife was really, really helpful. And it was. I think it was still a painful experience for her because she still hadn't taken all his journals out of his closet. George, he. He was a. He was a protege of George Shallow. And George Saller said, your job is, at the end of every. First of all, take field notes and at the end of the day, revisit those notes and write about the sights and sounds and smells. You know, he said, I think his quote was, the pen is the weapon against oblivion. So Alan Rabinowitz followed that, and he was a very careful and dedicated note taker. So his. His wife, you know, it was pretty brave to allow me to. To, you know. Yeah, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

Corinne, when we were in Africa, wasn't it? Wasn't those guys from Pantera that we were Talking. The lion guys.

[James Campbell]

Yep, Yep, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. We were with some dudes that were. We just shared a camp with them.

[James Campbell]

Huh.

[Steven Rinella]

And they were coming in to set up. They were coming in to set up a huge camera trap array. Yeah, we call them trail cams in our circles.

[James Campbell]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

They were coming in to set up a huge trail cam array around lions, leopards.

[James Campbell]

I think mainly. I think mainly those two.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[James Campbell]

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. I used to call them trail cams, too, but I've been around jaguar biologists for so long, I call them camera traps.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

All my hunting buddies have been.

[James Campbell]

You fast? Yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

You had to assimilate.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, I got a thing like. Like coyote. Coyote, yeah. You know. Yeah, there's very, like. You don't meet many people who. You don't meet trappers and stuff that say coyote. No, it's a coyote. You got a code switch. Yeah. Trail cams, you kind of know where they're coming from. Camera traps, you kind of know where they're coming from.

[James Campbell]

And you don't call mountain l. Mountain lion. You call them cats. Right? Yeah. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. So that's. Yeah. It's funny you could tell someone's background there, but it's been. What an amazing tool, though. And my understanding, too, is with. With leopards and also with jaguars, the rosettes are identifiable completely. So it gives you the ability to. To. To name them and know them.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how. That's how they. Jack Childs identified a Jaguar in 2005. He caught him on his trail cams and in 2005. And he looked at the rosettes and said, these are the same rosettes that I saw on the jaguar that we photographed in 1996.

[Steven Rinella]

And what year was it?

[James Campbell]

2005.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[James Campbell]

So he recognized there was one that resembled Pinocchio and one resembled a cartoon character called Betty Boop. I don't know. I. I don't. I'm not familiar, but that's how he identified that cat. So that cat had been living in Arizona from 1996 through 2005. Huh. So. Yeah, so that is the. The. No, no.

[Steven Rinella]

That lived in Arizona that long without getting in trouble.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, without getting in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty amazing, man.

[Steven Rinella]

You know, they.

[James Campbell]

They're. They're one thing. They're grow. They're jaguars. Have this modified hyoid bone in their throats so they can roar unlike any other cat in the United States. And so every jaguar's roar is different, too. That's kind of their auditory signature. None. No, no. Roar is the same, huh?

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Do you know the story? This was another controversial one. In the book, do you tell the story of the jaguar that gets killed by researchers in Arizona? Tell that story real quick.

[James Campbell]

Oh, man, that's a, That's a.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a sore one, right?

[James Campbell]

That's a complicated one. So that, that's called. That's macho. B. That. So in 2008. Oh, man, this is going to be tough. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security set aside or made it known they had $50 million to give to agencies who were studying, who wanted to study the effects of the border wall on endangered species. And there was a group called the Jaguar Borderland Detection Group, and they set up trail cams all over Southern Arizona, from the Chiricahua Mountains or, Or the Animas Mountains in, In. In New Mexico all the way to the Baba Kivaris, you know, in. Southwest of. Of, of Tucson. And I've kind of lost my thought for a moment.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, we're talking about that cat that turned up. Got killed.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. So. So they. They what the Arizona Game and Fish Department wanted. They wanted to capture and collar a jaguar. Now, there was a group called the Jaguar Conservation Group, which was made up of guys in the government, conservationists, ranchers, et cetera. And the environmentalists in that group said, if you're not going to set aside critical habitat and refused to. Why do we have to call her a jaguar? Because that's essentially what you want to know. You want to figure out what his range is and where he.

