Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 177: Poison vs. Choppers

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Ep. 177: Poison vs. Choppers · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Predict Anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you stand with on x. Okay, we're joined here today
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: by special guest Carter Smith, Executive director of Texans Park
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Yeah. Great to be with
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you all. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna like ask ask
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: them easy questions to start. The first question I have
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: is not easy. You're aware of how um, how people
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: who don't live in Texas are often baffled by Texas.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The the the number of um animals and just it's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: bewildering to be. Yeah, the scale, the diversity. You had
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a bit of a mythology around all that in there. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And you can be driving down the road and there's
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: a zebra standing there. It's just we hear. It's that's
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: why it's gonna be down here, because we hear from
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: so many people, you know, people right in and we
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: here from so many people who have they speak about
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: like people from the Northern Tier States whatever speak about
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Texas as though they're asking about another country. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and so it's good to come down and talk to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the official I don't like to go by the official
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: voice of Texas. Yeah, I'm not quite that formal formal stage.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well I'm gonna ask you to cut
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: that immediately. You're you're from here, right, I am, Yeah,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: grew up here. It's got up one foot in the shitty,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: one foot in the country called Allston home our family
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: right and farmed in central and South Texas, and and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: so it was kind of the best of both worlds.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Ran a cattle ranch. We did, yeah, calfe operation and
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and um my really uncle took full responsibility for that
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: when we played a part is as well. Um it
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: was kind of interesting growing up to see my cousins
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: really gravitate more to the bag side. You know. I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was always a lot more interested in you know, trapping
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: hogs and you know, catching bull frogs and that kind
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of thing. So so let's just support your cafe operation. No, no,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that was a separate operation. And so there was there
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: was just a dry land row crop operation, Sorghum and
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: corn um Lee sat out to a neighbor that have
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: been there forever um and so and then we had
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: a little cattle operation off on that off to the
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: side on that place as well. And uh and so
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: you know, that's really where I discovered the outdoors growing up.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: All my my friends love to punt and fish and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: be outside. That was pretty pretty natural, you know. Thankfully
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I had this blessed childhood where I had places to
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: go and could also take take friends. But um, it
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: was a pretty easy assimilation into the outdoors. Not so
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: much for kids today. Did you guys on your guys properties,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: you guys involved in the oil and gas to impression tests. Yeah, yeah, well,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and you know, obviously you know, you look right now
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the Permian um and it has
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: dramatically changed the energy landscape. Just a huge voluminous production
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: of oil and gas out in out in West Texas.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You know all of those notions of energy independence, um.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And you know the fact that you have now the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: US as an exporter of oil and gas. You know,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: the the amount of production that's coming out of West Texas,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: it's just astronomical, um. But yeah, the the ranch of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: my father grew up on UM and that where I
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: spent a good part of my childhood. You know, there
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: was legacy production that um you know went back to
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the forties and fifties and some that was you know,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: during during our lifetime, and UM, you know it was
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: always the trick is to balance that with the other
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: things going on at the ranch, um and uh, make
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: sure that there was a a coexistence. But I certainly
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: don't want to give the listeners an impression that all
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: of Texas is covered with pump jack's. You know, it's
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: not their hot spots where oil and gas is produced.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's a critical resource for the stake generates
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: lots of revenues, you might imagine lots of lots of jobs.
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  Speaker 1: But UM, it's not as if that's an activity that
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: blankets the entire state. It's localized obviously, where the oil
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and gas is and where it's viable to get out
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of the get out of the earth. Did you when
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you were young, did you know you're gonna go into
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: wild I didn't. Um, you know it's I really I
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: didn't have a good sense that, um, you could pursue
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that is a vocation later on, Yeah, you know, it's funny.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: When we were kids, like some man of the kids,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like the Hunting Fish, the only thing you could think
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: of is everyone would say that they're gonna be a
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: game Yeah right. It's like, I don't know, it seems
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: like is aware of yeah well, and you know, to
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: be fair, I had that too growing up. UM. There
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: was a game boarding in Zalez County and one of
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Williamson County that were you know, at the palace and
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the farming ranch all the all the time. They're wonderful mentors,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: wonderful role models. But you know, Steve, really i'd say
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: it was college UM, and I was sort of mandering
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: my way through trying to figure out what I wanted
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to do. No one full well, I didn't want to
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: go to law school UM. And I sat down one
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: evening with a Parks and Wildlife game boarden and a
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist and that was really the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: epiphany that you know, I could pursue that is a
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: is a vocation. And I wouldn't talk to a couple
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: of my biology professors at the University of Texas and UM,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and they said, you know, if you're really interested in
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: pursuing wildlife biology or wildlife management. You need to transfer
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to another school that has more of an applied resource
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: management program. And so one of them said, go west
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: young man to soul Ross. And I said, well, where's
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that And they said, that's an alpine in far west Texas.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And so I, you know, dutifully looked it up. Small school,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: this kind of rich history and geology and wildlife and
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: transferred to soul Ross and and then left school for
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a while to actually come work for Parts and Wildlife
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: on one of their wildlife management areas. And a couple
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of professors from Texas Tech who were doing research on
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: the wildlife management area convince me that, you know, Luck,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: you really need to go back school, finish up your
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: degree and wildlife management. Why don't you come to Lovebuck.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Let us show you around campus. Um you don't have
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: that much to go. That's thee was a rule, now,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, it really is. It's you mean to
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: get it like administrative level stuff, and you know it's
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of folks that have taken that trajectory.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: UM I wouldn't but the graduate program and certainly if
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get employed, UM as a biologist with a
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: state fish and Wildlife agency, you need a mattress degree
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: for sure. It's just so hyper competitive. UM. And then
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: candidly here, if you want to be a game board,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: you've got to have a college degree. Now that there's
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: no requirement that it's in criminal justice or fisher reaeson,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: wildlife management or psychology or maybe any of the other
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: fields you might think of or phil with with UM
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: law enforcement. But you gotta have a college degree. UM.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And that's a very important, I think distinguishing factor for
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: our force. But yeah, the the advanced degree if you
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: want to go into the biological sciences and and get
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: into fish reason wildlife management. It's just so so competitive
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: these days. It's just about imperative. That's what drives it
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: in your minds, is the competition. Yeah, not like a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: not like a it's not a prerequisite for applications. Well,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: there is a prerex sid I mean typically we'll say
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: preferred UM, you know, and so and you know, we've
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: got plenty of biologists that UM that have undergraduate degrees
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and excel inside the agency, and then we have plenty
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: of post docs. So it it runs the gamut on
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the continuum. But on average, I'd say, UM, these days,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: competing for a state Fish and Wildlife agency job, that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that that at least a master job is going to help, UM,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: give you a little extra chance, and in in what
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: is a very very competitive field. And you went off
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: to Yale, I did, I did? There must have been
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: a real shots, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. If somebody said
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I took a wrong turn in Waco. Uh, but you
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: know that? Did I feel pretty? We were you well
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: traveled or were you pretty to spent your life around Texas? No? No,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I mean I I had. I wouldn't say I was
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: well traveled, but I've been outside of the state and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: now outside the country. Um. And I was excited about
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a challenge. Um, and candidly when I was kind of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: making my mandors through college, which was a very circuitous um,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: of course. Um. Before leaving Tech, I had applied to
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Yale and gotten in and then decided that I didn't
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: want to do that, finished up my degree, came to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: work for Parks and Wildlife UM, and was here for oh,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I guess almost two years, and realized I needed to
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: go get that advanced degree, and Parks and Wildlife was
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: looking at creating a position where I could go to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a and m U, pursue my masters and continue work
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: full time with the department, which was a huge opportunity.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: But I went ahead and decided to UM pursue UM
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: admissions again into Yale end UM. I went in to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: talk to Bob Cook, who was the Wildlife Division director
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: at the time and interestingly enough was my predecessor as
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: the executive director and UM, and Bob said, Carter, We've
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: got a terrific opportunity for you at college station. UM.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I think it would work out very well. But I'm
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: gonna take my parts and whild iife had off and
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: if you were my son, I'd tell you to go east. UM.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: You need to go do that. You need to have
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a different experience in your life. Go go experience a
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: different culture, group of people, different type of education. UM.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And I think it will put you in good stead.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And what you did so I did? I mean, I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: was terrified, absolutely, yeah, but I loved it. Uh. You know,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: wonderful university. UM. Lots of people from all over the globe,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: very stimulating intellectually. UM. And there I had a chance
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to meet a professor that really became a professional mentor
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: for me Um a guy named Steve Kellert Um and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Dr Kellert and E. O. Wilson and wrote that biofella
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you work. Yeah, that would be a stretch, but I
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: did how he popularized that term biophelia. We talked about
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: him my brothers in the college. He reads a lot
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of Oilson. Yeah, yeah, well you know what he was
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that he passed away? No, No, he is. He's still
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: he's still alive. Um. And I think he's retired from Harvard.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I mean he's probably still a professor emeritus or something.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: You know, I'll never forget. He's written so much on
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: so many subjects. Just what an intellectual giant um and uh.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: And there was something that he wrote one tie that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: always stuck with me. The little guys, the little guys
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that ruled the world, you know. And of course he
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: was an invertebrate biologist, and so I loved dance and
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: all the little things. And when you think about you know,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: soul health and just the criticality of of of of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: microbes and the huge amount of biological diversity in our soil,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and how that's just really the foundation for for everything.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: He was certainly spot on people that I mean just
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: listeners that are curious for your talking about you can
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: look up these comparisons of you know, if you took
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: everything if you imagine all animal life like in an
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: area and made a put in the pile, and then
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: took all animal life out of the soil and put
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: it in a pile, like the comparison of sizes, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: then you get into stuff like if you took all
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the beatles in the world and put them in a pile,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: that the pile is bigger than all the humans and
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: large mammals, and you know, pretty dramatic and it's funny,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: like you just you don't perceive the world that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Well another good comparison to that is like the tall
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: grass parrot. You know, you look at those big, expansive
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: tall grasses and then you dig up the root system
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: and uh and what's on top of the whole pales
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: in comparison to what's beneath iceberg. That's right, that's right. Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: The other issutingly thinking about Yale that um was was um.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I mean I knew it before going there, but of
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: course it's were aldo leopolg um, and so in the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: university very proud of that connection and that that ethic,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and you know Gifford Pincho's time there, and and so
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: there's been a lot of folks along history that went
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to school there, and you know, a lot of them
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: you know, more in kind of policy related um um positions.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But Steve Keller was just one of the brilliant thinkers,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: really interested in the human wildlife interface and people's attitudes
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: towards wildlife and nature. And you know, I think for
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: anybody that goes into a career in fisheries or wildlife
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: management or conservational law enforcement, you quickly find out that
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: most of your work has spent dealing with people, not creditters.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: It's really funny you mention next. We had a leading
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: mountain lion biologist on recently and he like in being circumspects. Yeah,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I mostly deal with people. Yeah,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I'd rather deal with lines, but I'm dealing with people. Yeah. Yeah,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: I'd rather deal with deer, but I mostly deal with people. Yeah. Yeah.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Were you familiar with the writings of Aldo Leopold before
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: before you went to school Sad County? You know, I
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: grew up all that kind of stuff. Well a little later,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I you know that that that came to me in college.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I think the Saint Kenny Almanac was was actually a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: literature class. I had it at first all I went
