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Dylan McDowell: Inside the Network Connecting State Lawmakers on Environmental Policy · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [instrumental music plays] Welcome to our continuing conversation about our wild, connected, and ever-changing world, a little endeavor we call The Wild Idea Podcast, and along with Anders Reynolds, I love bringing you our roster of amazing guests, uh, to sometimes look back, sometimes look around, and often to look forward. My name is Bill Hodge, and I am a lifelong lover of wild places and passionate steward of those wild places. Today, we are fortunate enough to look around the state houses of the country with Dylan McDowell. Dylan is the CEO of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, a non-partisan network of over 1,300 state lawmakers from all 50 states committed to advancing strong environmental policy. A fitting guest for this Election Day episode, right, Anders?
• 0:44
  Oh, hi, Bill. Happy Election Day. First question, have you voted?
• 0:49
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 0:51
  Did you early vote? Did you vote today?
• 0:52
  I voted by mail, you know, 'cause we're not supposed to, so I voted by mail.
• 0:56
  Ooh, I sense some, sense some cheating going on there.
• 0:59
  [laughs]
• 1:00
  Um,
• 1:02
  Bill-
• 1:02
  Yes
• 1:02
  ... I don't know if you know this, but humans
• 1:06
  aren't the only ones who vote. There's some great examples of, of democracy, um, showing itself among wildlife populations.
• 1:16
  Really?
• 1:17
  Yeah. For example, um, African buffalo herds seem to, quote-unquote, "vote," um, on which way they are going to, like, migrate. So the resting females will stand up and continue to, like, stare in their preferred direction until the, the herd kind of starts to back them slowly and, and follow the majority.
• 1:42
  So, I guess, uh, that makes me wonder if, if one wild animal could be elected to run America's public lands for the next few, next four years-
• 1:54
  Huh
• 1:55
  ... who would get your vote, and what would be their campaign slogan?
• 2:00
  Oh, man. You know, the, I, we could go cliché, right? You know, I could say the bald eagle, you know. Uh, maybe, maybe the bison as our national mammal would be a good one. But, um,
• 2:13
  I think because you add that element about slogan,
• 2:17
  I'm gonna say turkey vulture.
• 2:21
  Um, and I think the campaign slogan is, "I'm gonna pick this carcass clean."
• 2:25
  [laughs] Oh, I love it. That's great. [laughs]
• 2:29
  What, what would you, what, who, who are you voting for, and, uh, what's the campaign slogan you've got for them?
• 2:34
  Well, that's a good question. I'm gonna go with honeybees. Bill, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a certified beekeeper by the, um, City of DC.
• 2:46
  Also known as a api- apiarist. Is that right? Am I saying that right?
• 2:50
  Yes, yes.
• 2:50
  Nice.
• 2:50
  Um, so I've, I've seen this electorate up close. Um, honeybee swarms can pick a new home through a sort of election. You know, the, the drones, the, the scout bees sort of advertise, um, different, uh,
• 3:06
  sites, uh, for consideration with their little waggle dance they do. And, and the better sites, or I guess maybe the better dance, wins more supporters. And,
• 3:15
  um, once enough scouts r- uh, back one site, the whole swarm goes with them. So, you know, despite the, despite the fact they've got a queen, um, she's, she's just a figurehead, man. That's, uh, that's democracy in action. So-
• 3:30
  So what's, what's the slogan?
• 3:31
  Be the change.
• 3:32
  [laughs] Look how slick you are. Look how slick you are. Be the change. I like it. You know what?
• 3:39
  I, I like yours. I like yours.
• 3:41
  It, it, b- what, what's beauty- beautiful about your selection too is it, it automatically
• 3:47
  tees up the resistance, right? Because then we're gonna have no queens protests, right? No queens protests will pop up across the country, so.
• 3:54
  No queens waggle dances-
• 3:55
  [laughs]
• 3:56
  ... uh, downtown Missoula.
• 3:58
  I love it. I love it. So, folks, I hope you've been out and voted today. If you didn't vote before, I hope you're voting today. It is critical. It is an important day for America. Show your civic duty. Get out there and make it happen. Before we talk to Dylan today, we have to get to our Anders Nerd Word of the Day. Uh, and I've got one for you. It'll be interesting to see you slip this word in there. The word is pyrrhic.
