Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 353: How to be a Conservationist in a Post-Pandemic World with Hal Herring

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Ep. 353: How to be a Conservationist in a Post-Pandemic World with Hal Herring · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
0:06
Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
0:12
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I
0:17
Speaker 1: am your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode three
0:21
Speaker 1: and fifty three. Today in the show, I am joined
0:23
Speaker 1: by Hale Herring to explore what it means to be
0:26
Speaker 1: and even how to be a conservationist in a post
0:31
Speaker 1: pandemic world. All right, welcome to the Wire dhun podcast,
0:38
Speaker 1: brought to you by on X Today. My guest is
0:41
Speaker 1: Hal Herring, and Hall was on the podcast five or
0:45
Speaker 1: six months ago, but it was a very different scenario
0:48
Speaker 1: because Hale was actually interviewing me. This time, I'm flipping
0:52
Speaker 1: the tables and I'm back in the interview seat. He
0:55
Speaker 1: is the guest, and if you're not familiar, Hell is
0:59
Speaker 1: the host of at Country, Hunters and Anglers, their podcast
1:02
Speaker 1: and Blast. He is a tremendous conservationist and advocate for
1:07
Speaker 1: wild places and wild animals. He is a writer for
1:10
Speaker 1: Field and Stream and a number of other outlets, and
1:13
Speaker 1: he's just become one of the one of the voices
1:18
Speaker 1: and leaders that I have turned to and pointed back
1:22
Speaker 1: to and learned from. So much in my own journey
1:24
Speaker 1: as um. You know someone who wants to be an
1:27
Speaker 1: effective conservationist and advocate and I'm learning and growing and
1:32
Speaker 1: trying to make some kind of positive impact. Well, Hell
1:34
Speaker 1: is someone who's been able to do that. And I
1:37
Speaker 1: thought today we could pick his brain about where he
1:41
Speaker 1: thinks we're going now that we are heading towards some
1:45
Speaker 1: kind of new normal. The world has changed. We all
1:48
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. The last few months have
1:51
Speaker 1: been strange, scary, different, um, just different, and I gotta
1:58
Speaker 1: believe that means things are gonna be different moving forward
2:00
Speaker 1: when it comes to advocacy, when it comes to sticking
2:04
Speaker 1: up for the environment and the conservation of wildlife and
2:07
Speaker 1: public lands and all these different things. So this is
2:10
Speaker 1: a this is a a different kind of conversation that
2:13
Speaker 1: we kind of go all over the place. We discuss.
2:16
Speaker 1: You know, some of the things inspired Hal to try
2:19
Speaker 1: to become someone who could advocate for these things. We
2:24
Speaker 1: talk about ways he's tried to funnel his frustration or
2:28
Speaker 1: anger or disappointment, discouragement, all these different things. How do
2:32
Speaker 1: you take those emotions? How do you use that for good?
2:36
Speaker 1: How can you filter all the stuff out there? How
2:39
Speaker 1: can you listen to what one person says and then
2:42
Speaker 1: the different idea from another person and then try to
2:44
Speaker 1: fare out what's true. How do you realize or learn
2:47
Speaker 1: what issues we should fight for and which ones maybe
2:50
Speaker 1: we step step back from. How do we write effective
2:53
Speaker 1: letters or make phone calls to actually make a difference.
2:55
Speaker 1: How do we make a difference? It seems sometimes like
2:58
Speaker 1: I post something on Facebook, excite this petition? Does that
3:01
Speaker 1: do any good at all? Does anything that we as
3:05
Speaker 1: individuals do make a difference, Especially now that this whole
3:11
Speaker 1: ship storm of a pandemic has hit us across the country,
3:14
Speaker 1: and it seems like everyone's so focused on on that,
3:17
Speaker 1: on health and the economy. Is there even time and
3:21
Speaker 1: energy and oxygen left in the room to talk about
3:24
Speaker 1: conservation public lands. That is what we talk about with
3:28
Speaker 1: Hail today. I think if you listen to this podcast,
3:31
Speaker 1: you are a hunter. If you're a hunter and you
3:33
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, you care about these things. You
3:36
Speaker 1: care about deer, you care about wild places, You care
3:40
Speaker 1: about wilderness, You care about water and air and dirt
3:44
Speaker 1: and critters, and you want to keep these things around.
3:46
Speaker 1: And the way we are going to do that is
3:49
Speaker 1: by figuring out how to be a conservationist, and now
3:52
Speaker 1: we need to fare out how to do that in
3:54
Speaker 1: this weird pandemic and hopefully post pandemic world. That's our
3:58
Speaker 1: conversation today. I hope you will listen in. I hope
4:01
Speaker 1: you enjoy it. I hope you learn something from it
4:03
Speaker 1: or become inspired by it. Um. I certainly was, and
4:07
Speaker 1: I'm ready to get out there and kick some tale.
4:09
Speaker 1: So without further ado, thank you all for listening, and
4:13
Speaker 1: let's get right to it with Hall Haring. All right,
4:18
Speaker 1: I am very excited to have hell Heiring with me
4:21
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Hell welcome to the show. Thanks Mark
4:25
Speaker 1: here Man. Yeah, you know, you had me on your
4:28
Speaker 1: podcast a few months ago, so it just seemed only
4:30
Speaker 1: right that I should return the favor and have you
4:32
Speaker 1: on mine. So it's it's nice to have the control again.
4:36
Speaker 1: I'm back at the driver's seat. We're some used to, Yeah,
4:40
Speaker 1: I was. It was when we did down there in Boman. Yeah,
4:43
Speaker 1: which was cool that you were in in uh within
4:46
Speaker 1: shouting distance where I could come down there and do that.
4:48
Speaker 1: That worked out great and I had a lot of
4:50
Speaker 1: fun too, and h man, it was it was really
4:54
Speaker 1: it was fun for me to have this reversal of
4:57
Speaker 1: roles where someone's asking me about my perspective on some
5:00
Speaker 1: of these conservation or public land related topics. Um. But
5:04
Speaker 1: the whole time we were talking, I found myself wanting
5:07
Speaker 1: to keep asking you questions. And so so now now
5:10
Speaker 1: I've got I've got all these questions, I'm gonna push
5:12
Speaker 1: it you a lot of different things I want to
5:14
Speaker 1: talk about. It's a it's a weird time right now
5:17
Speaker 1: in the spring of as you know, of course. Um, yeah,
5:22
Speaker 1: you're right there. We're in the same boat on that.
5:25
Speaker 1: You know, how how how are you handling things? How?
5:29
Speaker 1: How has this changed your typical spring activities, lifestyle anything
5:35
Speaker 1: like that. Well, at first it was kind of, Um,
5:39
Speaker 1: I was pretty relaxed about it because for one, I
5:43
Speaker 1: had more time to put in like a bigger garden. Um.
5:47
Speaker 1: And I was kind of obsessively pushing the fishing season here.
5:51
Speaker 1: I got. I got into fishing real early, and I
5:54
Speaker 1: was almost it wasn't like a vacation, but it was
5:57
Speaker 1: a time out of time sort of. And then um,
6:01
Speaker 1: and then it as as the drag owned of that
6:04
Speaker 1: came in, I realized I had to get back to
6:06
Speaker 1: work and I had to get lots of work done,
6:09
Speaker 1: and that was pretty hard. Um. You know, my kids
6:12
Speaker 1: were home. My daughter it's fine, she's working, baby sitting
6:17
Speaker 1: on a ranch. My son is is cowboy and on
6:19
Speaker 1: the broken old ranch west of town. But both of
6:21
Speaker 1: them were home, you know. And um, and then my
6:25
Speaker 1: wife was working at the library and keeping it open,
6:28
Speaker 1: but nobody could come in and so it was just
6:31
Speaker 1: sort of Um, it's as if the carpet underneath you
6:34
Speaker 1: was constantly shifting. It's a good way to put it.
6:37
Speaker 1: Which is hard. It's distracted, it is it is you. Uh,
6:42
Speaker 1: you've been hard at work, though still on on some
6:46
Speaker 1: some projects related to a lot of the stuff writing
6:49
Speaker 1: about public lands and whatnot as well too, right I am.
6:53
Speaker 1: I'm I'm working on a on a book length project
6:56
Speaker 1: on the public lands. Um. Hopefully it will be almost
6:59
Speaker 1: as good it is yours, certainly, ra I've certainly been
7:03
Speaker 1: ransacking yours to see what what new things I had
7:07
Speaker 1: to offer it. Uh, but um, it's yeah, I'm working
7:11
Speaker 1: on that. And I was super lucky to have that
7:13
Speaker 1: project underway before the shutdown. Um. I did a fielding
7:18
Speaker 1: screen story that I turned in like right the first
7:22
Speaker 1: of March, and I came back from the Shot Show,
7:26
Speaker 1: which was by all rights should that Las Vegas should
7:30
Speaker 1: have been the epicenter of of the COVID virus because
7:33
Speaker 1: it was the Year of the Rat and and it
7:36
Speaker 1: was on the same day that Hubei Province was shut
7:39
Speaker 1: down that the Shot Show and the Year of the
7:42
Speaker 1: Rat celebrations launched in in Las Vegas. And one of
7:46
Speaker 1: the mysteries here is it's not an epicenter of the
7:50
Speaker 1: epdym of the pandemic, so nobody knows anything. And that's
7:55
Speaker 1: that's something we could talk about questions. We have great scientists,
8:00
Speaker 1: we have great science, but the world, including viruses, are
8:04
Speaker 1: a mystery to us. And maybe there's a lesson there.
8:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel I feel like those questions,
8:12
Speaker 1: asking those things, wonder about those things. That's probably what
8:16
Speaker 1: makes you such an interesting and helpful writer. I mean,
8:20
Speaker 1: that's that's what makes any of us a writer probably
8:22
Speaker 1: are creators. Is being curious today is being curious for sure,
8:27
Speaker 1: like and and one and there and then and then
8:29
Speaker 1: there's another element of that because no, I don't really
8:32
Speaker 1: know about the motivation of viruses. I don't know what
8:36
Speaker 1: they're doing, but I do know, like if you take
8:39
Speaker 1: care of and I'm not doing a soapbox here, but
8:42
Speaker 1: if you go and do a restoration project on a
8:45
Speaker 1: trout stream or on a on a tributary to your
8:48
Speaker 1: favorite catfish river, that you can throw a stone and
8:51
Speaker 1: have a real effect that you can see. And so
8:55
Speaker 1: there's this balance between the things that we cannot know,
8:59
Speaker 1: the the all the huge world of mystery and peril,
9:04
Speaker 1: and the things that we can actually address, which not
9:09
Speaker 1: surprisingly might help you get through the things you can't
9:12
Speaker 1: understand or can't see coming. It's it's funny you bring
9:18
Speaker 1: this up, and this is this is exactly one of
9:20
Speaker 1: the things that I want to talk to you about,
9:23
Speaker 1: which is this whole idea of like the things you
9:26
Speaker 1: can control or the things you can maybe have an
9:29
Speaker 1: impact on. Uh. As someone who at a young age
9:33
Speaker 1: just fell in love with the outdoor world, it wasn't
9:34
Speaker 1: until I got into my twenties when I started thinking about,
9:38
Speaker 1: you know, what my impact was on this natural world
9:40
Speaker 1: I love so much? Um And then once I started
9:43
Speaker 1: thinking about that, it was this massive kind of cascade
9:45
Speaker 1: of different questions and answers and well, what does this
9:48
Speaker 1: mean then? Or what should I do about that? Given this, Um,
9:52
Speaker 1: When when did that happen for you? Like when did
9:54
Speaker 1: you realize that you had an impact or that you
9:58
Speaker 1: had or that or that you could make a di
10:00
Speaker 1: friends or anything. When when did you realize that you
10:02
Speaker 1: wanted to do what you're doing now, which is writing
10:04
Speaker 1: about and advocating for uh, wild places and wild animals
10:09
Speaker 1: and things like that. Well, I don't think I had
10:12
Speaker 1: a choice so much, um, like when I was where
10:16
Speaker 1: I grew up in North Alabama, and that the development
10:20
Speaker 1: there is double, triple, quadruple what it was when I
10:24
Speaker 1: was born, um, And so like from an early age
10:28
Speaker 1: my parents were they they bought a farm outside of
10:32
Speaker 1: Huntsville and we all we we lived out there. Um.
