Latest / The Wild Idea / Sam Forstag: Smoke Jumping, Union Organizing, and the Fight for Montana’s First District

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Sam Forstag: Smoke Jumping, Union Organizing, and the Fight for Montana’s First District · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to our continuing conversation for a wild, connected, and ever-changing world. I am your host, Bill Hodge, and we'll be joined, as always, by my partner in crime, Anders Reynolds, in just a moment. And today, as we close in on election day, we bring you a candidate for the House that has ash on his boots and a union firefighting card in his pocket. Sam Forstag, who is running for Montana's First District, a place where public lands are front and center in a very, very tight contest. Anders, it is pretty consequential campaign with a critical election coming up. The future of public lands seem,
• 0:38
  frankly, hanging in the balance. I don't know if you agree with that, but it's, it's a big one.
• 0:42
  Oh, hi, Bill. Yeah. I'm really, really excited about this conversation today. As I've been saying to you and to my friends and to anyone who will listen for a few months now,
• 0:56
  I am so geeked out about the way that Sam Forstag has put public lands, as you said, front and center. Obviously, Montana voters are pretty emphatic on the issue. I think there was a, a survey from University of Montana that came out earlier in the year that found, you know, that over 80% support a ban on selling or transferring public lands, uh, into private hands. And so, to see him campaign on that is, is really, really thrilling. I mean, the
• 1:28
  2024 Montana GOP platform called for relinquishing federally managed lands to the states, and, you know, Mr. Forstag's opponent has aligned himself with that platform. But these places matter, and in particular, in this House district, these voters know these places matter. And it's just been really exciting to see this issue kind of right up in front of, of what's becoming like a, a bellwether race across, um, the United States, and it's drawing a lot of media attention and financial attention and political attention. And, you know, if this thing goes the right way, I think it really, really proves that voters do care about public lands as an election issue, m-maybe to a greater an extent than common wisdom would have said before. So yeah, super, super exciting.
• 2:20
  Yeah. It's, it's, it's a critical race. And if y- you know, Anders and I happen to live in the district that we're talking about today, but if you don't, if you live across the country, I can assure you, you will enjoy hearing Sam talk with passion about his time as a federal employee working for our public lands. It is, it is really, really a ri- rich conversation we plan on having with him today. So, doesn't matter if you live in Western Montana, think you'll enjoy a, a conversation with Sam Forstag today. Before we talk to Sam, you had a big family event over the weekend.
• 2:49
  I had a big family event over the weekend. My kid sister, Molly, got married back in Arkansas, and it was so great. It was so great. It was a great night. It was a fun night. It was long and full of so many astonishments. And Bill, I wanna say, I hope last Saturday night was the first of many long evenings and astonishments for Molly and for her husband, Mark. And I have to say, as, as honored and as overjoyed as I was to walk my sister down the aisle, I was even more moved to see the love that surrounded them all night, love coming from family and friends, and to find the two of them so often cleaving to each other amid all the festivities. They have all my love among an abundance of it from other people. And when I left North Little Rock on Sunday, it was 93 degrees, and when I arrived home in Missoula that evening, I had to clean snow off of my car in the airport parking lot in my shorts.
• 4:06
  [laughs]
• 4:06
  So-
• 4:07
  Yeah.
• 4:07
  Interesting times we live in, Bill.
• 4:09
  Well, congratulations to Mark and Molly. That's, uh, fantastic. I mean, I would have liked to have been in Arkansas over the weekend as well, probably not at the wedding, maybe a little bit farther north and west of there.
• 4:21
  Uh,
• 4:23
  I know what you're talking about. I... Mercifully, I missed the Tennessee-Arkansas game because of this wedding, and I-I'm so happy. I...
• 4:32
  [laughs]
• 4:34
  Arkansas hasn't been any good of late. We haven't been any good. We just plain stink. And I don't like NIL, but so many other programs, especially in the SEC, have used it to crawl out of a hole. Look at Mississippi State. Look at Missouri. But we just plain don't know how to use it to build a roster.
• 4:56
  The defense is fine. It's fine. There's some depth and some talent there. But going into this season, I was asking, "Who
• 5:03
  are the dynamic playmakers on offense?" And Bill, all of that is compounded by Hunter Yurachek's just blowing the head coaching search. He wanted Kiffin, and he was never gonna get him. Then he wanted Alex Golesh, who went to Auburn, and so we settled for Silverfield.
