Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 079: From Taxes to Trout

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Ep. 079: From Taxes to Trout · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This is the me eat your podcast, coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case underwear, listening me to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: eat the podcast. You can't predict anything. Oh all right,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: before before we get two started. Uh, Jimmy Dorn you're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: freshman the wheat fields of Montana. Yeah, I'm just back,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: just just the other day. You go out every year
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and cut wheat every year and my friends wheat farm.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah two Uh, a couple of weeks of harvests and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: just had a little break, came back to the bar
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days, take care for the business,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the restaurant. Uh, end of the month stuff, and then
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: right back to go. We just switched over from cutting
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: winter wheat. Now we're moving on to spring wheet, which
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: is still a little bit high moisture. So it's worked
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: out perfect. Like how why did you? Why? And how
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: how many years have been caught in wheat? Poor? This
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is my four or third year and it was one
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of my best friends his family. I met him actually
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: we worked at a restaurant together here in Seattle, and um,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: his his family runs a big wheat operation north of
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Great Falls Danner. There's really fantastic people in the Gas
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: botas and uh, we just went through a deal and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and he had his father actually unfortunately passed away at
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: a pretty young age, and kind of, you know, it
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: was kind of a it's like just kind of all
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: hands on deck kind of things. So I went back
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and helped out. And I just love it. I mean,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: driving a big kind of raccoons and a yeah, yeah,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: definitely the raccoons skit the way occasionally, but yeah, they
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: trust me driving really huge, cool, super expensive piece of equipment,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and I just love it. So tell me how like
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: give me the both of even getting like how much
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: we cut? How quick? Well, I couldn't really break it
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: down how much? How quick? I mean we feel a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: lot of semis. It's it's we can fill up like
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: a seven fifty bushel hopper in minutes. I mean it's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: forty five um header moving it like three and you're
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: swat at a time. Yeah, did mow lawn so fast?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: It'd be quick. We can we cut six acres and
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you know, just under a couple of hours. It was.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It was pretty amazing. When it's humming, we have three
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: machines going, three combines and the grain cart and uh,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: we can just flat out knock it out. Is it
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: getting hauld to a silo or is it going right
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: to so much? We have two different things. You'll haul
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to grain silos, yeah, commercial operations and or we'll ben
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it and uh, they speculate on prices and stuff like that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: We can weak stores for quite a while. So and uh,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: it just depends on where it's going what it is
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: you said, I think we talked about it before it
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You kind of do it for therapeutic reasons. Man. It
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: gets me out of the city. And uh, wait for
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the eats the business away from the pizza business instead
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: of like yoga and surf camp. Some of these wheat
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: farmers might want to look into sell them like gold retreats. Yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they should go cut wheat week. It is very therapeutic.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I mean you spend it. It's it's I don't want
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to sell it short. It's a grind. I mean we
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: cut from you know, you wake up at six and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: your servicing machines by seven thirty and then you're generally
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: cutting by around nine. And he worked all day and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: they the cool thing is dinner in the field. And
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: also you get these you know, the cooler shows up
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and around you with your face up in that faced off.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: That would not that kind of cool lunch cool lunch cooler.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Getting ship house might not go over too well. There's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: really expensive gear, but uh, I don't know. Uh yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: and you know, dinner comes around and he cut until
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: dark and then generally the rule is once the you know,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: these machines all have fantastic light arrage. You could work
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: all night if you wanted to, and uh, generally we
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: just fill up all the machines at once it gets
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: dark dark, that's when we're just like, all right, just
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: fill up the semis and then we tarp them off
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: overnight and uh that's generally the end of the day.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: But you'll generally cut from nine am two generally around
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: ten thirty eleven pm. So it's it gets things start
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: moving kind of wavy after you know, twelve hours or so.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: But you do, like later on you have to do
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: like a memoir about wheat coding. I love it, I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: really do. And then you know, the scenery is pretty cool,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: and I mean, uh, you know it's it's a climate controlled,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: you know environment. You're sitting in air conditioning with the
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: air chair and you have XM radio and I download
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you know, I've listened to forty podcasts and but it
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: still doesn't you know, we did. We cut for a
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty plus hours in ten days. I mean,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: it's it's definitely grind. You close your eyes when you
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: hit the sheets, you opened them and it's time to
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: go again. It's just like you don't even feel like
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: he had a break for real. So at the end
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: of the year, they just cut you big badass check
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and you walk up. Well, we'll see about the badass part,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I definitely get drive off in a brand
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: new truck. Gold Team. I wish, I wish. No, it's good.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: They're super nice people and they've been you know, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: was a total greenhorn and it's like I'm the city
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: guy showing up playing farmer and so they're you know,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: they're nice enough to a trust me and be I
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: take instruction. I can learn pretty much anything pretty quick,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and you know, they're like, hey, do this, do that,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and they literally just kind of threw two the wolves. Man.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: They're like, all right, here you go. Don't wreck it
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: because it's really expensive, and then I take it from there.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It's great, it's been it's been really fantastic learning experience,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: and I've met a lot of fantastic people and farmers
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I think are some of the best people we got.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's been. It's been fantastic. I really enjoy it. And
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: then Tuesday you head back cup more week. Tuesday I
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: go back. Yeah, I got my trucks after likes and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: my trucks at the Great Falls Airport right now, just
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: gonna go and get right back after it. And I
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: think it's probably another ten days of two weeks, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: then we'll probably drinks some beer and eat mistakes when
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: it's all said and done. So it's been great. I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: just like I said, I love it. Just the nicest
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: people and amazingly resilience and just something breaks. You don't
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just you're sixty miles from anything, so it's not like
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you can just I mean, guys know how to well thinking.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: You know this guy that I work with, you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Josh and and his brother in law Brandon, they can
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: literally fix anything, like on the fly, Like this crazy
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: bracket broke on the combine I was driving, and this
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: guy Brandon, uh had a new one fabbed up installed
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in like an hour and a half, Like just oh yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I got that. They're just they're that kind of people.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And when stuff goes south. We had a big fire
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: um on the farm adjacent to ours, which is like
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: just a disaster, right. You know, you're watching your whole
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: year's work go up and smoke wheat fire and it's
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: degrees and there's a fifteen mile our wind. I mean,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: it is astonishing how fast or fire will move and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: how dangerous it is. But like every wheat that's still standing,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: still standing wheat, and there's actually some cut. There's this
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: lay down it's like swath. I'm not exactly sure the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: technique for harvesting, but so basically it's just like it's