10:35
Speaker 1: But from an early age they were like, isn't that beautiful?
10:38
Speaker 1: You know, wouldn't it be? Isn't it sad that they've
10:41
Speaker 1: channelized the creek you know, where we all fished. And
10:46
Speaker 1: so I was steeped in that kind of idea early.
10:49
Speaker 1: I mean that the idea of natural beauty and and
10:53
Speaker 1: like my parents were very religious and so like that
10:57
Speaker 1: like God and and not so much steward ship, but
11:00
Speaker 1: just the mystery of creation. Right, I was always there,
11:04
Speaker 1: So it was really deep, deep and grained in me um,
11:08
Speaker 1: and then it was doubled down because you could go
11:11
Speaker 1: out there and snag red horse in the spring, these beautiful,
11:15
Speaker 1: huge suckers and that would run up this creek and
11:18
Speaker 1: you would bring them home and eat them, you know,
11:20
Speaker 1: and they were bony. Or you could shoot a rabbit
11:23
Speaker 1: and have it for supper, and like like you spend
11:26
Speaker 1: just like all of your time immersed in this thing,
11:29
Speaker 1: and so later on, I don't think it was quid
11:31
Speaker 1: bro quoa. I think it was just like, you know what, Mark,
11:35
Speaker 1: One of the things I saw was like, holy smokes,
11:37
Speaker 1: you could fix that, you know. I remember when I
11:41
Speaker 1: got into the game. Farming stories is one of the
11:43
Speaker 1: very first big investigative journalism thing I ever did. And
11:47
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, they just built a huge game
11:50
Speaker 1: proof fence across the wild mule deer migration path, you know,
11:55
Speaker 1: and so now what are the legal and ethic the
12:00
Speaker 1: ramifications of that? Right, all these builders showed up on
12:03
Speaker 1: the highway down at Derby and got run over. I mean,
12:06
Speaker 1: it's not funny, but you know what I mean. I
12:08
Speaker 1: was like, damn, you could take that fence down and
12:10
Speaker 1: make it better. Um. But somebody owns that fence, So
12:14
Speaker 1: how do we deal with that? You know? What? Were
12:17
Speaker 1: the almost like it's it's almost like it's fairly simple, right,
12:21
Speaker 1: But but it's not though, because it's it's not easier
12:24
Speaker 1: said than done, I think, for right, which is incredibly interesting.
12:28
Speaker 1: Who when did you realize that you could do it? Though?
12:31
Speaker 1: Or was there I don't know, was there a person,
12:34
Speaker 1: was there something you read? Was there was there some
12:36
Speaker 1: kick in the ass that went from oh, there's something
12:38
Speaker 1: you could do to damn it, I have to be
12:40
Speaker 1: the one to do it. Well it No, there was
12:44
Speaker 1: a but I did read Ted Williams a lot um
12:48
Speaker 1: and in my twenties, like in my late twenties, and
12:51
Speaker 1: Ted Williams was doing what I it auto bond. He
12:53
Speaker 1: had a column called Insight, and um, I read that
12:59
Speaker 1: one up in that about game farm and one of
13:01
Speaker 1: the ones I found because I was getting interested in this.
13:03
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I worked as a laboring person
13:07
Speaker 1: and a kind of a I did all kind of
13:10
Speaker 1: weird labor jobs, and so I never made a lot
13:13
Speaker 1: of money. And so to sell a story about something
13:17
Speaker 1: that I was already like really passionate about, um and
13:20
Speaker 1: get a check for sake, six hundred bucks or twelve bucks,
13:23
Speaker 1: you're like, a, whoa, this is something maybe I can do. Um.
13:29
Speaker 1: That's pretty much how I got into it. I did
13:31
Speaker 1: not ever I would. I had a lot of fury
13:35
Speaker 1: about like like ecological devastation, but I didn't really do
13:40
Speaker 1: much with it. And I was lucky to meet people.
13:43
Speaker 1: I worked on trail crew for a guy who was
13:46
Speaker 1: very important. He he said, you know, anger is not
13:49
Speaker 1: really uh, that's not really substantive way to address things
13:54
Speaker 1: that bother you unfocused anger. Are you that ranting on
14:00
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter is not a productive use of my time? Hill,
14:03
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I share your guilt. It's funny, though,
14:10
Speaker 1: because these days, with social media, it is so easy
14:13
Speaker 1: to have that fury and put out there in the world.
14:15
Speaker 1: And there's some, at least for some people, there's some
14:20
Speaker 1: uh I don't know, a little bit of therapeutic effect
14:24
Speaker 1: to doing that. But you're not really doing anything. Yeah,
14:27
Speaker 1: there's some catharsis there, but you're not really doing anything.
14:30
Speaker 1: You're getting almost the illusion of accomplishment, but it's not
14:35
Speaker 1: it's not really impacting things in a substantial way other
14:38
Speaker 1: than annoying whoever follows you on social media, so it's
14:42
Speaker 1: dangerous and that you lose friends over it that wouldn't
14:46
Speaker 1: wouldn't otherwise know that you had these ideas. You know, Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: it gets It can get real toxic and nasty, that's
14:52
Speaker 1: for sure. I've I've strongly thought about just getting off
14:55
Speaker 1: of Facebook totally because I've just gotten sick of a
14:58
Speaker 1: lot of stuff I've seen there. But at the same time,
15:02
Speaker 1: I find myself having some fury too, and I wish,
15:05
Speaker 1: you know, there's times I want to just yell at
15:07
Speaker 1: the world. How do you channel how do you channel that?
15:10
Speaker 1: How do you how do you do how do you
15:13
Speaker 1: figure out what to do or how to do something
15:16
Speaker 1: with that these days? Because you know, when you and
15:18
Speaker 1: I were sitting there together in Bowsman a couple of
15:20
Speaker 1: months ago, we talked about Ed Abbey. Edward Abbey, he
15:23
Speaker 1: was this guy who had a whole lot of piston vinegar.
15:25
Speaker 1: He had some fury, and you know, he he found
15:30
Speaker 1: some positive ways to use that fury to impact change,
15:33
Speaker 1: and maybe he talked to us some things that we
15:35
Speaker 1: wouldn't condone too. But how do we channel the good
15:39
Speaker 1: part of that fury and do good with it? How
15:41
Speaker 1: do you think about that, well, I would say there's
15:44
Speaker 1: several things in there. One thing Abby came from was
15:47
Speaker 1: a place of incredibly deep love for that place where
15:51
Speaker 1: he found himself in the desert. Um, like behind the anger,
15:57
Speaker 1: behind the polemicist, there's a person who is unbelievably happy
16:04
Speaker 1: to walk through the desert for miles and miles and
16:07
Speaker 1: just look at stuff and pull it all in. Um.
16:12
Speaker 1: And so that's different than a person who's just walking
16:15
Speaker 1: around in a in a fury. Uh does that make sense? Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: it's got The foundation is strong. The foundation is is
16:25
Speaker 1: like irrefutable, like like this guy really loves this, you know.
16:29
Speaker 1: One of the quotes was like, you know, let's love America.
16:32
Speaker 1: Let's save some of it. Yeah yeah, and um, and
16:39
Speaker 1: I just you know, I got introduced to his work
16:42
Speaker 1: really early because my father loved that movie. Um it's
16:46
Speaker 1: called The Brave Cowboys and it was made with Kurt
16:50
Speaker 1: Douglas Lonely or The Brave and um, he was really
16:54
Speaker 1: interested in that movie, which is strange. I mean he
16:56
Speaker 1: was a lawyer and wasn't particularly into anarchist theory and stuff.
17:00
Speaker 1: But uh, that so we had that book and then
17:04
Speaker 1: years later I saw like desert, solitary and all the
17:07
Speaker 1: all those other stuff. Um, but I think that that's
17:11
Speaker 1: part of it is you gotta be you gotta love
17:14
Speaker 1: stuff first, you know. Um. And then the other part
17:18
Speaker 1: of it is that really cool thing about journalism, which
17:23
Speaker 1: is it's not always practiced, for sure, but where you
17:26
Speaker 1: really and truly insist own abandoning your own biases, your
17:33
Speaker 1: own expectations and your own hopes for what something might be,
17:38
Speaker 1: and you just sit there and go off and take
17:42
Speaker 1: it in and let the chips fall, the truth chips
17:47
Speaker 1: fall where they may. You're you're looking for truth, whether
17:51
Speaker 1: it's uncomfortable, whether you hate what you find. And that's
17:56
Speaker 1: a really cool, like spiritual discipline, a positive thing probably
18:00
Speaker 1: for people to do, whether their journalists or not. Exactly
18:04
Speaker 1: and and incredibly difficult, and um, I definitely don't expect
18:08
Speaker 1: everybody to do that anymore than I expect somebody to
18:11
Speaker 1: go to a zen monastery or you know, walk do
18:15
Speaker 1: the snow leopard trail into bed or whatever. You know,
18:19
Speaker 1: it's more fun to crush the beer can on your
18:21
Speaker 1: head and said that guy, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's
18:28
Speaker 1: way more fun and more liberating and all. But but
18:30
Speaker 1: it doesn't really lead anywhere right now. It raises a
18:33
Speaker 1: good question, just in generally, how to how to filter
18:37
Speaker 1: all the stuff out there right now? Because you could
18:39
Speaker 1: take any particular issue that's relevant to this conversation, whether
18:43
Speaker 1: it be some new regulation or deregulation of something in
18:47
Speaker 1: the energy industry, or it could be privatization of public
18:50
Speaker 1: lands or something, and there's gonna be people on all
18:53
Speaker 1: sides of the issue telling you this is right, this
18:55
Speaker 1: is wrong, believe me, don't believe for him, so on
18:58
Speaker 1: and so forth. Um, and it's so easy now to
19:02
Speaker 1: get the truth lost. You wrote something last year a
19:06
Speaker 1: couple of years ago on Field and Stream was something like,
19:09
Speaker 1: how do you write in a post truth era? Or
19:11
Speaker 1: something on those lives? How do you I don't know
19:14
Speaker 1: if I don't know if we are in a post
19:16
Speaker 1: truth erab, but how do you go about filtering everything
19:19
Speaker 1: given just the confusion of everything these days? Well, in
19:25
Speaker 1: that essay I wrote, you know, if you believe in
19:27
Speaker 1: a post truth error, then you should pull on a
19:30
Speaker 1: pair of tennis shoes without your socks and go for
19:33
Speaker 1: a jog and the Bob Marshall Wilderness when it's twenty
19:35
Speaker 1: three below and get we wei out there where you
19:39
Speaker 1: know you can't get home by dark, and then tell
19:42
Speaker 1: me about post truth um, so relative of them, you know,
19:47
Speaker 1: the idea that nothing can truly be be defined. It's
19:50
Speaker 1: not something that hunters and fishermen and real outdoorsman um
19:54
Speaker 1: will ever gonna embrace. Not not no, I mean, I
19:58
Speaker 1: mean you don't put the plug in the john bo
20:00
Speaker 1: to your going down? Are your futable? Yeah? They are?
20:04
Speaker 1: And the and the plug is a very simple thing
20:06
Speaker 1: to put in there, you know what I mean. It's
20:08
Speaker 1: like so there, but human perceptions of of that truth
20:14
Speaker 1: all are are in conflict. And the nature of a
20:18
Speaker 1: democratic republic like ours is to let the best argument
20:22
Speaker 1: win if it's presented in a way that people will
20:26
Speaker 1: listen to it. And I keep coming back to this.