• 5:21
  And where has that gotten us? It's gotten us a blown fourth quarter lead against Tennessee. What I will say is Arkansas, even at its worst, always seems to have one good game in them in Fayetteville. They always seem to knock off one top 25 team. And going into the fourth quarter up, I think, 13 on Tennessee, I thought, "Maybe this'll be the week." And I admit it, I was excited 'cause I wanted to rub it in. I was thinking about you. And when I checked the score after the game, [scoffs] I, I wanna say disaster, but it's just so typical. It's just so typical.
• 5:53
  I could not resist, and I feel honestly really bad for, I mean, I'll just say fourth and 10. You know, it's gonna be a, a question people have about him punting the ball with, you know, two minutes or so left in the game. But I, I don't... He was in a no, he was in a no-win situation. I'll defend your coach. He was in a no-win situation, but...
• 6:12
  Hunting for the buyout, I think. I think he's gotta go.
• 6:16
  [laughs]
• 6:16
  Yurachek's gotta go. Everybody's gotta go.
• 6:19
  [laughs] Uh, too much football talk for people who love public lands. Before we have Sam join us in the conversation, I've gotta give you the Anders Nerd Word of the Day, 'cause we still haven't come up with a better phrase for it, but the Anders Nerd Word of the Day is refractory. Refractory.
• 6:35
  Refractory. I actually don't think I know what that means, Bill. I know what olfactory means. I know that's, like, related to the sense of smell, but you're gonna have to educate me. What is refractory?
• 6:46
  A little, like, hardened by heat, if you will. Like-
• 6:49
  Hmm
• 6:49
  ... changed by the heat of the moment. Um-
• 6:53
  Hmm
• 6:53
  ... it might be appropriate that we have a firefighter on here for me to try to get the word out of you for refractory.
• 6:59
  Hmm.
• 7:00
  So, yeah. So see if you can, see if you can slide that in.
• 7:03
  Yeah. Thanks for the hint. I think I, I will try to use it there.
• 7:06
  Sam, welcome to the "Wild Idea" podcast, where, as you might have guessed, we love big, audacious, wild ideas, and union smoke jumper to a neck-and-neck race for a seat in Congress, I think qualifies as a wild idea. During a brief moment in college, I was a, a wildlife biology major, and I had a chance to research the health of a population of white-tailed deer and how much pressure that, that herd was under, and we analyzed the adrenal glands on harvested deer to measure that pressure. So, why do I tell you this weird little anecdote from my past? Well, I'm curious how the adrenaline hits different in a campaign like this versus fighting a wildfire deep in the back country. What's the adrenaline dump like?
• 7:45
  Uh, you know, I'll tell you, it's funny you ask, 'cause we just wrapped up our second debate of the election this morning, 8:00 AM. It was a hell of a time for, for a debate. And, uh, yeah, when we wrapped up, I mean, you know, I had just finished, uh, in about an hour at 8:00 AM, sharing stage with, I mean, every bit of hateful, angry rhetoric you could imagine being regurgitated through Aaron Flint's mouth. And, um, you know, I, I think we actually, well, did a pretty, pretty damn good job, and I think, uh, there's a reason Trump's coming. It's 'cause Aaron keeps messing these debates up, among other things, and he, he needs the help. But, uh, it felt... I remarked to two friends who, one of whom's a former smoke jumper that also left to help with the campaign, that it, you know, feels a whole lot like when you're, are jumping into a scary spot. You know, like, not all jump spots are made equal, and sometimes it's a big field, and it's fun, and everyone high-fives, and sometimes it's a little tennis ball-sized opening in tall timber, and the plane's pretty quiet, and you are breathing and keeping everything slow until the second you get there, and once you've opened it up, there's that adrenaline dump. And yeah, there's a lot of similarities there, but it's, uh, it's just like one of my rookie trainers told me when I was training for jumping, you know, "Just breathe, and nothing matters but the moment, and, you know, uh, if you know what you're doing's right, it makes it a whole lot easier."