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: laid down in these long rows, just tinder dry, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: it's this massive amount of fuel for the fire. And uh,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I mean everybody drops everything from like a three mile
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: radius and everybody you have to have you know, we
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: have these big we drag a disc or behind a tractor,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and we have a fire rake set up with you know,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a massive container water with a pump like a legit
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: fire set up, and everybody just drops what they're doing
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: and it's like all hands on deck. Everybody shows up
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and puts out their neighbor's fire. It's really, it's really
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: astonishing to see how everybody comes together. It's pretty cool.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That is nice. Yeah, that's solid that people are. They're
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: just good salt of the earth, just awesome folks. Year
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: no no, no, no. But here in Seattle, if a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: if a competitor down the road, if another pizza guy
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: down the road's place burning down, like I'd lend a hand.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: We're all in it together, like I like to think.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So yeah, our only guests Mike rule, Mike tell tell
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: everybody what what what? What? Your story is, what you
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: do for a living. So I'm the native Fish program
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: manager for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: and people are thinking New Mexico has fish. They do
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: when I when I when I moved into that job,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I thought, man, this is probably gonna be easy. I
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: don't think there's really any water in New Mexico. But
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it turns out that's not true. There's there's water and
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: quite a few places and a whole lot of data
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: fish that are are pretty unique to that part of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the world. But if you were to weigh up like tonnages, Okay,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: let's say let's say you had a giant pile they
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: had all of the non native fish in New Mexico,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and the next to it was a giant pile with
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: all the native fish of New Mexico. Which pile is bigger? Wow,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: this is a tough one. That is I probably probably
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: non native fish the bigger pile. Yeah, based based mostly
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: on on the reservoirs that we have. Yeah. Yeah, Why
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: why do reservoirs tend to suck so bad for native fish? Well,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's certainly not always true that there bad
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: for native fish, but but it's like, you know, it
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: just seems like everywhere you go, when you go to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: a reservoir, oftentimes you're fishing fish that aren't from the area. Yeah. So,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, definitely a couple of things that play. One.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: It's not it's not the historic habitat that's there. You know,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: those native fish evolved in those in rivers mostly, and
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: then you put a dam on the river and you
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: create a lake, and so that's that's just not what
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: they're adapted to. And then, of course the other thing
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: is you know, the introduction of of non native fish,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: both intentionally and accidentally over the years, and including you know,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: non native fish that we that we like to fish
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: for yeah, because it's probably a big thing with you
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: deal with the non natives that that you want, and
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: there's the non natives you don't want. I think it's
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: like where I grew up in the Great Lakes, the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: non natives you don't want are getting almost as numerous
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: as the non natives people did want. Yeah, I mean,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I like all these like all the car gobies, right,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: all these things to completely rewrite the landscape, the deleterious
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: non natives. At the same time, they're also trying to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: like establish more and more the ones day, you know,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: five species of four species of Pacific salmon in the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Great Lakes. That's a tremendous amount of money that goes
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: into putting those fish in there. Yeah, you know, i'd
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I'd like to think anyway, we're mostly done in most
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: places trying to establish new populations and non native fish. Um.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: But of course you're right, you know, salmon and other
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: fish to support him that got established in the Great
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Lakes our thing. Um, you're saying that most like we
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: as a culture are mostly done trying to establish non
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: native fisheries. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think here
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: in the United States for sure, that's true. I don't
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: know about else in the world. I think for the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: most part. I mean that doesn't mean that we don't
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: continue to support some non native fisheries. But but as
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: far as uh, you know, bringing in a lot of
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: new non native fish at least in the public waters, UM,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: that's lower, that's lower priority. Yeah, you know, I'm not familiar,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: certainly not in New Mexico with you know, with efforts
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, to like get more walleye go
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: on or more whatever going. You know. I think we
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: want to talk about is UM. Like I think I
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: think a lot of a lot of people that hunt
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: fish don't realize is how wildlife management gets funded. UM.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm gonna set this up real quick. Then you
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: after I get done set it up, you take you
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: go with or don't go with. You can you can
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: like say where I was wrong or right. But in so,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna look at American history, UM, in a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in a wildlife perspective, we came in it must say
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: like euro American culture, European culture came to the US.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: What's not the US, And we spent a couple of
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: hundred years almost systematically but not quite intentionally depopulating wildlife
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: in the country to the point where we got to
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: around the turn of the century, the early and we'd
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: kind of uh almost wiped out virtually everything. And then
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: at that time there was a big push to try
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: to find a way to recover game animals. And one
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of the biggest things that happened that there's two stages
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and recovering wild wildlife in America. There's like two stages
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: that happened to it. Well, let's for our perposonal stagre's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: three stages. One of the stages was setting aside land
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and habitat okay, and Theodore Roosevelt kind of ran point
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: on that idea is just like establishing landscapes where there
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: could where there you would have if they're where you're
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: creating land that if there were animals, that's where the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: animals would be. Setting aside a habitat um. Another stage
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: in this was time to stop the bleeding, which was
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: basically a war against market hunters, so trying to de
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: incentivize or otherwise make illegal the raping and pillaging of
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the land and water by people who were collecting animals
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to sell be it for the feather trade, wild meat,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: wild fish, so that was another step that we had
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to take was to stop market hunters, and the third
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: step was to build stuff back up again. Eventually, the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: question comes up, right, how are we gonna pay for
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: wildlife recovery in this country? And one of the first
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: things were kind of like one of the big things
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: that happened in wildlife recovery happened in nineties, right, and
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: it was originally called the Wildlife Restoration Act. Yeah, I mean,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: they the two acts that you're going to talk about.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I think you know that we commonly refer to as
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson and Dingle Johnson are actually Pittman Robertson is
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the Wildlife Restoration Act and Dingle Johnson is the Sport
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Fish Restoration Act. We we often put those two things
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: together and call them the Wildlife and sport Fish Restoration Acts.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: In fact, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has offices
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: that we shortn't even further and call them the whisper Offices,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: UH short for Wildlife and sport Fish Restoration, and those
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: are the offices that administer those those federal excise taxes.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: But the portion of that that became pitt and Robbers
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and happened much earlier. That's a good question. You're you're
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: probably actually more familiar with the the intimate history of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the accident than i am. You know, my knowledge kind
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of starts with they came into existence in nineteen thirty
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: seven and then have been amended various times. Look that
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: up beyond history, regardless of it as a gap. Let
