Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 145: A Life of Service

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Ep. 145: A Life of Service · The MeatEater Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast calling at you shirtless severely
0:13
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You can't
0:18
Speaker 1: forget anything, alright, Virgil, let's just start out and have
0:28
Speaker 1: you just get right into it. Introduce yourself, like right
0:30
Speaker 1: off for anybody even says anything interesting. Thanks Steve. I'm
0:33
Speaker 1: Virgil Warm director and Idaho Fishing Game. Um, it's the
0:38
Speaker 1: greatest job in the world. Like, that's the top that's
0:40
Speaker 1: the top dog individual. Well, I have you, but yeah,
0:45
Speaker 1: in our agency, um, the director uh oversees the operations
0:50
Speaker 1: of the entire agency and you, guys in the crowning
0:53
Speaker 1: achievement of your career, right, is this passage of the
0:57
Speaker 1: new pine squirrel season? Well, I won't say it's a
1:00
Speaker 1: crowning achievement. Yeah. A couple of years ago, one of
1:05
Speaker 1: our commissioners just asked the question can we kill Plaine squirrels?
1:10
Speaker 1: You know, they're commonly known as red squirrels, And the
1:13
Speaker 1: the answer was they're protected wildlife. And then he goes, why, Yeah,
1:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's always been that way. Yeah. This
1:23
Speaker 1: came up because we I was just talking about how
1:26
Speaker 1: last night we were eating some pine squirrels for dinner.
1:29
Speaker 1: And I was saying, how everywhere that I've ever lived
1:35
Speaker 1: lists the pine squirrel or red squirrel um as a
1:41
Speaker 1: non protected, non game species mean no close season, no
1:45
Speaker 1: bag limit. And I would have never have guessed the
1:46
Speaker 1: Idaho was an exception to that, because like people don't
1:49
Speaker 1: really get after them. You know, they're a common household pest,
1:52
Speaker 1: because if a squirrel gets in your attic, it's probably
1:54
Speaker 1: a pine squirrel. In the northern tier States, um, they pray.
2:00
Speaker 1: A surprising thing is they pray on snowshoe hair leveretts.
2:07
Speaker 1: Do you know that in in Alberta, they did a
2:09
Speaker 1: mortality study on snowshoe hairs and most of the ones
2:13
Speaker 1: that went missing were found in pine squirrel mittens. I
2:16
Speaker 1: got a body that watch would kill a bird one time.
2:18
Speaker 1: A Yeah, they like to kill. They like to kill
2:20
Speaker 1: snowsh your hair leveretts, and they're like the baby birds
2:23
Speaker 1: out of nests. But we'll see the pine scenes. They're
2:28
Speaker 1: they're stashes, their mittens, whatever you want to call them,
2:32
Speaker 1: become an important food source in the winter for some
2:36
Speaker 1: birds and other wildlife because they can get into those
2:38
Speaker 1: stashes and you see grizzlies in the spring will come
2:40
Speaker 1: out and excavate them, you know, pull them all out.
2:43
Speaker 1: So you guys realize there's no season for him, and
2:46
Speaker 1: what kind of magic needs to happen. You know, It's
2:49
Speaker 1: not as easy as just waving a wand and saying
2:51
Speaker 1: the season's open. We had to go through rulemaking to
2:55
Speaker 1: make them non protected first, and then we had to
2:59
Speaker 1: go through the process of proposing a season, getting public comment,
3:03
Speaker 1: and then the Commission approving it. They just finally approved
3:07
Speaker 1: that at their last commission meetings. So we will have
3:09
Speaker 1: a pine squirrel season from one extreme to the other.
3:14
Speaker 1: It's eight per day, twenty four in possession, so and
3:18
Speaker 1: it's got an open season that'll be from August through
3:23
Speaker 1: marcht one, so you know there's a close period and
3:26
Speaker 1: that conforms with our open season for other um rabbits
3:32
Speaker 1: and other small games. So just for consistency reasons, we
3:36
Speaker 1: kept all of that. You're gonna run them like small game.
3:40
Speaker 1: Do you guys have any regulations around and I don't
3:43
Speaker 1: imagine you have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels. Uh,
3:47
Speaker 1: we do have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels,
3:51
Speaker 1: mostly in urban areas, and uh, there is no protection
3:55
Speaker 1: on those. You can kill as many of those as
3:57
Speaker 1: you want because they're because they're a non native. There
4:00
Speaker 1: are non native non protected wildlife because most of them
4:04
Speaker 1: are in urban areas were discharged of firearms is prohibited.
4:08
Speaker 1: Um that we don't see much use of them, although
4:11
Speaker 1: there are a few folks, uh that that utilize them.
4:15
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a Missouri native. I was raised. Probably
4:19
Speaker 1: the first thing I killed was either a rabbit or squirrel,
4:21
Speaker 1: so one of the two had to be what I
4:24
Speaker 1: was shooting at exactly. Um next to Virgil Chris, Chris
4:30
Speaker 1: just hanging out. Chris is the old friend of mine
4:32
Speaker 1: who should you should come out of the show a
4:33
Speaker 1: lot more? I want to Yeah, I mean my friends,
4:36
Speaker 1: I'm not a big podcast listener. I watched the show
4:39
Speaker 1: of the Mediator show all the time, but my friends
4:41
Speaker 1: listened to it all the time. I told him when
4:42
Speaker 1: I was doing today, they said, seriously, are you kidding me?
4:45
Speaker 1: Anti podcast listen? No, Um, I'm not. But to steal
4:50
Speaker 1: an old favorite phrase of yours that you stole from
4:53
Speaker 1: Ian Fraser. You know, hunting or fishing is something I'd
4:56
Speaker 1: rather do than talk about. So um, I'm not Antipope cast.
5:00
Speaker 1: I just I write a lot, and I need uh.
5:03
Speaker 1: When I'm done writing, I need to get out of
5:06
Speaker 1: the word world. You know. Just listen to silence, you know.
5:11
Speaker 1: I remember reading somewhere that people are saying you can't
5:13
Speaker 1: appreciate music without appreciating silence, because music is an interruption
5:17
Speaker 1: of silence. Sure. I bet John Cage would love that, right.
5:21
Speaker 1: I don't know who said, I'm just gonna act like
5:23
Speaker 1: I said that. I remember an old squirrel hassan fop
5:27
Speaker 1: for meal that you made. You remember that? Yeah, man, Yeah,
5:30
Speaker 1: we used to get after him right here in town,
5:31
Speaker 1: right here. But uh, you know live trap nowise and squirrels?
5:36
Speaker 1: Oh is that how you're getting them? In? Other ways?
5:39
Speaker 1: We go, we go honest, we go out of state
5:41
Speaker 1: that we'd go, you know, hunt them around. Uh plug
5:46
Speaker 1: your book real quick. Okay, Well, my my last book
5:49
Speaker 1: is called Body of Water. It's a nonfiction book from
5:52
Speaker 1: Milkweed Editions about uh really that centers around a man
5:56
Speaker 1: named David Pender who was the first Bahamian bone fishing guy. Uh.
6:00
Speaker 1: He went to uh he grew up on a small
6:03
Speaker 1: island called deep Water Key, and a rich Floridian man
6:08
Speaker 1: named Gil Drake, Floridian man named Gil Drake actually bought
6:14
Speaker 1: an island from the Crown um the English Crown called
6:18
Speaker 1: deep Water Key and hired David Pender too excavate the
6:22
Speaker 1: mangroves from the island, and over time hired Pender to
6:25
Speaker 1: be his first fishing guide bone fish guide in the Bahamas.
6:29
Speaker 1: So Pender made about five dollars a day at the time,
6:33
Speaker 1: and over the last fifty or so years, the bone
6:39
Speaker 1: fishing industry has become the trux of the eco to
6:42
Speaker 1: tourism industry in the Bahamas, so a hundred and fifty
6:45
Speaker 1: million dollars a year. Basically, this little fish that we
6:49
Speaker 1: used to throw into Purina food bags has become the
6:55
Speaker 1: crux of an island, the entire island's economy. Really, first
6:59
Speaker 1: bone fish I ever saw, and this is the way
7:01
Speaker 1: after bone fish became what bone fish are. The first
7:03
Speaker 1: one I ever saw is leading dead on the side
7:05
Speaker 1: of the road. Where is that Mexico? He's done on
7:09
Speaker 1: the side of the road with the weirdest thing. I
7:12
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, it's not how you want to see
7:14
Speaker 1: your first bone fish. In the r day, a buddy
7:16
Speaker 1: mine from Hawaii sent me a picture just a classic
7:18
Speaker 1: grip and grim with a whole bunch of dead bonefish
7:20
Speaker 1: lander because they make fish patties out of here, they
7:22
Speaker 1: call it. Then they don't. They catch mountain deep water,
7:26
Speaker 1: huge bonfish my brother called a big bone fish and
7:29
Speaker 1: a hundred feet of water in Hawaii. Right, So they
7:32
Speaker 1: don't look like they're like a flats fish. They're they
7:33
Speaker 1: act like they're just a fish to eat, a bony
7:36
Speaker 1: ass fish to eat. Right. I remember your your discussion
7:40
Speaker 1: in meat Eat or the book about your first experience
7:46
Speaker 1: releasing these fish. That's when I found my first dead
7:48
Speaker 1: one on the side of the road like a road
7:50
Speaker 1: killed bone fish, and then caught my first ones and
7:53
Speaker 1: let them go. And meanwhile we like killed every other fish.
7:56
Speaker 1: We didn't know what it was to like fuel our
7:59
Speaker 1: journey to let bone and fish go because you gotta
8:01
Speaker 1: eat something. We pull fish out like what's that, I
8:03
Speaker 1: don't know, eat it and let all that, let all
8:08
Speaker 1: the old ones go. Did you ever end up beating
8:10
Speaker 1: a bone fishing bone fish one? What was it? Like?
8:13
Speaker 1: You said, just boning paying the fine white flesh. Totally fine,
8:18
Speaker 1: you gotta pick it. To quote and Fraser again, who
8:21
Speaker 1: I think might have stole this from John McPhee, but
8:23
Speaker 1: he's talking about eating rochad right, and he said, it's
8:26
Speaker 1: kind of like fixing a watch, like picking the meat,
8:30
Speaker 1: like all the bones. You know. It feels like you're
8:32
Speaker 1: like dismanling a watch to get it apart. But I
8:35
Speaker 1: ate one down there, barracoutaite a lot of those kind
8:37
Speaker 1: of fish. But it's a cool book. We should maybe
8:41
Speaker 1: sometimes dedicate the whole conversation about the books. It tells
8:43
Speaker 1: the story about a fish that no one cares about
8:45
Speaker 1: becoming a fish that's like a billion dollar industry. Yeah,
8:48
Speaker 1: we should. I'll come back anytime. I'm glad you're living
8:51
Speaker 1: in Bozeman. Now. I remember when you used to speaking
8:54
Speaker 1: of picking fish, remember fishing for whitefish and making something.
8:57
Speaker 1: I was talking about that yesterday. Yeah, tedious, but great recipe.
9:04
Speaker 1: Um on down the line. Oh yeas w you have
9:08
Speaker 1: headsets on? What are you doing? Just monitoring? They're just
9:11
Speaker 1: taking yeah, entourage. Oh yeah, let's go ahead. Then we're
9:17
Speaker 1: gonna dive into and then we're gonna dive into all things, uh,
9:20
Speaker 1: fisheries and wildlife management. Yeah, tell us from the Meat
9:24
Speaker 1: Eater Crew, Virgil, can you start out I have a
9:29
Speaker 1: thousand things to ask you. One of the questions I
9:31
Speaker 1: want to ask you later once we get going, is
9:34
Speaker 1: when you hear hunters and anglers talk bad about fish
9:39
Speaker 1: and game, what are the most legitimate complaints and what
9:43
Speaker 1: are the least legitimate complaints? But I don't want to
9:46
Speaker 1: talk about that yet, but just know that that's coming,
9:49
Speaker 1: so dig deep to try to give a thing like
9:51
Speaker 1: what is the most legitimate complaints that you found in
9:55
Speaker 1: your career in the lifetime of service? I think first,
9:58
Speaker 1: I think could be interesting to talk about where your
10:02
Speaker 1: department sort of ends, and you can make it general
10:06
Speaker 1: like the IDAHO right is your area of expertise, but
10:08
Speaker 1: you probably enough exposure from all the other agencies to
10:12
Speaker 1: like like where where does what does the Game Commission?
10:16
Speaker 1: And what is its relationship to your department? And and
10:20
Speaker 1: how do you move from one of those? I think
10:22
Speaker 1: that this is this is something that's not well understood,
10:24
Speaker 1: and it might be a good basis for the conversation here.
10:29
Speaker 1: That really is And I certainly our Game Commission Idahoe
10:32
Speaker 1: Fish and Game Commission is integral to our agency. Uh.
10:37
Speaker 1: They are the policy and regulatory setting body for the
10:41
Speaker 1: department Officient Game. As director, I set as the director
10:47
Speaker 1: of the Idaho Department of Fishing Game. I'm also a
10:50
Speaker 1: non voting member of the Idaho Fishing Game Commission. My
10:54
Speaker 1: other title is Secretary Officient Game, and that interfaces the Department,
11:01
Speaker 1: through the Director and the Commission in Idaho. The Director
11:05
Speaker 1: serves at the pleasure of the Commission, a seven person
11:09
Speaker 1: board appointed by the Governor UH for staggered four year terms.
11:14
Speaker 1: They can be appointed to two terms confirmed by the
11:17
Speaker 1: Senate as confirmed by the state Senate. Our commissioners are
11:22
Speaker 1: as a director appointed by a commission, I do not
11:27
Speaker 1: have to go through that that political process with the legislature.
11:32
Speaker 1: They do that, and so that's the firewall or the
11:36
Speaker 1: buffer that's there. But the governor selects those commissioners and
11:41
Speaker 1: the commission. The governor selects the commissioners, the commissioner selects you,
11:44
Speaker 1: the director, and you have a term limit of two
11:46
Speaker 1: terms for the commissioners, so they can serve two four
11:50
Speaker 1: year terms. And then they turn out the director has
11:54
Speaker 1: no term limit, so you can keep going and keep
11:57
Speaker 1: goingment Now it's you serve the pleasure and so at
12:02
Speaker 1: any time for commissioners decide they want somebody new, you've
12:06
Speaker 1: got your walking papers. How many commissioners are there seven
12:10
Speaker 1: and that varies, okay, but they set the rules. So,
12:14
Speaker 1: for instance, we talked about and I don't want to
12:16
Speaker 1: put too much into this because it's a pretty small
12:18
Speaker 1: issue pine squirrel season that has the goal of the
12:22
Speaker 1: commission right, correct, But the Commission draws so much of
12:27
Speaker 1: their information from the Department because the Commission's not doing
12:31
Speaker 1: not game surveys. So that's where the Department and Commission
12:36
Speaker 1: are linked in. The first initiative in the state of
12:40
Speaker 1: Idaho was approved by voters in the state that created
12:44
Speaker 1: the Commission prior to ninety eight. We were formed as
12:47
Speaker 1: an agency in eight the Department Official Game prior to that,
12:51
Speaker 1: the director was appointed by the governor. It was completely
12:55
Speaker 1: partisan and most of the st spoils the war and
12:59
Speaker 1: it is and many of the staff were non professional
13:03
Speaker 1: and it was a very partisan UH structure. Decline of
13:09
Speaker 1: trying to recover Elkords, trying to get hunting back and
13:12
Speaker 1: going in the twenties and thirties, UH failed miserably because
13:16
Speaker 1: we didn't have that professional workforce out there doing the
13:21
Speaker 1: survey work. The initiative formed the Commission and put the
13:26
Speaker 1: Commission in its position of hiring the director and gave
13:30
Speaker 1: very specific roles to each body and the department access
13:36
Speaker 1: staff and managers of that public trust that's out there.
13:41
Speaker 1: The Commission is the the trust holder along with the
13:47
Speaker 1: legislature UH, they are the ones that are responsible for
13:51
Speaker 1: how to how to UH deal with that trust. We
13:55
Speaker 1: just make recommendations and manage it per their direction. So
14:00
Speaker 1: up until the time pine squirrels were protected, that was
14:04
Speaker 1: the direction. Then they decided they as the UH trust manager,
14:09
Speaker 1: they wanted to do something different. We said, there's not
14:12
Speaker 1: a problem biologically. They went on with the rules. And
14:15
Speaker 1: so we interact very closely with our commission. Who how
14:22
Speaker 1: often does the Commission butt heads of the department like
14:24
Speaker 1: meaning presuming there's people in the Commission who have an
14:27
Speaker 1: extagrind right like because they're from different walks of life,
14:31
Speaker 1: is it happens? We don't see it a lot. UH.
14:35
Speaker 1: Generally the Commission tries to work as a team together,
14:38
Speaker 1: but they are appointed to represent geographic areas of the state,
14:42
Speaker 1: and they're they're pretty much they have a district and
14:45
Speaker 1: those that district is very similar to our administrative regions.
14:49
Speaker 1: So we've got seven of those. And every so often
14:52
Speaker 1: you see um a difference in the way that the
14:58
Speaker 1: commissioners themselves to go. As director, I manage the agency
15:05
Speaker 1: to make recommendations. Where we have a disconnect is if
15:11
Speaker 1: for some reason, through public input, somebody wants a season change.
15:17
Speaker 1: But someone said, hey, there's I'm seeing fewer and fewer deer,
15:20
Speaker 1: and then you look and you he actually is probably
15:24
Speaker 1: seeing fewer and fewer deer. Let's say it's legitimate, and
15:28
Speaker 1: as an individual, I suspect that that's the case they
15:31
Speaker 1: are seeing. But our survey work, we look at it
15:34
Speaker 1: and we go, you know, we killed more deer last
15:36
Speaker 1: year in that unit than we've ever killed before. Our
15:39
Speaker 1: survey information says that the buck doo ratios in there
15:44
Speaker 1: are above policy. And so you have that disconnect between
15:48
Speaker 1: what you see in the spot you hunt and what
15:51
Speaker 1: we see when we try to manage a larger piece
15:53
Speaker 1: of real estate. And so that goes to the commission.
15:57
Speaker 1: They get public input all the time, like that. We're
15:59
Speaker 1: in the idle of it right now with some deer
16:01
Speaker 1: setting stuff that's going on, Like tell me what you mean,
16:05
Speaker 1: white tailed deer. We're we're adopting a new white Tailed
16:08
Speaker 1: Deer plan, and in that process the question of do
16:11
Speaker 1: we know what we're talking about in this particular piece
16:13
Speaker 1: of real estate versus what the data is for game
16:16
Speaker 1: management units on a larger piece. And and so the
16:20
Speaker 1: Commission is in a situation where the biological information would
16:24
Speaker 1: suggest one thing, and what individuals that are motivated to
16:29
Speaker 1: get involved in the decision making process show up at
16:32
Speaker 1: a public meeting say that isn't right. And you know what,
16:35
Speaker 1: they're probably not wrong about where they're hunting, what they
16:39
Speaker 1: see their specific spot, but what it does that mean
16:43
Speaker 1: that that's the way it is everywhere. And that's the
16:46
Speaker 1: kind of wisdom and balancing that the Commission has to
16:50
Speaker 1: go through to sort through. Here's the science as we're
16:54
Speaker 1: trying to present it to you, and here's the public
16:56
Speaker 1: input that has some veried input. We can tell you
17:01
Speaker 1: all about this, but I can't say that what Joe
17:05
Speaker 1: Hunter over here sees is incorrect. And so that is
17:10
Speaker 1: where the beauty of the Commission processes. They're there to
17:13
Speaker 1: balance out perhaps the scientific information that we provide them
17:19
Speaker 1: with some of the input from the public of what
17:21
Speaker 1: they desire. As trust Um users, they're the they're the
17:26
Speaker 1: ones who get the benefit of that public trust of wildlife.