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: to Swann University of South and UM and it just
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: really resonated with me. I mean his prose was so elegant.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I mean it was so compelling, and he just wrote
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: about the outdoors in ways that really spoke to me,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: um and in ways that no one had done and
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: no one had done. Yeah yeah. And what's interesting about
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: that writing is it's timeless, right. I mean we read
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: it today and we thank god that was written, you know,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: seventy years ago or so, and it's as relevant today
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: as it was in anything in there. I reread it
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: now and then anything in there that feels dated, it's
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: not actually dated, but it almost feels prophetic, like like
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the most of it feels like everything feels relevant and now,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and then you read something and it feels like, man,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: he really was looking kind of forward or and I say,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: it's so much prophetic. We're talking about things that wanted
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: being proving to be pretty timeless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I think the whole stewardship ethic, you know, and of
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: course at a private land state like Texas. Um, that's
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: very Germaine to what we what we do. And I
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: think Aldo Leopold wrote very very persuasively and movingly about
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the criticality of that ethic and making sure we do
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: everything we can to help foster and engender that in
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: our in our private lands managers and our private landowners.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: And so when you say private land state, US are
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: in the nineties, yeah, and you know, proudly so, I
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: mean that's part of the kind of the rich tradition
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: of of Texas and so um, we're a very proudly
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: private lands state. And and also you know, certainly from
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a conservation perspective here in Texas, if you're gonna get
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: anything done any kind of a meaningful scale in Texas,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: it needs to be in concert and partnership with with
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: private landowners. And so that's a big driver for us. Well,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I imagine, I mean just that you know, you have
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: to be realistic about it. I'm sure there's plenty of
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: people that would like to have some more public land
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: opportunities in a state like this. Wildlife conservation is gonna happen.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: It's gonna happen on private lands. It's where yeah, yeah,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: you bet. I don't want to skip too much, but
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you wanted with the Nature Conservancy. I did. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I worked for the Nature Conservancy and that was kind
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of an interesting transition. I um. When I left Yale,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I was up in Canada for a while, up in
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the boreal forest, um way hoose work, which is pretty
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: interesting and uh. And then I got talked into coming
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: back to Texas from some interestingly enough, some parts and
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: wildlife biologist friends that were really concerned about the development
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: of the Katie Perrie west of Houston and just a
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: waterfowl mecca, historic prairie wetland areas, lots of rice farming
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: at the time. But Houston was, you know, on its
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: inexorable march westward and um and there was a need
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: for kind of a nature conservancy like organization that could
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: work with parties to try to help protect some of
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: that habitat before it all became impervious cover. It's so
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I got in pervious so so so just like this tabletop,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the parking lot, the asphalt, nothing gets like
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah and so um and so Houston's moving west,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: You've got all this valuable rice farm habitat, wetlands, residual prairie,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: tons of waterfowl. UM. But you know, the concern was
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: it was gonna get paved over unless there was somebody
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: actively working to go out and work with landowners to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: try to figure out a way to conserve it. So interestingly,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a group of waterfowl guides uh, rice farmers UM, a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: couple of developers, real estate attorneys, UM, and some of
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Houston's got the middle of the road conservationists said we
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: need to create a land trust like organization. That was
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the coalition. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So they credit this
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Katie Perry conservance. Real quick. Oh you know what, hold
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that thought, all hold the thought? What were you looking
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: at with moos? So we were looking at a variety
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: of things and is kind of this concept about trophic
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: cascades and whether or not systems were controlled top down
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: through her beavery or more bottom up through nutrient related considerations.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: And at the who's in the driver's Yeah, kind of
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: who's in the driver's seat and so in and you
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: know how our forest management practices UM contributing to either um,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you know, helping or hurting moose populations. And there was
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: this this this Kotaria Universities that was working up on
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a Cree Indian reservation UM with funding from the National
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Science Foundation, and so they were looking at a wide
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: variety of things. And it was University of Saskatchewan, University
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of British Columbia, University of Washington, Harvard, Yale, a couple
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of couple of others, and so there were there were
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: professors and grad students from all over UM and we
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: lived on this Kre Indian reservation and UM and and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: worked very closely with the First Nations Community, UM, the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Saskatchewan provincial government on a variety of kind of research
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: related topics. And my job was to help kind of
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: keep all of that going. There were certain uh numbers
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: from the community that we had to hire for jobs
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: associated with the research. When researchers in their grad students
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: would come up, I'd have to help them kind of
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: get acclimated and help them get their research projects get
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: get set up. And so he was a pretty eclectic
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: mix of things that we were we were we were
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: studying the moose stuff, obviously is what caught my attention
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the most, because I knew so little about moose before
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I got up there, and it was just interesting to
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: be around a big game animal that was so you
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: know iconic um in those in those in those forests,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I'll always treasure that time. Just uh but
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the culture shock was about like going to New Haven, Connecticut.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Uh so in the other direction, in the other direction. Yeah. Yeah,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So anyway, and I ended up making my way back
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to Katie at the behest of of of folks here
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: to help start this land trust, which I knew absolutely
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: what was the Yeah, when you talk about the land
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: trust for Katy Prairie, what was the what was the
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: developer participants? You know, so the developer participation were really
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: a couple faults of Syrah Club was suing everybody over
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you know, development of wet lands, violations of the Clean
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Water Act. I mean it was World War three over
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: there on the on the on the Katie Perry um.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: And so they were trying to find, let's create some
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: organization in the radical center that can apply to everybody
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: that's doing something applied, pragmatic, getting something done. It's not
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: just a purely litigation oriented strategy. And um, you know,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and I would say it the the the area was
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: was pretty agricultural oriented, so it wasn't like a fit
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: for an organization like the Nature Conservancy. And so that
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: was the genesis for for for the land trust being created.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: You mean men, the nature conservants is generally associated with
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: less disturbed less disturbed lands, Yeah, exactly. And and then
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: I think folks wanted wanted a group that it was
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: a local um. You know, it was locally driven. The
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: board was local, people knew who they were, representatives from
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: these different sectors that you know, kind of aligned around
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a plan to help protect parts of that, Katy Perry.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: And you know, to your question, the real estate developers
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: saw it as a as a quality of life issue.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: They saw it also as an appreciation to real estate
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: is there was going to be development out there. There
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: is development out there, but having open spaces, parks, wildlife areas,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: they saw that, or at least some of them saw
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that as a value add to what inevitably was going
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to be the you know, future growth of Houston. And
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: so having some of that preserved, they saw that as
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a as a proverbial win win playing yeah, playing the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: long game. And I'll tell you what's what's proved interesting
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: about that too. If you look at um Hurricane Harvey, UM,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: when it perched over Houston and West Houston and dumped,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you know, fifty inches of rain. You know, that area
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: west of Houston, you know, becomes the receiving ground for
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: all of that rain. And the more that can slow down,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the more it can can penetrate into the soil percolate
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: down there. As opposed to just running off concrete into
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: a buy you, the less flooding it's gonna cost. So
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: so as it turned out. You know what the Katie
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Perry Conservancy was doing when I started there, you know,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: it's all about waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. Um. Today it's
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a whole lot more about UH kind of an unconventional
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: flood control strategy and preserving open space to help with
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: attenuating UH floods into Houston in addition to protecting open
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: space and wildlife habitat and places that people can can
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: go to get outside people. Yeah, yeah, they still do,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: which is terrific, you know, And um, we don't have
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the huge amounts of snow geese that we used to have.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: When I was there, those rice fields and wetlands were
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: just absolutely covered with snow geese. There was one of them.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: But even that was an anomal though, right, well, it
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: was an anomaly because you know that rice attracted him,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and UM, I like that that. Yeah, yeah, just the Yeah,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of them, Yeah, a lot of them, but
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you know, lots of ducks of all stripes. You know,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: we're here at the tip of the funnel on the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Central Flyway, so we get lots of waterfowl that that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: come through here. And we spent a lot of time
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: here at the agency working to conserve waterfowl habitat and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and make sure we're doing our part along the along
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the flyway and um. And so that Katie Purry provided
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a pretty unique point a little further inland from the coast. Um.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: But yeah, those big flocks of snow geese have kind
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of gone away. Um, they seemed a lot of them
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: moved over to Arkansas where you still have a lot
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of rice country. And yeah, we just don't have the numbers.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Did you. Did you keep up as an angler through
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: all this Yeah, yeah, no, I never lost that. Um.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And you know that certainly was my immersion in the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: out of doors is loved up, you know, hunting fish
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: growing up. If I could, you know, died funding, I
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: you know, I would be the peppist, you know, A
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: way to go. I think from my perspective, I just
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I just love that, UM. But I've always tried to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: make time for it. UM. Now, you know, to be fair,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: you get a lot of folks that I love to
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: hunt fish and so I want to, you know, go
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: get a a have a career as a wildlife biologists
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: or a game warden. It's not like you've got a
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: lot of copious free time to do all that. Yeah,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: so people get kind of disabused of that notion. It's
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a professional job and you're gonna have to make time
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: just like anybody else to do the things you love.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Then you came here. Now, then I went to work
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: for the Nature Conservancy and UM, and so I was recruited,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: UH go work for the Nature Conservancy in South Texas
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and Northern Mexico's a project in the Lagana Mata tom
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Alepis and look at the madri in Texas. UM looking
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: at kind of a binational conservation strategy with UM, and
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: they wanted somebody that could relate well to landowners and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: would be comfortable. At the time working in Northern Mexico
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: is a different times. Then it's flamed by now and
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: so by national working in two countries UM and so
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you know what's interesting about the Laguna Madre system. You know,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the one of the five largest hyper saline, super salty
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: lagoons in the world. You have it in South Texas
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: basically from Corpus to Brownsville. Then you've got the real
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Grand and then you have the Mexican Laguna Madre south
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: of that, and they're both of them again super salty,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: loaded with you know, red fish and trout and redheaded
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: ducks and peregrine falcons and kemps, ready sea turtles and
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: shore birds and wading birds and reddish eGRID. I mean,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: it's just it's the amount of wildlife is stunning. Is
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: it in good shape on both sides of the border.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: You know, there are um, there are there are differences. Um.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I think has helped the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Texas side quite a bit is the big expanse of
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: ranch country, undeveloped branch country that borders the Laguna Madre.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: So we're talking about the King Ranch, the Kennedy Ranch,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: some of our state's most uh fabled in largest ranches.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: And the fact that and in great shape and they
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: very actively manage those ranches for wildlife and conservation and
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and range land health and so forth. Um. It's so
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the lack of development along the Laguna Madre both um,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: largely on the mainland side because of the big ranches,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: but then of course podral And National Seashore, longest you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: undeveloped stretch of barrier island in the world. UM, coupled
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: with another big swath of protected land that's part of
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Refuge on South Padrea Island means that, Um, you just
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: don't have a lot of developmental pressures in the Laguna
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Madre until you get deep down into the into the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: rear Grand Valley near the Mexico border. Um. It's so
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Texas site pretty good shape. Um, you know, get into Mexico.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Oh that that that system um still biologically very unique.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Um fished awfully hard. Um because even like the one
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: you guys in Texas when it was such a slow
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: down on commercial red fish netting and stuff, they probably
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: those practices that probably continue to imagine they do they
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: continue down there. Um. You know, they'll put these big
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: nets across those little bayous and inlets and just hammer
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: the fish of all kinds, and you know, candidly. Our