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: me quickly they real quick layout, just the background on it.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: So Franklin Roosevelt, he goes around like he had a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: big conservation bent, like Theodore did. And Franklin Roosevelt goes
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: around and he in the thirties, he's going around and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: this is like the you know, during the Great Depression.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: He's going around explaining does this rod and gun clubs
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: around the country? People who are interested in in hunting
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and fishing. He's going around and explaining to them, if
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: some if this is gonna happen, if we're going to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: recover American wildlife, you guys are gonna have to do it.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And they come up with this idea that we're gonna
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: put an excise tax on guns and ammunition and hunting equipment,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: to the tune of like Tenor and the sportsmen who
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: are going to be paying the tax. It's a very
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: targeted tax just on people to hunt, and there overwhelmingly
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic about it. The industry people, the people who are
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: producing guns and ammunition, who are gonna theoretically lose sales
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: due to the fact that their goods are not going
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to be ten or eleven percent more expensive, are enthusiastic
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: supporters of this Wildlife Restoration Act idea. And the thing
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: goes from introduction to the president president's signature in ninety days.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Now the Affordable Care Act took over a year. To
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: give you a sense of like how quickly this thing
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: went through with overwhelming support, and it wound up that
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: they're just taking when when you buy guns enamel, you
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: get taxed on it. That tax we're in top about
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: how this works. That money is the money that went
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: into we're covering American wildlife. Yeah right, it's it's what's
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: called a user pay system, So you know, it's it's
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: in sports AND's best interests to have healthy wildlife and
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: fish populations in the landscape. And in order to to
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: foster that, the idea was that the users would help
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to pay for it, meaning that it's gonna favor well,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: we'll get into that, the criticism that it just favors
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: game animals. Yeah, and we can we can talk about
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that at any point you want to. Um. The reality
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: is the the acts are a little bit different in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: uh in how they specifically focused. I mean, yeah, let yeah,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: let me let me clarify the one I'm talking about
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: became Pittman Robertson and follow following that or not what
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: you find out? Oh sorry, I didn't. You didn't clarify
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the question, So I didn't. We're talking about you're supposed
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: to look up is Dingle john What year did Dingle
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Johnson happened? Okay, Now, Dingle Johnson is a real strange name,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: like Pittman Robertson. You know, you kind of like, right,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: it's like an austerity to it, right, But Dingle Johnson
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: is just like, uh so I would have picked a
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: different name. Well, I think it's personally it's you know,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: just like Pittman Robertson named after the two sponsors of
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the bill. No, no, and God bless him. But I
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: just would have said, like, you know, considering that it's
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Dingle and Johnson, we're gonna go. We're gonna go with
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: different names. I don't expect you to have it to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: have a stated opinion on that, but can you lay
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: out what so like, take it from the perspective the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: dude likes the hunting fish, what stuff is he buying
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: that is going into these funds? So specifically, what kinds
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: of products, like when you buy sporting goods, what exact
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: stuff are you buying that your pants? Such a humongous
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: tax that's that then goes into wildlife funding? Like what's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: on the list? Yeah, so there's I mean, there's a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: there's a huge list of things. It It really largely
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: comes down for for Pittman Robertson, A lot of it
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: is guns and ammunition. Um, it's archery equipment, reloading supplies.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I believe archery equipment is in there, yep. Um, some
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: gunsmith thing, I believe if gunsmiths are actually building guns, um,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: muzzle loaders. So it's it's really, you know, most of
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the common things that we think not and stuff. No,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: that's getting more it's super specific. Yeah, that's right. And
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: then what is it in the fishing end of things? So, um,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you know, fishing is is pretty similar in that it's
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: it's the things that you would think of. It's it's
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: rods and reels and and lures. Um. So the very
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: specific stuff, right. The one that's pretty important to sport
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: fish that most folks don't know about is that that
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: there's an excise tax on boat fuel. So you have
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a boat fuel is just I mean unlettered gas. Yeah,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that's correct, But it depends on where it's sold exactly.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not entirely sure how they calculate
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: what counts as boat fuel. You know, if there's some
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: small percentage of all the fuel that's sold that's considered
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to be boat fuel, or if it's just what's sold
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: on marina docks for instance, or or close to reservoirs.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: But but there's a substantial portion of of what comes
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: through the Sport Fish Restoration Act is is coming from
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: boat game. Yeah, I mean it's an important component. Yeah.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So the I know that the Pittman Robertson funds right now.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: So again, right now, when you go out by guns, ammunition,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, reloading stuff, archery equipment is
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: loading stuff. You're paying a heavy as tacks on those
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: goods and right now, I think on average now it
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: raises about a billion dollars a year go into that fund. Yeah,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I think the I'm gonna gonna go into government speak
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: here the fiscal year, Um, I believe seven hundred and
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: eighty million dollars is the number that I got in
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: front of me coming through just through Pittan Robertson, just
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: through the Wildlife restaurant, from from one fiscal year. And
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: does that stay pretty steady every year? Um? You know,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I don't have the history in front of me. It
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it went up. I think you know almost everybody knows
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the story of of what happened during the Obama administration. Yeah,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: go ahead, all right, So there's different ways to spin is.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to find a way that that rolls
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: into different spins on it. So okay, Um, now this
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is me talking, not Mike ah Obama. People know it's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: not like a the gun. The firearms industry did not
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: find a kindred spirit in Obama. And uh, there there
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fear throughout the eight years of
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: his pregnant as presidency that we would be having some
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: like draconian anti gun measures and acted and it prompted
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to go out and buy firearms
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: and buy AMMO for fear that their right to do
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: so might be infringed upon in the very near future,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and it caused a like a legit gun rush. I
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: think the handgun sales went up under his administration some people,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and so all that gun buying. Some people called him
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: um jokingly called you know, America's best gun salesman, and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: other people talked about his conservation legacy because it blew
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: up Pittman Robertson funding. Because every time someone goes out
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and buys a handgun for home defense, by the way
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: this law has written, ten or eleven percent of that
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: purchase price price goes into funding wildlife. So it was
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: like the good old days for eight years and then
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: gun purchases. With the the new administration coming in, gun
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: purchases plummeted almost instantaneously. So I think now there's some
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: austere times coming. Yeah, that's entirely possible. I mean we
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: haven't it'll be it'll be fiscal year eighteen when when
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: when we see those new numbers. But whether yeah, because
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: the real big drive around that is guns and ammunition.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: I mean as far as like the percentages go. So yeah,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: because because because Obama fuelled such a gun buy and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: frenzy he fueled like some major conservation spending. I even
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: saw her one magazine, like a very pro Obama magazine
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: had it be like um as sort of building in
