Ecological Wonders: From Mountain Sheep to Pygmy Rabbits to Rhinos with Janet Rachlow

In this episode, Janet Racklow shares her unconventional journey from a dance major to a wildlife researcher. 

Janet's enduring fascination with animal behavior led her to study species across diverse ecosystems, from mountain sheep in Alaska to rhinos in Africa. 

Her current focus in the Pacific Northwest includes studying the ecological and behavioral intricacies of pygmy rabbits, highlighting the significance of sagebrush steppe habitats. 

Janet discusses the interplay between research, wildlife management, and conservation efforts, bringing attention to the challenges and importance of preserving endangered species and their environments.

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Transcript

[00:02] Janet Rachlow: Welcome to just talking about Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus. Welcome, everyone, to women of the Northwest. I'm your host, Jan Johnson. And in this episode, Janet Ratchlow shares her unconventional journey from a dance major to a wildlife researcher. Janet's enduring fascination with animal behavior led her to study species across the diverse ecosystems, from mountain sheep in Alaska to rhinos in Africa. Her current focus in the Pacific Northwest includes studying the ecological and behavioral intricacies of pygmy rabbits, highlighting the significance of sagebrush steppe habitats. Janet discusses the interplay between research, wildlife management, and conservation efforts, bringing attention to the challenges and importance of preserving endangered species and their environments. This is a really interesting episode today, so I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, be sure to share it with someone else, you know, that would enjoy it as well. So here we go. Let's dig in. Welcome Janet Rachlow to Women of the Northwest. Happy to have you here today.

[01:23] Jan: Thank you. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

[01:25] Janet Rachlow: So you are a researcher?

[01:27] Jan: I am. I am.

[01:29] Janet Rachlow: What path took you to that?

[01:31] Jan: Yep. It's a convoluted path, actually. And, you know, when I think about it, I never outgrew the fascination that most kids have with animals. I never outgrew that. And so I get to do what I loved doing when I was seven, but I took a convoluted path to get here, and part of that was being a dance major in college and just roundabout way to get here.

[01:53] Janet Rachlow: Well, that love of animals could have taken you to being a vet or something like that.

[02:00] Jan: You know, I think my parents would have been very happy with that, but I was always interested in why animals do what they do. When you watch them, why are they doing what they're doing? And so that was really, you know, that still is a fascination that I have.

[02:13] Janet Rachlow: So lots of observation.

[02:16] Jan: Observation and different ways of measuring and trying to understand. There's a field called behavioral ecology, and it's sort of a mix between just pure animal behavior and then asking questions about how animals respond to the environment to make choices, and then what are the consequences for their behaviors in an ecological context as far as reproduction or survival. So those kinds of questions to me are super interesting, and they're also really amenable to gathering information that's useful for management and conservation of wildlife, which is also another passion of mine.

[02:53] Janet Rachlow: How did you decide what kind of animals you wanted to study?

[02:56] Jan: Boy, you know, I always loved mammals, and I just, I think I just never outgrew that, you know, I have always loved mammals, and I've worked with lots of different types of mammal species, and, yeah, they're all fascinating. That's a lame answer. Sorry.

[03:12] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. Talk to us about what kind of animals and how you go about studying them, what, you know, what would be some of the steps you would take and where do you go to do that?

[03:23] Jan: Yep. So I'll tell you. I've worked on a variety of different species. So I've worked up in Alaska with mountain sheep, which was absolutely fascinating. And I also had the opportunity to work with rhinos. So I spent about seven years working in Africa on rhinos and asking questions about dehorning and how they manage them and what are some of the sort of behaviors and reproductive consequences of the way rhinos are managed in southern Africa. So those are super cool. Since I've been in the Pacific Northwest for about 20 plus years, I've been working on a variety of species here locally. We've done a lot of work on pygmy rabbits, which are these crazy little rabbits that live only in the sagebrush ecosystem, and they have many aspects of their ecology, behavior that are really kind of weird and wonderful. And they're threatened in the sagebrush in the same way we think about sage grouse being threatened. So we've done a lot of work with those species. And in part, when I came here, I was very interested in sagebrush step, and there was maybe a little bit less work done on mammals in the sagebrush. And so actually, it was a person in the BLM Bureau of Land Management that suggested, why don't you think about pygmy rabbits? Started working on them 20 years ago, and we've continued working on them since.

[04:42] Janet Rachlow: So when you work on them, what do you, what, break it down for people that are not in that area? What's that look like?