17:29
Speaker 1: We manage it. The Commission is a trustee for that
17:33
Speaker 1: and and so we go back and forth through that
17:35
Speaker 1: process UH constantly with with our commission. Most of the
17:41
Speaker 1: time nine ten per cent of what is out there
17:46
Speaker 1: for public input, we get good public input. We get
17:49
Speaker 1: agreement with the biological information it goes through. We just
17:52
Speaker 1: approved phishing regulations for three years, a new phish management
17:58
Speaker 1: plan for six years. At this last commission neating two
18:01
Speaker 1: weeks ago took fifteen minutes, no dissenting anything. It took
18:05
Speaker 1: a year, took a year of public input to get
18:09
Speaker 1: to that point. But by the time we got to
18:12
Speaker 1: that point, we didn't have any issues. That's not true
18:16
Speaker 1: with our deer, elk and other wildlife management issues. We
18:22
Speaker 1: had no dissenting votes on point squirrels, So that one
18:25
Speaker 1: went pretty easy. Brings people together together. But but white
18:32
Speaker 1: tail deer are a big thing right now. They tell
18:34
Speaker 1: me what because there's a lot of them, not a
18:36
Speaker 1: lot of them we're seeing um because of way hunting
18:40
Speaker 1: occurs in Idaho with the ability to move around. We
18:44
Speaker 1: have a white tail tag for the late season white
18:47
Speaker 1: tail hunt. UM that that you have to decide whether
18:50
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt during the early mule deer in general
18:53
Speaker 1: deer season, or whether you want to hunt white tail only.
18:57
Speaker 1: And you get that white tail tag. A lot of
18:59
Speaker 1: people prefer white too, I do, and and consequently they
19:04
Speaker 1: all go to these really neat spots and so they're
19:06
Speaker 1: seeing a lot more hunters. So you're out there driving
19:10
Speaker 1: around where you go buy and you see six camps
19:14
Speaker 1: in the spot you didn't see but one camp four
19:17
Speaker 1: or five years ago. Then you go out hunting and
19:19
Speaker 1: you don't see the deer immediately. There's a problem. And
19:24
Speaker 1: this is occurring in the clear Water and several other
19:27
Speaker 1: units around that, coupled with loss of access on private lands,
19:32
Speaker 1: creates this uh perception that hunting for me isn't as
19:39
Speaker 1: good as it used to be, and people perception is
19:41
Speaker 1: correct for that person. People are attributing this to forcing
19:46
Speaker 1: people to make this decision about what they want to hunt.
19:48
Speaker 1: That's part of it. They're also saying there's too many
19:51
Speaker 1: non residents, and non residents can be both people from
19:54
Speaker 1: out of state as well as people like myself from
19:57
Speaker 1: Boise coming up into their area to hunt UH. And
20:02
Speaker 1: it's it's that social tension that comes with using a
20:07
Speaker 1: resource out there. And as users, you've probably all seen that.
20:10
Speaker 1: I know, I do. Uh. You see it whether you're
20:13
Speaker 1: fishing or hunting. I get away from it by hunting
20:17
Speaker 1: later in the season so I don't have to deal
20:20
Speaker 1: with it, or I fish later in the season or
20:23
Speaker 1: during the shoulder periods. Montana, as an example, has their
20:27
Speaker 1: shoulder hunting seasons that they use right now. To try
20:30
Speaker 1: to distribute some of that, we try to use our
20:33
Speaker 1: regulations to do that, but it at some point we
20:36
Speaker 1: still have the people seeing something different than what are
20:41
Speaker 1: biological data. So some of the and I'll jump to
20:46
Speaker 1: your question, you know, what are the legitimate complaints for us?
20:50
Speaker 1: Add something. One of the writers that writes for us
20:54
Speaker 1: on our website, Pat dirk And, did a piece for
20:56
Speaker 1: us about comparing success rates hunter success rates with surveys
21:03
Speaker 1: about hunter satisfaction. He's the basic I mean, just to
21:08
Speaker 1: really take something long and complex and make it short,
21:11
Speaker 1: as people are just generally not happy, not happy, Like
21:16
Speaker 1: you take a relative picture a year to year of
21:18
Speaker 1: like what was good hunting and bad hunting, then to
21:21
Speaker 1: ask people to put a personal spin on it that
21:23
Speaker 1: generally viewed as being more negative than it was. I
21:27
Speaker 1: wouldn't totally agree with that dot our survey that we
21:31
Speaker 1: recently did on um mule, they're in whitetail hunters. Everybody's happy. No,
21:37
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I'm gonna say everybody's better, but
21:39
Speaker 1: but most people are satisfied or very satisfied. Based on
21:44
Speaker 1: the survey work we did. It varies depending on the geography,
21:49
Speaker 1: it varies on what they're after. One of the things
21:53
Speaker 1: that we are in Idaho by commission direction, we're an
21:56
Speaker 1: opportunity state. We're all about being able to hunt every year.
22:01
Speaker 1: We're all about giving people that chance to get out
22:04
Speaker 1: there and to accomplish that. We have to have that
22:09
Speaker 1: that ability to hunt every year, you're going to have
22:12
Speaker 1: fewer older growth animals than you would if if you
22:18
Speaker 1: didn't go for that opportunity. And so that is an
22:23
Speaker 1: opportunity state versus a on a quality state. Utah has
22:31
Speaker 1: UH and this is based on their public input down
22:34
Speaker 1: there and a large number of hunters there in different
22:37
Speaker 1: productivity chose years ago to go with a quality system
22:41
Speaker 1: that produced a larger proportion of the herd as four
22:46
Speaker 1: point animals. Idaho has quality. Don't get me wrong. It's
22:52
Speaker 1: just we manage the productivity of that herd so that
22:56
Speaker 1: we can utilize that productivity for as many hunters as
23:00
Speaker 1: possible while still producing a pretty good number of four
23:04
Speaker 1: point animals, whether they're mule deer or whitetail. We talked
23:07
Speaker 1: about this too as being like some states are kind
23:09
Speaker 1: of split. The Colorado's quality on a mule deer opportunity
23:14
Speaker 1: on elk correct and and part of it has to
23:16
Speaker 1: do with the number of animals that are there. In general,
23:19
Speaker 1: ar mule deer haven't been doing as well as our elk,
23:22
Speaker 1: although in Idaho, with with some of the work we've
23:25
Speaker 1: been doing, as well as the easy winners we've had
23:27
Speaker 1: and the better survival on fonds, our mule deer are
23:31
Speaker 1: really up. But half of our deer harvest is whitetail
23:34
Speaker 1: in Idaho. The other half is all those dudes up
23:38
Speaker 1: in the Panhandle. And it's because we got a lot
23:40
Speaker 1: of them, and and people are turning onto them because
23:43
Speaker 1: they taste better. Now that's just my that's my bias.
23:47
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way. When my wife is not
23:50
Speaker 1: a hunter, but she is a consumer, and when I
23:55
Speaker 1: go hunting, I generally get orders as to what she
23:59
Speaker 1: prefers that bring home and and uh a white tail
24:02
Speaker 1: are much higher on the list than a stinky old
24:05
Speaker 1: mule deer. As she puts it, now, I find them
24:08
Speaker 1: both very flavorful. I like the flavor. They're both distinct
24:12
Speaker 1: and different, and enjoy eating both. In the ticket, she puts,
24:18
Speaker 1: just keep telling her just get your own ticket and
24:20
Speaker 1: come out hunting with me. But really, late, I want
24:26
Speaker 1: to get in your bio from it. But lay a
24:28
Speaker 1: good piece of marriage advice on us. Listen to your spouse,
24:32
Speaker 1: bring home my white til. Can I ask a question
24:37
Speaker 1: about so when you guys are prioritizing, um, you know,
24:42
Speaker 1: an initiative or or you know this uh the new
24:45
Speaker 1: squirrel uh listing. I mean, are you thinking, well, that's
24:49
Speaker 1: gonna be an economic boon for the state. I mean
24:52
Speaker 1: it's the squirrel thing, or I'm kidding a little bit.
24:54
Speaker 1: But how how much are you prioritizing like revenue potential
25:00
Speaker 1: revenue over the resource or is it certainly um? Idaho
25:05
Speaker 1: gets no general funds okay. Our revenue is generated by
25:10
Speaker 1: predominantly license sales, as well as contract money and the
25:14
Speaker 1: excise tax on hangingd fishing equipment. Pittman, Robertson and Danel Johnson.
25:18
Speaker 1: What's the contract money. Contract money is mitigation money like
25:22
Speaker 1: from Bonneville Power to operate hatcheries for the mitigation of
25:26
Speaker 1: dam's Idaho Power of Vista, Um, gosh, you name it.
25:31
Speaker 1: We get contract money to work with a b p A.
25:35
Speaker 1: As an example, we've got contract money to do sage
25:38
Speaker 1: grousework for the Fish and Wildlife Service, but a lot
25:41
Speaker 1: of it most of its mitigation money to operate hatcheries
25:43
Speaker 1: for hydro power development, meaning the hydro power development impedes
25:48
Speaker 1: fish movements and they got to make up for that
25:50
Speaker 1: by running a hand correct, it's the state runs the
25:53
Speaker 1: hatches for We operate the hatcheries that they built for
25:56
Speaker 1: those facilities, and and so that's a huge piece of
26:00
Speaker 1: our budget. But as far as the discretionary funds that
26:04
Speaker 1: we get, it's almost all license money, a little tiny
26:08
Speaker 1: bit off of non game license plate sales. We have
26:11
Speaker 1: a license plate system and that generates UH together about
26:15
Speaker 1: two million dollars that runs that UH non game program
26:19
Speaker 1: um that we have in the state. So back to
26:22
Speaker 1: your question about what do we get. Do we take
26:26
Speaker 1: economics into consideration. If it was a conservation issue where
26:32
Speaker 1: you should hunt or not hunt? The answer is no.
26:36
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at the way you conduct a hunt,
26:39
Speaker 1: the way you you set seasons, how you allocate those
26:44
Speaker 1: tags to residents and non residents. Definitely, revenue is on
26:48
Speaker 1: the table as it as an item to take a
26:50
Speaker 1: look at, But by and large the Commission isn't as
26:54
Speaker 1: concerned with revenue as they are the social aspects of
26:59
Speaker 1: how this effect hunters in the field. Um, I'll give
27:04
Speaker 1: you an example. We dive into this. I mean, the
27:05
Speaker 1: Commission just recently closed steelhead fishing in the state of Ida,
27:10
Speaker 1: and the economic effects of that are huge. Well, I
27:16
Speaker 1: got a lot of but we had a public meeting
27:21
Speaker 1: last week in Riggins. Now. Riggins is on the Salmon River,
27:26
Speaker 1: a very small community, uh that has mostly natural resource
27:31
Speaker 1: based economy. Used to be timber that's gone. Now it's
27:34
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, I mean, and whitewater rafting on the
27:38
Speaker 1: main Salmon River. And the closure of a winter steelhead
27:41
Speaker 1: fishery is millions of dollars to a community that is
27:47
Speaker 1: probably getting a third of their financial revenue from steelhead fishing,
27:53
Speaker 1: another third from chinook, and the rest of it from
27:57
Speaker 1: other outdoor based recreation activities, and so it hits a
28:01
Speaker 1: community like that hard over Christmas. Goodness, who's grinch here?
28:07
Speaker 1: And I get it. Talked the numbers, I'm guessing why,
28:11
Speaker 1: but talking about what precipitated the closing. One of the
28:15
Speaker 1: people decided no we um UM. We got served with
28:21
Speaker 1: a notice of intent to be sued. UM and about
28:26
Speaker 1: forty five days ago who was bringing the suit? It
28:28
Speaker 1: was a group of five fish advocacy groups and river groups.
28:34
Speaker 1: UH that I felt like that the what we call
28:38
Speaker 1: mixed stock fishery where we fish on the hatchery fish
28:41
Speaker 1: these mitigation fish and there are wild listed steelhead in
28:45
Speaker 1: the river with him, felt that our fishery was harming
28:49
Speaker 1: those wild fish. Technically, the problem is we don't have
28:53
Speaker 1: a permit to have that mixed stock fishery. It expired
28:57
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten. The federal age and see
29:00
Speaker 1: responsible for that permit UH National Marine Fishery Service has
29:05
Speaker 1: failed to issue that permit to us since two thousand
29:08
Speaker 1: and ten. We have submitted it every year. We have
29:12
Speaker 1: complied with the terms of the permit, but they have
29:15
Speaker 1: been working on other areas that were very important for permitting.
29:20
Speaker 1: UM and I can get into the technicalities of that,
29:23
Speaker 1: but the point is we are guilty of not having
29:26
Speaker 1: a permit. So here we're getting a notice Noah or
29:32
Speaker 1: National Marine Fishery Services, go ahead and fish without the permit,
29:35
Speaker 1: comply with the terms you submitted. We don't have time
29:38
Speaker 1: to go through the process to give you that permit,
29:41
Speaker 1: but we're not going to prosecute you under the Endangered
29:43
Speaker 1: Species Act. The Endangered Species Acts as a citizens lawsuit
29:48
Speaker 1: feature in it that allows private citizens to sue somebody
29:52
Speaker 1: violating it. That was I mean, this has been going
29:56
Speaker 1: on for eight years and then we get this notice
30:00
Speaker 1: intent to sue. If you go to court and are
30:05
Speaker 1: found to be guilty, I guess you would say we're
30:09
Speaker 1: not in compliance, then the state has to pay all
30:13
Speaker 1: the legal fees of the plaintiffs. And knowing what we knew,
30:18
Speaker 1: we felt that it was not useful to go through
30:22
Speaker 1: a legal defense when we really didn't have the permit
30:27
Speaker 1: trying to convince a judge, and in all likelihood the
30:30
Speaker 1: plaintiffs would have asked the judge for an emergency closure
30:34
Speaker 1: while they started in and the end result would be
30:37
Speaker 1: we would be paying the legal fees and we would
30:40
Speaker 1: have a closed steelhead system. By closing the season, we
30:44
Speaker 1: preclude them from taking us to court. So now the
30:48
Speaker 1: decision to open it back up is still with the commission.
30:52
Speaker 1: The permit will be done in March next spring. Were
30:58
Speaker 1: a black eye, right, yeah, I and and deservedly so
31:03
Speaker 1: we are. We probably could have been a little more
31:07
Speaker 1: aggressive with seeing that this could happen. But frankly, I
31:12
Speaker 1: knew for well, I've been director for eight years and
31:15
Speaker 1: the whole time I knew we've been playing doing this,
31:18
Speaker 1: and I felt because National Marine Fishery Service wasn't going
31:21
Speaker 1: to prosecute us, that we were okay. I never thought
31:23
Speaker 1: about our conservation friends and these other entities taking us
31:27
Speaker 1: to court. Are these fisher Are these angler based groups?
31:32
Speaker 1: For a couple of them are angler based groups, A
31:37
Speaker 1: couple of them are river based groups, angler groups desiring
31:40
Speaker 1: more wild fishing. Yeah, they've got a different agenda, and
31:44
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. Part of the agenda they
31:47
Speaker 1: were willing to not sue us if we agreed to
31:52
Speaker 1: go to no bait, single barbelous hooks fly fishing only
31:58
Speaker 1: banned the useful boats. So they were trying to say
32:01
Speaker 1: this was a conservation issue. But then they had this
32:04
Speaker 1: string of things that would have precluded most of our
32:07
Speaker 1: steelhead anglers from going fishing, just so that group could
32:10
Speaker 1: get out there, the Catch and Release group basically, and
32:14
Speaker 1: are the people of Riggings and that whole kind of
32:18
Speaker 1: valley there. They upset mostly you guys were They're upset
32:23
Speaker 1: that we allowed this to get to where it is.
32:26
Speaker 1: But at the public meeting we had last week going
32:28
Speaker 1: into town, there was a sign um, you know, public
32:32
Speaker 1: meeting so and so play such and such time, and
32:35
Speaker 1: they had the name of one of these groups just
32:38
Speaker 1: plastered on there said not welcome. So yeah, they're they're
32:43
Speaker 1: they're doing. I have a meeting tomorrow with the board
32:46
Speaker 1: of one of these groups. The season doesn't take effect
32:50
Speaker 1: until December the seventh, I think, is when it closes.
32:56
Speaker 1: Terrible day, um, but we've got a little bit time
33:00
Speaker 1: in here. We're still negotiating. We had a negotiated settlement
33:03
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, and then when all of the planeffs left,
33:06
Speaker 1: they came back a day later and said, no, we're
33:09
Speaker 1: going to back away from our agreement. So I got
33:11
Speaker 1: a couple of quick questions. First, for Chris, uh, you're
33:14
Speaker 1: you're you're a fishing guide straight over to that country
33:16
Speaker 1: at all I do not. I know, I couldn't had
33:18
Speaker 1: that far down river. No, I grew up still heading
33:20
Speaker 1: in Michigan. So, um, we don't have these problems. Now
33:23
Speaker 1: we don't have these problems. But now I'm still lying
33:27
Speaker 1: the bank with them down there, right. I spent most
33:29
Speaker 1: most of the winter righting. So as soon as I'm
33:31
Speaker 1: off the river in late October, I'm hanging up the
33:34
Speaker 1: rods and the waiters and chasing the bird dog around.
33:37
Speaker 1: But um, but do you hear guys griping about this?
33:40
Speaker 1: So I didn't. I didn't even know about it, which
33:42
Speaker 1: tells you how how often much I've been in the
33:44
Speaker 1: woods in the last month or so. But all you know,
33:46
Speaker 1: most of the Missoula single Missoula fishing guides head over
33:50
Speaker 1: there for for a good month, and you know, drag
33:53
Speaker 1: a trailer over and right. For sure. It's fascinating to
33:58
Speaker 1: me and and uh surprising too. Now here's my question
34:03
Speaker 1: for you, Virgil, on this issue. The average letter writer
34:08
Speaker 1: who writes in with a complaint. Um, let's say you
34:12
Speaker 1: were to take all those people and make a pool
34:14
Speaker 1: of them, So forget the average You're gonna take a
34:16
Speaker 1: pool of all the people that have written a letter
34:18
Speaker 1: of complaint, how many of those individuals if if you
34:21
Speaker 1: had to guess what percentage of those individuals would be
34:23
Speaker 1: able to articulate the issue to the extent that you
34:26
Speaker 1: just articulated it to me right now? Is it well
34:30
Speaker 1: understood or do you find or are you baffled by
34:33
Speaker 1: how not well understood it is. I'm baffled by how
34:39
Speaker 1: not well understood it is. We're pushing the envelope. This
34:42
Speaker 1: closure only occurred less than two weeks ago. In fact,
34:47
Speaker 1: it'll be two weeks ago Wednesday, this coming Wednesday, and
34:51
Speaker 1: so we're we're trying to get the word out there.
34:54
Speaker 1: The form letters that I've been inundated with simply aren't accurate.
34:59
Speaker 1: The misunderstand ending that there is a conservation benefit to
35:03
Speaker 1: this closure, Uh is wrong. Okay, that there is a
35:09
Speaker 1: catch and release mortality on these listed steelhead, but that
35:13
Speaker 1: is less than three of handling, and that's a worst
35:17
Speaker 1: case scenario. That's what that's what we use in our permit,
35:22
Speaker 1: and we predict that three out of a hundred fish
35:25
Speaker 1: handled may die as a result of that catch and
35:27
Speaker 1: release fishery, and that's the impact that we will have
35:31
Speaker 1: on these wildfish while we're catching and keeping hatchery fish. Okay,
35:36
Speaker 1: and it's something all the states do. I mean, Washington
35:40
Speaker 1: has their permit in hand, they got a couple of
35:42
Speaker 1: years ago. They got there's first. So the Washington part
35:46
Speaker 1: of the Snake River will stay open even though ours
35:49
Speaker 1: will close because it's it's border water. Oregon doesn't have
35:54
Speaker 1: their permit for this fishery, but they're going to continue
35:57
Speaker 1: to fish because they didn't get sued, you know, and
35:59
Speaker 1: so he had It's a very selective um legal actions
36:03
Speaker 1: going to continue to fish or in the state of
36:05
Speaker 1: Oregon will continue fish, as will Washington on the Snake
36:09
Speaker 1: River portion. Our Salmon River and Clearwater rivers would be
36:13
Speaker 1: the ones that are predominantly affected by this, as well
36:16
Speaker 1: as Idaho licensed anglers who fish Hell's Canyon the Snake
36:21
Speaker 1: River portion. But you could continue to fish by buying
36:24
Speaker 1: a Washington license. That's the absurdity of some of this.