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: it as part of his concert, like I said, his
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: conservation legacy, even though it's completely like the Department of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Unintended Consequences, right, it was like not the goal. And
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: if that was the goal, and you are that shrewd
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: of a poker player, I have to like hand it
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to you. If you're like, well, how could I get
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: more money to fund wildlife? I don't all do. I'll
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: act like I'm gonna get rid of guns, but not really,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that's shrewd. No one plays that kind of poker. Yeah,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I got no. I mean I wouldn't think so. I
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: would just say that it's been a good thing for
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: for conservation funding. Okay, so there's seven hund eighty million.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Now how much comes up from the taxes on fishing gear?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: You got that? Yeah, so it's it's about three and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: fifty millions. Yeah, but there's twice as many fishermen. Yeah,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: you know, because they like fishermen are like uh, I
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: was sending his conversation your day, Um, twice as many
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: people buy fishing licenses, but they're not they're not as obsessive. Right,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: There's there's more weekend folks that that don't don't fish
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: year around, like you know, like people who are real
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: dedicated with hunting. Yeah, like when you talk when you
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: talk about hunting and fishing, like hunter numbers in American
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: fisher numbers in America. While they're looking at is uh,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: they're just looking at who bought a license? What happens
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: after the guy buys a license? You have no idea,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: so you kind of and be like, I can't remember
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: what it is. Just thirty million, I don't know. Some
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: years I think like around thirty million Americans buy a
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: fishing license, but they could be buying three day licenses
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: in order to go out, you know, one time. So
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: they're like twice as many fishermen are only paying half
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: as much excise taxes on stuff. Yeah, fishing rounds like
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: a hundred bucks, on our rifles a thousand bucks. Right,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's just a question of price. Could be
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: maybe so there so that money, Um, so we got
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: like what you're buying, it pays the stuff. This is
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: something everybody has to do where does that, like, what's
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the path that money takes in order to then go
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: into like actual fish and wildlife spending. Yeah, so, um,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I guess you know. One thing to note there is
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: is that that the the excise tax is in the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: price that you see, you know, Yeah, you don't get
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like an itemized bill that shows that part of it. Yeah.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: If you walk up to the counter and they charge
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: a tax, that's not the tax that we're talking about.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: It's already built into the price of the item. Um.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So that money essentially goes into uh pot of money
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: that is administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: And then from there did the pots get blended to
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the pots stay separate. They stay separate. The hunting pot
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and the fishing pot go to US Fish and Wildlife Service,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: but they stay hunting fishing. That's correct. Yeah, I mean
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: there you know, there are different there are different rules
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: for both pots of money, um in terms of how
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: things get old out to the states and and territories
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and the District of Columbia. Um. So they stay separate.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And then ah, essentially what happens is the Fish and
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Service runs their formula for how much each state
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: is going to get from each program every years that
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about that. But what'd you find out?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Do you find it out? Dingle Johnson? So quite like
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: some idy here twelve years thirteen years later, here's nothing
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to look up. Do you remember when a guy told
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: us how much uh, Federal and Savage when they have
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: to cut their check, they're Pittman Robertson check. Uh, there's
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah. I don't know if
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I was there for that conversation, though you were on
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the email. I'll find it. Um. Okay, Yeah, some guy
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: was telling us, like what a company like that Federal Ammunition,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: how many how much animal they sell? It's gotta be
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a lot. Oh yeah, at the end of the year,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you're right, and check for tens and tens of millions
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of dollars. Just think about how much Federal is shoot
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: every year? All right? So so how do the what
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: is the goal? Like, how do you how do you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: calculate that out? Like what are they looking at to say, like, okay,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: here's what states get? What is it? How many dudes
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: hunting fish there? Yeah, that's part of it. Um, Like
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I said, they're they're a little bit different at at
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: their heart, they are both about two things. One is
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: land area, so how big the state is, and the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: other is how many license buyers there are. Um, you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: there there's a little bit of complexity and nuance, and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: we could we could spend a week talking about that.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: But for Wildlife Restoration Act, um, it's fifty percent land
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: area and it's fifty number of paid licensed hunters. Now,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: so who are the big winners there? Well, I you know,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I got to imagine I could, I could look at
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the list, but you know, I have to imagine a
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: state like Texas, which has a huge land area and
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: a huge number of hunters, would would really come out high.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: But there is an additional rule in there, which is
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: that no state can receive more than five percent of
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: the total or less than one Oh, I got you.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So it keeps it from from, you know, having one
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: state really dominate. I grew up in Pennsylvania. That Pennsylvania
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: would probably be another one that if if you base
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: anything off the number of of licensed hunters in the state,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: you know, would would really get a big share. Oh yeah,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: because they are Pennsylvania often vised for like the hunting
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the state. Yeah, I have per capital, but just total
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: numbers of licenses, right, you always hear like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas. Yeah,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: they they used to say when when I was a kid,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: you know, they said there were a million people in
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: the woods on the first day of rifle deer season
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: every year. So I had I had looked it up recently. Um,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I believe in the last couple of years they fell
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: below a million licenses sold. But but that million number
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: is a threshold that that not many places. I think Texas.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I think for a couple of years ago, five to
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: ten years ago, maybe Pennsylvania was was number one right there,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and now it's fallen behind to Texas, a long behind Texas.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: So did you say, again, just to back up, did
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you say it winds up being how many people buy
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: a hunting license, how many people live in the state. No,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it's how many people buy a license. It is number
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: of paid licensed hunters. So it's land area, fift land
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: area and fifty number of licensed hunters. So then they
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: take the big giant pool of money the US Fish
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service does or there three quarters of a
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: billion dollars million whatever? Does they take that and then
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: they run their calculation and they wind up saying, let's
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: use New Mexico. They wind up saying, Okay, here's New
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Mexico's chunk, and what is New Mexico's chunk? This is
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: all public information? Oh yeah, yeah you can. Uh. I
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: mean if you if you do a web search for sport,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: fish and Wildlife Restoration Acts, you'll you'll end up at
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: at the Fish and Wildlife Service UM website and and
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: all of this is is readily available. Yea. So New
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Mexico UM, make sure I'm on the right line in
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the table here. It looks like fifteen million dollars fifteen
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and a half million dollars in fiscal year seventeen four
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: from the Wildlife Restoration Act, So from Pittman Robertson and
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and what for them fishing, I think it's about it's
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: six six point one, so twenty one and a half
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: million combined. And so the FEDS then they don't just
