Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 267: Smolt to Adult

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Ep. 267: Smolt to Adult · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're here, Ryan Callahan. This goes out
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to Yanni's dad. Yanni's dad. Yanni. We are joined by Phil,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: who's having a little parfait. How is How is it? Phil?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It's always delicious? Yeah, smacking your lips over there? You
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: turned your mic off? Yeah, so people can't listen to
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: you smack. Some people love this kind of thing. Most
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: people hate it. I'm gonna turn it off. Uh, Chester,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: who's here for a guest appearance? Uh? Today's installation of
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the adventures? What is the what's the what's the show called?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Turn your thing back on? In the middle of a bite? Here? Uh?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The Continuing Adventures of Chester. The investor UM. Ryan Callahan
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: is here, fresh off his first I mean, like literally,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: it's probably I mean, it's probably hasn't even it's probably
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: still percolating through your for sure COVID vaccine first round fighter.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: That's not an endorsement, that's just what I got. You'll
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: know how it works, you, Um so you weren't. Did
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: you have like, uh, you know about getting the vaccine?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Were you afraid that, um, you know, the government was
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: going to put a tracking device in you and all
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. What's the main argument against the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: vaccine that? Well, that's a big one and and the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: whole thing is made up? So why I do this anyway?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And um, you know it's weird though, like, amongst a
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: large part of my family, we've never ever had flu shots.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I've never had a flu shot in my entire life.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: But I wouldn't call yourself an anti vax no. But
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I just ran because I don't get the flu, right,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't as far as I know. As far as
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we know, we've done a bunch of COVID tests. Um,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: but I guess I haven't had an eye anibody test.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: But I didn't get COVID either, So maybe you did,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: but maybe I did. But you did, you've ast late
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: on getting the vaccine. There was part of me that
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: was like, self, do you find it odd that you've
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: never had the desire to get a flu shot or
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: felt like it was irresponsible to not get a flu shot?
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: But here you are really chomping at the bit to
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: get a COVID nineteen shot. Yeah, I had those thoughts. Yeah,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: there are notable. I mean, there's more incentive to kind
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of wrap this up. If we can, then there is
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the wrap up the flu. I don't really know why
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that's true, but it's like I don't know. Yeah, it's
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: like maybe it's acknowledging a little bit of frailty in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: your cell. I'm tougher than the flu didn't get COVID,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know, but yeah, i'd had some
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: like huh, like, well, you know, don't feel sick. Maybe
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I just have the good stuff already so I mess
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: with it. Were they friendly to you down there? Very friendly,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: very thankful, Jeff, take your shirt off. No, I just
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: peeled gave her a little shoulder, a little taste of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the shoulders, and they were acting like they were acting
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: like you were doing them a good turn. Yes, very much.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: So we're just so happy that you came in, like
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: giving blood or something. What shoulder would you like? You know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like A, I'm my left shoulders closer to you about
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: that one. I'll get up and move. I'll get up
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and move if you want it in the right shoulder,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: do you want Bugs Buddy or camel uh band Aid
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: want Bugs Bunny. So there's enough camera in my life, ma'am.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And then how do you go about? Um, I'm gonna
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: introduce un s second Eric. Uh. We're joined by podcasts
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: alum Eric Crawford, who's wearing a new hat. I don't
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: mean that literally, I mean figuratively wearing a new hat.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: But how do you know when it's tigned to go
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in for your other one? They right now, they're really
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: encouraging you to preschedule your second shot, but they're doing
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: it in blocks. So it's like the block that I'm
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a part of right now that got signed up and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and got vaccine slots for today. Well, we'll all be
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: getting their second shot. A but uh, we're all on
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the road April. Uh. But I had a long talk
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: with my Conciguliari Phil podcast producer over there with the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: yogurt yep yogurt guy. I mean, look at him, he's
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: working on his gut health. He's already got a round
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a vaccine in him. He's pretty liable source. So um,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: and you're saying, just get it and figure out the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: second one could be a week early, week late, but
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: got it? Yeah, so that's that's my program? Got it? Yep?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Eric Crawford, Well, was the last time you were on
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the show you were a game warden? I was? I was, Gosh,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: was it was that? Could that be? When the heck
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: was it? It was a long time ago. God, we're
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: just young pops back then, some of us. Yep, what
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: are you doing nowadays with yourself today? I worked for
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Trout Unlimited as a North Pudeo field coordinator is what
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: my official title is. Did you know all along you're like, man,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: someday when I'm not a game warden, I'm gonna work
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: for Trott Unlimited. I didn't know that, you know. It's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: just a kind of a right, you know, set of circumstances.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Quite honestly, got burned out being a game warden after
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: twenty plus years of doing it. But at twenty plus years,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: don't it, I meanears with the same agency, right, Yeah,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: so we kind of like look out for you after that,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Like there's some retirement stuff and all that. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: straight up. Yeah, I got a pension and everything. Yeah,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: but I feel like you're not Are you older than
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: me or younger me? No? I think we're the same age.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: That's not really fair. You're one year older me. Now
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: you're like you can tell people you're retired. Well, yeah,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I still work though. That's a good point. Yeah, so
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I don't draw in my retirement um with the state.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it was just a good transition from doing
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: you know, conservation law enforcement and conservation for that matter,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: to now focusing on in on you know, salmon and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: steelhead and cold water species throughout the state. Idea. Were
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: you torn about retiring? I wasn't. I wasn't at all
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: there there was so well, well, I will say this,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: there is a day as I drove drove to the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: office that I worked out of in Lewiston that it
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: really hit me that I was losing my identity if
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, Like, yeah, I was a game warden
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: for twenty years, Like that's packing the pistol line your
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: hip and yeah no, not wearing body armored to work
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: or wearing a side yeah no. But it was just like, hey,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: that's who I am, that's who I identify with, And
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: then one day it was gone. Are your neighbors a
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: lot more forthcoming with you now? About like what they've
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: been up to? Uh? Um? I have one neighbor that
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I think he's even more apprehensive now because then he
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: he doesn't know what I'm up to, and like he's
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: an avidly he used to know what not to tell you.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Now he's like, I don't even know anymore, not even
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: know Cal's aware of this. But last two weeks ago,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: last week, last weekend, it was, um, there was three
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: moose in my yard and so no, no alive, Yeah,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: eat my shrubs. So I called the damn game department,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: told me get their moose out of the yard, like
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: literally called my old neighboring officer. I was like, hey,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: these moose are back, what are you doing? But that
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: same neighbor had just evidently just been bitching like crazy
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: about him, like eating his apple trees, and he's happy
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: to see him. Gone, yeah, Um, are you admiring that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: bowl right there? I am. The thing is, it's hard
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: to talk about. People can't see it, but it's gorgeous.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: That's called a Bucky bowl. It is amazing. The inside
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of it literally looks like polished stone rather than would
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: it's unbelieable. It's a birch, a birch burrow. That Buck Bowden,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: who's also a podcast a lum um Buck Boden goes
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: out and hunts him down out in the woods out
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. Obviously, Chain saws off the burl and then
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: takes a like an angle grinder with this little wood
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: fitting on it and cuts away everything that doesn't look
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: like a bowl. So how many hours of effort goes
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: into that? Because it takes them about ten million hours.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I thought it'd be way more. It's gorgeous. I feel
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: in the walls are in that thing. It's beautiful. It
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: is um. The reason I bring this up is, uh,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: we're gonna make one. We're gonna make one of these
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Bucky bowls. It'll be a while, so we'll stay tuned,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: but we're gonna we're gonna have a way to make
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: one of these Buckey bowls available, and we're gonna raise
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: some uh conservation money by having a auction house of oddities.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So you're saying that I should start saving my money
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: so I can save the money now, because that big
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: ass bowl, you could pretty much Jester goa damn you
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: take a bath net thing. That bowl is gonna Bucks
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: got one that looks just like that. He's sending it
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to us that we're gonna make available through an auction
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: house of oddities. Uh, lots of pictures of those things. Um, yeah,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: ten hours is all I bet you if you went
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to do it well. In fact, one of our camera
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: guys took from Buck's collection. Have did you ever asked
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Lauren to hear from Lauren? You know, Lauren, how long
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: it took him to do it? He did it. He
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: did it. I don't know how long it took him, though,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: but he was asking me a bunch of questions about
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: it with like the angle grinder, with the wood bits
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, because you're a little b crafty with wood. Chester. Yeah,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: it used to be like what you mean he can
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: still be crafty, be tired, but I still work. You
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: can still be crafty with wood. I mean, come on,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: it's not hard to be crafty with wood. Well, the
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: talking about Oh yeah, so we're gonna have Phil hit
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the hit the Chester and the Investor um soundtrack, The
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Continuing Adventures of Chester the Investor. Come that's it, come off,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it's right, come to pop um on um. What's going
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: on lately? Chess has been getting so much feedback about
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: his bitcoin operation. Yeah, a lot of people writing in
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: which I was surprised with advice. You have advice, here's one.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It's not quite advice. We know what you're talking about.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I started my coin base account back when bitcoin was
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: like ten k. They gifted me ten free dollars a bitcoin.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: That money has now grown to thirty eight dollars in
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: one cent. If it keeps growing, I'll be able to
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: buy those new sweet first light pants all without ever
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: putting in my own money. Suck on that Chester, Austin
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: out of Arizona. How is the How is the investment
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: sitting right now? Um? It's kind of like just been
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: stagnant since the last time we talked about it. Really, yeah,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it hasn't. I mean it's gone up and down, but
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: not huge swings A sorry. Yeah, do you guys feel
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: like your conversation has kind of stagnated the marketplace a little?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Like introduce some investor uncertainty because we might be we
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: might be tanking, influencing it, influencing the market. You might
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: be doing insider trading. Game stop, he's doing trading because
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: he knows when we're gonna talk about it. Are you
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: regretting your investment? You wish you put it into real estate? No?