• 4:23
  Pyrrhic.
• 4:23
  It's an interesting word. It's, it's an interesting word in how it's spelled. Interesting that the way you see it spelled, it's hard to figure out how to pronounce it, but pyrrhic is the word I wanna see you slip in there today.
• 4:33
  Pyrrhic. Uh, I know pyrrhic well. P-Y-R-R-H-I-C. It's one of those words that also almost always appears with a second word behind it, which is victory. A pyrrhic victory, which is, you know, a, a battle won, but at, at such a cost that it might as well have been a loss. It might as well have destroyed the winner. Bill, you messed up on this one. You, you know I love Hannibal. Um, you know that as a fact. If our listeners have been listening from episode one, they will know that as a fact. King Pyrrhus, who inspired a pyrrhic victory, was, um, a role model for, for Hannibal. Both King Pyrrhus and Hannibal, of course, invaded Italy, and the Romans were terrified of them both. And at some point in his life, Hannibal was asked, um, I think by the Roman general Scipio, to name the greatest commanders in history, and Hannibal ranked himself and Alexander and King Pyrrhus. But, um, the word pyrrhic comes from, from Pyrrhus, who, a- after victory on Roman soil, I think, was, said something, you know, alo- along the lines of, "If one more victory like that, and it'll be over." So,
• 5:47
  yeah.
• 5:47
  Yeah. No, you're right. I kinda, kinda screwed the pooch 'cause I just teed up even more of your nerddom right there. So, so if you wanna know a little more about Anders, there you go. There is this love affair with Hannibal. Uh, so I guess I actually made it easy for him today, but that's okay. That's all right. It's not always gonna be a challenge. Uh, but we do hope you enjoy this conversation with Dylan McDowell. Dylan, welcome to The Wild Idea Podcast, and thanks for bringing us the story of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. Let's, let's lay some groundwork for our audience, if you will. How does the caucus work, and, and with whom does the caucus work? And, and, and maybe in telling us that, maybe a bit of the origin story of the caucus.
• 6:26
  Dylan and Anders, thank you so much for having me here. Uh, really excited about this and excited about the work you all are doing to tell these stories. Um, so I'm Dylan McDowell, the CEO of NCEL, and NCEL is a network for about 1,400 state lawmakers across the country. We're non-partisan, and it's really about connecting legislators with their peers from across the country, across party lines, to have strong environmental solutions. Um, the vast majority of state legislators are really under-resourced, and I can get into that more later. But really, it's about helping legislators be as effective as possible at the state level. And I think that's where, going back to our founding, uh, we were founded by a man named Leon Billings. He was a staff writer actually on the Clean Air Act and the Clean Air-- and Clean Water Act in Congress. He then became a state delegate in Maryland, and he realized how different it was going to the state level and not having capacity, not having a lot of staffing. And so in 1996, he created a really loose, informal network of folks that became the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. So really, our founding goes back to some of these really instrumental environmental laws in Congress, and then that tie to how important the states are, but how much they need capacity to effectively carry those missions out.
• 7:37
  That's great. I, I'm curious a little bit more about you. You have a science education background. I'm curious how that informs your day-to-day task list as the CEO of NCEL.
• 7:47
  Well, kind of going back to my found-- to my own story. So I grew up in a small town on the Oregon coast, a little town of Yachats, 600 people, very rural. And, uh, you know, we did not have a lot. We didn't have a movie theater, didn't-- I had to go to another town for school, a lot of low-income population, including myself. But we had the ocean, and that ocean was a place to recreate. It was a place of peace. It was a place of tranquility and inspiration. And so I actually started volunteering at the Oregon Coast Aquarium when I was in middle school. Did that all the way through high school, and I realized really early on that I loved talking to people more than I liked taking care of the animals. And I got to do really cool things. I got to feed the sharks. I got to do octopus encounters. But it was really about being on the other side of the glass, helping people understand why this work is important. So I carried that through into college. I was gonna do environmental education, did an internship with the Smithsonian Hatfield Marine Science Center. And then kind of on a whim, I started working at the Oregon State University Government Relations Office. And it was there that I realized I could take all these education skills that I had, and I could apply them to state lawmakers in a way that was much easier than I realized. Taught things about really concise communication, how to hold interest, how to make things accessible and explain concepts in ways that different people could understand regardless of their backgrounds. And so I ended up actually staying in the government relations office for a little while after graduation, found my way to DC, and have been in the policy space since with over 10 years at NCEL.