36:27
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is the catch and release fishery
36:31
Speaker 1: is not the issue here. Um. This is partially a
36:35
Speaker 1: social issue. This is partially an issue of these advocacy
36:40
Speaker 1: groups trying to make a point that Idaho isn't doing
36:45
Speaker 1: enough as a state on down river issues, and so
36:50
Speaker 1: they're hitting us at home with a legal action on
36:54
Speaker 1: our sport fisheries. And it really doesn't hurt the department.
37:00
Speaker 1: It hurts the local communities, right you have. I mean,
37:03
Speaker 1: you you gave that, Um, you gave some percentages. But
37:08
Speaker 1: what's what's the dollar figure? You know in the town
37:11
Speaker 1: of Riggans. We've done the economic evaluation and I'm going
37:17
Speaker 1: to say the town of Riggins for this winter fishery
37:22
Speaker 1: is a million and a half dollars if my numbers now,
37:24
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a lot of money. Not. I mean,
37:28
Speaker 1: there's less than a thousand people there in the wintertime.
37:30
Speaker 1: There's probably half that been a big chunk of change.
37:34
Speaker 1: Be factor in population is a big deal. Clear Water,
37:37
Speaker 1: you know, or Pheno that area there, Um, it gets
37:41
Speaker 1: hit hard and the outfitters and guides that rely on
37:44
Speaker 1: that and cater to that. I mean, I got a
37:46
Speaker 1: heartfelt letter from a guide up on the clear Water
37:49
Speaker 1: and and he said, cash, it couldn't come at a
37:52
Speaker 1: worse time. He goes, I don't make a lot of
37:54
Speaker 1: money during this period of time, but it's gonna cost
37:57
Speaker 1: me five thousand dollars in the next six weeks. It's
37:59
Speaker 1: going to run my Christmas with my kids. Gosh, I
38:03
Speaker 1: just almost get into tears over something like that, and
38:06
Speaker 1: it's like, well, dang, should we have not closed it?
38:10
Speaker 1: Let it go to court fought and try to keep
38:13
Speaker 1: it open as long as possible. We're still having that
38:16
Speaker 1: active discussion right now. But these actions that appear to
38:19
Speaker 1: be just about the department and its management really are
38:24
Speaker 1: about people and the people who use the resource and
38:27
Speaker 1: the communities that benefit from those resources. Walk me through
38:31
Speaker 1: how you how you wound up where you are now?
38:34
Speaker 1: Like that, Were you aiming through your career in fish
38:36
Speaker 1: and wildlife to wind up in this position? Or does
38:39
Speaker 1: it never? I'm by training, I'm a fisheries scientist. I
38:45
Speaker 1: was worked as a fisheries biology undergraduate degrees in education.
38:48
Speaker 1: I taught high school, came to Ido, worked on fish
38:51
Speaker 1: on steelhead as a matter of fact, and my yeah,
38:55
Speaker 1: and I worked on steelhead and cutthroat. Um got on
38:58
Speaker 1: with the department to over forty years ago, uh and
39:03
Speaker 1: worked on the South Fork and the Snake River in
39:06
Speaker 1: Idaho on cutthroat trout in the late seventies and early eighties,
39:11
Speaker 1: on a problem we were having there with declining numbers
39:13
Speaker 1: in size of fish, and got an opportunity to manage
39:18
Speaker 1: that fishery for about seven years. And that included that
39:22
Speaker 1: area that I was manager over, including the Henry's Fork
39:25
Speaker 1: and the South Fork of the Snake and some of
39:27
Speaker 1: that greatest fishing country and well in the world. Maybe
39:31
Speaker 1: maybe Montana is close, but you know, we'll we'll give
39:36
Speaker 1: them since wire in Montana, I'll give him a little
39:38
Speaker 1: credit for having good fisheries. But the bottom line is
39:44
Speaker 1: then I just worked my way up when I had
39:46
Speaker 1: an opportunity and various positions as state fish manager, fishery
39:51
Speaker 1: research manager, I was bureau chief over our communications program
39:56
Speaker 1: for a while, fisheries chief. I did a stint in
39:59
Speaker 1: Oregon as director for a year, went over there and
40:03
Speaker 1: um learned a lot. I consider it now as a
40:06
Speaker 1: one year sabbatical to a different state and had an
40:09
Speaker 1: opportunity to come back Tita, who as a deputy director
40:13
Speaker 1: and turned into a director's job. So it's a really
40:16
Speaker 1: short bio when you get down to it. It's just
40:19
Speaker 1: a lot of different opportunities and jobs, but it's all
40:22
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. It's working with people to manage
40:26
Speaker 1: their resources to provide what they want while having that
40:30
Speaker 1: foundation in our mission statement, which is preserved, protect, perpetuate,
40:34
Speaker 1: and manage for the benefit of the people. That resource
40:39
Speaker 1: can only be used when it's preserved, protected, and perpetuated.
40:45
Speaker 1: And when it is used, it's primary use is hunting, fishing,
40:48
Speaker 1: and trapping. That is in the code that formed our agency,
40:52
Speaker 1: that was given to us in by the people of
40:55
Speaker 1: the state. It was approved by the people in the
40:59
Speaker 1: state in um. A lot of people said, well that's dated,
41:04
Speaker 1: you know that was that was eighty some odd years
41:08
Speaker 1: I guess it was eighty years ago and it's no
41:10
Speaker 1: longer valid. Well, in two thousand twelve, we had an
41:16
Speaker 1: initiative in this or we had a constitutional amendment the
41:21
Speaker 1: right to hunt fishing trap, and in that amendment it
41:25
Speaker 1: had the right to hunt fishing trap is held uh
41:29
Speaker 1: to be a right for the people as a whole,
41:32
Speaker 1: not individuals as much, and that the primary method of
41:37
Speaker 1: managing wildlife in the state of Idaho is hunting, fishing,
41:41
Speaker 1: and trapping. So if you're gonna manage wildlife population should
41:44
Speaker 1: do it with hunting, fishing and trapping. That got approved
41:46
Speaker 1: by seventy public right they want the public to do it.
41:52
Speaker 1: That was approved by seventy of the people in two
41:55
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Now if that is at an endorsement of
41:58
Speaker 1: the night and their should have moved it forward. So
42:02
Speaker 1: what we in Idaho have is the benefit of knowing
42:08
Speaker 1: from a participation in an in an election what it
42:14
Speaker 1: is the really big goals are. And that makes my
42:18
Speaker 1: job easy. If you flip the card over I gave you.
42:21
Speaker 1: On the back, there is our mission statement that's in code.
42:24
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing written out there, and it's three
42:27
Speaker 1: sentences long on the back of everybody's card. Now it's
42:30
Speaker 1: on the back of mine. But that's that's something I
42:34
Speaker 1: do so that I can because whenever I doubt what's
42:37
Speaker 1: going on, I just flip that over and read through
42:38
Speaker 1: it again. It's like, Okay, everything I need to know
42:42
Speaker 1: is right there. So in Idaho, Uh, I'm switching gears
42:48
Speaker 1: here a little bit um in Idaho. When you get
42:51
Speaker 1: when you get an email in the subject in the
42:54
Speaker 1: subject line is steel ahead or the subject line is
42:58
Speaker 1: grizzly bears? Which one are you more like? Oh no,
43:02
Speaker 1: because this is like you spent a lot of time
43:05
Speaker 1: certainly um endangered species as a whole, and um, those
43:11
Speaker 1: two add in stage grounds and uh yeah, that's occupied
43:15
Speaker 1: a fair amount of our time. Um, I will take
43:19
Speaker 1: the steel head one any day of the week over
43:21
Speaker 1: grizzly bear because you have a lot of person I
43:24
Speaker 1: have some of that, and we have more biological we have. Oh,
43:28
Speaker 1: it's less value laden relative to managing fish. You know,
43:36
Speaker 1: a wild steelhead is a phenomenal creature. I mean they
43:39
Speaker 1: are there's nothing nothing like them on the end of
43:42
Speaker 1: a fly rod and any kind of tackle, they're just awesome.
43:46
Speaker 1: They'd be cruising around out the ocean and uh on
43:50
Speaker 1: the hatchery steelhead isn't far below that. But that certainly
43:53
Speaker 1: to have have that creature in your hand. But they're
43:56
Speaker 1: still generally not thought of as individuals. They thought of
44:00
Speaker 1: as a population, as a run, as a school, you
44:04
Speaker 1: know that type. That's a good point and and consequently
44:09
Speaker 1: the emotional attachment to them doesn't go to the individual level.
44:15
Speaker 1: With megafauna, both big animals you know, bears, wolves, uh, cougars, um,
44:24
Speaker 1: you name it, deer and elk um. It's lesser degree
44:28
Speaker 1: than the other ones. Your name, Well, I guess you're
44:30
Speaker 1: doing it in order. Yeah, we call them charismatic megafauna,
44:36
Speaker 1: you know, big charismatic critters, and and they come with
44:40
Speaker 1: a whole different set of values where people try to
44:44
Speaker 1: humanize those animals and their behavior, and consequently having a
44:48
Speaker 1: discussion about biology with folks who have that becomes way
44:53
Speaker 1: more difficult. Can you sketch out um and go back
44:56
Speaker 1: as far as you want. You can go all the
44:57
Speaker 1: way back to vour whatever to help was, or you
45:00
Speaker 1: can go back the last two or three years. But
45:02
Speaker 1: sketch out where Idaho sits and where things stand right now,
45:07
Speaker 1: and do the grizzly one. And you can personalize that.
45:09
Speaker 1: You can editorialize it however you want to do. But
45:11
Speaker 1: it's like tell a little narrative. We should be celebrating
45:14
Speaker 1: the recovery grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. We should
45:18
Speaker 1: be ready to celebrate the delisting of grizzly bears here
45:21
Speaker 1: in the Northern Rockies in the Northern Continental Divide, just
45:25
Speaker 1: north of where we're at here in Missoulu right now. Um,
45:28
Speaker 1: but I know in the in the Tri state area there, uh,
45:33
Speaker 1: we have an excellent grizzly bear population that's properly managed.
45:37
Speaker 1: We've got exceeded the management goals. We've answered every scientific
45:42
Speaker 1: question in a legal arena, and to still have those
45:47
Speaker 1: bears on the list because of legal issues, judicial issues,
45:55
Speaker 1: to me, undermines the whole benefit of the Endangered Species Act.
45:59
Speaker 1: We the agency that's in charge of like the agency
46:05
Speaker 1: that oversees the population. Right now, they're saying it should
46:07
Speaker 1: be delisted. Correct, Fish and Wildlife Service themselves believes it
46:11
Speaker 1: should be delisted. They're the ruins who delisted it. They've
46:14
Speaker 1: been told to relist them until such time as they
46:18
Speaker 1: answer these legal questions. Now we will get them delisted, Okay,
46:23
Speaker 1: whether it was last year, whether it's next year or
46:26
Speaker 1: three years out, because the population is secure, nothing about
46:32
Speaker 1: answering these legal questions. But this isn't about whether the
46:36
Speaker 1: population is secure or not. It is about the fact
46:40
Speaker 1: that folks do not believe that the management tool of choice,
46:46
Speaker 1: again going back to our constitutional amendment is hunting. So
46:50
Speaker 1: when we have more bears or problem bears, our choice
46:55
Speaker 1: is to have a hunter go out and take care
46:57
Speaker 1: of that, versus having our staff go out and trap
47:00
Speaker 1: the bear and get rid of it. Now we're gonna
47:02
Speaker 1: have to do a combination, But I would much prefer
47:05
Speaker 1: to use a hunter who buys a license and a
47:08
Speaker 1: tag to go out on his own time to take
47:11
Speaker 1: that animal and keep the population and check for the
47:14
Speaker 1: social needs of the communities around there, then send one
47:18
Speaker 1: of my staff out there to trap the bear and
47:21
Speaker 1: then euthanize it unceremoniously. I believe that we have a
47:25
Speaker 1: lot more respect for that wildlife we interact with in
47:29
Speaker 1: that manner than we do with wildlife that we just
47:32
Speaker 1: euthanize in a in a manner to kind of take
47:35
Speaker 1: care of that nuisance. UM. Do you right now feel
47:39
Speaker 1: as though do you feel that as though the fight
47:44
Speaker 1: around grizzly bear delisting will want of being worse than
47:48
Speaker 1: what happened around wolves, or do you feel like it
47:49
Speaker 1: will follow that same pattern off you had like some
47:52
Speaker 1: stops and starts, you had some lawsuities, but he eventually
47:54
Speaker 1: wound up at least and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. You wound
47:58
Speaker 1: up with delisted will wolves and regulated hunting UM or
48:03
Speaker 1: do you think this is fundamentally different it will play
48:05
Speaker 1: out in a different way. It's I think it's fundamentally
48:08
Speaker 1: the same, uh, And I do think it will play
48:10
Speaker 1: out in a similar manner, But the anti hunting aspects
48:15
Speaker 1: of it is even larger with grizzly bears than it
48:19
Speaker 1: is with wolves, although it's very large with with wolves. Uh,
48:24
Speaker 1: it's um. It's a very strong community of people out
48:29
Speaker 1: there who believe in their values. And at the same
48:33
Speaker 1: time it's it's part of where the frustration is. Because
48:38
Speaker 1: delisted wildlife normal wildlife are under the sovereign trust responsibilities
48:44
Speaker 1: of each individual state. There are a lot of people
48:48
Speaker 1: that don't believe they're being heard and their needs are
48:53
Speaker 1: being addressed by our commission. And I can tell you
48:58
Speaker 1: they're being hurt. What you mean, like, what? What? What?
49:01
Speaker 1: Groups of people? Give you an example. One of the
49:04
Speaker 1: things that we were told they wanted was a buffer
49:07
Speaker 1: around Yellowstone Park so we wouldn't have a celebrity bear
49:12
Speaker 1: going outside of the boundary and getting shot and then
49:15
Speaker 1: running back into the park. And and so I get,
49:20
Speaker 1: I get that big enough already needs to become bigger,
49:23
Speaker 1: and so the park we But they're saying, well, you
49:27
Speaker 1: ignored us when we asked for that. No, we didn't
49:31
Speaker 1: ignore it. We took it into serious consideration and looked
49:34
Speaker 1: at it and said it was unmanageable to do because
49:37
Speaker 1: grizzly bears can roam as much as sixteen to twenty
49:40
Speaker 1: five miles outside of the park, and a wounded animal
49:43
Speaker 1: could go right back in, whether it is a hundred
49:45
Speaker 1: yards from the border at the border or five miles out,
49:50
Speaker 1: you know, And it just wasn't a tenable thing for
49:53
Speaker 1: us to address relative to that. But they were hurt.
49:57
Speaker 1: It was discussed, but the vision didn't go the way
50:01
Speaker 1: they wanted it. So they want to federalize management of
50:05
Speaker 1: these species. And under the Endangered Species Act, that's a
50:08
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service or its National Marine Fishery Service
50:11
Speaker 1: for fishing and pinnipeds, for seals and sea lions and
50:16
Speaker 1: um they wanted to to. They want to federalize as
50:19
Speaker 1: many species as possible so the state doesn't have the
50:22
Speaker 1: final say. And I believe at core that's a lot
50:26
Speaker 1: of what's going on here. When when the delisting happened
50:30
Speaker 1: in bears where what now has proved to be temporarily delisted,
50:35
Speaker 1: you had three states that we're looking at assuming management. Okay,
50:40
Speaker 1: you had Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and you want up
50:43
Speaker 1: having like three what appeared to me to be three
50:45
Speaker 1: very different responses to this in the hunting question, okay,
50:50
Speaker 1: where Montana was fixing to sort of sit out the
50:54
Speaker 1: hunting season, and I felt that that was kind of
50:56
Speaker 1: a lame move. This is just me personally talking on
50:59
Speaker 1: there's not Virgil. I'm not speaking for Virgil in their
51:01
Speaker 1: the Idle Fishing Game or anyone. Just personally, I thought
51:04
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a lame move because they're
51:06
Speaker 1: sort of be like, I don't want the black eye.
51:08
Speaker 1: I don't want to be caught in the controversy. I'm
51:10
Speaker 1: gonna see how it plays out with Idaho and whelming Now,
51:13
Speaker 1: Wyoming has kind of hosts more of that little subset
51:16
Speaker 1: of the population of bears. They host more anyone else.
51:19
Speaker 1: They were pretty aggressive. They were talking about, you know,
51:22
Speaker 1: harvest and killing two grizzly bears. Idaho, in a curious way,
51:28
Speaker 1: came in where they were going to issue a tag.
51:32
Speaker 1: That's symbolic, right, It's symbolic, But that was our allocation.
51:37
Speaker 1: So the tri state plan that we all three of
51:40
Speaker 1: agreed to allocates the available mortality to the states based
51:46
Speaker 1: on the size of the geography. I don't only have
51:49
Speaker 1: six of that grizzly bear range, and so we get
51:54
Speaker 1: a smaller portion of that available mortality to utilize. So
51:58
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a symbolic no. No. It wasn't like
52:01
Speaker 1: we want to do it, but we don't really want
52:02
Speaker 1: to do it, so we do on our allocation was
52:04
Speaker 1: like one point four one point five bears, okay, and yeah,
52:10
Speaker 1: had I would have liked to borrowed a half a
52:12
Speaker 1: bear from Montana or Wyoming, so that Tana's allocation was
52:19
Speaker 1: I don't it was like seven or eight I think
52:22
Speaker 1: I I. It may have been in the teens. I
52:24
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but it's intermediate to Wyoming being the largest,
52:30
Speaker 1: Montana the next, and Idahoe the smallest. How much you
52:33
Speaker 1: talked to those guys a lot? Oh yeah, we we
52:37
Speaker 1: We really don't. I I will tell you that the
52:40
Speaker 1: tri state UH working relations between Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho
52:45
Speaker 1: are top notch. We formed that during the wolf delisting things,
52:51
Speaker 1: and we continually have constant and routine interactions. But the
52:57
Speaker 1: other thing you have to understand is what states is.
52:59
Speaker 1: We don't all manage exactly the same to get the
53:02
Speaker 1: same output. The way I structure are hunting seasons under
53:07
Speaker 1: the ability may be different than the way Wyoming or
53:11
Speaker 1: Montana does it, but it is still under the same
53:15
Speaker 1: state sovereignty, trying to provide for the needs of the
53:17
Speaker 1: people that they have and as long as it is
53:21
Speaker 1: above the bounds of conservation, there's really nothing wrong with that.
53:26
Speaker 1: It's the way Utah does trophy. There's nothing wrong with
53:29
Speaker 1: what Utah is doing with their trophy muletare managed. That's
53:33
Speaker 1: what they chose to do. There's nothing wrong with Idaho
53:37
Speaker 1: doing our management as opportunity. That's what we chose to do.
53:42
Speaker 1: The differences are actually great to have because each state
53:46
Speaker 1: is an experiment and wildlife management above that conservation threshold
53:50
Speaker 1: that we can learn from each other. You have to
53:53
Speaker 1: share information. We share information all the time. We have
53:56
Speaker 1: a group we call the Western Association Official Wildlife Agents.