• 8:54
  A whole lot easier. Sam, thanks for being on the show. Bill brought up college, and I wanna stay there for just a minute. For folks that don't know your bio, you worked multiple jobs to get through the University of Montana, where you studied philosophy and political science. You were elected student body president there. And then, instead of law school, you went to the fire line to pay off your loans, and you stayed eight years, four of them as a smoke jumper. Aldo Leopold didn't get to his land ethic by admiring the view. He got there as a working forester, and there's a chapter in "Sand County Almanac," I think it's called "Good Oak," where he saws through a lightning-killed oak and reads up centuries worth of history in its rings. You know, that's, that's knowledge that only comes through the crosscut saw. So, my question to you is, did your land ethic come from, from playing on these lands or for wor- or, or from working on them, and did it change once the land was the thing, you know, paying your bills?
• 9:53
  I, I think I had the seeds of it. I mean, I, you know, I've always, you know, found solace outside and loved hunting and hiking and skiing, but I think that my land ethic and, frankly, my political ethic came from doing the work outside. You know, uh, whether you're studying... I'd actually offer that our forestry department at UM is a uniquely good program at getting people out into the field when they're earning their degree. But across the board, we have so many people at the highest levels of power who do not know how any of this stuff works
• 10:20
  on the ground. And I mean, fire and forestry is a, a hell of an example. I mean, when they started those cuts, you know, the DOGE cuts a year and a half ago that got me into this thing, they claimed they were going after government inefficiency, and there are huge inefficiencies in the federal government. It was not the people they came after. You know, 85% of the Montanans they fired in the Forest Service in the first round of cuts were making 19.70 an hour or less. It was 360 people, and most of them were the ones swinging the tools for the lowest amount of money. That's not the inefficiency in the federal government. The inefficiencies are the processes, many of which those people are the only ones who are able to con- keep the cogs turning and, and navigate. So, uh, I hope to change that when I get to Congress. I mean, it kills me that the closest excuse we have for a wildland firefighter on Capitol Hill right now is a corporate executive cosplaying as a firefighter and getting rich on all of our dime doing it. His name happens to be Tim Sheehy. And it kills me that when we have a chance to actually invest and fix these things, like so often, we, we don't actually fix what's broken. I mean, what's broken is things like federal hiring, where it takes nine months to hire somebody who might make 15 bucks an hour as a forester on the back end. It's things like workman's comp. I mean, these are the, these are the things that anyone who's been on the ground doing the work could tell you a better idea for how to fix than Elon Musk could. I guarantee you that.
• 11:31
  Let's talk about doing that work. You once logged more than a thousand hours of overtime in a single season. That's six extra months of full-time work packed into one season. What did that cost you physically and at home, and, and maybe more importantly, what does the public most misunderstand about the kind of people that do that work?
• 11:52
  Yeah. Uh, I mean, there's an immense personal cost when the only way to make a living is with an, an exorbitant amounts of overtime. I mean, I, I've, I've had three seasons where I clocked more than a thousand hours, and I mean, my last fire season as a smoke jumper, my math was, I need to crack around 950 at a minimum just to keep my 980-square-foot roof over my head through the three months I got off in the winter. I mean, there's a reason if you look at wildland firefighters, the divorce rate is about 75%. Uh, we're a profession that has one of the highest rates of suicide of any profession. ... in the country. It's a very isolating thing to have to give up your life for six to nine months straight just to get by, and we have structured it so that you have to do so. I mean, without overtime, at the end of 2024, my monthly take-home pay was something around $2,000, and my mortgage had gone up to 2,700. A- again, for a small, pretty humble place, like, there's no other way to do it, and that is a hell of a twisted incentive, and we need to get better help to people who, whether they're wildland firefighters or, frankly, law enforcement, like first responders, get them the ment- mental health services they need and, like, give people the breathing room they need to earn a living doing these critically important jobs.
• 13:00
  So, Norman Maclean spent the end of his life trying to understand the Mann Gulch fire that happened near Helena. You know, he held a-- he wrote a whole book on it that I'd recommend to folks. It's called "Young Men and Fire." That fire resulted in 13 men dead, most of them Missoula smoke jumpers.
• 13:20
  And his point in, in, in writing that book was that there are some fires that take decades to understand. I'm curious, is there a fire you're still working out? And, you know, if so, what did that refractory experience change about you or the way you see land or the way you interact with other people?