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: gameboard spent a fair amount of time, um, dealing with
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: a legal Mexican commercial fishermen coming into Texas. And so
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: they'll come in these little pongas and they'll set these
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: long lines and they will hammer our you know, sharks
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and rechnaw because you're just flirting with a with a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: you're flirting with a marine marine border. Yeah, and and
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: they come over, they set their lines, and they come back,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and they get in and out and and it's a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: real game of cat and mouse. Um. But it's that
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that pressure has really intensified over the years, I think
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: is you know, some of those fisheries in Mexico had
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: so much pressure on them that, um, it's just been
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: worth the risk to them to come over and try
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to sneak across the international boundary and fish and Texas waters.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: And so our our law enforcement team spends a lot
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: of work and making sure they're protecting our resources. In
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: that record, hey uh yeah, hit him with the question
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: you were talking about wanting to ask them what's out
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: of order? But it's now Yeah, I didn't know we
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: had an order. We'd like to keep it secret. Yeah, yeah,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: there you go. No man, we're running through like, uh,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: think about it like your childhood. Yeah, I say the
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: secret Yeah, no, I got it. I got we got
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: peeled off on international borders. Yeah, but we were wondering
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: how much you work in concert with like the Mexican
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: government now as Texas parks and wildlife with critters that
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: are you know, they're living that zone, might don't care
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: about whether yeah, exactly, they don't know migratory wat water phone.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: It's got to be a conversation, right it is. Yeah, absolutely,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And in fact, we have a liasion that works here
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: UM whose sole job it is to um, you know,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: kind of work with some of our international partners. And
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: so a big part of her job has been with
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: working with our counterparts in Mexico on you know, fisheries
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and wildlife issues. And you're right, you know, bighorn sheep
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: or redheaded ducks could care less whether or not you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: they're in the Wevley owned um or you know, West
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Texas UM or the coast of Texas or the coast
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: of coast of Mexico. And so we still continue that
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: work fairly actively, not as actively as it once was,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: just you know, to be fair, the conversations are good. UM.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: You know, we have there's an international joint venture of
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the Rear Grand joint Venture works on bird related priorities
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: in both Texas and Mexico that were very actively involved in.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: UM will frequently host workshops for UM Mexican biologists to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: come to to to come to Texas where we can
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: help share information and disseminate information UM. But you know,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: regrettably thanks changed UM in Northern Mexico and that has
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: put a damper on, you know, some of our travel
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and the ease of working across borders to UM share
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: resources and work collaboratively on projects and again, whether that's
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: UM Kim's readily seat turtles on the coast and protecting
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: nesting beaches or working together on you know, red headed
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: duck related management or big horn sheep or whatever. But
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: they're still for still a dialogue and that's good when
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: we see that things have changed, are you referring to
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: just like the escalation of drug related violence and it
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: also things about things about border security really really more
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the former than the ladder. Yeah, the escalation of the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of the cartels and the penetration into into northern Mexico.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: You know, they're just issues associated with safety that we
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: have to be very very mindful of, um, because of
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the areas in which, um, you know, our folks work. Um.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: You know. That's that's that reminds me of a point
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I like to raise with people now and then, um,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: where you grow up with this the idyllic cents or
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: not even let me put it different way, like people
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: imagine this sort of post apocalyptic situation where wildlife thrives,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and I always find myself pointing out the people if
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you look, what like chaos does not serve wildlife? Well yeah, yeah, sure,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: like stable, well functioning governments serve wildlife well bad. You know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: there's this idea that I used to remember going to
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: places like going to the Southern Philippines when I was younger,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and I had my snoricling mask, and I was like, oh,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: it'll be no one's ever seen in these and you
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: go there and you can't find a fish. There's no
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: regulatory structure, no enforcement, no protection, just illegal fishing, illegal methods,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: using explosives, using poisons, no one to say no, that's
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: not right, not just after you're like, yeah, it's the
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: places that work smooth, they have very well well, And
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I think there's three legsure that tool, right, I mean
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: there's the biology shot, there's the enforcement shot, and then
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: there's the dedicated fun inside. And you've got to have
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: all three of those for those systems to function. And
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: so to your point, I think you're right where you've
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: got stable governments and you've got you know, hunters, anglers,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: outdoor enthusiasts wherever you are on the consumptive or non
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: consumptive space, and there's dedicated funding streams to support that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: You have professional scientists, and then you have a professional
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: law enforcement force that's that's charged with taking care of
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: that and protecting it. That's where you see the fish
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: and wildlife thrive. Your right. You know, are you familiar
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: We're gonna get back on tracking a minute, but are
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you familiar with the How would you describe Shane Mahoney
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: we've ever had him on the show. You I know,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Shannon very very charismatic, very eloquent, very very passionate. But
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh, he's he's like a wildlife philosopher. Yeah, yeah,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: that's and that's a great way to put a wonderful
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: ambassador for the North American. He is a deep, deep
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: thinker about wildlife and the history of governments and conservation
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and what war works have done. But you know, wildlife
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: philosopher is a is a terrific I think Moniker for
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: for Shane and and all the good he does all
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: around the world. He raised the point with me that
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: that kind of reflects what you're just saying where you're
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: talking about the system of But like like scientific management
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: to biologists, you have a funding structure. You have private
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: landowners who want to see wild motivated to want to
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: see wildlife, fund their property and enjoy wildlife. And he's
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: describing all these functions that make our wildlife system work, um,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: and how complex it is and interwoven it is. And
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: he said, one of the reasons our system is resilient
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: is you can't cut the head off the snake. There's
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: not like a thing. There's not like some crystal thing
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: that makes it work. Many things work, and if you
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: if someone were to go in for whatever nefarious reason,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: we're like I'm going to destroy it, it wouldn't be
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: clear what to do. Like we have a it's it's
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: a very well supported very well yeah, thankfully, thankfully, Yeah
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, um, okay back contract. Now, so you
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: got this question answered. Check, give us, give us a breakdown. Well,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the lands where you're at now lands for right now.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: So you do that conservancy, that nic conservancy for the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: whole damn state. Yeah, I know. It wasn't that much
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of epiphany, that easier transition, to say the least. Probably
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: thankfully I didn't know what I didn't know. Um, And
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: but no, I I was happily doing my work at
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the Nature Conservancy. Really enjoyed the conservation work. It felt
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: like it was impactful in Texas, which was really my
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: UM area of focus. Although you know, as I said,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I'd worked in northern Mexico for a while as well,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: But you know, Texas being my home ground, that's that's
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: where I was interested in in in in focusing. And
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and then I got recruited, Uh, kind of gauged my
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: interest in coming back to parks and while life in
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: this in this job, and um, you came back to
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: serve the rouler in I did. I did? Yeah, And
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: um and what a privilege, I mean, really, what a privilege.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I Um, I care deeply about my home ground, just
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: as I expect most people care about theirs. And so
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity to work with a group of
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: colleagues that are so passionate about you know, place and
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: our natural heritage, in our in our history, UM and
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: our wild things and wild places. UM. I love that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: about this agency and so UM the people were a
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: huge attraction to me just because I've I've i've always
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: held the department in very high esteem because of the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: professionals that I knew that worked for the department in
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: different quarters UM, And so that was appealing to me.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: And then just the opportunity to do things at a
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: little larger scale to give back, not just in the
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: stewardship related side, which I'm particularly passionate about, but also
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: the outdoor recreation side. I I really believe firmly that
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: if we're going to grow the next generation of conservationists,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: that we've got to figure out ways to immerse them
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: in the outdoors. Now. It may not have been and
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: probably won't be the same way I was immersed in
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: the outdoors or either of you were, um, but wherever
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: they are, wherever they're at, we need to figure out
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: ways to introduce them and connect them. And I felt
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: like Parks and Wildlife understood that from a from a
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: state agency perspective, and if there was an opportunity to
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: help grow that and expand that, and that really that
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: really appealed to me is a is a way to
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: give back to the state that's given me a whole lot.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: You probably can't even answer this. Do people come along
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and never vet you as an interior secretary as Oh gosh,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: their their their bar is much higher uh than next.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I feel that's your next place. Oh you know, I
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: love Texas and you have to dynamite me out of here.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's or shoot me out of here, which
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: others probably a line of folks want to do. That
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: give me an overview on um just like the scale
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of Texas Parts and Wildlife Department. Well, so you know,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: we cover the whole state, you know, two hundred and
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: fifty four counties, hundred and fifty million acres or so
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: a terrestrial wildlife habitat um Our boundaries go out nine
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: nautical miles into the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred thousand
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: miles of rivers and creeks and streams, you know roughly,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: you know, with our Mandering shoreline a little over four
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: thousand miles of that. So it is, it is big,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and it is vast. You know, you draw a straight line,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's three hundred and sixty seven miles. You
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: do all the you know, bays and estuaries and so forth,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and it's it's scaled up considerably along the along the coast.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: It is an interesting statistic about Prince of Wales Island
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and the Island of Hawaii, Prince Will's Island. It's half
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: size or a third size, best twice the coastline. Yeah, yeah,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: exactly the same phenomena. But you know, the scale is
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is fascinating. You know, ten or eleven different ecoregions, um,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: you know, from the deserts to the coast, to the subtropics,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: down into the Rio Grand Valley, the southern terminus of
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: the High Plains, the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you know, the Edwards Plateau, and the central part of
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the state. A place at E. O. Wilson of all people,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: called the twenty six bow diversity hotspot in all the world,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: just because of the proliferation of interesting fish and wildlife
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: organisms and plants that that reside there. The Big Thicket,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: which is you know, more like the south over in
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the eastern part of our state. And so it is big,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: and it is diverse. Is an artifact of the size,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of the accident of geography thing. It's
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: situated a pretty interesting part of the globe all and
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: you've got stuff that from a passing glance you can
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: think it was tropical jungle. Yeah, and then you have
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: it's amazing cause you go up and you have the
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: like short grass prairie right off at Texas Panhandle, right
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: because guys would guys would talk about traveling for days
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: without seeing a tree. Yeah, and did and it looks
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: like the Great Plains. Yeah, absolutely got those rolling, undulating hills.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe you'd hit a little bottom with some
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: cotton woods and a spring fed creek and and and
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot gamier than people realize. But yeah,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: there are parts of the Panhandle that you know, I'd
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: pluck us all down in and you'd say, sure, I'm
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: I'm here in Kansas, I'm in Nebraska. But you're in
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the Texas painting or conversely, parts of far West Texas
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: where you get up in some of the mountains um
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and you get some ponderosa pine and aspen, and you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: I think you're in New Mexico or Colorado and So
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: that's that's fun to be able to work in the
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: state that has that level of diversity of kind of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: plant and animal communities and to play a role in
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: helping to manage them and conserve them. What's you guys
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: best guests on how many deer? Say? You know? And
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: our best guess is a is A is a good
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: way to put it. But you know, maybe in the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: five million range. I'm gonna look at what I told
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: here about twenty eight million people. Yeah, so you know,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: we grow by about a thousand Texans a day, so
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: as you can imagine, seriously, seriously, Yeah, yeah, it's impressive.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Our our growth rate has just been um, pretty high
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: and pretty because roughly, yeah, what's driving it? Yeah, it's
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the economy. Yeah, the economy. Um. I mean people come
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: here for business quality, quality, alive. Um. You know, eighty
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: six percent of us live in nine major metropolitan areas,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: so you know, Texas spite of all that vast rural
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: nature nature um empty in the middle, empty in the middle,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: um um or populous in the middle and in empty
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: on the on the fench. Yeah. Yeah, so five million,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: roughly five million deer. If I be a deer, if
