Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 072: American Wilderness

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Ep. 072: American Wilderness · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening un podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: stay longer. UM. All right, So right now we're sitting
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: in uh in what do you call this place? We're
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: in Albuquerque Regional Headquarters. Yeah, this is the Southwestern Regional Office,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the Southwestern Regional Office of the US for US Service.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Do you guys mind going around and saying like what
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: you do and what like what your job titles are.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: So I'm Jerry Monzingo. UM, I'm Wildlife Fishing and rare
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: plant program manager on the Healand National Forest which is
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: in southwest New Mexico. And you grew up doing a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: little fur trapping. I did? I did? Yeah? Um. When
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: growing up, I lived along the HeLa River, which is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: headwaters are in the HeLa Wilderness. And my grandpa started
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: me out, um probably when I was ten eleven years old.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: UM gave me three old number two Victor long springs
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that were the springs were just about warring out um,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and that and that started me. I walked to the
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: river from the house, set out a few traps um.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: And then of course for what muskrats, no coons, raccoons,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: gray fox, the occasional bobcat, lots of skunks. Um. Occasionally
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: you're saying ring ring tales. Yeah, what was like, what
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: what's the market like for those bads? You know, that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: was back when fur prices were good. Fur prices were
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: good then, Um, you know ring tales were twelve bucks
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a little gray fox was worth Yeah. I started trappling
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: right at the tail end of the super good fur prices.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And it was the same single spring number one, single spring,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: single long spring victors that that launched me into the biz.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: But then you also came out like, ah, you came
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: out of a mining family. I did. Yeah. Um, my
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: dad worked at the local copper mine. Um, all my life,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: that's you know, that's all he knew was the copper mine.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I think he ended up when he retired. It was
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: thirty six years at the copper mine. I spent a
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: three and a half year stint at the copper mine.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: In about a year into that, I figured that wasn't
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: for me. Um, it was shift work. I had grown
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: up with that my whole life, and a graveyard shift
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: around my house me and my sister is always left
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: because you know, when somebody's trying to sleep during the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: middle of the day and a bunch of kids running
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: around the house. Um, and even if it even if
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: it wasn't us that woke him up, um, we got blamed.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: So we just it away from the house. I stayed
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: at the river, fishing, trapping, whatever, just to be clear
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: of home, just to be clear of home. And then
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you didn't you mind for you did mining for three years.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I did three and a half years UM and then
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: when up going from that into school and came up
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: through wildlife mild right. Yeah, when I got out of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: UM high school, what I wanted to do was get
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: a degree in wildlife management for sua a career with
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a state agency. At that time, about the time when
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I graduated, the mind shut down. My family was always
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: very serious about not being in debt, so really the
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: only place that they could afford for me to go
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: to school was the local university, which was thirty miles away.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: That university didn't offer a degree in wildlife management, nothing
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: really even close. So it is a typical seventeen year
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: old that thinks they know best. Um, I decided I
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to go to college, and my mom decided
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: for me that I was. So I went to the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: local college got a associate's degree in welding technology. And
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: prior to that, during high school, um the summers and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: during and during the college, I had worked for a
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: local ranch um in hayfields, working cattle. I got out
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: of college with that degree, I went back to the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: ranch for two two years, a little over two years,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: making twenty five bucks a day, fourteen sixteen hour days,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes seven days a week, like around what time, what
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: year was at oh eighty. I worked at the ranch
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: in the summers from about eighty one until eighty four
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: when I graduated, and then I went back to work
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  Speaker 1: for a little over two years solid about eighty five
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: eighty six. So now when you like, as a as
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: a biology is now working, how far from where you
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: grew up are you now that you work for the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Forest Service? Like how close and what proximity to all
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: where you were trapping and growing up and and mining
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: is your work now? Like right there? Yeah, it's right there. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: So I grew up in a Do you work now
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: in places you were familiar with as a kid? Yeah? Yeah,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't do a whole lot of hunting
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and all on the National Forest growing up, um, and
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: we gathered fuelwood there to heat our house. I grew
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: up hunting with my my grandfather, um on my mom's side,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: because my dad just my dad wasn't an outdoorsman, and
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: my grandfather's family had settled in the cliff La Valley,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: you know, in the late eighteen hundreds, um, along the river,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and so he he knew all the local folks that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: had been there a long time. He you know, it
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: was friends with the large land owners, the ranchers. So
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: my early time was hunting private property. I mean I
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: fished some on the National Forest, um, because it was
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: you know, an hour's drive and hike basically into the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: heel of wilderness from my house where I grew up. UM.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So I did spend a lot of time along the
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  Speaker 1: river in the forest, but most of my early hunt
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  Speaker 1: and all was done um on private land. Yeah. How
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: long you've been with the Forest Service now? Twenty two years?
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I was twenty two years. Yeah, long time and on
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the same forest for twenty two years, which is very
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: you don't see that very often people stay in that long.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But it's I love the country, I love my job, um,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and I really have no desires to go somewhere else.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: If you're doing good work, I leave. Yeah, now, Beyord,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you're from far off. Yeah, I grew up in Seattle. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Where How did you come to be here and do
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: what you're doing? I was a long, long journey. I
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I grew up playing on public lands in
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the Northwest. You know, my dad was before he had
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: me and my my brother and sister, was an alpine climber.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Climbed all over the world. Yeah, so a guy. I
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: think he was like on the on the cusp of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: doing some pretty big things. And you know, as as
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: things go in the mountains, never never quite pulled off
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: some of these big climbs. But so he instill in
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: that's really early, this kind of ethic of or passion
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: for the outdoors, and was dragging us all over the
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Cascades growing up. And so have many a fond memory
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of camping trips and backpacking all over the place growing up.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: And so left Seattle when I was eighteen after after
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: get out of high school, went to school on the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: East Coast. Um had an interest in environmental issues due
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: to that upbringing and and you know, growing up in
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Seattle and just hearing a lot about Yeah, there's a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: lot of interest that part of the world, as I'm
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: sure you know about environmental issues and sustainability and it's
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: kind of a weird, like I'm not a climber, but
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's a real next is for the climbing world.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It is, it is. I mean there's some some really
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: famous folks who uh yeah, who who grew up there,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: um lived there today in the in the climbing world,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: alpine climbing in particular. You think you talked about rock
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: it's them down in Yosemite. And he spent a lot
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of time down there too. But yeah, well international, yeah,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So Um anyway, went to school, studied, uh
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: studied environmental studies as an undergrad had a kind of
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: interest in international applications of that that sort of feel
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to study. And so along the way, I spent about
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: a year in China. I went to grad school and
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and uh did an environmental science degree, And based on
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: my experience in China, wanted to get some other exposure
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in India being another huge kind of developing country. You
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: know that's going to be um amazingly significant on the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: world stage and in the context of environmental issues. And UM,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: during my time abroad, you know, what I really missed
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: was was the outdoors, you know, in our public lands.
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  Speaker 1: And and so I did a lot of reflecting. I
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: missed my family and friends too, of course, and I
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: was meeting experts who had spent their whole lives abroad,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: their whole adult lives anyway, and UM, it just kind
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: of concluded, this is not the lifestyle that I want
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  Speaker 1: to live. And UM, I think, you know, there's a
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: lot of good, important work that we can be doing
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  Speaker 1: at home. So I kind of did this mental ship
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: in terms of where I thought I was going to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: be taking my career. Came back and had an opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to to start up with the Forest Service in Washington
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: d C. I was joked, that's like a backwards career path. Um.
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  Speaker 1: You know, looks like Jerry started in the field on
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a national forest and UM, you know those who aspire, um,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: worked their way up to d C towards the end
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: of their careers and had the chance to start out
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: there and fascinating experience. Met a lot of really great
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  Speaker 1: people who had rich careers and turned around after two
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: years there and went um did a brieft in eastern
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  Speaker 1: Washington on the Calville National Forest, and then went down
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to the Cleveland National Force in southern California for about
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: four or five years before coming out to Albuquerque. And
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: part of your deal like just say caves, caves. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: So I'm I'm the regional program manager for a wilderness,
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  Speaker 1: wild sink, rivers and caves and and it's kind of
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: an odd, odd grouping of programs at face value, but
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  Speaker 1: the rationale behind it is that we have um federal
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: law that protects each of these resources. And so I'm,
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  Speaker 1: in essence the specialist um protect our special places within
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the region. That's that's my job. In a nutshell, what
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: does the law that protects caves? Like, I know, like
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: when you say, when you say wilderness, so as we're
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna as we're gonna be discussing it today
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: when we say wilderness, like we're talking about wilderns of
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: the Capital w like federally designated wilderness. We'll get into
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: what that is. But and wild and scenic rivers that's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: its own piece of legislation. Right when we when we
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: designate generally a stretch of river, right, explain it and
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: explain the cave thing, and how like what kind of
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: administration occurs around caves. I I had no idea there
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: was anything like that. Yeah. So so, yeah, wilderness is
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: actually kind of the odd odd one out in that bunch,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: in the sense that it's just a broader landscape that's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: gets protected where you have rivers and caves that are
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: discrete resources. And so wild Rivers um So that Wild
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Rivers Act passed in nine, basically allows Congress to designate
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: stretches of free flowing so you know, rivers that are
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: free of dams and other impoundments and diversions, rivers that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: have um hy degree of water quality, and what we
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: call outstandingly remarkable values. Um So, these really, when you
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: look at a regional or national context, these really special values.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: They might be fisher widlife species, that might be a recreation,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: They might be scenery or geologic resources. And so there's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: got to be something about that free flowing river that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: has really kind of really specially unique qualities. And so
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: we placed that protection over it. Wild sc Rivers Act
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: really in a in a nutshell, um it prohibits damn
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: building is the biggest, most direct thing any kind of
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: any kind of firk hydroelectric type of project is outright prohibited.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: And then we have this mandate as managers to protect
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that free flowing condition, to protect water quality and protect
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: those outstandingly remarkable values. That was next. So that was
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: kind of they're both in that era of really significant
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: major environmental legislation being passed in this country, and you
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: get into the seventies and you have you know, the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and so I was really the heyday of these big
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: and Nixon that's right, yeah, SA, of course, yep, yep.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: And then right down the caves, you because I didn't
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: know there's any kind of special there's like a there's
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: like a protective designation for caves, that's right. So there's
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, kind of like the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Wild Stink Rivers Act, and it basically says that or
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Congress has the ability. Actually actually in this case, Congress
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the ability. They differ. They delegate that to
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the agency to to identify and protect significant caves. And
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: so it's similar to wild sink rivers. It's these caves
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that have some special unique value to them again recreation, wildlife, um,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: scientific values. And so that law, once we designate as
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: an agency these caves is significant. We have to protect.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: We're required by a lot of protective special values. Got you. Yeah,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: how many stretches of river have our wild scenic rivers
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: because that's all over the country. Yeah, Like I used
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to fish small mouth on one a stretch of the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Delaware River, Yeah, which is like very you know, I
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: mean it's houses, cottages, right, So it's not like wilderness
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: is so wilderness designations Like a criticism is that they're
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: all high country in the not a criticism, but like
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: when someone looks at the scope and it feels like
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a very Western issue because they're in these like very
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: remote areas in the mountains generally at higher altitude. But
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: in the wild scenic rivers, man, I mean they're all
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: over the plaster or the east, you know. Yeah, we
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: shake with wilderness. It's like the rock and ice, you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: back in the day where there were no other you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: really immediately accessible economic values, and so they were remote, undeveloped,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and it's a lot of the early wilderness where these
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: kind of rock and ice type of places, and there
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: are people doing good work to try to diversify the system.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So we have representative set of ecosystems that you know,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: are are protected as wilderness. And like you said, rivers
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: um a little different all over the country. Off the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: top of my head, you know, because it's spent all
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: my time thinking about the southwest UM. I don't know
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the number of rivers designated UM, you know, but it's
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: not even it's not whole rivers, so it's segments. So
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: we have one here in New Mexico and the Rio
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Chama that designate wild Stink River and it's right between
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: two dams. Yeah. But but again in that stretch, you know,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: there are no effects to the free flow, so the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: river is free to do its thing, meander across the landscape.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: You know, you go through those channel formation processes and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: UM has a whole slew of outstanding they remarkable values.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And so that's kind of a unique thing people always
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: talk about, like that's kind of weird. It's you know,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: it's a river that's damn controlled, but you call it
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: free flowing and it's not about UM. You're looking at
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the entirety of the river. Itself. I mean, there are
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: very few rivers in the West that would be free
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: flowing for their full duration, the HeLa maybe being one
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: of them. Is there a river that is protected from
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: its headwaters all the way down to the mouth or confluence,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: not in the Southwest? Um? I would? I would? I
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: would say, I mean, I can let me typ step
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: back in The reason the Wild Sink Rivers Act passed
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: was really a response to this this heyday of damn
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: building and kind of the early and middle part of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the exactly the Floyd Domini area. And
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: so there have been a lot of damns built by
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the time the Act passed. And so I again, that's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a question. I I you know, stuff I should probably know,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: but I would. I would hazard a guess that we
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: might have something in Alaska, But I'm not aware of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: anything in the lower forty eight because there was so
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: much river development. And that's not to say it doesn't exist,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: just not off the top of my head. But we
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: went through so much river development before we got to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: that point in sixty eight when Congress passed that act that, um,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you know, it was about protecting some of these really
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: high value segments that we had left at that we're
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: not yet developed. Yeah, I want to get into I
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: want to move on and introduce Carl, but reintroduced Carl.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: But I want to get into like what was going
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: on why so much of this stuff came out of
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the sixties. Yeah, and like what was happening culturally at
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: the time. But Carl. Yeah, Now, Carl joined us before.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: He's been on the show a couple of times and
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: then joined us before and told the fascinating story of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the Wisconsin supersow. That's right? Is that what it's called?