20:30
Speaker 1: It's like the freedom of public lands, restoring floodplains and fisheries,
20:37
Speaker 1: removing unnecessary dams, having effective and clear regulations about air
20:44
Speaker 1: and clean water, and then incentives to get people to
20:47
Speaker 1: follow those rather than trying to dodge them. I mean,
20:50
Speaker 1: those are things we can actually do. And I promise
20:53
Speaker 1: you that the truth of say the Des Moines Water District,
20:56
Speaker 1: where they cannot purify that water enough to to meet
21:00
Speaker 1: safe drinking water standards. That's not post truth, that's just real.
21:04
Speaker 1: You drink that, it's not gonna be good for you.
21:08
Speaker 1: You take you you restore those wet lands upstreamed, You
21:12
Speaker 1: incentivize those farmers upstream to stop putting that fertilizer in there.
21:17
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about regulation and incentive. I'm not talking
21:20
Speaker 1: about taking people's profits, because we all we're all on
21:24
Speaker 1: the edge with money in this country because things are
21:27
Speaker 1: so expensive in our life that's very We have a
21:29
Speaker 1: lot of expectation. So you incentivize you can clean that up.
21:34
Speaker 1: This is something we could all agree on. The question though,
21:38
Speaker 1: then becomes for a lot of people it's it's it's
21:44
Speaker 1: those things like the idea sounds really good. I certainly
21:47
Speaker 1: agree with it, but then there's gonna be someone who's
21:49
Speaker 1: gonna come at you with this. Others say, well, know
21:52
Speaker 1: they're taking away personal freedoms of private property rights, or
21:54
Speaker 1: their de incentivizing business, or they're making it harder for
21:57
Speaker 1: people to keep jobs. There's always these there's so many
22:01
Speaker 1: of these different angles that it's hard to part. So
22:05
Speaker 1: I think from a really practical standpoint, for like an
22:10
Speaker 1: average person, a guy or girl out there listening who
22:14
Speaker 1: they've got their job. They don't work in this space,
22:16
Speaker 1: but they love the outdoors. They love hunting and fishing
22:18
Speaker 1: in wild places. And they're trying to make sense of
22:21
Speaker 1: all this stuff that's coming in. And some of this
22:22
Speaker 1: stuff they're here in you or me saying, hey, pay
22:25
Speaker 1: attention to this. Some of this stuff they're seeing on
22:27
Speaker 1: the news. Some of this stuff they're wondering, Okay, is
22:30
Speaker 1: this important? Is this not important? Is this a good
22:33
Speaker 1: thing or is this actually bad? How do you go
22:37
Speaker 1: about like truth checking or verifying? How do you how
22:42
Speaker 1: do you bs check all these different environmental issues or regulations? Um?
22:47
Speaker 1: Because maybe there are some things that are an overreach,
22:49
Speaker 1: maybe not, Like what's the process, the actual nuts and
22:52
Speaker 1: bolts process you go through to learn about, say, for example,
22:56
Speaker 1: the waters of the U S rule, Like, how do
23:00
Speaker 1: you go about and figure out? Okay, how do I
23:01
Speaker 1: get a an informed, clear perspective on this that can
23:05
Speaker 1: help me decide whether I want to advocate for it
23:08
Speaker 1: or not? Um? How can an average person a great question?
23:11
Speaker 1: And so, as a journalist, what I'm gonna do? One thing?
23:16
Speaker 1: I am coming that something from an assumption though that
23:19
Speaker 1: clean water is better than like polluted water. Um that
23:24
Speaker 1: that that is a bias. I have people share that,
23:29
Speaker 1: you know, you know what I'm saying. Most people share that.
23:31
Speaker 1: So how do we get that? And was the orders
23:34
Speaker 1: of the US rule a effective way to achieve that goal?
23:41
Speaker 1: And the answer to that for me was I spent
23:44
Speaker 1: I spent years and nobody in the in if you're
23:48
Speaker 1: a roof and contractor or um or or a financial
23:52
Speaker 1: reporter or whatever, nobody's gonna do this. So that this
23:55
Speaker 1: is my job. I got paid to do it. You know. Um,
23:58
Speaker 1: you talk to everybody on all sides of that, and
24:01
Speaker 1: you're really careful with Like when in that one with
24:04
Speaker 1: the Farm Bureau, who was really against the orders of
24:07
Speaker 1: the US rule? Um? I found people on both sides
24:11
Speaker 1: of that who are so for it or so against
24:13
Speaker 1: it to be less trustworthy than those who simply wanted
24:16
Speaker 1: the goal of clean water? Does that make sense? And
24:21
Speaker 1: so you really get away from the advocates, the the
24:26
Speaker 1: the the die hard advocates, and you go to people
24:29
Speaker 1: who have a more objective view. And again, my biases
24:34
Speaker 1: for clean water versus balluted water. So how do we
24:38
Speaker 1: achieve that? And in my opinion, after writing all of
24:41
Speaker 1: those for so long. The Waters of the US Act
24:45
Speaker 1: was a very well written very you took into account
24:50
Speaker 1: private property rights and eventualities and all but one of
24:54
Speaker 1: the things it required. There's two things that were wrong
24:56
Speaker 1: with it. One they knew they couldn't get through Congress
25:01
Speaker 1: because the farmers, developers and some of the mining interests
25:05
Speaker 1: did not want it, and they had more clout in
25:08
Speaker 1: Congress than the people who just wanted to try to
25:11
Speaker 1: make this Clean Water Act it you know, expanded, and
25:15
Speaker 1: so they wrote it as a rule for the e
25:18
Speaker 1: p A. I can tell you there's a problem with that,
25:22
Speaker 1: because we, the people in our congressional representatives, didn't get
25:25
Speaker 1: to look at that. Impassive rules are very dangerous when
25:31
Speaker 1: put into place for bi federal agencies because they are
25:35
Speaker 1: the province of unelected And I don't like the word
25:38
Speaker 1: bureaucrats because I know people who serve in those positions
25:41
Speaker 1: with incredible integrity and honor. But they are they they
25:46
Speaker 1: are now in charge of imposing this rule on the people.
25:51
Speaker 1: It's not a law. My opinion is we should put
25:55
Speaker 1: the Waters of the US Act through Congress, let everybody
25:58
Speaker 1: fight over it, and let's pass something however we can
26:02
Speaker 1: that that will approximate it. But as it was, there
26:07
Speaker 1: were too many people who were convinced that it was over.
26:11
Speaker 1: It was stepping on people's property rights. Back to back
26:15
Speaker 1: to the every man who's looking at this, what are
26:18
Speaker 1: some of the resources that maybe, like if if I'm
26:21
Speaker 1: a listener and I'm wondering to myself, Okay, I'm gonna
26:25
Speaker 1: be trying to pay attention to some of these top
26:27
Speaker 1: level issues when they come down the line. I want
26:30
Speaker 1: to try to listen to different sources. I want to
26:32
Speaker 1: try to get a informed opinion. Do you have any
26:36
Speaker 1: recommended resources or types of people or types of websites
26:40
Speaker 1: or I don't know anything that you would recommend people
26:43
Speaker 1: turned to to try to get a clear understanding of
26:47
Speaker 1: these different pieces of legislation or rules or issues that
26:51
Speaker 1: impact conservations. I got it. So I'm gonna say, if
26:55
Speaker 1: you're a hunter and a fisherman, and and you you
26:58
Speaker 1: really care about the environment that you hunt in fishing
27:01
Speaker 1: that you pass under your kids, um, I don't think
27:04
Speaker 1: it's the bad thing to go to an advocacy organization
27:07
Speaker 1: like Trout Unlimited and get their policy directs and say
27:11
Speaker 1: and then and then look at those with the traditional
27:14
Speaker 1: grain of salt. You know, this is their job. They're
27:16
Speaker 1: an advocate for the clean water. So but I do
27:20
Speaker 1: think that back country Hunters and Anglers and National Wildlife
27:24
Speaker 1: Federation and Trout Unlimited are in good faith and they
27:29
Speaker 1: will give you a rundown on what they think is
27:32
Speaker 1: important to to protect clean water, air, white public lands, whatever.
27:37
Speaker 1: And so these organizations are very they're very important. Now
27:41
Speaker 1: that said, you go, if you have worries, you you
27:46
Speaker 1: ask them, and then you go and you read. And
27:49
Speaker 1: one of the things that happened in the the Tyson
27:52
Speaker 1: chicken spill on the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior
27:55
Speaker 1: in Alabama, which is last like last winter. Local coverage
28:00
Speaker 1: of that thing was great and it was not biased,
28:05
Speaker 1: and people were furious at Tyson and they they asked
28:09
Speaker 1: Tyson why they did it. And the local coverage was very,
28:14
Speaker 1: very good. And so you gotta read. You gotta get
28:18
Speaker 1: off the internet and get a local paper whatever danger
28:21
Speaker 1: there in. I was building a fire this morning and
28:24
Speaker 1: reading the hell of an independent record, which I don't
28:27
Speaker 1: get anymore because we don't deliver it here. And I
28:30
Speaker 1: was learning things about my community, my county that I
28:33
Speaker 1: would never get in a million years reading on the
28:35
Speaker 1: internet because it's not local news. And that's a pair.
28:41
Speaker 1: That's a peril we're in as a democratic republic that
28:44
Speaker 1: depends on the First Amendment, the freedom of speech and
28:48
Speaker 1: the press. I mean, we need local news, good local news.
28:56
Speaker 1: I wonder about this often, just whether it be the
28:58
Speaker 1: local news or is the larger, the larger top level
29:03
Speaker 1: designation of news or resources that you can trust. I
29:10
Speaker 1: think trust is the thing these days that is exceedingly
29:13
Speaker 1: hard to pin down. Y can I can we go back?
29:16
Speaker 1: Guess Rerecords said the Waters of the US Act, it
29:20
Speaker 1: required that the American people have some level of trust
29:26
Speaker 1: in that environmental protection agency and and buy extrapolation the
29:31
Speaker 1: federal government the Waters of the US Act in order
29:35
Speaker 1: for it to work the rule, it meant that we
29:40
Speaker 1: had to trust the federal government not to overreach on
29:46
Speaker 1: our private properties and the and the end result was
29:49
Speaker 1: it was it was a huge propaganda campaign against it, yes,
29:53
Speaker 1: but the end result was that the American people decided
29:56
Speaker 1: that they didn't trust the federal government that much. And
30:00
Speaker 1: that's fine. I think not to trust is good. Like
30:04
Speaker 1: the old Arabic proverb to trust is wonderful. Not to
30:08
Speaker 1: trust is better. Uh, I think that's good, but that
30:12
Speaker 1: comes with a penalty, and your lack of trust in
30:15
Speaker 1: the government that you have can can wind up being
30:20
Speaker 1: running you towards a failed state model. Do you do
30:24
Speaker 1: you trust our government? I think that the government should
30:29
Speaker 1: be recognized as we the people of and foreign by,
30:35
Speaker 1: and it should be checked at every turn and asked
30:39
Speaker 1: if this is the right way. That's an exhaustion process.
30:43
Speaker 1: But I think that the institutions are sound, you know,
30:49
Speaker 1: I think that the ideas are sound, but it's it is.
30:52
Speaker 1: It may be a government of laws and not men,
30:55
Speaker 1: but men are administered in those laws, and men, as
30:57
Speaker 1: we all know, and women and children are foul mm hm.
31:02
Speaker 1: So within that context, understanding that we live in this
31:06
Speaker 1: world where there's all these things that are happening that
31:08
Speaker 1: are impacting the resources we care about, and we have
31:11
Speaker 1: a fallible government that is built on strong foundations in
31:16
Speaker 1: many cases, but does have people, imperfect people at different
31:20
Speaker 1: times in different ways. That a yes, as we all are.