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I've made white tails. Someone then came and said to you, um,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: like they wanted to make a bet with you, a
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: bout how right the number was? Yeah? Like how how
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: how possibly wrong could a number like that be? Well,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: and you guys sit around trying to like, because five
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: million sounds like a pretty convenient round number. Yeah, and
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I and you know take that again? Is it from
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: looking at densities and then multiplying. Yeah, So our our
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: our biologists are actively involved, you know, with survey of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: all kinds of animals um year round, you know, depending
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: on what the species is. You know, certainly why tell
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: deer surveyed very very extensively, not only by biologists with
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: this department, but by private landowners and others. But five
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: million is an estimate, and so that's a rounding number
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: from me um and so is that accurate within plus
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: or minus ten properly? We got a lot of deer
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: um and in many cases too many deer. And so
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you know the issue is not so much how do
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: we bring back deer in our state. We've already done
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: that very very successfully. The challenges is how do we
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: get hunters to shoot enough dear? How do we get
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: landowners to accept allowing hunters to shoot enough dear without
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: being concerned that you know, they've shot all my dear.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: You know, really interesting because a friend of mine this,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say who said this because because
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: it sounds cynical, but he was this is not you talking,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: it's me talking, but a friend. And I was, like,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: he says, I'm always baffled. I hear someone say white
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: tail conservation, white tail conservation is shooting white tails. Well,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: but to be fair, you know they're parts of the
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: South and parts of the country and where white tail
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: numbers have declined. Uh, and so you know why that's happening. Um,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: you know, probably myriad reasons. In Texas, that's not the case.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So when you say too many, too many by what
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: measure like too many according to who? Yeah, too many
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: according to what the habitat can reasonably sustain. So it's
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: not egg it's not car insurers. No, it's you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, we hear from you know, some farmers in
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: certain locales about about deer densities being too high and
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: concern about crop depardation. That's really a very very small
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: part of what we deal with. Um. Occasionally we'll hear
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: uh from an insurer about you know, dear vehicle accidents.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: But that's really an anomaly that that does happen. Oh, sure,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I mean occasionally, but it's you know, it's it's really
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: more the poor motorists to you know, hit a deer
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: and then well that's the state's deer, and so the
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: state needs to pay me for the damage to my
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: car and my lost trip and this and that there.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Everybody's dear. Uh it's so uh yeah, No, we don't
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: have any liability associated with that, I mean always, so
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that's something people test. Oh, it's occasionally, you know, it's uh,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: It's probably been a couple of years since since I've
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: heard somebody make a vigorous case in that in that regard.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: But um, but you know, we do have a lot
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: of dear vehicle accidents. It's something you can have a
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: lot of dear Ferrell Hawk accidents. Um, you know, you
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: gotta be mindful driving in rural areas. It is hitting
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: your car, yes, yeah, and that'll call serious damage. I
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: mean you look like hitting a bear. Um. In fact,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: there's right around Austin there's a a um a loop
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that was that was built a new tollway and when
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it put in, It was put in. It seemed like
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: there was a vehicle Ferrell hag collision every single day. Um,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you know, And this just happened for a year or two,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: and finally a couple of the counties got together and said,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: you know, we've got to start working on some Ferrell
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: hawks lost. That's a public safety problem. Um. You know,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: there's all these other myriad problems associated with Ferrell hawks,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: but um, you know, a a a loop around Austin
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: and San Antonio with a eighty five mile hour speed
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: limit and somebody hitting a Ferrell hag, that's a recipe
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: for real problems. Um so um so, yeah, deer hall
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: collisions are up? Are are are? Is it? One of
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: the things that keep us laying awake at night about
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the things that let's talk about hogs because I had
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: a bunch of hard questions. Let's just do them now. Um,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: what's the ballpark on hawgs? Can you even venture to guess?
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Do you have more hogs and deer? I don't think so.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: You know the numbers that that that I hear consistently,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, you listen to the margin of ara
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: this or somewhere between two to four million hawks. So
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: how accurate is that? Nobody knows we were They're hard
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: to count, you know, because they're largely nocturnal UM, and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: they're not really good methodologies UM that are established and
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: that are being practiced on a regular enough basis to
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: estimate numbers. And again remember with you know species, I
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: there a lot of arrested as trends over time, right,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: the exact numbers are less important than the trends and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: in other specific um um into season in in metrics.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: But lots of hogs every we have we have farall
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: hawks and every one our counties now um so counties,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: you guys got two hundred and fifty four and that's
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: not so your hog distribution map is the state. It
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: is the state. It is the state. And I even
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: on that like crazy West Texas, Yeah, where you couldn't
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: think there's there's a country there, avelena country, very little
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: surface water, UM, not a lot of top soil. It
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: is astounding how adaptable and resilient those feral hogs are.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Well they displace have alena. Yeah. I think that when
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: when hogs will come into an area and really take
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: over UM, oftentimes that will disrupt UM. You know, those
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: those very strict social structures that um that UH have
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: alna live in and will displace them from from a
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: from a habitat utilization perspective. So we certainly see that.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you if you could um wave a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: magic one. This is our favorite question when it comes
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: to pigs, because a lot of times we have people
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: who even work in the hog or adication industry and
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: we're asking if you can wave a magic wine and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: have pigs go away. They'll say no, I wouldn't waive it.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And not only and not just because I do this
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: for a living, but they just come to appreciate them
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: all the time. They're a fashioning animal archtype. Yeah, so
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: let's say, here you are, I present you with this wine.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: As much as there's an industry in your state, it
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: people come here. I got friends that come from Montana
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: to Texas. Yeah, it would you would you waive the
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: one and it would be absolutely gone from the state.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: You know, that's a that's a great question. You could
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: have to put me in that camp that's decidedly mixed
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: professionally and personally. You know, professionally be the right thing
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: because you've probably been hunting your whole life my whole life.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I grew up with him and I do have a
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: deep appreciation for him and they are fun to chase,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: and we've got a lot of landowners that enjoy that.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: But we certainly have an equal matter more that um
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: are just run over with hogs, huge problems. So how
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: do you how do you like? There's no such thing
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: as a balance between these two things. No, and there's
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: it's a it's an interesting push pull. But you know, professionally, UH,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: we are pushing hard to to do everything we can
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: to UM encourage landowners and hunters and others to UM
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: trap as many hogs, shoot as many hogs. You know,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: we're working on a fascinating uh natural toxicon that is
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: derived from sodium nitrite, you know, food preservative, and our
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: biologists have been working in concert with scientists from UM
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand and here in Texas in U.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: S d A to test that toxicon. It's a toxic
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and it's a it's a bait. It's a pellet um
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: that's got a very specific delivery mechanism to preclude other
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: non target spec not lethal to deer, not lethal to birds,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: not lethal to cattle, and so we're still in the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: testing phase. Yeah, I got to Yeah, I mean I
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: clearly we UM. I don't want to have some unintended
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: impact on all the other species of wildlife and things
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: that we that we care about. But it's been a
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: fascinating study by our biologists at one of our wildlife
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: management area and so they've gone back to the drawing
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: board with UM. The size of the pellet, UM, the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: amount of the toxicon and the pellet. And what's interesting
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: about this is sodium nitride hogs that eat it in
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: a certain quantity, it stops the oxygen flow to the brain.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: So they'll eat it and then they'll go off and
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: kind of go to sleep. So you know, it's not
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: like other kinds of pesticides that you hear about that
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: you know, have some pretty dramatic effects and UM and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: so we're you know, advert into those kind of concerns,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: but we're particularly concerned about I want to make sure
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: we've done everything to attenuate impacts on non target species, right,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: we want to focus on hogs. So we're not ready
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: for UM to have EPA approval yet and have that
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: that would require that would require ep approval Yeah. Yeah,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: So we're rigorous testing and we've been working on the
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: is for eight years or now, um testing different pellet formulations,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of cooperation from other entities, right, there's been
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of interest in that, a lot of interests.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: You know. Similarly, though you know your point earlier, we've
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: got you know, landowners in part of the state that
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: have operations that you know, hunters come in from from
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: from out of state in state to hunt Farrell hawks,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and so you know, they'd be real concerned about controlled
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: and and a landowner's choice. And really, at the end
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: of the day, people have to get comfortable with the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: fact that you're not gonna you're not gonna radicate Farrell hawks.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: You can manage them, you can try to control them,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: but you're probably not gonna radicate magic one scenario you
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: don't not realistic. Yeah, how far out might be? I mean,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: let's say you got there, you know, let's say toy
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: and I tried. Yeah, let's say you got there. Like,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: how far out might something like that be? If you know,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I think runs a normal course in the process, I
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: think we'd still be several years away. And by that,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you know, say a minimum of three there's more field
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: testing that would have to be done. You know, we've
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: been doing this in a in a in a setting
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: on a Wildlife Management UM area in which we've been
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: able to test it in pretty controlled environments. We've gone
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: out with UM Wildlife Services and done some preliminary field
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: tests and that's caused just to kind of go back
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: and again look at that baked formulation, the palatability, look
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: at the level of the toxicut um in there, and
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: so probably we'll go back out in the field sometime
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: in the next year to test that again, but we're
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: several years away from that. You say, sodium night not tried. Yeah,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: My question is does that start kind of the brining process,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: so that is it safe for human consumption afterwards? Like
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: you can right to the smoker. Yeah, there's yeah, just
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: right there, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, No, I don't think it
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: does that that for you. But but obviously we are
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: concerned about you know, somebody shoots a feral hall that
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: uh ended up eating some of that, babe, other animals
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: eating that. Yeah, you bet, you bet so. I we're
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: making sure that we're we're looking at every facet of
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: this both from a non target perspective, but also the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: human health and say it would be it would be
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: wildly irresponsible not to right. So, um, you know, it's
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: a state Fish and Wildlife agency. We have to we
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: have to do that. And this is a pretty unique
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: area of research for us UM. And so we've got
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: a real dedicated team of biologists and scientists again working
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: in active partnership with U s d A and other
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: research institutions on this. But there's a real hunger out
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: there for some kind of a solution to the feral
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: hog problem. Um. You can't shoot your way out of it.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: You can't trap your way out of it. That's interesting.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: So you would say within Texas, like more than fifty
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: of your constituents would say, let's try to make less hogs. Yes, yes,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: what are the main what are the mean wise? Like,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: what are what are the main arguments against hogs? Yeah? Destructive,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: you know, a lack of real kind of meaningful predators
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: on them. Their populations just go up and up. You know,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: they're tearing up fields, tearing up roads, tearing up tank damns,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: you know, displacing native species. Um, I'd say those are
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: the principal ones. It's just kind of their their destructive
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: and unchecked nature in terms of how they grow, you know,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: with their gestation period is what three months, three weeks
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: and three days, so they're having litters all the time,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: and their litters you know maybe you know, ten, twelve,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: fifteen piglets, and so it's just hard to get the
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: brakes on them. And a deer, a deer is gonna
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: kick off, yeah, but she was gonna kick off one
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: or two funds a year, that's right, That's right, And
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: she's gonna kick off what Yeah, And so they're gonna
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: they're probably gonna have you know, two groups of hogs
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: every year, sometimes three, um, And they reach sexual maturity
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: at a very young age. And you know it in
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: coots will kill hogs and mountlines will kill hogs, but
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: but not in a way that's keeping those numbers in check.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And certainly hunters aren't doing that either. Explain what exactly
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: what is the regulatory structure around shooting hogs from helicopters?