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin super Soo, Wisconsin super sow and um, but yeah,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: just revive people's memories on what what your story is. Yes,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I work here in the Southwestern Regional Office. I'm the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: regional wildlife Ecologist. Um. The cliff Notes version of my
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: journey to this agency is growing up in northwest Lower Peninsula, Michigan,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: for getting a little fur trapping, a little bit, getting
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: really good at doing chores for private landowners. Um. And
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I had a a platte book that I pasted pages
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: of on the wall and took a highlighter and drew
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: outlines around the properties where I had obtained permission to
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: hunt fish camp trap and really didn't have easy access
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to public land. So I was bailing hay, doing chores,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: um splitting wood, and over time I accumulated what in
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: hindsight now looks a lot to me like a map
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of a national forest where have little in holdings where
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: you don't have access, especially those eastern nationally crazy on
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: maps right. Um. And then I went to college for
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: natural resources program. I too spent some time working overseas
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: in China as I was working on my PhD, and
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: through that experience realized that we are way luckier here
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: in this country than I had acknowledged growing up. And
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: as I was finishing up grad school and considering different
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: career tracks, UM, I became increasingly interested in getting involved
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: with our public land system. So once I wrapped up
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: my my degree at the University of Wisconsin and Madison,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: UM I looked west of the Mississippi, really zeroed in
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: on states that had a very high ratio of public
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: land to population. And uh, my wife, who also grew
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: up in Michigan, was interested in states where the winners
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: weren't quite as long and gray and rugged. And so
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: those two key criteria helped us really zero in on
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the Southwest and on New Mexico in particular. So we
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: moved down here in late and started working for the U.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: S d A. Forest Service on the Lincoln National Forest.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And during my relatively short tenure with the organization, I've
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: had a chance to work at our Washington office headquarters,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: um work at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and now
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I'm based here out of the regional office. And the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: position covers eleven National forests between Arizona and New Mexico,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and then there are also four National Grasslands administered by
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the CIBOLA, and those also fall under the purview of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the position. I have. So anything related to wildlife monitoring
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: on a scale that expands beyond a single forest would
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: be something I would work on. As an example. And
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: you drew a bull moose tag in Idaho, man, I
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: got I gotta say so. One of the things, aside
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: from a lot of public land, one of the things
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: that drew me to New Mexico was the ability to
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: hunt elk, mule, deer, and pronghorn. Growing up in Michigan
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: all about white tails. I love white sales. White tail
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: hunting is amazing, don't get me wrong, But you know,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: reading all the Western hunting magazines growing up, I was like, God,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I would love to be able to chase this diversity
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: of big game. So I moved to New Mexico. And
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: my strategy with applying for big game tags here. You know,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you get three choices in New Mexico. I put choices
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: that are great for first and second, and then my
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: third choice is always just please give me a tag.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: So my third choice elk tag is the tag I've
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: drawn every year. I've had an archery elk hunt every
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: year I've been here. And then this year I failed
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: to draw an elk hunt, and I was so sour.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: You know, It's like I moved west to hunt elk
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and now I do not have an elk tag. And
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: it turns out there is no better cure for not
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: drawing an elk tag than to draw moose tag. You know. Uh,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: just quick thing I'll add man here about like the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Platt books. When I was a kid, I worked like
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I I hunted a trap Mosqueton County, Ottawa County, nue
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Ego County, and and there they have township um and
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: townships or six miles by six miles, And Plat books
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: would come in township plat books or no, you get
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a county, but to be broken down. And I remember
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: going around like I would identify. I would go through
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: plat books, identify every place I wanted to where I
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: wanted my trap lines, and I would make a list
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: on a legal pad. And my old man would, you know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: late summer every year, just as a favor, would get
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: on the phone and he grew up doing sales, you know,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: because he was an insurance salesman. He would get on
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the phone and just work that list. And I mean
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: he would score, Like if I put a name down,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: he would get on the phone and right away would
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: be like some he'd find some connection to church whatever,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: fraternal organizations ain't something, you'd find some connection. He would
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: just check them off. And I had yeah, and I
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: would put that up in my little trapper area, had
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: all those plat maps, all my property circle, and it
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you'd build out a thing. And that
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: One of the things that drew me to public land
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: was the amount of sort of administrative duties surrounding maintaining
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: like a network of properties. And then when you would
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: look at these states that had like a bunch of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: public landing realized, Oh my god, what a shortcut did
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you just have? Like this? This? Uh, you know this
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: is right to go out there and be out there,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and that's it. No one, no one can tell you know,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: as long as you're a law abiding person, no one
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: can tell you no. Um. But yeah, So back to
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: have a quick question, Carl. Have you stepped foot on
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: all those forests and grasslands that you oversee? Now, No,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I have not nearly all of them, um, But I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: have not yet visited the Black Kettle National Grassland, which
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: is the farthest east most of our grasslands. But I'm
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: tempted because reports are the Bob White numbers are like
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: through the over there. Um. Yeah. And in phenomenal turkey
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: hunting too. So if you look at the you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the expanse of country um that include Southwestern regional administrative units,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it's a ton of land, um and the diversity is incredible.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: But you know, we haven't worked out of this office
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: for a few years. It's still a pretty good feat
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: that I've been to each of the forests. And then
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: remember within each of those forests, you have another level
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of administrative unit, the district, and I'm nowhere near having
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: visited every district. So, for example, on the Lincoln National Forest,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: there are three different districts, and I've I've been involved
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: with projects on each of those districts. But um, how
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: many districts on the HeLa six districts, And I've visited
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a couple of the districts on the HeLa, mostly the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Wilderness Ranger District because that's one of my favorite chunks
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of ground in the whole region. Yeah, was it that
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: the first? Like that is it the carl you can
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: tell a story? Is it the first wilderness? The first
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: thing we now recognize is federally designated willness was an
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: idea put forward by Aldo Leopold. Yeah, is that true?