31:23
Speaker 1: So they are you know, enforcing or implementing these decisions
31:28
Speaker 1: that impact the thing we love. Let me ask you this,
31:32
Speaker 1: and this is a very high level loaded question. Um,
31:36
Speaker 1: but it's it's like the questions so many people are
31:38
Speaker 1: trying to answer for themselves I think right now, Um,
31:42
Speaker 1: which is how to be a conservationist or how to
31:47
Speaker 1: be an advocate? You know, there's a lot of people
31:48
Speaker 1: have gotten Instagram profile these days, and you know it's
31:51
Speaker 1: asked for your title or whatever these things you are,
31:53
Speaker 1: and people will say, I'm a hunter, I'm a conservationist. Um,
31:58
Speaker 1: how do you become a conservation he or what are
32:00
Speaker 1: the things that you should be doing or can be doing,
32:03
Speaker 1: or should be doing a better job of to truly
32:06
Speaker 1: be that participant, that citizen participant that impacts these things
32:10
Speaker 1: we love so much. There's the generic stuff I know,
32:13
Speaker 1: like make your voice heard. I know that you should participate,
32:16
Speaker 1: But what's the nuts and bolts, real stuff we can do?
32:20
Speaker 1: I tell you, Um, there's a guy and I've never
32:22
Speaker 1: personally met him. His name is Justin Schaff, who lives
32:25
Speaker 1: out in Glasgow, Montana, and they were working with Black
32:28
Speaker 1: Country owners and anglers to remove these old decrepit fences
32:33
Speaker 1: throughout all this analoge corridors out there in eastern Montana
32:38
Speaker 1: north of Fort pick And I would love I didn't.
32:42
Speaker 1: I was working. I've got other stuff. But I think
32:45
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing clean up days. I see
32:48
Speaker 1: it through B A J A lot. But Um, there's
32:51
Speaker 1: that gun works um down in Utah and they do
32:54
Speaker 1: those range cleanups on public land. I think that's the fundamental.
32:59
Speaker 1: That's a that's the eight hundred foot level stuff and
33:04
Speaker 1: that And one of the things we had when we
33:07
Speaker 1: achieved the greatest successes in conservation in wildlife in American history,
33:11
Speaker 1: in world history, is we had all of these strange
33:15
Speaker 1: sportsman's clubs all over the United States, and people went
33:20
Speaker 1: there and they drank coffee and they discussed. The Valley
33:22
Speaker 1: County Sportsman in Montana was this huge engine of change
33:26
Speaker 1: for good. Um. We have them all over We still
33:29
Speaker 1: have them, but the average agent there is like sixty six,
33:32
Speaker 1: you know. Um, And I don't know if we'll ever
33:35
Speaker 1: have that again, but we do need to join with
33:38
Speaker 1: people who have like goals and like passions and remove fence,
33:45
Speaker 1: Romuntalo range, clean up the Black Warrior River for trash day. Um.
33:51
Speaker 1: And then those people brainstorm, as citizens in the United
33:56
Speaker 1: States of America uniquely do, and they say, what do
33:59
Speaker 1: you think the next big thing? We should work on,
34:01
Speaker 1: is what do you think about the nuts and bolts
34:07
Speaker 1: of some of the the influence buttons we can press.
34:12
Speaker 1: So we can do on the groundwork, and then the
34:15
Speaker 1: next thing we can probably do is try to influence
34:17
Speaker 1: decision makers. And so if I'm thinking to myself, what
34:20
Speaker 1: are my mediums of influence? While I can show up
34:25
Speaker 1: at someone's office, I can write a letter, I can
34:27
Speaker 1: place a phone call, I can sign a petition, I
34:30
Speaker 1: can post a rant on Facebook. Maybe those are the
34:32
Speaker 1: five I can think about the top of my head. Um,
34:36
Speaker 1: what of those do you think are most effective? And
34:39
Speaker 1: then secondly, how do you make one of those more effective?
34:43
Speaker 1: Like there's the you can send an email that's like
34:46
Speaker 1: the pre written email that b H already put together
34:49
Speaker 1: for you, or you can write a whole custom letter.
34:51
Speaker 1: Does that make a difference? What's you're taking on that
34:55
Speaker 1: make a difference for sure? But we don't all have
34:58
Speaker 1: time to do that. I mean, you gotta new baby
35:00
Speaker 1: in the house. Um. And so the other is say
35:04
Speaker 1: eight percent as effective, and so that's one hill of
35:07
Speaker 1: a lot better than zero. Um. And here's the thing
35:11
Speaker 1: I noticed, I have UM and I do not really
35:15
Speaker 1: have a political bias. I've never fit in a party,
35:18
Speaker 1: you know, But I do think that politicians who do
35:23
Speaker 1: not listen, say congressmen who you write the letter and
35:27
Speaker 1: nothing happens. Are people all show up at the public
35:31
Speaker 1: meeting and the policies could coming out of that office
35:34
Speaker 1: don't change that. You know, people that it's time for
35:37
Speaker 1: America's just to to vote. That those people out because
35:43
Speaker 1: the people you're gonna get in that do listen. They're
35:46
Speaker 1: not necessarily like like I know people who do single
35:49
Speaker 1: issue voting on on guns in particular, you know, And um,
35:53
Speaker 1: I I share the Second Amendment reverence, and I'm a
35:58
Speaker 1: Second Amendment absolutist ephen which is uncomfortable around more liberal people.
36:03
Speaker 1: But that's a perfect example of where we've voted a
36:08
Speaker 1: single issue and let these these politicians go wild all
36:13
Speaker 1: around it. I mean, I mean, why does the GOP,
36:18
Speaker 1: why does the Republican Party the United States have a
36:21
Speaker 1: privatization of public lands paragraph in its platform? I mean,
36:27
Speaker 1: how many of us want that, you know? I mean,
36:33
Speaker 1: I just I just think that should be there should
36:35
Speaker 1: be pressure there until that is removed from the platform.
36:38
Speaker 1: And I get emails and and communicate contact all the
36:42
Speaker 1: time from people that listen to the podcast and they're
36:46
Speaker 1: they're very conservative, and they just go, you know what,
36:49
Speaker 1: We've come to the end of this idea that because
36:51
Speaker 1: I vote Republican, that I'm gonna put up with water
36:56
Speaker 1: pollution and privatization of public lands. I'm done with that.
37:01
Speaker 1: What are they gonna do? Yeah, that's the question. So
37:03
Speaker 1: what do you do? It's we've got to We've got
37:05
Speaker 1: an election coming up here in a matter of months. Uh,
37:09
Speaker 1: what do you actually do to change that? It seems daunting. Well,
37:13
Speaker 1: Tim Fox is running for governor here in Montana, and
37:15
Speaker 1: he came out with a whole I haven't haven't read
37:17
Speaker 1: all of yet. He came out with a whole policy
37:21
Speaker 1: direct his own conservation, extream access public lands. So that's
37:27
Speaker 1: gonna be like, why why don't all of them have that?
37:32
Speaker 1: And so if they don't have that, you're gonna say, well, dude,
37:36
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can vote for you. What
37:38
Speaker 1: do you you know? What do you what do you want?
37:41
Speaker 1: What do you want? What? What are you trying to
37:43
Speaker 1: make of my country? What are you doing up there?
37:47
Speaker 1: But if you want to privatize public lands, how else
37:50
Speaker 1: what are you representing? Do you think me, do you
37:55
Speaker 1: think it comes down to just the critical mass of
37:57
Speaker 1: people reaching out to these So, for example, you have
38:01
Speaker 1: Republican candidates in Montana that are coming out in support
38:05
Speaker 1: of public lands and conservation issues because they realize in
38:08
Speaker 1: Montana enough people are raising the ruckus that they better.
38:12
Speaker 1: But maybe in I don't know, South Carolina or something,
38:16
Speaker 1: maybe they're not. And so Republicans they're feel like they
38:19
Speaker 1: don't need to worry about that part of things because
38:21
Speaker 1: no one's given a hard time. Is it as simple
38:23
Speaker 1: as that? I think it's as as simple as that.
38:26
Speaker 1: And I think that one of the things we we've
38:28
Speaker 1: done in this country is we've been so we've been
38:32
Speaker 1: so successful with the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act,
38:35
Speaker 1: the restoration while like Pittman Robertson, you know, Landing War
38:38
Speaker 1: Conservation Fund, that a lot of people have been able
38:41
Speaker 1: to deprioritize those things in their own like political life,
38:46
Speaker 1: for their own own owned, their own daily life, because
38:49
Speaker 1: somebody somewhere is taking care of that. But in a
38:53
Speaker 1: democratic republic, which requires on the participation of the citizenry,
38:57
Speaker 1: when you don't take you you think of what else
39:00
Speaker 1: has taken care of it? A lot of times the
39:02
Speaker 1: bridge collapse, you know, like you go, Wow, I hope
39:06
Speaker 1: those engineers know what they're doing. That bridge looks like
39:09
Speaker 1: it's kind of off. Yeah, it comes out that that
39:11
Speaker 1: trust again. Yeah, yes, And and I guess if we
39:17
Speaker 1: lose the trust that we can make a difference, we're
39:19
Speaker 1: in big trouble. And I don't think I don't think
39:21
Speaker 1: we're there anywhere near that yet. You wrote, you wrote though,
39:25
Speaker 1: uh in February of two thousand nine, you wrote that
39:29
Speaker 1: you were worried that to some degree America's hunters and
39:32
Speaker 1: anglers had lost their stomach for a fight because of
39:36
Speaker 1: some of the things that we're going on. A year ago,
39:39
Speaker 1: there was the shutdown, there was the expiration of the
39:42
Speaker 1: l wcf UH, all sorts of other things that we're
39:45
Speaker 1: aware of going on with deregulation of environmental policies. Still
39:50
Speaker 1: some people poking at the public lands privatization issue. Um.
39:54
Speaker 1: Now it's a year later, some things have changed, But
39:56
Speaker 1: I'm curious do you still feel that way? I tell
40:00
Speaker 1: you what's happened was that the fight that we're talking about,
40:03
Speaker 1: the fight for public land and wildlife and all it
40:07
Speaker 1: has become. Um, we have got to take that out
40:10
Speaker 1: of the polarities we we as as a people, all
40:15
Speaker 1: of us Democrats, Republicans, the independence, we have to remove
40:18
Speaker 1: the goals that we have. What is what is that thing?
40:22
Speaker 1: We can we can disagree on methods, but we can
40:24
Speaker 1: agree on goals or whatever. So we have to. Uh.
40:28
Speaker 1: My friend David Lidford, who's a biologists in Kentucky, UM,
40:32
Speaker 1: we did a podcast with him and and he off,
40:35
Speaker 1: he has this kind of thing you'll say, says, what
40:38
Speaker 1: is it that you want? He's particularly an ornithologist. He's
40:42
Speaker 1: a big rowity like Kentucky guy who who loves birds
40:46
Speaker 1: and hunting and elk hunting and stuff. And uh I
40:49
Speaker 1: met him because he worked at the Elk Foundation a
40:50
Speaker 1: long time ago. He's gone back to Kentucky. But he's
40:53
Speaker 1: fond of saying what is it that you want? Because
40:57
Speaker 1: on these these uh reclaim and coal mines lands where
41:01
Speaker 1: he works, they can plant the plants and and make
41:06
Speaker 1: sure they live that will support migratory say warblers. Okay,
41:12
Speaker 1: and he said, but but people tend to look look
41:15
Speaker 1: at it landscape and go I just wanted to be
41:17
Speaker 1: driving and healthy. I want everything I want. I want
41:20
Speaker 1: a lot of things here and he goes, you gotta
41:22
Speaker 1: have goals, and one of the things you could say
41:25
Speaker 1: was would you rather have clean water or polluted water?
41:29
Speaker 1: Will argue about the methods, but we're going to hold
41:31
Speaker 1: onto that goal. And I'll tell you what. If you
41:33
Speaker 1: have a politician who doesn't care about whether you get
41:37
Speaker 1: polluted water in your will, and there are these politicians
41:41
Speaker 1: out there, buddy or not, that guy needs to get
41:44
Speaker 1: voted out. I mean that Elk River coal, that cold
41:50
Speaker 1: washing spill that they happened in West West Virginia. One
41:54
Speaker 1: of the reasons that was so devastating to the water
41:56
Speaker 1: intakes for people downstream was that their wells had already
42:02
Speaker 1: been contaminated for generations and couldn't be used. Now. Somebody's
42:09
Speaker 1: not voting their best interests there, And yeah, I mean,
42:15
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got to decide what it is we want.