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: How does this work? How does that work? So UM's
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of confusion about that. Sure. So first off,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the pilot has to have an aerial wildlife management apartment,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: and remember everything the overarching governance for that is the
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Federal Airborne Hunting Acts. So there's a there's a federal
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: regulation which governs what states can do. Now, states can
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: work within the parameters of that federal act, but there's
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: an overarching federal Airborne Hunting Act that basically says you
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: can't hunt from a helicopter or a next wing aircraft. Now,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: so how does that translate into people shooting hogs out
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of a helicopter in Texas which aerial and then our
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: coyotes here and yeah, right, so UM in Texas UM,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the Texas Parts and Wildlife Department, we essentially serve as
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the agent for helping to permit activities under that Airborne
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Hunting Act. And so we'll issue an aerial management permit
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: to a helicopter operator and so that's an annual permit,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: has to be renewed. There's certain reporting related requirements and
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: that's required if you're gonna you know, count wildlife from
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: the air, if you're going to talk photograph wildlife from there,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna trap wildlife from the air, if you're
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: gonna shoot hogs or coats from there, you've got to
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: have that aerial Wildlife management permit. You also have to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: have what's called a landowner authorization agreement or what we
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: call the acronym and l o A landowner authorization Agreement
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: LAY and l o A is approved by the landowner
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: on whose property you're flying over and say shooting hogs
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: or codes out of the helicopter. So the landowner has
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: to approve it has to approve the activity. So whether
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: that's a wildlife census or maybe it's a trapping of
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: exotics um um or shooting codes or hogs out of
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: a helicopter. And then there are agents and sub agents
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: of the landowner that are approved on that landowner authorization agreement,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: and so those can be observers and they can be
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: shooters on the helicopter, but it's a it's jail referenced.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: The landowner has says, you know, within these boundaries, I've
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: approved this map. You have this letter authorization agreement to
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: conduct those aerial management activities, whatever they are. So that's
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: kind of the regulatory permitting structure, um that we have
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: put in place here. Um, there's been a real uh boom,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: i'd say, in the last um three to five years
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: of helicopter companies marketing to people to you know, come
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: be designated agents and and and shoot um out of
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: their helicopter to shoot hogs out of a helicopter. But
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: it's critically important that um, that that you've got that
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: landowner authorization agreement and you're identified again as as a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: as an agent or a sub agent, and that you're
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: only flying and shooting over property which you have permission,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: and that your pilot is properly and that you're and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that your pilot is properly licensed. And again there's reporting
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: requirements and other compliance things that they have to they
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: have to meet. We've um, UM. It's been an important
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: tool for landowners. Yeah, yeah, landowners will use that and
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: particularly um like a guy can realize a guy can
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: realize real movement of a problem. It can. But but
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I think you look at it seasonally and temporally know
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and so so let's say, um, you know, you want
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: to target hogs, and you you go up in the
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: air and you've got some shooters, You've got a good pilot,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and you find number of sounders and you hammer those hogs. Um,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you're gonna knock them back for a while. You may
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: chase him on to somebody else's property, but you're gonna
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: realize some relief. Now that's not permanent relief because they're
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: gonna come back right nature a bore as a vacuum,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to manage them, you're gonna have
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: to stay after them. But it can help give a
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: temporary reprieve. So you know, when we're recommending those activities, again,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: from a feral hog perspective, it's you know, shoot shoot
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: off and um. You know, you can hunt year round,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: there's no limits. UM. Legislation passed in our recent legislative
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: session that if you're a landowner or a landowner's designated agent,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: you don't need a hunting license to hunt feral hogs. UM.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: But if you're us out shooting Farrell hogs or hunting
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Farrell hogs and you're not witnessing them in the act
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: of depredating livestock or crops, uh, you really need a
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: hunting license. So there's a little bit of a dichotomy
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: um there from an enforcement perspective. But again, we we
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: encourage the harvest of Farrell hogs. And so you know,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: we've tried to throw everything but the kitchen sink at
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it in Texas. UM. But but it still feels a
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: little bit like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: at times. To what extent do you agree with the
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: statement that enthusiasm around hog hunting actually drives increases hog
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: numbers in Texas. Well, I think that's fair in parts. Yeah,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I think that's fair in parts, Um, because people love
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: coming to Texas to hunt hogs, and that's great. We
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: want folks from out of state to come give us
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: a chance to showcase our state, just like you know
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: other states would like to do that or do that
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: as well, and do it very very well. But yeah,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I know we welcome and want folks to come to
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Texas to hunt hogs or deer, turkeys or quail or
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: doves or waterfowl or whatever. Does that drive increased numbers
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: or helped to artificially problem up? Well, I guess in
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: the sense that is opposed to a management philosophy in
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: that area in which people are really working to actively
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: control them keep the numbers down. Yeah, it probably works
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: against us. Um, is that the principal reason why hog
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: numbers are just off the charts high in Texas, Probably
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: not meaning high rates of reproduction, no real significant perdation.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: We don't shoot enough of them to be able to
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: keep up with their biology of of of of reproduction
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: and so um. Those factors have much more of a
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: bearing than um the fact that you may have landowners
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: in certain areas that you know, see see wild hogs
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: as a resource for them. They are people who pay
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: good money, need to come stay at their places and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: have a having experience hunting. Hogs love it. The great
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: revenue stream for them, diversifies their operation, maybe makes it
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: more likely that um, you know, they're able to manage
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: their land, keep the family the property and the family
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: and so forth. But I wouldn't say that as a
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: big tipping point for why we have so many hogs
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: in Texas. And imagine too, once they're established that it
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. But you're I'm sure you're familiar with
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: this that some states that are on the edge of
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the expansion of hogs will preemptively band hog hunting, Yeah,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: to de incentivize individuals who might think it'd be cool
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: to bring them home. I don't blame them and cut
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it loose, yeah, And I will worry about that. Is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: some you know, disingenuous person comes and traps up load
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: of hogs and Texas and then illegally transports them across
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: state line and thanks, wouldn't this be fun to release
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: them on my property? And you know state accident. I
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: mean absolutely has happened, and it absolutely has happened. It
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: does happen, um, and that's problem. But you guys have
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: probably had hogs since then. We've had dogs for a
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: long time, you know. Um, it's essentially like this place
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: at this point, it's one could almost start to think
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: of it as almost a native and not really. But
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: we've been here hundreds of years. They've naturalized, right, I mean,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that's how I think they've naturalized. You know, you think
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: about hogs being brought over by the spaniards, Um, some
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of those practices, you know, I mean they turn them
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: loose in the bottom lands and let them get fat
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: in the winter and eat acorrange and uh and then
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: looked up, you know, round them up such as it was.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: And and obviously then you had those feral hogs. Hogs
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: that were originally domestic, get out, reproduce, start to rewild,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: produce a subsequent generation, produce another one. Next thing, you know,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: we've got wild hogs and and and in those numbers
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: have just grown, and their geography has grown since I've
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: had this job, which will be twelve years in January. Um. Again,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: no badge of honor here, but UM I think when
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: I started, there were still maybe fifteen counties or so
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: that we didn't have feral hogs in and would have thought, well,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: there's no way they're gonna get to El Paso, right,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, what's the what are they going to do there?