• 13:41
  Yeah. Uh, absolutely. If I-- I mean, I'd give you two, two instances. I mean, uh, I'd say the, the first is, is a fire I, I jumped my last season. It was early July two summers back, and I jumped a fire in Alaska. They had a pretty, you know, hot and heavy fire season up there, as they tend to once every few years. And, uh, we jumped our, I think it was second fire in, in about seven days, and there's six of us left, right, six of us on this load. And, uh, a load is how many jumpers go out the door. And we were jumping into about a, you know, probably 30-acre fire burning in black spruce. There's already air resources on it, and to, you know, skip a lot of details, what ended up happening is a whole lot of other fires started in Fairbanks proper. We lost our air support, and the wind switched. And what was a 30-acre fire with us at the heel of it suddenly was blowing up into about 60,000 acres by that evening, coming right at us. And it was the closest I've ever felt to death. We kept our cool. We hiked about a mile and a half to find a little patch of hardwoods that don't typically burn, uh, in that area of Alaska, and were luckily able to ride it out up there and get some air support at the last minute. In the course of all of this, we're communicating with dispatch, right? Uh, we're telling them, you know, "We've lost air support. We need transport right now because now we're out here without any way to get out." You know, we're in the tundra without a road for miles around. When we-- when the wind switches, we convey the seriousness of that, and I had to-- you know, we had to get on a call, uh, and say, "Hey, we need air resources not for fire suppression now, but to save, you know, for firefighter life and safety, to make sure we don't have people dying." Come to find out when all that wraps up that this is a dispatcher who just started three weeks ago. And when DOGE comes in and fires 2,000 secondary fire employees, when we-- when they come in and fire the people who actually manage large wildfires, a lot of people, including dispatchers, who lost their job, what that does is it loses us institutional knowledge. It means fires burn bigger, and it means firefighters are less safe. That's something anyone on the ground could tell you was a predictable outcome. The man who was in charge of that effort, who just happens to be the richest man in the world, he doesn't seem to give a damn about it. And so, that really kind of raised the stakes for me, and it, it made me realize, I mean, we got one life here. When I'm sitting there wondering if we're gonna be able to make it to that hardwood stand, like, thinking, "Have I done everything I possibly can?" And that's what got me into this race, is the stakes feel so high. Like, it feels like things are being torn down around us by careless, cal- callous leaders and, and like we really had to do everything we possibly could to, to fix this. And, well, luckily, I feel pretty hopeful that we can start doing that.
• 16:04
  I just love the passion that comes through every time I hear you speak, Sam. You not only sort of built that ethic jumping into fires, but you also spent time as, as a union chief, as a union leader for the Forest Service. Um, how did that time as a union leader inform your values as you sort of hit the final stretch of this incredibly critical campaign?
• 16:25
  Yeah. Uh, I mean, uh, it spurred action. I mean, those cuts I mentioned to you, there were heartbreaking, infuriating stories all over Montana. I mean, I had a member in the Bitterroot who lost her job 15 years in to, to her civil service, uh, not for cause or performance, but because she just happened to have taken a lateral transfer so she could do more remote work while she went through chemotherapy. And so, she was a probationary employee. I mean, folks like Perk and Ennis, who got a text in line at the airport to his grandma's funeral saying that he'd lost the job he was only making 16 bucks an hour at and would be locked out of his computer by the end of the day. And it did not feel like there was anybody listening to these. I mean, quite literally, when I reached out to Ryan Zinke, who was sitting in this seat, three, four times, I got crickets. So, it was personal for me, and I decided if he's gonna come take my members' jobs, I'm gonna come take his. And what we did in response is we organized, and the beautiful thing about union organizing is that you do not have to agree with all of your members on every single issue. Uh, if you did, nothing would ever get done. If I had to agree with, [chuckles] with every guy in my union on every issue, we would not have been able to organize the Custer Gallatin and make sure the last non-union forest passed a or- a unionization vote two to one and got the protections of a contract, and that's the way I'm running this campaign too. I mean, uh, we've got to get back to a place as a country where we can sit down across the table from someone who we don't agree with on everything and find common ground, 'cause we agree on 80% of the issues, but nothing is getting done right now. Uh, uh, we, uh, at this point, have five former Republican legislators endorsing this campaign, a former Republican governor. I just wrapped up a town hall in Deer Lodge with Greg Frazer, one of those Republican legislators, where we talked about just that, but the fact that Greg, who is, uh, well, a union leader himself and a employee at the state prison who's a mental health tech, Greg knows it's worth investing to get mental health services to people before they end up at the prison. And Greg knows that, uh, trillion dollars of cuts to Medicaid is gonna impact the people that he ends up serving and leave all of us paying more for it.