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I still made money on it, and it's it's I
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: haven't lost any money. It's just it's hard to put
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: a few thousand bucks into real estate. Oh yeah, like
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I need a very small piece of land. Yeah. I
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: mean to be clear, I'm not like, I don't have
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a ton of money in bitcoin. Just trying to get
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: just trying to get a wife, trying to get Someone
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: wrote in this this is some feedback that I got.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you got it. Um, this guy
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: hates bitcoin. Okay, he doesn't like it. He doesn't like bitcoin.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Um because of this, there's no social, tangible, utility or
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: value to it. He goes on to say that, which
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is that's all. That's all subjective, right. What's not subjective
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: is this uses insane amounts of real energy. Okay. The
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: University of Cambridge suggests the bitcoin network uses more than
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty one tarawatt hours of electricity annually.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Now are you you've met with this chapter. There's about
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a hundred eight countries in this world. Yeah, okay, if
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: bitcoin was the country, it would be thet is that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: a word? Yeah, the thirtiest most energy sucking country on
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the planet. That's how much electricity electricity those suckers are using.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: The cost doesn't end there, Okay, familiar with there's a
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: bitcoin mining operation in in Milltown, Montana right there, you know,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: like on the mill property. When they shut the mill down,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and uh, they seek out places to mine bitcoin that
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I have a relatively low temperature because they got a
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: cool cool all the computers and all the computers are Yeah,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: but the facility also creates like an audible hum, and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: you can hear that hum for miles really like once
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: you like, you know, it's that thing like you, once
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: you become familiar with it, you can hear it for
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a long long way, and then eventually you're so familiar
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with it you can't hear it anymore. But yeah, it's
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: gone now. Um for this could have been part of
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the reason. But um their studies coming out suggesting that
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: this audible hum could make people tone deaf to that
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: pitch people and then uh also was having all sorts
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of effects on like bats and birds and stuff like that. Jeez, Chester, Yeah,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: well dirty money, Chester feel like this is all It's
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like Chester is holding the Walleye boat industry hostage. He's
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: basically saying, you could end this global environmental catastrophe just
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: by giving a walleye boat, bats birds that I'm into
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: it for the boat. If I get a boat, I
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: pull out. If not, I'm in killing bats, killing birds,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and may your children go tone deaf. However, there's some
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting stuff going on by you know, these mining
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: operations using energy, excess energy from UM fossil fuel mining
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: like oil rigs. I know you'd like to say this,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: but I don't really know what this means. It means
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: to see what mining means, because they're thinking you're digging
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: a hole. Basically, a mining metaphor mining is solving a
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: long math problem, and once they solve it digital, it's digital.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: It comes up with basically a number that cannot be replicated.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: It's really difficult to replicate that number because you'd have
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to go through the exact same steps you know, these
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: mining operations that have to do to come up with
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that end number. That end number is a bitcoin and UM.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: So the mining is just computations, very complex computations with
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: computers that that require lots of energy and make our
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: children not be able to hear certain sounds. Possibly, but
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know that's why he has that's why he's
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: so unconcerned with this. No, I'm I'm concerned. But there's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: like most of bitcoin is mine in China, um, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is coming. They're setting up these
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: operations in dams and stuff where there is excess energy.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: So like where in like low population areas where these
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: electrics these hydroelectric dams are creating too much energy, they
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: got nowhere to put it, So essentially it would just
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: be they're taking this access to mine bitcoin. Also, in
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the United States, oil rigs you see them all over
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: produces natural asides. So they're basically tapping into these flares
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: and trying their best to use excess energy, which that
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: that energy would be going to nobody, you know it wouldn't.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: They're not using it, they're just burning it off. How
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: much believe that a scale of one to ten. I
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: believe it, Like you lose energy when you move energy.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: That's that's part of the deal. So can I can
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: sense think about this. The US dollar is backed by
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the US government, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam, which I'm not
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: hating on the U s dollar. I'm just turning yeah, um,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: we need the US but it is backed by the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: US government, which is essentially backed by the military, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: think about how much gasoline the military uses every day
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to protect our dollars. Is going deep? Is deep? Now
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: I can't even tort I have to come back for
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the next next time we do this segment and think
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: of a retort. Well, and it's all for a Whileye boat,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: that's the most strike, you know what I'm here? Think
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: about like this magic. If the military would just give
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Chester a Walleye boat, they wouldn't even feel it their
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: budgets fell off a train somewhere, and they'd win him
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: back over to the US dollar and he'd be back
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a fan of the US dollar to get that customer back,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: and he wouldn't be putting his money in some crypto
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: terrorism deal Chester. So let me tell you another. Here's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: another possible retort Chester for you, not for me, but
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: for you. Would be um that if you didn't buy it,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: someone else a buy it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: like you getting out of this Walleye boat business isn't
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: gonna make or break Bitcoin, absolutely not. Yeah. Uh, what's
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: your timeline? Like, at what point would you be frustrated
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: if you didn't have your Walleye boat a couple of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: months Oh, you like he wants that boat because well
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: his buddy Staths just went out and bought a boat
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the old fashioned way work and that military just work
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and take your money and buy a boat. Now he's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: out pounding wall eyes and Chester's just sitting around hitting
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and refresh on his bitcoin account. I went with him.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: You gotta tasted a good life. I gotta taste and
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that was all I needed. Yeah, you gotta pace yourself though,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you don't want to make the wrong purchase. That's true,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and right now it's really hard to find as a
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: guy that has done that myself. Well what Chesters think
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: about doing it all? Honesty? Chesters thinking about selling his
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: drift boat, putting the drift boat money toward the wall
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: eye boat, and then promptly getting back into bitcoin just
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: to make just to make screw you money. Yeah, smart move.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I I did something similar. I had a raft with
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a fishing frame, sold that upgraded to a drift boat.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: But that was when I moved to the Lewis and
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Moscow area. Now realized I couldn't get to where I
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: needed to to fish salm and steelhead, sturgeon, cocone, you
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: name it. And now I have a power boat m
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: sold them, so just often upgraded. What's that drift boat worth?
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Probably Hunterbucks motor that I'm torn because you know right now,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm not the kind of guy who probably should
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: be buying a wallet boat. You know, just you're gonna
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: earn it like this way. That doesn't have any impact
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: because this is money you found in a drawer. True, well,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't find it storing it a drawer. I worked
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: for it. The we were just talking. Boat boats are
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a hot topic because there are no boats on the
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: market right now. That's very It is a seller's market,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: you could say, right, low inventory, lots of demand. Now
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: is the time to get top dollar for that drift boat.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And I have a raft you can borrow any time
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: you want. Thanks Cal, Yeah, it's nice. Everybody wins with condition.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Cal gets invited on every Walleye trip. Oh I already decided.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I told him if he needs to drive to Wisconsin
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and get a sweet Walleye boat, he can take my truck,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: because he's not talking about as if he ends up
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: with a big lake Walleye boat, he all of a a
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: sudden needs a vehicle to tow that boat. And then
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: later years from now, you'd be like, how did you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: get that boat out here from Wisconsin? Oh, that's right,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: you took my truck. That's right, tuck um can can
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: we ask you? Can you put your your former game
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: warden hat on? And I want to run a question
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: by this. This This is a hard question to ask. I
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: just chooing fairness to the audience. I teed it up. Yeah,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I asked it was okay to ask it um our governor.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Here in Montana, there's been some articles written, uh, with
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: what I have found to be a decidedly um misleading
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: collection of headlines about the governors sort of like illegally
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: uh you know, like illegally kills a Yellowstone wolf. So
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact headline. It was such that
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I thought when I saw the headline, I thought, man,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it's so ungovernored, like to go into Yellowstone National Park
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and shoot a wolf. That's what I thought. Reading the headline.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is a big deal, you know.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: And I read the article and I'm like, the third
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: or fourth paragraph or the article, I get to what
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like what happened actually transpired? Not to make an apology
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: for it, but it's just it was like it was
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: funny that in in searching for a headline, people that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: wanted to make it something like you put down like
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: dead killed Yellowstone Wolf. It's like, you know what's gonna
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: be sticky? Right? Um? What did happen was if if
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: you go online here and you're from Idaho, but you
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: go online in this state and buy a trapping permit, Um,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: there's there's a season two travels. You're trapping permit is
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: good for all trapping activities, with the exceptional one thing
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you need to do an online certification, like you need
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: to take an online course. There's a there's a quiz
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: in it. I don't know, mostly some kind of thing
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to make sure you were actually paying attention. I gotta
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: believe there's because we in Idaho has a similar trapping
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: ed course specific to wolves. Okay, the wolf trapping course
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: above and beyond trapper education, so we don't we were
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: going to in this state, but we don't have trapper education.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I think that it came down to this is a tangent.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I think it was something like the state the state
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: agency was going to put it in place, but it
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: realized it was more it needed to be kind of
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: like a game commissioned decision or somehow it got put off.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: We still don't have the trapper education course, but they
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: were able to do it with wolves. If you've bought
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: another thing to be similar to this is when you
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: buy um. You know, when you buy a deer hunting license,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you don't need to take a test that shows you
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: can tell the difference between a white tail and the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: mule dere um. But when you buy a bear license
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: here you need to go on and take this little
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: primer that helps you distinguish black bear from a grizzly
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: so people don't accidentally, help prevent people accidently shooting grizzies.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Similar thing like that. Um, and it's pretty clear, like
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: it's it's clear you need to take this thing. I've
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: been on there and looked at the whole deal. Uh.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: So he trapped wolf like otherwise legally trapped wolf was
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: not yelloso on part. It was private property on a ranch.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Trapped wolf. I don't know what happened, but it turned
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: out that um. Uh, it turns out that he had
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: not gotten his Uh, he had not done the online certification,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: had a license, did all the other stuff, didn't have
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that online certification, didn't take the free of course, and
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: then there's been a um and was issued a warning. Hmm.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: What do you kind of imagine about, like what would
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: be your line of thinking in a situation like that,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like if we if we remove the title? Yeah, and
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that's the important part. I try to strip away the title. Yeah,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that you have someone who looked you know, it's quite
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: clear when you go on the website you're supposed to
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: do this thing forgot meant to get to it later
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: had read that part. Who knows, Um, how do you
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: view something like that? Yeah, So I think that's a
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: key part of it, is removing the title as though
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: it's just a regular person. And then you got to
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: look at well, what was their intent? Were they trapping
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: with NB? Seven fifties? Um? Were they absolutely targeting a wolf?
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Or was it incidental to kyo trapping? So once you
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: get to the bottom of that, and if it's as
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: simple as a hunter ed or a trapper head or
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: wolf trapper head equation, um, you know, I think it
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: depends on everything leading up to that. Like I said,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the whole the situation, in all the circumstances. Um. But
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you know, a warning for doing something like that, it's
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: in season. Um, you could legally harvest it. Uh. It
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: just the problem was that he didn't have the necessary
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: trapper ed or wolf trapper ed certification. And so you know, yeah,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: it's reasonable to get get a warning and you know,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: forfeit that wildlife since you didn't have, you know, the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: necessary certifications. So you feel that in in a in
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: an interview situation, when all the facts are presented, you
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: can see a scenario in which a warning is yeah,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: and I mean what what you're looking at, you know,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was the individual's intent to really buck the system and
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: not take the trapping course. I mean, how long does
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: it take? Does anybody know? Oh? Five minutes? Yeah, and
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: it's online, you know, in Idaho it's gosh, just a
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: twelve hour course. It might even be eight hours. Interesting
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: comparison wrap because it's like two out of three thing. Right,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: he had his trapping license, he had his wolf tag,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: but he didn't have the online certification. Yeah. Um, what
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: I have seen like down at the Hagerman Boat Ramp
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: in Idaho waterfowl scenario. Right, Idaho has the migratory bird
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: like the state migratory Bird endorsement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, migratory
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So you have your hunting license, you have your federal
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: migratory duck stamp, but you don't have the two dollars permit.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: But you don't have the two dollars the least expensive thing,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the two dollar thing, right, And I don't recall anybody's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: ducks being take. I've seen many people get ticketed on
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that boat ramp for that. I don't recall anybody's ducks
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: being Yeah. An example this is always bring up is uh.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: And I think I've mentioned it three times. A don't
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: think it's it's wherew do you say? What was that word? Illustrative?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know illustrative just right, I'm using that. Well,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: let's hear what you have to say that it was
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a guy uh. And I remember he does some he
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: does hunting media, and I remember that he you know, also,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: you see these articles that he was like, um, honey,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: without a license or poaching an elk or whatever. Right,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: and it gets presented that way because that's splashy. But
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: remember the thing being that he had his several hundred
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: dollar nonresident ELK tag but hadn't gotten the five dollar
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: bow hunter stamp. In a case like that, I'm not
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: excusing it like you need to have you need to
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: have it, like you know, you're responsible to know all this,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: like absolutely, but you look and you when you look
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: at the intent thing, I can't picture someone being like
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and I know how to save five bucks, Like it
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: has to be another explanation besides someone you look for
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: another explanation besides someone just pulling a fast one, you know,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and you would see that, you know, that's a really
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: good example because in Idaho and Cali you're probably familiar
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: with this, is that you now need archery d to
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: get your archery permit, your validation. And so it could
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: be a system now where people are in that age
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: class that they would have to take archery education um
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to get that permit that they don't want to take.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: They don't want to waste the time to take however
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: many hours there it is. You know, you just gotta
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: look at all the circumstances, uh to to to find
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a lesson. Here, I would point out, I'm finding a lesson.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Imagine the uh imagine the embarrassment and distraction that one
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: goes through in a situation like this. It's really just pays.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: It really pays to when you're engaging in a new activity,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: when time has gone by and the rules might have changed,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: an it pays to Uh, I'll put it this way.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I sometimes when we're going to a new state, I'm
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: learning to have to be a practice to lay out
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: to someone like, here's the things I have, Here's what
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I want to do. Am I missing anything in my
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: pile of stuff? Here? Like? Am I getting this right?