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: And and then all of a sudden, well, it's seven
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: counties that don't, then it's three, then it's one, and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: then pretty saying Okay, we've documented hawgs in every countyon
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: and no one's come looking to kick you out of here. Oh.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they look for other reasons, but I don't
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: think I've been blamed singlely for that that problem. One
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: more question for you. I was reading the piece one
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: time and I was talking about that somehow there's been
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: like an oversight and shooting hogs some hot air balloons. Yeah,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't the what had was somehow illegal in the state?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Remedied this is this true? Yeah? Yeah, No, there was
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: someone someone identified a problem that like once they looked
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: at the rule books, they realized they couldn't hunt from
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: a hot air balloon. Yeah, and you know whether that's happened,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: I guess, but it's just so it's such a funny
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: thing to realize. Was like like the when you look
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: at the detail, you realize that hot air balloons are excluded.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Let's go close time on that guy's hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: no doubt, no doubt. Uh. Tell me about elk a
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: little bit, because I know from I'm a member of
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation every year and I read I
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: did a lot of greg work. Yeah, I read their
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: their magazine. They come out with Bugle, and I think
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: it was in there that I read a piece where
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Texas had a weird situation where elk had been extrapated
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: out of Texas. Wasn't They've been gone for hundred plus years.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: There's some elk back now, and there's some sort of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: pro and on. There's pros and cons to whether elk
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: would be regarded as a native animal in Texas and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: arguing about to what degree were they really present and where? Yeah,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: can you break this down talking about no, no no, no,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm acutely familiar with with that. And by the way,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountnel Foundation just does terrific, terrific work. Um. I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: don't remember that. I don't remember it being I don't
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: know that it was super critical of Texas. No, I mean,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: but it but it's but it's been a topic of
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: interest for a while, I think because it helps explain
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: wildlife politics. Yeah. Yeah, So, you know, historically they were
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: elk in Texas and and probably covered a fair amount
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of the states. I mean, they were in the bresh lands,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: you know, UM, kind of down through the central part
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: of the state. You know, maybe even along part of
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: the part of the coast, um and um. And then
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: you're right sometime in the you know, mid the late
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: teen late eighteen hundreds, they really contracted and you know
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: there were some relic elk up in the Guadalupe Mountains
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: on the New Mexico border. UM. Probably some free range
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: in elk that still wandered through the Texas Panhandle and
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: parts of other parts of West Texas, but largely extirpated
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: from the state. But we as an agency, we consider
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: elk to be native historically they were here. As an agency,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: they were, they are they are a native species of wildlife.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Now here's where the rubber hits the road. You translate.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: That will show me where elk are in Texas and
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: how they get there, if they always been there, where
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: they introduced and that, And it's a really eclectic mix
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: of situation so like um like, for example, elk absent
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: largely from big parts of Transpacas or West Texas are
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: mountainous country historically no, no, no, in recent time, yeah,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: and so and so let's say forty years ago, Parks
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife works to then go get elk from rocky
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: mountain states to restock elk in parts of West Texas.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: And so we've got elk in the mountains, and that
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: was going on. Was that going on four years ago? Yeah, Okay,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: already forty years ago, so that was certainly certainly going on. Um,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: you know, lots of efforts of course, is biologists were
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: working to restock fish and game populations that had been
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: um pushed lower for a variety of and sometimes with
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the kind of a cavalier approach and in in in
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: some as you look back on it, uh, some of
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: it looks a little bit that way. Clear everybody out
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: and drive off. And then we've come a lot, we've
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: come along to what we've got a long way, Uh,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: in that in that regard, particularly with disease concerns and
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: you know, concerned about health related issues, capture related, my apathy,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: all those issues that that translocating animals has come a
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: long long way since the wild West days and when
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: you're referring to. But so, the department did a lot
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: of restocking of elk in the in the state. Um,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: in state, in the we're treated as a game animal
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: up until I think the mid nineties, and the legislature
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: was petitioned by landowners out in West Texas to declassify
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: it as as no longer being a game man because
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: that would mean what So what that means is is
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: no longer it now became classified as an exotic and
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: so no seasons, no bag limits, you need a hunting license.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: But basically, as a landowner, you could manage the hunting
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: of elk or opportunity to hunt on your on your
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: property or ranch without worried about, well the elk season
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: is only a month long or I'm only going to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: get three bull tags. Um. You know, basically you had
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: the ability to decide how you were going to manage elk,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: how you were gonna hunt elk, and so how how
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: is the state. If someone proposed that, for dear, you
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: wouldn't like it. No, So how is how what is
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: the argument? I mean, I understand, just I understand on
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: the individual land on their basis, most people and I
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: would be included in this. Probably most people are gonna
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: want a higher degree of autonomy on one's own property.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: But like I said, someone Canden proposed that to you,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Like I said, you know what for no on um,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: I want you to just give me the okay to
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: do what I want with mallards that are on my property.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I want a hunt the year around as much as
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I want. You're gonna say no, way to resist. But
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: but here's what I didn't finish on the history of
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: elk in Texas. What also began to crop up were
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: private individuals bringing in elk from captive elk farms, and essentially,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: um there were all of these kind of high fence
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: hunting ranges in which you know, elk might be placed
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: on in in areas where probably historically there weren't elk,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: or they were intermittent at best, And so you had
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: kind of all these captive elk herds, and so the
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: state became kind of a grab bag of of of
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: elk from different locations, managed differently different settings. UM. So
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: we've been in this situation now where elk, while we
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: consider them native um statutorially, they're still considered an exotic
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: and so you don't have the same kind of regulations
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: that um, you know, traditional big game have and you
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: have like you don't have management authority over we we
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: don't have management authority. They continued to do. They continue
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: to thrive in areas that would be regarded as potentially
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: historic range. Yeah. So the elk are doing pretty well
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: in parts of West Texas. So for example, you know,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: the Davis Mountains is a very popular area for people
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: to go hunt you know, free range elk in a
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: mountain setting that looks like New Mexico, and so you
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: know places you might have a legitimate chance at a
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: four bull um, so pretty significant bull elk. You know,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: it a at what people would think of you know
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: today is kind of a traditional Western kind of mountain
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: mountain hunt. Um. But that dichotomy that you mentioned about,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: you know, some groups would like to see him reclassified
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: as a game animal and have the state takeover management
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: of them. Others want to make sure they stay in
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: their current form where they've got that kind of autonomy
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: that you spoke to that tends to split landowners right
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: down the middle and West Texas. Some of them, Yeah,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: we like the way it is. We want to continue
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: to have that independence. Others of them say no, we'd
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: like to see it be a game animal. The elk farms,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: the kind of the elk ranches, that's a whole separate deal,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: separate and apart from you know, free range elk populations
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: in in far West Texas. I think you'd have to
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: treat those differently. Um, just very very different settings in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: in in in circumstances from a management perspective, and uh
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: and so that in fact that the state's Animal Health
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Commission has really the regulatory jurisdiction over elk is an
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: exotic not the not fortune Wildlife Department. You just mentioned
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: the difference between elk herd that might be rolling around
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: freely and the elk herd that might be contained an
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: offense on one individual's private property. Explain to me the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: regulatory difference. Let's leave elk aside, and let's just talk
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: about deer or something else. How does the state view
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: those two things differently? Where free ranging deer um that
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: are you know, it could be on county land, that
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: could be on an individual's private farm. They're moving around
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: the state. You know, the people own them. And then
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: you have deer herds that are privately held and held
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: in to a specific land owned property by offense. Does
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the state have to treat those two different deer populations
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: differently or is your view that it's it's all dear
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: and it all falls under the same regulatory structure. All
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: all deer belong to the people of Texas. The public
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: trust doctrine in this notion of public ownership of wildlife prevails,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: UM and there's a long history of that, not just
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: in our state, but all across the country. That's the
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: foundation for the North American model UM, and that's what
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: we subscribe to. And certainly legally and UM philosophically. You know,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: we believe that all dear, irrespective of whether they live
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: behind a low fence or a high fence, or in
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: a captive game form or out you know, in a
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: completely free range environment, those deers still belong to the
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: people of Texas, and so so in a high fence atmosphere,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: even where you bring in you might bring in like
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: introduced for genetic purposes, introduced new deer by dear move
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: them around. That still has to be managed according to
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: rules set by the state. Yes, And the reason for
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: that is that is that interface between you know, free
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: range populations of deer and captive populations of deer. The
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: release of active bred deer into you know, high fenced
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: ranches or what are called release sites, there's still ample
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: opportunity for those deer to connect and and and have connections.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: And of course we all know fences are are are
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: anything but infallible. You know, it's like blow out, a
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: water gap goes down, a tree falls on them. You know,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: a bull runs through uh a fence, um, whatever, the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: group of hogs runs under whatever. So you know, by
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: by no means or those impenetrable. So high fence operation
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: in Texas there's still an opening day. Yeah, there's still
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: a there's still an opening day of of of of
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: deer season. And you know that's one of those great traditions,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: rites of passage. And and I wouldn't think of all
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: high fence properties is somehow radically different than all low
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: fence properties either. Um, you know, because because the scale, yeah,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: the scale of them. That's a that's a great point.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: And don't think and and and you know, our listeners
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: shouldn't think that because somebody has a high fence around
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: their ranch that they're involved in the breeding of deer,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the captive breeding of of deer. That's that's that's not
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: necessarily the case. I mean, we have two hundred and
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand landowners in our state and about a thousand
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: deer breeders. But you know, there are lots of high
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: fenced ranches, but the scale of them may be very
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: vast um and and so you still have the same
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: kind of opportunities for uh, you know, fair chase and
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: in in in hunting. However you choose to to hunt,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: there may be a high fence around you know, some
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: or all of those property, and that that fence maybe
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: uh more or less uh effective at keeping deer in
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: or out. Um And so, you know, folks tend to
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: think about Texas, you know, in that way and have
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: this very kind of negative or pejorative perspective on on
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: on on high fences if you come from states in
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: which that's not so commonplace. What really really focus on
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: is the management behind the fence. What are they doing
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: from a habitat management perspective, how are they managing it
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: to promote habitat diversity? How are they managing the game?