• 18:14
  Someone's gotta pay the light bill. We'll be right back after this break.
• 18:17
  I'm Jimmy from Missoula, Montana, and you're listening to "The Wild Idea."
• 18:23
  Sam, I'm so impressed by your campaign putting- ... the defense of public lands front and center in the TV ads I see when I watch football, and the mailers that are in my mailbox, and in the stump speeches I've seen you give.
• 18:37
  Personally, I've been waiting quite a while for a candidate who understands that standing up against all the attacks on our public lands is a winning issue. You know, you, you coulda led with, with almost any issue. I'm, I'm curious why you put public lands at the very center. I know you've mentioned DOGE as a catalyzing moment, and you've given us these examples of, of peoples whose, whose lives have been turned upside down by some of those, those decisions by DOGE. So, I guess I'm curious, as you've been talking to voters, do you find that public lands is a, is a winning issue in Montana, or is this just a, a values issue that you would have run on even if it polled badly?
• 19:11
  I'd say yes and. I mean, this is the reason I'm here. This is the reason it's my home. Like, it, it, it's the reason people stick around in a state that right now has the least affordable housing market in the country. It's 'cause we have access to the most beautiful land on Earth at our back door. And even when I'm working three jobs at a time, I can squeeze in a Sunday afternoon and drive up the valley, and 30 minutes later, you know, from that trailhead, be at the top of a beautiful ridge in the Bitterroot. I, I also have found that this is a unifying issue because public lands, I mean, they quite literally belong to all of us. They are the great equalizer, and they are part of our heritage and the bounty that's been passed down from many generations fighting like hell for it. Right? I mean, Aldo, not just Aldo Leopold, I mean, Leopold, but I mean, people like Teddy Roosevelt, people like Lee Metcalf, who helped write the Wilderness Act as a senator from Montana. This shit was never easy. It, it was never given away, and like, it, it's our turn to stand up and actually fight like hell for it. I'll say early on, maybe a funny anecdote, is we had a discussion when my team was me plus two or three, and we said, "We're not gonna say public, public lands and public hands, 'cause that doesn't mean anything." [chuckles] It sounds like political word mush. Like, the details matter, and like, what that looks like is we'll not vote in for an appropriations package unless we get fully funded public lands agencies in there. And what that looks like is making the wise investments, quite frankly, to make us less reliant on wildland fire, and invest in fuels crews, invest in fire mitigation work and trails crews, 'cause those are the things that if we invest on the front end, more money stays in Montana, and we all save so much money on the back end. Yeah. A-a-and, and fr- beyond that, I mean, just today, what, data centers came up, right, in our debate. Well, there are these ridiculous proposals to put data centers on public lands. Like, that should be a basement, right? This shouldn't be a point of disagreement. Well, Aaron Flint ain't saying anything about that. Why is he not saying it? Because of the money. Because he's got $600,000 from American Mission, an AI super PAC, flooding into this election to back his campaign. Like, the only way we fix this is, A, getting people who know what it's like on the ground, and B, getting that money the hell out of our elections.
• 21:05
  As a Montanan, I, I'm, I'm deeply impressed with, again, as Andrew said, putting public lands front and center. I, I like to... Maybe this is more political word mush. I love the idea that public lands curate our lives. And I don't care if you live in a Western state like Montana with a bunch of public lands, or if you live in the East and, you know, your public lands maybe aren't big federal lands. Public lands and public commons curate our lives. I am deeply concerned about the impacts we may never recover from, and this is gonna be a real inside baseball conversation, but the way these impacts on the land management agencies over the last 19 months may be, you know, hard to overcome. And I have a deep place in my heart specifically for the United States Forest Service, where so many of your former Forest Service colleagues have been displaced or are being reassigned. But what I wanna ask about is the realignment specifically of the wildland firefighting apparatus of our country. On so many fires across the country, we have historically seen agency staff that did not have fire in their job title, folks whose day job it might have been to be on a trail crew or to be a public, you know, public affairs officer or whatever, but they show up anytime, anywhere mentality. But with Senator Sheehy-led effort to create this new US Wildland Fire Service over at DOI, I'm scared to death that this will further cripple the Forest Service in all areas of focus, not just fire, while continuing to feed that what I see as an industrial firefighting complex with expanding budgets for big interest, industry interests, not, not the firefighters on the ground. You know, you alluded to it e- earlier, you know, Senator Sheehy's, you know, had this, you know, this contracting firefighting service, uh, air support, but there's actually almost no attention being paid to creating actual resilient forests and safe communities. Do you agree with, like, my perspective on that?