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And a big part of solving that is getting also
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: getting licenses from places where the vendors are familiar with
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the rules. This is not the dog on Walmart, but
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I've had to go into Walmart's um where they have
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: a sporting good section, and I've had to go in
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and argue with people about what I need. Right, It's
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: nice to go to a place where and again I'm
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: not I'm not trashing. It provides great service. Right, if
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: people go buy stuff there, it's wonderful. But um, to
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: go to a place where you have more subject matter expert,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: more likely to encounter a subject matter expert, and take
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: the time to be like at the end of your
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: transact in the middle of it, be okay, I'm doing this,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: but I might do this and what if this happens? Like,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: am I is my situation dialed. Yeah, I would see
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: that a lot. Is that, Well, hey I bought I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: bought my stuff at this vendor and they said I
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: had everything I needed and it was you know, and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: what do you say that. It's just like, well you
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: don't have everything. Please go back, Please go back and
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: get your archery validation, Like I'm telling you you don't
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: have it, you know, And it's a simple fix, you know.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: But very good point, Steve. I mean, you gotta go
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: to the subject matter expert and and choosing a place
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: like that or maybe a gas station may not be
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the right place. You got to where it's like the
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: crusty old guy who is not going to let you
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: purchase anything until you've heard the fifteen minute history of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: the game unit lines being redrawn and it's not the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: way it was when he was a kid, and here's
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: how he knows. And then you can get down to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: actually giving that person money and getting out the door,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: as opposed to the just give me the thing and
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: with the right stuff. Uh okay, the a little bit
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: more on the we covered the We're there Chester when
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: we covered the hairy eyeball disease. Yeah, fascinating, man, what's
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: it called weird stuff corneal dermoids. I don't know until
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: very recently there's a it can hit humans. It's all
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: manner of mammal species where somehow you're eyeball becomes hairy,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: like the hair making stuff basically your eyeball somehow turns
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: to basically skin and then it starts growing hair. Like yeah, crazy.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: If you're a human, you can imagine it's probably you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: all kinds of ways to fix it. But this this
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: deer turns up blind like his problem in each eye.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Both eyes probably got worse and worse and worse and
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: worse till one day that deer was flat old blind
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and its eyeball it's just hair. Yeah. The the the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I think the case that's being referenced is they were
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I think they determined that this was something that came
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: that that evolved over time, versus the deer being born
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: with harry eyeballs. Because of the way that they're like,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: there's some learning how would have gotten that old, right,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: there's some learned behavior here that probably couldn't come about
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: any other way than if the deer could see up
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: to a serious point and then and then it haired over. Well,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: then plus the helplessness of it. But the reason I
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: bring this back up is this guy, a listener of
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the show, sends in a picture from a cow elk
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: from New Mexico. Um, it's not my inst Graham, So
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: if you go to add Stephen Roanella you'll find the um.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Make sure to hit follow. Are you there you'll find
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the a picture of this one. This Harry Eyeball, and
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: this is an elk shot. His body shot it, and
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: he says. The funny thing is his body who shot
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: the elk is blind in the same left eye. So
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the hunter in the elk have a bum eye left side.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: And this elk has hair. It's like as long as
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Phil's hair, way way longer than Cal's hair. It's pretty gross.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Let me see how long your hair is. Chester. Yeah,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I'm losing it about the length of Phil in Chester's
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: hair sticking out of his eyeball. Oh oh, I honestly
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: can't believe those those pictures weren't flagged for sensitive material
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: because some stuff on your on your Instagram has it.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I thought shouldn't be. But the cross Harry, you can
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: see an argument CROs Harry Eyeball, it is still Yeah,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: wid wide open to all viewers. Someone's telling me that
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: there's a medical Instagram page that gets flagged all the time.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: So you can be trying to be constructive and helpful
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and educational and still get flagged. It's people really don't
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: like looking at these hairy eyeballs. Yeah, that's what I
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: say when I see that, phil Um, if you find
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: if we keep going, talk about a couple more things, Yeah,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I like. I think I like the next one. Honestly
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: into this one. You know, we're gonna talk about really
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: to talk to Karin, who's not here because she's not here. Evidently, No,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: she'd normally be here. She's not here, she's in Texas.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Crint just told you we're gonna talk about I'm forty sure,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: I know. Does it feel like you're kind of watching
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the sausage you get made when you have our when
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: you have our stuff, there's a little bit of sausage making. Yeah.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: How would you eight Karin as a producer? Oh she's
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a top notch Yeah, I really. I gave her kudos
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: the other day for that Preston Pittman piece. Yeah that
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: was fantastic. Yeah, it's springing, but you know, just he's always, always,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: admired him when I was younger. Yeah, I love you know,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: as an young turkey hunter and he was, you know
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: it back then been shot twice. Can't argue with that,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: oh boy. But then it's also his you know, his
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: sage advice at the end. It was really great. He's
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: a class act. Phil, you know what you ought to
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: think about? Uh? I like, I like trail camps so much,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: A trail camp pictures so much that, um, if we
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: had an opening, like like, I don't know what it
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: would look like. Oh, you know what we could use is,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: um remember J Giles band centerfolds? Yeah, standard entertaining. Maybe
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: a little something with that, maybe to intro the segment
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: caught on this is caught on trail cam. Um, so
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I'll be like tonight on caught on trail cam. Two
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: bucks mounting each other. This is interesting. Cal is gonna
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: give us a report on this. So a guy sending
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: some pictures of a buck mounting another buck. So buck
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: mounting a buck for about six seconds. Turns out there's
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: this whole world of it's an obvious question why how'd
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: that come to be? And there's even like an acronym
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: for it, S S B S s B stands for
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: it should be s S s B. It stands for
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: same sex sexual behavior in wild Yanni's opinion, Yanni had
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: always thought it was related to like his gas was,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it was related to dominance. You know, they're always like
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: fighting and posture and doing all kinds of stuff, and
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: it's like a dominance thing. One day, I was turkey
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: out with my kids. We were talking to a cattle
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: rancher because all of his cows were all mounting each other,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and for the life of me, I cannot remember what
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: he told me. Hopefully a cattle guy can write it,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and we should have called one. I think he had
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: just maybe weaned. No, you wouldn't be turkey season. You're
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: not weaning him. No, not am No, there's a thing
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: he told me, how long is our gestation period? Cal
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: you're not you're not pregning them yet. They don't have
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a leven month gestation period. No, they have a brand
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: new calf. Yeah, but they're all mounting each other. Those
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: would be probably the steers from the year before, right,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: It's not what that would be. Oh, yeah, I should
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: be paying attention. Yeah, my kid was real curious about
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: all the mountain going on. He told us, And I
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: must have been distracted by something, because for the life meeting,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: we've got great people. There's a big cattleman I email
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: with down in Florida. He's headed like the Florida cattleman's
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: he'd tell me, damn sure, what's that count? Gestation period?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Two three days? That's that's an average between like our
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: our most common domestic cattle breeds. I bet you it's
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: a year ling. It's the yearlying that's doing that, particularly
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: year linter steer. I bet you I got a turkey
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: hundred yards from there. We had that conversation after hunting
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: turkey winter range. Yeah, yeah, big time. I probably wouldn't
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: tell people that that might dispel some of my perceived expertise. Um, well,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: he's what what Eric's referring to. There is it in
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: the inner Mountain West where winners are very severe and
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: where problem that were they're not historic populations of turkeys.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: They have a way of in the winter finding their
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: way down to a cattle graining operation, find the biggest
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: feed lot you can, and disperse and in migrate like
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: considerable distances from those places, but you'll have it. You
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: might have a rancher that's feeding cattle, and all of sudden,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: come February, he's got thys. Yeah, he's got every turkey
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: within twenty mile. See it all across the west. And
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: then as soon as things start to green up, they
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: just get bored and leave. And then they go off
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and do turkey stuff. Yeah, everybody talks about how important
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: you know, mule and their winter ranges, what we need
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to do to protect them. Geez, those turkey winter ranges. Yeah,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: it's pretty valuable. It should be like if you love turkeys,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: hug a feed lot. Hug feed lot manager. All right,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I'll lay it on for us. Uh. Well, I think
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the It's interesting that this topic also popped up right
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: because Krant and I were talking about Preston and and
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: he was talking about the homosexual turkey. He's like, there's
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: two who thinks that the turkeys either homosexual or the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: turkey's like being shot out before or something like to
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: account to account for why I would have no interest
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: in the cause of a hen in coming in and
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: um we there's a discussion that followed of like is
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: that correct? Is that just like an off the cuff
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: type of this is this is my reasoning and there's
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: no reason for it. Good observation from a blitzman trying
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: to find an excuse for a long beard not coming
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: in right, exactly right. But I was like, well, homosexual
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: behavior in a huge variety of animals is is very
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: well documented stuff. I mean, it is a plausible and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: it is a pure reviewed possibility. You could say, right,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: people have written papers on this. Um. And then you
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: can go even further, and there is the sexual Uh
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: what's the sexual ginandromorphism? Sexual dimorphism, not dimorphism that that's
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: just a difference in size. Oh yeah, there it is.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Bilateral ginandromorphs were half siders. Uh. And I did enough
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: digging around. Super fascinating, but it's odd that it's the
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: most apparent in birds. And you can have a true
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: fifty fifty split and a um down the middle down, yeah,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: down the middle. And uh, there's a uh guy in
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania who got a couple of good pictures of a
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: bilateral ginandro morph a cardinal in Pennsylvania, which is you know, uh,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: split directly down the middle, red male resembling cardinal on
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: one side, female resembling cardinal on the opposite side. And um,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: this is documented enough to where he didn't turn the bird.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I didn't kill the bird in and dissect it.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: But ah, science would say that this bird has both
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: ovaries and testes. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: word bilateral jnando in jnando ginandral morphs half siders. That's
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: really something, man. Yeah, I mean I thought so. But
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons people struggle with this with like
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: same sex of behavior and animals because you want to
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: look at it like everything they do must right, has
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: to be reproduction, has to be reproduction, else doesn't make
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: any sense, right, But so that's the case, then you
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: have to d um to male deer attempting to mount
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: one another. Uh, there's no points which are not reproducing,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: so like that shouldn't happen, that's not reproduction. Yeah, and
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: then you can go away down the rabbit hole. And
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: and there's all sorts of papers of all sorts of
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: animals performing sexual acts that have that do not relate
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: to reproduction worms from worms to drafts, including dolphins, lions, bison's, walrus,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: many birds. Yeah, there's a paper out of Japan those
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: cool looking snow monkeys that oh I don't think those
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: monkeys are cool looking. Ice coated monkey, icy monkey in
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the hot spring is too much for me, Icy hot
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: spring monkey. There's a lot for me to handle. They
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: there is a paper out there that has there, you know,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: as all papers do, started with an observation led to
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: a question of is this a one time thing or
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: does this happen all the time? But those uh monkeys
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: hop on top of the deer that come down to
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the hot springs and eat And maybe we did cover
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: it on the Meat Eat podcast that the female of
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: female monkey would hop on a deer and then and
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: ride the deer until it found some sexual release and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: then you know, I head back to the hot spring. Yeah. Incredible, Yeah,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: which might be something somewhere you've seen in your time
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: in law enforcement around hot springs and a lot of
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: geothermal over there. What's what's more remarkable than that the
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: monkey does it is that the deer tolerates it. Yeah,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that the deers like do they tolerate or do they
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: seem too? Yeah? I forgot about that story. Did you
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: cover that on Cale's weekend review? I think so? It's
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: hard hundred episodes. Yeah, who the hell knows what you covered?
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: We we just just finished a hundred episodes. Phils nodding. Yeah,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that's right. We can kind of off our regularly scheduled
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: programming the last for we're gonna get back to the
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: news hard news cycle here on one on one. Uh,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: how do you get I want to talk about this,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: this explanation for what's this what's the an acronym SSB
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: same sex behavior, Same sex sexual behavior one explanation, I
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: should say it's an explanation. But like a thing to
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: think about is that you have to imagine like life
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: in all of its forms UM and when you had
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: life forms that had you know, but not that we
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: don't anymore. We still do life forms that have UM
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: less pronounced sexual dimorphism appearances side whatever that UM. Maybe
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: at a time when you encountered or maybe amongst some species,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: you encounter a look alike and the one organism doesn't
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: know about the other organism what it is male female, right, Yeah,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: and they just they couple. Well. I think that where
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: you're going with it is the fact that this has
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: been happening for a long time in a number of species.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is that it is
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: self limiting because there is no reproduction. Yeah, that that's
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: the part that I found so interesting about it, says,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And so we hypothesize that present day diversity and sexual
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: behavior and animals stems from an ancestral background of you'll
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: like that, you'll appreciate this indiscriminate mating among individuals indiscriminate
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: may indiscriminate mating among individuals of all sexes, and some
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: branches of the animal tree of life, where SSB is
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: actually quite costly, this behavior might be selected against. Yeah,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: takes energy, takes energy, takes a lot of energy. You
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: think about a lot, Cal, Oh, yeah, no, it's yeah.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're facts of life stuff. There's just a
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: lot of life out there. Is this kind of funny
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: when people talk about this stuff. Was if they've got
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: like lab coats and clipboards. But maybe I'm being basic
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: and crude here, but it's sort of like it's like
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: why are we all kind of wondering why why these
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: animals have these same sex interactions when we we just
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: have to like look at each other and look at humans, like,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: because we're not the same films, we didn't come from
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: No monkey, Yeah that's true, Cal, But I mean, like
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe I'm just maybe Occam's Razors and the way
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: to Go. But I'm just kind of thinking, like, well,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: maybe they're just horny and sexuality is a weird, complex spectrum.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: There's something I'm attracted to. God, yeah it is is,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: but you know, and that's like the odd thing, right.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: It's like there's gonna be a chunk of the folks
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: listening who are like, hey man, it's not Adam and Eve.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: But the thing is, it's like, well, boy, it's weird
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: that birds do it, and bees do it, and and
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: worms do it and do it to do it and
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: they've been around, they have a long time. Yeah. I
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: don't look at it as I don't look at it is?