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It is true? And you know these he wasn't calling
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: it that then. Well, so there was an essay that
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: he published with the title A Plea for Wilderness Hunting Grounds.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: And Leopold was in this mode of authorship where he
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: was pleaing for a lot of different things. During this
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: kind of he was he was like throwing that word around.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: He had a number of them. Another one was there's
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a place in northern New Mexico, if I remember right,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: called Stinking Lake, And he had a plea for a
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: special designation of this stinking lake as a as a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: wildlife refuge for waterfowl. But this plea for wilderness hunting grounds. Um,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: would you guys agree? That's kind of seen as one
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of the key kernels that ultimately grew into the Heila.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So you read that, um, And that was he wrote
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: that night for outdoor Life. Actually that that's right of here. Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: And and what's funny though it actually, at least by
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: what I've found out, it wasn't published until after four
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: when administratively the HeLa Wilderness had already been set aside,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't designated yet, but all those early wildernesses
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: were administratively set aside by the agency. UM. And you
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: know in there he compares, you know, he lists all
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of these areas that in the Southwest that he thinks
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: should be wilderness, and he talks about losing them, and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: he compares that to the city block in town somewhere,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and there's five city blocks left and they start building
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and those blocks are disappearing, and he talks about, shouldn't
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: we have one left that has nothing on it that
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the kids can go play in and the weeds can
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: grow on UM, so that that's what he's laici Pality's
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: all called green space now, spent a ton of time
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: talking about it and trying to hang on to it
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: in that plea. That's what he's That's what he's comparing
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: it to um and in the Southwest. You know, I
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: don't know at the time, there was five or six
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: areas that he was talking about and they were just
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: getting chewed up. Um Rhodes pushed him too. Him and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: here's a guy coming out of he was born in
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: what state? Karl doesn't like when I point out that
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: he married his cousin, but he was born in what state? No,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: First of all, you don't have that right. That is
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: that is not a fact. Let me let me let
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: me correct a little history for you. He actually married
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a New Mexican woman, and that's a really kind of
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: unique twist on this story. His parents were, that's what
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: it was. So you don't like when I point that
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: out because it's not correct. I don't like him. You
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: point to false facts for sure. So yeah, he was
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: he was born in Burlington, Iowa or in Iowa. Midwestern
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: He's claimed by He's claimed by three plays. He's probably
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: claimed he's claimed by by more than three plays claimed
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: by New Mexico because it was kind of he like
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: came of age here, he had he had an epiphany here.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: He had a number of epiphanies here for sure, and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: then later went to Wisconsin where he wrote much of
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: wrote about the epiphanies he had in New Mexico. Um
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: in Arizona, and he came out to New Mexico in
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Arizona before the even states yep. His first position was
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: on the Apache National kind of settled into being in
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: the old man in a public intellectual in Wisconsin and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: had his property where he much of Sand County Almanac,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: which is sort of his seminal work, San Countie Almanac
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: he wrote there, and that was collected and published after
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: his death. Yeah. Yeah, his his son had a big
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: stake in helping to see that through to publication. Um.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And there was a lot of back and forth with
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: various publishers leading up to his his death at a
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: fairly young age fighting a wildfire there and there is
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: no Sand County. Um the county fighting a wildfire on
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: his own property, neighbor's property, yep, and uh. The county
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: is called Sauk County, and the shack is in auh
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It's it's close to a little town called Baraboo, right
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: on the banks the Wisconsin River. Um. And if you
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: spend any time in that country, you can see where
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: this poetic name of Sand County comes from, because it
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: is really sandy, poor soil. And he obtained that farm
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: in a state of very poor ecological health. It had
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: been essentially pillaged by the previous owners turned back over
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the bank um, the prior owner forfeited it um and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: then Leopold and his family. You know, an important point
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: about Leopold's legacy is that his children, I think, in
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: large part due to their experiences on that piece of ground,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: all have been very involved conservationists in their own right
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: and contributed very importantly UM to various fields of of
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: study related to ecology. His son became a hydrologist. Yeah,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Luna has a quote. You probably know the quote better mean,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: but I think that he said, um, rivers are the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: gutters through which run the ruins of continents. Yeah, or
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: something longer there. The poetry that that family have collectively
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: been responsible for is amazing. You talked about the words smithing,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and another one of his children in the wildlife Arena
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: um Starker Leopold was one of his sons, and he
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: was a phenomenal biologist um in his own right as well.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: So the family, you know, you could go on Nina.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Leopold practiced a certain poetics with his children's names. Yeah,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: oh absolutely, Yeah, that's because he named his kids things
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: you'd expect someone like if you met someone in Hollywood. Well,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: there's there's reason for it. So let's talk about Luna.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And my Spanish is not gray. But when I first
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: moved here, just south Albuquerque, there's a town called Los Lunas. Okay,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: when I looked at Los Lunas, I thought to myself,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: isn't that bad Spanish? Because Lunas is a feminine word,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: so shouldn't it be Lost Lunas. And this is the
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: town that Leopold's wife, she had, she had deep roots
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in that town. And the reason it's masculine as opposed
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to feminine is they're referring to the family the Lunas
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the feminine moon in Spanish. So yeah,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: he certainly put some thought into naming his kids. But um,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: he has claimed absolutely by the Southwest, absolutely, by Wisconsin,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: absolutely by Iowa, and then a number of lesser known
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: uh points along the way that he visited. He's on
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: a lum of the Yale School of Forestry. Yeah, the
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: first School of Forestry. Yeah, so he's claimed by them. Um,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you've spent some time in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as a
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: boy growing up, Leopold spent a lot of time in
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the Latianou Islands eastern up around Cedarville Um, catching perch
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and um. If you're really interested in the history of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold Um, there's a writer by the name of
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Kurt Mine who did like the in disputed Ultimate Leopold Biography.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: So check out Kurt Mine's book if you really want
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: to know the ins and out. I believe it's all
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the Leopold, his life and work something along those lines. Yeah,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: but don't read that he read San Connie all oh no,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: no, no no no. I mean Mine's treatment is phenomenal as
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a biography. Leopold's work in a Sand County Almanac is
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: poetry and poetry with an ecological twist that every hunter
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: angular conservationist can resonate with. And so he I want
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to get back like when he first comes up this
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: idea of wild rose because he was trying to sell
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: it and you guys pre mos better. He was selling
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: it being like, up, hey, listen, this the piece of
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: ground I'm talking about here. The best value it could
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: bring us is as itself. And so now we talk
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: about like wilderness, like when we have federally protected wilderness
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: or federally designated wilderness, it's like everybody's like rock and ice.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: But I think that he kind of knew that that
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was how it was going to have to work. Where
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: he couldn't take some area that had been identified as
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: being rich and easily extractable natural resources or premier gate
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: grazing land and be like, hey, I got an idea,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: how about we designate this as wilderness. Like he had
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: to go and find something where he could say it
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: just isn't a value for anything, but being wilderness, like
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: that's its most apparent, readily available worth. Is it just
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: as it is? And I think that want to be
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: like like a a good strategic move probably if you
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: look at what is long term goal was. Yeah, And
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: this discussion about the various uses of a piece of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: ground I think played a lot into the lead up
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: to the passage of the Wilderness Act in nineteen sixty four,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and Boring would be a phenomenal person to speak to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the the kind of wrangling that went into finally getting
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: that law passed, and also what some of the trade
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: offs were in terms of the language that ultimately was
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: encapsulated in the Wilderness Act. Yeah. And when we talk
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: about that, talk about whether people were annoyed by this
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: at the time. Oh yeah, I mean originally there was
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: pretty strong push back to the idea. And and so
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, just for a context, that Act was passed
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: in sixty four, but Congress had been debating it for
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: eight years by that point, so since the mid fifties,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and they wrote sixty six drafts. Literally, Yeah, what would
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: be an equivalent of that today? Man, I know, the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: like I'll defer to you, I I you know, in
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the context of my my job right now, I'm I'm
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: reluctant to hazard a guess at that. But um, you know,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I mean just self like I'm trying to think of
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: selfing that like, because even like like the Affordable Care Act,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: which was criticized about how slowly it moved, that'll that
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: went through in a year? In a year, yeah, exactly.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: So they kicked it around for eight years. Yeah, and
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: so what happened is the first draft, Um, you know,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: look at you look at the main part of the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Act and it talks about you know, wilderness is untrammeled
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and which is a you know word for free willed
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: um um, you know, free of restraint from from mankind
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: or humankind. Um. It's natural. So it has these functioning,
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: intact ecosystems in the full suite of indigenous biota. It's undeveloped.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And so these sort of developments of of humankind are
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: are few and far between president all their outstanding opportunities
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. And then lastly
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: there are these other features of values at times. And
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: so that was basically it in the original act. Um.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: It was this very purist sort of sense of wilderness.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And again, just given the political landscape at that time, um,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: you know, you have you know, again, the context in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the middle part of the twentieth century was we were
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: chewing up natural resources at a pretty alarming and efficient rate,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: and public lands were really seen as a source of
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: natural resources. So we're we're mining, we're cutting. Timber grazing
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: was a big deal. We're developing water resources all over
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the place. And so in order to get support from
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: all of these, um, these extractive industries and and the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: broader public and and you know Congress the congressman at
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the time, UM, they had to put in some pretty
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: significant compromised compromises by this sixty six draft that ultimately passed.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And so you have this list of of what are
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: called special provisions in the Act, and those include grazing
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: where it was pre established, can continue. Um it included. Um.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: So so back up with that one. So someone holds
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: so if someone held a grazing lease, the grazing permit,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: it would be it would be grandfather exactly exactly. UM.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Mining was another thing. I mean, mining's kind of interesting because, um,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: there's a provision in the Act that says any valid
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: existing right and that's a term for in essence of
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: property right. So someone who has an established mining claim
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: is that's basically a property right. And so though that
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: can still be grandfathered in with new designations. But the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Willerness Act allowed until December four, so full twenty years,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: you know, a few months after its passage, new mining
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: claims to be established in wilderness as another compromise. UM,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: motor boats where that use existed, and that's mainly in
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the boundary waters up in northern Minnesota, was allowed to
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: that kind of use was allowed to continue. But but
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: let me stop in sixty four. Yeah, when they're getting
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: ready to do it, were they actually throwing around specifics
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: about what places they're thinking about? It was that part
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: of the bill. It was just like allowing them these
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: uses where they existed prior to you know, the passage
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: of the Act or subsequent designations. But did the Act
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: carry with it, um, spots that would become wilderness? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: absolutely so. Um it was it was fifty some instant
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I think it's fifty four instant wildernesses, all managed by
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the Fourth Service. So it wasn't just like giving the
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: right to create eight them, but was also saying, and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: here's a list. We had this initial list, and then
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the Act directed it was kind of it's actually an
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: interesting history. It directed the agencies um and at that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: time it was for service. All the instant wellnesses were
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: National Force System lands, but also directed the Department of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the Interior for the National Park Service and fisher Wildlife
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Service for service as well. To to basically go out
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: inventory and recommend additional designations to Congress within the next
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: five years. And so they that Congress intended at that
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: time that this would be a very agency driven process
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and and within i mean it was less than ten
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: years where really the public took over in this very
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: democratic sense and worked outside the channels of the federal
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: government to advocate for additional designations. And that's really the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: way that it works today is these UM grassroots movements
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and and kind of on the ground collaboration among interest
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: groups to hash out UM you know, support for designations
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and other other uses of UM specific federal lands for
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for designation. But it slowed greatly right in the last
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: few years. Yeah, I mean, i'd say, you know, in
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the last in the last ten years or so, it's
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: it's dramatically slowed. And we had the first Congress UM
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: a handful of years ago that did not pass a
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: single wilderness bill UM, you know, the two year Congress,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and so that was, yeah, testament to things really slowing
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: down recently. As far as new designation. New designations were
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the boundary waters in the initial round, they were what
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: were some like when the bill went through, Yeah, what
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: are there some examples of places that they identified as
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: being like like the type sites of wilderness where they
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: were saying, like, here is a thing that would be
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a great one to start with. They like the places
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that were like early like early on identified as eligible
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: for federal wilderness designation. And most of these had already