• 22:48
  No, I, absolutely. I mean, I, I started my wildland fire career on the district over in Lincoln. And if you're working on a ranger district, fire is integrated with trails, is integrated with fuels if you got fuel staff. Like, what this reorg is gonna do in the Forest Service and what shifting fire, uh, away from the rest of the agency is gonna do is completely divorce land management from wildland firefighting. And it's gonna shift us further into what I see as this constant state of crisis response, where we wait until everything is an emergency, and then we throw tens of millions of dollars on it as a, you know, active wildfire. Yeah, I, I mean, this, this is not a wise way to manage our public lands. It's gonna... If you ever go to California, well, any firefighter will tell you working with Cal Fire can be kind of a nightmare, because they only do emergency response. These are not people who know the ecosystems necessarily. They're not folks who work on the land. And a great example is, well, at the end of last summer, the Bitterroot National Forest had one trail crew member for the whole national forest. And as the, uh, as the union local, we got to go to the forest leadership team meetings, and we asked them, "Well, what's the plan for clearing trail miles if you got one trail crew member?" I mean, that's absurd. And they said, "Well, the plan is we're gonna aim for one-third of what our typical trail miles are cleared, and we're gonna use the firefighters to accomplish that goal." And now the plan is to pull all the firefighters out of the Forest Service, so there is no plan. Like, the plan is to gut our public lands and do exactly what they've done in places like public education. They gut the public service, they turn around and say, "Look, it doesn't work. I guess we gotta privatize it." And, uh, if you wanna know why, well, look at the incentives here, right? I mean, Tim Sheehy's company, in its history, never once recorded a profit until 2025, the year that he voted to gut the agencies that conduct this service otherwise. [sighs] And I'm getting long-winded 'cause I feel very strongly about this bill, but I mean, like, we had a fire east of, of Missoula here by Helmville. You know, beautiful ranching community, again, pr- fairly close to Lincoln. That fire two s- two summers ago was the Windy Rock. It was 2,000 acres, not the most populous neck of the woods, and cost the state of Montana $56 million.
• 24:44
  Like, that is the least efficient, least effective way to manage our forests. For 56 million dollars, you could pay, by my napkin math, 2,000 Montanans 20 bucks an hour, 365 days a year, to actually stomp around the front country with a chainsaw, engage in active fire mitigation to make us more fire-safe and resilient. That would be money that stays in our communities. But when I parachute into a wildfire and they tell me, "You're not gonna get a hotshot crew for two weeks," my only option is to call in air support. Am I calling a large air tanker? Well, sh- that's 90,000 bucks a pop that goes to Tim Sheehy's pockets and floods out of our state. This is why we need people who actually know what it's like on the ground and who are not incentivized to cut those services so that they can profit themselves off all of our backs.
• 25:22
  Yeah. No, here, here. Uh, yeah, I, I, one of my proudest moments was being a part of writing that National Forest Trail System Stewardship Act, which was meant to empower, you know, career force of, you know, wildfire staff to actually spend time when they're not on fires helping other ways to find more efficiency, and that helping with trails example you gave that was in that bill. I'm gonna go ahead and put you in that seat, representing Montana's first congressional district. I know you will be focused on a lot of critical issues facing Montanans in the district and across, for Americans across the country. But since we are a wildlands-focused podcast, I am curious, as your constituents begin to reach out about their fears over what the current administration is doing to public lands, how you might see springing into action early on. Like, are there efforts regarding public lands where you expect to lean in on, like, right away?