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Should they? I just look at it as huh okay,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah. But I mean it's it's just kind
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: of funny. We're like wondering, well, like why would they
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: expend their energy if the whole thing is to reproduce?
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: And like I totally understand that, but how many animals
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: when they engage in is it called coitus when it's
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: animals when they have sex, how many of them have
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I know that they are they have a chance to
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: reproduce and create another just acting on instinct, like I
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: have this weird urge to do this, and I'm gonna
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: do it. That's we're intelig enough to teach our kids
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: and we know what will happen if this happens. Animals
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: c cucumber saying here's what I'm gonna do. Yeah, I'm
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: gonna make a lot more c cucumbers. When I expel exactly,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: is he just he's just he's just doing what he
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: feels like doing, whether it's a male or a female.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: So like Darwin had this theory, right, and that was
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: a long long time ago, And like I just read
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: a paper last year on giraffe specifically, right, and it's
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: like old giraffe's like the young bull old bowl thing, right,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: And there's like young giraffe bowls do a lot of mating,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and the ones that made the most do not live
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: as long because they're they're really working hard, and the
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: ones that don't put that much effort into maating live
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: a lot longer. And because they live a lot longer,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: they end up having more offspring m you know. And
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: it's like, but you gotta work really hard, you know,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And you know, there's the observation also of there's all
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: sorts of communities out there that are it's like there,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a frenzy of sexual activity.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And the selection process isn't anything that we kind of
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: come to the conclusion of of like is there actually
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: selection process? If there was, then look at all the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: connections happening here, and why would any of that make sense? Right? So,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: I mean it's it's all good questions, but no, like
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: my conclusion isn't like I'll be damned. Yeah. What justifies
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: me in feeling that I can go like, huh, is
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: because they're writing about it in like science and nature. Yeah,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: so there's still obviously a lot of there's someone like
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: there's some scientific validity, and I don't think it can
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: all be captured. I don't think you'd be like all
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: cases are um pleasure inducing, all cases are mistaken attempts
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: to reproduce, all cases are dominance. I mean could it's
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: probably this giant spectrum of impulses and desires. Uh, and
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: then you like overlay that on what humans do, right,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: And it's just like until we can figure out a
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: way to start um interviewing all of these species and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: animals and and get some get some straight facts. Uh,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: you know what, it seemed like he did this when
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: you were younger. You identified as female when you were
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: younger and had millions of babies, but now you're male.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Why did you choose to do that? You know, it's
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: like it's hard to apply it. You know, it's like
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: nature is freaking fascinating and awesome. Yeah. Why is it
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: legal to sell a mounted animals? Not that kind of
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: not anytime amounting situation, but like a shoulder mount right
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: with hide on it, horns on it or antlers on it,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: whatever the case may be. But it is illegal to
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: trade meat. So stems back to Lacy Act days early
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: early on in the commercialization of wildlife, and so you
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: don't want to profit off of um meat, specifically meat,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: because there absolutely is a value to wild game meat.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: You know, you can go to the grocery store and
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: see domestic meat and see what value is placed there.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: And so if it was incentivized to sell edible portions,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: it would be a huge problem. And that's what you know,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: primarily what we saw with the Lacy Act and the
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: development of that and other things, the Migratory Bird Act
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: with trying to take away the value monetary value of
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: specific wildlife and so um, that's why you know the
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: basics of why you can't I'll meet game meat, but
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: you can sell but a lot of times you can't
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: sell of some things and some circumstances. You can't sell
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: raw hides. Yeah yeah, sometimes you processed, Yeah, like you
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: The only way. The only outlet, at least in Idaho,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure this is consistent across the United States,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: is you can only sell a green hide. What Steve
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: is talking about, So his Martin hides or his beaver
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: hides that are green haven't been tanned. The only person
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: you could sell that too is a fur buyer that
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: is permitted and licensed. You can't just go out and
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: sell him on the street. Green. Um sounds going to
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: add to that? Oh that you can capes, you know
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: you can make like I've sold cape soft things. I
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: sold a cape one time for a thousand dollars. I
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: was standing right next to a friend who sold a
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: cape one time for six hundred bucks. Or if you
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: have a tax numbers who has a client. Let's say
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: a guys shoots a big something. She's a big but
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: hits it through the neck and he's gonna put all
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: this money in New Mouth, but the next is no good.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: So they wanted they want the cape, the neck hied
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: off another dude to put the antlers out so it
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: looks normal. Those are canna be quite valuable. You can
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: strip that thing right off and sell it. Yeah. Yeah,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: And here I thought I was doing good with a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: forty white tail cape that I'd sell. Well, these weren't
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: white tails. Yeah, but you know, I'm sure something to
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: the right person. But uh, it's just interesting, right, it
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't How can I sell you that? But but I
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: can't sell you some neck meat too, Yeah, Nope, you can't. Yeah.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: And I once sold the full cape of a white
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: tail buck, big bodied white tail buck to attack sermist
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: in trade for him tanning my bare hide which you
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: were barbering. Yeah, a little barber. Weren't trained neck meat. No, no, no,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: no neck meat. So you can see how, without knowing
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: the full story, you can see how people would look
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: at that and be like that makes zero sense. Absolutely, yeah.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: And it's just about creating a commercial you know, situation
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: and monetizing it. That's the biggest problem. And you do
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: see in commercialization of wildlife cases. You know, it's not
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: always about horns because it's a lot easier to get meat,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: and so you will occasionally see a case where they're
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: just out you know, spotlighting deer to commercially sell the
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: meat because it it has value. When they put the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: laws into effect, um, they tailored it like you know.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: And and one of the things that inspired Theodore Roosevelt
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: to do the conservation work that he did was the
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: what's that word the plant planet? What's that word for
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: hunting feathers? Plumage, plumage mark? What is the word for that?
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Isn't there like a not plenary but like feather hunters?
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: So oh of shorebirds, yeah, like beautiful shorebirds. You know,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: people would want the feathers to decorate like like honestly,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: to decorate hats. And there were people that made living
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: shooting beautiful shorebirds, herons whatever to get togethers um and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: there they you know, you addressed it specifically, like the
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: market for big game was there was a market for meat.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: So they're addressing the meat thing. There's a market for
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: feathers on sather things, so they addressed like that market, like,
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: can't sell those feathers because that's what people are after.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: So it might leave room for like the things you
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: can sell weren't things they were trying to address. Like
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: if deer were being driven to extinction by cape hunters,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: they probably address selling capes. But this wasn't the case.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: It could be something to do with meat. Would be
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: harder to track the source. It's just meat. But if
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: somebody's trying to sell up drop double drop time buck,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to be in today's day and age,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: easier to try and figure out who got that sucker,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: came for whatnot? That's driving me crazy. It's like plenary
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: plan it's something I'll give. I'll give someone chapters bitcoin
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: to whoever can figure out what the hell that word is.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: It's not the plumage deal. That's a that's a good word,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: but that's not the word. Come on, someone find find it.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I would type in something along the lines of millinary
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: that it's not plenary specific to you Chester, how much
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: bitcoin you're gonna give kel Well, I think it's specific
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to hats. Yeah, the feather hats people back then at
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century like feathered caps, and they
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: were shooting shore birds to near extinction. Some of the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: big places that became like Wetland's refuges were made. Refuges
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: is protected from the millinary what's the word millinary? The
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: millinary trade? Try this went on, you can you can
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: have you can weigh in on this. As a game
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Ward former game Ward, it was it's pretty caught and dry.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: But a guy from Maryland rights and this is this
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: is funny. This is a good one got from Maryland.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Justin from Maryland writes in about a disagreement between his
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: hunting club members. So when you go, he says, this
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: is true in Maryland, but this is true everywhere. It's
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: called it's something or another. Kell tells if you go,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: like right now fall comes around, you decide to go
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: hunt migratory waterfowl, you will be presented with a set
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: of questions about what happened to you last year when
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: you went hunting. It'll be like ducks zero to five,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: five to twenty and higher whatever to help geese, like
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: what you get right, and you get down and you'll
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: get into weird stuff and be like coots and rails,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: you know, zero to five and you check just trying
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: to get a sense of what all you got. What's
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: that called hip? Yeah, that's the Harvest Information Program. Yeah, yep. Yeah,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: sometimes have dubs on there too. Any of the migratories,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: they're just trying to figure out what's going on. But
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: apparently in Maryland they have either either justin here is
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: confusing Maryland's own thing with the federal thing, or Maryland
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: does their own thing. But he says he's belongs to
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a duck club and Maryland has a questionnaire. He says,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: in his duck camp, there are two sets of opinions
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: about how to handle this questionnaire. Camp number one is
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: that you lie and say you got fewer than you did,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: because the DNR, the Department Natural Resources there will look
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: and be, oh, not that many geese got killed last year.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Let's allow everyone to kill more. Now. Camp two is
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: you lie and say you got more than you got,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: because then the d n I will think, geez, if
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: they're killing that many geese, there must be a lot
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: of geese. We should let him kill more. His camp
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: is why not just tell him how many geese you
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: got and we'll let them figure it out. And that's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the camp. A guy should be got a game that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: we don't understand the game or the system, but we
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: got a game to sis. It's clear by that explanation.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: They don't understand that. It's like, like, the one thing
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: we all agree on here is we're gonna gain the system.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: How to do that is where we find discord. All right,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: here's another listener feedback. It's not really a question. It's
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: more like a I don't know what you call it.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: You can decide eric what we call This guy writes
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: in he lives in Gloucesters. How you say that Gloucester, Gloucester, Massachusetts.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: He calls it taxi Chusetts. He doesn't taxi Chusetts. And
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: here's this problem, and this is legitimate. Gripe I got
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: his back on this freshwater licenses. So if you're in Massachusetts,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: historically you need it. You didn't need a freshwater fishing license.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: The freshwater fishing license sales went to fund the state
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: Phishing Game Agency. And as we've covered a million times,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and I'll say it one more time, your state fishing
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: game agencies get their revenue to do all the things
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: they do um ranging from access enhancement, to law enforcement,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: to disease research, to all the things that go into wildlife,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: making sure we have wildlife, making sure we can access wildlife,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: like all that stuff gets funded by and large through
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: excise taxes and license revenues. So the people that buy
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing licenses, um, whether they're aware of this
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: or even care about this or not, that's what your
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: licensed money does. But massive use. It's recently introduced a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: saltwater license. Okay, so this is true of a lot
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: of coastal states, a lot of coastal states. Fresh they
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: have different freshwater licensed, saltwater license. They introduced saltwater license.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: And I can't believe, I can't believe we didn't hear
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: about this before. The saltwater license money goes into the
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: general fund. And let me back up and say the
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: general state fund. I'll back up and say this, when
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: when a state sells hunting, fishing licenses and other permits
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: and stamps and stuff, they're able to take that money
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: and use it for wildlife management? What you the the
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: federal government has the ability to make sure states don't
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: rob that money. Because you could picture to some guy
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: would be like the highway guy in a state is like,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: well look at those assholes and fishing game. They got
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: all that money, Let's take it and make a highway.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: What prevents you from robbing the fishing game agency of
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: their money and using it for non mission work is
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: then you'd be come ineligible for federal matching dollars that
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: come from excise taxes on sporting goods equipment. So they
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: got some muscle there. They're like, if you steal money
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: from your fishing if if you the state steals money
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: from your phishing game agency, we're gonna make you regret
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: it by kind of screwing you and not giving you
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: other money that you could have got. So it incentivizes
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: you to leave that money there. But they made a
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: saltwater license and it just goes into the general slush fund.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: According to this gentleman, it doesn't go into funding fishing game.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: And he's basically like what gives I don't know what.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: It sounds stupid to me. You lost, like stay to