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: They're the non game, the unique species, And so the
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: issue is more that management and stewardship, not so much
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the height of the fence. Can you explain some of
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: the some of the governments around um xiotics and movement
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: of EOCTs, Like like, I'm assuming I couldn't, let's say,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: somehow got my hands on a truckload of jaguars. I'm
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: assuming I can't just turn the jaguars loose. Yeah no, So,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: so what is okay and what's not okay? Yeah? No,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: So those kind of wild dangerous animals obvious legal prohibitions
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: on first being able to have one and captivate or
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: much less released one into the end of the wild. Inevitably,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: after some hurricane or storm um in some area, you know,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: we may get a call about somebody that had a
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: line that nobody knew about, and you know, obviously there's
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of concern about that for
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: obvious reasons. But you guys, you guys will have a
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: list of the world's animals with a checker and x next,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: we don't in parts and wildlife doesn't regulate exochs um.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: You know, that's not that's not what we do, at
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: least on the animal side. We have some overlap there
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: on aquatic exotic plants that were involved in but that's
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: a whole different, different area of management and stewardship and control.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: But from an exotic animal perspective, that is managed through
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: the state's Animal Health Commission UM, and so different regulatory
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: structure in in entity. You know, there's certainly landowners all
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: across Texas that have got interest in exotic game. That's
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: very popular fallow deer, access to your black buck antelope
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: all day out, or you know, many many free range
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: environments now um. And so a lot of folks interesting that.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: From a wildlife and a hunting per aspective, it's it's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: it's pretty popular in our state, but we don't have
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: any regulatory authority. You gotta have a hunting license to
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: to hunt them. Um. But what about situations where that
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: stuff winds up impacting the things that you do have
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: prove view over? Yeah, great, great questions. So so most
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: of our wildlife work in Texas, as we talked about earlier,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: is on private lands. It's it's in concert with private landowners.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: It's voluntary, it's collaborative. Put this in perspective. You know,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: we provide technical assistance on wildlife management to landowners all
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: over the state and we have roughly thirty million plus
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: acres under a department approved wildlife management plan that's about
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: of the state. So that's kind of evidence of that
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: and that interest. You know, the first thing our biologists
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: are going to do with their landowner partners are what
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: are your goals, what are your interests, and so, you know,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: for landowners are interested in both exotics and native game,
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: you know, we want to respect that. We're obviously much
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: more interested on the native game, and that's what we're
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: going to work to help promote and really spend most
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: of our time on um. And you know, we've encouraged
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: them to make sure that those numbers of exotics are
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: managed in such a way that it doesn't have an
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: adverse impact on the on the native game and particularly
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: the native habitat um. But again, we want to be
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: very sensitive to the goals of the individual land owner.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: So if a landowner is very interested in you know,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: his or her access tore on their property or their
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: black buck antelope, um, to the extent that can be
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: incorporated into a wildlife management plan because the landowners are
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: going to be managing for that anyway, um, and they're
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt them, they're gonna enjoy them, they're gonna utilize
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: them to the extent that all that can be balanced.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: That's just something that our biologists have to work through.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: But we're focused on the native game. That's our area
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: of emphasis. But then if someone owns an if someone
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: has a property of private property and the owner and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: exotic on the private property, if that exotic animal escapes,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: they no longer on that animal. Correct. No, you'd have
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: to get you know, permission from a neighbor to go
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: and try to recapture that that animal. That that that
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: ownership doesn't extend like a loose cow or a loose horse.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: So there's some some differences there. You know, if I
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: had that you know, heard of of of of access
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: to here and it went over to your ranch, no no, no,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: or come over and fly over and trap them and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: bring them back, Um, you'd have the ability to file
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: you know, trespassing charges against me. So i'd have to
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: have your permission. Yeah, But I would not be able
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: to go run down and sell your cattle. No, no,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: absolutely not. Have there been cases in Texas where you
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: guys have had to where there's been an introduction of
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: an exotic where you had to go and sort of
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: catch it and stop it successfully. Or is the nature
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: of the landscape here such that when things get out
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: there just kind of out, you know, more of the
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: latter than the former. When we're thinking about, um, wildlife
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: and particularly large ungulates you know again, you know, kind
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: of deer and elk like animals that we hunt. You
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: got to remember that this kind of history of landowners
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: bringing in exotic game for sport and also for wildlife conservation,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: you know, helping to you know, bring back populations of
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: scimitar horned ore. Yeah. It's interesting where oftentimes it's been
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: that Texas will have more of some species than it
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't it's native, yeah, that's right, um. And it's it
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: helps prevent genetic extinction, that exactly, exactly. Um. But that's
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: been going on since the thirties and forties and fifties,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: so there's a long history. So you know, you would say,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: you know, take your most most well known and populist
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: exotic game animals axis or fallow or psycho or black
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: buck or all dad. You know, they've really naturalized. Um,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: not native, but they've naturalized, so they're here to stay UM.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: Where today, what we would see is perhaps there is
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: a a really invasive or exotic uh fish or a
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: snake um or a plant that our biologists are made
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: aware of in a localized area. More likely the result
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: of somebody tired of having something as a pet and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: they turn it loose in a city park or a
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: county park. We're gonna find it and we're gonna kill it. Um.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: You know. And that's the ounce of prevention is worth
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: a pound to cure um because just as you said,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: you want to jump on that and stop it from
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: being a problem. UM. And you don't have to to
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: to look any further to something like you know, zebra
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: muscles um or giant Salvinian water hyacinth. You know, exotic
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: plants highly de Yeah, they just take off. So we
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: find an outbreak like that in a like, we're gonna
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: go hammer it with with herbicide to see what we
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: can do to help kill those plants to keep it
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: from getting established. We don't see that, so much in
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: terms of big animals. But you know, occasionally our our
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: our biologists will get a call about again a snake
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: UM or you know something or a fish. It's localized
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: that we can find and and and try to deal
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: with that problem before it spreads. What is your perspective
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: on concerns about UM with chronic wasting disease significant? You know,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: when you look at deer and deer hunting um in
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: Texas and the magnitude of that, just how important it
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: is um from you know, not just the million hundred
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: thousand hunters that we have of in Texas, but um,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: how important that is to real estate values in our state.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: I mean basically rural land values or And that's that's
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: a good point. I never thought of, man, Yes, because
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: the huge owning deer properties you've got huge said that
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: people would be become obviously less interesting. Yes, yeah, I
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: know they'd be very concerned about it. Um. You know
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: just how important hunting is our rural communities around the
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: state from a tourism perspective and economic development. I mean,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: you go to these little towns and the central part
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: of the state opening weekend their season, and of cafes
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: and motels and the hardware stores and the gas stations
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: are packed to the gills. So people on camouflage and
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: so that's real money. UM, that that's out of county money,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: and it makes an impact locally. And so you guys
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: have had a couple of positives now right, we we have.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: So we've got we've got kind of three nodes of
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: c w D and our our states by no means pervasive. UM.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: The first node is out right near the New Mexico border,
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: just east of El Paso and a little mountain range
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: called the Waco Mountains, which is pretty isolated. We found
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: it there in mule deer. Then we found it up
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: um in the Panhandle, the northern part of our state,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: very close to the New Mexico line. UM. Again we
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: think with free range animals coming over from New Mexico.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: But we found it mule deer, we found it in
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: a couple of elk, we found it in a couple
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: of white tail, and then down in Central Texas kind
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: of the heart of some of the most populous deer country. UM,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: we found chronic wasting disease in four pretty large captive
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: breeding operations and UM. And so we've been working very
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: actively to help deal with that. UM, what are the
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: what are the biggest limitations right now on presumably you
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: can do everything you wish you could do. What's the
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: limitation on from your perspective on on trying to slow
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: it get rid of it? I mean, can you You
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: can't get rid of it? I mean that's what you think, Like,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: Texas will not go back to being free in CWD. No,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't think we I don't
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: think we will. But that doesn't mean we're complacent about
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: it somehow lay behind the log and say, hey, we've
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: got it in these three isolated areas, so we're not
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: going to worry about it everywhere else. Absolutely to the contrary.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: So our strategy is focused on three goals. UM. You know, first,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: we want to minimize the impacts of c w D
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: to all of our dear populations, whether it's free range
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: or captive UM. Secondly, we want to make sure that
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: we minimize the impact from c w D to UM
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: hunting and hunting based economies, and that includes real estate values,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: rural communities, tourism, hunter expenditures, all that. And then, last,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: but not least, is we want to make sure that
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: our management actions are done in such a way that
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: we maintain the trust and confidence of our hunters and
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: our private landowners absolutely critical. So those are the three
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: tenants of our efforts. And then from a from a
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: strategy perspective, we're focused on two things. First is early detection,
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: so if it's out there, we want to find it
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: so that all of a sudden, you know, we can
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: get mandatory testing in place, we can get carcass movement
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: restrictions in place, we can get prohibitions on moving live
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: dear into and out of those those those areas in place,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: so early, so very active. From a surveillance perspective, our
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: biologists are spending a lot of time, you know, collecting
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: brain samples throughout the year, but particularly during hunting season,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: and we've stratified the state um according to kind of
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: statistical grids to to to sample at levels that gives
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: us you know, varying level of confidence or degrees of
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: confidence that we find it dependent on the sample size.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of effort on the early
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: detection and the sampling, and then it becomes a containment issue.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: Um um. I'm not aware of any situation um in
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: any kind of a free range environment in which anybody
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: has really gotten rid of it, so it gets it.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: How do you arrest the spread of it? And the
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: two biggest threats to that, of course, or large aggregations
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: of animals, right, and then the movement of an animal
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: from an infected area to another area. You know, they
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: move on a trailer or whatever, some artificial movement of
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: of of of deer, So you know, working to kind
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: of manage densities in those areas and then also make
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: sure that we don't have movement of deer into route
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: of areas that we know have f c w D. Again,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: it's a big issue for our our state just because
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: deer hunting, deer management, enjoyment of rural land is so
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: tied to the health and enjoyment of deer populations in
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: our state that we have got to take an aggressive
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: strategy in dealing with it. Thankfully, we have it in
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: three isolated areas and that's how we want to keep it.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that you've gotten adequate federal support. I'm
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: working with c W That coordination and support are are
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: all the states. It is kind of duking it out
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: on their own well, and I think that's a real
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: issue UM that's out there. You know, historically we had
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: financial support through U. S D a APHIST to help
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: with UM monitoring, UM the surveillance because we're we're spending
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: very very conservatively, you know, let's say a million and
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: a half dollars a year on just the CWD surveillance.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Remember that's time that that biologists also could be spending
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: working with landowners on habitat management, wildlife management, you know,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: working on game non game whatever whatever other priorities that
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: we have out there. So there's a real opportunity cost
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: of time. Historically, we did have some federal funding to
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: to help with that. Now, as I understand it, there
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: is proposed funding this year in the House Appropriations Bill
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: UM for the Department of Agriculture to help ensure that
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: there's going to be some funding made available to the
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: states to help support that that surveillance. That would be helpful. Undoubtedly,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: there is a need for great or coordination across our
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: country with respect to how do we deal with it.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: And you know, as I look at that UM, I
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: would say, you know, one, I mean, states have the
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: jurisdictional authority over deer and elk UM largely there's some
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: exceptions to that, but but mostly and we need to
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: respect those jurisdictional boundaries, and states need to be able
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: to choose how to respond to things just depending on
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: what the cultural and political currents are of the state.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: Those are just realities that we have to deal with
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: in wildlife politics, as you as you said, But we
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: could benefit from, um, from additional federal funding coming to
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: the states to help support adaptive management, more surveillance, etcetera.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: I think we could also benefit from a more coordinated,
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: comprehensive look at targeted research, particularly testing and evaluating these
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: adaptive management strategies that states are implementing kind of into
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: pendant of one another. But you know, it's not all
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: done in some kind of a rigorous experimental design type
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: type setting. So some targeted research to test that. And
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: it needs to be over time, right, It needs to
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: be longitudinal. You can't just study this kind of an
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: issue for two years traditional master's student and say hey,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: we're done. You need to commit to that over over
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: a much longer period of time. UM. We also see
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: capacity issues in uh in testing labs for CWD, and
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: so you know we have the Texas A and M
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: the Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab does a fabulous job. They're
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: really good partners of ours on UM. They're they're they're