• 26:08
  Y- yeah, absolutely. I mean, I am gonna make damn sure we get an appointment to the Natural Resources Committee in the House, because that's where the fight's gonna be to refund our public lands, to rebuild them in a way that makes sense, because they were not perfect before. Right? I mean, I ended the '24 wild, the '24 fire season, uh, fire in the middle of the Three Sisters Wilderness through a satellite phone call telling us that the Forest Service is 20 million bucks in the red. And so, anyone who's a temporary employee is out of pay status the second we get off that fire. Like, these things were not working perfectly before this. So, let's rebuild them in a way that makes sense, and let's invest in the places that prevent us from spending 56 million dollars on a single wildfire or worse. Uh, to me, that looks like seriously expanding investments in fuels reduction and fuels crews. Those are the people who stomp around the front country. Uh, they help engage in thinning in places where, well, the timber ain't merchantable. And what do they do? They, they lop and sc- scatter, or they stack and they burn when it's safe. Um, expanding prescribed fire. There is a bill in front of Congress right now, uh, it's called the Prescribed Fire Act, that would help streamline getting prescribed fire permits, help coordinate different levels of government to do so easier, help tribal communities get back to cultural burning without having to jump through quite so many hoops on their own tribal reservations. What does that take? It takes a lot more bodies. Like, the biggest impediment or the reason you might be at risk of losing a prescribed burn is 'cause you don't have enough bodies on holding to make sure that that doesn't get across your line. So, we need to reinvest in the people who are oftentimes GS-3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, who carry out those burns, who do that cutting. Yeah, uh, I'll fight to make sure that gets includ- included in our appropriations, uh, God willing, in a budget, if Congress can get their act together and pass one. And, uh, what, I'll tell you too, like, all the ideas, I mean, there's no monopoly on good ideas in one party. A river runs through it. Ryan Zinke, after, well, nearly a decade in Congress, he finally stepped up and sponsored that legislation in the last month. That is a great bill. That's the result of decades of work. I wish he would've stepped up w- before the end of the term, before Congress was in an early recess so it could get passed. I hope to work on that bill with Troy Downing over in Eastern Montana, if he's the next representative over there, and make it a bipartisan effort. That's a way to actually engage in responsible, collaborative land management. And it does not have to be a partisan issue. I, I think it hopefully will not be.
• 28:19
  Sam, this is so thrilling hearing you talk about fighting to refund our public lands and to rebuild them in a way that makes sense. And I'm personally so thrilled to see you zero in on e- exactly what I think the problem is, which is, you know, the Trump administration trying to make the experience on public lands so crappy that people are begging to privatize them. You know, I've, I've heard you say on the campaign trail that we're still talking about public lands as if it were the 1970s. And I guess m- my final question to you would be, what's the most outdated assumption that you're hoping you can help retire, uh, if you make it to Congress?
• 28:59
  Yeah. I, we have a cultural conversation that we've gotta move forward on about fire itself. Like, fire is not a bad thing in itself. Fire is bad when it, uh, starts in a tinderbox in late July and it's 90 degrees out and drier than ever and start, well, suddenly homes are at risk or lives are at risk. Fire is a healthy part of the landscape that, frankly, we've suppressed at far too great an ex- far too great a level for about 100 years now. I mean, it felt like we were making some progress in that conversation until about a year and a half ago when, yeah, Tim Sheehy comes out and tries to bring us back to the 10:00 a.m. rule, where you put every fire out by the next morning. We just lost, uh, what f- feels like decades of progress in that conversation. But, you know, what we're really doing right now is, is more or less rediscovering things that, uh, well, Native people here in Montana and across the country have known for millennia. People, well, in this neck of the woods, for thousands of years, they would reintroduce fire to the landscape when it was safe. They would light low-level burns. They would clear out the underbrush. And we can do that again. It's gonna take a lot of manpower, but it will save us so much money on the back end, and it will leave our forests, uh, safer for it.
• 30:01
  Yeah. One final thing from me. I'll, I'll try to, I'll try to make it a question. It's, it's gonna be a bit of a diatribe for me, but I about came out of my seat when you brought up the River Runs Through It Act. I worked for a few years on both the Lincoln Prosperity Proposal, you've talked a lot about spending time on the Lincoln Ranger District, and on the Blackfoot Clearwater Act, and now collectively known as this River Runs Through It Act.