54:00
Speaker 1: These and that group we come together twice a year
54:04
Speaker 1: and interact with each other a lot. When I have
54:07
Speaker 1: a meeting coming up in early January, and that's where
54:10
Speaker 1: I'll meet with Montana Unwyolming again to discuss grizzly beary
54:13
Speaker 1: issues and how to move forward. Were you guys on
54:16
Speaker 1: the grizzly bear thing? Did you did you issue the tag?
54:18
Speaker 1: We did issue the tag. Did you keep the person anonymous? Um? Yes,
54:22
Speaker 1: we well with the name is available about any other
54:26
Speaker 1: information about them is not by state law that they
54:30
Speaker 1: had to call him up, and I guess so the
54:32
Speaker 1: Commission took action at the last Commission meeting to brain
54:36
Speaker 1: check that um opportunity to that individual for next year
54:42
Speaker 1: because it was suspended by the U. S. Fish and
54:44
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service. Once they were relisted, they can't have directed
54:49
Speaker 1: sport mortality under yes, A does I don't have salvage
54:53
Speaker 1: requirements for black bearths meet salvage requirements not me. The
55:00
Speaker 1: Commission changed the meat retrieval portion of that one decade
55:07
Speaker 1: or so ago. Yeah, And as I was guessing, they
55:10
Speaker 1: weren't going to do a meat salvage requirement on grizzly bears. No,
55:12
Speaker 1: that is not part of the requirement. And again that's
55:16
Speaker 1: some of the variation you get from among states. Someone
55:19
Speaker 1: told me how they were in a meeting and it
55:22
Speaker 1: was like a it was a public comment period, and
55:24
Speaker 1: some hunters were saying, well, you know, we should do
55:28
Speaker 1: a you know, we're we're proposing this idea of a
55:31
Speaker 1: meat salvage requirement, and some of the people who were
55:34
Speaker 1: opposing the hunt we're sort of saying, like, uh, what's
55:38
Speaker 1: the term I'm looking for when you say don't like
55:40
Speaker 1: not infantilize, what does the word indulge. No, that's not it.
55:44
Speaker 1: That's what I'm looking for. I don't know they're saying, like,
55:46
Speaker 1: don't you know, don't do it man Kelly. It was
55:52
Speaker 1: telling me the story and I can't remember the word
55:53
Speaker 1: they use for it, but they're kind of like, don't
55:56
Speaker 1: do this phony symbolic thing to greenwash this. But that
56:01
Speaker 1: came to the word that he said that was used.
56:04
Speaker 1: But they were sort of like rather than rather than
56:07
Speaker 1: the opposition figures saying like, yes, I opposed the hunt,
56:12
Speaker 1: but there is gonna be one. I agree that there
56:14
Speaker 1: should be a meat salvage requirement. They wanted to make
56:16
Speaker 1: sure it looked as bad as possible, agreed. I. No, No,
56:21
Speaker 1: that's gonna confuse things too much. I'd rather there wasn't
56:23
Speaker 1: because it's easier for us to bash it. Right. You. Certainly,
56:27
Speaker 1: one of the things that we know as wildlife managers
56:33
Speaker 1: for you and as hunters on your behalf, is that
56:37
Speaker 1: support for hunting, that is, for traditional consumptive purposes in
56:42
Speaker 1: the United States is very high. A recent survey that
56:46
Speaker 1: I saw presented that was presented this last spring showed
56:51
Speaker 1: that over the American public is supportive of traditional regulated
56:56
Speaker 1: hunting activities. Were consumption is part of it, depending then on,
57:03
Speaker 1: and that's been pretty stable. We don't have to win
57:07
Speaker 1: support as hunters, We just have to keep it. Part
57:11
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about, Steve, is how do we
57:15
Speaker 1: regulate our own behavior so we maintain that support for
57:19
Speaker 1: that traditional hunting based activity that we so value. I
57:25
Speaker 1: believe that the use of a red squirrel where you
57:28
Speaker 1: described the meal you got off of it, is in
57:32
Speaker 1: keeping with that traditional activity that we know gives us
57:36
Speaker 1: a lot of support whether people hunt or not. We
57:40
Speaker 1: do know from other surveys that when you label this
57:43
Speaker 1: trophy hunting, when all you're out there for is the
57:47
Speaker 1: trophy without the consuming, it is a very conservative. But
57:52
Speaker 1: support from the public surveyed across the United States drops
57:57
Speaker 1: into the mid twenties. And so the anti hunters are
58:03
Speaker 1: trying to portray grizzly bear hunting as a trophy activity,
58:09
Speaker 1: not a population management activity, not anything else, and successfully
58:14
Speaker 1: then they turn the tables. We have to as hunters
58:18
Speaker 1: take a look at how we interact with the wild life.
58:21
Speaker 1: That we take the almost spiritual aspect of both taking
58:26
Speaker 1: that life as well as the consumption, whether it's the
58:29
Speaker 1: use of the fur or the meat or the bone
58:33
Speaker 1: in whatever manner, we've got to take and keep that
58:36
Speaker 1: front and center as we propose changes in hunting seasons
58:41
Speaker 1: and how we interact with our wildlife and fish for
58:44
Speaker 1: that matter. So, just to wrap up on grizzlies, if
58:48
Speaker 1: you look at a crystal ball and be dead, honest, Okay,
58:52
Speaker 1: don't tell me what you want to be dead? Honest,
58:54
Speaker 1: where is it gonna wind up? They'll be delisted. It
58:57
Speaker 1: will take another year or two to work through the
58:59
Speaker 1: legal system. Will persist on that, Uh, simply because the
59:03
Speaker 1: population itself is so strong, I mean, all the habitats occupied,
59:08
Speaker 1: it's actually plateaued out and uh and as long as
59:12
Speaker 1: we're able to delist it based on that distinct population
59:16
Speaker 1: segment that it was listed under for that Yellowstone ecosystem.
59:21
Speaker 1: The same will be true for the Northern Continental Divide.
59:24
Speaker 1: It takes in Glacier National Park. That will get delisted
59:27
Speaker 1: at some point, as well. Other populations that we've got
59:31
Speaker 1: like in the selkirks Um, these little populations that are
59:35
Speaker 1: reliant on Canada. We don't believe we'll ever achieve the
59:40
Speaker 1: populations that are called for in the recovery plans because
59:44
Speaker 1: they're so small and ISO it's hard to picture the
59:47
Speaker 1: Northern Cascades, which might might or might not have one
59:50
Speaker 1: in it like at this very second good example of that.
59:54
Speaker 1: And so uh, I think the greater Yellowstone in Northern
1:00:00
Speaker 1: Continental divide, where you have like maybe maybe a thousand
1:00:03
Speaker 1: in the other world. Yeah, I mean, um, I don't
1:00:06
Speaker 1: know what's in the Northern Continental Divide, but I think
1:00:09
Speaker 1: the fashionable And so the answer is yeah, Yeah, there's
1:00:14
Speaker 1: nothing to be gained by not d listing though, and
1:00:18
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be gained by doing that. It's
1:00:20
Speaker 1: a success of the es A. All of financial and
1:00:23
Speaker 1: human resources going into the e s A process go
1:00:26
Speaker 1: away and we can put our efforts on something else
1:00:28
Speaker 1: that's more important and uh and get on with it.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: And that's been my My complaint about how e s
1:00:36
Speaker 1: A has been used is it's it's being used two
1:00:41
Speaker 1: achieve other needs. It's just like this lawsuit over our
1:00:45
Speaker 1: steel head permit. They're not suing us for conservation purposes
1:00:49
Speaker 1: on steelhead, they're suing us to get other things that
1:00:53
Speaker 1: they haven't don't feel they've been heard on and um,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: and and that's a misuse of of the endangered species.
1:01:01
Speaker 1: That's the thing that saddens me about seeing how the
1:01:03
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act is uses it. It's oftentimes in these
1:01:07
Speaker 1: big public battles, becomes about something very different than what
1:01:11
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be talking about. Like the conversations we're
1:01:14
Speaker 1: having around grizzlies right now. We're not having a conversation
1:01:16
Speaker 1: about whether the populations were covered. It's just that like,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: I know what I want. You know that people can
1:01:22
Speaker 1: look at it. I know what I want. Um, I'm
1:01:26
Speaker 1: not really interested in the main question that governs that,
1:01:29
Speaker 1: like population stability, but I'm gonna use components of the
1:01:33
Speaker 1: essay as a tool to get what I want. And
1:01:37
Speaker 1: what I want is I damn sure don't want some
1:01:39
Speaker 1: redneck shooting a grizzly bear. Certainly like their perspective on it.
1:01:45
Speaker 1: I understand that, and that we've seen that social angst
1:01:50
Speaker 1: over large predatory wildlife goes down tremendously when they have
1:01:56
Speaker 1: a ticket in their pocket, permit to kill that because
1:02:01
Speaker 1: the control shifted from the Fishing Wildlife Service to the
1:02:07
Speaker 1: hunter himself or herself, as the case maybe we saw
1:02:11
Speaker 1: it with wolves. Oh my gosh. They angst over wolves
1:02:15
Speaker 1: and the predation they were having on both livestock as
1:02:18
Speaker 1: well as wildlife was huge. The number of letters we
1:02:21
Speaker 1: got from sportsmen was unbelievable. As soon as we opened
1:02:25
Speaker 1: a season and people could buy or permit, that went
1:02:29
Speaker 1: way down. Yeah right, no, now, not even close. I
1:02:34
Speaker 1: mean we dropped their numbers by a few hundred, were
1:02:37
Speaker 1: cropping them off, but it did change their behavior. But
1:02:41
Speaker 1: we have reduced live livestock depredations. Uh, and we've we've
1:02:47
Speaker 1: shifted their behavior around. They now understand what humans are
1:02:52
Speaker 1: and tend to stay away. We still have hotspot problems
1:02:55
Speaker 1: with wolf predation, but most of it's on on our
1:02:59
Speaker 1: uncular it's on our dear and elk. Uh, it's not
1:03:02
Speaker 1: as much on livestock. We we've really used hunting as
1:03:06
Speaker 1: well as directed kill by our agency and its staff
1:03:11
Speaker 1: and the US Wildlife Services to reduce that tremendously. And um,
1:03:17
Speaker 1: we're making some inroads on elk management as well. We're
1:03:21
Speaker 1: killing enough of them that elk populations have jumped back
1:03:24
Speaker 1: up in some areas it did and it still has
1:03:29
Speaker 1: some holes. I mean, we've got twenty seven elk elk
1:03:32
Speaker 1: zones in the state, and of that, seven of them
1:03:35
Speaker 1: aren't meeting objectives. Five of those are almost certainly the
1:03:40
Speaker 1: result of predation UH. Two of them a combination of
1:03:44
Speaker 1: that and other factors. UM. So we've we've changed that.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: Originally we were at I think eleven zones weren't meeting objectives,
1:03:54
Speaker 1: and so we've pushed that back down UH to a
1:03:57
Speaker 1: lower number. UH. And those mostly backcountry units, we can't
1:04:01
Speaker 1: we're not get enough hunters in there. We don't have
1:04:04
Speaker 1: livestock in there, so we don't have wildlife services in
1:04:07
Speaker 1: there directly killing animals that are our request. We're trying
1:04:12
Speaker 1: that in the Lolo zone just over the hill here,
1:04:16
Speaker 1: where we sent wildlife services in there as an experiment
1:04:19
Speaker 1: to kill wolves to try to reduce their numbers to
1:04:22
Speaker 1: a point we can see populations come back like that.
1:04:26
Speaker 1: It doesn't have it doesn't have to be egg does no. No.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: We we use them UM. In fact, I prefer to
1:04:34
Speaker 1: use them. They're they're cheaper and better at it than
1:04:36
Speaker 1: our staff are because they got the right equipment and
1:04:39
Speaker 1: training to get in and get that taken care of
1:04:43
Speaker 1: to handle that. And we have found that we can
1:04:48
Speaker 1: remove enough wolves to get a response, but it's a
1:04:51
Speaker 1: garden weeding operation. I mean, they were very productive. They
1:04:54
Speaker 1: come back, so you've got to go back in there.
1:04:56
Speaker 1: And what we need is to get enough hunters and
1:04:59
Speaker 1: trappers in there once we get the numbers down, to
1:05:02
Speaker 1: keep the numbers down so we don't have to keep
1:05:04
Speaker 1: paying a third entity for our own staff to go
1:05:07
Speaker 1: in there and do that. And whether we can get
1:05:11
Speaker 1: there in a place like the Low Lo or the
1:05:13
Speaker 1: middle Fork of the Salmon or the Cellway and some
1:05:16
Speaker 1: of these really thick backcountry panhandle units is yet to
1:05:21
Speaker 1: be seen. We're working with the trappers in the state
1:05:24
Speaker 1: UH to try to enhance their ability to get in
1:05:27
Speaker 1: there by changing some seasoned structures, bag limits, trap check
1:05:33
Speaker 1: limits and stuff like that, working very closely to adjust
1:05:36
Speaker 1: those to try to get to a better place with
1:05:40
Speaker 1: being able to use sport trapping as a means of
1:05:43
Speaker 1: control as well. And UH, I'm pretty excited about that.
1:05:47
Speaker 1: But we've only been at this now for I guess
1:05:51
Speaker 1: eight nine years, and we've only been out from underneath
1:05:53
Speaker 1: the umbrella of Fishing Wildlife Service. We had a five
1:05:56
Speaker 1: year probationary period where we couldn't do a lot of things.
1:06:00
Speaker 1: We've really only been at this about three years with
1:06:02
Speaker 1: trans new stuff, and you're gonna see us continue to
1:06:06
Speaker 1: do that. What do you think will end up happening
1:06:09
Speaker 1: in the northern Great Lakes? And this is like we're
1:06:10
Speaker 1: getting like way outside of your purview. But do you
1:06:14
Speaker 1: think that that there's light at the end of the tunnel.
1:06:17
Speaker 1: There is a bill in Congress to delist wolves nationwide
1:06:22
Speaker 1: across the board. They're just done. Whether that stands a
1:06:25
Speaker 1: chance of getting through in this it's a little too
1:06:28
Speaker 1: you like, um, a little too elastic. Yeah, I all
1:06:33
Speaker 1: I know is in them in in that particular area,
1:06:37
Speaker 1: that's probably their best chance for delisting because of the
1:06:42
Speaker 1: way the judicial order is on them. Up there. It's
1:06:45
Speaker 1: a little different, um, but it's it's gonna be they're out.
1:06:50
Speaker 1: They don't have a population problem there. It's it's again
1:06:54
Speaker 1: they're tied up in this legal mess that they can't
1:06:57
Speaker 1: get out. And there it's around the question of just populations.
1:07:01
Speaker 1: I don't want to get us like terribly into the weeds,
1:07:03
Speaker 1: but there it winds up being again like nitpick that
1:07:06
Speaker 1: it's like nitpicking little legal things and they're not arguing
1:07:09
Speaker 1: about the main question, right the main question being like
1:07:11
Speaker 1: are there enough wolves? There's questions within that geography. There's
1:07:15
Speaker 1: no there's no benefit being derived of e s A.
1:07:21
Speaker 1: That's where I think the question. It's the it's the
1:07:25
Speaker 1: nuances of the Endangered Species Act and somebody arguing over
1:07:28
Speaker 1: the definition of a distinct population segment or some other
1:07:33
Speaker 1: aspect of the s A. That many attorneys are very
1:07:37
Speaker 1: good at arguing in a court of law, and it's
1:07:41
Speaker 1: not a great benefit of their pocket what probably given
1:07:44
Speaker 1: them given the way they're reimbursed. There's there's a number
1:07:48
Speaker 1: of scholarly articles on on the reimbursement of of the
1:07:54
Speaker 1: legal people that are taking these suits. It's a cottage industry.
1:07:58
Speaker 1: I can I can image me to essay lawyer. But
1:08:00
Speaker 1: at the same time, it is their right to take
1:08:03
Speaker 1: those legal actions and that's just the way it is.
1:08:05
Speaker 1: And until Congress decides to change something on that, it's
1:08:09
Speaker 1: it's what we have to deal with. Well, I don't
1:08:11
Speaker 1: want to blow that. I don't want to be mistaken
1:08:13
Speaker 1: for someone who wants to blow the whole system up.
1:08:14
Speaker 1: I just wanted to all end. I wanted to all
1:08:16
Speaker 1: end the way I wanted to end, but not I'm
1:08:19
Speaker 1: not I'm not adversarial to the process. I'm like like
1:08:23
Speaker 1: a sports fan, right, you appreciate the rules, but you're
1:08:26
Speaker 1: just rooting for your own teeth. So I just like
1:08:29
Speaker 1: to see it end up in a way that I
1:08:30
Speaker 1: wanted to end up. But I want jump in another one.
1:08:35
Speaker 1: Until the other day when someone they they officially verify
1:08:39
Speaker 1: that a Mountain Cariboo came down to Montana. Right, I
1:08:42
Speaker 1: missed that. I'm still back with the grizzly that was
1:08:44
Speaker 1: on the golf course and Stevensville. If you heard about
1:08:47
Speaker 1: that too, Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
1:08:50
Speaker 1: I think they verified it. I think some guys had pound. Yeah,
1:08:54
Speaker 1: they found some flirting with the board, and I think
1:08:56
Speaker 1: they might have it, might be lured him over, It
1:08:59
Speaker 1: might be verified and step foot into Montana, which would
1:09:02
Speaker 1: be the first time since the twenties or something. But Idaho,
1:09:06
Speaker 1: right had the except for that. And I don't know
1:09:08
Speaker 1: enough about that to know how freakish that is if
1:09:10
Speaker 1: it's one that just packed up and straight a hundred miles.
1:09:13
Speaker 1: But Idaho has been the the state of the lower
1:09:19
Speaker 1: in the Lower Fort the idol has been the state
1:09:21
Speaker 1: where we have had or the last decades we've had
1:09:24
Speaker 1: some number of caribou flirting with the border. And if
1:09:28
Speaker 1: you were gonna have a cariboo in the US, it
1:09:30
Speaker 1: was presumably, I mean, it was gonna be one in Idaho.
1:09:34
Speaker 1: And that population is soffe. Do you see what's your
1:09:39
Speaker 1: take on it? Is this like a a big meaningful
1:09:42
Speaker 1: thing or is it wind up being that it was
1:09:43
Speaker 1: such kind of of a little bit of a fluke
1:09:47
Speaker 1: and you can't read too much into it that they're
1:09:49
Speaker 1: now not there, Like, give me the mile high perspective
1:09:53
Speaker 1: on it. From my standpoint, this was almost preordained. I'm
1:09:57
Speaker 1: giving limitations of the habitat at given the small, low
1:10:02
Speaker 1: productivity of the of the herd and the fact that
1:10:06
Speaker 1: it was reliant predominantly on Canada with a few animals
1:10:09
Speaker 1: coming in. The critical mass we needed of thirty to
1:10:13
Speaker 1: sixty animals we achieved I think the mid thirties and
1:10:17
Speaker 1: number of years ago, and then we've been on a
1:10:19
Speaker 1: downhill slide since. So they having a population of three
1:10:22
Speaker 1: or four. In fact, Canada's kind of come in and
1:10:25
Speaker 1: take those animals and removal to put them in protective
1:10:28
Speaker 1: custody to try to preserve the genetics and use those
1:10:32
Speaker 1: animals to breed some more in in uh captive rearing,
1:10:36
Speaker 1: and then reintroduce them at some other point to bolster
1:10:40
Speaker 1: the remaining population. Part of the problem was predation with
1:10:44
Speaker 1: the establishment of wolves in that area in addition to
1:10:48
Speaker 1: the already existing cougar population that was there, it tipped
1:10:52
Speaker 1: them over. It was that combination of factors. And at
1:10:58
Speaker 1: one point we had actually given permission to Canada to
1:11:02
Speaker 1: hire people to come in and kill wolves in northern Idaho,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: uh and they did that, but that wasn't enough because
1:11:09
Speaker 1: it's not just wolves. It was a combination of wolves
1:11:12
Speaker 1: and probably black bears on on on the young ones
1:11:17
Speaker 1: as well as cougar in there, and because their habitat
1:11:21
Speaker 1: is so small, it was easy for the predators to
1:11:25
Speaker 1: pick on them uh there and so this was preordained
1:11:30
Speaker 1: from my standpoint, Steve, it's also an appropriate action. One
1:11:33
Speaker 1: of the things just basically saying we're done, we can't
1:11:38
Speaker 1: do anymore, We're going to triage this out. And this
1:11:41
Speaker 1: is a situation where we did not know how to
1:11:46
Speaker 1: overcome the limitations to that population. We took those animals
1:11:51
Speaker 1: and put them into a captive rearing situation. Maybe we'll
1:11:55
Speaker 1: figure it out. But we we've decided that the use
1:11:59
Speaker 1: of resources for those few animals that were declining their
1:12:02
Speaker 1: extinction was not a good use of resources. Let's go
1:12:07
Speaker 1: into the captive rearing game. Let's try to see if
1:12:11
Speaker 1: we can understand this in the future as we work more,
1:12:14
Speaker 1: get better at managing other factors, habitat, predation, what have you,
1:12:18
Speaker 1: and then we can put the resources to managing something
1:12:21
Speaker 1: we know how to fix for some other species. And
1:12:24
Speaker 1: that that idea of conservation triage under ESA as controversial
1:12:30
Speaker 1: as the dickens. There's folks like myself to think it's
1:12:33
Speaker 1: the way you go. We do it medically on something.