[Steven Rinella]

But then you're not going to do anything with the info.

[James Campbell]

But you're not going to do anything. You're not going to do anything with the info. So. There was a surreptitious plan to capture a cat, this Macho Bee, in an area where they were also trying to trap mountain lions and bears.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[James Campbell]

So in February 18, 2009, Macho Bee was captured. Captured. And he was captured in a snare which they baited with the scat of a female jaguar in heat. This is. This is a long. This is going to be a long story.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I know. There's like some little ring. No, you're doing phenomenal. When you pulled that date out, dude, I was impressed.

[James Campbell]

It's still a sore point.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Down there.

[James Campbell]

And so there was this guy named Emil McCain who had studied in Brazil and was an amazing tracker. Well, he had set up this snare with these two other biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and he said everything had been cleared Everything was above board. Well, it turns out it wasn't above board. So this jaguar, Macho B, was snared in February 18th of 2009. Two biologists said he was extremely frail at the time, and so they collared him, and then they waited six hours for the telezole to drift out of his body. And then the jaguar stumbled off, but he already was in bad condition. And then about two weeks later, they weren't getting a signal from Macho B from the collar. So about two weeks later, some Arizona Game and Fish people went to check on Macho B, and they said he was extremely frail and stumbling around.

[Steven Rinella]

Check on him how? For not getting a signal from the collar.

[James Campbell]

They went back to that. That site, the snare site, and essentially he hadn't moved. The jaguar hadn't moved. So then, like, a couple days later.

[Steven Rinella]

So they're not getting a move. They're not getting movement.

[James Campbell]

They're not getting any movement.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm with you.

[James Campbell]

So then on, like, March 2, 2009, a whistleblower came out. This woman named Janae Bryant, who was working with the Borderland Detection Group, said that she had placed the female scat at the snare site to lure Macho B. So right there, the Arizona Game and Fish, essentially, rationale, went out the window. Because it was a deliberate.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, because their deal was that it just inadvertently got hooked in a lion set.

[James Campbell]

It was an incidental. Inadvertent. Yeah, but.

[Steven Rinella]

But they had baited it.

[James Campbell]

But they had baited it for.

[Steven Rinella]

For jaguar, for jaguars.

[Phil]

And I'd like to know what it takes to get female jaguar in heat scat.

[James Campbell]

That's a great. I. I have no idea. It's a great question. I have no idea. That should be asked. But then a day later.

[Steven Rinella]

So what. How is that a whistleblower? That seems more like an admission.

[James Campbell]

Well, because the Game and Fish Department was trying to cover up that it was an incidental, inadvertent picture.

[Steven Rinella]

And so she was like, hey, it wasn't. In fact, I did it.

[James Campbell]

And then she eventually wrote a book called Cloak and Jaguar. Oh, come on.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[James Campbell]

It was actually a pretty good book.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, come on. I mean, come on. It's like a podcast.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

[Steven Rinella]

So anyway, we had good titles.

[James Campbell]

So anyway, on, let's see, March 3rd, another party went out to check on Macho B and captured him because they could tell that he, you know, he was hurting. He was hurting and hurting bad. So they brought him to the Phoenix Zoo and they did the bunch of tests, and they were like, like this. This jaguar is going to die. So they thought about. They thought about putting.

[Steven Rinella]

And what did the tests reveal? That he'd been drugged bad or he was starving.

[James Campbell]

He was starving.

[Steven Rinella]

He was already starving.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, already starving. Physically in bad condition. And his kidneys were shot.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, old.

[Phil]

Old animal.

[James Campbell]

So he would.

[Steven Rinella]

Kidneys were shot from the drugs?

