On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan, Chris explores the mighty beaver and its role in reshaping our landscapes and entire ecosystems. Then we plunge into the waters along the pacific coast to follow a sea lion’s journey from California all the way up the Columbia River in search of salmon, in what has become a controversial story of survival between two protected species.

THE WILD is a production of KUOW in Seattle in partnership with Chris Morgan Wildlife and Wildlife Media. It is produced by Lucy Soucek and Matt Martin, and edited by Jim Gates. This special episode was produced by Brandi Fullwood. It is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Our theme music is by Michael Parker.

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On this one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan, Chris shares tips on how to stay safe in the wild and explores the psychology of animals with author Richard Louv.

THE WILD is a production of KUOW in Seattle in partnership with Chris Morgan Wildlife and Wildlife Media. It is produced by Lucy Soucek and Matt Martin, and edited by Jim Gates. This special episode was produced by Brandi Fullwood. It is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Our theme music is by Michael Parker.

Follow us on Instagram (@thewildpod) for more adventures and behind the scenes action!

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/ChrisMorganWildlife

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a special one-hour special of THE WILD with Chris Morgan featuring favorite episodes like the first time Chris caught a grizzly bear.

In Part One of this episode Chris recounts catching a grizzly bear while conducting research in the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies. In the second part of the show, Chris shares the history of grizzlies in the North Cascades and how they became known as ghost bears.

THE WILD is a production of KUOW in Seattle in partnership with Chris Morgan Wildlife and Wildlife Media. It is produced by Lucy Soucek and Matt Martin, and edited by Jim Gates. This special episode was produced by Brandi Fullwood. It is hosted, produced and written by Chris Morgan. Fact checking by Apryle Craig. Our theme music is by Michael Parker.

Follow us on Instagram (@thewildpod) for more adventures and behind the scenes action!

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/ChrisMorganWildlife

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We learn about calorie counting for polar bears and what the future could look like for the Hudson Bay polar bear population.

We’re back in the helicopter with polar bear researchers Dr. Nick Lunn and Dave McGeachy, searching for mother bears with cubs. 

This is springtime over the huge, frigid landscape. Mother bears are waking up after eight months of fasting and heading out to the sea ice of Hudson Bay. 

Looking across this hostile environment - nothing but ice and biting cold wind - really makes you think about what it takes for these bears to survive. And how they’ve evolved for these conditions. 

And now, during the springtime, the name of the game is seals. Eat as much as you can before the ice goes away. Especially if you’re a mother with new cubs. They each dug a maternal den in the fall, gave birth in December, nursed their cubs, and are now coming out very hungry. 

In this last episode of Season 5, we’ll look at the challenges that polar bears mothers and cubs face in the spring. There is a whole list of dangers before we even get to climate change and loss of sea ice. And we’ll explore how the ever growing season of summer is a threat to the survival of this population around western Hudson Bay in the Canadian north.

Check out part 2 of the behind the scenes footage of our Churchill journey.

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How the changing seasons of our planet are shifting the traditions of the place, the polar bears, and the people of the north.

This sea ice of Hudson Bay is what makes life possible for polar bears. It’s as important to them as the air they breathe.

Every year, hundreds of bears move through this area and they’re forced to come ashore in the summer when the ice melts — a grueling annual migration that pushes the bears from ice to land and back to ice again.

But there’s one group of bears that’s not out on the ice: mother polar bears. Right now, they are still on the land, cozy in their dens, nursing their new tiny cubs. Those families are about to start an epic springtime journey from the land to the sea ice, emerging from their snow-covered birth dens into a bewildering new world to join the other bears out on the frozen bay.

The life of any polar bear is astonishingly brutal, but the life of a new mother is an extraordinary tale of determination and grit against the forces of weather and time.

Here, it’s possible to watch how the changing seasons of our planet are shifting the traditions of the place, the polar bears, and the people of the north. These bears are the litmus test for all of it.

Check out the behind the scenes footage of our Churchill journey.

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How these canids survive among city skyscrapers and sidewalks. And what that can teach us about saving the planet.

In April of 2007, a coyote walked into a Quiznos in downtown Chicago. It walked inside the front door, right into a fast food restaurant full of people. And then, it sat in a soda cooler for an hour. It was an event so rare, it made the evening news. 