• 9:14
  And Dylan, NCEL describes itself as legislators', uh, remote environmental staff. Um, I think many listeners may not realize and may be surprised that most state lawmakers have no policy staff at all. Um, earlier, you called them under-resourced. That's, that's 100% true. Because those state legislators often lack staff and even, you know, access to researchers, my understanding is that y'all fill the gap with events, uh, peer and expert connections, and this incredible online resource library that's been built for busy lawmakers. So I guess my question is, you know, where would these lawmakers get their information if not from you, and how does NCEL stay a trusted, neutral source with so many decision-makers across so many states?
• 10:08
  In terms of resource, of the resources available to state lawmakers, I'd love to just share a few examples. You all, you're in Montana. Montana is one of four states that only meets every other year, and I think a lot of people don't realize that you have four states that only meet every other year. You have states that in even years, they might meet for 30 to 60 days at all. Um, there's the majority of legislators make a very small amount of money. If you're in New Mexico, you actually don't get paid at all. If you're in New Hampshire, you get ma- you make about $100 a year. That was written into the Constitution and never updated. And so it is not a job to get rich and famous. It is not a job that's very lucrative, but folks are coming at this because they're passionate. They're oftentimes working other jobs. They're coming from other sectors. And, you know, I think you, you look at a few states that are very well-resourced, California, New York, but over 40 of them are really trying to piece together good ideas. And like you said, some have no staff. Some have one staffer among five legislators, and so they don't have policy expertise oftentimes. There are non-partisan committee staff usually, but even that, there's limited bandwidth to help. And so our goal is to be that hub for lawmakers to connect to their, like I said, to their peers, but also to experts. And so we really try and bring in a wide range of folks that they can talk to, that can demonstrate best practices, talk about what has worked on the ground. If one state has done something, how do we tell that story? And we, we always say we are by and for state legislators. Um, our board of directors is a majority of sitting state lawmakers by definition, and that's part of that charter, to make sure we are always serving the constituency that we, uh, we're, we're really governed by the constituency that we're trying to serve. And so we, we are always working to make sure that legislators feel like they are getting the best information, that they have access to who they need, and we wanna make that as accessible as possible, um, to your point about my science education background, as concise as possible, as easy to find. If you go on our website and look at our resources, you know, we make sure our fact sheets are pretty short, our briefing books, you could pull one page out and run away with it. I think about a lawmaker going to a committee hearing, and they need to be able to read something, get up to speed on it, and understand to have a conversation. And I, I think my last point is just, it's very easy just in the environmental space to say- ... legislators should care about X. And there are so many topics in the environmental world. You could be talking about climate and energy, you could be talking about wetlands, you could talk about water scarcity, landscape conservation. But if you're a lawmaker, your day is packed with 15-minute meetings that are covering everything from criminal justice reform to healthcare to the budget. And so how do you help legislators focus their time and energy and connect with the re- the best available information? That's where we come in.
• 12:53
  Dylan, this episode is gonna air on election day, and a few months following its release, a whole new class of lawmakers, uh, will be walking into state capitol buildings across the country. Many of them, a- as you're alluding to, knowing very little about conservation law or wildlife funding, for example.
• 13:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:12
  Um, NCEL's early 2026 work included welcoming newly elected lawmakers into the network, building new resources, um, teaching them about all these, um, programs that you're talking to us about. What happens to environmental policy when there's a big turn- turnover, like I think people are expecting this year? And, and what's the first thing, you know, freshman legislators usually ask you?