[James Campbell]

No, kidneys were shot from dehydration. When they found him the first time, he was hypothermic. I think his core pressure was. His core temperature was like 90 degrees or something like that. If I want. So I'm trying to give you some kind of broad brushstrokes. But ultimately they had to put the jaguar down. And when they had to put the Jaguar down on March 3, all the papers across the country covered the death of Macho B. And then the whole kind of. I hate to say, guys, but the whole thing just blew up.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[James Campbell]

And two reporters for the Arizona Daily Star, a guy named Tim Steller, and I think Tom Davis, waded into this for. For months, wading into all the literature, and ultimately decided that what had happened was that the Arizona Game and Fish Department did not have an incidental take permit from the US Fish and Wildlife Service for jaguars. They had no jaguar handling protocol. So they just, you know. Because ultimately there was another reporter who reported on this and said it was driven by greed, driven by environmental politics, and driven by a desire to get some of that Homeland Security money that they had set aside for endangered species.

[Phil]

Hey, Jim, can you get closer to your mic, please?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, sure. They thought if they could capture Macho be, they would. Would be able to get, you know, some of that Homeland Security money. Does that all make sense? It's.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. But here's the one part. Here's one part doesn't make sense.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Not nothing.

[James Campbell]

No, no.

[Steven Rinella]

Criticize your storytelling. No. If this jag there seems to me like a little bit like what was the result of and what was before.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

If this jaguar is on death's door.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

How much does he give a. About a. A female drop shopping.

[James Campbell]

Oh, you mean, does he have the.

[Steven Rinella]

No, I'm saying he's out doing jaguar stuff. Okay. He got himself like he gets himself to the snare location. Yeah, right.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And they might have had a great. Set a great trail, but he's there. He's enough to be interested. He's got curiosity. He gets hooked. But then all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, he was half dead already. It's like, are you sure? Because he showed up there but never left.

[James Campbell]

Never left. Right.

[Steven Rinella]

So you caught him at the moment, at the. His last gasp was stepping on that plate.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He's like, I'm good for one more step. It's just. I feel like there's a little, you know, like, you could say, like, oh, no. He was all. But he was in rough shape. He was all beat up. It's like, could have been that bad shape, dude. You caught him.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right.

[Steven Rinella]

If he's in bad shape, he's laying in a thicket.

[James Campbell]

Right. Well, I should. On the second printing of my book.

[Steven Rinella]

You'Ll interview me, I will incorporate, and I'll be like, having not been there, having no real idea. Brief consideration of the facts of the case.

[Ryan Seacrest]

No.

[James Campbell]

So that. That was a real. That for me, that was a real conundrum about. Do I include that story? Do I dredge up all that old crap?

[Steven Rinella]

Well, you have to.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, but.

[Steven Rinella]

Because it's a new story.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's right. But there were a lot of people, you know, who were kind of injured by the story. And Jack Childs said it put jaguar biology in Arizona back into the Stone Age. So I really, really fought long and hard, or thought long and hard about whether I wanted to tell that story. And ultimately I decided to because that pretty much has set the course for jaguar conservation in the Southwest.

[Steven Rinella]

In what way?

[James Campbell]

It's a stain. It's a stain that nobody wants to dredge up. And right now, nobody really wants to touch. Jim Heffelfinger, that the Arizona Game and Fish Department may be a little more receptive to jaguars in Arizona had this not happened. But they're just. They just don't like talking about it anymore, rightfully so. You look skeptical.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, no, I'm just picturing the email on.

[James Campbell]

That's what I was thinking.

[Steven Rinella]

I was literally thinking, Jim. I was literally thinking of the email we will get. Email? Yeah. I'm not saying who, but there will be emails.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, there will be emails. I mean, it's a complicated, unfortunate, tawdry story. You know, it just. It just. I think there are a lot of people who meant well and things just went bad.

[Steven Rinella]

But. But I mean, just. Just to talk shop a little bit.

[James Campbell]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

Not even about jaguars. Just to talk shop a little bit. The.

[Odoo Advertiser]

The.

[Steven Rinella]

As a writer, whatever.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Podcaster, writer, researcher. The. Why do you gotta go bringing this up thing.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

I understand it, but it's like the answer's kind of like, cuz.

[James Campbell]

Cuz. Right. So I should apologize.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what I'm saying? It's like, cuz. It mattered. It mattered.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Mattered. Matters.

[James Campbell]

It matters. Yeah. I mean, it's a big, big deal. And a lot of jaguar biologists were like, I didn't give a shit about a geriatric old jaguar that died in Arizona. But, but because, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

But it's also the COVID the only one reality.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. And it was the only one in the country at that time.