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: do this all the time, Like I see this legislation
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: all the time where it's like there's a bunch of
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: money over here that we could be using for all
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: sorts of other things. Why don't we get some of that?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: And I know what you just explained about that if
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't read up on Massachusetts, uh uh, this this
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: particular case from Massachusetts. But Yeah, you gotta find yourself
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: a state lawmaker that wants wants to write this situation,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: because yeah, that that's a bunch of crap. If you're fishing,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: dollars don't go to fishing, they go to, you know,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: something like a school lunch program. You're out there catching lunch. Yeah,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: And I think it comes down to, you know, not
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: every state has a separate A lot of states get
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: their funding through general funds, um state coffers, through general
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: taxes and everything. So it would be curious to know
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: how Massachusetts rates with that, you know, for all, like
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: there could be some complexifying issues like how Missouri has
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: that license plate tax that helps fund wild but yeah,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: or you know, look at Oregon for a pretty good example.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Their fishing wildlife enforcement is under the Oregon State Police,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: So I don't know what percentage they get from Oregon
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Fishing Wildlife, Oregon Department Fishing Wildlife. But um, in comparison,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: you know in Idaho where I worked, there was it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: was just straight up licensed dollars. There was no general
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: fund money. And so what you were referring to before
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: was PR and DJ Pittman, Robinson and Dingle Johnson, which
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: are those federal excise taxes and usually it's at a
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: three to one. For every one dollar UM the state
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: puts forth, it gets three dollars matching. But pr DJ
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: can't be used for law enforcement. Oh yeah, you have
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to use your license revenue for law enforcement. Yep. Okay,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a promise to listeners if this is
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: totally If this is totally wrong, you won't be hearing this.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: If it's at least right enough to warrant the discussion
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: we're having, you will hear it. It's fair. Okay, yeah, uh, okay.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: You went to work for Trout Unlimited. I did you
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: got involved in samon sam in a steel Head primary
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: scope of work? Lay it out for me. What does
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the sculpt work like your job? When you apply for
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: your job, what was the job to script? Yeah, so
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: the job title was North Idaho Field Coordinator. Basically it
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: was just in summary UM policy work, outreach and engagement
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: work all associated with salmon and steel head throughout the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: snake of a basin. There's a little bit of my
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: work plan, my annual work plan that is dedicated to
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: what we refer to is upcountry UM protections. So part
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: of what UM the portion of trout and limited that
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I work for is the Angler Conservation Program, and so
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: we do all the outreach and engagement and policy stuff
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: in addition to our other staff. But that's the crux
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: of what we do. So a combination of cold water
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: fisheries related UM policy UM as well as like I said,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: public lands protections and so those up up country protections
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: would be UM what is affectionately called in the clear
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Water basin UM the Great Burn, So just an area
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: there and but then primarily my day in and day
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: out stuff is focused on SAM and a steel head
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: throughout the Snake River basin. And of course now there's
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: much more focus with Representative Mike Simpson's recent release of
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: his proposal, the Northwestern Transition. Yeah, and we're gonna be
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: uh in a moment here we're gonna be joined by
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Congresson Mike Simpson from Idah. How uh He's gonna lay
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: out this very UM ambitious, complicated, costly but I would
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: argue like extremely important to consider and pursue a version
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: of UM with all necessary tweaks made, but like to
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: move to to pursue a version of this meaning UM
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: the Snake River damn dilemma that we I would like
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: to see it that we switched to being um, yes,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: those damns have to go. How do we do it? Yeah? Yeah,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: and we do it as painlessly as possible. And I
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: think that this is you know, I'm sure there's any more.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: He's proposing a version of that, being like, it's got
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to happen. Um, we're in the driver's seat. Let's make up.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Let's make a palpable version for ourselves. How did you
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: before he comes out? How did you like, because you
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: introduced me to this and you you approached us about
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: having this conversation, how how did you guys? Worlds kind
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: of collide on this. Uh so UM trout a limit.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: It has been dedicated to restoring the lower snakes. So
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: when we refer to the lower snake, we're talking about
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: approximately a hundred forty miles stretch from the confluence of
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: the Columbia River down by Try States Washington up to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: um the Lewiston Clarkston area of Idaho, h forty aisles
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: of what is now a damned river for UM. Federally
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: UM managed hydro dams create an immense slack water and
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: so way back in the nineties, right shortly after the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: listing of most of the species within the Snake River basin.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: So we have saki that are listed as endangered starting
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: in ninety one and then up through with spring and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: summer chinook and fall schinook in the in the mid nineties,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: and then ninety seven kind of was the end of
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: it with steelhead being listed in the Snake River basin
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: has threatened and so UM way since that time try
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: to limit it has been UM of the opinion UM
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and rightfully so or a science based organization that the
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: removal of the four lower Snake dams would provide the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: best opportunity for recovery and restoration to those some monded
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: species throughout the Snake River basin. So since ninety seven,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: this is something that we've been dedicated to in a
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: variety of ways. UM. You know, not only the portion
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: of the organization that I work for. UM. We have
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: the water and Habitat program that does a lot of
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: the restoration work. People are very familiar with with with
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: what we do at Trout Unlimited, you know, and restoring
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: habitat throughout the Upper Salmon Basin in particular, and so
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: UM now we have found, you know, a champion, you know,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: for these fish and Representative Simpson. UM. And I think
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: that the really great part of his proposal is that
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: it's broad. It's not just focused on salmon or steelhead.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: It's in it's focused on the entire region, you know,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: looking outside of the borders of his not only is
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: congressional district, but outside the borders of Idaho throughout the Northwest.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: And how this can benefit everybody that is involved or
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: could be impacted by it. And I think that's the
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: most incredible thing, and that's really important to trout unlimited.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, restoring and recovering salmon and steel had
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: throughout that basin, but making sure of that all the
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: stakeholders come out whole. So yeah, do you guys, how
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: many I know you don't know the entire history because
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: you were busy doing your other job. Um, how often
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: do is something like this come along? Like this proposal,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: a proposal like this, This is a once in a
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: lifetime proposal. Yeah. I mean, here's the fact of the matter.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: So Ice Horror is the lowest snake or the lowest
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: dam on the Snake River. Um. It was completed in
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: ninety two. The furthest upstream uh damn on the Lower
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Snake is Lower Granite, which was completed in nine. Through
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the course of construction on those four Lower Snake River dance,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: we saw a very um steep declines in salmon populations
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and steel a populations that are it's clearly correlated to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the hydro development, okay, and just have not seen any
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: recovery of those numbers. Despite millions and millions of dollars annually,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: you know, into um mitigate efforts throughout the hydro system,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: throughout the basin and restoration, we still don't see it recover.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: And so here here comes a congressman from Idaho, UM
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: that hopefully will here. You know, he truly is a
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: conservation champion, UM and it's pretty remarkable of his accomplishments already.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: But here he brings forth this proposal that literally, like
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: I said, encompasses the entire Northwest that quite frankly could
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: be a once in a lifetime opportunity. And it's people,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: just look, it's a hundred forty miles of river that
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: you know is damned. Well, then we we look what's
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: above those damns, and how huge that landscape is, you know, humongous, humongous, Watershed.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: When we start talking about the clear water, the lock Saw,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: the Sellway, the Middle Fork, the Upper Salmon, and and
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of it is still in Christine habitat are
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Christine condition about of the historical spawning and rearing habitat
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: is still intact. And the Snake River basin that's something
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I had thought of. That's a good point. Yeah. And
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: I mean you're like, you're you're you're restoring access to
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: something that's ready to roll. Yeah. And and and Cal's
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: heard me make the comparison, and and it's it's it's
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: my my blind date comparison, you know. Is that Hey man,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: there's this, you know, I'm scheduled to go on a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: blind date, you know, tonight, and the place settings is
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: all set, there's beautiful silver, nice bottle of wine. But
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: my date, my date doesn't show up. Well, I'll come
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: back tomorrow. And my date doesn't show up. And the
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: same thing is with the habitat there, you know, and
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: or the table is set, it's beautiful, like it's gonna
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: be a good date tonight, but my partner doesn't show up,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: you know. And so that's the way you have to
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: look at it, you know. And when you have that
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: much intact habitat, it is beyond approach to not give
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: it the opportunity, those fish the opportunity to really maximize it,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: you know, And that's what we're looking to do. UM.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: Much of this based off of when we look at UM,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: how salmon are doing. And this is where people really
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: get confused. They're like, well, jeez, we're still fishing for them. Man.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: We had a great run, you know, just a couple
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: of years ago, which we've had our ups and downs. UM.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of that opportunity, all of that opportunity is
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: based on hatch reproduction. About thirty three million salmon and
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: steelhead smolts get released into the Snake River basin annually. UM.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: But when you look at what we refer to as
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: a smolt to adult return ratios, and so that's just
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: the simple idea that a hundred smolts outmigrate to the
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: ocean and one adult comes back. That's the simplest way
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: to do the math. That's one all right, UM, one percent.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: If you have one of anything, you're not reproducing, right,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: And so many of our populations are there now throughout
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: the Snake River basin. UM teetering just at you know,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: UH spring and summer chinook or teaching at point nine
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: percent UM the steel head summer steel head to inhabit
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: the Snaker basin are just over UM one percent, and
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: so we're not making what we refer to as two percent,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: which is the maintenance level. And so we strive through
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: lots of different UH venues, whether it's the Northwest Power
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: Planning Council UM or recently the Columbia Basin Collaborative, there's
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: a bunch of agreement on what the metrics should be.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: S a rs are that one metric from two to
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: six percent with an average of four percent is the
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: is the goal? Right down the Stank River basin, we're
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: not meeting that. And when you really start to look
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: outside of the basin and look at rivers that are
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: below the lower Snake and don't and fish that don't
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: have to pass four dams, you see much better s
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: a rs. You know, above two percent, you know, upwards
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: of five and almost close to six percent. So lower
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: in in the Columbia, you know, and this is this
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: goes back to this other idea of well it's all
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: ocean conditions. It's all ocean conditions. Look at every other
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: population throughout the range of salmon and steel heads. Steelhead, well,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: it is partly ocean conditions. Ocean conditions are something that
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: we as mankind can no longer control. Right now, we
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: can control the hydro system UM, and we have tried
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: to do that to increase s a RS, but haven't
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: haven't figured out that that magic bullet. And so here
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: comes to Representative Simpson with this bold um all encompassing plan,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: you know that takes everything into account. There's a question
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: that comes up all the time, Like I saw it,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: a bunch of like why aren't hatcheries uh at performing
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: at capacity? Like we're not running the camp the full
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: capacity of our hatcheries. If we did that, then we'd
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: have enough. Yeah and so, and that comes back to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: this idea that thirty three million Smoltz isn't enough, right,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: and that we need more. But hatchery fish underperformed wildfish
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: right now as it is, so they have even lower
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: essa RS than what we see UM in wildfish. Never
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: mind that the the figure that is used to evaluate
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: the productivity of the hatcheries is the adult returns. That
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: is what UM. The funding mexicum mechanism for most of
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: the hatcheries throughout the basin, which is approximately seventeen or
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: so UM. It through comes through Lower Snake camp Um,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: which is funded partially through Bonneville Power UM, the main
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: electric and entity that operates the whole hydra system. But
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: adult returns are how they are evaluated, and not once
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: have they met their adult return goals. So just by
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: increasing more smolts it's likely because of the essay rs,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: because of the impact of the hydra SYSM, it's not
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: gonna roof, you know, and it doesn't just by producing
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: more hatchery fish doesn't get us to recovery or restoration,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: and we can spend a lot of money on hatchery fish. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I mean it's annually. Lower snake comp in the Stinker
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Ever basin is funded at thirty one million dollars annually,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: and that's just flushing fish down the system, you know,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: and hope that there's gonna be opportunity, and you just
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: want to be there when they're doing that, because the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: bull trout fishing is unbelievable. Catch these balls that are