• 13:35
  It's a really good question. And to your point, it's 83% of seats are up for election this year. And so it's a very, very large number. And I look at states like Oregon, where I live, and there's the retirement and departure of some really high-profile lawmakers that are committee chairs, that have been leading this work for many years, folks like State Representative Ken Helm, who's led on a lot of wildlife and water issues, chaired the Water Caucus. And so I think one thing to note is there's going to be a turnover in leadership. There's going to be many states where there's different folks taking the helm of committees, different-- taking the helm of caucuses, of full-on leadership of the chamber. And so that's one thing to watch, is really thinking about who is coming in and setting the agenda, what are their priorities, how are they approaching these issues. When we think about new legislators, which is increasingly an area we're trying to focus, is you have folks that get elected in November, and by January, they're seated in a chamber trying to make laws. It is a very short turnaround in our system to where you are all of a sudden introducing bills and trying to say, "I am governing," which
• 14:38
  I am always in awe and appreciation for state folks that are able to go into these offices and really put themselves out there, and just so grateful for that. I think the first question we always get is, "What have other states done?" Some folks come in and say, "I know what I wanna do. I want to protect-- I want to think about water protection and conservation measures. I wanna think about landscape access and public lands. I wanna think about, you know, utility rates and affordability." And so what we try and do is help them then know, here's a quick overview of what's happened in other states. Here's a starting point for you to say, "Okay, I can look at these pieces. Has my state done these things? Are there ideas that I can take from other areas? Can I connect with that lawmaker directly?" Because you want-- we wanna shorten the length of somebody saying, "I have an idea," and then trying to think about how they start approaching that in their state. I think the best way to give them the tools to do that is to understand, where have other people done this? What were their hurdles? How did they approach it? And that creates a foundation that will hopefully help new lawmakers be successful.
• 15:39
  I'm, I'm curious about the recruitment process, or, or maybe that's the wrong word for it, but what does bringing in new members of the caucus, like, look like? What cross-pollination looks like? Are there strong relationships within the caucus that cross state lines? How does a good idea actually travel from one state house to another?
• 15:57
  We are constantly working to bring new legislators into our network. And there's no cost to join NCEL. Um, we, of course, encourage people to donate if they're able, but we really wanna make it a free and accessible resource for lawmakers.
• 16:11
  And
• 16:13
  there's a few different strategies we use. One is that we're tracking anywhere from two to 3,000 bills every year. And so when we're doing that, we're keeping track of who's working on issues, who has sponsored different topics. And when we go to state capitols, of which we go to about-- we visit 20 to 25 per year, sometimes more, across our team, we'll meet with lawmakers, understand the work they're doing, talk about NCEL. And then we also have state leads. So these state lead roles, um, are ones where lawmakers have stepped up to help be more of a leadership-- uh, play a leadership position in their state and connect us with folks and say, "Here's a new..." That works really well with newly electeds. And they can say, "Here are some new folks that have come in. We know they're interested in the environment, or their district touches all these environmental issues. You should connect with NCEL." And so then they, they help bring them into our-- into the midst of our work, and then a lot of times, we'll make sure we invite them to regional events. We have a national forum every summer. This year, we had over 200 lawmakers join that, which was a really exciting opportunity for us, a bipartisan group getting together, sharing ideas from across the country. So, and we also have virtual opportunities in the day and age of Zoom and other meetings like that. Um, to your point, Bill, about sharing across state lines, we really try and help legislators connect with their peers on specific topics. So partnering with groups, uh, we have partners that have helped us create things like, um, Biodiversity Working Group. We have a Water Working Group. So these topics where we can go much deeper into specific ideas and bring experts in that cater to the interests of specific lawmakers.
• 17:46
  More of the conversation after a word from those who support wild ideas. I'm Mingjia from Las Vegas, Nevada, and you are listening to "The Wild Idea."
• 17:56
  Dylan, y'all track thousands of bills a year. Um, I was, I was looking at some numbers on your website, and, uh, for our listeners, in 2025 alone, NCEL tracked 3,000 bills across all 50 states and in 43 distinct issue areas. And its forecast for, um, this year's sessions included energy affordability- ... outdoor education, nature-based solutions, and watershed health, while your midyear updates covered straight transmis- uh, state transmission authorities, wildlife conservation funding, endangered species protections, and outdoor recreation and stewardship funding. That's so much stuff. That's just, like, a load of work. I, I guess I'm curious, what trend from the 2026 sessions surprised you most, and what are you watching for in 2027?