[Steven Rinella]

So trust me, if that, if they had hooked a mountain lion and it died, we wouldn't be talking about it.

[James Campbell]

We wouldn't.

[Steven Rinella]

No.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

But it's like.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

The only one.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

There's just. I mean, you can't. Well. And like bad stuff happens. I have a dear friend who's. I'm not gonna name his name because what he said me in private. He said this one time he was doing a mark and recapture project. I'm not going to tell you what kind of. Because people put it together. He's doing a mark and recapture project with, with wildlife.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He said his advisor once said to him, if you're not killing, you're not working hard.

[James Campbell]

Wow. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Because he initially was like so afraid of. And he's supposed to be getting collars.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. On.

[Steven Rinella]

Right, right. And he was so afraid that it was crippling.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And eventually someone said that, wow, if you're not, if you're not killing stuff, you're not doing it. It's hands on work. Yeah. It's like you got. There's a. There's an inherent meaning, there's like an inherent risk.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That becomes very different. One. There's one.

[James Campbell]

There's one.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a different conversation.

[James Campbell]

Well, the protocol for capturing jaguars in, for instance, Brazil is like super complicated.

[Steven Rinella]

Sure.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. And if you're gonna do. If you're gonna do a capture and collarine program, which I was part of, you taught you were talking about seeing this magnificent jaguar, you know, just behind the glass and how it made you feel, you know, we had prepared night after night after night for the chance of. Of capturing a jaguar. And when it finally happened, no one had ever told me about what an emotional experience it would be when they presented that jaguar and laid him on the back of the truck and said, okay, now you can touch that jaguar. Oh my God. I mean, I still get a little shaky thinking about it. It was just like as the jaguar is breathing, touching, you know, touching the belly and just moving my hand, you know, moving my hand along the jaguar.

[Steven Rinella]

On the tail trying to get one of those teeth out. Anyone noticing?

[James Campbell]

Everybody would love a jaguar tooth to Hang from in their neck.

[Steven Rinella]

But it was really like. The thing of it is, he's still alive, right? Yeah.

[James Campbell]

So, I mean, but that was. That was pretty overwhelming.

[Steven Rinella]

That was pretty amazing. Laid a hand on.

[James Campbell]

Laid a hand on one. One. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty.

[Steven Rinella]

And that's got to feel just like muscle, man.

[James Campbell]

Oh, just complete muscle. Yeah, like the hindquarters, you know, that's. Oh, man. Yeah, just solid muscle, huh? Solid muscle, yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

That's cool that he's breathing, you know?

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty. Pretty special experience.

[Steven Rinella]

What's jaguar smell like? Just nothing.

[James Campbell]

No, in fact, that jaguar, oddly didn't smell. But there's this guy named Eduardo Carrillo in Costa Rica who said. He was talking about how elusive jaguars are, you know, cryptic. And he said he could be crawling through the jungle. And he knew that jaguar was close because his trans. Because his receiver, he was getting beeps. And he said, what he does is, he said, you know, jaguar could be three feet away from you and you wouldn't see him. He'd listen for the monkeys. Or he'd use his nose.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, you're kidding me.

[James Campbell]

No, he said jaguars reek. So he would use his nose and smell them out.

[Steven Rinella]

Yanni got to do that with lions. Oh, you did with collared lions. And Yanni was saying, it's amazing, man. Like, tell him, like, you get close to that sucker and you don't know he's there.

[Phil]

Oh, that. Yeah. I thought you were talking about the part where we had him drugged and then we were handling them.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, no, that's like, how is he letting me get this close?

[Phil]

Yeah, but no, we. He was doing a study where he was basically seeing if he repeated hazing would. Cause, like, would be a deterrent for mountain lions proximity to humans, Right?

[James Campbell]

Oh, yeah.

[Phil]

If that makes sense. In. In one broad brushstroke. And so to do that, they were collaring them and then walk. Once they had him collared, walking towards known locations of lions, coincidentally playing the meteor podcast at 80 decibels on a speaker.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Phil]

And then he's watching the GPS as he walks towards it, and he's like, okay, we're at 50 meters. We're at 30 meters. And the closest one we got to, I think, was 12. And I'm like, are we gonna keep going? And he's like, no, at this point, we stop.