1:12:35
Speaker 1: There are yeah, some of them. You just say, I
1:12:38
Speaker 1: don't know what to do, and no amount of money
1:12:42
Speaker 1: poured on it is going to make any difference because
1:12:44
Speaker 1: we don't know what to do. Because what a reasonable
1:12:47
Speaker 1: number of population be in that I can't tell you
1:12:51
Speaker 1: what the recovery plan was. Thank for the Idahoe portion,
1:12:54
Speaker 1: it was just around a hundred animals. They're flirting around
1:12:58
Speaker 1: a dozen, seven to a dozen, right, and then it
1:13:00
Speaker 1: just it went down to single digits and you know,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: and it was a time where they were either going
1:13:06
Speaker 1: to go away on their own, or we take a
1:13:08
Speaker 1: few and you didn't see a way to buy your
1:13:10
Speaker 1: way out of it. No, not with There wasn't any
1:13:13
Speaker 1: way and to do it effectively. And so the Canadians
1:13:18
Speaker 1: chose to offer this opportunity and boom they're out. So
1:13:23
Speaker 1: that's that idea that there are. Did we give up
1:13:27
Speaker 1: on them, not totally, but we recognized there was nothing
1:13:31
Speaker 1: more to be done right at this moment in time
1:13:34
Speaker 1: with that species. We damn near got there with Saki salmon.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: I mean, I was on the original Saky recovery team
1:13:40
Speaker 1: when we got down to one male, lonesome Larry came back.
1:13:44
Speaker 1: One year, we had four fish come back. The next year,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: we had zero another year and then seven. I mean
1:13:52
Speaker 1: that was a four years fan and that's a complete
1:13:54
Speaker 1: generation zero, four and seven for the returning populations Sakai
1:14:00
Speaker 1: salmon coming back to Red Fish Lake in Idaho. We
1:14:04
Speaker 1: took all of those fish out of their natural habitat,
1:14:08
Speaker 1: put them in a hatchery and Eagle Idaho, and expanded
1:14:13
Speaker 1: their genetics such that we did not go into what's
1:14:17
Speaker 1: called in breeding depression. We used every trick in the book,
1:14:20
Speaker 1: and there were some really amazing tricks that our staff used.
1:14:24
Speaker 1: Now we're stocking millions of fish in there to try
1:14:27
Speaker 1: to build that population back up while we expand. The
1:14:31
Speaker 1: population came from those from that, from those yeah, from
1:14:37
Speaker 1: those thirteen fish that we had dinner ad right, that's
1:14:41
Speaker 1: four or five seven, yeah, twelve fish um that we
1:14:46
Speaker 1: had to work with. We now have a full blown
1:14:49
Speaker 1: hatchery operating that we built with BPA mitigation money. And
1:14:55
Speaker 1: it was expensive, but we didn't waste our time trying
1:14:59
Speaker 1: to douce them in on site because the numbers were
1:15:02
Speaker 1: too small and numerically we couldn't get over the hurdle. Well,
1:15:07
Speaker 1: fish are different because you can't go pull a hundred
1:15:08
Speaker 1: eggs out of caribou. That's true, you know. Now we
1:15:11
Speaker 1: can get four thousand eggs out of a saki and
1:15:14
Speaker 1: consequently it is a different game from that standpoint. But
1:15:18
Speaker 1: my my point being is we have to make some
1:15:21
Speaker 1: of these hard decisions at some point in time not
1:15:24
Speaker 1: to spend money certain ways or human resources as the
1:15:27
Speaker 1: case maybe and um and move forward. That's conservation triosh
1:15:32
Speaker 1: where we make those decisions versus everything is important. We've
1:15:36
Speaker 1: got to pour all the resources into it, but there's
1:15:39
Speaker 1: not enough to take care of it when you, uh,
1:15:43
Speaker 1: you've been at this game a long time in this business,
1:15:46
Speaker 1: right and now you're in kind of a pinnacle position.
1:15:50
Speaker 1: When you look at like these tough decisions, do you
1:15:53
Speaker 1: do you imagine that there are some that will that
1:15:57
Speaker 1: will haunt you or that you'll have a sort of
1:16:00
Speaker 1: I guess he is the guy who What do you
1:16:03
Speaker 1: think about that? Where do you feel like you're so
1:16:05
Speaker 1: sort of part of a process, right and if if
1:16:07
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you would be someone else and that person
1:16:09
Speaker 1: would probably end up doing the same thing. Or do
1:16:11
Speaker 1: you feel like you're putting like the personal like Virgil
1:16:15
Speaker 1: More stamp on things that are going to affect future
1:16:18
Speaker 1: generations and they'll look back and be like, that was
1:16:20
Speaker 1: the guy certainly messed it all up, or or conversely
1:16:24
Speaker 1: the guy that made it perfect. Well, I'll take responsibilities
1:16:28
Speaker 1: for the screw ups because that's the way it works.
1:16:31
Speaker 1: But the successes are never a single person um, they're
1:16:36
Speaker 1: they're always a group. But the successes that I've been
1:16:39
Speaker 1: part of them that I'm most proud of are forming
1:16:43
Speaker 1: strong collaboratives among all of the users out there that
1:16:48
Speaker 1: can agree on how to move forward. And that's that's
1:16:53
Speaker 1: a challenge given the di visitness in society today. But
1:16:58
Speaker 1: the closer you get people to the resource on the ground,
1:17:03
Speaker 1: the easier it is for them to all focus on
1:17:06
Speaker 1: what they love. So if we're talking about trying to
1:17:10
Speaker 1: manage Yellowstone cutthroat across its entire range, gosh, that's a
1:17:14
Speaker 1: big area across several states. But if you want to
1:17:17
Speaker 1: talk about managing Yellowstone cutthroat in the South Fork of
1:17:20
Speaker 1: the Snake, I can bring those users together. We can
1:17:24
Speaker 1: sit down and form up a collaborative. We've done it
1:17:27
Speaker 1: on the clear Water, We've done it in the oy He's,
1:17:29
Speaker 1: We've done it on the Koutney River, We've done it
1:17:32
Speaker 1: in in Montana with the Blackfoot Initiative. The ones that
1:17:36
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with, and that is the challenge, is to
1:17:40
Speaker 1: find the right sizing of bringing people together that care
1:17:44
Speaker 1: about that place, that land, and the geographical geographic size
1:17:51
Speaker 1: that people can embrace. Some of them are massive, like
1:17:55
Speaker 1: the oy He's. It's a big geography, but it's it's
1:17:58
Speaker 1: a resource people can race and get their mind around
1:18:01
Speaker 1: as they try to come up with solutions to maintaining
1:18:05
Speaker 1: lifestyle and wildlife resources and plant resources down there and
1:18:10
Speaker 1: they initiative was a huge success and still is. And
1:18:14
Speaker 1: we've got ranchers working with conservation groups, working with other
1:18:20
Speaker 1: NGOs to to keep a lifestyle on the ground because
1:18:24
Speaker 1: everybody cares about that sage brush community down there. We
1:18:28
Speaker 1: see it in the clear Water basin. People care about
1:18:31
Speaker 1: that resource there in the lifestyle it has. It's hard,
1:18:35
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of work. That's when I'm most
1:18:38
Speaker 1: proud of every collaborative that I've ever been associated with
1:18:43
Speaker 1: that has been successful is because everybody came together with
1:18:46
Speaker 1: that common value and and it's really satisfying things and
1:18:51
Speaker 1: that isn't dependent on an individual. Then if that person leaves,
1:18:56
Speaker 1: it has momentum of its own. Uh So I feel
1:19:00
Speaker 1: some problems. Look, if you look at the Cutthroat in general,
1:19:03
Speaker 1: it's just too like it has the approached on the
1:19:06
Speaker 1: micro level. I think the management schemes for that level
1:19:14
Speaker 1: need to be uh The issues associated with the south
1:19:17
Speaker 1: Fork of the Snake and maintaining the spawning tributaries there
1:19:21
Speaker 1: and dealing with the rainbow trout intergression are unique to
1:19:25
Speaker 1: that area and require localized work. Uh. Public bient. The
1:19:32
Speaker 1: way Wyoming is doing it as different because their geography
1:19:35
Speaker 1: is different. The way Yellowstone Park is doing it is different,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: um and it's its own community up there with Yellowstone Cutthroat.
1:19:43
Speaker 1: Montana has a slightly different approach on it, but it's
1:19:46
Speaker 1: all getting at the same thing, and it's it's reliant
1:19:49
Speaker 1: on that. Now. We have a tri state agreement on
1:19:52
Speaker 1: Yellowstone Cutthroat that we put in place in the eighties
1:19:55
Speaker 1: and said, here's the things we all agree on are
1:19:58
Speaker 1: going to be common death missions and common management concepts.
1:20:03
Speaker 1: We're going to manage for purity of cutthroat, and that
1:20:06
Speaker 1: purity is defined this way, you know, by what proportion
1:20:10
Speaker 1: of integration is there and how we use those fish
1:20:13
Speaker 1: and transport them around. We agreed on those basic concepts,
1:20:16
Speaker 1: but then we went out and built these management things
1:20:18
Speaker 1: on a localized basis. I'm curious about, if I can
1:20:21
Speaker 1: interrupt just uh something you said about the those collaborative efforts.
1:20:26
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had to pinpoint something that made
1:20:30
Speaker 1: them work, because I've been part of plenty collaborations that
1:20:33
Speaker 1: didn't work, what would what would it be? It's usually
1:20:36
Speaker 1: some big controversy, the one that I'm no, I'm serious,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: and sometimes we're right at the middle of it. And
1:20:43
Speaker 1: that's where I take responsibility for being at fault. And
1:20:46
Speaker 1: I'll do this on behalf of my agency more than anything.
1:20:49
Speaker 1: But years ago in the Henry's Fork drainage, we've got
1:20:53
Speaker 1: on on Park Reservoir. On Park Reservoir gets uh utah
1:20:57
Speaker 1: chubs in them. That ties up the biomass and our
1:20:59
Speaker 1: ability to grow hatchery fish in there for sport fishing.
1:21:02
Speaker 1: You gotta back up on that one. People are gonna
1:21:05
Speaker 1: your tom about okay, I mean some people who know
1:21:08
Speaker 1: about this, Okay, Well, anyway, we get competition between fish
1:21:12
Speaker 1: species and non game species like a utah chub, which
1:21:15
Speaker 1: is an exotic. Uh. We're in there eating all of
1:21:19
Speaker 1: the zooplankton and and food and tying it up in
1:21:23
Speaker 1: their bodies biomass. I'm sorry, I did get carried just
1:21:27
Speaker 1: like what the Utah shub was, and it was sub
1:21:30
Speaker 1: is a mental. It's a great big mental. They got
1:21:32
Speaker 1: in there, and they got in there. We can have
1:21:34
Speaker 1: a way through bait puckets and what have you, but
1:21:37
Speaker 1: the bottom line is we have periodically gone in there
1:21:40
Speaker 1: and poisoned that system with a poison called ropano. It's
1:21:44
Speaker 1: an extract out of a root from South America and
1:21:48
Speaker 1: it it blocks the oxygen I take at the cellular
1:21:52
Speaker 1: level in the brain and they just die. And you've
1:21:54
Speaker 1: done some South American fish poisoning. That's where we learned
1:21:58
Speaker 1: it from the natives down there. Uh well, I haven't
1:22:03
Speaker 1: done that. I'd like to go sometime. And anyway, in
1:22:07
Speaker 1: the process of doing the one that I the last
1:22:11
Speaker 1: one of these, we drew Island Park Reservoir way down
1:22:16
Speaker 1: and we do that to limit the amount of poison
1:22:19
Speaker 1: that has to be put in the system and then
1:22:21
Speaker 1: detoxed as it flows out of there. And we usually
1:22:24
Speaker 1: close the damn drought down, dump the toxin in, do
1:22:29
Speaker 1: all the tributary strait, try to kill the chubs, close
1:22:32
Speaker 1: the gates on the dam, and fill it back up well.
1:22:35
Speaker 1: In the process of trying to get the minimum pool
1:22:37
Speaker 1: possible to save money, they drew the pool down so
1:22:43
Speaker 1: low it cut through the sediment that had built up
1:22:45
Speaker 1: in the reservoir, and all that sediment flushed into the
1:22:49
Speaker 1: Henry's Fork at Harriman Ranch, the fly fish mecca down there,
1:22:54
Speaker 1: and it accumulated terribly habitat and it did it created
1:23:00
Speaker 1: some problems that created such a public outcry about the
1:23:05
Speaker 1: Bureau of Reclamation and Fishing Game mismanaging this reservoir and
1:23:10
Speaker 1: having effects on the wild trout fishery in the Henry's
1:23:13
Speaker 1: Fork Below that the Henry's Fork UH Coalition formed up
1:23:21
Speaker 1: under guidance of the Henry's Fork Foundation as well as
1:23:25
Speaker 1: the local irrigators there that were upset, and they formed
1:23:28
Speaker 1: one of the most successful collaboratives we have today and
1:23:31
Speaker 1: included everybody in it. But it was an incident that
1:23:35
Speaker 1: created that, and if you look around you'll find often
1:23:39
Speaker 1: there was an incident or an activity or a legal
1:23:43
Speaker 1: action that caused something. They finally brought people together because
1:23:48
Speaker 1: they know we got to fix this so this doesn't
1:23:50
Speaker 1: happen again. And that's just one example of the Henry's
1:23:54
Speaker 1: Fork Watershed Council forming up. That was thirty years ago.
1:23:59
Speaker 1: The had and put from irrigators too. Yeah they're a
1:24:02
Speaker 1: big I want water, and you boys figure out the
1:24:06
Speaker 1: fishing situation, and so fast forward, the dam was rebuilt,
1:24:12
Speaker 1: a hydro project was put on it a few years later,
1:24:15
Speaker 1: and because of that collaborative, the needs of the fish
1:24:19
Speaker 1: and the irrigators were worked out among the collaborative and
1:24:22
Speaker 1: fed to the agencies so we could implement them as
1:24:27
Speaker 1: trust managers uh for them, and that's the way it
1:24:32
Speaker 1: should be. Too often we get put in a position
1:24:34
Speaker 1: of why did you make that decision instead of implementing
1:24:38
Speaker 1: things that the community as a whole comes up with.
1:24:41
Speaker 1: I see our agency and our staff as catalyst, if
1:24:47
Speaker 1: at all possible, for catalyzing that kind of community interaction,
1:24:52
Speaker 1: so we can come up with these Certainly, ultimately the
1:24:56
Speaker 1: Commission made me making some of these decisions, but trying
1:24:59
Speaker 1: to get people to come together instead of us standing
1:25:03
Speaker 1: in the middle of the circle getting shot at by
1:25:05
Speaker 1: all sides because they're dissatisfied with what we're proposing to
1:25:09
Speaker 1: try to balance everything out. We're better if we're part
1:25:12
Speaker 1: of the circle and everybody comes up with an idea
1:25:15
Speaker 1: that's implementable in consensus or as much as you can now.
1:25:19
Speaker 1: That works until somebody doesn't consent, and then you get
1:25:22
Speaker 1: these tangents out there. But it is by and large
1:25:25
Speaker 1: working very well. It's where the focus is right now
1:25:29
Speaker 1: and natural resource management of our public lands, especially in
1:25:32
Speaker 1: the resources on those public lands. Do you find areas
1:25:36
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of public apathy? It surprises you
1:25:42
Speaker 1: buy the lack of input. Yes, I'm always amazed on
1:25:46
Speaker 1: certain issues that you think are just gonna blow things up.
1:25:49
Speaker 1: We'll put a proposal or an idea out there, we
1:25:52
Speaker 1: have nothing, We'll have a public meeting or a workshop.
1:25:55
Speaker 1: Three people will show up. I think what we're doing
1:26:01
Speaker 1: right here though, with a podcast, what we can do
1:26:04
Speaker 1: with social media to try to get this information out
1:26:08
Speaker 1: on a broader sense. Because I'm old enough, I still
1:26:13
Speaker 1: like to sit down and have a cup of coffee
1:26:15
Speaker 1: and read my paper. Okay, but I'm realizing now that
1:26:19
Speaker 1: my paper is only three pages long, and if I'm
1:26:21
Speaker 1: going to really get any information, I'm gonna have to
1:26:23
Speaker 1: sit down at least with my tablet and my cup
1:26:26
Speaker 1: of coffee and and read through that. And if I've
1:26:28
Speaker 1: got a tablet, then I can hot link in to
1:26:31
Speaker 1: the to the next level of information if I desire,
1:26:34
Speaker 1: and that might lead me then to some of these
1:26:36
Speaker 1: other discussion groups and information from folks like yourself that
1:26:40
Speaker 1: are going to help us hopefully engage people in a
1:26:44
Speaker 1: different manner of community as we work forward with these things.
1:26:49
Speaker 1: Part of the reason these folks are here, the two staff,
1:26:52
Speaker 1: are to help us with that in terms of how
1:26:54
Speaker 1: do we get how do we do that. How do
1:26:56
Speaker 1: we communicate better? I came up during an era where
1:26:59
Speaker 1: we did a mag scene and we had a TV show.