• 18:51
  The first thing I would say is we have some really incredible staff. Um, folks on our team are always watching issue areas, watching policy trends, and really talking to legislators. Really, we try as hard as we can to embody this idea that we are by and for lawmakers, and that they are the ones that can tell us what they need, where there's momentum in the field, where there's opportunity, and we can then bring that to coalitions and partners that we work with and help them make sure that, that as much as possible, the environmental community is working together and working with lawmakers as partners. In terms of trends, I think the one that's on everyone's mind for this year is data centers. Everyone is talking about data centers. It ties to the affordability conversation, et cetera. But I think what's really notable is how much states are approaching this, lawmakers particularly, from very different ways. You have some folks that are coming at data centers from the pure conversation about energy, uh, energy rates, energy production, but more and more thinking about the siting, the impact on landscapes, thinking about the concerns with data centers on public lands, reporting on water usage, and so water needs for states and drought tie-ins, community, um, community benefits and community agreements at large, so thinking about how the imp- how it impacts and supports the community. And so I think something I was really impressed by is how much states have taken this topic of data centers and really brought that into all aspects of environmental policy. It's not just an energy conversation, not just affordability, but it really touches on everything, and it's a chance to actually educate their colleagues, constituents, and all of us in the community of how one issue can actually touch on and bring together a lot of these concepts that are often talked about in silos.
• 20:27
  Yeah. A couple years ago, it felt like states were competing to attract data centers with tax breaks and other incentives, and now you see legislatures in red and blue states alike asking, "Who's gonna pay for all this, and how much water are these facilities gonna use, and are our communities gonna get a say?" What's, what's driving that shift? And, you know, when lawmakers call NCEL asking what to do about a data center proposal, you know, h- how do you interact with them?
• 20:59
  There's a few ways we approach it. One is trying to see what's been done and figuring out some of the states that have been on the front end of this, so looking at states like Oregon, Georgia, Texas, looking at rate classes specific to data centers. That's one where, once again, you see red and blue states making progress, which I think really shows an essential theme I'll always come back to, is states are doing really good bipartisan policy that kind of goes against this narrative that we hear of federal gridlock and bipartisanship being dead, but there's really good work happening at the state level. And when it comes to data centers, a lot of states are... I think the attention has just been raised. There's been more research. There's been more information out there about how harmful this can be if it's done wrong, and I think people are realizing that there was a very fast uptake of data centers, a very quick build-out, and not a lot of questions were asked initially. And so for states that maybe don't have as many or are on the verge of this saying, "Wait a second, we need to figure out what regulations should be put in place, what are good processes to have, what are good restrictions, what are good rules," and that has sparked a very big conversation. We're seeing that with voters. We're seeing that with polling. And so that is kind of, I think, turning into the midterm conversation, which will be very interesting to watch. And I think what's gonna happen next is after the election, states are gonna say, "What do we... What does it look like to do this sustainably, appropriately, responsibly for communities?" And states are talking about, does that mean purely giving communities say? Does that talk about the reporting requirements? Is that all of the above? Bring your own clean energy? So these proposals are really going through the political dialogues right now, and I think what's exciting to me and... is how much this conversation ties back to affordability, which is one of the biggest terms being thrown around in the election. But it really comes back to things like energy systems and utilities and transmission that the average voter is usually not talking a lot about, and legislators are trying to communicate to their constituents. But you now have a topic that has put those to- those issues into a way that you can frame them and talk about them, and it has the potential to really change how we talk about the environmental issues moving forward in a really positive way, and to help educate constituents, voters, legislators across the country that these issues are connected, and we can really think about water and energy in the same conversation.
• 23:19
  Okay. You brought up both the word narratives and the state of Georgia, and you're so sharp, I just gotta keep, keep picking your brain. Um, this year, two very different states found new ways to fund the outdoors without raising taxes. Uh, Georgia nearly doubled, uh, the share of outdoor gear sales tax that goes into land conservation in that state, and Wyoming steered some federal rural health money into outdoor recreation. And I guess my question to you about both those moves, is reframing conservation as healthcare or economic development or affordability, a word you just used, the key to building bipartisan support? And does that make, you know, these funding streams more durable, or are these just pyrrhic victories, right? Will they get raided the first time a state budget gets tight?