42:18
Speaker 1: And I often asked um people on the far right, especially,
42:23
Speaker 1: I say, what would it look like if you had
42:26
Speaker 1: your way completely? And you know that most people don't
42:31
Speaker 1: really have They don't They can't really, they can't answer
42:34
Speaker 1: that question. They know what they're against, but they don't
42:38
Speaker 1: know what they're for. And I go back to my
42:40
Speaker 1: Childhood's like I always knew what I was for. It
42:45
Speaker 1: was like to take my kids down to the creek
42:48
Speaker 1: and catch brim and shell crackers and see a freaking
42:53
Speaker 1: deer or a or a water snake or or a
42:57
Speaker 1: queen snake, which were really rare go by, you know,
43:00
Speaker 1: mm hmm. It's funny to experience creation. It's funny, though,
43:06
Speaker 1: is that so true? But at the same time, if
43:10
Speaker 1: you look at in history, if history is an indicator,
43:14
Speaker 1: more often it seems like it's only the threat of
43:18
Speaker 1: danger or crisis that gets people off their asses and
43:22
Speaker 1: doing something, which which isn't always true, but it seems
43:25
Speaker 1: like in many cases it is. I think that's evolutionary
43:28
Speaker 1: biology for us as a species. You know, like when
43:32
Speaker 1: the matt when the when the dire Wolf is not
43:35
Speaker 1: outside the circle of fire, people saying and they I
43:43
Speaker 1: was thinking about that year zero or whatever that is
43:45
Speaker 1: with the Jack Black, Yeah, I haven't seen that long,
43:52
Speaker 1: you know. With he's in love with that that whatever
43:55
Speaker 1: that gal is dancing. Then he tell her to hit
43:58
Speaker 1: her on the head with the club and on he
44:00
Speaker 1: hits through and he's like real week, It's he's like out.
44:04
Speaker 1: But like when they're not being attacked, people tend to
44:08
Speaker 1: go into like like neutral, which is you know normal, Well,
44:12
Speaker 1: it's it's funny even it's funny though, are are we though?
44:17
Speaker 1: Because I feel for so take this example, uh, Quality
44:23
Speaker 1: Deer Management Association is representative of deer hunters across the country.
44:28
Speaker 1: It is the most highly participated in type of big
44:31
Speaker 1: game hunting. There's more deer hunters out there than anything else. Um.
44:36
Speaker 1: But when you compare membership to that organization to something
44:40
Speaker 1: like d you Ducks Unlimited um or Pheasants Forever, they
44:45
Speaker 1: have a dramatically higher membership of those other species. Now,
44:49
Speaker 1: one of the theories is that deer hunters are kind
44:52
Speaker 1: of resting on their laurels because we're in the glory
44:54
Speaker 1: days of deer. Deer hunting is great. We don't have
44:56
Speaker 1: a wolf at the door, while ducks are. Pheasants had
45:00
Speaker 1: more recent concerns, and so there's this urgency. Um. So
45:06
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Remember, um, Howard Vincent told me,
45:10
Speaker 1: who's the head up Pheasants forever? He said, the one
45:13
Speaker 1: of the Bob st Pierre might said. He said, the
45:15
Speaker 1: one of the biggest problems is like when when up
45:18
Speaker 1: when game birds are up and everybody's got the dogs
45:21
Speaker 1: and they're having the time of their lives hunting. They
45:23
Speaker 1: let their membership laughs. Yeah, and she said, he said,
45:28
Speaker 1: it's amazing how you can chart this. Like when times
45:31
Speaker 1: are good, everybody's like it's gonna be good forever. And
45:35
Speaker 1: then when times they're terrible, they, you know, they're all like,
45:37
Speaker 1: we gotta do something. I think I'll join up. Well,
45:40
Speaker 1: the same things, same things true of the Second Amendment,
45:43
Speaker 1: right you look at that's exactly the same correlation with
45:47
Speaker 1: gun sales and administrations and are a membership. I'm sure
45:50
Speaker 1: it's tied to are you worried about losing your right
45:53
Speaker 1: or not? Yeah? For sure? And we don't. Can't you
45:56
Speaker 1: all relate dog to that? You know, you're like, you know, like, OK,
46:00
Speaker 1: that's one less thing I gotta worry about, you know.
46:03
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't remember how much these tires I
46:05
Speaker 1: put on this, these twelve flight tires I put on
46:07
Speaker 1: the Forerunner. After we had a series of flats, I
46:11
Speaker 1: was like, who those things are? You know, I don't
46:12
Speaker 1: know how much they are? There so much money. I
46:14
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. I gotta worry about that right now.
46:18
Speaker 1: And so I get it. Um. But you know, I
46:21
Speaker 1: don't think we have such a good trek record mark Um.
46:27
Speaker 1: I mean really up until up until now. And maybe
46:30
Speaker 1: it's just because we I'm paying attention. This is my time,
46:33
Speaker 1: You're paying attention, this is your time, especially you've got
46:36
Speaker 1: younger children than I do. But like we have such
46:40
Speaker 1: a good track record. Like I was thinking, when this
46:43
Speaker 1: meat it's not a meat shortage, but when the COVID
46:46
Speaker 1: nineteen got the meat processors and you realize that like
46:49
Speaker 1: a quarter of all the meat is processes in these
46:51
Speaker 1: five plans, Like that's a big national security food security problem.
46:59
Speaker 1: Like how come we let all of our local slaughterhouse
47:03
Speaker 1: processing facilities go belly up one by one over the
47:07
Speaker 1: course of my life. I mean, that wasn't very smart.
47:13
Speaker 1: And but every every time I opened up the computer,
47:18
Speaker 1: now there's somebody writing about local food security, and there's
47:23
Speaker 1: there's I was reading a piece from the Food and
47:25
Speaker 1: Environment Reporting Network. I was reading one from Civil Eats,
47:29
Speaker 1: which is not my fallow there, and it's like they're
47:32
Speaker 1: people are buying more seeds, they're they're they're talking about
47:36
Speaker 1: local food security. So we're kind we are a problem
47:41
Speaker 1: solving a bunch of folks for better or worse. We
47:44
Speaker 1: damned up all our rivers. We know, we like we
47:47
Speaker 1: we got rid of the biathling in like thirty years
47:50
Speaker 1: and none. Then we brought them back like like we're's
47:53
Speaker 1: we're the like the best in the world that wrecking
47:56
Speaker 1: stuff and then fix them. It's a good way to
47:59
Speaker 1: put it. Yeah, Um, we really are, though. I mean,
48:02
Speaker 1: you look at Europe and it's just kind of moribund
48:05
Speaker 1: compared to here. I mean, I mean it's just like
48:09
Speaker 1: like here, it's just like there's just vibrancy. And I
48:12
Speaker 1: think part of it is the conflict, and I think
48:14
Speaker 1: we're too polarized now, but it's the conflicting visions for
48:19
Speaker 1: our country that are like two turbines, you know, those
48:23
Speaker 1: magnets that make electricity pushing that's it, yeah, pushing and pulling,
48:29
Speaker 1: and and like there's just this like blue fire right
48:33
Speaker 1: in the middle of that. Obviously, I'm a kind of
48:37
Speaker 1: an uber patriot or whatever. You got the most interesting
48:41
Speaker 1: place I've ever been, Well, it's interesting. You gotta that
48:44
Speaker 1: fire is either what you harness in it runs the
48:49
Speaker 1: turbine or it destroys it and explodes them exactly. It
48:55
Speaker 1: blows the roof off the building, kills everybody out there. Yep,
48:59
Speaker 1: that's exactly you. How do you see what's going on
49:02
Speaker 1: right now with COVID nineteen and all the ripple effects.
49:06
Speaker 1: How do you see that impacting the future of our
49:10
Speaker 1: conservation battles? Once again, I think we're on a wobbly
49:14
Speaker 1: place where, um one, I'm I'm extremely concerned about the
49:20
Speaker 1: amount of money that I don't know where it comes from,
49:23
Speaker 1: that's flowing out to everybody from from the the poorest
49:29
Speaker 1: to the richest. I don't know where all that money
49:31
Speaker 1: is coming from. But I do think that we're gonna
49:33
Speaker 1: see a consequence in federal land management and the privatization
49:38
Speaker 1: movement as a result of this deficit that we're running up. Okay,
49:44
Speaker 1: so you're saying, and a couple of years from now,
49:46
Speaker 1: the bill is gonna come do and people are gonna
49:47
Speaker 1: look to our public lands to pay it probably, and
49:51
Speaker 1: they're also going to if we if we let them,
49:56
Speaker 1: then we're going to see like people go, well, we
49:59
Speaker 1: just can't a forward to do. The equip Environmental Quality
50:03
Speaker 1: and Center program, which is a fantastic program, by the way,
50:06
Speaker 1: by the by the NRCS to protect and buffer watersheds.
50:11
Speaker 1: We just can't afford that anymore. And I'm like going,
50:14
Speaker 1: whoa wait a minute, buddy, how much is it gonna
50:17
Speaker 1: cost when the Moines is flooded or St. Louis is
50:19
Speaker 1: flooded out again? You know? Um, So we're gonna have
50:25
Speaker 1: to insist on a more rational environmentally based economics and
50:34
Speaker 1: budgets or else the low hanging fruit is gonna be
50:40
Speaker 1: everything that we love and that that concerns me, big problem. Yeah,
50:46
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. Another one of the things, and
50:49
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. Another one of the
50:50
Speaker 1: things that I've been wondering about is we have this
50:56
Speaker 1: this storm of current that's going on related to the
51:02
Speaker 1: pandemic and the pandemic response and the economic impacts, etcetera.
51:05
Speaker 1: And it's all consuming. It's it's like a hurricane that's
51:08
Speaker 1: all around us, and it's all you can see, it's
51:10
Speaker 1: all you can hear. You walk outside and get slapped
51:13
Speaker 1: in the face by the rain and the lightning, and
51:16
Speaker 1: underneath all that, though other things are still happening, there
51:21
Speaker 1: are this There's been a slew relative slew of different
51:26
Speaker 1: policies being put into place or environmental protection is being
51:30
Speaker 1: removed or different rules being put in place that are
51:34
Speaker 1: impacting our wild places that are very much still flying
51:37
Speaker 1: under the radar right now because I can, and I've
51:40
Speaker 1: been reading stories how some people are kind of racing
51:43
Speaker 1: to get certain things done underneath the cover of COVID darkness.
51:47
Speaker 1: I can get away with this stuff while nobody can
51:49
Speaker 1: really put much energy towards it. Is that something you're seeing,
51:53
Speaker 1: Is that something you're worrying about? Is there any truth
51:55
Speaker 1: to that? I think there's some truth to it. I'm
51:58
Speaker 1: not worried about it. And here is why the the
52:02
Speaker 1: initial private paradigm, the the American people have said that
52:08
Speaker 1: they don't trust the federal government. They they got they
52:12
Speaker 1: bought into this Ronald Reagan view that says the government
52:16
Speaker 1: is not the solution, the government is the problem. What
52:19
Speaker 1: are the twelve scariest words in American In in English,
52:23
Speaker 1: I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.