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: been identified by the Forest Service, you know as these
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you know, like the HeLa wilderness with a little w
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in the sense that it was administratively designated and the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: foresters had gone on after. And so that was put
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: in place in full forty years before the Wilderness Act
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: passed by the agency, and then they went on to
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: develop these series of regulations that prompted the agency to
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: identify other administrative wilderness designations and primitive areas. And so
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: it was all these um agency identified wildernesses and primitive
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: areas that that were designated in sixty four by the
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Act as the instant wildernesses. So the Helo is one
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: UM we have. It's it's really these big, large, iconic
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: wildernesses that we have today. So like in Arizona, the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: masts Hals were another um you know that the acts
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: as wilderness should typically be five thousand acres or greater um.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of exceptions to that, but when
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: we look at those original willernesses, it's these big vast
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: landscapes um that we're protected. Ye, does it. I almost
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: hesitate to bring this stuff because it's so like, it's
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: so kind of out there when yeah, yeah, as you
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: bring it up, tell them what we have a friend.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to name them, tell them what our
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: friend thinks, because I'd like to talk about like tell
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: them like sort of the whisperings around the campfire about
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: what wilderness is, what will happen the wilderness, and I'd
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: like to speak to the legality of this occurring. Yeah,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: his he has uh I don't know if it's conspiracy
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: or now, but he has a worry. And I believe
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it's not just him obviously, Like he's Steve said, there's
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: like these whisperings, and there's people that have this idea
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: that whether it's just the people that manage the wilderness
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: or the people that promoted uh, private organizations that you know,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: promote wilderness, that there is this hidden agenda that in
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the end, way down the line, that what they're really
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: driving for yes, is going to be a place where
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: humans are not allowed either, that we will just have
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: these landscapes just for the landscape and the animals that
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: live there. So I would debunk that right at way
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: in the sense that Congress explicitly said in the original Act,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: one of the core values of wilderness is a human use.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: It's opportunity for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreations. So
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: to get out of modern society for our you know,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: for for the public in the United States, to get
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: away from modern society, get away from the masses, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: engage in these kind of primitive activities, primitive travel, hunting,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and angling, have freedom from all the rules and constraints
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: of society. So I mean, that's a core value in
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: the Act. And um, you know, as managers were beholden
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: to the direction that Congress precisely, precisely. And then I
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: can say from a personal level, I my job, um
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: is managing I don't manage wilderness on the ground. We
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: have folks, wonderful, wonderful people who do that. But you know,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I provide program leadership in the region. And I can
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: speak for myself and everybody I've ever known, literally a
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: hundred percent of folks I've known who work on wilderness management,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and we all love wilderness us in large part because
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: of our personal experiences in wilderness. Um. You know, there's
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: certainly a whole host of other values that it brings
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: to the table. But um and I I it's it's
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: pretty um, pretty out there kind of thinking in my view.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Has anybody sitting here at this table ever heard this ever,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: ever even heard of a group of like even even
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: organized group that somebody's even out there thinking that way? Well,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: and actually, I would say so, we're in the midst
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of our forest planning process right now in the Southwest,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and that's an exercise I'm you know, per another law
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: plan directs us develop these land management plans um and
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: we need to update them every so often because the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: world changes are are are understanding the science changes, we
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: have other pressures, like you know, we have a changing
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: climate right now, so we update these plans periodically, and
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: part of the legal framework and directing us to do
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: that says we should be looking at identifying in essence
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: lands that are suitable for wilderness designation to recommend to Congress.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: And there's all this uh going around owned in the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: context of these discussions these planning processes, which are very
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: rooted in public process. You know, we want a lot
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: of collaboration in public involvement. But people are going around
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: saying you're trying to close the forest to all human use,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: you're locking it up, and that's fundamentally I'm not true.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And so so it's a little bit illegal. Uh yeah,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: it would be. I would say, um, you know, we
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: have provisions that allow us to implement discrete kind of closures,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: but you had to close you know, all of wilderness
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: would be counter to that act absolutely. Like an example
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: of a closure would be when like fire hazard. Yeah,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and that's even Yeah, so that's an example that occurs
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: around here. You know, when I was in southern California,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: we put a closure in place because we had a
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: super fund site due to um unmanaged target shooting for
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: decades and decades, and so people were shooting up appliances
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: and using you know, lead ammunition for long term and
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: a concentrated place, and so we ended up with heavy
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: metal uh levels and in the soil that we're dangerous.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: You know, you could kick up dust and breathing all
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: kinds of gnarly stuff, and so we put a closure
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: in place, um, so that we could get in there
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: and clean it up and get the public back in
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: there in the future. So, I mean those are the
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: kind it's like these. Usually it's public health and safety.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's to protective very unique sensitive resource. But I
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: mean it's been happening a lot lately that people are
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: freaked out about it. I know personally people that have
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: had gates put across road they used to use for access,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: they used to drive on, and because of limited budgets,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: that road hasn't been able to have been you know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: kept up, and so now there's huge gully washers going
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: right down through the middle of it. I'm guessing that
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: they they're closing that access because the roads become dangerous.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: But that's not even a wilderness issue that no, no,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it's not not at all, but as that feeds that
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff, the closing of the forest. Yeah, I
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: mean part I mean, that's a that's a a fairly
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: complicated question in the sense that some of it is
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: um just inability to maintain our our massive, massive road system.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: You know, you think about most of our roads were
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: built in the timber heyday, and we had receipts coming
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: in from timber sales as an agency big time. So
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: we had re sources UM coming from our timber program
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that have with the industry changing just due to global
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: economic forces, are not available and so we not only
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: can't continue building roads like we used to to to
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: provide access to these timber stands that were being harvested,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: but to maintain these roads for public safety and also
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: natural resource protection in terms of you know, erosion into
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: salmon streams in the Northwest, for example, and so that's
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: that's been a part of that UM is really just
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: a change in in economics with regards to natural resources
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: in this country which has driven a change in the
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: kinds of resources that we have available to us as
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: an agency, and that has uh that has affected our
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: ability to maintain our road systems and places. And then
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: again you think about these systems being put into place
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: for timber harvest, we're managing the land for a much
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: broader suite of values in many cases these days, UM
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: for ecosystem health being a big driver. We're doing a
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: lot of restoration work as an agency, and so sometimes
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: it's determined that you know the presence of these you know,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: i'd call legacy UM timber era roads on the landscape.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Our counter to some of these efforts to provide for restoration,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: to say, we want to defragment wildlife habitat for example.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: So there's there's that side of the story to you,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I think, and then you get into the whole there's
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: a whole private landowner access thing. You know, in the
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: in the Bowsman areaf I'm not mistaken, their whole sections
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: of the Gallatin that are really not even accessible to
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: the public because they're surrounded by private lands. And that's
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: another you know, as populations grow, we get more and
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: more people interested in the outdoors. Landowners in some cases
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: who used to sort of allow public access have have
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: closed off access. And that's the agency. You know, we
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: all I can say, I mean with a you know,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a strong degree of confidence, value and love public access
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: on public lands. I mean, we work for the public,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: the American public, and we manage these lands on their
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: behalf for you know, whole slew of benefits that they provide.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And so when we get um access being closed and
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: I see that differently as our closed roads. At times
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: we're still providing access to the national forest. When we
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: entirely lose access to the public landowner decisions where we
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: have really no you know, no right of way for example.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: We we hate to see that as much as the
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: rest of the public not being said, you know, that's
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: a private property owner sort of right and decision to make.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: You know, the thing I said when I'm having this
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: conversation with people about road closures, the thing I often
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: bring up is that even if you look at private
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: timber companies or large like Native corporation lands in Alaska,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: they'll build roads for timber extractions. So they're cutting a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: road for a very specific purpose, like to let out
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: a sale, a timber sale, and the road is its
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: course and purpose are designed for timber extraction. The timber
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: extraction happens, it takes how many ever, decades sometimes you're
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: talking almost in terms of close to a century before
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: you're going to go in and do before it's viable
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: for another harvest. And so the road was there for
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: that purpose, and it's closed because it's not serving the
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: purpose that was built for. And there's no sense in
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: maintaining that road during this passage of many decades that
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: would occur before you cut it again. And private timber
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: companies and tribal corporations do the same exact thing with
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: their roads, but you oftentimes don't hear the criticisms there
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: there are people just take it as like a matter
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: of course that that's not the thing. But I have
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: this conversation all the time with people who feel that
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: when a road gets closed on national forests, it's like
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: met as a personal affront to them or somehow is
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: position in their mind as like a condemnation of their activities,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: rather than looking at like what like a like a
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: very broad category of reasons for why this might be
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: closed at this moment. Yeah, I mean, I can appreciate
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: that in the sense that I mean, I think we
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: can all around this table agree that we've had some
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: really um formative experiences in our lives on public lands
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: that we treasure, we hold dear to our hearts, and
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: folks out there, you know, they may have they're special
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: place that they really hold near and dear to them.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: UM closed to motorized travel UM for these reasons that
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: we've talked about before and again in a nutshell, the
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: agency is just trying to balance UM the amount of
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: resources has available to maintain roads and these other purposes
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: in terms of natural resource management or restoration. Um and
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: make these decisions, UM you. Of course I'm not thinking
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: about uh any particular person or place, but I can
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: see how folks feel that it's uh it you know,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: hurts at a personal level because they may be not
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: able to drive to where they used to the places.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I love, you know, I have a follow up to
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: just the restrictions around wilderness and people thinking that it
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: could become more restricted than it is now. Right, I
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: mean it's it's no bikes, horses, foot travel, a couple
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: of air strips that you can land on. Steve you
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: said eighteen church again you talked about like grandfathering in
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: so when like the boundary waters motorized boat traffic where
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: it was like some I'm sure argued like imperative to
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: travel in the area, right, and it got Grandfather didn't. Yeah,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: I think it was just uh, I've I've traveled pretty
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: far in the boundary wires in a canoe. I guess
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: what I would say is that there was a stakeholder
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: group of people who had a really high value on
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the motorized recreation or travel they were doing. And that's
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: probably more why I got Grandfather that they held it
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: really to be very important to that that group of
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: folks as opposed to necessarily be an imperative. Yeah, and
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: so they made there was like flexibility within the Act
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to do that right and in the and in the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Frank Church, they when it became a wilderness, they honored
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: flights in eighteen airstrips. And that's the same I was
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: talking about that list of exceptions that we call special
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: provisions in the Act, and airstrips are one of them
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: where aircraft landing predated wilderness designation. It could be allowed
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to can in you when again that's you look at
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: the first part of the Act defines wilderness. You know,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: these activities that are really antithetical to wilderness, you know,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: from the pure standpoint of the way Congress defines it. Again,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: we have this list of exceptions, which was what it
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: took to pass it. And I actually want to add
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: what was really cool In six or four the Senate
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: was unanimous voting for the Act. The House had one
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: dissenting vote. And the rumor is, I mean, I haven't confirmed.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: That's like voting in to go to World War two. Yeah, yeah,
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: it's amazing. The rumor is the one dissenting vote was
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: represented about of Texas and he felt that it it
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't strong enough in terms of protection of the land.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: That's the rumor. So it's pretty amazing. You think about
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: unanimous support in the Senate. Yeah, it's amazing bipartisanship work
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: to get this legislation passed. Who are the people that
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: stuck with it through the eight years, like Lee Metcalf
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: was involved in it. The man at the center of it.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: You want to jump on this, Jerry Well, I you
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: know the answer for sure? Who's that? Howard zon Eiser?
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: He was. He was not in this in the Senator house.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I mean he was. He was the primary advocate. He's
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: the one really well we can credit for making it happen. Though,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: I know you heard of this guy, so you need
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: to check him out. One of the stories about Zion Eiser?