1:27:02
Speaker 1: No one does magazines that in newspaper articles. I mean,
1:27:07
Speaker 1: it was all print or media driven under an analog system. Uh,
1:27:12
Speaker 1: we need to and our transgressing, you know, getting into
1:27:15
Speaker 1: the digital stuff. I think the building we're in here
1:27:18
Speaker 1: right now is an example of that digital technology. We're
1:27:23
Speaker 1: at quite the ONEX World headquarters because it just moved
1:27:26
Speaker 1: next door. Okay while we're at their annex A one
1:27:30
Speaker 1: thing I was going to throw in there. Um, you
1:27:32
Speaker 1: know you mentioned the apathy. I've been to some of
1:27:35
Speaker 1: those meetings where two or three people in fact this summer,
1:27:37
Speaker 1: I think I talked to you about this stuff that
1:27:39
Speaker 1: d e Q is doing on the Upper clerk Fork
1:27:42
Speaker 1: and um, you know, if you go down to the bar,
1:27:44
Speaker 1: you go down to Charlie B's, everyone will talk about it. Everybody,
1:27:47
Speaker 1: every fishing guy's got an opinion about it. But I
1:27:51
Speaker 1: think some of that apathy is derived from the fact
1:27:54
Speaker 1: that no one knows who's really accountable for stuff. I mean,
1:27:57
Speaker 1: you tell the story about the res are getting drawn
1:28:00
Speaker 1: down and this massive sediment coming out. Um, you know,
1:28:04
Speaker 1: I would imagine I don't know that this for a fact,
1:28:07
Speaker 1: but that that fishing community down there was probably going,
1:28:10
Speaker 1: who's accountable for this? Who's who's making up for you know,
1:28:13
Speaker 1: this money that we're losing, etcetera, etcetera. And I think
1:28:16
Speaker 1: some of that apathy comes out of the fact that
1:28:19
Speaker 1: people figura, well, no matter what they yeah, yeah, I
1:28:24
Speaker 1: find I I think that that's true because you hear
1:28:27
Speaker 1: so many of these issues, some of the ones we've
1:28:28
Speaker 1: touched on today. You hear people talk about them and
1:28:32
Speaker 1: they're very passionate about it, but the minute they open
1:28:34
Speaker 1: the mouth, I'm like, you know what, you're not equipped
1:28:36
Speaker 1: to talk about this, bro right, just by a handful
1:28:39
Speaker 1: of things you just said, like you're behind, you're not
1:28:42
Speaker 1: caught up. Yeah, And I mean, Virgil, you articulated that
1:28:47
Speaker 1: those collaborations so well, and it sounds like when those
1:28:51
Speaker 1: people come together there has to be some level of
1:28:54
Speaker 1: compromise and those different entities or collaborative management by its
1:29:00
Speaker 1: nature is give and take. I mean, it's but it
1:29:04
Speaker 1: also builds on relationships and understanding a core understanding that
1:29:10
Speaker 1: my need and value really isn't that much different. Example
1:29:14
Speaker 1: being the rancher who has a piece of property but
1:29:19
Speaker 1: relies on the public sagebrush grasses to have his um lifestyle,
1:29:25
Speaker 1: his ranching lifestyle. He's got a ranche, but he needs
1:29:28
Speaker 1: the grays Catalan and and he values that environment because
1:29:37
Speaker 1: it's home. He knows it as well as anybody because
1:29:41
Speaker 1: he's lived there for maybe three or four generations, uh,
1:29:44
Speaker 1: in his family. And we can't exclude their needs and
1:29:50
Speaker 1: be successful. Example being sage grouse. Sage grouse need water
1:29:55
Speaker 1: for an important part of their brood rearing. Even in
1:29:59
Speaker 1: Idaho with all the public lands we have, which is
1:30:03
Speaker 1: federal another five percent of state, I mean, it's huge,
1:30:06
Speaker 1: almost all the waters on private land that's what was homesteaded.
1:30:10
Speaker 1: And so if you put a rancher out of business
1:30:13
Speaker 1: because you're saying you can't graze up here because of
1:30:15
Speaker 1: endangered species, and they pull their whole operation into their
1:30:19
Speaker 1: little piece of land that has all the water, and
1:30:23
Speaker 1: they began to feed there and utilize all the habitat
1:30:26
Speaker 1: up the sage grounds suffer in the long run because
1:30:28
Speaker 1: it's disconnected. We need the community. Now they get that
1:30:33
Speaker 1: what's good for the herd is good for the bird.
1:30:36
Speaker 1: Is the catchphrase that we use now right, and and
1:30:41
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. We want these operational ranches out there
1:30:47
Speaker 1: that are part of the landscape and can be managed
1:30:50
Speaker 1: in conjunction with other resources we value. They've seen it
1:30:55
Speaker 1: in the past. They know what can be done. We've
1:30:58
Speaker 1: seen it, and so now it's just a at or
1:31:00
Speaker 1: a bank. Sure, we don't restrict any of our activities
1:31:03
Speaker 1: to the point that everybody just gives up and goes home.
1:31:06
Speaker 1: And that's that's collaboration. That's the thing I warned about
1:31:09
Speaker 1: all the time, or think about. One thing about wildlife
1:31:12
Speaker 1: issues is what happens when you create the damage that's
1:31:16
Speaker 1: done when you create a spotted owl where the spot
1:31:20
Speaker 1: at out a conversation around the spot at all, the
1:31:22
Speaker 1: spot at all like ceased to be a bird and
1:31:25
Speaker 1: it became like this, this symbol of something, and it
1:31:29
Speaker 1: became like a thing of animosity, and it became a
1:31:31
Speaker 1: symbol of divisiveness. And when you allow some of these
1:31:34
Speaker 1: conflicts to go to fester and don't strive for some
1:31:38
Speaker 1: compromise and like people are coming to a mutual understanding
1:31:41
Speaker 1: of what they need to go, you end up having
1:31:43
Speaker 1: these like these like wildlife fatalities in terms of like
1:31:47
Speaker 1: what the species stands for. And it's painful to watch
1:31:49
Speaker 1: it happen, Like if you've heard the howl of a wolf, right,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, but it's painful to watch it happen where
1:31:54
Speaker 1: people Like when I hear that noise, I think about
1:31:56
Speaker 1: like my needs not being listened to, man, and that's
1:31:59
Speaker 1: the only thing I'm here ring right there, And it
1:32:01
Speaker 1: sucks to see that happened to to wildlife. And I
1:32:04
Speaker 1: think the way they had that off is to usually
1:32:07
Speaker 1: you know, these ways like finding out like what you need,
1:32:10
Speaker 1: but also giving room to other people to also live
1:32:13
Speaker 1: their lives and have their needs be met. And it's
1:32:15
Speaker 1: like it's hard to do. I used to not look
1:32:18
Speaker 1: at these issues that way. When I was younger. I
1:32:19
Speaker 1: looked at him in a very rigid way, where like
1:32:21
Speaker 1: I was right, you were wrong, and you were stupid
1:32:24
Speaker 1: and I was really smart. Know, then do it? You know?
1:32:26
Speaker 1: And then the more you round and watch successes and
1:32:29
Speaker 1: failures around some of the stuff, do you more you realize, Man,
1:32:32
Speaker 1: you're never gonna get there with that attitude. That's correct.
1:32:35
Speaker 1: We never got to the question, what are some like
1:32:38
Speaker 1: big fit, what are the fishing game grapes, fish game.
1:32:42
Speaker 1: Don't know what they're talking about. They killed all the Uh,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: we want more big fish. You know, that would be
1:32:53
Speaker 1: there's no big fish simplistically, but certainly if the legitimate complaint.
1:32:59
Speaker 1: You ask what thegitimate complaint is, and it would be
1:33:03
Speaker 1: that we don't know everything about the spot you hunt.
1:33:08
Speaker 1: When you come to me and you say, do you
1:33:10
Speaker 1: know how many deer or what the buck doo ratio
1:33:14
Speaker 1: is in you know, Timber Creek of unit five, I'm
1:33:20
Speaker 1: gonna go no, but I can tell you what the
1:33:22
Speaker 1: buck doo ratio is in units three, four, and five
1:33:25
Speaker 1: overall from the combined survey work we've done. But no,
1:33:30
Speaker 1: we don't know that. And it is a legitimate complaint
1:33:34
Speaker 1: that we have set management goals based on larger survey units.
1:33:41
Speaker 1: And this person complaint is you don't know what you're
1:33:44
Speaker 1: talking about relative to Temper Creek. Because I sat the
1:33:47
Speaker 1: same blind for twenty five years and I always see
1:33:50
Speaker 1: acts of this year. I saw why, and it's legitimate
1:33:53
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of what they see. We talked about
1:33:57
Speaker 1: that earlier, and what we're trying to do now is
1:34:01
Speaker 1: look at different ways of censusing wildlife to understanding what's
1:34:05
Speaker 1: out there. Going from the traditional UH site based survey
1:34:12
Speaker 1: work where we have to see them, count them, UH,
1:34:16
Speaker 1: kill them, assess them, whatever the case may be, to
1:34:21
Speaker 1: something that provides a different level of that. I mean
1:34:25
Speaker 1: remote cameras. It's still kind of seeing, but we can
1:34:28
Speaker 1: get a lot more of them out there. I mean
1:34:30
Speaker 1: I just saw him bringing a truckload to remote cameras
1:34:33
Speaker 1: into our office that we boxed up and sent out
1:34:36
Speaker 1: to all the regions. I mean hundreds of these things
1:34:38
Speaker 1: that we're putting out and in matrix to try to
1:34:42
Speaker 1: get better understanding of what's in Timber Creek as an example,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: versus just the larger units based on aerial flights. UM.
1:34:52
Speaker 1: We're using UH hair snags and scatter analysis pulling DNA
1:34:57
Speaker 1: out of these animals so that we contract families. We
1:35:02
Speaker 1: can tell you by looking at UM d N A
1:35:05
Speaker 1: from wolf scats whether or not that represents a family
1:35:09
Speaker 1: unit and whether or not they were successful with getting
1:35:14
Speaker 1: a pair of getting a brood off just by getting
1:35:19
Speaker 1: proper sampling of pieces and parts because we can type
1:35:23
Speaker 1: those our ability today with advanced computer analysis and the
1:35:30
Speaker 1: speed at which we can do things from when I
1:35:32
Speaker 1: started my career uh is, I can't even fathom it.
1:35:38
Speaker 1: I mean, DNA analysis is a good example. We have
1:35:41
Speaker 1: the DNA makeup of every hatchery fish we stalk out
1:35:47
Speaker 1: and and and it's it's amazing that we have parental
1:35:51
Speaker 1: based stock analysis. You take a fish in the ocean,
1:35:55
Speaker 1: I can take a fin clipper a swab off of
1:35:57
Speaker 1: that fish, can run an analysis and I can tell
1:35:59
Speaker 1: you which hatchery it came out of, and which female
1:36:01
Speaker 1: produced it and and that, and I can do it
1:36:05
Speaker 1: darn near in a couple of days. I mean, it
1:36:09
Speaker 1: would have taken you months to pull something like that
1:36:12
Speaker 1: off before, and not with that specificity. But I got
1:36:15
Speaker 1: a lab full of people that are cranking this stuff out,
1:36:17
Speaker 1: and it's going on all over the place, and and
1:36:21
Speaker 1: we're advancing and trying to push the limit. That's the science,
1:36:26
Speaker 1: that's the science fiction almost of wildlife management. As we
1:36:30
Speaker 1: move forward, it doesn't eliminate the hands on stuff, the
1:36:34
Speaker 1: trapping of animals to put collars on them so we
1:36:36
Speaker 1: can go in and assess how they died, whether it
1:36:40
Speaker 1: was predation, natural whatever. Get better at that, um we
1:36:45
Speaker 1: still have a lot of that, the fun stuff jumping
1:36:48
Speaker 1: out of a helicopter on a on a calf elk
1:36:50
Speaker 1: and wrestling it to the ground. Uh. Catching fish in
1:36:53
Speaker 1: a trap and putting tags on them. That's fun. Handling
1:36:56
Speaker 1: wildlife is really a kick. It's what got me into
1:36:59
Speaker 1: this business. Uh, and learning from that. But we're we're
1:37:04
Speaker 1: trying to get better at this. And you know, drone
1:37:08
Speaker 1: technology and infrared technology isn't quite there yet. But I
1:37:12
Speaker 1: mean these satellite collars we put on elk now beam
1:37:15
Speaker 1: up to satellite back down to the computer. They're instantly
1:37:18
Speaker 1: on a map, and we can program them to do
1:37:20
Speaker 1: it every five minutes, every hour, every ten hours, depending
1:37:24
Speaker 1: on what we want. And we're able to use that
1:37:26
Speaker 1: to help landowners understand where an elker it is relative
1:37:30
Speaker 1: to depredation on their haystack. And and that's real time
1:37:34
Speaker 1: management while we track some stuff around. So you're working
1:37:38
Speaker 1: towards being able to tell that guy what's going on
1:37:40
Speaker 1: in front of his blood. That's the legitimate complaint. We've
1:37:42
Speaker 1: heard it. We're working on it, using technology and trying
1:37:46
Speaker 1: to put more resources into it. Uh. Fortunately in Idaho,
1:37:52
Speaker 1: our finances are secure for the time being. We went
1:37:56
Speaker 1: through a low like everybody else when the economy tanked.
1:37:59
Speaker 1: Are revenues dropped by uh, real quick. Why are you
1:38:04
Speaker 1: tied to the economy, because people, that's good question, Steve.
1:38:08
Speaker 1: We're tied to the economy because half of our licensed
1:38:12
Speaker 1: revenue comes from non residents, but there are only ten
1:38:15
Speaker 1: of our hunters. And in the past say that again.
1:38:20
Speaker 1: I want people to hear this. Half of our revenue,
1:38:22
Speaker 1: our licensed revenue, which is around forty four million dollars
1:38:25
Speaker 1: a year, half of that, a little over half of
1:38:27
Speaker 1: it comes from non resident hunters. Now, we have a
1:38:33
Speaker 1: lot of non resident fishermen, but they don't generate nearly
1:38:39
Speaker 1: the same money because they're buying one day. It's it's
1:38:42
Speaker 1: a high volume, low cost problem. The economy goes south,
1:38:45
Speaker 1: people are like, I can't, I can't go to idle hunting.
1:38:47
Speaker 1: This year. We did not realize how sensitive it was.
1:38:51
Speaker 1: We'd never seen it before. But when the economy tanked
1:38:54
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. We have a quota on non
1:38:58
Speaker 1: resident hunting permits in Idaho. Um it's thirteen thousand, five
1:39:04
Speaker 1: hundred elk tags fifteen thousand, five hundred deer tags. When
1:39:09
Speaker 1: those are gone for general hunting, they're gone. We've never
1:39:14
Speaker 1: sold We've never not sold those out up until two
1:39:17
Speaker 1: thousand nine, No kid, no kidding, we always sold them out,
1:39:21
Speaker 1: so half of our revenue was guaranteed. And and we
1:39:25
Speaker 1: we did three things. We raised the price of non
1:39:29
Speaker 1: resident fees so we didn't have to raise them on resident.
1:39:32
Speaker 1: Our elk herds tanked because of predation and other habitat
1:39:36
Speaker 1: related issues, and the economy tanked. All three of those
1:39:41
Speaker 1: things combined over a four year period to drive our
1:39:44
Speaker 1: revenues UH down by nine million dollars UH. It was huge,
1:39:50
Speaker 1: It was huge. And what we found is non residents
1:39:55
Speaker 1: are elastic in their coming here and further analysis, that
1:40:00
Speaker 1: was partially the perception that our elk herds had collapsed
1:40:04
Speaker 1: and it wasn't worth it. The other part was a
1:40:07
Speaker 1: big portion of those people who stayed away were skilled
1:40:10
Speaker 1: trades folks construction. Construction got hit hardest, and those guys
1:40:16
Speaker 1: were selling their trucks to feed the family they were
1:40:20
Speaker 1: they were not working because the housing market collapsed. Then
1:40:25
Speaker 1: as soon as the economy started coming up about a
1:40:27
Speaker 1: year behind that, and then people got over the price increases. Man,
1:40:32
Speaker 1: we we discounted nonresident products we marketed to them. But
1:40:36
Speaker 1: the last two years we sold all of our nonresident
1:40:38
Speaker 1: product out again, does this state keep trying? I mean,
1:40:41
Speaker 1: I'm sure they do, but um, I know, the Montana
1:40:44
Speaker 1: Guides and Outfitters Association just put out a reported said
1:40:48
Speaker 1: the outdoor recreation industry in Montana brings in like seven
1:40:53
Speaker 1: point one billion annually. We have those numbers for hunting
1:40:59
Speaker 1: and fishing in Idaho. I believe the direct economic benefit
1:41:05
Speaker 1: is one point four billion. Okay, I know who has
1:41:09
Speaker 1: an economy of about sixties six billion, So that gives
1:41:13
Speaker 1: you some sense of where it fits. It's a pretty
1:41:16
Speaker 1: sizeable number. And and then wildlife viewing adds about another
1:41:21
Speaker 1: six million to that. So we're about a two billion
1:41:24
Speaker 1: dollar uh economic activity in the state on a wildlife
1:41:28
Speaker 1: based economic activity, all outdoor based recreation is I think
1:41:35
Speaker 1: it's a six billion Okay, it's it's it's at that
1:41:39
Speaker 1: six billion dollars figures. So you know, just under ten
1:41:42
Speaker 1: percent of the economy of the state is outdoor based
1:41:45
Speaker 1: and a third of that is based on wildlife. So
1:41:49
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's important, and we can drill that down.
1:41:53
Speaker 1: We've been the surveys. If you want to know how
1:41:55
Speaker 1: much people what the economic benefits are of somebody fishing,
1:41:58
Speaker 1: Um Uh, Henry's like, I can go to the file
1:42:02
Speaker 1: and pulling information up and today I mean fish they caught,
1:42:04
Speaker 1: how much money they spent, how they much money spent
1:42:06
Speaker 1: on groceries and housing. We've got that information from surveys
1:42:10
Speaker 1: and we can give it to county commissioners who can
1:42:12
Speaker 1: live at the local working group. And it's big. It's big.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: So tell me a classification of grape that you feel
1:42:21
Speaker 1: is illegitimate, Like, what's the thing you guys in your
1:42:24
Speaker 1: business people are like, oh, fishing game and you're like, man,
1:42:28
Speaker 1: that just isn't fair. There's probably two One is you
1:42:32
Speaker 1: never listen. You never listen to us, You never do
1:42:37
Speaker 1: what I want done, and and I get it, but
1:42:42
Speaker 1: it's not a legitimate complaint given the amount of public
1:42:46
Speaker 1: input that our agency seeks. The requirements for public input
1:42:52
Speaker 1: of a state agency are minimal. I mean it's like
1:42:55
Speaker 1: one public meeting before the commission makes decision. Gosh, we
1:42:59
Speaker 1: have dozens, if not hundreds of public meetings over a
1:43:03
Speaker 1: year in advance of regulations, setting opportunities for input electronically
1:43:08
Speaker 1: in other ways. So I don't consider those to be
1:43:11
Speaker 1: legitimate complaints because there's so many opportunities What that might
1:43:17
Speaker 1: mean is I told him my opinion and it wasn't
1:43:20
Speaker 1: reflected and what ultimately happened. So the other one is
1:43:25
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're talking about. In other words,
1:43:28
Speaker 1: will do a survey, whether it's a social survey that
1:43:32
Speaker 1: asked for uh, Steve, you get a survey from us
1:43:36
Speaker 1: and it says, uh, you know, are you satisfied with
1:43:40
Speaker 1: deer hunting? Um? Would you be satisfied with? Uh? Fewer
1:43:47
Speaker 1: large bucks but more hunting opportunity? A bunch of social
1:43:52
Speaker 1: science questions that we worked with the university design and
1:43:55
Speaker 1: they go back and they go, we don't believe any
1:43:58
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, it doesn't conform with my opinion, so
1:44:02
Speaker 1: we don't believe it. And so and we see the
1:44:06
Speaker 1: same thing from deer and elk population surveys. They go
1:44:10
Speaker 1: because they didn't see it, We don't believe that. You
1:44:13
Speaker 1: do not know what you're talking about. That is not
1:44:16
Speaker 1: a legitimate complaint. Okay. We are a science based organization,
1:44:21
Speaker 1: whether it's social science, whether it's biological science. I'll stand
1:44:25
Speaker 1: on our science. And I can tell you, having been
1:44:28
Speaker 1: a in a leadership role in a state agency for
1:44:32
Speaker 1: over a decade and working nationally among my peers and
1:44:37
Speaker 1: other state agencies. I can tell you that in the
1:44:39
Speaker 1: Inner Mountain West, we have some of the finest fish
1:44:42
Speaker 1: and wildlife scientists in the world. And in Idaho we
1:44:47
Speaker 1: know more about predation management and ungulent management than just
1:44:50
Speaker 1: about anybody in the world. I mean, we're we're on
1:44:53
Speaker 1: top of the game and and I'm proud of that. Now,
1:44:56
Speaker 1: do we have things we don't know. Absolutely. Do we
1:45:00
Speaker 1: have more to learn and more to do, absolutely, But
1:45:04
Speaker 1: don't say we don't know what we're doing. Just understand
1:45:08
Speaker 1: we don't know everything and we're still trying to get that.