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: like turn around and write you at check for twenty
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: one and a half million and say go for it. Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And so this this was really one of the things
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about. You know, we talked
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the history of the Act and
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: and like I mentioned, I'm you know, I'm not the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: greatest student of that history. I'm I come at this
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: more from a pragmatic standpoint of of how we do
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: this and how the money really works and how it
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: flows and where it goes, and so what happens is
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the state's right grants. I mean, we know how much
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: money is is going to be granted to us or
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: how much money is available for those grants. But we
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: write grants too. But you know, like, but you know
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get it. We know, we know we're gonna
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: get it. I mean, the Fishing Wildlife Service, you know,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: reviews the grants to ensure that the projects meet the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: rules that the acts put in place. You know, so
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: there's a process step there that has to be done.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: But we, you know, we still have to write the
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: grants and then we report to the US Fish and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Service at the end on what we did with
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the money. Um. But you know, one of the real
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: interesting nuances of how this works is that both programs,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: as well as some other federal grant programs, are reimbursement programs.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: So the state, while while we do write a grant
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: and the Fish and Wildlife Service does come back hopefully
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: and say yes, you know, go ahead, you can spend
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: money on that. The state spends the money first, and
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: then once we've spent it, we apply for reimbursements. But
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: where do you get in the first place. So almost
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: all of that money, in especially in a state like
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: New Mexico, comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: So the license buyer pays for the projects up front
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: and then gets reimbursed for a portion of the money
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: that has already been spent. Can you real quick name, like,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: can you put give people sense of what these projects are? Well,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I mean that's it's tough because they're they're really broad
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: in in uh scope and scale. UM. We use the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: money to do all kinds of things. Habitat restoration is
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is one thing, um, you know, both for for fish
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: and wildlife. UM. You know, we do surveys, We monitor
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: populations of fish and wildlife statewide. UM. On the fishery
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: side of things, we do things like operate our state
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: fish hatcheries using this money. UH. Specifically in the program
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: that I work in, we do. We we work with
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: our native fish are particularly our native trout, both helo
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: trout and real ground the cutler trout are considered sport fish.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So even though helo trouts listed as threatened under the
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act, we're still able to use Dingle Johnson
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: money to work on it. So it is to do
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: research and habitat improvement, try to recover the fish. Yeah,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: and so to a large degree, it covers most of
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the breadth of the biology stuff that the agency does.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And so you know, I do wanna. I don't want
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: to move on before I mentioned one thing, which is
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: that most states work like New Mexico, where almost all
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: of our revenue comes through license sales. They're are not
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: like You're like, you're not getting money just from the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: general taxpayer in New Mexico. That's right, and and most
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: states work that way. There there are exceptions. I believe
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Missouri and Arkansas are two exceptions that that while of
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: course they still get money through license sales, they also
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: get other money's tax sales, tax revenue or general fund moneies.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: But most states um are like us. And you know,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: we we say that we're an enterprise agency, which essentially
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: means that we generate our own revenue. Yeah. I had
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: read somewhere that so the country has fifties state fish
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: and game agencies obviously, and I read somewhere that their
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: budgets so all of the work that goes into wildlife
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: at a state level, which basically all states. Every state
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: manages virtually all the wildlife in their state. Was some
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: exceptions when you get into like things that are listed
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: as in dangered species, but states manage their own wildlife
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and across the boarding, all states just all the money
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: they use for wildlife, game and non games. So just
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: like all wildlife in the state is paid for sixty
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: six depending on which state, is paid for by people
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: buying hunting and fishing licenses or by people paying taxes
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: on hunting and fishing gear. Like the hunters and anglers
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: foot the whole thing. Virtually, the hunters and anglers through
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: buying licenses certainly foot a big proportion of it. You know,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't have an agency wide number like that.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, there there are things that you can pay
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: for using Sport, Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act moneies. We
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: call those reimbursable expenses, and other things that you can't.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So you can't reimburse for law enforcement expenses, and obviously
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: that's a substantial component of a lot of you know,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: agencies do um, so actually paying the game wardens. You
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: can't use federal funds for that, right, that's correct. That's
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: got to come out of your license sales. It does.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: And so one of the other things that the acts
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: prohibit are really anything that generates revenue. So we can't
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: use the money to sell licenses. So the staff and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the infrastructure and everything else that's actually selling licenses not
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: reimbursable expenses. And I want to I want to get
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: back to the to just to to the to the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: part you're talking about where you're doing paying out a
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: pocket and then applying for grants. But just real quick,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: a thing, a problem that used to happen that this
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: is correct, it is. It used to be that states
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: would some states would the state Fish and Game agency
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: would make money. They would raise funds by selling hunting
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: and fishing licenses, but then the states would pilfer those accounts.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: And if you if a state removes hunting fishing license
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: revenue from its state Fishing Game agency, doesn't the state
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: then become ineligible for the federal money. Like there's rules
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: that come with the federal money. There there are and
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we call it the anti diversion
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: portion of the bill. So, um, the Acts basically say
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: what you just said, which is that if a state
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: is to be eligible to receive the money, they cannot
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: transfer that license sale money outside of the agency to
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: do other unrelated things. So they can't divert the money
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: for other purposes. They can't take it and put it,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: you know, in their general fund to be spent on
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: roads or something. Yeah. So your so your licen's money
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: stays on mission, right, which is really I mean, that
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: was a absolutely brilliant thing to build into the Acts.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: That's what I was just thinking. It's like, man, they
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: really like nailed the like the game plan this one. Yeah.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And then Greg blast it's his favorite part of it
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: is is if the money doesn't get used in two years,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: it just gets rolled into migratory birds. I think, Yeah,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: he likes that little final button on it. Yeah. I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: actually just listen to that episode again, and you know,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I was I was thinking about that when this morning.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Actually that that if if folks wanted to, that would
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: be a great one to to listen to before this
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, start thinking about why that
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: revenue is important, you know, before you sort of get
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: into the mechanics of how it all works. So how
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: crippling is it that you guys got to pay up
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: front and then get reimbursed later. Well, why can't it
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: this give you the money up front? Well, you know,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I don't like, how do they expect you have the money?