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: just there, uh spewing salmon small and steel had small
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: out when you when you pick them up, it's amazing
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: expensive Belgians. Yeah, I was talking to a a guy in
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: a bar and catch can one time, and he was
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: working at a hatchery, a coho hatchery, and cohoes, you know,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: they stay in the in the natals spawning stream an
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: extra year, right, so um, when they go out there,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: pretty big. They spend a lot longer in the river.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: So when you have a coh hatchery, you need to
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: rear the co host a lot longer than some other
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: salmon's that that that don't need as much time. And
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and sort of like in stream incubation. He
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: was saying, they'd go out and and uh let some
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: of the release some of these hatchery releases into the ocean,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and these humpbacks, humpback of whales would get onto that,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: he said. You'd see that mouth come up, you know,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: and he'd be like, well, there goes a quarter million
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: dollars a quarter million dollars or so we're gonna jump
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: over and talk now. And thanks for the introduction here
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: talking now to Congressman Mike Simpson from Ida. Hope, Oh Okay,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: without much further ado, we are joined to buy Congressman
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Mike Simpson from Idaho. Uh, Congressman Simthic. You lay out
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: for us a little bit about some of the some
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: of the issues you've been involved in in your career
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: that are pertinent hunters and anglers and and outdoors people
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: like some of the areas in which you've played and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: influenced the world we live in. Sure, you have to
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: remember that in Idaho, most people live here because they
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: love our outdoors, They love our public lands, They love
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: the fish and hunting and recreate in uh in our
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: public lands. So I've been very active and trying to
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: maintain those public lands. Whether it was through the Boulder
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: White Clouds initiative that created the wilderness for the Boulder
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: White Clouds, it had been wilderness study area for years,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: and I came to conclusion and somebody need to make
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: a determination what was going to be wilderness and what
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: was going to be released for multiple use. So we
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: passed that bill. It took about fifteen years to get
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: it done, but we got that done. And then one
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: of the things I think I'm proud of Stu is
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: the Great American Outdoor res Act the past just last
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: year or year four last I guess, uh and uh
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: you know that deals with land and water conservation fund
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: and fully funding it. That also maintains access, and that
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: was one of the important parts of this, the access
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: for hunters and anglers and those types of things. You
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: can love the public lands, but if you can't have
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: access to them, it doesn't really mean much. So I
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: think that was one of the strongest environmental bills has
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: probably passed since the Wilderness Acts. So I've been actively
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: involved in these issues for a number of years, both
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: relative to Idaho and the nation as a whole. And
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: now you're setting your setting your sights on um helping
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: us through making a plan about what we're gonna do
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: about some of the damns we have on the major
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: salmon rivers in the West. Uh. I want to get
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: to I want to get through a little bit of
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: history for people first. But can you um, you know,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: encapsulate what you're what you're proposing, How you became interested
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: in this subject. Sure, you know this has been a
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: debate that's been going on for twenty five or thirty
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: years in the Pacific Northwest. You're seeing Idaho salmon runs
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: declined substantially. In fact, they're on the path to extinction
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: if we don't do anything else. The other issue is
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: the Bonneville Power administration and the fact that at one
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: time they were the lowest cost producer of energy in
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. And so consequently all your rural electrics
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: and others used Bonneville Power power because it was the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: cheapest they could get. There no longer the cheapest in
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. So on the one hand, how do
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: you make Bonneville Power sustainable for the future and competitive
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: for the future. UH, And one of the one of
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: the things that has to be done is to end
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the salmon wars, the endless litigation that that occurs about
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest. And UH to do
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: that if you're gonna return Idaho salmon runs that are
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: on the endangered list, almost every fish biologist that I've
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: talked to says that you're gonna have to remove the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: lower Sneak River ams. So we put out a concept
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: that does that. But of course, what you say you're
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: gonna read you're gonna retire those dams or remove those dams.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: Then you have to look at what are the value
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: of the dams, and what does that do to the stakeholders,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: and how do you compensate the stakeholders or put them
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: in a better position than they were before. So if
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: you can do that, if you can read, if you
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: can make the stakeholders hold again, if you can remove
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: the dams to help restore the salmon, you can end
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: the lawsuits, and if you can make b P a
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: competitive that's a huge task. UH. It's something that we've
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: been working on, working on for about three years, and
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: we've had about three meetings, maybe as many as five
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: hundred meetings with different constituency groups about the issues that
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: surround that. UH. And that's that's what we've been doing
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: over the last three years. We released a concept in
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: UH in February so that people could talk about it. UH.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: As I said, this is a discussion that has to
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: happen UH, and I'm glad we started it and now
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: we'll see where it goes. Would you mind helping, UH
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: help listeners understand why the damns were put in place.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: You know, it's one of these things I think were
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Now there's such a you know, a widely held predominant viewpoint.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: It seems that you know, a widespread acknowledgement that they're
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: very problematic. UM. But they were built, Yes, why were
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: they built and and what was the conversation about what
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: was the debate when they were being built, like like,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: how well did people anticipate the you know, the havoc
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: that would be wrought by constructing the dams. Well, you know,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: it's interesting if you go back to the the Ice
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Harbor Dam, which is the first one that you reach
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: after you leave the Columbian Head up the Snake River,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: the first of the four that was authorized in the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: Army Corps of Engineers requested funding for it every year
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: in their budget request. Congress refused to fund it. And
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: if you read the statement of the chairman of the
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Appropriations Committee when he was asked why they didn't put
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: funding in for the Ice Harbor Dam, he said because
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: building this damn would be the eventual extinction of a species,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: and that's something that they couldn't comprehend. So it was
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: no one clear back then or at least suspected that
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: that would be would be a problem. But then two
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: years later, uh to Democratic sentators, one from Oregon and
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: one from from Washington, slipped a million dollars into an
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: appropriation conference report, and that started iceho Harbor, and that
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: started the domino of the other four damns. So it's
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: been a it's been a challenge from the start, and
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: we've known what the consequences were, but we've always thrown
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: up our hands and said, hey, we can replace these
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: fish with hatchery fish and stuff. And now we find
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: out the hatchery fish aren't the same as well salmon
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: and returning the salmon uh is something that that is
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: important to me. I think it's important to Idaho. And
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: when I look at h the impact that the damn staff,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: they were built for power. That was the reason these are.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: There's a not flood controlled dams. These are just uto
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: the river dams and they produce power. They also have
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: the benefit of being able to take barging from Lewis
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: to Idaho all the way down to Portland, mostly into
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: the Tri Cities, but then onto Portland through the Columbia
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: River dams. UH. Those are two benefits that the dams,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: that the dams have. But when you look at the
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: power production, now there are other ways of produced power.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: Someone told me once and I agree with this, that
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: you know, everything we do on the Columbia and Lower
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: Snake River we can do differently if we choose to
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: do it. That's our choice. Salmon don't have an option.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: They actually near river, and right now they don't have
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: a river because of the dams. In fact, it's almost
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: a misnomer to call it the Lower Snake River because
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: the river is really just a pool, a series of
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: pools behind these damns, slack water pools, which harm the
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: salmon because of the increased water temperature. The velocity of
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: the water coming down doesn't flush them down to the river.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: It takes about three times as long for a for
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: a smoke to get to the ocean as it used to.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: That puts them in more danger. Are predators and other
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: other factors that affect them. That's why fish biologists will
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: tell you the only way you're gonna restore these salmon
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: is to is to remove these dams. The way they
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: generally measure the success of a salmon run or the
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: health of one, is called the stars the small to
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: adult ratio it needs to be It would preferably be
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: between four and six. Anything above two and two is
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: a sustainable run. And if you look at the salmon
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: that come up the Columbia River and passed the first
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: three dams and then go into the John Day Drainage,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: there are numbers about three point five. That's a healthy run.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: Once they passed the fourth dam and go into the
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: Acama drainage, it's about two point four, which is still
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: healthy and sustainable. But once the Idaho salmon go over
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: those next four dams, their stars rate is about point
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: eight and that's a path to extinction. And that's something
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: we have not been able to change over the years
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: with everything we've tried. What other industry, Like when you
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: mentioned that the dams were put in place, um, primarily
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: for electricity, meaning if it wasn't for the energy conversation,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: it probably wouldn't have become a conversation. But then the
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: dams get put in place, and then it winds up
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: having sort of you know, inadvertent or subsequent effects on things.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Meaning I'm guessing irrigation probably is a thing you mentioned,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: barge traffic. Uh, how many industries you know? I don't
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: think it needs to be an exhaustive list, but like,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: what what all industries would need to make an adjustment
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: or be have their their concerns addressed in order to
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: begin dealing with this problem. And if you if we
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: look beyond power, but just other ways in which communities
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: have grown up around the water's edge, and I don't
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: even really know all the ways in which it could
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: impact industry and people if we were to pull this
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: feet off. Yeah, there's there are a number of industries
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: and we've tried to look at all of them. Like
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: I said, that's why we've had the three to five
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: meetings that we've had with different interest groups and stakeholders
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: about the impact of removing those dams. You know, you
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: look at the lower Snake River, they have, uh there's
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: marinas and other types of recreational outfits that that operate
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: in in those waters. The city of Lewiston has a
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: port there. The port is about I don't know, it's
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: about a one point nine million dollar annual budget and
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: employee several people, and so, I mean that's important industry
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: in Lewiston, but it's mostly the grain producers in the
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Poluce area around Lewiston that that barge their grain down
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: the river. And it is the cheapest way to transport
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: transport gain grain. You can do it cheaper than you
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: can on trucks or by rail. So you'd have to
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: make accommodation for all of these individuals, and what we're
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: trying to do is what can loisten be in the future.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: How can we make them hold again? Uh? And we've
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: we've thought of some ideas, but mostly it's going to
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: be up to them, uh, their future. And and really
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: the question I asked people is we need to be
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: looking down the road about what we want to Pacific
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: Northwest to look like in twenty five or fifty years,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: because the decisions we make today are going to make
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: those terminations. Do we care about salmon? Uh? Do we
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: care if they come back? Now? I will tell you
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: that if you talk to a lot of Washington grain
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: farmers and others who are affected by this, by this
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: uh these this damn removal because they pump out of
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: the Snake River to arrogate fields in Washington and so forth,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: I can understand why I don't really care about Idaho.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: Salmon doesn't affect them. They're salmon are back in healthy numbers. Uh.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: It's in Idaho that's paying the cost. And I've said
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: this a number of times. The more I look at this,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: the more I look at the fact that Idaho is
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: paying all the costs of these dams in Washington and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: we're not getting much of the benefit. The benefit is
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: the lower cost transportation which we can replace and do
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: it so that we can actually get it down the
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: river or down to the Tri Cities or to Portland
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: cheaper than they do on barges today. If we're willing
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: to look at a different way of doing it. We
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: get about eight percent of the power that's produced to
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: those damns comes to Idaho. And that's all. But yet
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: we flush four hundred and eight seven thousand acre feet
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: of water down the year, every down the river every
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: year to er or to flush salmon past these four dams.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: And the one thing that's not doing it's recovering salmon. Uh,
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: that's problematic. That's four and eight seven thousand acre feet
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: of water that's not available in Idaho to either recharge
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: our aquifer or additional irrigation or other things that we
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: just flushed down the river. How do you account for
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: the fact that there's still damns below the dams? You know?