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Who where? Who was he? Whoere? Did he work? He
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Wilderness Society? He was that point. I mean at that
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: point early in his career he worked for what is
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: now the Fishing Wildlife Service UM, but he he ended
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: up being the kind of primary advocate for the act.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: He wrote it, UM. He was the one rewriting and rewriting,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: and rewrote it and rewrote it, and rewrote it. It
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't it okay? But wasn't it um the writer the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: gay wrote hard rock cany like big rock, Candy Mountain
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: um Man, now I know you're talking about now. It
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: was it was this this um, this guy Howard zon Eiser,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: and so he you know, he had experience in the
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: federal government. He knew the way the system worked. And
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: then he just was this um unstoppable passionate advocate. And
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: unfortunately he passed away months before. Yeah, oh you know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of his uh, Wallace Stegner. I mean he
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: was an a like Stegner was an advocate, and there
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: were town of people advocating. I mean, of course, I mean,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: you know Leopold, I mean, there's a whole whole long
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: list of folks. I mean, Bob Marshall, another, Frank Church,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Edward Abbey, I mean, and then uh and then uh,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: because a lot of these guys wind up with four
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: like these guys want up with wilderness areas named after him,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: Frank Church, Bob Marshall, Lee Metcalf, although Leopold all the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: label yeah so so, but the main I don't I
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: never heard of this guy. Yeah, I know, he was,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and he didn't live to see its passage. Unfortunately he
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: did not. But I don't get how how could it
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: be written sixty four times and take eight years to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: get through and then get your get through with the
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: unanimous vote. It reached like some level of perfection. I
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: think it was all those compromises, you know, I talked
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: about like that early. They've done so much yep. So
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: they're like, we need to get the grazing industry on board,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: we need to get the mining industry on board, we
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: need to get the sort of recreational you know, um
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: aircraft community on board. And so that's what you know,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: like I said early on it someone had to be pissed.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: I guess they were. They were were they were, Yeah,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: they were rallying together, you know, pretty nearly unanimously across
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: the board. So knowing that it would designate fifty some
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: wilderness areas, right, and it was at nine point one
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: million acres nationally at that time. So, but Willards only
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Willards is less than two percent of the country. That's
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: not true. Um, so it's five percent about for the
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: full country including Alaska, it's about two point seven percent
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: of the lower And I can speak on behalf of
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: the four Service you know, I'm not I don't know
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the stats for the other three federal agencies that managed wilderness,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: but it's a it's about just about ninetent of National
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Force System lands our designated wilderness. So you know, uh,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: it's a small proportion of the country. You know, when
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: you look at the actual um land mass, you know
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: that that the four Service manages, it's a it's a
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: decent chunk, you know, just shy thirty six thirty six million. Yeah,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: so total in in the nation, there's seven d sixty
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: five wilderness areas. Nineteen sixty four, you had nine point
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: one million acres designated. Since nineteen sixty four, it's gone
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: from nine point one million to a hundred nine million,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: So a hundred million of the hundred and nine million
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: have come through subsequent legislation, and uh, fairly recently, our
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: home state of Michigan gained one Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: designation coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Wilderness
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Act in Yeah, sever sand that's my backyard, that's where
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: I grew up, thirty two thousand, five hundred fifty six acres,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: So that wasen and you talk about the slowdown since then,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: UM there were three designated together in Idaho and twenty
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: and nothing since then. New Mexico UM gained a wilderness.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's interesting the legal wrangling now that
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: goes into designations. So the most recent addition for our
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: region came through basically a rider in the National Defense
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Authorization Act that designated Columbine Honda Well. And actually in
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: addition to that, it modified the boundary of Wheeler Peak,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: which was one of the original sixty four willderness is
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: because the mountain biking community placed such a high value
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: on this trail opportunity in Wheeler Peaked out. Part of
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: the compromise and getting calum Mine Hondo pushed through was
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: to make this minor boundary modification so they could could ride.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: They had this loop ride opportunity. So that's what Carlson,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: this kind of like this this wrangling and high level
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: of compromise and we're working through a whole host issues. Yeah,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate the flexibility and being able to look
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: at individual places. But if you guys, like when you
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: guys think, now, what are the biggest challenges in UM
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: sort of the biggest social challenges in managing wilderness. Talking
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: about wilderness my fundamental belief, and I want to hear
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: from Jerry and Carl, but it's really just a lack
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: of public awareness about about what it is and the
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: value that it holds for for people, for all Americans
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and for you know, whether it be you know, through
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: personal experience visiting wilderness or providing wildlife habitat, fish habitat,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: clean air, clean water, um. And and so it's just
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: a lack of awareness and understanding of how how really
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: essential it is UM to our well being as a nation.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: And really, if you look at the deep history, I
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: don't want to spend a lot of time on this
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: necessarily and unless you guys want to talk about it.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: But as we were as we were, as you know,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: kind of the European Americans that that came came over
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and started spreading across North America, developing and taming the frontier. UM,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: people started to look around and say like, hey, we've
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: been pretty effective. And this notion of wilderness and wild
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: places UM is really unique. You know when we we
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: we all came from Europe. UM. Is that this European
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: American community, UM, this doesn't exist in Europe. This is
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: something that's unique. It's gritty, frontier kind of wild places
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: is unique to the American identity and um so I
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: think that's something part of our national history that we
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: don't talk about as much anymore. And again you look
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: at the contemporary social and ecological values wilderness, people don't
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: perceive that as as as well as I personally wish
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: they would, you know, just because there's a lot of
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: demands on our attention and it's something that slips under
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the radar a little bit. So I think that's our
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: biggest challenge long term personally. It's funny, like the patriotism
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: element of wilderness is something that I think it's lost.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: But if you go back to the US Census um
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: after they conducted the U s Census, they realized that
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: there was no frontier left. Like before that they've always
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: looked at population levels and they had a sort of
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: a line and they looked at population. Of course, we
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: settled in the east and settled the west coast and
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: still had a chunker ground in the middle that didn't
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: meet the basic threshold to pull it out of the frontier.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: In the census turned up that there was no discernible
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: line of settlement in the country anymore, and a prominent
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: historian at the time, Frederick Jackson Turner, came out with
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: this this influential paper and and speech he gave, which
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: was about a thing that quickly became known as frontier anxiety,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: where he had argued that the American culture and American spirit,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: and American institutions, we're all built around the idea of
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: of a frontier of of conflict with an engagement with wilderness,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: right that we'd come out of that that, like frontier spirit,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: was integral and like shaping who we are. And he
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: pointed out that it made us different than the genteel Europeans,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: where there was no availability of land and resources for people.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: And he pointed out that our sense of rugged individualism
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: was built around our interactions with wilderness, and like at
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: that moment, we were in this interesting spot because we
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: were at that moment where we had within our grasp
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: to completely destroy all vestiges of wilderness, like it was
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: wilderness existed at first in spite of our best efforts
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: to get rid of it, and then we had to
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: very quickly transition into this idea that we're gonna have
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: to have it because of our best efforts to preserve it,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: and that would have been like a really important moment,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: and figures like like early figures like Theodore Roosevelt were
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: impacted in a dramatic way by that that shift in
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: American history there. And at the time, it was like
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: it was described as sort of a thing you would
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: like to preserve wilderness, to have a forest system was
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: the thing you were doing to preserve like American integrity.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: I think since then there's some some element of that
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: history has been lost to people where they look at
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: it now that we've come to see it different than
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: this thing that we're gonna do to salvage our you know,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: to save our somewhat feral wild some some aspect of
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: what made us feral and wild and American in the
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: first place, where now people look at it some people
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: are guilty of somehow having kind of lost sight of
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the factors that went into our decisions to have federally
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: managed public lands. Yeah, and I mean that's a a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: very complex problem, but I think it goes back. A
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: big part of that is lack of exposure. And so
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: there are a couple of films out there UM. One
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: is it's I think it's called American Values American Wilderness
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and it's this film put together that just talks to
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: ordinary citizens about they get them out in wilderness and
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: what what does it mean to you? What's it's importance
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: to you? And UM a second one called Untrammeled that
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: are northern region about a Missoula put together a few
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: years ago for the fiftieth anniversary where they took a
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: group of kids UM out into I think it was
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: the Bob um Or or one of the big Montana
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: wildernesses for the first time ever. And in both films,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: these people who are being exposed to a wilderness, uh
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: for the first time are just they're astounded. It like
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: the vastness of the places and the fact that they're
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: set aside uh for you know, to to to have
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: ecological systems run their course free of human intervention. And
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: it's pretty moving. Um. But it just it really resonated
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: with me in the sense that it's like these folks,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: you know, and again, you know, just a small handful
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: in these films. You know, it's not necessarily representative of
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: all of the United States, but first time visitors and
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and and just have these amazing emotional reactions, um about
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: how special these places are. And so it says to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: me that I think, uh again, as a broader community
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: of people who are interested in conservation in public lands
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: at working to provide access and exposure, is it? Is
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: it really important priority? In my opinion? What about cultural engagement,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: um with with people who don't realize sort of what
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: we have. The other thing you guys worry about. Do
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: you have people in the East who live away from
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: large tracts of federally managed public land who might not
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: view it as pertinent to their lives. Yeah, and I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I I think public land in the East
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: is is people look at it as at least hunters
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: as a scourge because that's where all the you know,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: you can't fight your way through the people. Um. And
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't think they realized that you
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: come west and and that public land is in such
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: big swaths that that is that isn't an issue. Um.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: You know. I I think the whole wilderness concept and
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: where we're seeing people not realizing what's out there is
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: I think it started a long time ago. And if
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: you look at the late eighteen hundreds and all when
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: all these folks that were fighting for it early nineteen hundreds. Um.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: But if you look at the settling of the west
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: and when that line disappeared, there is no more frontier. Um.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: It wasn't long after that that the demographics change of
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: where people were living. People moved to the city. They
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: weren't in the wilderness anymore. Um. And I think it
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: started way back there with people losing that touch with
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: the land um. And and it's just grown from there,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: a lack of engagement. I sometimes feel that that that's
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: like one of the more that's one of the bigger
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: things is is getting people to realize that they sort
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: of have a steak and this and they have an ownership.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Because I think that even even you hear people say
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: like you always hee like federally owned, right, and other
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: people would be like, well, no, like federally managed. It's
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: owned by the US people. And I feel like people
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: don't have that steak. And it's hard because it's like
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: a learned activity. When I was growing up, I grew
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: up near the Manastee National it was now the Manastee
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: here on National Forest. We had no comprehension of how
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: it came to be you know, I told people before,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: we just viewed it like it fell from the sky.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: There was no idea that it was like a thing
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: there because people fought to have it be there, So
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: there was no like you you, We used it all
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the time, we were always out there, but never put
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: never made this connection in your head, that that that
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: public lands were sort of a system that we worked
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: for and there's people who have dedicated their their lives
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: and careers to maintaining and that it was like a
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: thing that required some public involvement, in public awareness, because
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: until someone goes to take something away from you, you
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: just don't realize. And so I hear from all kinds
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: of people all the time. I have friends who are
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: always like expressing some skepticism about public lands management, but
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: all of their activities occur on public land. They're not
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: even making the connection within their own lives, you know. Um,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that's most alarming to
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: me about That's just like ongoing conversation wherese engaged in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: about the validity of federal land management. Is his like uh,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: historic amnesia and then also certain like personal hypocrisy about
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: utilizing things without having any sort of sense of maintaining
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: their well being, Carl, So we think about all of this,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: I want to go back to that question you post
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: about the the challenges that we face in terms of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: wilderness stewardship, and I agree wholeheartedly these cultural issues and
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: the lack of awareness about wilderness, and I think furthermore
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: it applies to public lands in general, as you've described,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: is really relevant. But a couple of things more specific
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: to wilderness stewardship that I view as really pressing challenges
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: right now are the trade offs between these different elements
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: of wilderness character. I'll give you a couple of specifics.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: So one of them is the trade off between providing
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: for an opportunity for people to experience solitude versus people
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: having an opportunity to experience freedom from regulation or unconfined recreation.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: So we've talked about the boundary waters a little bit already.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Is that as freedom from regulation articulated anywhere? Yeah, so
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the elements of wilderness character.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: And help me out if I'm wrong here, but it's
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: of recreation. And by primitive and un like you're building
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: your only almost purposefully creating your contradiction. Well, in some
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: cases you are so. For example, in the Boundary Waters,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: you have if you want to go on a trip
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: in the Boundary Waters, they have a permit process. The
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: fact you have to apply for a permit and get
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: approval to go in there. That dampens your ability to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: experience unconfined recreation because they have this whole system to
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: get a permit. If you look out the window over here,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: we've got the Sandy A Mountains and it's adjacent to
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: an urban center, Albuquerque, and there are trails here. If
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: you were to hike up, for example, the Lalos Trail
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: right now, especially on a weekend, you might pass literally
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: a hundred or more other hikers on that trail in wilderness.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: So this, you know, the I don't want to overstate
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: the disconnect between people are culture and wilderness areas because
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: the fact is we have a number of wilderness areas
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: that are essentially getting loved to death, and that trade
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: off between outstanding opportunities for solitude and this primitive and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: unconfined recreation. That's one big challenge, especially for wildernesses that
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: are adjacent to major metropolitan areas. So that's one and
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: the other one that I think is a little bit
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: more interesting and where I have a lot of mixed
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: emotions personally as somebody who values wild places but also
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: really values the indigenous biota of the landscape. Is this
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: notion that you have a tradeoff between the untrammeled element
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of wilderness character how free the landscape is from active
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: management and and natural nous. Okay, So one of the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: things that Jerry can speak really well too, are the
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: tradeoffs associate with trying to conserve native species in wilderness
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: through active management, and you're conserving those native species in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: the interest of protecting the naturalness of the landscape. He's
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: done a lot of great work with HeLa Trout as
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: an example. But by simply engaging in the mettling of