[04:50] Jan: Yeah. Well, we've done a variety of different studies. Initially, some of the studies were really basic, like, where do they occur, some of the basic natural history, the basic ecology of these animals. Where do they have their babies? We didn't know that, really, until they brought them into captivity for captive breeding for the Columbia basin, the ones up in Washington that are retina listed as endangered right now. But we've done work to ask what types of habitats are good habitats. If we're going to manage habitat for the species, we need to know what is good habitat. So how do they use the habitat? We've done work with radio collars. We have very tiny radio collars that only weigh about 5 grams. And, in fact, more recently, we've been able to put GPS collars on a little tiny, if you can imagine, on a pygmy rabbit. They make them small enough so we can learn a lot about when they're active, where they're going, what sorts of resources they're using. Pygmy rabbits are unique among north American rabbits and hares in that they're obligate burrowers. So they always have these fairly intricate burrow systems that they use. And so we've tried to understand why, you know, why do they use these burrow systems? What types of soils are important for those burrow systems? Right now, we're doing some work to try and understand how changing climates might affect their ability to persist in different landscapes going forward. Some of the work is observational. They're a little bit hard to watch. They're pretty secretive. They live in pretty dense sagebrush. So sometimes we've used other tools to try and learn more about their behavior than just being able to watch them. I love just being able to watch animals. It's not the best species for really just behavioral observations. That's okay.

[06:34] Janet Rachlow: So to begin with, though, for you to study them to begin with, there must have been a concern that maybe there was a change in the environment.

[06:41] Jan: Yeah, so the sagebrush steppe environment. So sagebrush steppe means a combination of sagebrush shrubs and then a grass understory that occurs across a large part of the Great Basin. So a pretty big, broad area, but it's also sort of sometimes, ironically, considered one of the most endangered ecosystems because it's changing so rapidly as a consequence of a whole variety of effects. So fires, invasive grasses, development of different types, so that even though we think of it as being a very broad, widespread ecosystem, it's actually changing very rapidly. And so the same sorts of concerns that have led to the same sort of impacts to the environment, that have led to concerns for sage grouse, have led to concerns for other species that live in that system. Pygmy rabbits are, in addition to being weirdly obligate burrowers, they're also obligate sagebrush species. They only live in sagebrush environments, is a concern. 20 years ago, there was a petition for listing the species as threatened or endangered across its range, which is part of what got us asking a bunch more questions. Just in the last year, there has been another petition listed submitted to the fish and Wildlife Service again to list them across their range. So there is a continued concern about the availability of habitat and the persistence of the species.

[08:09] Janet Rachlow: Once you have the concern, where does that go then? How does that impact? Or building management has to start thinking about that, too, or how does that work?

[08:22] Jan: Yeah. Really? That's a good question. Very much so. Once there is a petition submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service is required to undergo a review of the status of the species and come up with what they call a species status assessment. And that involves taking all from. They reach out to all the states where these animals occur, and they get all the most recent information and they pull it all together and try to synthesize and understand, are there changes? Is this species truly threatened? So when that happens, when there's a petition, it triggers a lot more work. States are very interested in having the best information available for us. It means that we've. Sometimes it means we have more funding for research. We. In response to this, we started a statewide survey for occupancy of pygmy rabbits. That hasn't been done in the past to really a detailed survey. So we're doing that right now with one of my grad students, and that's in collaboration with the state and federal agencies here in Idaho, also Montana. Other states are doing the same sorts of work because they need to be able to respond to the fish and Wildlife service. So it does trigger a sort of more scrutiny for the species. Yeah, sure.

[09:33] Janet Rachlow: And then heads it to whoever, if there is possibility of us affecting that change.

[09:39] Jan: Right, right. And, you know, the pygmy rabbits are a little bit of. Sometimes it can be a little bit confusing because the population in the Columbia basin, which is separated in quite a bit of space from the great Basin region, those populations there were brought down to just a very few numbers. They declined or were extirpated, brought into captivity, and they've been trying to reintroduce Columbia basin pygmy rabbits that is listed as a federally endangered, what's called a distinct population segment. So for vertebrates in the United States, under the Endangered Species act, populations can be listed, not just the species. And so the whole species of pygmy rabbits across the range is not listed, but it's under consideration now. But that population in Washington is still listed as a federally endangered population.

[10:32] Janet Rachlow: Interesting.

[10:33] Jan: Yeah.

[10:34] Janet Rachlow: What did you find out about the rhinos?

[10:37] Jan: So, yeah, so I went initially to look at the effects of dehorning on white rhinos. There had been some work that was ongoing on black rhinos, and I'll make this story short, but we didn't get a chance to learn as much as we wanted to, because I was working in the country of Zimbabwe, and shortly after we had been there a year, we got rhinos, dehorned. We figured out how to keep radio collars on rhinos. We had a control group of animals with horns and radio collars that we were going to observe for a year and then go in and take the horns off and observe them for another year. We got all that established, and there was some economic adjustment programs in the country that ended up with essentially a lack of law enforcement for about six to nine months. And during that time, a large portion of the animals we were studying were poached, even the ones that had been dehorned, because they still had a base of a horn. So one of the things we learned is dehorning in and of itself. If you don't have enforcement of the protection, doesn't work. We measured rates of horn regrowth. Those horns regrow, and they regrow relatively rapidly. They regrow faster on males than females, faster on young animals than older animals. One of the concerns was the ability for animals to have normal behavior. Males use their horns in fighting with one another. We had animals that were dehorned that still were able to fight and even fight to the death, if you can imagine. It's sort of like two trucks driving into each other until one stops driving.