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: testing work as CWD samples, whether that's from you know,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: free range UH populations or from captive red facilities. They
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: really work hard at that, but the capacity is constrained,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: so there's a lag in testing those animals. So hunter
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: kills a deer UH, it's in an area in which
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: it's a mandatory testing area, and you know, if they
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: have to wait six weeks for that sample to come
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: back to no fault of of of our lab. It's
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: just a capacity issue. It'd be nice if we could
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: accelerate that with additional capacity. The last thing that I
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: think that could probably get some help on federally UM
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: is work on a more coordinated, consistent message for hunters
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: to help explain c w D, why it is, why
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: it matters, and what they can do to help address it.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: UM find that there's still a lot of ignorance out
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: there about the disease, a lack of awareness UM hunters
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: that may be unwittingly contributing to the spread of it
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: through the movement of infected carcass parts. So there's just
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: some just distrust and some distrust of of of government.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: Are people are using it as a sort of proxy
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: our fearmongering, right, I mean, I you know you hear
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: that too. It's it's a fairmongering issue. It's um, you
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: have more dear uh killed by cars than you do
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: by c w D. How many times have you heard
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: that argument? And so it affects such a relatively small
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: number of animals across the country or a particular state
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: in some cases that why are you so concerned about it? Well,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a brain disease. It's always fatal, fatal.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: You don't need to comment on this, but it's and
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm even wrong about my assumption, but it would
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: seem that the livestock industry would be very interested in
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: c w D, keenly interested, because we like, as a
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: hunter and a person that eats a hell of dear meat,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: I'm concerned about the human health considerations. I mean, it
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: would be catastrophic to the cattle industry should that disease
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: jump a species barrier species barrier, and and also we
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: had like the equivalent of mad cow disease, Yeah, BSc
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: type situation. What you know the thing. And again you
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: don't need to you don't need to get into that.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: But it's something I puzzle over that that you just
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: don't hear. Maybe and maybe it's out there and I'm
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: not privy to it. You just don't. You don't hear
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: that industry talk about, Wow, what is this. Let's get
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: a grip on this. We do in Texas. Yeah, Texas
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: and Southwestern cattle raisers UM. You know, their members are
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: terrific partners with the department. Many of them are very
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: actively involved in wildlife management on their ranches. And you know,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: dear is the proverbial, you know, goose that lay the
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: golden egg, um. And so they're actively involved, very knowledgeable
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: about this, and they do compare the very strict testing
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: requirements and food safety protocols on on livestock and meat
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: um and meat related products. Because of that public safety
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: and the making sure that the consumers are comfortable with
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: the safety of the meat that they're eating, very very
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: focused on that from a market perspective. So they absolutely
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: make that parallel in terms of advocating for you know,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: more testing and appropriate testing in deer populations. You know,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: if c w D is indeed a problem. So yeah,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: you'd be um surprised at the awareness or linkage. Perhaps
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: it's not verbalized as much, or perhaps it's not talked
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: about as much and in all states, but certainly the
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: cattle raisers in Texas have been very very strong partners
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: with us and our efforts to help raise awareness UM
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: and deal with this this this issue in Texas. So, uh,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: last thing for you, what are the biggest challenges and
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: opportunities you see in your position? And I'm guessing that
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: you probably put c w D among the biggest. Third Well,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know c w D is
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: one of those um emerging wildlife related challenges. You know
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: that that that transcends boundaries that you think about all
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: these different vectors and portals and areas of commerce into
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: into Texas, and so you know, whether it's you know,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: white nose syndrome and bass or c w D in
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: in deer, some rare fungal disease and amphibians, or the
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: introduction of you know, exotic and invasive plants that proliferate
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: and take over our legs like a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: You know, those issues, those are those are real and
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: I you know, we take a lot of pride in
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: our native plant and animal communities. I mean we we
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: we want to keep it that way, that that that
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: native wildlife heritage, that outdoor heritage, that diversity habitats that
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: we talked about, We want to keep those native and healthy.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: Um And so there are challenges for us, and so
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: I don't want to play let's pretend. I mean we've
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: got a big, growing state, twenty eight million people and growing,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: most of them very detached from the kind of things
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: that we love. That in and of its yeah yeah. Now, Now, interestingly,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: I think that most attitudinal surveys that irrespective of whether
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: or not somebody is urban or rural, old or young,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter. What the demographic stratify er is that today
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: people still have some kind of desire to see wildlife
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: conserved and protected. You know, there's still there's still positive sentiments.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: I think what we all worry about and appropriately is
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: that increasing generational detachment. And what does that mean? Will
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: that attenuate, will it subside, will it go away? What
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: does that mean for the future of you know, hunting
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: and angling and and and responsible and ethical fisheries and
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: wildlife management. Will we have the support from a populace
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: that you know doesn't hunt and fish and so therefore
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't you know, pay into the pay into the system.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: Will they see the benefits of of that. So that
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: population issue, competition for what a course, is big fragmentation
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: of ranches. You know, it's harder to keep family ranches
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: together for all kinds of reasons. So we see them
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: getting smaller and more fragmented, and that inevitably leads to
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: habitat loss, and that leads to habitat loss. So UM,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: there there are no shortage of challenges. Uh. You know,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: we could we could write war and peace uh on
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: that particular topic. All of those are opportunities as well.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: You know, how do we better connect with UM an
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: urban based audience, that is that is detached from the outdoors.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: How do we use technology not as our enemy but
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: UM as our portal to connect people to the outdoors
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: and get them interested to come to places. How do
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: we invest in more you know, parks in public areas
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: that are close to where people are so that they
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: have easy access. How do we create more mentor programs UM?
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: How do we how do we help shape educational programs
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: in the schools through all ages to make sure that
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: people we're getting a proper grounding in natural resources related literacy. Um,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: you know, speaks to kind of this our three effort
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: that's going on nationally where um, you know, I think
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: for for the fishing side of thing, we've got a
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: real opportunity to move to move the needle. Um, certainly
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: getting people into the outdoors to enjoy wildlife. Maybe they're
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: not going to be hunters, but we want them to
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: appreciate hunters. We want them to appreciate hunting. We want
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: them to appreciate wildlife management, understand the science behind it,
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: the reasons behind it, and and and why that can
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: help all of the species of interest that we're charged
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: with with managing. So um, the challenges again are our
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: opportunities is as as as well. And I think what's
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: the the overriding concern for all of us, irrespective where
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: we are, is trying to leave our home ground better
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: than we found it. Our buddy dug during on where
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: you stole it? But maybe he made it up. No,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: he stole it. It's not ours, it's our turn, our turn. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: do you got the last final thoughts? No? I mean
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: we've covered the waterfront. Uh, pretty well, there's nothing you
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: were dying to get wedge in there. No, gosh, we
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: have we've I'm trying to think if there's anything we
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: didn't cover that, let me let me hear my concluder
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and you can do one if you've got one, and
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: you honest is gonna go. I mentioned Shane Mahoney earlier
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: in the same conversation where we talked about the uh,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: the model, you know, complex model. Uh. He was talking
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: about the same thing he just brought up. Was funny
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: you mentioned technology in in people's engagement with the natural world,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: and he made a point that you're saying guys like
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: him and his generation, It's true. I'm forty five and
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: this is the same thing with me. We grew up
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: in a world the like doesn't exist, and he like
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: talks about you know, riding off on your bike with
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: your twenty two right doesn't happened, And it's like is
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: he says, so many people in and his age and
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: again and include myself in it, are thinking like for
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: for people to engage in the natural world, we need
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: to recapture and deliver to them this child, this like
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: idyllic childhood that we had growing up out in the
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: rural parts of America where you took off in the
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: morning with your twenty two fish and rod and came
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: home after dark. And he's like, that's the mind frame
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: and how we're going to re engage people with nature. Um,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: and the technology is bad and he says, like, that
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: approach is not going to work. We are not going
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: to we are not going to bring that back and
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: make that a scalable model for wildlife engagement. And you're
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: gonna have to find a way two make the natural world,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: make nature relevant in the way that people can understand,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: and they're going to relate to how they do. And
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: he says that and I feel that that will happen.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: And technology, if it's going to happen, technology and a
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: bracing of technology will be part of that. Amen. You
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: will not get payment that, you will not get people
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: to leave it behind. I couldn't agree more with that approach.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: It's a the the the other is just so wildly
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: uh idealistic. Will never go back to that. There are
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: people who pull it off. Um. You know, very local
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: if in national terms, when we talk about like an
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: increasingly urbanizing where we live, it's like if we're if
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: we're gonna make it this binary thing. You have to
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: love nature and hate technology, and that's the only way
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: we're gonna win. You'll never win that, you know that
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: that that if if that was a battle, which I
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: don't think it it ever was, by the way, although
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: people love to frame that, and a lot of it
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: had to do with people extrapolating, making their own inferences
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: from you know, some of the findings that drove the
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: whole uh, you know, last Child in the Woods movement,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: Children to nature related movement. But I think most folks
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: who are given this issue any real thought have come
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: to the same conclusion is technology is here, it's here
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: to stay, it's growing, and it's increasing part uh you
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: and you can't make kids choose. So meet them where
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: they're at and let them experience. It's like taking my
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: I've got some young cousins that are you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm kind of mildly annoyed by the fact
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: that you know, we're sitting out there, um, you know,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: in a ground, blind or something, and you know they
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: want to post everything on Snapchat and Instagram and tell
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: the story, you know, electronically and their smartphones are going
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: ninety to nothing. But you know what, they seem to
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: have a ball. So who is it of me to
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: tell them? No, I want you to enjoy it my way.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: You can't do it your one. You gotta enjoy my mood.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: I say all that stuff. Yeah, well, I just don't
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: think it worked. I'll leave you with this story. Fifteen
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: years ago, I got a buddy that UM the mind
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: that UM ranches out in far West Texas, sprawling ranch.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: Gets left alone by his his wife UM with his
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: two young daughters, and UM, I think they were four
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: and five. She leaves to UM, going to town to
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: see parents or something for the for the weekend, and
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: so he's doing parent duty at the ranch. He said.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: He watched his two daughters UM one afternoon spend their
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: entire afternoon within about a five ft radius of a
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: big oak tree in their front yard, and it dawned
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: on him at the time that hey, you don't need
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: to take people to some big wilderness area. Yeah, we'd
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: all love to know that they're there, UM, but people
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: can find nature anywhere. They can find it at an
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: undeveloped city block, a lot, a park, a little green belt,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: you know, sitting under a tree looking at your office
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: building and there's a paragon falcon, you know, praying on
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: a pigeon, you know, in downtown Chicago. UM, it's not
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: that we don't to get people out into these wild places.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: We do, but let's help them discover nature in the
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: outdoors where they are. And I thought it was interesting
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: for that friend to have that revelation about, you know,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: the population as a whole, from watching his two ranch
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: raised girls on a big, sprawling ranch, because of their
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: interaction with one tree in their front yard and how
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: just connected they were. That thing's pretty cool. Yeah. I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: had an interview recently, asked you like, where's the best
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: place to hunt deer? I said, it's close to your
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: house as possible. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: know we're short on time. I'll leave it at this.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: That was a good story to finish on. Good Thank
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. Thanks. I'm sure you're
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: extremely busy, so thanks for giving us so much times
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: allowed to be here. Thank you for having all right.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: Tell him John starting the sky film dot com man,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: Tell him, Yeah, you guys need to uh go over
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: two stars in the sky film dot Com and buy
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: a copy of it, and I was just thinking that
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: you ought to buy a second copy to give. I
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: don't know how that works. You can get a link
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: and you can give it to somebody, but you should
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: buy it for a non hunter who's uneasy with hunt
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: That's right, because this is it's a very good, uh
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: deep dive into hunting. Explores all the different realms of
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: hunting that we all know so well and they're so
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: easy for us to talk about and understand. But uh,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Steve does a really good job in the documentary of
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, opening it up to and in
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: a conversation where people that are non endemic outside of
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: our little hunting bubble can understand all these topics that
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: we deal with and grapple with all the time. Um,
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: you'll enjoy it. But I also feel like if you're
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: somebody that wants to promote hunting and make hunting cool again,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: you should pass it along to some folks. Yeah, you're
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: only worked on the movie. Yeah, have a good time
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: working on it. And your honest is the he's the
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: most honest man in show business and he's sounds you
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: go watching. Yeah, I know I know for a fact.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys. Stars in the sky film dot com
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: where you can find our new documentary UM available for
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: streaming and download purchase