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: the system, you are by default, ah impinging on the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: untrammeled character. So some examples of this, you know, I'll
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: Royal up in Lake Superior, right that had that that
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: island is virtually all wilderness, and historically there have been
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: predator prey dynamics between the wolf pack there and the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: moose population on the island. Had had wolf had wolf
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: moose for a long time, and then during a severe winter,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: wolves were able to cross a large expanse of ice
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: on Lake Superior not only once, and landed in paradise. Right, Yeah,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: there was food galore um. But not only did that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: happen once, it happened fairly often, to the point where
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: the wolf pack was sustained by this regular infusion of
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: genetic diversity from the mainland. So there's been much debate,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: including people like like Howard zon Eiser's relatives have weighed in,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: like descendants of Howard zon Isiser, on what the right
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: answer is. And if you ask different people who share
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of our values, you'll get different perspectives on this.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: But the question has arisen in light of the fact
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: that Lake Superior has not frozen to the banks of
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Ile Royal in however many years, should we be taking
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: wolves from the mainland and releasing them. Two support the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: genetic diversity of the wolf pack, which is suffering as
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: a result of low genetic diversity. So in nineteen sixty four,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: when this Act was passed, and during the decades leading
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: up to it, there was this mindset that you could
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: draw a line around a chunk of ground set it
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: aside and have it be preserved and free from human manipulation.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Over the course of the last fifty years, we have
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: come to understand that there's no place on the face
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: of this planet that has not been altered as a
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: result of human activity. Even the very most remote place
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: and the most remote wilderness up in Alaska has experienced
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: change as a result of human beings existing on the
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: face of the earth. I mean the last fifteen thousand
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: years of human history on the landscape. Yeah, and I
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: mean particularly last couple hundred years as we're burning fossil fuels.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: So if you think about the fact that every every
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: square inch of the planet is somehow affected by human activity,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: this notion that you can draw a polygon on the
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: map and then protect it as free from human influence
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: is a fundamental fallacy. So the question is what's the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: appropriate amount of meddling in the system we should do
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: to respond to exogenous outside factors that are human induced.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: What should we be doing, for example, to protect cold
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: water bowl trout fisheries in the High Country in the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: face of global change. So that conundrum, that trade off
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: is a really fascinating question, and there's a lot of
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: active debate right now in the wilderness community around that
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: question without weight, I'm gonna ask you to weigh in
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: on it, But can you explain as well, um some
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: issues about some some issues that come up surrounding the
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: use of aircraft UM by state agencies doing management duties,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: and how even those cases bring people up against the intent. Yeah,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: that's that's a perfect content and lettering of the wildern.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: That's that's exactly what exactly what I'm getting at here.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: So let's take, for example, helicopter used to manage bighorn sheep.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: Okay state agencies oftentimes want to take management activities to
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: move big horns around on the landscape. Helicopters are the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: easiest way to do that in ru good remote country.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: And back up on that, because we're still um like,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: if you look at a map of historic Bighorn Range
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: in current Bighorn Range, we haven't really scratched the surface
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: on bighorn restoration, and I think probably we never will
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: scratch the surface very deeply because frankly, a lot of
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: the historic Bighorn Range has been so altered and compromised
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: that will never support bighorns again. So I'm I'm very
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: much in favor, and I think everybody here is very
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: much in favor of doing everything we can to restore
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: native bighorn populations on the landscape where they existed historically
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: and where they've been extirpated as a result of human activity. Um.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: But this this issue hits at the heart of the
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: trade offs between managing for naturalness with bighorns being a
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: key element of the indigenous biota of a particular landscape,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: and a couple of the qualities of wilderness character, one
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: certainly being untrammeled because you're taking a management action, and
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the management action is. If you're
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: manipulating the system, you're degrading the untrammeled character, even if
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: it's for the betterment of the naturalness of the landscape.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: And then also the undeveloped character, because when you start
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: landing aircraft in a wilderness area, that degrades the undeveloped
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: character of the wilderness. And so in order to justify
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: UH an activity like that, you go through a process
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: of analyzing these trade offs, and we use a minimum
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: requirements analysis. And where that those words minimum requirement come
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: from as the word of the act it talks about
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: a variety of uses being expressly prohibited in wilderness unless
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: they meet the minimum require, the minimum requirement for the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: administration of the area's wilderness, the minimum necessary. My brother
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: is a he's an ecologist in Alaska and UH a
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: long time ago, we were having a conversation about the
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: nature of doing recovery and he was describing like he's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: like describing his job out there, and he's saying, Alaska
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: is still relatively so pristine that we're not really engaged. Um,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: we're not really engaged in recovery work in Alaska. He
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: described its like in places we're still just trying to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: describe what's there, and so you're you're afforded the luxury
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: of of a much more hands off approach because you're
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: not in the restorative phase yet you're still in the
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: phase of like, what's here, what steps do we need
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: to take to maintain it? And so natural systems can
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: play out more. But in the lower forty eight we're
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: really engaged in um saving things that are on the brink.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: And during recovery work, which has to be so much
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: more complicated than just sitting back and trying to still
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: get your arms around what we have, you know, they're
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: still describing fisheries in Alaska. They're still describing and trying
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: to quantify salmon runs in Alaska that are bigger than
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: any runs that we have in the lower forty eight.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: And so it's like, you really like the borders here,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: like to what to what Carl was saying, you realize
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: that you can pick these little spots like this little
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: island and say it's wilderness and and sort of dream
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: up this scenario where it's like protected from outside forces,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: but it has to be the borders are so porous
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: just from factors that are way outside of your control,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: like the fact that we haven't maintained some of our fisheries.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: And now it turns up that like maybe an unintended
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: concoct I guess it would be an intended consequence of
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: wilderness designation is that you sort of created a place
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: where this fish species can exist. And maybe at the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: time when we were articulating the benefits of wilderness, we
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: didn't think that like include that, but it winds up
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: being that, like not quite accidentally, but we saved something
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: that would otherwise probably be gone. So an important point
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: along those lines, Steve, You're you're spot on about the
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: species benefits, uh, but it's important to recognize that human
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: beings are on that list too. And the reason we
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: have Helo trout in the Helo Wilderness is because it's
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: these headwater cold water systems. And if you look at
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: where our nation's water supply comes from, especially in the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: relatively dry western side of our country, a lot of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: our most our most important treasured drinking water supplies have
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: their source in the high country. And I think one
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: of the reasons that we still have some really great, clean,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: healthy water resources is the fact that we have these
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: big chunks of uncompromised high country where that cold, clean
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: waters bubbling forth and melting off every spring, and so
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: you have cold water fisheries certainly benefiting, you have a
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: whole host of of other fish and wildlife species protected.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: And this is where the conversation about the relevance of
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: wilderness broadly to the American people, I think really gains
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of traction to is the fact that there
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: are direct benefits to people who will never go to
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the wilderness. There are direct benefits that people are experiencing
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: right now, and they're completely ignorant of the fact that
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: they have this linkage oftentimes through water, through clean air,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: these benefits of big chunks of of ecologically intact land. Yeah,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: that's the thing that troubled me is when people and
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: people on my side of the argument do it too,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: is people try to draw to apply dollar figures to things.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: That's something go ahead well as Actually that's something I
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: wanted to interject about to talk about because we haven't
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: really spent any time talking about why would we forego
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: the most efficient tool in wilderness, like a helicopter um
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: in which we can authorize as Jerry was talking about,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: and we we did use helicopters, determined it was the
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: minimum necessary to do that HeLa trout salvage following the fire,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: and we've done some follow up helicopter work to reintroduce
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: them as conditions have improved. But the the reason um
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: for we we we use these primitive skills. We emphasize
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: these primitive skills. That's one thing in this untrammeled quality
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: where we're trying to be hands off and let nature
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: run its course. Or that's a pretty unique um approach
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: for a federal land management agency to say, let the
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: ecosystem manage itself ideally and and the reason I can.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: Can we talk about why that is? I mean, I
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: think that's an important important context here, um to to
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: to for the public who kind of wonders what we're
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: doing with wilderness or thinks it's hands off. So that
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: untraveled quality came about through these series of lessons where
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: we as managers had the best of intentions. Um, I
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: thought we were doing the right thing using the most
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: up to date science we had available the time, and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: we we proved to ourselves later that we we really
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: didn't know much about the system and in fact, our
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: our work in the best of intentions was actually hugely
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: detrimental to the ecosystem. So an early example that in
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: Leopold's era is these efforts by the federal government, uh,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: in predator control, you know, to enhance game species and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: in provide for you know, improved grazing resources. And you know,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: we all know the stories. I mean, um, you know
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Leopold rights about in the Southwest, this extirpation of predators
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: leading to booming deer populations and you know, vegetation being
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: denuded and uh starvation events. Yeah, that was one of
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: his tasks exactly. Yeah, yeah, he was, I mean he
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: he has the story about the wolf with the green
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: firing er eyes that occurred on the Apache Secrets National Forest.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: UM and it was a kind of a yeah, an
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: aha moment for him and in his growing ecological awareness.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: And so again back in the day, we thought this
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: was the right thing to be doing. UM and and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: and we and we had some pretty that was a
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: case where we had some pretty rapid evident consequences from
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: that that line of work where we had um, you know,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: a game animal game species UM starving. We've seen and
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: follow up you know, as our our our our understanding
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: of actually ecological systems as continue to improve, like with
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: the reintroductional wolves and Yellowstone totally changed predator prey dynamics,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: you know, where he had an absence at this Keystone
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: predator um and changed ecological conditions as a result as
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the wolves got re established. So so that's an example of, um,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: why we have this untrammeled quality of willness. You know
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: why zeen Heiser and other thinkers, you know, Leopold's land
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: ethic contributed to that. The intelligence or the sign of
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: an intelligent tinker is to not throw away all the pieces. Right,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: So we you know, we we may not ever know
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: at all, given the complexity these ecosystems, and so the
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: untrembled quality, you know, I describe it as an essence
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: a small insurance policy to have some of these landscapes left,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: you know, in North America, or at least United States,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: five of the United States, where we're trying to let
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: nature run its course because we may not know at all. Right.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: Another good example here in the Southwest, as we're looking
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: out the window at some smoke right now, too, is
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: a hundred year history of suppressing wildfire from the landscape
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: and thinking that that was the best thing we could
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: be doing for the national forests, you know, from their inception,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: keeping fire off the ground. And now we're doing everything
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: we can, like Jerry mentioned, to encourage these naturally ignited
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: wildfires to burn. And we acknowledge the fact that fire
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: is a key element of these systems. Some of our
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: forest types here in the Southwest evolved in the face
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: of fires that burned somewhere in the neighborhood of every
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: five to thirty years or so. And we've got chunks
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: of ground here, including that mountain out the window, that
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: haven't burned for over a hundred years. So and when
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: those places go, they tend to go in a catastrophic well,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: so you go from high high frequency fires that burn
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: at a low severity, So fires that burn often but
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: consume a lot of leaf litter um fine fuels, they
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: burn across the surface of the forest um. In the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: absence of those fires, you get a lot of fuel
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: building up, so that when there is a fire, it
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: could be on the order of hundreds of thousands of
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: acres burning at very high severity, where even mature trees
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: are eliminated. So during is making a really important point
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: here that you know, as an ecologist, I often contemplate
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: what is it a hundred years from now that they're
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: going to be looking back at our generation and going
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: you idiots, Like what were you thinking? Because hindsight so like,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: what will be the putting cigarettes and people's see rations
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: exactly of the future. Yeah, it's a it's a it's
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: a good question. What do you think it will be
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: fire suppression? I think we already kind of know that.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: One man. You don't have to answer. I got some ideas,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: you got some ideas of what we might later realize
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: we're big mistakes. You don't have to give them to me.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go think about it and gonna go back
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: into the thing on top of the dollar, the dollar,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: is that I find that people often want landscapes to
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: justify themselves, um constantly financially, to be where people look
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: at something like, well, what value is it bringing us
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: or me right now? And that's inspired some some thinkers
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: and some wilderness advocates to be like, Okay, um, let's
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: play this game, and let's start as signing dollar values
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: to clean air and clean water. Oh. It's an interesting
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: concept and one thing that it makes me uneasy because
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: I'm like, but I don't think everything in the world
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: needs to justify itself financially all the time. Like when
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning and and and my
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: kids are my three kids are waking up and they
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: climb into bed with me and my wife, I don't
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: look at them and be like, how are you gonna
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: justify your existence today financially to me? Right? Because like,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: some things are like bigger and better and more important
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: than that. And so I do struggle a little bit
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: with people feeling that it's necessary. But it is a
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: really interesting idea that we would start looking in the
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: West or across the country. At what dollar value is
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: there to place on sources of clean air and clean water? Um.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: And I don't even think people have really even probably
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: haven't made much progress. And it's it's such a huge
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: idea and difficult to quantify. But I wonder if that
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: in the end will some will in some way be
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: something that helps people realize the hornets of wild landscapes
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: in this country when we do have that more when
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: we do take a more holistic approach looking at natural systems. Yeah,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: the whole ecosystem services conversation. I mean a quick example.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I was in southern California before coming out here,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: and um, growing population, changing climate stress on aquifers, so
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: less water available in San Diego County is building a
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: new deesel plan and you talk about the billions and
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars um it's gonna take to build that
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: thing and then operate it in the long term so
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: that we can have fresh clean water, you know, out
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: of the ocean. Um, were we to invest in uh,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: you know, protecting our lands or where we still have
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: intact ecosystems that provide clean water. I mean, that's a
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: that's a huge Um, you know, we're avoiding a huge
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: economic cost. And so I think it's a I think
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: it's a hugely relevant conversation, you know, And I get
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: you that it's a you know, we're at a place
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: where we've had to we've had to really craft these
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: you know, complex uh analyses and arguments about the dollar
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: worth of these these ecosystems serve is. But that's just
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: where we're at, you know. But it wasn't part of
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: the language in absolutely not, No, what did what did
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: a hundred senators in nineteen s four? What we're a
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: hundred senators voting from an emotional standpoint in some way?