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I think that agencies, I mean, I think this has
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: been going on. I don't know the early history with agencies,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: but I think this has been going on so long
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: at this point that agencies are you know, have just
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: learned to plan for this um as it as it
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: currently stands. Uh, you know, I think New Mexico Department
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: of Game and Fishes is doing just fine with that.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: But just like moving the money around, Yeah, yeah, like
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: taking money that everything would go for doing a project
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: where it you're gonna get it back later and you
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: can use when you get it back, you can use
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: it for things that the federal funds aren't eligible for. Yeah,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I'm not a hundred percent sure
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that that, but that that's a exactly right that it's
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that we wait to get it back
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: and then use it for things that it's not eligible for.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I think it just all comes back into you know,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: our our big fund when it comes back. So while't
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: me through the process of like I like, how while
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: me through the like follow a dollar? Right, So there's
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: a dollar in this pool? How does it come to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: that dollar winds up going to to to Fish and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Wildlife in a case scenario like something you've been involve
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So once it gets to the agency, Yeah, like I'm saying, like, like, like,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: walk me through the process of a state identifying something
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: they'd like to do. Right. So so we say, hey,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: we have a real grande Cutler trout project that we
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: want to work on. Um, here's what it is. We
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: right up to grant, We send the grant to Fish
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service. They come back and say, okay, you're approved,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and um how long does that take? You know? It depends, Um,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: usually a couple of months. I Mean, there's there's kind
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: of grand cycles that are that are tied with these
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: things that you know, most most folks understand what they
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: are and and when things need to be turned into
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: to fit in the both the state and the federal
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: fiscal year. Um. So they they usually turn them around
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: pretty fast. Uh. And so then Once we get approval,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: you know, there's grant code set up, and uh, if
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: you go work on that Rio Grande cut or trout
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: restoration project, UM, you come back and you report that
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: time that you worked or if you buy stuff for
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: the project or whatever it is, UM, you report it
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: that way. And then we have a federal aid office.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: So New Mexico Department of Game and Fish employees who
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: who work on this stuff full time financial specialists. UM,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: they gather all that information up. They send it to
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the Fishing Wildlife Service, you know, to document that the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: agency spent the money, and then the Fishing Wildlife Service
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: sends back the reimbursement portion UM, which for both sport
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: fishing wildlife is is sev. So we get reimbursed. They
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: don't pay. Now we get reimbursed for seventy excuse me,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: sevent the cost? Is it competitive or the like? Does
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: this Is there some bigger hand at the state level
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that says like, okay, we have fifteen million dollars to
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: work with here, let's figure out how we're going to
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: spread this around. Are you competing? Are your grants competing
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: against other people within the state in that sense? Um,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's all, it's all within our agency. So you know,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: you could you could view it as there is some
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: competition in that way where you know, upper level management,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: like the chiefs from Fisheries and Wildlife and the other divisions,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: you know, would would talk about the projects that that
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: are on the docket and how they're gonna spend that money. Now,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: of course, because the acts are separate, because ones for
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: sport fish and ones for wildlife. Generally, the Wildlife division
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: is gonna decide how to spend their portion of it,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: and they do that in consultation with with you know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: our our administration are director. Um. So, so by that,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: I mean like, let's say, you know, there's fifteen million available.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: They're not sending over twenty million grant requests to official
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: wildlife there, They're sending over fifteen million grants. We work
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: that out internally. Yeah, that's okay, that's all right. So
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you're never like fighting against the guy down the hall,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: all right now if you got to go make your
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: case right at the for the state level. Yes, that's correct. Yeah.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: So what was the next part of that? Now, because
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I interrupted you about that, I don't know where we
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: were reimbursed. Oh yeah, why like, how's that come up?
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: They're just like, won't do one? Well, I mean I
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: think that that the idea is that the state is
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: vested in its own projects, you know. I mean we
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: ultimately are still I mean, we're accountable right up front
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: and spending the money. But you know, I think it's
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: also right. It's also a mechanism, you know, by which
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: we own a portion of of what's been spent. And
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we have a lot of pride in the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: projects that that we do. So what is it with
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I noticed when you're talking about this, you're saying wildlife,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: but then sport fish. So Pittman Rock again, like it
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: just in lingo, just for the listener and lingo we've
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: come to talk about. The Wildlife Restoration Act is known
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Pittman Robertsons. That's like two people that whose name replied
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: to the bill, Like two people pushed for the bill.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: That's game and non game animals. Yeah, so wildlife is
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: defined by the Act as birds and mammals. So why
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: is the fishing one sport fish? That's a good question.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, um, so if there's like a chub that
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: people don't regard, a native chub that people don't regard
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: as a sport fish. You can't use that money on it.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: It has to be a sport fish. Yeah, that's right.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: And so they're that seems kind of like, um, it
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: seems like, uh, not quite cynical, but it seems like
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: a little bit where you're you're opening yourself up for um,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: some pretty heavy criticism. Well, you know, they're I mean,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: there's even there. There's a couple of nuances. One is
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that that the state has some role in defining a
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: sport fish. So you know, there are places where a
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: roundtail chub are considered sport fish. Not in New Mexico,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: but but there are places, Um, I believe, I believe Arizona. Um.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: The other thing is when when we go out and
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: do work for sport fish, and some sport fish are native.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned, I mentioned the two trout species
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: and and actually you know down in in southeast New
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Mexico there's there's a lot of native fish. There's large
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: about bass and other things down there. Um. But when
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: we go out and do surveys, even if they're sport
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: fish surveys, we're almost always learning something about the fish
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: community as a whole. So even though the work may
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: be focused on sport fish, there are ancillary benefits to
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: other native fish, non game fish. And then it's not
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: totally discriminatory against non game No, not totally. But and
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: I would think if you're studying habitat, then you know,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: whatever you learn habitat, it's gonna be beneficial to all exactly.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Or or doing habitat improvement projects are you know, often
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: good for everything. And and so a big chunk of
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: what what happens with my team and my program is
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: is is done through other federal aid grant programs that
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: are similar, have similar mechanics, uh, but different sources of
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: of funding give me for instance, so there's really two
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: programs that we use all the time. UM. There is
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: some funding that comes through the Fish and Wildlife Service
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: to work on endangered species Endangered Species Section six funding UM.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: And so you know, one of the hot button issues
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: that we're working on right now. We also in my
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: program work on aquatic invertebrates. UM, we're working with a
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: native muscle called the Texas hornshell. There's a lot of
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: uh things swirling around right now with listing for that animal,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: like did it'll getting threatened or endanger Yeah, it's actually
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: they're about to publish the final rule, and so we've
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: been we've been working on on one, getting the best
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: understanding that we can of what's going on with it.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: We've also been trying out some some new conservation approaches
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: to try to repatriate it to some his or habitat
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: UH places where it's not currently found. And then we've
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: also been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and UH private landowner and and business folks to UH
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: to work on what's called a candidate conservation agreement with
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: assurances UM. It's essentially a conservation agreement that folks can
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: enter into before an animal gets listed, so that to
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: try to head off getting listed. Well, it's not it's
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: not that particular agreements not necessarily so much about the
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: animal not getting listed as it is about laying out
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: what will happen if it does. So that muscle lives
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: in the Permian Basin, and if you google search the
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Permian Basin, the thing that you'll see pop up is
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: probably about oil and gas development. And so you know,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: those businesses are interested in understanding what will happen and
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and and so through this process they get assurances about
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen if the animal gets listed, and
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: they probably get real interested in having it not get listed.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Well you know what I mean, Like as far as
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: like supporting the paying for biology, Yeah, well they I
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: mean through through this program they support conservation by paying
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: into a fund to to ultimately help recover the animal
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: if it gets listed, or continued to work on it
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: as it goes through the process. What what it tell
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: me about the animal? The one you're talking about right now,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Texas hornshell. Um, you know, it's a it's a it's
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: I believe it's the only remaining freshwater muscle in New Mexico.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: It it lives in the Black River, which is a
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: tributary to the to the Pacos River in southeastern New Mexico. Uh,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: it's got an interesting life history and that it it
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: lives up under these mud banks that overhang the river
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and under rock ledges and stuff. So, um, it's actually
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: kind of fun to go a sample for it, jump
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: in the river and and swim around the banks and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and feel up under the banks trying to trying to
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: find a thing. And how big are they they get
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: up to I don't know, I'd i'd say maybe five
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: inches long way across the shell. It looks like a
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: like a kind of mossy getting a restaurant. It looks
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: kind of like that. I mean, it's you know, it's
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: a bi valve muscle, you know, similar to what folks
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: would be familiar with their and why are they suffering?