Why did the coyote walk into the Quiznos? How was it so tolerant of people? It's not normal for a wild animal to be less than six feet away from a human without a care. 

Sometimes you start to think about a story that you want to tell, but the story itself takes you to unexpected places … in this case to some of the biggest questions of our time about urban ecology, race, and our future relationship with nature. This is one of those stories.

Today, we’ll look at how a coyote in a refrigerator can teach us to rethink our entire relationship with nature: from deep in the wilderness, to deep downtown in our cities.

Clarification, 2:30 p.m., 6/6/2023: Sam Kreling is a PhD student working with Laura Prugh, Associate Professor of Quantitative Wildlife Sciences at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. Professor Prugh is the principal investigator of the Seattle Coyote Project.

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Who let the 200-pound python out? 

Today, the origin of the Burmese python problem in the Everglades. And how science is being used to try to solve what seems like a losing battle. 

I'm back in South Florida, in the Everglades, on the side of a dirt road next to a canal. It looks pretty similar to where I met Anthony Flanagan and Kevin Pavlidis - the two python bounty hunters from the last episode.

Out in front of me are miles and miles of marshland. Today, we're diving back into the Burmese python problem. But this time...we're doing something a little different. We're letting the pythons go.

With the focus being the urgent removal of Burmese pythons from the Everglades, it might seem counterintuitive that we are now releasing one back into the ecosystem that it's destroying. But there's a good reason why. 

This snake will lead researchers towards all sorts of important information that might just save this ecosystem from an impending ecological collapse.

Behind the scenes footage of releasing the 16-foot python and our run-in with the alligator.

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In the Florida Everglades, the Burmese python is an invasive species that's close to triggering an ecological collapse. But not if these python hunters have anything to do with it.

Burmese pythons are huge compared to the native snakes in Florida. They can measure up to 20 feet and weigh 200 pounds. The females lay up to 100 eggs. And they eat just about everything, from animals as small as a mouse to as big as a bobcat or an alligator.

And they’re causing immense destruction throughout the Everglades ecosystem. So much so, that there is a team of bounty hunters out to catch and kill as many as they can. So I’ve traveled to South Florida to meet two of the best.

Check out at my YouTube channel @ChrisMorganWildlife the behind the scenes footage of the 10-foot Burmese python capture.

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On this episode, join me in Ireland for a very Irish tale! 

If you’re from where I live in the Pacific Northwest, squirrels might not seem very special. It seems like all I have to do is look out my window and I’ll see one, bounding across the grass. But in the British Isles, the red squirrel is a bit of a “British darling.” They’re a species on the brink of extinction. It seems like everyone wants to see this fluffy-eared, threatened species bounce back. (including me … I did my master's degree on them after all in the 90s). 

And the tale of this creature has become very curious here in Ireland.

The red squirrel population is mysteriously recovering, thanks to another furry creature … who happens to be their own predator.

The pine marten. Even though this player is a predator that eats squirrels, it’s turning things around for the resident reds. I’ve traveled to Ireland to unravel this riddle, and to tell a tale of one squirrel against another. How a wily carnivore called the pine marten is coming back, restoring balance and actually helping its prey return to the Emerald Isle.

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Whenever I'm out doing field work or on a hike, I’ve not only got my eyes wide open, but my ears too. There’s a lot going on in a forest or under the sea - the sounds of nature. So many of those sounds in nature are about communication.

Personally, I love to chat with ravens. I like to think that we have lovely conversations. I know I’m fooling myself... but there’s something happening that might change that.  

There’s a tech company out of Silicon Valley that is hoping to make that dream of communicating with animals a reality. Earth Species Project is a non-profit working to develop machine learning that can decode animal language. Basically, artificial intelligence that can speak whale or monkey...or perhaps even raven?

So we are doing something a bit different on The Wild today - fun to mix things up now and then. For this episode I’m not outdoors among the wild creatures, but in my home studio, talking with two fascinating people about the latest developments in technology that are being created to talk to wild animals. We’ll also explore the ethics of this technology. What are the downsides to playing the role of Digital Dr. Dolittle? 

Guests: 

Aza Raskin, co-founder of Earth Species Project and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

Karen Bakker, professor at the University of British Columbia where she researches digital innovation and environmental governance. She also leads the Smart Earth Project.

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