[James Campbell]

We can stop.

[Phil]

Like, it's right there, please. And what was amazing is that it's literally right there. And he says it's in that cops of trees. And he goes oh, now it's moving and you're looking right there and you never see it. You never see the cat.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, right. So amazing.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, that's great.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. So amazing.

[Steven Rinella]

Are you gonna retire now?

[James Campbell]

Oh, man, no. You know, I'm a writer. I can't retire.

[Steven Rinella]

There's no plan for that, is there?

[James Campbell]

I'll be retiring when I'm pushing up daisies. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna write next?

[James Campbell]

I'm not sure. You know, that's a good question. Usually I should have a book, you know, another book project ready to go, but I don't.

[Steven Rinella]

And looking for that plane is just for the hell of it.

[James Campbell]

Look at. Looking for that plane is about, you know, a passion project.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, should say the hell of it. It's not a book. I assumed it was a book project.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, well, you know, it could be, you know, it could be like a long form story or something like that, but I'm not sure if it's a book project, but. But I'd love to write about New guinea again. Maybe next book will take me back to Alaska. I don't know. I got a few ideas, but this book because. Well, for a lot of reasons. Because of COVID eventually the guy who filled. Who became the new Alan Rabinowitz, who was a great friend of Alan Rabinowitz, a guy named Howard Quigley. He died in the middle of my research and it just, you know, of what he did. Cancer, too.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, wow.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. And so this project took me way longer than it should have. And it became, ultimately it became a passion project, you know, not a, Not a. Not a pain project.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, like you spent too much time on it.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some, you know, not unnecessarily, but necessarily.

[Steven Rinella]

But yeah, like the, the economics didn't make sense.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, a lot of writers will tell you these days. It's hard, hard to make for the economics to make sense. But, you know, I got a couple ideas, but, you know, we'll. We'll. We'll see.

[Steven Rinella]

Just hit me with one. I'll tell if it's a good one or not.

[James Campbell]

Ah, ah. I was thinking.

[Steven Rinella]

I saved you tons of time right now.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, yeah, okay. I was thinking I'd tell.

[Steven Rinella]

But don't give it away and if you shouldn't, because then someone else will do it. If it's a good idea, we'll cut it out of the podcast so no one jumps in.

[James Campbell]

I better not talk. I better not say word. Give me a hint. Alaska.

[Steven Rinella]

Good idea.

[James Campbell]

About as vague as. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

The collapse of the Yukon salmon collapse.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, that's. That's it. That's a great story.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, I got it.

[James Campbell]

Well, that is. No, but that's a great story. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Someone should do a book on that.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, somebody should. That's. You know, I know a lot of guys who ran fish wheels on. On. On the Yukon and they're, you know.

[Steven Rinella]

You know what the answer is that they're leaning toward.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Hatcheries.

[James Campbell]

Oh, is that right? Really? In Alaska.

[Steven Rinella]

That's the answer.

[James Campbell]

Of all places.

[Steven Rinella]

That's the political. That's the. That's what they're coming in with is like, oh, that's easy. Hatcheries.

[James Campbell]

Wow. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Fix that.

[Odoo Advertiser]

No problem.

[Phil]

Oh, that's the fix. Not the, not the fix, not the reason.

[James Campbell]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

It's. It's. It's like. Cuz it's the whole thing of. It's. It's just like. What's the problem? Everything.

[James Campbell]

You're right.

[Steven Rinella]

Hammer and fish in the sea. Like Hammer and fish in the sea. Intercept fisheries. Water temperatures.

[Phil]

It's like.

[Steven Rinella]

It's just too big and too. It's. It's. It's. You can't unravel it. Everybody's got. It's this, it's that there's a real problem. I mean it seems to be that there's a real problem with like intercept fisheries, like hitting those fish. Hitting. Hitting those fish before they're in the. In the fresh.