• 24:13
  I would say that the outdoors are one of the, the most exciting trends that I've seen in the last eight years. We are seeing so many states, red and blue, purple, all of the above, taking up policies that are around outdoor access, outdoor education, um, protection of outdoor spaces, trails, all of these things, in a way that I really haven't seen in, in other issues, especially so quickly. In 2025, we saw over 300 bills in the outdoors. This year, we saw over 200. And that's notable because, as I mentioned earlier, you have four states that didn't meet at all this year, and others are constrained legislatively. So you couldn't even have as many bills, but you still had over 200. And I think the funding piece is one area where we're really seeing bipartisan agreement. Time outside is good for us. That it is tying into conversations, not just about affordability and the economy and economic benefits, but also screen time. I'm a parent. I have four-year-old twins. I think about screen time for them. I talk to other parents about this all the time. And coming into a world where a year from now, they'll be in public school, and we're seeing things like mandatory outdoor recess time. We're looking at things like screen time in schools and how that ties to, um, childhood learning, childhood health. And so those connections, Texas is another state that has passed a lot of bills around the kind of health benefits of ti- health and nature, and it's very, very exciting to me because I think the more we can put together being outside, being in nature is good for you, that is going to open up a lot of opportunities. And there's a great group we partner with, the Nature and Health Alliance. NHA, Nature and Health Alliance, they have brought together researchers to talk, to bring together the best available science on the benefits of time outside on your health. And so we actually have a shared fellow with them where we're trying to help communicate that to lawmakers because it's great to have the research, but then how do we bring that into this policy conversation to say, "Most of us inherently know if we go out to a park, we feel better." But how do we document that? How do we think about our institutional healthcare, that time in nature can reduce the total cost of care for a patient? And that's becoming something that is evidence-based. So I'm really excited about that, and I think it kind of embeds itself in so many exciting policy ways where you can have chairs of health committees saying, "We're gonna have a hearing now on environmental issues, uh, in the form of outdoor recreation or, um, small, you know, urban parks and green schoolyards," and topics like that.
• 26:45
  Time for a shameless plug, but that conversation about legislation that helps promote the idea of time outdoors, less screen time, time for kids, certainly want to put a plug in for "Raising Wild," a sister podcast here under the Wild Idea Media umbrella, where Ashley's been having a lot of conversations on that topic. And also point folks to an episode we did with the, the team for Trust for Public Land, uh, about a lot of the work they've done to make sure that there's green spaces around schools for kids to get outside. You know, we spend a significant amount of our time here on the Wild Idea podcast focused on federal level policy and legislation, and it really excited me to bring us closer to the ground with the work you all do at the state level. But as the saying goes, all politics is local. I think one place I want us to go is local governments, counties, cities, towns. I'm curious, does the caucus work with groups like NACo, the National Association of Counties? Like, is there any interaction beyond state houses on sort of working with, uh, working with counties and, and municipalities?
• 27:47
  Really good question. We are increasingly finding partnerships with local governments, with governor's offices, thinking about other levels of government to help make policymakers more effective. Um, I personally finished six years on my Parks and Recreation Advisory Board in Salem, Oregon, where I live, and so I've been pretty tied into my own local work here. Uh, you mentioned Trust for Public Lands. I was able to get us on the 10-Minute Walk campaign, and thinking about how do we bring local work connected to the national and regional level, I think is something that is not happening enough. So we have been partnering more and more with some of these groups, um, groups like ICLEI and Climate Mayors and others to make sure that we have local officials engaging where possible with lawmakers. And I think one thing that became really evident in the last couple administrations is the federal government is really good at setting direction and putting in money, but it's all about state and local action for implementation. We've seen that with the Inflation Reduction Act, um, with, you know, big dollars that were intended for certain outcomes, and how do you get that down to the ground? You need state and local players. You need awareness. You need implementation. And so trying to figure out that whole chain of interaction where state lawmakers are connecting with them as much as possible. So increasingly, that's been a big part of our work is to think about beyond a bill, what do you need to do? Who do you need to talk to? And very often, that's the local entities.
• 29:14
  You know, you're... It sounds like you guys do a lot of reimagining where you can go. It's not necessarily reinventing what you do, but imagining new ways in which to apply the resources that you provide folks. I think that's gonna come up when you guys are looking at rebranding the organization that's coming up shortly after this episode comes out. Can you talk about what people can be looking forward to be coming out soon?