[12:09] Janet Rachlow: So has a headache so massive, they have to stop.

[12:13] Jan: Right? So, I mean, we didn't get to answer all of the questions, and in part, I wound up switching to a different set of questions following the loss of most of the rhinos in the area where we were working. But some of what did come out of that was that animals still exhibited normal behavior. They still had calves, they still defended territories. White rhinos are territorial. So some of what we learned was that horns regrow and animals seem to be able to adjust their behaviors associated with that. Actually, dehorning for a long time is something that went by the wayside for rhinos. And more recently, in the past few years, as poaching has intensified in some areas, they are continuing now to dehorn rhinos. So it was, I think it's a tool in the toolbox for how to conserve rhinos. But in and of itself, dehorning alone isn't enough.

[13:05] Janet Rachlow: So what's the point of dehorning?

[13:08] Jan: So horns are. Horns are used for a couple of different things. Their animals are poached and the horns are taken, and they're used primarily in traditional Chinese medicine. And, you know, so horns are ground up and used in a lot of different medicinal products. And unlike what people think that it's just sort of superstition, actually, that has medicinal properties. I mean, and many traditional Chinese medicine has a 2000 year history. Many of the medicinal products really have a function. And so rhino horn does work, but so do other types of horn that have some of those same properties. Another part of it, rhino horn, is ground up and used as a paste, as sort of an aphrodisiac, which you might imagine a lot of things ground up in a paste and applied might have the same effect. But those are the primary uses for rhino horns. So it's used in different types of sort of medicinal treatments, and it's worth a lot of money. I mean, it's worth more than its weight in gold. So rhino horn is a very valuable substance. Yeah.

[14:13] Janet Rachlow: If you, you were dehorning them, is that right? Dehorning?

[14:18] Jan: Yeah. Yeah.

[14:20] Janet Rachlow: But you were dehorning them. I'm still confused about what the purpose was, why you would defore.

[14:26] Jan: Oh, to reduce the incentive for poachers to come in and shoot them.

[14:31] Janet Rachlow: Oh. So if you, if you dehorn them ahead of time, then they wouldn't. Okay. Okay.

[14:36] Jan: The idea was that poachers would have, you know, and it's, you think about a risk and a reward, and this is part of having the law enforcement there. There's a risk. Poachers that go into many of these areas are shot on site. So there's a risk to going in there. The reward is coming out with a, with something that you can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. So it's balancing that risk and that reward to try and, you know, deter people from shooting them.

[15:01] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So then what do you do with the horns when you dehorn them? Yeah. So you could have your own market and that would fund your research.

[15:12] Jan: Well, so you're actually asking really good questions. So people did that initially with elephant ivory to try and sort of flood the market with elephant ivory. And there's a real difference of opinion as to whether that's the economic approach, flood the market, make it freely available, or you just get it off the market and it's illegal. In the country of Zimbabwe where I was working, where the rhinos were dehorned, all of those horns went into a national stockpile. They weren't sold. But there's always people that have very different perspectives on how to address that conservation conundrum. And one argument is, why don't you sell it and then use the money to fund conservation? And that was really an argument that's been made for elephant ivory. Also challenging. You know, it gets into global economics. It's interesting to think about, like, I think about the animals and their biology, but the real context is a global one, and it involves, you know, economics and social values and.

[16:14] Janet Rachlow: Yeah, yeah, totally. Tell us some of what you did in Alaska. Sure.

[16:20] Jan: So when I was, I did my master's research at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and I went up and just worked on a study on moose, which is totally cool. In Denali National park, moose up above tree line tend to form larger groups. They don't really do that here as much, but there they do where they're up above tree line. Animals that are more in the open often tend to form groups, in part for security from predators. And they have something. Their mating system is sort of approaching kind of a harem mating system. And so it's absolutely fascinating behavior that's a little bit different than moose and some other parts of their range. So I participated in some of that just as a technician. Super fun. Got to spend, you know, the falls and Denali National Park. I mean, pinch me. Right? And then I did, my master's work was focused on doll sheep, which are a mountain sheep. Sometimes they're called thin horns, sort of similar to the bighorn. And we were looking at habitat that is used by females during reproduction. So trying to understand what was quality habitat. Well, how did they use the habitat? And understanding something about timing of reproduction and how they used habitat differently when the lambs were very little versus when they're older. And so some of that had implications for translocations of sheep. And they wanted to make sure that were they to translocate sheep, they would put them into places that had suitable habitat for females raising lambs. So that was another, like, pinch me that I get to spend the summer hiking around in the mountains in Denali National park, you know, I mean, really? Yeah. And get paid for it. Sort of.