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I could envision in my mind the best
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: case scenario would be that um this endeavors successful to
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: ultimately we get the public support we need and we
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: get the money we need to begin this very ambitious
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: project of dismantling these things and restoring salmon runs like
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I'd love to see it. But when I hear this,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: the first thing that pops in my mind is, well,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: what about the fact that you still got a whole
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: bunch of them below there? Unless this sets a template
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: or creates a path forward for people to comprehend removing
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: more dams, Um, how does it? How can it fix
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: anything when you still have the Columbia Right? Yeah, A
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: lot of people ask me, isn't this slippery slow to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: remove more dams? What we do in this proposal and
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: the way you end the lawsuits and the endless litigation
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: that goes on as you relcense all the remaining dams
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: for the period of thirty fifty years depending on when
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: their license comes due, automatically re licensed them. Because most
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: of the lawsuits occur around dams and damn re licensing
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: and that type of thing you would you would re
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: license them. They would be exempt from the Endangered Species Act,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Clean Water Act, and the environment National Environmental Policy Act UH,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: and that takes away almost all of the lawsuits and
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: in fact, most environmental groups that are UH. Some of
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: the proponents of the of the lawsuits and have been
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: in the past have said Okay, we can live with
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: that as long as we get rid of these these
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: four dams. But if you look at the numbers, as
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: I said earlier, and the smalls coming up the river,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: the first four dams on the Columbia River, yes they
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: have an impact on salmon, but they don't endanger them.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: They still have a healthy stars rate once they passed
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: those four dams. Eight dams is just too many. That's
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: why the numbers fall through the floor on the Snake
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: or or the the Idaho salmon runs. Yeah, that's uh.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me, um, the point you just made
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: about trying to in sort of aligning. You mentioned having
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: all these different stakeholders and seats at the table. Um,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to me that as a way to alleviate
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: concerns that the slippery slope concerns, that you're willing to
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: strike a deal like that, and not only that, but
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: that that you're saying that environmental groups would be comfortable
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: with an arrangement like that, they'd be recomfortable with the
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: idea of tabling conversations about Columbia dams in order to
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: make a deal to do this ambitious plan on the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: on the Snake, like that that's that there's widespread comfort. Yeah,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: there is. Most of the environmental community that we've been
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: working with, and like I say, the ones that are
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: generally behind the lawsuits or have been in the past.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Both the environmental groups, the state of Oregon, the the
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: Indian and tribes have all said yeah, this is okay. Now,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: I will have to tell you there are a number
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: of what I call extreme left environmental groups from Washington
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: and Oregon who have come out and said they're they're
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: opposed to this. They want to return salmon, they want
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: to damn's gone, but they're posted this proposal because they
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: don't want to give up their right to suit. Well,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: that pretty much tells you what their game plan is
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: for the future. Uh, it's gonna be lawsuit after lawsuit
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: after lawsuit. And I wish we would spend more money
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: trying to restore salmon runs and less money in court.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: To tell you the truth, even though I understand that
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: attorney's kids still have to eat. Personally, have you did
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: you grow up as a salmon fisherman an angler? No,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I was never a fisherman. My brother, my
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: brother was the fisherman. He was a fly fisherman used
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: to tie tie flies, you know, and kick over rocks
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: to see what they were eating. And then they take
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: me out and say, man, there's so many fish here.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: My arm got sore, and I'd go fishing with Eve,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: and of course there's not a bite. So I decided
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: that that I couldn't trust him. But I was never
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: I was never the fisherman. I love to eat him.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: He loved to catch him. I imagine that, UM, you
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: can't get away from partisanship on something like this, meaning
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: as I'm sure you know better anybody on the planet,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: some people are gonna go, um, they're Gonnay're gonna look
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: at it like it is a particular party in support
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: of it. If that's the case, we're into If someone
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: else is behind it, we're going to resist it. Do
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: you find that when it comes to um an environmental
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: issue like this, you know, like fish, um that has
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: an industry overlay to it, do you find that that
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: partisanship gets worse, that it's kind of that it's alleviated.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: What do you encounter when you're working on this, you know,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I I find that the partisanship with environmental issues isn't
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: as strong as it is with some other things, other issues. Now,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: the one challenge in this is that it's going to
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: cost about thirty three and a half billion dollars is
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: what we estimate to to make the stakeholders hold again,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: to replace the power to do the other things. That's
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: the value of the dams. We're the first people to recognize,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: you know, the idea of taking these damns out has
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: been has been considered for by other groups and it's
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: always just either take the damns out or don't take
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: the damns out. And we're the first people to actually
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: put a value on those dams and recognize that they
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: do have a value and you're gonna have to replace that.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: I think that's what's got so many people that are
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: anti dam removal concerned is that we've actually put a
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: value on it, and they're saying, Okay, how do we
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: fight this. This must be a serious consideration. And I've
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: had a lot of people suggest that I would say
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: that there are not favorably disposed of what we're the
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: concept we put out there, but are coming to the
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: realization that you know, we can either plan our own
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: future and develop our own future, or it can be
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: planned for us UH and it would be better if
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: we if we did it our selves. But I find
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: the partisanship kind of Yeah, Republicans and Democrats have a
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: difference of opinion on how best to manage our public
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: lands and that type of stuff. But when you look
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: back at the Boulder White Clouds Wilderness area that I did,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: in the end, it passed without a descending vote, without
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a Republican or a Democrat descending vote in both the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: House and the Senate. When we did the Great American
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: Outdoors Act, uh, it passed by with bipartis and support.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: So when we get right down to it, I think
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats want the same thing. We have a
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: different opinion about how to get there sometimes. But but
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I I, uh, I'm not worried about the partisanship. Really,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: do you feel that the proposal that you've worked on
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: and we'll we'll tell people how to find the details
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: of the proposal. Do you feel the proposal you worked
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: on um has turned some opinions or have you Do
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: you feel that it winds up being is this the
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: battle line is pretty much the same still or have
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: some people come and said, oh uh, this I can
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: get on board with previous previous proposals, not for me. Yeah,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: you know, the response we're getting from the public is
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: about what we expected when we released it, and it's
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: the reason we released it as a concept, not a
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: written piece of legislation. When you write a piece of
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: when you say i've got a bill here, it's like
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: saying I'm ready to go with this. I've done all
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: the thought and everything. We released as a concept so
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: that people would have time to consider it put have
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: their input into it. I'm sure there are things that
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: we have not thought about that that others will think
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: about for us. And there are questions that need to
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: be answered that some people have raised. Uh And that's
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: why it's out there as a concept for this public
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: debate that that is going on now. Uh So I,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: as I said, I think the reaction is kind of
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: about what we expected. We knew that there would be
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: a number of people that it would and and insociations
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: and organizations that would say, hell no, we're never going
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: to really never gonna remove those damps. I understand that
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: I have sympathy with that position years ago, that's the
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: position I was in. But the reality, you know, twenty
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: five years ago, if you read some of the articles.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: When I was Speaker of the House in Idaho, I said,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: damn removal is not an option. I said, we ought
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: to try everything else to restore salmon before we ever
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: consider that. Well, in the twenty five years since then,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: we've tried everything else. And if somebody has an idea
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: of how you can restore salmon without moving those damps,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear it. But the problem is is
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: we've tried everything so far. Unless I said, every fish
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: biologist that I've talked to says you're gonna have to
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: remove those damps if you want to restore Idaho salmon runs.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: So we knew there would be that reaction from the
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: hell no never sort of group. And I'm not critical
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: of them. I just I understand where they're coming from. Uh,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who are saying
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: to me, this is interesting. Maybe we ought to step back,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: put the pitchforks down and talk about this and consider
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: the options here. Because as I said, I just talked
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: to a group the other day who I who I
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: thought would have been uh, pretty firmly against it, and
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: they still maybe uh, but they're starting to say, you know,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: maybe we got to plan on our own future instead
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: of have someone else planned for it. And when I
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: say that, people say I'm trying to threaten people that
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: judge can remove these dams, and that's not true. Judge
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: cannot remove these dams. Only Congress can do that. But
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: a judge can make it so damned expensive to keep
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: these dams that you just have no option but to
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: remove them. They could order draw downs or additional spills
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. Two years ago, a judge
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: ordered forty acre feet of additional water to be spilled
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: over the dams to help salmon recover. Didn't help recover salmon,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: but it did cost forty million dollars from b p
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: A to to do that. Of lost power generation, that
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: means the rate payers ended up paying that forty million dollars. So,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: as I said, that's another aspect of this whole proposed
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: It's not just salmon and dance. It's also the b
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: p A trying to keep power rates slow in the
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest that have been growing over the years. And uh,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: and as I said, Bonneville power of power is no
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: longer the low cost power in the in the Pacific
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: Northwest anymore. So we've got to do something to make
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: them u competitive in the future. Let's talk for a
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: minute about the hell no never perspective. Um, if this
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: will demonstrate my bias a little bit, but if I
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: view someone saying, Um, if I viewed someone like like yourself,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: you're you know, you're not a salmon fisherman, okay, but
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: you're you're recognizing the importance of salmon as a as
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: a wild creature that we're blessed to have on the landscape. Right.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: It belongs to a system that's greater than any individual,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: and it has integrity. We want to uphold the integrity.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: Like I view that as you know that that to
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: me strikes me as um, you know, largely altruistic viewpoint,
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Like you're looking to future generations. If you talk about
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: the hell no never audience, is there an argument among
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: them that goes beyond anything that might be self serving?
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I think there's concern. And as I said
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: in our video when we released it, I said, you know,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: I can't promise you I'm not certain that removing these
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: dams will bring back salmon. It's a complex biological system.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: You know, when I was a dentist in the real world,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: some coming to my office with a serious infection, and
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: I could prescribe some antibiotics for him. I couldn't promise
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: them it at work. It would work nine nine percent
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: of the time. You can't promise somebody it's gonna work
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: because it's a biological system and people react differently. The
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: same thing is true with salmon. But it's the best
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: chance we've got of recovering Sam and I think the
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: only chance we've got of recovering these four for salmon runs.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: But I always get a kick out of people who
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: say to me, you know, I don't think we should
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: remove these dams. Uh, it's not guaranteed that salmon would
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: come back. And I want salmon back as much as
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: anybody else does. What they really mean is, I want
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: salmon to come back, but I don't want to have
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: to change anything that we're currently doing. Uh, you can't
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: have those two things. I don't think you're gonna get
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: salmon back. And I think in in what the fish
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: biologists tell me is within probably twenty years, that's five
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: like life cycles or four life cycles of salmon. Uh,
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: that that these fish will be extinct. And you mentioned
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: the reason for it, as I said, you know, some
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: people want them come back because they want to be
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: able to fish and etcetera, etcetera. I want them back
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: because there are an essential part of our of our economy,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: and essentral part of nature. Uh. There are over three
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: hundred of three other species of animals and plants that
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: depend on the nutrition that salmon bring back up from
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. There's been studies done that if you
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: look at a stream where salmon uh generally populate versus
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: one where there's no salmon in it, trees actually go
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: three times faster in the in the drainage that has
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: the salmon, just because of the nutrients that they bring
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: back something of the hair of a of a bear
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: in these regions have salmon d n A. And so
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: they're an important iconic species for the Pacific Northwest. I
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: don't want to be the generation that said, yeah, we
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: saw him going away and we didn't do anything to
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: try and stop it. You mentioned only Congress can remove
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: the dams. Uh, why is that? Like, what what is
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: the what is this sort of like the legal the
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: legal framework that that makes that true. Well, there they
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: are federal dams that were put in with federal legislation.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: So to take federal legislation to h to remove them.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: That's my understanding of the and I think that's probably true.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: But like I said, a judge can can make it
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: so damned to expensive to keep him. He could order
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: draw downs where you would actually draw the as of
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: oars down to almost zero, which means there wouldn't be
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: any barging or anything else like that. Or he could
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: order additional spills and guess where that water ultimately comes from.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: It comes from Idaho because all the water in the
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: Snake River drains out of the Idaho drainages, and so
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: uh and and Idaho. These the habitat that we're talking
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: about in Ido and Central Ido is the high altitude
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: habitat and probably the best and cleanest water and coldest
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: water UH in the in the entire Pacific Northwest for
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: salmon habitats. So UH it is vital that we restore
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: uh store these uh salm into this habitat, and especially
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: in the age of warming rivers because of global global
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: warming and other types of things. UH, it's important that
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: we maintain this cold, high altitude water habitat that we
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: have an Idaho congressman, we've UH we we've talked a
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: little bit about um the argument for removing the dams.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: We've talked about some of the resistance of doing it
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: and what it might take to ease that resistance. What
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: about just the physical process, Like let's let's say one
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: of Americans and one of the Congress, the US Congress
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: and Senate all said, yes, let's go. Uh what are
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: we what are we looking at? I mean, are we
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: talking about decades of work? ZUI is not like a
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: B fifty two bomber just comes over and it's done right.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: There's a there's a thing that needs to happen here. Yeah,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: it's much more complicated. And our proposal to damns don't
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: actually come out until because that's nine nine years from now.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: You have to have the power replacement in place, you
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: have to have the alternative transportation in place. But then
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: you have to do dredging behind these dams. That's gonna
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: cost you a billion or so dollars to remove the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: sediment that has accumulated behind these dams, because you don't
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: want them to want it to just wash down the river.
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: So you've got to remove the sediment. And then we
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: don't physically remove the cement. Part of the of the damn.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: What you do is you remove the earthen berms around
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: the edge to create the natural river flow that existed before.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: Oh until that'll it stays there. Yeah, yeah, the cement
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: part stays there. It's the it's the earthen berms that
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: that attached on the sides that you'd remove, and then
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: the river could flow around that. And uh. You know,
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: and I've told people listening thirty years of salm and
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: aren't back. This hasn't worked. You could actually replace the
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: earthen berms if you need to. Uh. We've just got
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: to start start thinking outside of the traditional uh ideas
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: that we've had in the past that haven't worked, and say,
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: let's let's look down the road. Let's see how we
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: can make this work. Uh, and let's try something different.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I know you can't be a slave
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: to polling, but among your constituents, what percentage of your constituents?