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Are the intolerant of pollution? Um? You know, water quality
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: is an issue, and of course water quantity is an
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: issue as well. So drawing water off lowers water levels
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and that screws them. Yeah. If if water levels dropped
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: below where they where they live up under the banks,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: they don't they don't fare so well. So let's say
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: you identify um, I mean you specifically, but kind of
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: like addresses as you as in just people that work
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: at State Fish and Game a state fishing game agencies
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: you identify. I think let's say, with with this muscle,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you're like, man, if I had you know, a couple
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars, I could there's this idea, how to
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: really should try it? What is it like when you
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: go and present? How competitive is it when you go
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: within agency to present your plan? Like do you have
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: to have your ship dialed in when you're going to
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: present your idea because it's a competitive environment. It's more
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of a negotiation, I would say, than a competition. We
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: we talk about all the priorities that the agency may
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: have for using that funding, and you know, I mean
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: I would know we're we're really we're talking about when
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: we talk about Sport Fish Restoration Act money, you know,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars. It's bounced up and down a little bit.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: But the E s A Section six funding is has
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: been around two hundred thousand dollars in federal money a year,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: so much smaller pot of money. UM. And the other
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: program that I wanted to mention is the state Wildlife
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Grant program. UH. If you look, most states have what's
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: called the State Wildlife Action Plan, which is a plan
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that they developed in concert with the Fish and Wildlife
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Service UM and that's tied to another grant program that
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: that is more UM. I I believe it's currently in
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: the like eight hundred thousand dollar a year neighborhood, so
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: four non game fish and invertebrates. Those are too pots
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: of money that we drawn what funds those were, like,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: where does that money come from? There? There money from
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Congress tax revenue money such a general pool money. Yeah,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: so when you have an idea, you're not in there
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: like fighting the guy down the aisle. No, I'm obsessed
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: with this idea, Like I just just got you a
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: lot of people that want the money. There, I mean there,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: there is there, you know to some degree, there's there's
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: longstanding programs that money goes to, like some guys kissed
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: because he's got some glamorous thing that draws in all
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the money. That doesn't happen. Well, I mean like oh,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: those sheep, those desert big horn sheep guys sure gobble
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: up a lot of money, but see those those folks
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: can use Pittman robertson money, so they're not you know,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: and these more limited people. Is it that those trout
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: guys gobble up a lot of money? Well, I mean
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: again that that would be that would be DJ money eligible.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: So it's it's really a smaller group of folks in
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the agency that work on things that are not reimbursable
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: um against PR and DJ money and and I guess
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I've honestly never thought much about this. Maybe it's in
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: partment because my team gets a lot of that a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: lot of that funding, you know, on the wildlife side, UM,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the herpetology stuff, reptiles and amphibians, you know, they they
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: use that money as well. And then you know, with
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: so particularly for that's particularly true for the ESA funding.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: For the State Wildlife Grand funding, we have another division
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: called UH Ecological and Environmental Planning UM, and that division
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: also works with a lot of State Wildlife Grand money.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: But you know, I feel like those lines are relatively
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: clearly drawn and and you know, there is conversation and
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: negotiation every year about how that money is going to
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: be spent, but it's you know, it's not it's not gladiatorial. Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: So do you feel like you're well funded all in all?
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I do. Yeah. So here's a government guy and it's
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: not going to complain to me about he doesn't get
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: an of money. No. I you know what, you're able
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: to do what you need to do. I think that
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: that we currently absolutely have as many projects going UM,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: as many fully funded projects going as as we could do.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: You know, if if we had more folks in the program,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: we could take on more stuff. But but right now
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: we're we're very busy doing a number of projects across
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: the state. Jimmy Dornany got any questions up to this point. None,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: just everything's been What's the part you thought was the
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: most interesting? Um, basically the breakdown between the amount of
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: money that's gleaned off of sales of firearms. I mean,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: I was just had kind of a not a really
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: strong knowledge of background. I just I'm just amazed that
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: there's that kind of revenue, seven hundred fifty million. I
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: was wondering if they put it. I was going to
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: ask if money gets put away, if it's not all spent.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: He said, it's got to be spent on mission, got
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: to be spent instead of having a nice big chest
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: somewhere where we got it. Uh, well, that's good. It
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: seems like it's going to get use And I like
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: the idea of our fund and our own deal. You know,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: we can't say how do I say it equently? Um,
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: you know we're paying for what we're getting. You know
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: that that strikes home. That's good. But that so, but
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: that becomes controversial to some people because here's the like,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: here's a criticism that you here floated around, Mike, you
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: might speak to this or not. Um. The criticism being
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: that they'll even you like like a fish and game agency.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: What you'll hear their language of like our customers. Okay,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: so someone who just let's say, you have a person
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't hunting fish and they live in a state and
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: they enjoy wildlife. There is some resentment in some with
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: some people that the agency that's responsible for managing and
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: handling all wildlife in that state views it as though
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: they're doing it to service a customer base who's actually
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: paying for it. Now, I would argue that makes sense
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: to me. These are the people who are funding it,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: so they should have a bigger say or have their
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: interests served as a higher priority than people who aren't
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: funding it. But some people feel like a state shouldn't
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: be in that situation. They shouldn't be looking at If
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: your job is to manage wildlife, you shouldn't be doing
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: it through the lens of servicing your customers, meaning of
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: emphasizing or paying special attention to the things that they
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: like to go out and shoot and catch. That they
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: would point to, there's inordinance spending on elk, turkeys, trout,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: wal eyes, and a lack of attention and a lack
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: of funding and a lack of management brought to horn
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: knows chubbed muscles right because the customers don't care or
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: don't care as much. I like that it's broad that
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: it's not just specific the stuff that we hunt, but
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: it's also the money is just distributed all around. But
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: they but but it's not like like a lot of
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: attention is paid to the things that the customers are
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: interested in. Mm hmm, I'm putting Devil's advocate. I'm just
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: saying that that makes people uneasy when they view it.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Being their customers, it would be like, okay, they'd be
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: like this. Imagine the governor state. You would never say, well,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: you know, rich people pay a lot more taxes. I'm
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: more interested in doing the kind of stuff that helps