[17:54] Janet Rachlow: And get paid for it. Yeah.

[17:55] Jan: Not much, but enough to get by.

[17:57] Janet Rachlow: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So in your next career, you can be a park ranger.

[18:04] Jan: Yeah. You know, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. It's. I mean, part of it. Part of it is I've gotten to work in absolutely beautiful, fabulous places. And I think your family always thinks you're on vacation. You're on vacation. You're actually working. I'm here working. I'm not really on vacation, but this is work.

[18:20] Janet Rachlow: This is work, really, some ways.

[18:23] Jan: It really is. Great work.

[18:26] Janet Rachlow: Fascinating. So you're also a professor.

[18:30] Jan: Yeah.

[18:31] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. Your goal is to pass the torch.

[18:34] Jan: You know, part of, I think maybe people don't always realize that at a lot of universities, at bigger universities, our job is about 50% teaching and about 50% research and mentoring grad students who themselves are doing research. I mean, that has a real benefit in that you're constantly learning new stuff, and as you do research, you can bring the latest research to your classroom. So it's kind of a really nice. It's actually a really cool mix where I get to. I get to keep learning all the time. And I just. Before we. We were talking here, I was just meeting with one of my grad students and a colleague, and we were asking questions like, we don't know the answers to these questions. How do we find these out? You know, just kind of fun. Like, it get to be a sort of a. A detective for your job.

[19:17] Janet Rachlow: Those are the kind of questions that should start in preschool.

[19:20] Jan: Right? I know. Right. Ask great questions, you know, all the way through.

[19:26] Janet Rachlow: What kind of questions do you have about this? What could we learn? How do we get there? What would you.

[19:31] Jan: Exactly. Exactly. Sort of. Yep. Critical thinking.

[19:35] Janet Rachlow: Exactly. Yeah. So let's see. You're close to retiring.

[19:41] Jan: Yeah. Probably another four or five years, maybe. Yeah.

[19:44] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. What's on your bucket list?

[19:47] Jan: Oh, boy. I don't know. You mean what do I do when I retire or. I don't know. You know, I do like to travel, although I also love spending time in my garden. I think even after I retire, I will still be strongly interested in conservation, and I think finding ways to contribute to conservation and conservation education with maybe a little bit more freedom and time that I have right now will be. Will be fun to do. I also. I love doing sports outdoors, so having more time to ride my bike. And, you know, I hear across Washington there's a bike trail that goes all the way across Washington, or they're working on that. I would love to ride that. So I don't think I'll be bored. I think I'm going to be fine.

[20:35] Janet Rachlow: I don't think your husband would let you be bored either. Right.

[20:38] Jan: Right. I could go on some of his crazy raft trips with him.

[20:43] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. That is great. So, anything else you want to add?

[20:48] Jan: No. Boy, I appreciate the opportunity and appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and also just share a little bit about what we do. The fun part about my job is that you get a chance to work with young people, and I, especially women or people that are in groups that are maybe not as don't grow up thinking they can be a scientist or be outdoors or do this kind of work. So it's kind of fun for me to have the opportunity to share that. So thank you.

[21:15] Janet Rachlow: What's the best way that just the general public can support your type of work?

[21:21] Jan: You know, I think part of it is, you know, there's so many demands for our attention, but learning a little bit more about the environment around you and in a broader context. I mean, climates are changing and it affects all of us. But learning more about the, I think, the old adage of thinking globally but acting locally, I think on a local scale, we all can make a difference in our own environments in whatever way you choose. And whether it's wildlife conservation or clean water or clean air or other environmental, you know, issues, I think everybody, they're important to all of us. So I would encourage everybody to think about what's going on around them, to be aware of it, and to find small ways to contribute. Yeah.

[22:08] Janet Rachlow: Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Janet. This has really been interesting.

[22:14] Jan: Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[22:19] Janet Rachlow: That was pretty fascinating, didn't you think? I sure did. Learning things that I'm not really familiar with, which is the fun of these episodes, I get to interview so many people that are just extraordinary. It's kind of nice to know that there are at least 102 of them. Since this is our episode. 102. If you know somebody that you think would be an interesting interview for me, you can text me. There's a link at the top of the show notes, and if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it. And if you aren't following women of the northwest, just click that little follow button at the top of the episode, and it will let you know when the next one comes out. So until next time, have a wonderful week, and we'll talk to you later.