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: I think that something's got to happen. Uh. You know,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: we haven't done any polling on this, so I can't
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: give you an exact answer. The only answer I would
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: have is from the contact I've had with people. As
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: I said, a lot of people are saying, interesting, we
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: ought to consider this. Other people are saying, I admire
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: you for taking on the challenge, and it's a discussion.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: It's got to be had. But I'm not sure I'm
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: in favor of Damn removal, and other people are just
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: saying hell no. So it's a slow process of giving
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: people a chance to consider this and and think about
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: the options and what and what we might be able
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: to do and if we want to plan our own future.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: And I think over time over the next few months,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: if people have a chance to really sit down and
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: talk to talk about it, UH, you'll see more people
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: coming around with the possibilities. And I've I've been doing
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: meetings all over my district in Idaho. We will start
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: doing some more around the Pacific Northwest and North Idaho
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: and Washington and Oregon. Also from the agricultural perspective, Congressman,
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: is the lack of embrace for Damn removal based on
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: the shipping primarily the use of the of the barge
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: system for moving grain or is it due to uh,
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: probably a realistic increase in cost of pumping water out
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: of the snake for agricultural purposes. It comes in several aspects.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: I think the largest opposition is from the grain grower perspective,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: because they ship nine million bushels of grain down the
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: river every year, and they're they're afraid that if you
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: added ten or fifteen cents to a to a bushel
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: in transportation costs that put them out of business. It
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: might well, I think we can do it, and they
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: can actually ship per farmer at a cheaper cost than
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: doing it by barging. If we give them the resources
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: to develop this plan. Now we've come up with an idea.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: It might not be the right idea, but they're the
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: experts in trying to get their grain to the Tri
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: Cities in New Portland, so we're given the resources, they'll
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: come up with a plan. I've been interested though, in
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: the grain farmers in southern Idaho in my district, UH
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: that actually don't use the barge system. They either truck
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: it to the Tri Cities or Salt Lake right now,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: and UH, the only thing this plan would do for
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: them is make more water available for southern Idaho. When
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: we stopped flushing fo seven thousand acre feet of water
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: down the river, We've got some real water quality issues
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: in the Snake River in the mid snake up by
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: twin falls and so forth, and uh, and this would
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: help improve that water quality and quantity by by you know,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: stopping the flushing. And I've told these people listen, that
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: flush is going to go away one way or another.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: It's gonna go away because salmon go extinct and it's
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: no longer necessary to flush sam water for salmon. Or
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: it's gonna go away because the dams aren't there, so
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: you don't need to flush water to uh to uh
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: flush Smoltz over the dams. So uh, it's it's a
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: matter of looking down there. And then I think there
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: is just a natural sort of resistance to say, how
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: stupid is this to take out this infrastructure that we've
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: that we built over the years and stuff, you know,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: and why would you want to do that? And I
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: understand that because that's as I said, you know, a
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: number of years ago, I probably would have been in
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: that same camp. But you've got to look down the future,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: and we don't do this for us. We do this
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: for future generations. Both those people that care about the
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: environment and salmon and also agricultural producers try to end
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: these lawsuits that they're facing every single day. And that
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: power companies are facing every single day and try to
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: end the spiraling costs of the power that they have
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: uh in UH if you if you talk to the
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: Washington area growers, they pump water out of these reservoirs
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: behind these dams. Uh and so consequently restoring a natural
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: river means that it would they would have to to
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: alter their their irrigation uh pumps and how they draw
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: water out and probably deepen their wells and a few things.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: We've put some money into this proposal for them to
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: help do it. They said it probably takes six hundred
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars. We've put seven and fifty million
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: dollars into the proposal. So we're trying to address all
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: these concerns that people have. And but but believe me,
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: I understand the concerns, Congressman. I think that as this
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: rolled out, you know, it had a price bat tag
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: of thirty three point five million, and I think there
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: is a little bit of a sticker shock. But yeah,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: with the billion, yeah billion, and so as it is
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: rolled out, living on the police as I do, UM,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: I've seen definitely both sides of it. People that support
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: support it for various reasons, Um, But I've been very
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: interested in the fact that the proposal isn't just about salmon,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: it isn't just about conservation. You took this step to
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: include every industry in almost every community into consideration, and
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: I think that's a pretty striking aspect of the proposal,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: and and so kudos to you for that. You know,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: having those three meetings, UM, do you get the sense that, UM,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: that with those three meetings that a lot of the
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: uh if you will, the leaks and the dam were
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: plugged and and these are small hurdles that you have
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: to jump. Now with the additional five bringing your total
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: up to five. I mean, you think we're getting there
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: as far as buy in in the proposal as broad
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: as it is. Well, I I appreciate comments, And like
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: I said, we tried to take into consideration all the
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: impacts that we could think of, and that's why we
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: talked to so many stakeholders because there were things that
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: we probably wouldn't have thought of had we not talked
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: to a lot of these different individuals and stuff. And
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: so I wouldn't say that that we plugged all the leaks,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: for sure. There's still some out there that that we
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: need to talk to. But I'd say the conversation is
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: going well. I've actually talked to grain producers in the police,
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: actual farmers, uh and uh they said, well, you know,
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: this is kind of an interesting idea, and yeah, if
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: we could get grain down the river, do we really
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: need to dance and stuff. But as an association, they're
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: opposed to it. And the Washington grain Growers, the Idaho
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: grain growers, the Oregon grain growers all stick together and
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: support one another, so uh, it will be it will
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: be hard to bring them on board. What I'm trying
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: to do is allevie some of their fears that were
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I've got a history that I've built up
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: over the years of being the leading supporter of agriculture
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: in in Congress, one of the leading supporters of agriculture
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: and Congress, whether it was making sure that they had
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: the resources to do what was necessary. The cattleman, we
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: delisted wolves and a few things like that for for
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: the cattleman and sheep industry, kept the do Boys sheep
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: station open. Made sure that white potatoes and you know,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: being from Idaho, potatoes are important. We're put back on
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: the wig program and in school lunch program and things
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: like that, and making sure they have the resources for
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: their their research and so forth in the wheat industry
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: and so forth. I've got lots of awards from the
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: agricultural industry. And if I thought for a second that
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: this would harm agriculture in the long run, I'd drop
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: it in a heartbeat. This will not harm app culture,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: and I think it will place them in a better
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: position in the future. But that takes time to come
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: around to UH, and I understand that, and that's why
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: I haven't gone out and ask anybody to jump on
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: board and support this. I just said, listen, let's all
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: put down the pitchforks, and let's have this discussion of
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: what we want the Pacific Northwest to look like in
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: forty or fifty years. Congressman, would you like to directly
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: address the idea that the suspension of like you mentioned
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: the Clean Water Act d s a M on the
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: Lower Columbia Dams would also allow the building of of
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: new infrastructure that would like go against UH the idea
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: of modernizing like clean or green energy. UM. A lot
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: of people see this as like, oh my god, we're
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: gonna suspend these tools that we use to UH. Fight
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: bad eken or environmental policy um as like a scapegoat
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: type of tool. A trade off. It is a trade
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: off to some degree. But the reality is all of
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: the lawsuits that occur occur virtually all of them occur
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: around the Clean Water Acting in the Nanger Spaces Act.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: Every time a dam comes up to read license. I'll
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: give you an example, I'd hop Powers Health Health Canyon Complex.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: They've been trying to re license those damn since I
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: was a Speaker of the House in Idaho. That was
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: twenty five years ago, and they've been trying to relycense.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: They've spent as much money or in fact, they spent
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: three times as much money re licensing those dams as
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: it did to build the dams, and they still haven't
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: got licenses for him yet. That's what's happening with all
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: of the dams in the Pacific Northwest. And what we've
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: created is a cottage industry with the age of funds
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: that's equal access to justice funds that are paid for
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: by Congress. And what happens is a firm can come up,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: an environmental group or whatever can come up, file a lawsuit,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: and if you win, in partner and hold your lot,
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: your fees can be paid for, and you actually make
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: money on these things. And it is a cottage industry
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: that's going on. And so I'm I'm not too happy
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: about that, but I think that suspending the the Endangered
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: Species Act and the and the UH Clean Water Act
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: and the nip A process is vitally important to ending
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: these lawsuits. And it doesn't mean you can go out
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: and do additional things. It just means these damps are
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: re licensed operators they currently as they currently operate and stuff. Uh,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: this is a little bit of a looking into a
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: crystal ball type of question here. Okay, I I have
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of respect and admiration for the way you're
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: you're framing it up, that that you're not starting with legislation,
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: You're starting with a proposal. You're bringing it to people,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: You're inviting comments, you're inviting critiques, You're trying to initiate
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: a discussion. Um, do you feel that in the end,
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: in terms of your involvement here, that in the end
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: that's your goal or do you think that this specific
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: proposal could actually be but you know, a blueprint for
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: action that we take or is it to you is
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: it enough just to start the conversation, trusting that in
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: ten twenty thirty years the conversation advances enough. Or do
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: you think we could be like, you know, at a
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: moment right like, at a moment in time where we're
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: gonna go Uh, that's a good question. I think that
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: this is a blueprint which could start the process of
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: recovering ido salmon, removing dams, and changing the economy and
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: the transitioning of the Pacific Northwest for the future. Whether
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: it would be this specific proposal or not, I don't know,
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: but I think this could be the blueprint for it.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: We're at a unique time in history. We don't have
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: that long to make a decision on how we're going
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: to recover salmon and whether we're gonna do this. And
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest Delegation is actually in a pretty powerful
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: position when you consider Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: is Ron Wyden from from Oregon. Patty Murray and from
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Washington is in leadership. Mike Crepo from Idaho is the
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: ranking member on the on the Senate Finance Committee. We've
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: got important people Kathy and Morris Rodgers from Washington, who
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: is not supportive of Damn removal, but is the chairs
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: the ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee in
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: the House. I'm one of the senior members on the
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: Appropriations Committee. So when you look at how the delegation
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: is and and uh the chairman of the Pete de
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: Fazio as chairman of the Infrastructure Transportation Committee in the House,
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: so we're in a pretty powerful position. It's also helpful,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: frankly that the Biden administration is looking at an infrastructure package,
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: because I'd like to get the financing for this in
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: place before we started doing the legislation. You've heard too
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: many times where Congress passes legislation and promises financing for
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: things and then that never happens. Uh. I would like
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: to put the financing UH in place if we could
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: do it through this infrastructure package that the Biden administration
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: is looking at and put it in a trust fund
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: until we had the legislation pass that that we could
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: do this. So it's a it is a long process,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: it's a cumbersome process, and I will tell you right
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: in the legislation is going to be, for lack of
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: a better word, of nightmare because it involves so many
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: different aspects of of the economy. And the environment of
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. So but I think, and I and
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: I've told people, I honestly believe that in years those
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: damps are going to be gone. Whether it's because of
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: this or for some other reason, I think those damns
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: will be gone. The question is will it be done
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: in time to say the salmon or not? Uh, I
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: know you've got stuff you gotta go do. I appreciate
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: your time. Uh, anything you'd like to add in? Um
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: at the end here that that I didn't ask you,
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: but you're you're dying to say, I've probably told you
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: more than I know. Well, again, I appreciate taking the time. UM,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: I'm sure people love to hear it. It's a you know,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: aspects of this debate I've been exposed to for my
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: entire life. Um, it's exciting to see getting the attention
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: that it's getting now. Best of luck. I appreciate the
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: efforts that you're putting in to try to hear people
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: out on this and in a in a way that
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: maybe is not quite as acrimonious as other efforts, you know,
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: start this conversation about something that's very important. So Congressman
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: Mike Simpson from Idaho thank you very much. Thank you,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: Steve appreciate it very much. All Right, Phil, we're gonna
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: let's end its show there. Yeah, great guest Chester. You'll
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: come back on for more investor updates. Yea. Hopefully we
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: can just start doing the fishing adventures. Oh, like you
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: want to after you get the boat? Oh? Can we
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: do that, Phil? Yeah, I already made it as a
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: separate jingle for when he gets the boat. Are you
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: already did? Yeah? Okay, I hear it. There's Wallee in
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: the snake right lower snake. Maybe I'll come over there
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it should be like Lie and Chester the Investor,
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: just because you got a Walleye boat when it could
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: just morph. Yeah, money in action, your investment in action,
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: investing in I'm so glad because I was. I was
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: already starting to miss you, Like you get the boat
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: and you wouldn't come into the studio anymore. I was
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: the angler. That doesn't sound good. No, yeah, it can
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: be investing my time in catching Walleye. You probably forgot
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: that you did this, but you asked me to make
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: a jingle. It's the continuing Walleye Adventures of Chester the Investors.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: You did on on the podcast. I have a tentative
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: hold on Steve's boat right now, Chester for uh a
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: couple of days in April and April first weekend May.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: The Ginering Ventures of Chester the Walleye. No restrictions or
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: limits on Walleye or small Mouth where you're going. Yeah,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: he's going. He's going to help salmon. And that's it.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: You don't like do it, like looking at him, don't
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: like catching him, but you thought long and hard. Somebody's
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: got to do it. That was one of the things
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: we used to laugh about was when people would be like,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: people to go shoot prairie dogs. You know, well, it's
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: helping the rancher. I'm like, I bet you. I bet
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: you if you went to the rancher and you said,
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: me and my buddies here, I want to help. We
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: just want to help. What can we do? I bet
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: you about fifty on his list of chores would be
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: shooting prairie dogs. He'd be like, see that fence and
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: I'll five miles of it. If you really want to help,
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: that would be helpful. He's liking those prairie dogs. I
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: got this uh chemical dispenser on the front of my
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: four wheeler and I just drive over each hole, hit
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: a button and drops a load of rodents in there,
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: so don't worry about that. Doesn't worry about the facts. Yeah,
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: all right, thanks everybody,