52:25
Speaker 1: We we bought that, okay, in Dick this, we bought
52:31
Speaker 1: that in spite of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and
52:37
Speaker 1: all of the billion millions of bureaucrats who have done
52:40
Speaker 1: their jobs and made things good in America. We bought
52:43
Speaker 1: that ideal, We bought that narrative. Ronald Reagan was the
52:47
Speaker 1: first to articulated um and somehow now we've said, all
52:53
Speaker 1: of this deregulation that the Trump administration is doing is
52:56
Speaker 1: nothing different than what the Republican Party has been saying
53:01
Speaker 1: all of my adult life. They wanted. And so do
53:05
Speaker 1: I worry about it. I do not, because you get
53:09
Speaker 1: what you demand, you get what you say you will
53:12
Speaker 1: stand for. And if the states now they say tenth Amendment,
53:16
Speaker 1: the state's rights are gonna do it, well, you know
53:20
Speaker 1: where I grew up states rights with a rallying cry
53:22
Speaker 1: for Jim Crow Law and all that stuff which which
53:26
Speaker 1: obviously needed to change, right, But I do think the
53:29
Speaker 1: Tenth Amendment is an important thing. My my belief, my
53:34
Speaker 1: hope is that the people of the United States will
53:36
Speaker 1: get get away from this hatred of the federal government
53:40
Speaker 1: while they get the mail and drive on the interstate
53:42
Speaker 1: highway system and do all the things and enjoy all
53:46
Speaker 1: the benefits of having a function in federal government, but
53:48
Speaker 1: that they will hold the states more accountable for managing
53:53
Speaker 1: the environment, air, you know what I mean? Like that
53:57
Speaker 1: this could be a positive thing. While we recognize the
54:02
Speaker 1: benefits of what we had pre Ronald Reagan. And I'm
54:06
Speaker 1: not saying Ronald Reagan was bad or anything, but this
54:08
Speaker 1: was just something that came up in the eighties that
54:12
Speaker 1: has now achieved kind of a nuclear success amongst American Yeah,
54:19
Speaker 1: so here's an interesting example of something that's relevant to
54:22
Speaker 1: what you described. How About something who kind of came
54:26
Speaker 1: of age of of sorts ideologically at least during that era,
54:30
Speaker 1: who's now having an impact and who's sliding under the
54:33
Speaker 1: radar in certain ways, which is William Perry Penley, the
54:37
Speaker 1: acting director of the BLM, who just like a rule
54:41
Speaker 1: that was not put in front of Congress and didn't
54:44
Speaker 1: have to be voted on, He's been named an acting
54:46
Speaker 1: director of the BLM, but not made the real director
54:49
Speaker 1: of the BLM, so he doesn't have to go through
54:51
Speaker 1: the exactly, so he doesn't have to go through the confirmation.
54:55
Speaker 1: This is obviously a piece of skullduggery that the American
54:59
Speaker 1: people are, you know they I just can't believe. There's
55:03
Speaker 1: just not enough of us that no know what's an
55:06
Speaker 1: issue there, I guess. So we've got a guy who's
55:10
Speaker 1: publicly stated he is anti public land that is now
55:13
Speaker 1: in charge of the agency that administers I believe the
55:17
Speaker 1: largest percentage of our public lands in the country. Um,
55:20
Speaker 1: and that still happened, has been going on for a
55:22
Speaker 1: year or something like that now. Uh, and again he
55:26
Speaker 1: just got re upped and no one's talking about it.
55:28
Speaker 1: What do you think about that kind of thing? I
55:31
Speaker 1: think that that if if I were looking for an
55:33
Speaker 1: example of why I did not trust an administration, that
55:38
Speaker 1: example would be a photo of William Parker Pendley. Yeah.
55:44
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you another thing is if if American
55:48
Speaker 1: hunters and fishermen and women are going to put up
55:54
Speaker 1: with an administration who appoints I would ask your listeners
55:57
Speaker 1: to do this. Look up pacifics States Legal Foundation and
56:01
Speaker 1: Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is where Pendley came from,
56:05
Speaker 1: which is where Gail Norton came from under George Bush
56:10
Speaker 1: forty three, and where uh James Watt was an originator
56:15
Speaker 1: who was under Reagan, who you know did all that
56:17
Speaker 1: outlandish stuff on public lands against the public lands. UM.
56:22
Speaker 1: Look up Mountain States Legal Foundation, look up a Pacific
56:25
Speaker 1: States Legal Foundation, and and just judge for yourself whether
56:29
Speaker 1: representatives from those organizations should be in control of American
56:33
Speaker 1: public policy. And I'm not saying that those people may
56:39
Speaker 1: not perform a valuable service as gadflies and watch dogs
56:44
Speaker 1: and law and lawyers in the private sector, But ask
56:47
Speaker 1: yourself whether those representatives from those firms should be in
56:52
Speaker 1: public policy over with power over things that you believe
56:55
Speaker 1: in and that you want. So here's the here's the
56:58
Speaker 1: dilemma though. Hell is, someone can be you know, hunter
57:03
Speaker 1: Angler out there trying to pay attention to this stuff,
57:06
Speaker 1: trying to say what's going on in our government right
57:08
Speaker 1: now that's good for environment, for hunting and fishing, and
57:11
Speaker 1: what's going on that's not so good? And they see
57:13
Speaker 1: something like this with Penley, and they go and do
57:16
Speaker 1: the research you just told them to do, and they
57:18
Speaker 1: see that, Hey, okay, this is this is an issue.
57:20
Speaker 1: This is not a good thing. This is an indication
57:22
Speaker 1: of people doing something that is is not going to
57:25
Speaker 1: help us out in the long run. So that might
57:28
Speaker 1: put an X in the column of Hey, these guys
57:30
Speaker 1: aren't doing very good when it comes to these things.
57:33
Speaker 1: And when I go to the voters box this November,
57:35
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about that. But look on the flip side,
57:39
Speaker 1: how about I don't know, a month or two ago
57:41
Speaker 1: they came out with the new hunting access increases for
57:45
Speaker 1: wildlife refugees and they're increasing access to a whole bunch
57:48
Speaker 1: of different pieces of public lands across the country. That
57:51
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty good yeah, So how does someone
57:54
Speaker 1: make sense of that? Like, Hey, there, here's a really
57:56
Speaker 1: good thing they're doing. Well, what did it call slie? Okay,
58:01
Speaker 1: So Randy Newburgh has that wonderful saying conservation is not
58:06
Speaker 1: convenient and when you do large scale restoration of say
58:11
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River watersheds, there are winners and losers, is
58:14
Speaker 1: no doubt. So so what did it cost them to
58:19
Speaker 1: re establish some access? And I'm not saying it's it's
58:22
Speaker 1: it's not important to the wildlife refugees versus having William
58:27
Speaker 1: Parker Penley in control of of um that interior, right um?
58:34
Speaker 1: Like like like what was the convenient thing? And I'm
58:39
Speaker 1: not saying it's throw us a bone, because it is
58:42
Speaker 1: throwing us a bone and we all know that is.
58:44
Speaker 1: But it's a good bone. You don't want to look
58:47
Speaker 1: a gift horse in the mouth completely, right, No, But
58:50
Speaker 1: you can you can accept that and still say that
58:54
Speaker 1: Parker William Parker Penley or that that ridiculous leasing orgy
59:00
Speaker 1: that they went on on oil and gas in the
59:02
Speaker 1: migration corridors and stuff like that. I mean, yeah, and
59:06
Speaker 1: and that the reason that's a problem is one the
59:12
Speaker 1: state of Women did not stand up and push back
59:15
Speaker 1: against that lease. And even though their fishing game, they
59:17
Speaker 1: didn't feel that they had the power to push back.
59:20
Speaker 1: That's a problem. Okay. The other problem is those leases
59:24
Speaker 1: imply a right to drill, and you can easily use
59:28
Speaker 1: those leases as hostage leases in the future and you
59:32
Speaker 1: could say, you know, you're gonna have to pay me,
59:34
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna take the knife of the mona Lisa
59:36
Speaker 1: here going to you know. And so those leases should
59:41
Speaker 1: have been considered and debated and discussed for a long time.
59:48
Speaker 1: It's not analysis paralysis to try to find out what
59:51
Speaker 1: that right answer is. And when you see people doing
59:55
Speaker 1: fire sales of public assets, people should be paying attention
59:59
Speaker 1: and say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lord, Nelly, let's
1:00:02
Speaker 1: just let's hold on. And then you say, holy smokes,
1:00:07
Speaker 1: look at whose conducting this by ourselves? They are an
1:00:11
Speaker 1: anti public lens activist, So do we really so? Then
1:00:18
Speaker 1: you you you write your letters, I guess. But in
1:00:21
Speaker 1: the end you're gonna have to change the paradigm that
1:00:24
Speaker 1: says that these people are allowed to auction off our assets,
1:00:28
Speaker 1: or privatize our public lands, or enable other people to
1:00:32
Speaker 1: profit by polluting our water. That's the paradigm that we
1:00:36
Speaker 1: haven't gotten there yet. We we we never have gotten there.
1:00:40
Speaker 1: I think that's so in the COVID nineteen thing, these
1:00:43
Speaker 1: are the questions that are being asked. What is a
1:00:45
Speaker 1: healthy environment that will prove that'll that'll make people strong
1:00:48
Speaker 1: and healthy and resilient in the face of pandemics, local
1:00:52
Speaker 1: food security, clean water, places to do do disperse, recreation
1:00:59
Speaker 1: another question that all this has got me asking. When
1:01:03
Speaker 1: it it's it's right in line with some of the
1:01:05
Speaker 1: things you describe there. You identify something like a fire sale.
1:01:08
Speaker 1: You see an issue that hey, this is there's something
1:01:11
Speaker 1: going on here. We need to do something about it.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: So there's the wolf at the door or the flip side.
1:01:16
Speaker 1: We'll see, Hey, here's an opportunity, here's something that was proposed.
1:01:20
Speaker 1: It's a great idea, it just needs our energy behind it.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: So you've got one of those two kinds of things.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: And then we as a at home conservationist that wants
1:01:28
Speaker 1: to make a difference. We now know. Okay, I can
1:01:31
Speaker 1: call email whatever. My big question is, during this time
1:01:35
Speaker 1: with the coronavirus consuming so much of the oxygen in
1:01:39
Speaker 1: the room, are we are we blowing what's the way
1:01:47
Speaker 1: I'm looking for here? Are wasting our time trying to
1:01:50
Speaker 1: honk the hornet that stuff right now because there just
1:01:53
Speaker 1: isn't any oxygen in the room. Like, when's the timing? Right?
1:01:56
Speaker 1: When do you think that we can start pushing on
1:01:58
Speaker 1: these things and have the politicians actually be able to
1:02:02
Speaker 1: pay attention. Um, I'm just worried, like right now it
1:02:04
Speaker 1: seems like no one can focus on anything else because
1:02:07
Speaker 1: of the crisis. They can't and and that's true, But
1:02:10
Speaker 1: but now is the time for people like listening to
1:02:13
Speaker 1: this podcast to start saying, like, okay, let's let's again Americans.
1:02:19
Speaker 1: I think as a as a nation, we're greatest problem
1:02:22
Speaker 1: solver in the world. You know. And there may be
1:02:25
Speaker 1: some hunter gatherer band somewhere and in the Cala harry
1:02:28
Speaker 1: or something is better than us, you know, the day
1:02:30
Speaker 1: to day, but as a nation, we're the best. So
1:02:33
Speaker 1: what are the things that we need to solve? What
1:02:36
Speaker 1: are the things that have the cold light has been
1:02:39
Speaker 1: cast upon them by the COVID nineteen pandemic and by
1:02:43
Speaker 1: the government's response to it. Okay, I mean one of
1:02:47
Speaker 1: the things that voy we could we could go the forever,
1:02:49
Speaker 1: and I know we can't. So one of the things
1:02:51
Speaker 1: that's very disturbing to me is that we had government
1:02:56
Speaker 1: directives powers that left the home depot and some of
1:03:00
Speaker 1: these huge businesses open while local businesses were forced to close.
1:03:06
Speaker 1: One of the things that really bothered me is that
1:03:09
Speaker 1: that we have entered into a regulatory state that discourages uh,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: small farmers and small meat producers from supplying local communities
1:03:20
Speaker 1: while the larger entities have taken over all the markets
1:03:25
Speaker 1: with predictable results. By the way, like like important beef
1:03:29
Speaker 1: from other countries and and paying our guys are people less,
1:03:34
Speaker 1: you know, um, illegal labor in the in the in
1:03:38
Speaker 1: the in the process, and plants where people are getting
1:03:40
Speaker 1: hurt and they're not they don't know about OSHA, and
1:03:43
Speaker 1: they don't know about the rights they have as Americans.