• 29:35
  Yeah. On November 9th, we are gonna have a new name, a logo, and website, and you should check out our... go to our current website on November 9th, and it will redirect you to a, a whole new suite of things. Really excited, um, but I will say that our core mission is not changing. We are going to continue serving legislators across the country. We are gonna continue the work we're doing, but we're gonna do it under a slightly new name and look, and it's gonna be, uh, hopefully even more effective than before.
• 30:04
  We have been talking to Dylan McDowell, who is the CEO of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. I cannot let you go without asking about a childhood in Yachats. I love Cascadia. I love all things Pacific Northwest, and that has become one of my favorite destinations. Literally this time this week last year, we were setting up, uh, there just south of town. Uh, got to be there, uh, during some pretty blustery weather, and it also happened to be king tide, so got to see a really, really big ocean, which was exciting. But what was... I was just gonna ask you personally, what was that childhood like growing up there on the Oregon coast?
• 30:41
  It was incredible. Um, you know, I, I look back at it and how grateful I am to have that. My dad had a nautical antique shop, which is relatively unique. Um, you know, it was... It sounds like you've been to the area. So between Yachats and Florence, there's a stretch of Highway 101 that I would argue is one of the most beautiful strips of highway in the world. Uh, you get Heceta Head Lighthouse and just beautiful pull-offs, Strawberry Hill, all kinds of tide pooling. And his shop was halfway between, 10-mile area. And my childhood, when before I was in public school, consisted of me taking some stairs down a slope and going around the coast. And so I would go, I would go tide pooling, I would go collecting agates and rocks and poking around at all the animals that washed up. And so it, it was pretty amazing. But like you said, blustery winds, cold weather, rainy times. Um, I... It's... It was truly a unique spot. And I think every time... I'm, I live inland only about an hour or so in Salem, but I kind of think about an ocean meter in me, and sometimes that ocean meter's drained and I need to refill that. And so I have to go back to the coast and I have to get that and really see that giant Pacific Ocean and the tumultuous waves, and it really fills me up. And I think there's that sense of wonder looking off at the coast and just seeing, knowing that there's a whole ecosystem and whales and sharks and everything happening underneath the waves, and all you see is this big blue off into the horizon. So, I, I think I've carried that with me, and that's, that what, that's what took me to the Oregon Coast Aquarium as a middle schooler, was knowing I loved this ocean world, but I didn't know enough about it. And so I've, I... You'll see, viewers can't, or listeners can't see it, but I have some ocean prints behind me on my wall, and I, I try and kind of have this ocean touch wherever I go.
• 32:20
  Well, I... You could just really feel it sort of coming out of you, how much that influenced where you are today, running this important caucus, uh, that I, I hope will help our audience better understand the work that goes on in state houses that are so critical for our wild and connected world. And so, Dylan, I just wanna say thank you. It's been great having you on the podcast. We can't wait to hear the new brand and, and point people in that direction. But certainly, thanks for taking time out of your day to talk to us today.
• 32:47
  Absolutely. Thank you so much, Bill. Thank you, Anders. Really, really grateful for the chance to be here and to share a little bit about our work. And, uh, I hope that everyone that's listening will engage with their state lawmakers, because it's... They are very accessible, important people, and they are excited to talk to you, to bring good ideas to fruition, and hopefully change things for the better where you live.
• 33:07
  Well, thanks for joining us. Coming up on the Wild Idea Podcast, we talk High Plains Habitat with the folks at Wild Idea Buffalo. Again, we love that name. We visit with a real champion of his home state of West Virginia, West by God Virginia, the acclaimed chef Mike Costello, to talk about the farm to forage to table efforts of Lost Creek Farm. And we sit down with Erin Sprague with Protect Our Winters. We sure love having all of you with us on this journey and hope that if you haven't yet, you hit subscribe on your podcast player of choice and sign up for our newsletters at thewildidea.com, where you will also see a link for Buy Me a Coffee, which is a way you can support our work. It means a lot to all of us. So let's grab our briefing papers, put on our Sunday finest, and head for the State House to fight the good fight. And when we do, we look forward to seeing all of you there.
• 33:53
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Brynn Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Springhill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating. And if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [instrumental music]