[James Campbell]

Wow. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So, you know, and they got like even like subsistence people. Like subsistence people living along the river. Nate. Like native Alaskan subsistence fishermen aren't able to put their wheels out. It's bad. And I guess like the way that they're, you know, as people at high levels in the state look at. They're like. Well, it's easy.

[James Campbell]

Fishery hatcheries. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Alaska. Yeah. Right. I mean the public lands issue up there is pretty dire now too.

[Steven Rinella]

Right now it is.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Right now it is.

[James Campbell]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

All right. That's a good book. Thanks. Come back out and finish it. Tell us what you find out.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

How I saved the. Sam, I think we just nailed the back cover copy.

[James Campbell]

Right?

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, we can get it. We can get on this right now. I'll blur it right now.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hello.

[Steven Rinella]

You guys are amazing. Hell yeah. Author of. Well, James Campbell. Thanks for coming on.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

I got one more for you. What's your favorite book that you wrote? Like one where you had the height.

[James Campbell]

Of your powers and at the height of. I like to think I'm still at the height of my powers. You know, I wrote a book.

[Steven Rinella]

I would say this one because it's for sale right now.

[James Campbell]

Well, that's true. Thank you. Apparently, I'm a really.

[Steven Rinella]

We have an in house marketing firm as well.

[James Campbell]

Yeah, my publisher's gonna kill me. Yeah, I mean, this was a real passion project. There's no question about it. But you know, I, I love, you know, I love writing all my books. I got another one about my daughter and I doing a bunch of stuff in Alaska, including building a cabin with my cousin Jaime Okorth and you know, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That was a particularly personal one. But yeah, all of them. You know how it is. I mean, you're a writer. It's all, you know, it's all really meaningful stuff. All of them.

[Steven Rinella]

You love them all, like little babies. You do.

[James Campbell]

And then when you're done, you're like, kick them out of the house. Like, I'm tired of that book. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

All right. Well, the latest yet. The latest is Heart of the Jaguar, the extraordinary conservation effort to save the America's legendary cat. And then if you're into whiskey, whiskey too. I highly recommend Ghost Mountain.

[James Campbell]

Thank you. Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

Ghost Mountain Boys, right? I can't see the covers. Yeah, the proper title, Ghost Mountain. Oh, there it is right here. Ghost Mountain Boys. About the, you know, the Pacific theater during World War II, particularly the battle of New for New Guinea.

[James Campbell]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, that rips your heart out, dude.

[James Campbell]

It sure does. Still. Still rips my heart out. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

A lot of suffering, a lot of heroism, a lot of sacrifice. Thanks for coming on.

[James Campbell]

Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, guys.

[Phil]

Thanks, James.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. As winter approaches, make sure you set aside some time for self care now through December 2nd. And get great savings on personal care essentials. When you shop in store or online, buy two participating self care items and save $3. Shop for items like Tresemme Shampoo, Dove Shampoo, Dove Men's Care Body Wash, Dove Body Wash, and Axe Shower gel. And save $3 when you buy two or more items. Offer ends December 2nd. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.

[Lego Advertiser]

When you say Lego Star wars, the first thing you think of is imagination or action. Or both. Definitely both. Like with Jango Fett's Starship. I mean, with stud blasters, seismic charges and three minifigures, your kid is gonna be creating stories until the Banthas come home. And for yourself, there's the Jango Fett's Firespray Class Starship LEGO set from the Ultimate Collector series. Enjoy some Jedi Master level mindfulness during your building time. Shop now for Star Wars LEGO sets on Lego Doc or in LEGO retail stores.

[Steven Rinella]

Amazon Five Star Theater presents real customer reviews performed by a real serious improv podcaster. Tonight's review Furby I bought a Furby as a nostalgic joke. Joke's on me. Day 1 Adorable giggles wiggles its ears, says me love you. Day 3 Woke me up at 3am whispering in Furbish. I think it summoned something. Day 5 I'm starting asking for life advice. Day 7 It blinked at me like it knew I blinked back. We've reached an understanding. I fear it.

[James Campbell]

I love it.

[Steven Rinella]

5 stars Erin M. Find your perfect gift this holiday on Amazon.

[James Campbell]

This is an iHeart podcast.