1:03:45
Speaker 1: I mean, the largest entities are grabbing stuff. But and
1:03:51
Speaker 1: and that's true, and it's terrible. But the thing it's
1:03:53
Speaker 1: bad for our national security, But in the long term,
1:03:56
Speaker 1: we weren't noticing that before COVID nineteen and so now
1:04:01
Speaker 1: is the time to start paying attention and perhaps listing
1:04:04
Speaker 1: to things that you, as an American citizen, see that
1:04:08
Speaker 1: obviously a million of us, millions of us could do this,
1:04:12
Speaker 1: This would be incredibly valuable. Did you use that state
1:04:16
Speaker 1: park to take your kids out during the pandemic? And
1:04:20
Speaker 1: where would you have gone if you hadn't had it?
1:04:22
Speaker 1: And wasn't it paid for by lunder Water Conservation Fund? Yes?
1:04:26
Speaker 1: It was, you know, did you take them down to
1:04:31
Speaker 1: go fishing? Like I was catfishing my mind out this spring?
1:04:37
Speaker 1: Like I wanted fish. I wanted to get a bunch
1:04:40
Speaker 1: of fish. I felt food insecure. I had six deer
1:04:43
Speaker 1: in the freezer, but didn't get an elk. I called
1:04:46
Speaker 1: a local ranchard about getting a cow. It was available.
1:04:50
Speaker 1: I relaxed on that. You know, they probably were a
1:04:53
Speaker 1: lot of people though, turning to some of these outdoor resources,
1:04:56
Speaker 1: whether it's food security or recreation, and it has shine
1:05:00
Speaker 1: a light on some of these things for some people
1:05:03
Speaker 1: that maybe wouldn't have normally paid attention as much. I
1:05:06
Speaker 1: saw everywhere I just like I in fact, I mean,
1:05:10
Speaker 1: there was days where I was I was really kind
1:05:13
Speaker 1: of ecstatic because of all the things I was seeing,
1:05:15
Speaker 1: people questioning and pointing out holy smokes, Like God, we
1:05:19
Speaker 1: got that. I mean everywhere I went, and by the way,
1:05:24
Speaker 1: we I know, there's a lot down in quarantine all
1:05:26
Speaker 1: but there's like enormous numbers of people around where I
1:05:29
Speaker 1: live enjoying their public lands. They were making me nervous.
1:05:33
Speaker 1: But it was one of those times when I really
1:05:37
Speaker 1: wished I lived closer to public lands. I always wish
1:05:42
Speaker 1: and appreciate it, but this is one of those times.
1:05:43
Speaker 1: It was visceral. Where you know, we weren't supposed to
1:05:46
Speaker 1: travel long distances. We weren't such a cross state, your lines,
1:05:49
Speaker 1: weren't do all these different things. And I'm stuck in
1:05:51
Speaker 1: a place right now where there's not any public land.
1:05:53
Speaker 1: We couldn't go hiking, there wasn't good fishing, uh you know,
1:05:57
Speaker 1: I couldn't go find black bears or anything like that.
1:05:59
Speaker 1: I was suck wishing I lived where you live. Hell
1:06:02
Speaker 1: and um much of there a lot of other people
1:06:05
Speaker 1: that are in big cities or in similar circumstances wishing man.
1:06:08
Speaker 1: Maybe there's something to be said about some of these
1:06:10
Speaker 1: places and some of these resources that we have. Uh.
1:06:13
Speaker 1: I think it's very possible that that this represents somewhat
1:06:17
Speaker 1: of a of a a seismic weather change in American
1:06:22
Speaker 1: consciousness about that very thing right there, and whether that
1:06:27
Speaker 1: means that land in Missouri is going to be more
1:06:29
Speaker 1: expensive as people like rush out to try to become
1:06:32
Speaker 1: food secure, you know, which would I mean, I don't,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: I don't know what's positive and that rural America has
1:06:38
Speaker 1: been in freefall for the last like thirty years. You know,
1:06:41
Speaker 1: maybe we could use a resurgence of people moving to
1:06:45
Speaker 1: rural America. Yeah, I wonder and I hope that if
1:06:51
Speaker 1: if this thing keeps tracking in a hopefully better direction,
1:06:55
Speaker 1: and we're able to get our politicians to have their
1:06:59
Speaker 1: enter g dispersed a little bit differently, I'm hoping that
1:07:04
Speaker 1: this can be an opportunity to get something like the
1:07:06
Speaker 1: Great American Outdoors Act done, because that's such a clear there.
1:07:11
Speaker 1: There seems to be such a clear connection between Hey,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: you appreciated that state park, your city park was that
1:07:16
Speaker 1: one place you could go and and enjoy yourself safely,
1:07:20
Speaker 1: um and or the national parks that are reopening now
1:07:23
Speaker 1: that's somewhere you can safely go, hopefully safely go. And
1:07:27
Speaker 1: I hope that we can have the energy and the
1:07:30
Speaker 1: tension to push something like that through. UM. So there's
1:07:34
Speaker 1: that opportunity. But then I worry about the thing you
1:07:35
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, which is the bills you out of. How
1:07:38
Speaker 1: do you pay the bills after we just printed all
1:07:41
Speaker 1: this money. Here's here's the thing is those things are
1:07:44
Speaker 1: not gonna be negotiable. You know, you're not gonna be
1:07:48
Speaker 1: able to suck out the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
1:07:52
Speaker 1: You're not. These things are not negotiable. These are It's
1:07:55
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a family budget, right. You're when
1:07:58
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay for your house, You're gonna pay that mortgage,
1:08:01
Speaker 1: and you're gonna pay that water bill because you need water.
1:08:05
Speaker 1: Booze bills are not negotiable. And that the idea somehow
1:08:10
Speaker 1: that our freedom to roam on public lands or to
1:08:13
Speaker 1: have a state park to take your kids, or to
1:08:15
Speaker 1: swim in the creek or catch fish for dinner, the
1:08:18
Speaker 1: ideas that both are the low hanging fruit that people
1:08:20
Speaker 1: can just slap with a freaking stick whenever they want.
1:08:24
Speaker 1: That's what we've gotta change. These are inalienable natural rights
1:08:29
Speaker 1: of the American people not to have somebody poison my
1:08:34
Speaker 1: will because they don't want to pay the haul off
1:08:36
Speaker 1: that Gallandroma used tall you wing right, that's not negotiable, Unfortunately,
1:08:44
Speaker 1: I'll just say it out of mind for a lot
1:08:45
Speaker 1: of people, though it is, and by the time it
1:08:48
Speaker 1: comes into sight, it's it's awful hard to get back.
1:08:53
Speaker 1: And that's a that's a big I would uh, I mean,
1:08:56
Speaker 1: that's one that I Here's here's a I've been throwing
1:08:59
Speaker 1: this to every body lately. But this is Frederick Douglas,
1:09:02
Speaker 1: and I just read his John biography, which is John
1:09:07
Speaker 1: talking Frederick Douglas Turner Frontier thesis. Yeah, yeah, No. Frederick
1:09:12
Speaker 1: Douglas the slave. He was the famous abolitionist, and he
1:09:16
Speaker 1: was actually a slave for all those years and he
1:09:18
Speaker 1: bought his bought his way out and then became like
1:09:21
Speaker 1: the firebrand, you know. But he was also a very complicated,
1:09:24
Speaker 1: incredibly complicated person who I have come to see as
1:09:28
Speaker 1: a person who understands more about power, oppression, natural rights
1:09:32
Speaker 1: and stuff than than anybody that I've ever read about.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: And this is what Frederick Douglas, who had been an
1:09:37
Speaker 1: actual slave, said, power conceived nothing without demand. It never
1:09:44
Speaker 1: has and it never will. You show me the exact
1:09:47
Speaker 1: amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person,
1:09:51
Speaker 1: and I will show you the exact Oh Lord, Eedmercy,
1:09:54
Speaker 1: I've got it. I've got the wrong quote. But he said,
1:09:57
Speaker 1: you show me the amount of wrong and injustice that
1:10:00
Speaker 1: they will endure, and I will show you the amount
1:10:03
Speaker 1: that will be opposed upon them. So if you think
1:10:08
Speaker 1: public lands are negotiable because other things are more important
1:10:11
Speaker 1: to you, you should ask what those other things are?
1:10:16
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It does? It does? How do
1:10:18
Speaker 1: you How do you implement that into your daily life?
1:10:24
Speaker 1: How does that become a part of what we hunters
1:10:26
Speaker 1: and anglers do today? Though? The first thing is to
1:10:31
Speaker 1: make time to enjoy all that stuff, So you know
1:10:33
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Remember Edward Abbey said, be a
1:10:37
Speaker 1: half hearted fanatic. Yes, and if you do that, you'll
1:10:40
Speaker 1: outlive the bastards. Yeah. And in this case, though, the
1:10:44
Speaker 1: bastards may win unless you're willing to go to the
1:10:47
Speaker 1: map for those things that that you're out there enjoying.
1:10:53
Speaker 1: What what? What do you think about some of these
1:10:56
Speaker 1: other ideas that have been floated recently? Um, to to
1:11:00
Speaker 1: kind of pair these two things together so derive some
1:11:04
Speaker 1: kind of public land or conservation benefit while also addressing
1:11:08
Speaker 1: some of the pandemic issues. For example, I've seen some
1:11:12
Speaker 1: people proposing, you know, trying to lump a bunch of
1:11:16
Speaker 1: public land and recreation related infrastructure work into a future
1:11:20
Speaker 1: stimulus bill or another idea of being what about bringing
1:11:24
Speaker 1: the conservation coreback and bringing some of these people that
1:11:29
Speaker 1: don't have jobs right now back to work in some
1:11:31
Speaker 1: of these places. Yeah, any thoughts on that is that
1:11:34
Speaker 1: something like an incredible idea. And I think that, Um
1:11:38
Speaker 1: I thought for a long time I didn't serve in
1:11:40
Speaker 1: the army or the military, although I mean that was
1:11:43
Speaker 1: always one of my plans and I never did. I
1:11:46
Speaker 1: do think that national service of some sort is a
1:11:50
Speaker 1: good idea in the future. I think we've become too
1:11:53
Speaker 1: abstracted from our our system of governance, you know, not
1:11:57
Speaker 1: just civics class, but like like actual part it's a
1:12:00
Speaker 1: patient as a citizen, and so I'd love to see
1:12:02
Speaker 1: something like a c C C. You know, my grandfather
1:12:06
Speaker 1: was a super conservative guy in the depression. Um he'd
1:12:10
Speaker 1: been in World War One and gotten mustard gas and
1:12:12
Speaker 1: all and stuff. And he hated like the w p
1:12:16
Speaker 1: A that we poke around, you know, and all that stuff.
1:12:20
Speaker 1: But in in long term, you know, those things were
1:12:23
Speaker 1: good ideas. And I understand that, like like some people
1:12:28
Speaker 1: are gonna object to that and hate them because their
1:12:30
Speaker 1: government program or whatever. But in the long term they
1:12:33
Speaker 1: proved out a lot of things did, like the Taylor
1:12:36
Speaker 1: Grayson Act, you know, to address over graysing on the
1:12:39
Speaker 1: public ranges in America. Those things proved out no matter
1:12:42
Speaker 1: how many naysayers there were at the time. So I
1:12:46
Speaker 1: think those things are incredible. I guess we're gonna be
1:12:49
Speaker 1: able to fund them, like if we're gonna be giving
1:12:51
Speaker 1: people money anyway, you know. I just I imagine this,
1:12:57
Speaker 1: this infrastructure project, especially as addressed bloods in America, which
1:13:02
Speaker 1: are increasingly disastrous to our budget, our economy because the
1:13:07
Speaker 1: federal flood insurance, and to our water quality and to
1:13:10
Speaker 1: our fisheries. I can imagine these enormous restoration projects that
1:13:15
Speaker 1: put people to work doing something incredibly positive. And we
1:13:19
Speaker 1: balance that out with the private the private land owners,
1:13:24
Speaker 1: um what they want to right because a lot of
1:13:26
Speaker 1: these tributaries around private land, and I could just imagine
1:13:31
Speaker 1: I would I can imagine in America that works better
1:13:34
Speaker 1: than it ever has because of the knowledge we have
1:13:37
Speaker 1: right now, and you could just you could step forward
1:13:42
Speaker 1: into a future that we all want to live in.