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: It had it been it couldn't have been a matter
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: of like practicality, you don't know. Yeah, No, I mean,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: I I'm not I'm not able to get into their heads.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: I mean I think again, you know, folks saw the
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: value and we were again look at the historical context, right,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: I mean we our natural resource economy and extraction was booming. Um,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: we had this also kind of parallel boom and tourism
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: and an outdoor recreation. You look at the National Parks
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: were building lodges and roads, and the Fourth Service was
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: trying to you know, um, keep up with them in
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: terms of you know, post World War two, people want
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: to get out and enjoy their public lands, and so
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: we're we're we were massively developing resources and lands a
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: parallel from from the extract extraction of natural resources to
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: grow our economy. And then they get people out of doors,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: and so I think again you get to this thinking
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: about you know, this, this this the role of the
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: frontier and taming the frontier in American history and as
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: an American identity, I think, I mean, it's just this
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: pace of um, all of a sudden booming pace of
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: natural resource development I think was pretty alarming to folks.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: And that's what you know, really, I think galvanized by
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century, galvanized the public, and
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: they're elected representatives to do something about it. Where you
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: can look at the time and be like, we're gonna
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: we're rolling, We're gonna keep rolling, but let's sort of
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: put a built in cap on how far this might go. Yeah,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly. I think It's worth noting, though, that the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: economic arguments have been there all along, getting back to
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: leopold stance that these were the landscapes that had very
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: little value otherwise. And here's a Leopold quote that kind
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: of agrees with you and kind of disagrees with you. Say, Man,
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: I'm open to that our remnants of wilderness will yield
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: bigger values to the nation's character and health than they
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: will to its pocket book, and to destroy them will
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: be to admit that the latter are the only values
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: that interest us. So we're saying, these these landscapes aren't
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: really that valuable financially anyway, and if we treat them
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: as if they do, UH will be negating these other
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: inherent intrinsic values. So the economics have been there all along.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: But I think there is utility, and I like the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: comparison to the kids greeting you in the morning. In
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: terms of trying to weigh everything in dollars and cents,
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: there's there's danger and attempting that, um, But I don't
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: mean to say that. I mean there's danger in thinking
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: that that. Just as a life philosophy, I think there's
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: danger in thinking that every aspect of our lives and
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: society and humanity is a dollar figure. To the contrary,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: I would submit to you that the things of the
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: greatest value you cannot affect the dollar figure two, and
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: I would include our nation's wildlife and public lands on
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: that list, along with my family, along with my relationships
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: with friends. I mean, you can't put dollar figures on
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: that stuff, the stuff that we hold most dearly ish
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: indescribable in terms of dollars and cents. And yet when
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: we have to have conversations about the value of these places,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of ways to argue in terms
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: of dollars and cents. So you feel like bringing on,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: I'll talk about So, yeah, the outdoor recreation. Let's chat
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: about that for a second. Eighty seven billion dollars a year,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: seven point six million jobs in the USA from outdoor recreation. Um,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: you take away public lands. What does that mean in
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: terms of jobs and in terms of the economic engine. Um,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: there's a powerful one. Think about the ecosystem services, clean air,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: clean water. Hard to put a dollar figure on, but
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: there are people, there are professors who make six figures dollar.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: He is thinking about how to do that. So you
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: can make those arguments. But I agree with the fundamental
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: notion that there are some things of such great importance
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: to us as individuals that they defy economics but bring
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: it on if you want to chat in that language. No,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: I do notice that in that you see a high
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: level of engagement with some businesses that are involved in
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: the outdoor economy, where they hear some of the murmurings
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: that we're dealing with politically and they're like, hey, man,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: you are fixing to be like infringing on my business here,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: because I am in the outdoor business. And if we're
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about business friendly to me, that means public
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: access on land because that's my client base. So it
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: is I do like, man, I welcome the input. Yeah.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: So there's one arena that we haven't touched on about
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: wilderness that I think would be a particular interest to
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: a man of your reading tendencies and and uh general
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: conversation points, and that is the cast of characters that
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: we have stemming from the southwestern wild country at the
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: turn of the last century, some of the mountain men
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: who came into their own in landscapes on the HeLa
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: and there's some stories around the last few grizzly bears
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: in the Southwest, and some of these mountain men of
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds in the landscapes
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: we've been talking about, particularly around the HeLa that you
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: need to add to your reading list. Characters like Ben Lily.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard of Nat Straw? Hear that guy? How
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: about Bear More? Another dude, You gotta check out Ben Lily.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: This guy from the age of fifty five to seventy,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: so a fifteen year period. Ben Lily is claimed to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: have hunted every single day except for Sundays, for fifteen years.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: It's estimated that down in the HeLa Country he was
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: responsible for killing somewhere between six hundred and a thousand
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: mountain lions really with however, his lifetime with hounds and
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: along the hounds front, there was a one one particular
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: hound he had named Crook. And on the box in
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: which Ben Lily buried his his treasured dog Crook, he wrote,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: here lies Crook, a bear and lion dog that helped
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: kill two hundred ten bear and four d twenty six
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: lion since nineteen fourteen, period of eleven years owned by
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: b Van Lily. And that that bear, that that dog's
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: buried somewhere in near Cupio Creek, down in Jerry's Neck
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: of the woods in the HeLa Country. So this guy
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: he literally lived outdoors and um man, some destructive fellows,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: So that that's it. Yeah, you could get away with
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: That's That's exactly the point. It's like, in some ways,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: you can look back at at the woodcraft and the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: you know, you talk about having like the hunting bug
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: to the point that it gets to be a disease
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: that you're hunting, like, you know, six days out of
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: the week for fifteen years. That's that's the hunting bug there.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Like when you're talking about the figures that extra pated
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: wildlife during the unregulated years. On one hand, like I
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: always look at him in two ways. On one hand,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, sort of a like even at
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: the time, would have been regarded by many people as
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: a morally grotesque figure. But they also, I thought, is
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: account for Like it's not easy to find that stuffy
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: and the level of woodsmanship. Yeah, in the age years
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: killed thirteen bears before he ate breakfast one day, you know,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: and it's like that's no easy feat for anyone, right, Yeah,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: And it is. It is tempting to you know, like
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: venerate the woodcraft that it takes to accomplish something like that.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: But if you start looking into the folks who are
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: actively pursuing predators in southwest New Mexico eastern Arizona during
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: that time frame that these species were extirpated by these species.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: I'm talking you know, the the last grizzlies being killed,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: Mexican wolves being eliminated. Um, you could probably narrow the
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: bulk of that mortality down to like a handful of folks.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: And they approached their work with almost like a biblical
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: uh fever in terms of how they hunted these species,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: and if you read some of their journals, you know
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: they were it was very much like a good versus
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: evil mindset that they were in to cleanse the landscape
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: of these predators. UM. And thinking about grizzlies, one of
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: the one of the quotes that I loved UM was
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: along the lines of you'll hear people say that bears
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: and men are inherently good and not looking to get
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: in trouble. But you don't have to go far to
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: find exceptions. When when did the when when of the
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: last grizzly vantage out of New Mexico. I'm not shot
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico, out of Arizona. So like this kind
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: of chunk of wild country on the border of Arizona,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. The last one was on Escadia Mountain. And
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: there's an essay in the Sand County Almanac by Leopold
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: titled Escodia, And that was in the mid nineteen thirties
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: that that bear was killed. Um, and that essay it's uh,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: it's a beautiful testament to the bear and one of
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: the and to the mountain and one of the one
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: of my favorite quotes. I'm grabbing my copy here right
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: now because Leopold took issue with the fact that this
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: bear was killed in June, right, and here here's what
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: he said. Uh. The trapper had packed his mule and
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: headed for Escodilla. In a month, he was back his meal,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: staggering under a heavy hide. There was only one barn
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: in town big enough to dry it on. He had
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: tried traps, poison and all his usual whiles to no avail.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: Then he had erected a set gun in a defile
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: through which only the bear could pass, and waited. The
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: last grizzly walked into the string and shot himself. It
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: was June. The pelt was foul, patchy, and worthless. It
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: seemed to us rather an insult to deny the last
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: grizzly the chance to leave a good pelt as a
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: memorial to his race. All he left was a skull
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: in the National Museum and a quarrel among scientists over
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: the Latin name of the skull. Really, man, you guys
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: got any last thoughts besides that? I had to ask,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: is still I have last thought questions still about the
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: wilderness thing? Just so that are are we can appease
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: all my friends worries you you dig that you're gonna
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: dig into the conspiracy theories again? Yeah, because the other
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: question that comes up is that if it's all primitive
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: and and uh, at what point are they're gonna say
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: you can't use modern firearms anymore in the wilderness. I
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: think that's maybe not even really like the question that
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: needs to be answered, but just answered to me. You
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: already said it that it would take an act of
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Congress like make any But what change? Right? That's ridiculous
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: because the nineteen sixty four you're not it's not seventeen
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: sixty four barrels shooting two seventies. No, I know, but
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: it's like it's a mechanized piece of equipment. Right, let
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: me go back, It's not motorized motorizing, wheeled conveyances. Yeah,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: so I mean that's the Acting. This listing of prohibity
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: uses talks about you know, landing of aircraft, motor vehicles,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: motorized equipment, and mechanized transportation. Mechanized transport, so these wheeled vehicles,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: um or you know, sailboats, anything that allows one to
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: travel or to carry goods via mechanical advantage. So um,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: a firearm doesn't fall within any of those categories. So
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: again you read, you go back to the the Act,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: and that's our guidance, as are the four Wilderness Managing Agencies,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: and and we have no legal basis to ever even
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: entertain something like that. Excellent, That's exactly what I needed
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: to hear your email with somebody right now about this.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: No no, no, no no. This is from a recent
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: conversation I had, but that tooks actly what needed to
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: be stated, like it's awesome, thank you. You know. In
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: um and Joan Didion's book, uh, she wrote to two
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: books about the sixties, almost called the White Album, and
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: one was called Slouching towards Bethlehem. And I think it
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: wasn't Slouching towards Bethlehem, Uh, which was written in the
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: pre Internet age. Okay, so the Internet wasn't even here yet.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: But in Slouching towards Bethlehem, she talked, she's talking about
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: people who who live in a in a in an
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: intellectual fantasy land, and she describes it like that that
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: we have so much and she again pre internet, which