1:45:10
Speaker 1: So that would be what I would consider. The other
1:45:15
Speaker 1: thing that really bothers me that I consider is when
1:45:17
Speaker 1: people personalize their interaction with department staff. I don't like Steve,
1:45:23
Speaker 1: Steve didn't approach me properly. Um that very well could be.
1:45:30
Speaker 1: And every complaint I get of a negative interaction with
1:45:35
Speaker 1: staff is fully investigated and responded to, and so I
1:45:41
Speaker 1: end up knowing that most of these are not legitimate.
1:45:45
Speaker 1: In fact, it's it's very seldom that I find one
1:45:50
Speaker 1: in the time that I've spent investigating these over the
1:45:53
Speaker 1: last twenty years, that you find a complaint it's usually
1:45:57
Speaker 1: because the individual didn't get the outcome, whether it was
1:46:03
Speaker 1: he got a citation where he got information he didn't want,
1:46:06
Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. And ultimately, when you
1:46:09
Speaker 1: go back through and and find the facts, it's it's
1:46:13
Speaker 1: not there. And that doesn't mean that the person didn't
1:46:17
Speaker 1: feel that way, but that didn't actually happen that way.
1:46:22
Speaker 1: That's one of the advantages of tape recorders and video cams. Uh.
1:46:25
Speaker 1: It pretty much takes care of we I've actually seen
1:46:29
Speaker 1: people look at those and go, oh, I had no
1:46:33
Speaker 1: idea I did that. You know, they don't remember that
1:46:36
Speaker 1: part of it. You know, that's it's we have selective
1:46:39
Speaker 1: memory as humans, and it's just the way it happens sometimes.
1:46:43
Speaker 1: Has it been, um what we miss say? Any of
1:46:46
Speaker 1: you were dying to get into that we can get in? Well,
1:46:48
Speaker 1: I I will say one of the other things that
1:46:50
Speaker 1: I think is important and important to all of you
1:46:53
Speaker 1: guys around the table is public access. Certainly, in a
1:46:56
Speaker 1: public lands state, we tend to think of and take
1:46:59
Speaker 1: our Public Act access, but we also have a huge
1:47:02
Speaker 1: amount of private land. And in Idaho we had an
1:47:05
Speaker 1: out of state person from Texas come in and buy
1:47:08
Speaker 1: up UM a hundred thousand plus acres of timber land
1:47:14
Speaker 1: and immediately fenced and closed at all the public access
1:47:17
Speaker 1: where the UH Corporate Timber Company had allowed public access
1:47:22
Speaker 1: on it before. UH. It was a huge eye opener
1:47:26
Speaker 1: UH to sportsman and us to suddenly have lost a
1:47:31
Speaker 1: big chunk of a hunting unit that was very important
1:47:34
Speaker 1: to folks, and it caused us to really start thinking
1:47:38
Speaker 1: about how do we enhance our ability to protect these
1:47:42
Speaker 1: large corporate lands from being closed so that the public
1:47:46
Speaker 1: can continue to enjoy the wildlife that they own that
1:47:49
Speaker 1: we manage for them on those private lands as well.
1:47:53
Speaker 1: So two years ago the legislature gave us some additional
1:47:57
Speaker 1: funds with a fee increase we asked for. UH. Part
1:48:00
Speaker 1: of it went to pay for depredation damage, to increase
1:48:03
Speaker 1: in the license increase, license fee increations, like what you're
1:48:05
Speaker 1: doing with that money and what we're doing, and a
1:48:08
Speaker 1: part of it was to enhance what we call access. Yes,
1:48:11
Speaker 1: it's a program we've had for a lot of a
1:48:13
Speaker 1: lot of years, but it was bubbling along with three
1:48:16
Speaker 1: or four hundred thousand dollars, most of it coming in
1:48:19
Speaker 1: from our lottery big game tag super Hunt. People would
1:48:24
Speaker 1: buy those chances, and that was funding our accesses program.
1:48:28
Speaker 1: Now you pay money on every license sold, whether it's hunting, fishing,
1:48:33
Speaker 1: it's a five dollar fee. A portion of that five dollars,
1:48:36
Speaker 1: about half of it goes into the access account. And
1:48:41
Speaker 1: now we're we've added about one point four million UH
1:48:46
Speaker 1: to that account. Uh, so effectively tripling what we've got
1:48:51
Speaker 1: available for access yes. Uh and that money goes towards
1:48:54
Speaker 1: me can privately and be the corporator just private deeded properties.
1:48:59
Speaker 1: It's to direct public access to that there to that
1:49:03
Speaker 1: land to hunt and fish, or through that land to
1:49:05
Speaker 1: get to public lands. Either way, we can do it
1:49:07
Speaker 1: either way. We've had real success for upland bird hunting
1:49:10
Speaker 1: and some stuff like that around the Boise area and
1:49:12
Speaker 1: some of the southern part of the state. We've not
1:49:15
Speaker 1: had a lot of success in the large corporate lands
1:49:17
Speaker 1: in the center in northern part of the state. UM.
1:49:21
Speaker 1: We also had a threat to state lands. Our state
1:49:25
Speaker 1: lands are about four million or about two point four
1:49:28
Speaker 1: million acres and they were under threat of lease for
1:49:32
Speaker 1: exclusive use. We've had some people saying, I want to
1:49:36
Speaker 1: lease this state section that's next to my private land
1:49:40
Speaker 1: for exclusive use for hunting. And fishing. So far we've
1:49:43
Speaker 1: been able to sidestep that, but state law requires the
1:49:48
Speaker 1: Department of Lands to generate maximum revenue for schools for
1:49:52
Speaker 1: the School Trust Fund. Some guys willing to pay more
1:49:55
Speaker 1: than what the public we don't have any choice. So
1:49:58
Speaker 1: we just signed an agreement with Department of Lands, approved
1:50:02
Speaker 1: by the Landboard and our Commission, that we use a
1:50:06
Speaker 1: portion of that access sus money. We're paying departmental Lands
1:50:11
Speaker 1: for all access to their lands, um every bit of
1:50:17
Speaker 1: it for hunting, fishing, and wildlife based recreation. So we've
1:50:21
Speaker 1: preserved the opportunity now and diminish the likelihood of an
1:50:26
Speaker 1: adverse um exclusive use agreement on those lands. That's that's
1:50:33
Speaker 1: gonna cost us about dollars a year. Do you feel
1:50:37
Speaker 1: all in all, you guys are right now every year
1:50:40
Speaker 1: adding to accessible acre do you think I had a
1:50:43
Speaker 1: net loss when when all things are considered. UM, I
1:50:49
Speaker 1: hope to announce shortly that we have an agreement on
1:50:53
Speaker 1: private timber land that will secure access to another million
1:50:57
Speaker 1: acres of of land in the next couple of weeks,
1:51:02
Speaker 1: and with that agreement we will have a net game.
1:51:06
Speaker 1: So we're using that additional money, and we went out
1:51:11
Speaker 1: for proposals for what we call large corporate landholders. What
1:51:17
Speaker 1: would you propose to us for a fee that we
1:51:21
Speaker 1: could pay you to gain access for handing and fishing
1:51:24
Speaker 1: to your large corporate lands. We have those proposals, were
1:51:28
Speaker 1: evaluating those proposals, were very close to agreeing to some
1:51:35
Speaker 1: of those proposals at this point in time. That will
1:51:37
Speaker 1: add in excess of a million acres. Yeah, I'm I'm
1:51:41
Speaker 1: really proud of that and the staff work that went
1:51:43
Speaker 1: into it. My hats off to our legislature for allowing
1:51:47
Speaker 1: that increase to be dedicated to that purpose as well.
1:51:52
Speaker 1: But it's it's a biggie and I see that as
1:51:55
Speaker 1: giving us the annual financial resources uh needed to secure
1:52:01
Speaker 1: this into the future. So um, I just wanted to
1:52:06
Speaker 1: get that in there, Steve that that of all the
1:52:09
Speaker 1: things we hear from sportsman, even in a public state,
1:52:12
Speaker 1: is access. They want more access or I lost my access.
1:52:16
Speaker 1: What you said, it's and uh somebody shut it down.
1:52:18
Speaker 1: A private entity bought that forty acres or twenty or
1:52:23
Speaker 1: three sixty or whatever it is, and it's now posted. Uh.
1:52:26
Speaker 1: It's it's important that we're actually meeting here at the
1:52:29
Speaker 1: on X place because this idea of where are you
1:52:33
Speaker 1: at and trespass is very important and private landowners are
1:52:38
Speaker 1: very sensitive to trespass. But how do you know? There's
1:52:42
Speaker 1: some posting requirements, but it's still in a big open
1:52:46
Speaker 1: state like this where you wander up one side of
1:52:48
Speaker 1: the mountain down the other and you come in on
1:52:50
Speaker 1: the backside and you walk up to a fence it's
1:52:52
Speaker 1: next to the road and it's posted, and you didn't
1:52:54
Speaker 1: see anything when you came down the other side. Where
1:52:57
Speaker 1: is it your responsibility to know where you're at versus
1:53:00
Speaker 1: the landowner's responsibility to post? And we're moving responsibility to know?
1:53:05
Speaker 1: I agree, and Idaho there is some posting responsibilities of
1:53:09
Speaker 1: the private landowner on non agricultural land basically timber and
1:53:14
Speaker 1: range land. But I think we're very quickly moving to
1:53:17
Speaker 1: the point where you've got to know where you're at
1:53:20
Speaker 1: all the time near it's your responsibility, not the landowners
1:53:25
Speaker 1: to know it. It is. But again, does everybody carry,
1:53:29
Speaker 1: you know, a smartphone or a GPS around with them? No? Uh,
1:53:34
Speaker 1: most of us do that are avid, but not everybody
1:53:37
Speaker 1: else does. And so part of it is getting the mapping,
1:53:40
Speaker 1: getting the information out there, and again the technology to
1:53:43
Speaker 1: do that, and uh, certainly talking about it, letting people
1:53:47
Speaker 1: know that in Idaho, you can go on our website
1:53:50
Speaker 1: and we have a hunt planner. You say, I want
1:53:53
Speaker 1: to go hunt white tailed deer and I want to
1:53:54
Speaker 1: hunt it in Timber Creek and game I use my
1:53:57
Speaker 1: example again. It'll pull up the maps to show you
1:54:00
Speaker 1: it is an excellent spot, right, that's better. Uh, And
1:54:05
Speaker 1: and it'll tell you the land ownership, it'll tell you
1:54:08
Speaker 1: the regulations, It'll tell you everything about that piece of land.
1:54:12
Speaker 1: However you want to scale it to look at what
1:54:15
Speaker 1: you can do in that area. And couple that with
1:54:18
Speaker 1: these machines and and uh some other third party software,
1:54:22
Speaker 1: so you know where you're at all the time, you're
1:54:24
Speaker 1: good to go. And and I've still got I would
1:54:30
Speaker 1: have to say dozens. That's probably hundreds of quad maps
1:54:34
Speaker 1: that are folded up in in the under. The came
1:54:37
Speaker 1: to the seat of my truck and I pull those
1:54:39
Speaker 1: things out and jam them in my backpack. I still
1:54:42
Speaker 1: carry a real compass with me because these things aren't reliable.
1:54:46
Speaker 1: The batteries go dead, you don't have access. I forgot
1:54:50
Speaker 1: to download that so it was on residence. I still
1:54:52
Speaker 1: still value paper maps. I think they still have a role.
1:54:55
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think it's something that uh we
1:54:58
Speaker 1: as mentors hunters should be teaching them. UH. And if
1:55:03
Speaker 1: there's a last thing I want to say about Idaho
1:55:05
Speaker 1: being the opportunity state and the need for us as
1:55:09
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers to mentor people in to teach them
1:55:14
Speaker 1: the ethics and the responsible interaction with wildlife, the respect
1:55:20
Speaker 1: for that wildlife, live or dead, that needs to be
1:55:24
Speaker 1: there as we utilize it, consume it, enjoy it, uh,
1:55:29
Speaker 1: reveling the experiences around the campfire, which we all do. Uh,
1:55:33
Speaker 1: those are important. I'm proud to say that in Idaho
1:55:37
Speaker 1: we have a thing called the passport. If you're a
1:55:41
Speaker 1: hunter and you know somebody that's never hunted, and it
1:55:45
Speaker 1: doesn't make any difference whether they're a kid or an adult.
1:55:50
Speaker 1: Somebody moves into town and sees that you're a hunter,
1:55:55
Speaker 1: I would really like to go up, but they don't
1:55:57
Speaker 1: have hunter head or anything else. You can go down
1:55:59
Speaker 1: to the to the license vendor and as a hunter,
1:56:03
Speaker 1: you can sponsor that person and get a passport. That
1:56:07
Speaker 1: is what's the cost of it, three seventy dollar seventy five.
1:56:14
Speaker 1: Then you can if you want to take them deer hunt,
1:56:15
Speaker 1: You buy a deer tag to go with it, go
1:56:18
Speaker 1: out and shoot birds for how long that year and
1:56:21
Speaker 1: then that then that person has to get it together
1:56:23
Speaker 1: and go take It's one time opportunity to mantor somebody.
1:56:26
Speaker 1: But it's great it it gets this obstacle. Oh gosh,
1:56:31
Speaker 1: I'd really like to go with you, but I don't
1:56:32
Speaker 1: have for sure I can get that for you. You're
1:56:36
Speaker 1: ready to go up again. We came up against that
1:56:39
Speaker 1: over Thanksgiving weekend because um, we're all kind of half
1:56:44
Speaker 1: doing Thanksgiving family stuff, we're all kind of half hunting,
1:56:46
Speaker 1: and me ran out of deer tags. We started looking
1:56:49
Speaker 1: at people didn't have a tag and be like, we
1:56:52
Speaker 1: get this person licensed stuff. And this is the way
1:56:55
Speaker 1: you can do it. If you had a movie that
1:56:57
Speaker 1: it never hunted before, just take them down and get it.
1:57:01
Speaker 1: And they've got to be accompanied by a license hunter.
1:57:04
Speaker 1: But it's neat. And you can take kids as young
1:57:06
Speaker 1: as eight that haven't had a chance to do hunter ed.
1:57:09
Speaker 1: If you're a parent or a guardian or whatever is
1:57:12
Speaker 1: that word is an idhole, kid can hunt, hunt deer
1:57:15
Speaker 1: or whatever. Eight years of age, they can hunt uh,
1:57:18
Speaker 1: small game and birds they can't hunt there until they're
1:57:21
Speaker 1: ten break off. That's what That's what I thought. Yeah,
1:57:26
Speaker 1: and you know you just broke your silence, But what
1:57:28
Speaker 1: else is on your mind? Man? Kind of on the
1:57:31
Speaker 1: opportunity um theme, Idaho does trophy species where you can
1:57:37
Speaker 1: only apply for one of the there's three, right you
1:57:40
Speaker 1: guys to go sheep and moves. Were you around when
1:57:43
Speaker 1: that was put the place? That system? And then just
1:57:48
Speaker 1: what are your general thoughts on it? Because that we
1:57:49
Speaker 1: really like it. I mean, I like the way that
1:57:51
Speaker 1: it's set up that you guys don't do the bonus
1:57:53
Speaker 1: points and their preference points and all that to deal
1:57:55
Speaker 1: with that big mess um. And then they put the
1:58:00
Speaker 1: ones in lifetime back and the ones in lifetime that's correct.
1:58:03
Speaker 1: We no longer call them trophy species. There once in
1:58:05
Speaker 1: a lifetime species again, getting at that perception, I mean,
1:58:09
Speaker 1: you can really never draw it again, not not for
1:58:13
Speaker 1: a once in a lifetime. So example of that and
1:58:16
Speaker 1: the answer is, yeah, I was around, and our commission
1:58:20
Speaker 1: has the authority to do bonus points. They they look
1:58:24
Speaker 1: at it about every five to six years. It comes
1:58:28
Speaker 1: back up, uh, and every time we provide them the
1:58:34
Speaker 1: information about what it means they always have backed away
1:58:37
Speaker 1: from it in Idaho. But you make a lot of
1:58:40
Speaker 1: money doing both points. From a financial standpoint, I will
1:58:43
Speaker 1: tell you the last time this came up about seven
1:58:46
Speaker 1: years ago, when we were tanking financially. It was looking
1:58:49
Speaker 1: pretty darn good to me as a director trying to
1:58:51
Speaker 1: figure out how to keep from getting deeper into the whole.
1:58:54
Speaker 1: But it is a pyramid scheme from a sportsman standpoint,
1:58:57
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you, depending on which method is,
1:59:00
Speaker 1: there's so many different ways to do it. But if
1:59:04
Speaker 1: you keep getting the opportunity to use your points, if
1:59:10
Speaker 1: it goes up sequentially every year because more people are
1:59:13
Speaker 1: getting into it, you've created a pyramid scheme that those
1:59:16
Speaker 1: who get in first or near the bottom are okay,
1:59:19
Speaker 1: But those who come into the bottom may have four
1:59:22
Speaker 1: or five six years before they even get to that point.
1:59:25
Speaker 1: And depending on how many jam into it, it may
1:59:27
Speaker 1: not get there for some species. And that's what we
1:59:30
Speaker 1: looked at is for very hard to draw species big
1:59:35
Speaker 1: horn sheep, mountain goat, uh, you may not get there
1:59:39
Speaker 1: even with bonus points, for you know, many bonus points.
1:59:42
Speaker 1: I'm going into the montet, the big horn sheep, draw
1:59:44
Speaker 1: this year because they square him here. Not enough. I'm
1:59:48
Speaker 1: going in with three pints and so lifetimes where the
1:59:51
Speaker 1: bonus points that still run into sub chance drawn. This heck,
1:59:56
Speaker 1: and that's what you get into, is the squaring thing.
1:59:58
Speaker 1: The other methods of trying to make sure everybody in
2:00:02
Speaker 1: there eventually gets one UM. But the commission has chosen
2:00:08
Speaker 1: our commission, and this has gone back as far as
2:00:12
Speaker 1: years ago when it first came up. I remember I
2:00:15
Speaker 1: was a fisheries guy at the time when I heard
2:00:17
Speaker 1: the first discussion, and we've continue to give that presentation
2:00:22
Speaker 1: over the years to new commissions as they come on.
2:00:25
Speaker 1: And that presentation is, by the way, online on our website,
2:00:28
Speaker 1: so every want to look at it. It has some
2:00:30
Speaker 1: gaming stuff in there that helps you understand how the
2:00:34
Speaker 1: various techniques work and what the end result is. It
2:00:38
Speaker 1: does work okay for moderate level UH controlled hunts, ones
2:00:44
Speaker 1: that have under twenty to one odds UM and if
2:00:49
Speaker 1: it's less than five to one odds, you don't need
2:00:50
Speaker 1: it anyway, you're gonna get one in a couple of
2:00:52
Speaker 1: years without that. But in that intermediate range it works
2:00:56
Speaker 1: really good to guarantee if you'll stay in there for
2:00:58
Speaker 1: three to five years, you'll get tech on the higher
2:01:01
Speaker 1: than twenty two one, it falls apart, and that's part
2:01:05
Speaker 1: of the problem is where do you use it and
2:01:07
Speaker 1: how do you apply it relative to that. So our
2:01:11
Speaker 1: commission has just chosen to stay away from it, but
2:01:13
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee they'll stay like that whatsoever. That could
2:01:18
Speaker 1: change overall or the constituents, it's a split. We have
2:01:25
Speaker 1: what I would consider a mobile group of hunters that
2:01:28
Speaker 1: moves around multiple states and hunts. We have a lot
2:01:32
Speaker 1: of our majority of our hunters just hunting Idaho. The
2:01:36
Speaker 1: folks who move around to other states like points because
2:01:39
Speaker 1: they can pile them up in all the different states,
2:01:41
Speaker 1: and they spend a lot of money accumulating that, buying
2:01:44
Speaker 1: tags and what have you, so they can accumulate that.