1:13:45
Speaker 1: And it's not that it's not that complicated. We already
1:13:48
Speaker 1: know how to do it. We just not sure how
1:13:50
Speaker 1: to get there. When this whole thing clears up, when
1:13:55
Speaker 1: hopefully whatever normal is, whatever the new meals I guess
1:14:01
Speaker 1: is now. Whenever that is, we're able to get back
1:14:04
Speaker 1: at it. And hunters and anglers we're out there doing
1:14:07
Speaker 1: our things. If I gave you a magic wand hell,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: and I said that you could have two wishes that
1:14:12
Speaker 1: you could make, two things that we will do differently,
1:14:16
Speaker 1: or two actions we will take, or you've got these
1:14:19
Speaker 1: two wishes, and hunters and anglers to help address some
1:14:22
Speaker 1: of the things we talked about today, to help us
1:14:24
Speaker 1: become better conservations for the future, to make that new,
1:14:26
Speaker 1: brighter future reality. What are those two things you're going
1:14:31
Speaker 1: to ask for? Holy smokes, they're gonna be boring. One
1:14:40
Speaker 1: is is reform of federal flood insurance and a emphasis
1:14:44
Speaker 1: owned restoring functioning watersheds across America, both for economic and
1:14:52
Speaker 1: other reasons. And I wrote a piece at Field and
1:14:55
Speaker 1: Stream called let It Flood. How we can create a fish.
1:14:58
Speaker 1: You can clean the waters and create a honey and
1:15:00
Speaker 1: fishing save the economy, clean the waters to great a
1:15:02
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing paradise. Now with like or something. But
1:15:07
Speaker 1: during the research of that, I became convinced that this
1:15:09
Speaker 1: is one of the main things. So it would be
1:15:11
Speaker 1: reform of federal flood insurance and an emphasis on the
1:15:14
Speaker 1: restoration of of America's water ships. And the next one
1:15:21
Speaker 1: is that we as a people would agree that the
1:15:27
Speaker 1: American public land six d forty million acres. And that
1:15:30
Speaker 1: doesn't mean all of them. We're gonna have to solve
1:15:32
Speaker 1: the checkerboard and all that stuff, but we are. We
1:15:36
Speaker 1: have we hold this as an asset in common, and
1:15:40
Speaker 1: we're going to use this asset to the priority to
1:15:42
Speaker 1: prioritize this asset to build ecological and social resilience into
1:15:49
Speaker 1: a future that we can't imagine. And those two things
1:15:53
Speaker 1: right there will not solve all our problems by any means,
1:15:56
Speaker 1: but they'll solve one sector of them. And in that
1:16:00
Speaker 1: ecological resilience building and access and and c C C
1:16:05
Speaker 1: operations and tree planting and and eerusion control. We're gonna
1:16:11
Speaker 1: see an economic boom in rural jobs and man disguised
1:16:17
Speaker 1: the limit on the positive here, I'm gonna give you
1:16:20
Speaker 1: one more, one more wish because I like where your
1:16:23
Speaker 1: heads at hell and I want to give you more
1:16:24
Speaker 1: opportunities for good and give you. Give you one more.
1:16:27
Speaker 1: And that's for me or for someone listening to Bob, Joe, Jill,
1:16:32
Speaker 1: whoever is listening. You're gonna give us one to do
1:16:36
Speaker 1: item one thing you want us to do when we
1:16:38
Speaker 1: get off this podcast. Okay, what are we doing? We
1:16:45
Speaker 1: are going first thing I would say, we're gonna go
1:16:49
Speaker 1: fishing or hunting women. Good idea, but I'll throw you
1:16:58
Speaker 1: a thousand and put her. We're gonna change a political
1:17:04
Speaker 1: paradigm in the United States that says that our environment
1:17:08
Speaker 1: are the health of our children, and our freedom to rome, hunt, fish,
1:17:15
Speaker 1: enjoy the American landscape is not negotiable by any political party.
1:17:23
Speaker 1: And and and if you believe that these things are
1:17:26
Speaker 1: not important, you belong out of public service and back
1:17:30
Speaker 1: at Mountain States Legal, or at your roof in business
1:17:33
Speaker 1: or trade real estate in Dallas or whatever. If you
1:17:38
Speaker 1: believe those things are negotiable, and that you somehow can
1:17:42
Speaker 1: deprive to ortize those things. You're not gonna be elected office.
1:17:46
Speaker 1: And it's on us to make sure that our politicians
1:17:48
Speaker 1: and are accountable for that. Huh, they're accountable for it,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: and that they know we wanted. There's a great one
1:17:55
Speaker 1: of the politicians said. It was somebody in Montana. I
1:17:58
Speaker 1: can't remember who it was. They said, WHOA, this is
1:18:01
Speaker 1: a great idea. Now make me do it. Yeah, that's
1:18:04
Speaker 1: it right there. Make him do it, yeah, because he
1:18:08
Speaker 1: you know, he's got to listen to everybody, and there's
1:18:11
Speaker 1: other people saying things that aren't good ideas. But if
1:18:13
Speaker 1: they say I'm louder and they say I'm more often,
1:18:15
Speaker 1: then he gets it. There's a let me throw your
1:18:18
Speaker 1: lun last off Frederick Douglas It. If there is no struggle,
1:18:24
Speaker 1: there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom
1:18:28
Speaker 1: and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without
1:18:32
Speaker 1: plowing up the ground. They won't rain without thunder and lightning.
1:18:37
Speaker 1: They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
1:18:39
Speaker 1: many waters. MHM. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It
1:18:45
Speaker 1: never did and it never will find out just what
1:18:49
Speaker 1: any people will quietly submit to and you have found
1:18:52
Speaker 1: out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
1:18:55
Speaker 1: be opposed upon them. And these will continue till they
1:19:00
Speaker 1: are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
1:19:04
Speaker 1: The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
1:19:06
Speaker 1: those whom they oppressed. That good stuff right there, it is,
1:19:12
Speaker 1: it's called It's eighty seven. Frederick douglas Is speech called it.
1:19:16
Speaker 1: There is no struggle, there is no progress. Well, well,
1:19:20
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's appropriate, appropriate marching orders for
1:19:25
Speaker 1: us to for us to leave on and know that
1:19:27
Speaker 1: we uh, we cannot allow ourselves to be oppressed in
1:19:31
Speaker 1: our natural world and our wildlife and wild places. If
1:19:35
Speaker 1: we want those things protected, if we want our public
1:19:37
Speaker 1: lands to remain available and healthy for ourselves, our kids,
1:19:41
Speaker 1: our grandkids, it's on us. And we're not going to
1:19:44
Speaker 1: stand for those things to be to be ignored or
1:19:48
Speaker 1: they're not negotiable, no negotiable. I like it. Well, I
1:19:51
Speaker 1: think what I'm gonna do then, hell with that set
1:19:54
Speaker 1: of orders is I'm going to just place a phone call,
1:19:57
Speaker 1: leave a voicemail with my senators saying us that just saying, hey,
1:20:01
Speaker 1: you know what this isn't you can't have either, or
1:20:04
Speaker 1: you can't be good on this thing and not so
1:20:05
Speaker 1: good on the other. I need you to, uh to
1:20:08
Speaker 1: support this stuff. And if if a whole lot of
1:20:11
Speaker 1: people did that, we'll find somebody that will. I mean,
1:20:13
Speaker 1: Florida is a great, great example, you know, like like
1:20:17
Speaker 1: they're they're due. They have a disaster in the Edbardlades
1:20:20
Speaker 1: have a disaster south alake Okee Chobi. It's it's a
1:20:23
Speaker 1: huge mess and everybody's conflicting and throwing rocks and stuff
1:20:26
Speaker 1: like that, but they are actually working and it's not
1:20:30
Speaker 1: a political thing. It used to be, but now it's
1:20:33
Speaker 1: like you said, it's insight right, it's not out of
1:20:36
Speaker 1: sight out of mind, it's insight. Well thanks a lot, man, Hey,
1:20:43
Speaker 1: I I really appreciate you taking the time and do this.
1:20:45
Speaker 1: This has been fun. You are always someone I can
1:20:47
Speaker 1: turn to for inspiration and insight. And uh, I cannot
1:20:52
Speaker 1: wait to see this book that you're working on. I
1:20:55
Speaker 1: can't wait to read it. It's it's gonna be awesome,
1:20:57
Speaker 1: I know it. Um. I just wish it was here sooner.
1:21:00
Speaker 1: I want to read it right now. I wish you
1:21:01
Speaker 1: were done already. I'm sure you probably too yeah, as
1:21:07
Speaker 1: a person who's written a great public lands book, I
1:21:09
Speaker 1: can tell you for sure me to anybody, Oh yeah,
1:21:13
Speaker 1: And I know you must have felt like that at
1:21:15
Speaker 1: some point, Oh for sure. Every every day I was
1:21:17
Speaker 1: just wondering, when is this thing going to be done? Well,
1:21:20
Speaker 1: i'd be able to finish it. Can I do this?
1:21:22
Speaker 1: But I'm certain you won't get it though, man. And
1:21:26
Speaker 1: it's also it's a great book. And I've I've handed
1:21:29
Speaker 1: it out to anybody who would who I knew would
1:21:31
Speaker 1: needed it. I appreciate you doing a lot of people
1:21:34
Speaker 1: who had to read it anyway because I've put it on.
1:21:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing that. And and hell, if people
1:21:39
Speaker 1: want to follow along with what you've got going on,
1:21:42
Speaker 1: or read your work or on a stay tuned to
1:21:45
Speaker 1: when your book does come out, how can they do that?
1:21:48
Speaker 1: How can they see what's going on right now? I'm
1:21:51
Speaker 1: I've got my website, which is how Hearing dot com um,
1:21:54
Speaker 1: and I've got the b H a podcast which I
1:21:57
Speaker 1: hope they'll that people are listening to. And I am
1:22:00
Speaker 1: told that once I buy a smartphone that I can
1:22:03
Speaker 1: have this Instagram account that I'm gonna use as I
1:22:06
Speaker 1: travel around the country working on the book, but I
1:22:08
Speaker 1: don't have that yet, So the way to follow it
1:22:11
Speaker 1: now is either a lot of stuff is archived on
1:22:14
Speaker 1: the website or just through the podcast. I give sort
1:22:18
Speaker 1: of some sometimes I say what we're doing, Um, I
1:22:21
Speaker 1: have you know, I'm I'm I'm not a luddike by
1:22:23
Speaker 1: at all at all, but um, I'm really behind because
1:22:27
Speaker 1: I have such a short attention span and the fishing
1:22:31
Speaker 1: and hunting it takes over my life at times, really,
1:22:35
Speaker 1: perhaps in an unhealthy way, like I'm gone. Well, I
1:22:38
Speaker 1: think you'll you'll die happier man, because of that than otherwise.
1:22:42
Speaker 1: Maybe anyway could be could be worse things. Hell, yeah, alright,
1:22:49
Speaker 1: hey man can say yes when this is all flying out, hey,
1:22:52
Speaker 1: I will take you up on that. I love love
1:22:55
Speaker 1: that part of the States. So I'll see you in
1:22:57
Speaker 1: Wyoming maybe too later in the summer. I agree. Sounds good.
1:23:01
Speaker 1: Hell cool man. Thank you Mark, And that is it
1:23:05
Speaker 1: for us today. Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you being
1:23:08
Speaker 1: a part of this. Appreciate you listen to what we
1:23:11
Speaker 1: had to say as we kind of bounced all over
1:23:12
Speaker 1: the place. And I don't know, this is kind of
1:23:15
Speaker 1: one of those conversations where I was trying to wrestle
1:23:17
Speaker 1: with questions I've had myself and try to get Hell
1:23:19
Speaker 1: to help me think through it all. So hopefully that
1:23:22
Speaker 1: translates into something that is helpful to you too. So
1:23:26
Speaker 1: that said, thank you again, Be safe, be well, and
1:23:30
Speaker 1: until next time, stay wired to Hunt.