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: is something we have. There's so much information out there,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: and there's so much like factual information out there that
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: people get overwhelmed by the duties that they would have
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: to inform themselves about certain issues. And it's such an overwhelming,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: daunting task to really go out and find out the
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: truth of a matter that you just kind of get
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: to a place where you're like, screw it. It's a
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: lot easier just to listen to what my buddy at
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: the bar said, because that saves me. That gives me
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: this thing where I feel like I know the real
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: story without having to do any of the work of
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: finding out like what actually is going on. And I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: think that that is only it's like only become worse
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: as the amount of information has increased. People's tendency to
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: retreat from information as increased because it's hard to go
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: find out, like to get a nuanced perspective on things.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: It's just so much easy to be like, yeah, well
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: what Bob told me that any what Bob said you
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: so kind of along those lines that you guys are
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: I mean still in the mode of closing thoughts. I mean,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to share that we dragged the closers on.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: Go ahead, Yeah, that's cool. I mean, you know, so
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: I name everyone around this tape values, you know, fish, wildlife,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: wilderness and other wild lands and these experiences that you
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: can have. UM. And you know, I feel like I'm
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: a new hunter. We didn't talk about that. UM started
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: last year in earnest UM grew up in Seattle, Like
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: I said, run around public lands. I joke around that
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like the long haired you know, for you guys
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: can't see me on the podcast, I'm like a long
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: haired granola eating you know, seattleleite wilderness guy. UM. But recently,
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: I mean through my upbringing in in that context and
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: value on local food where you know where it comes from,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: and you know, you have ethics about the well being
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: of you know, any any kind of animal products that
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: you eat, Hunting was a natural fit for me, and
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: so I make friends with guys like Jerry and Carl,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: who I know value they span these kind of traditional
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: communities like the hunters and anglers and the wilderness people.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: Um so I'm I'm pleased, and I know the two
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: of you are the same pleased to have a company
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: like that. But you know, there's still a ton of
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: work to be done, you know where we share. I mean,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I look at my friends who are are
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe who don't know as much as about wilderness,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: who who value hunting, my wilderness friends who are not
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: hunters and anglers, and you look at their value systems
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: and there's far more overlap in common value than difference.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: You know, they're gonna be some minor differences. And so
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: my closing thought as a person who cares deeply about
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: you know, wilderness, wild places, ecosystems, and biodiversity, is for
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: folks to get out of their comfort zones, get out
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: of their communities and where they don't have these established relationships,
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: you know with the quote other side, you know, build
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: those relationships, or get out and give back to your
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: public lands, Volunteer for one of your your national forests,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: and in some kind of stewardship activity, get involved with
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna speak on on behalf of the
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: wilderness community. You know, we have organizations like the New
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: Mexico Wilderness Alliance, who do they do advocacy, which we
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: don't do in the government, but they also have a
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: stewardship program. They're helping us take care of these wild places,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: keeping them natural, keeping them wild, get engaged, and they've
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: actually done a great job. I'm in working with the
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: back country hunters and anglers and New Mexican Wildlife Federation
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: to to find and sort of, you know, act upon
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: that common value system. But I think there's a lot
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: more really fruitful work to be done on behalf of
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: public lands and acknowledging we all have a lot of
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of interest in common to continue building those relationships,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of outside of our traditional communities. So
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: that's something that I you know, it strikes me as
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: sort of a again a long term sort of a
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: part of the willerness community that's newer to the hunting
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: and angland community. Yeah, my allegiance, like my lifelong allegiance
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: to hunting and fishing is what delivered me into wilderness advocacy.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: It wasn't the other way. Around. It was like my
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: question all the time is like when faced with an issue,
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: as you asked myself, um, what's best for hunters and
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: fishermen and wildlife? You know, that's like my guiding principle
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: on things that pertained to that space. And it was
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: in asking myself that question all the time that I
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: came to be a proponent and an advocate for wilderness.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I would flip it around there and say, you know,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: what's best for a wilderness? And there are certainly multiple things,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: but hunters and english you know, people who get out
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: enjoy take advantage of these these wild places, and we'll
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: turn around and and advocate for their stewardship, you know.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: And so I'd say, I'd say it's a two way street. Yeah,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: anyone else. I got a couple of thoughts at you. So,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: first of all, I think, you know, these two guys,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: Born and Jerry are a really interesting kind of pair
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: the direction that took them into this line of work.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: If you if you compare the process by which Jerry
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: came aboard with Federal Land Management Agency to that a Born,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: you've got a rural guy an urban guy, but both
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: of them very passionate about the public lands system and
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: our agency and the folks who work for other agencies
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: at the state level, other federal land management agencies, we
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: all tend to have a very strong relationship to the
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: resources that we manage. And I think there's a tendency
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about a big organization like the Forest
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Service has more than thirty thousand employees, it becomes kind
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: of faceless. It's just this big, mysterious organization. But I
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: think it's important for people to realize that a lot
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: of the folks working in this outfit and others again
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: at the state and federal level, are coming into these
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: jobs from a place of deep passion and reverence over
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: the resources that we're managing on behalf of the public
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: and we share a lot of the same motivations and passions,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: even though we come from a lot of different directions.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: Like Pyrn and Jerry and then the parting shot I'll
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: take it gets back to this question you asked about
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: the biggest the biggest threats that we face like in
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: the in the long run here um and I'm just
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: going to speak about this country because I think there's
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: some challenges we face as a global community that are
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: very pressing as well before Yeah, I want I want
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: to back up, just clarify, because you can't. You're saying
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: something that's kind of blowing my mind. Are you saying
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: you guys didn't come to work for the force service
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: for the money. Well, so let me let me respond
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: to that. I will say I think a lot. You know,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: people who go into natural resource management UM tend to
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: be motivated by motivated primarily by things other than making
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Yeah, it's not like it's not like
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: going to word for Goldman. That being set for folks
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: out there listening who are contemplating career tracks in natural
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: resources management, for the the young men and women who
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: are in high school right now listening to this, there
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: are jobs, there are career tracks available in these agencies
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: where your quality of life can be phenomenal. And when
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: you get up and go to work and you're doing
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: a job that feels like important work and it resonates
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: with you on a personal level, you have a form
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: of wealth that few people on the face of this
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: planet can lay claim to. To feel like the work
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: that you're doing is important, and uh, you get up
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: wanting to go in and contribute it's something very few
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: people experience. So if you think that something you might
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: want to do, not mean that as I did not
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: mean that as a hack. I just meant that, And
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about relatives of mine and my dearest friends.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: It's like like adventure, right, a sense of adventure, a
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: sense of wine to see new things, a sense of
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: wanting to do public service, a sense of wine to
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: find a way to have a life that that has
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: a strong outdoor element. These, more than other factors, seem
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: to bring people to public service in land management agencies.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: I was not I don't mean you're not the wrong way.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: I just want people to know, like we we you
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: know these agencies, state agencies, federal agencies. We need people
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: coming into our doors, into public service careers who embody
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: what we're talking about, that passion for the resource. And
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: that being said, you know, the salaries are very competitive
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: if you're in this line of work. I feel very
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: thankful for every aspect of the job I'm in and
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: have a comfortable lifestyle, very comfortable lifestyle. So along these lines,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: I've got a tr quote for you, Steve, far and away,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: the best prize that life has to offer is working hard.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: At work worth doing the best prize that life has
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: to offer. And I feel like the work that Jerry
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: bjorn I and thirties some thousand other people in this
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: outfit are doing, we're working hard at work worth doing,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: and we're doing it for the public. And that's a
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: really sweet thing to be doing as a professional. And
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: then getting back to your question about the biggest challenges,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: like what what do I see as kind of existential
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: threats to our culture and how it relates to wilderness.
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: We talked a lot about the rugged individualism in this
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: notion of self reliance and how wilderness has played into
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: our history and our ethos as an American culture. And
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: I I'm speaking personally right now, but I feel like
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: our are increasingly tame existence as a species is inherently
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: a threat to our well being. And I mean in
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: terms of our our mental and physical well being, and
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: I mean in terms of our ecological awareness and literacy.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: So if we have places where people can immerse themselves
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: in a natural setting and become acutely attuned to our
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: relationship with and dependence upon the natural world, that translates
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: into a whole host of behaviors that I think are
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: imperative for our persistence on a healthy planet. Yeah, just relevancy,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: an engagement. Yeah, so the big threat to summarize our
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: lifestyles are becoming to tame wilderness in contrast to the
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: normal routine of an Americans life now in this era,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: is an opportunity to escape that tameness, to be humbled,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: to experience humility, to be really uncomfortable sometimes, to be challenged.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, all the opportunities for recreation, hunting, fishing,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: et cetera feed right into that. But the key, the
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: key ingredient is having those places on the map where
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: you have an escape. And most countries around the world
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: do not have that at their ready disposal way that
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: we do. Yeah. I once heard wilderness described as the
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: nation's proving grounds, and uh that that resonated with me
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: because at the time that I discovered it, it served
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: that purpose. I mean, it gave shape to my life
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: that it. Honey, I was just gonna say out nice
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: closing thought, but yeah, that willness is a set place
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: where you can go and uh, you can really feel
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: how small you are in the universe. You know, when
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: you go there and you're humbled and you just realize
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: that environment doesn't really care about you. And um that
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: my brother always talked about how much he likes it
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: because he likes how scared it makes him feel all
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: the time. Here is an important emotion that I experienced
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: for sure that I would add it to Carl's list.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: What's the what's the Leopold quote? Man? Um, poor is
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: the life that achieves freedom from fear? Right? Yeah? Yeah, man,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: laying in bed at night, just waiting for that old
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: bear to get you. That's good for you. I'm glad.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I shall never be young without while places to be
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: young in. Yeah, go on all day, all right, thank you,