• 30:26
  I've experienced the power and joy that comes with working collaborative with people of different perspectives. In the Lincoln Prosperity community, we had, I had as much fun engagement with the motorized rec crowd as I did with some of my fellow maybe wilderness lovers or folks who were, worked for DNRC and in, in timber. We all found a way to give a little and get a lot. And, but what I found, and this happened elsewhere in the district down in Beaverhead County, we had a winning formula. Everybody had given up. We were gonna resolve some longstanding issues with congressional wilderness study areas, but also areas recommended for wilderness in the Italian Peaks. And all it took- ... quite honestly, was for our retiring senator to put his thumb on the scale, gin up his bad actors to destroy years, years of work by Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, wilderness people and ranchers working together, had all of that baked. I'm curious how you'll think about empowering collaboration instead of that example I just gave of just putting a thumb on the scale because you've got a specific interest that you think is more closely aligned to your base.
• 31:36
  Yeah. I, I mean, I think there are processes we should invest in, like, like alternative dispute resolution. Yeah, uh, collaborative processes like the one you talked about. And frankly, when they gut, you know, the soil scientists or when they cut NEPA administrators, what does that do? It, it means that the actual scientific product is worse. It means the environmental impact statement is worse 'cause we got one person doing three people's jobs. And so, of course, there's more dispute and conflict on the back end of that because it becomes less trustworthy because we've, well, we've tasked public servants with what is an impossible job. And that's why, frankly, I was sitting down with a logger about a month and a half ago, and he told me, "Between you and me, don't use my name, uh, the changes the last year and a half have been terrible for logging because we're getting fewer contracts through on federal public land because all this stuff is garbage." So, I think the way that we bring people together, well, when I'm actually in Congress, it's, I mean, it's a lot like the way that we're running this campaign, right? I just had my fourth civil discourse town hall with Greg Frazier. Our fifth is gonna be up in Libby, uh, with former Republican Governor Mark Roscoe. And I, uh, you know, I've thought a lot about, uh, Anders, you had your share of quotes, I get mine. I mean, Harry Truman was famously, maybe misattributed with saying, "It's amazing how much can get done when nobody cares who gets the credit." And right now, uh, in Congress, it feels like that's all backwards, and all anybody cares about is who gets the credit, so nothing gets done. So, well, we're gonna win this election, hopefully with you and all your listeners' help. Uh, go to samformontana.com. And [chuckles] and when we do that, we'll have control of the US House. Who knows? Maybe the US Senate. There will be a Republican in the White House. I see opportunities on some areas of public lands, on housing, on, on labor and unions, to actually pass meaningful legislation working with Republicans. And, uh, well, if we gotta give someone who I deeply disagree with the credit for signing that bill, by all means, because right now it feels pretty dire on the ground. And I'm not there for credit or glory. I'm, I'm there to actually get something done.
• 33:24
  Sam for Montana, folks. That is Sam Forstag running for Congress right now, former smoke jumper, former member of my favorite workforce, the Forest Service workforce. Uh, thank you, Sam, so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Been great having you here.
• 33:38
  Yeah, thank you guys for having me. And yeah, the website, samformontana.com, spelled out. We have three weeks left, so, uh, you can sign up to volunteer right there. I mean, donate if you can, but the only way we, we beat the immense amount of money and power we're up against is knocking every door and talking to all our neighbors. So, I, I'd love everybody's help.
• 33:54
  21 days out. Sam, I know you're in the thick of it and working so hard, so thanks for this half hour. It's been really, really great to spend it with you.
• 34:02
  Likewise, guys.
• 34:03
  Coming up on "The Wild Idea Podcast," stay in the politics of here and now with us for public lands law and policy. We dive back into private land conservation with the folks from Wild Idea Buffalo, and we visit with an old friend who has mad skills at bringing the wild to the dinner table. We truly love and are fed by these amazing guests and stories we have the privilege of sharing with you. If you wanna stay in touch along the way, be sure to visit thewildidea.com and sign up for our newsletters. There's also a place for you to financially support us through Buy Me a Coffee. In the meantime, let's put on the old Nomex and our hard hat, take that big leap, and when we all do, we'll see you on the grounds.
• 34:37
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Brynn Russell at Podlad. Digital support by Holly Wilkoszewski at Daypack Digital. Our theme music, Springhill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Laura Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating. And if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com. [upbeat music]