2:01:47
Speaker 1: They seem to like that because they've covered their board. Uh,
2:01:52
Speaker 1: the residents don't necessarily, they're they're more place oriented with
2:01:58
Speaker 1: the way they do things, and they just want to know,
2:02:00
Speaker 1: oh that they've got an equal chance with everybody else,
2:02:02
Speaker 1: and that's their kid or grandkid has that equal chance
2:02:06
Speaker 1: like everybody else. So yeah, and then back to the
2:02:10
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime, I just killed a moose last
2:02:13
Speaker 1: year my a nice bowl on the south fork of
2:02:17
Speaker 1: the Snake. I a tag after seven years. No, it
2:02:21
Speaker 1: took me seven years retirement. Yeah right, it doesn't work
2:02:27
Speaker 1: that way, unfortunately. But the seven years and you drew.
2:02:31
Speaker 1: I drew one killed a nice bowl last year. I'm done.
2:02:34
Speaker 1: Now I can put in for a cow tag if
2:02:36
Speaker 1: we've got a population and is growing too fast and
2:02:39
Speaker 1: I want to take some cows out. That's not limited,
2:02:42
Speaker 1: but I'm done on moose in Idaho. We just had
2:02:47
Speaker 1: a friend who drew. I supposed to be what Friday,
2:02:50
Speaker 1: thirties right, yeah, i'd say early and to be done.
2:02:54
Speaker 1: You're just done. Yeah. So bighorn sheep, we have two species,
2:02:59
Speaker 1: so you can get one for each, the desert Big
2:03:01
Speaker 1: Horn and the rocky mountainto Big Horn, so you can
2:03:05
Speaker 1: have two opportunities there, but mountain goat one and you're done.
2:03:09
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty terrible in this state. They made
2:03:12
Speaker 1: it that you can uh, you can buy bonus points,
2:03:15
Speaker 1: not whether you're in the drawer or not. So even
2:03:16
Speaker 1: though my kids aren't old enough to actually hunt, I
2:03:19
Speaker 1: can get I got them a little, I got them
2:03:21
Speaker 1: all numbers. They can start buying. They can take their
2:03:25
Speaker 1: allowance or their dad is do it for him and
2:03:28
Speaker 1: buy them bonus points someone they're like twenty, my little
2:03:31
Speaker 1: kid could have seventeen bonus points. That's horrible. I'm taking
2:03:36
Speaker 1: advantage of it because it's there, but it's horrible. It's
2:03:40
Speaker 1: so guilty doing it. It's what just games the system
2:03:44
Speaker 1: and blows it up because they shouldn't let they shouldn't
2:03:48
Speaker 1: let people let me do stuff like that. And you
2:03:50
Speaker 1: know you're part of the problem. You're gonna go ahead
2:03:52
Speaker 1: and do it anyway, you know, in this state, like
2:03:55
Speaker 1: they assigned so when you get a L that there's
2:03:58
Speaker 1: like a customer none and your customer number is your
2:04:02
Speaker 1: birthday and then the number after this is how many
2:04:05
Speaker 1: people with your birthday have it? So meaning like when
2:04:09
Speaker 1: they when the LS system came in, my LS numbers
2:04:12
Speaker 1: number three. I mean I was the third guy with
2:04:13
Speaker 1: my birthday to get to apply for a number. Now
2:04:16
Speaker 1: they're as signing numbers that are up in the hundreds, right,
2:04:20
Speaker 1: But when my little kids who are three, five and eight,
2:04:23
Speaker 1: I went down to get them a l S numbers
2:04:25
Speaker 1: and they're all number one, Like no one with those.
2:04:29
Speaker 1: I know I'm ahead of the game because no one
2:04:30
Speaker 1: with that birthday has gone and done it yet, so
2:04:33
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill it. I just can't decide how far
2:04:36
Speaker 1: I'm gonna run with this because I do feel guilty
2:04:38
Speaker 1: about it. I almost might not even not do it.
2:04:40
Speaker 1: Came aside, well, you'll get like me at some saying
2:04:43
Speaker 1: you'll have to do that with your grandchildren. Get expensive. Right,
2:04:48
Speaker 1: there's a multiplication one on the follow up question when
2:04:52
Speaker 1: you're um, when the economy tank and you're trying to
2:04:56
Speaker 1: figure out a way to get some more money. Did
2:04:58
Speaker 1: dedicated sales set ever come up? Because there's some couple
2:05:02
Speaker 1: of stays have done very well with that. We've looked
2:05:05
Speaker 1: at it. UM oh gosh. Five years ago, we did
2:05:08
Speaker 1: a thing called the Wildlife Summit, and it was trying
2:05:12
Speaker 1: to bring all folks together to talk about wildlife on
2:05:15
Speaker 1: a statewide basis. And UM an outcome of that was
2:05:20
Speaker 1: trying to build understanding of the needs of all wildlife
2:05:23
Speaker 1: and that we weren't able to generate enough revenue UH
2:05:28
Speaker 1: to take care of the needs of the of non
2:05:31
Speaker 1: game and other wildlife that was out there. UM a
2:05:38
Speaker 1: what I call a loose coffee clatch of conservation groups.
2:05:43
Speaker 1: After that was done, we did a survey of Idaho
2:05:48
Speaker 1: ones to see whether or not they would support an
2:05:51
Speaker 1: initiative that would either dedicate a portion of the sales
2:05:55
Speaker 1: tax or support an increase. The the increase was less
2:06:02
Speaker 1: than people just weren't willing to do that. It was
2:06:06
Speaker 1: slightly over of the folks were willing to support a
2:06:10
Speaker 1: dedicated portion of the existing sales tax. Okay, So the
2:06:17
Speaker 1: folks that know the politics of initiatives and everything said
2:06:21
Speaker 1: that given where we were at in the political cycle
2:06:24
Speaker 1: with elections and everything else, that that was not Probably
2:06:31
Speaker 1: they could get the signatures to get it on the ballot,
2:06:33
Speaker 1: but they weren't sure whether it would make it. And
2:06:37
Speaker 1: it depends on whether or not you have an entity
2:06:42
Speaker 1: that's well funded that will oppose it. If you don't
2:06:45
Speaker 1: have any well funded opposition, you can run these things through.
2:06:49
Speaker 1: But because we're getting at sales tax, whether it's an
2:06:52
Speaker 1: increase or a piece of the existing, opposition was going
2:06:56
Speaker 1: to be huge, and so that particular loose coffee clatch
2:07:01
Speaker 1: of folks backed away from that at this point in
2:07:05
Speaker 1: time for the state of Idaho. The beautiful people in
2:07:07
Speaker 1: Missouri pulled it off. They did, and being a Missourian
2:07:10
Speaker 1: I was in college during the time that that stuff
2:07:13
Speaker 1: was going forward, and it took them twelve years of
2:07:16
Speaker 1: trying different ways. They tell right, because when it passed,
2:07:24
Speaker 1: it passed with I mean not quite unanimous, but but
2:07:27
Speaker 1: it was a high support and and it did it.
2:07:32
Speaker 1: They went with a pop tax and a beer tax
2:07:34
Speaker 1: and failed on that. They tried all kinds of things
2:07:36
Speaker 1: before they came up with the one eighth of one
2:07:40
Speaker 1: sales tax increase, which has been the gold standard. UM
2:07:44
Speaker 1: Florida does a real estate transfer tax. Every time a
2:07:47
Speaker 1: piece of real estate sells. There's a piece of that fee.
2:07:50
Speaker 1: You know, all those fees you pay when you buy
2:07:51
Speaker 1: a piece of property. Well there's a little piece of
2:07:53
Speaker 1: that in there now that goes to the Wildlife Fund,
2:07:56
Speaker 1: and that's working for them down there. It went down
2:07:59
Speaker 1: when things tanked, but it went back up. UM Arkansas
2:08:03
Speaker 1: and Iowa went with a similar sales tax system as
2:08:07
Speaker 1: Missouri and uh. Arkansas got there through. Iolway got there through,
2:08:12
Speaker 1: but they didn't fund it. So you know, the mechanisms
2:08:15
Speaker 1: are but they didn't initiate it. Sins most everybody that dips,
2:08:17
Speaker 1: like the hunting fish, they just have a dip tip.
2:08:22
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that. So there is a solution,
2:08:25
Speaker 1: though I don't want to leave this before I speak
2:08:27
Speaker 1: to a solution that's live in Congress right now, and
2:08:31
Speaker 1: it's called restoring America's Wildlife fact and it's following it
2:08:36
Speaker 1: would it would take the royalties from oil and gas
2:08:42
Speaker 1: and mining on shore offshore. It's all of that royalties,
2:08:47
Speaker 1: and and that royalty package is around twelve fourteen billion
2:08:51
Speaker 1: a year right now. UM. It would dedicate one point
2:08:56
Speaker 1: three billion of that into the Pittman Robertson Fund, a
2:09:01
Speaker 1: subset of it which double the food. It would double
2:09:04
Speaker 1: the fund, and it would then that money would come
2:09:08
Speaker 1: back to the states based on the size of the
2:09:10
Speaker 1: state and the population, very similar to the way we
2:09:12
Speaker 1: do pr for hunting, which is a number of hunting
2:09:15
Speaker 1: licenses and the size of the state comes back to
2:09:19
Speaker 1: the state to manage a very familiar mechanism for the
2:09:23
Speaker 1: states to get financial resources to manage all wildlife. That's
2:09:27
Speaker 1: a re allocation. Isn't that a new tax. This is
2:09:29
Speaker 1: a re allocation of of a fund. It is the
2:09:32
Speaker 1: fund that the Land of Water Conservation Fund taps into
2:09:36
Speaker 1: right now. Uh. And so there is legislation our own
2:09:41
Speaker 1: Senator Rish in the state of Idaho is sponsoring it
2:09:44
Speaker 1: on the Senate side. It's got over a hundred co
2:09:47
Speaker 1: sponsors on the House side right now support it does.
2:09:52
Speaker 1: The House support is in a hundred and five and
2:09:54
Speaker 1: it's split almost equally down the middle. The co sponsorship
2:09:59
Speaker 1: on the Senate, it I'm not as sure of, but
2:10:01
Speaker 1: the co sponsors before I'm familiar with or bipartisan, so
2:10:05
Speaker 1: and the Senate works different than the House on that
2:10:08
Speaker 1: stuff anyway. UM, So we're hoping that they'll get to
2:10:15
Speaker 1: get a major hearing on this. We've had some smaller hearings,
2:10:19
Speaker 1: but it's moving forward, you know. It's it was classified
2:10:23
Speaker 1: as a moon shot to get it through this Congress
2:10:26
Speaker 1: with between now and the time they adjourn in December,
2:10:29
Speaker 1: but it's still live and Senator Rish was trying to
2:10:32
Speaker 1: get a hearing going on it. Um. This would be huge,
2:10:36
Speaker 1: UH for a state like Idaho. If we got our allocation,
2:10:41
Speaker 1: it would be on the order of fifteen to seventeen
2:10:44
Speaker 1: million dollars annually. So you know, take that our total
2:10:48
Speaker 1: t d j p R allocation is about that much.
2:10:52
Speaker 1: So it puts the the UH Wildlife Diversity Non Game
2:10:57
Speaker 1: Program on the same footing and allows us to have
2:11:01
Speaker 1: the resources to manage all wildlife populations. The fear A
2:11:06
Speaker 1: lot of hunters and anglers fear loss of control of
2:11:10
Speaker 1: their commissions and departments through this, and and it's not
2:11:15
Speaker 1: an illegitimate fear. But I go back to my home
2:11:18
Speaker 1: state of Missouri and see what happened there. I mean,
2:11:22
Speaker 1: they pumped a hundred and ten million dollars a year
2:11:26
Speaker 1: into their budget. It's the majority of their budget. They
2:11:29
Speaker 1: got about another sixty million I think in license sales
2:11:33
Speaker 1: and then other money in there. There about twice as
2:11:36
Speaker 1: big budget wise as the state of Idaho with with
2:11:40
Speaker 1: what they've got back there. But hunting and fishing is
2:11:46
Speaker 1: better and stronger there now as a result of having
2:11:50
Speaker 1: that collaborative of all users getting things done. And so
2:11:57
Speaker 1: when you look at the case histories of state that
2:12:00
Speaker 1: have had this additional money, Florida being the other example,
2:12:04
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing there is actually booming with those additional resources.
2:12:10
Speaker 1: It will mean some changes in in how we go
2:12:14
Speaker 1: about interacting with the public on allocation of budget. But
2:12:17
Speaker 1: certainly I don't think it's to be feared, it's to
2:12:19
Speaker 1: be managed. Yeah, that that'd be my perspective on it.
2:12:22
Speaker 1: I understand how I understand the viewpoint of people being
2:12:25
Speaker 1: leary about new voices sitting around the table, new voices
2:12:28
Speaker 1: at the table. Um, I get that. I still think that. Uh.
2:12:33
Speaker 1: I still think it's better to go with the money
2:12:36
Speaker 1: and and you know, play the game however you need
2:12:40
Speaker 1: to play it, but put to go with the extra
2:12:42
Speaker 1: funding and and then sort the rest out after the
2:12:44
Speaker 1: factor at least go into it with the right kind
2:12:46
Speaker 1: of mind frame and well our track record where we
2:12:49
Speaker 1: have financial resources and focus. If there's a sensitive species
2:12:54
Speaker 1: out there, I can keep them off the list or
2:12:56
Speaker 1: I can get him off the list again with that
2:12:59
Speaker 1: kind of financial resources. I know we can do it
2:13:01
Speaker 1: because we've done it and um, and I'm I would
2:13:05
Speaker 1: be anxious to to see that pulled off. Um, we'll
2:13:10
Speaker 1: see again. It's a moon shot, but it's live and
2:13:13
Speaker 1: it's moving forward. We've been two years moving this forward.
2:13:16
Speaker 1: The group that put it together was a group called
2:13:18
Speaker 1: the Blue Ribbon Panel, and uh, Johnny Morris from bass
2:13:23
Speaker 1: Pro now Cabella's Too, UM was the co chair along
2:13:28
Speaker 1: with governor a former governor of Freeden Fall from Wyoming,
2:13:31
Speaker 1: and most everybody on that panel were NGOs and private business.
2:13:38
Speaker 1: It wasn't a bunch of government folks. They're the ones
2:13:40
Speaker 1: that looked at this and said yeah, and then that
2:13:43
Speaker 1: their first recommendation was this one point three billion. That's
2:13:46
Speaker 1: where we focused. The second one is increasing our relevancy
2:13:50
Speaker 1: to all people about wildlife management. Money goes a long
2:13:54
Speaker 1: ways to helping that, but certainly, how do we as
2:13:58
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers show the use of hunting, fishing, and
2:14:01
Speaker 1: trapping for wildlife management is relevant to everybody? And I
2:14:06
Speaker 1: think that's a big part of of the challenge that
2:14:09
Speaker 1: we have in the future as hunters and anglers is
2:14:12
Speaker 1: to maintain relevancy. We've got the support. We've got that
2:14:16
Speaker 1: mid seventies support for traditional hunting, even higher for fishing.
2:14:20
Speaker 1: We just got to hang onto it, and we do
2:14:22
Speaker 1: it by doing what we know as hunters and anglers
2:14:26
Speaker 1: we are, and that's conservationists first, and we lead the
2:14:29
Speaker 1: way with our own actions and activities to get this
2:14:33
Speaker 1: stuff done. Good Your final thoughts, Chris Man, No virgils
2:14:37
Speaker 1: just schooling me. All the fantastic Virgil for Department of
2:14:44
Speaker 1: Interior or something right that means d C. It's I've
2:14:52
Speaker 1: I've learned a ton of one of the last thing
2:14:54
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you maybe was done so your
2:14:58
Speaker 1: access yes program. Yes, is Idaho Fishing Game the only
2:15:04
Speaker 1: state entity in charge of procuring more public access. We
2:15:12
Speaker 1: have the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation that has
2:15:18
Speaker 1: responsibility for trail access for both motorized and foot travel,
2:15:25
Speaker 1: and we work very closely with them. Uh. They also
2:15:29
Speaker 1: have responsibility for some voating access. We have our own
2:15:32
Speaker 1: voting access program, they have their's counties have some responsibility
2:15:37
Speaker 1: because they get a piece of the DJ Daniel Johnson funds.
2:15:42
Speaker 1: But as far as um land based hunting and fishing
2:15:53
Speaker 1: and trapping were it, Uh. The others are directed at
2:15:58
Speaker 1: more generalized recreation or motorized or powerboat recreation in that
2:16:05
Speaker 1: particular case, and compared to what we're putting on the
2:16:08
Speaker 1: table financially, it's a very small piece of that. It
2:16:12
Speaker 1: seems like in Idaho and Montana as well. The public
2:16:18
Speaker 1: the economy benefits so much from our public land that
2:16:22
Speaker 1: you know, more entities should be putting chips on the
2:16:26
Speaker 1: table to procure it. I think some of the NGOs
2:16:28
Speaker 1: are huge players there, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Uh. They
2:16:34
Speaker 1: do and and they they've been very uh cooperative, collaborative.
2:16:38
Speaker 1: They've got money to bring to the table that they'll
2:16:40
Speaker 1: match with anything you've got. And the Mule Dealer Foundation
2:16:45
Speaker 1: to a lesser degree is part of that. Uh. Those
2:16:49
Speaker 1: are the two primary players. Trout Unlimited does some for
2:16:53
Speaker 1: stream access, for flying, for fishing um, and we've got
2:17:00
Speaker 1: some some other players in there. But I don't want
2:17:05
Speaker 1: to dismiss some of those n g O s that
2:17:07
Speaker 1: have been very uh focused and effective, particularly Rocky Mountain
2:17:12
Speaker 1: Elk with their initiative to get access through private land
2:17:15
Speaker 1: to public land. They've been able to really do some
2:17:19
Speaker 1: good things. Sir. Awesome, thank you, thank you man. We
2:17:25
Speaker 1: did We did a deep dive. Man, that's a lot
2:17:27
Speaker 1: of fun. I uh uh enjoy this stuff. To Dingle Johnson, yep,
2:17:35
Speaker 1: you got it all. Give me some more time. We'll
2:17:37
Speaker 1: give you more. Well, you know, I want to have
2:17:40
Speaker 1: you back how long you're you're retiring, right, I am,
2:17:43
Speaker 1: I'll be retiring in January for a big ship talking session.
2:17:50
Speaker 1: Better yet, I'll have you come over. And I don't
2:17:53
Speaker 1: know if this stuff works on the back of a
2:17:54
Speaker 1: jetboat while we're trolling for steelhead um, we can we
2:17:58
Speaker 1: can plug it all into an inverter and will make
2:18:00
Speaker 1: this stuff work, and and we can do a live
2:18:02
Speaker 1: fish and she did a live ice fishing show one time.
2:18:05
Speaker 1: I can do that too. I've got a place on
2:18:07
Speaker 1: Cascade Reservoir and we can scoot right out on the
2:18:09
Speaker 1: ice and uh catch some of those trophy perch that
2:18:13
Speaker 1: we've got there, ye yellow perch yea. Well we're pushing
2:18:22
Speaker 1: eighteen inches eighteen yeah, and uh it's it's still got
2:18:28
Speaker 1: to three year classes in there that are grown into that.
2:18:30
Speaker 1: So it's a fish you know, fish story. I gotta
2:18:35
Speaker 1: get this right. But no, they are like Wally, these
2:18:37
Speaker 1: things are huge. I mean fourteen and sixteen inch perch
2:18:42
Speaker 1: our routine up there. Yeah, you catch three of those
2:18:45
Speaker 1: and you've got dinner. That's great. Yeah, it is. It
2:18:48
Speaker 1: is great. So stay tuned and thank you good all right,
2:18:52
Speaker 1: thank you two