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: rich people out. Now, that would not fly well as
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: a campaign rally, No, it would not. But fishing game agencies,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: some people feel that efficient game agency's basically saying that
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: by managing wildlife, Mike, you care to speak to this well,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, not your own opinion, but just
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: like would you care to add any flavor texture? Well? No,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I I think I think that
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: to some degree that's a misinterpretation what we do. And
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: you know, me being the guy complaining like I'm not
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: doing like you take you don't agree with that complaint,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: that that that that that's not a valid complaint. I think,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I think I understand where folks are coming
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: from when when they they believe that what we do
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: is manage sport fish and wildlife, um, you know, and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that we just do that for a customer, and and
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: all that we're doing is trying to increase populations of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: things that you can hunt and fish for. I empathize
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: with that, you know, I think I can see why
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: people might see that, but I think that the reality
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: is a lot different, and you know that. I mean,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: that's really why I wanted to come on today, was,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: you know, to to talk about, you know, how it
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: is that we pay for conservation and and why why
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: we manage non game fishing wildlife. Can you answer that?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Can you just answer that in a sentence? Why is
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: it a mandate? Well, I don't. I don't know that
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I can answer in a sentence. Um. I think there's
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a big long bunch of sentences together.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: So there's about half a dozen reasons why we do it.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: I mean one, New Mexico, like most states, you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: has in law in statute that they're fishing. Game agencies
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: are supposed to manage fishing wildlife, and there may be
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: nuances and how they define those things, but they often
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: include lots of stuff that's not you know, game or
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: sport fish, animals. So that's sort of you know, first reason,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: there's there's this legal reason, right, um the second reason
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: we do it, and I stock I want to talk
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: with legal reasons. So you're saying a state, um has
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: that knowing that the money is going to come from,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: knowing that the money is coming from hunters and fishermen,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: they still like with that bit of knowledge, they still
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: have it written in that you have to manage all wildlife.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the consideration originally was
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: when it went into statute and in terms of where
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: the funding would come from, but yes, it is. You know,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: we have a statutory obligation to manage fisher wildline. It
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: could be sued for not doing it. I suppose we could. Okay,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: so there's a legal reason, right, so you know, there's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: there's the ethical reason. And I genuinely believe that this
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: one is important to a lot of people in our
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: agency that you know, managing ecosystems as a whole is
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do. Trying to pass on our
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: natural history as intact as possible is the right thing
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: to do. So that's that's an ethical argument for for
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: why we do it. And you feel that that that
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: sentiment is is held. That's like a widespread belief within agencies.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: I do, yeah, because you guys didn't just all get
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: into it because a huge paycheck. It's a great it's
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: a great way to make a living, it really is,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: but it is it is h not one that necessarily
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: comes with lots of zeros. So you know. The third
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: reason is the ecological argument. Right, So if we want
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: healthy populations of the kind of things that we like
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: to hunt and fish for out in the landscape, they're
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: part of an ecosystem. You you never know what's going
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: to happen when one thing or another disappears. You you
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: never know, you know what might cause things to fall
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: apart from ecosystem level. It's you know, it's it's the
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold intelligent tinkering quote, right, you know. Um, so
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: we want to preserve all the cogs and wheels from
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: an ecological standpoint. So that's you know, reason number three.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: The the ecological argument that it's it's good overall to
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: have healthy functioning ecosystems and all the things that go
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: with them because of the interconnectedness of it all. Yeah,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: that that's that's what I think about a lot. I
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people that hunt fish and look
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: at wildlife through that lens of just like are there
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of deer around right now or not? Like
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: was it a good deer season or not? Because I
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: sat in my dear blind two days and I want
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: to know if I saw more deer last year than
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the year before, Like if you have like that limited
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: of a view of wildlife, I think that often times
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: you can kind of miss some bigger pictures about things,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: and we're at some time talk about it's not long ago.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Where like in the in the nineties, in the eighties
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: and nineties, like we were kind of change aging in
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: this country. In the middle of the country, we were
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: changing some practices of how we are growing grain okay,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: and putting tilling up more land and growing more grain
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: and experimenting with new fertilizers did allow us to grow
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: much more grain in places that we hadn't traditionally grown grain.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: And this went on in the eighties and nineties and
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: kind of rewrote the map on grain production in the US,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: and that caused a massive explosion of snow geese to
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: the point where snow geese populations quadruple and then went
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: beyond that. All of those snow geese spend their time
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: they summer and nest in the Arctic, and they started
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: to decimate grasslands on the Arctic slope. And another thing
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: that happened from this explosion of snow geese decimating grasslands
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: leading to the incursion of salt water into because as
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: they destroy the grass and the rhizomal systems, salt water
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: would come up and entirely change plant communities on the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: Arctic slope. And meanwhile, polar bears. We're figuring out this
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: new resource, and Hudson's Bay had polar bears that are
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: eating hundreds of pounds of snow geese eggs and not
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: eating things that they used to eat before, changing their
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: whole diet around to accommodate or to account for this
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: new resource. So you realize that like some dude killing
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: ground in North Dakota to grow barley, has such wide
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: reaching effects on wildlife that, yeah, like the elder Leopold
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: idea that when you pull a lever, it's not happening
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: in a vacuum, like you're changing many things along with it, right,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people fail to realize
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: that when they talk about species that are you know
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: that we pay attention to or don't pay attention to. Like,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: you can't just have this sort of really nearly idea
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: that you're just gonna let things vanish or trash certain
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: things and not have it be felt in strange, weird
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: ways elsewhere. You know. Yeah, ecosystems are are complex things,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: and they are much bigger than you think. They are
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: much much bigger and generally much more complex because you
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: can't anticipate yeah, like things that and you have to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: get over the idea too. I think people have to
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: get over the idea that we're like done making mistakes.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: There's sort of a cockiness that comes where we laugh
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: about ship we used to do, but right now we're doing,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: um we just haven't found out yet, yeah, you know,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: making big mistakes right now that we'll later realize we're
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: laughably stupid. Well, you know, and I I mean I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: as a as a fisheries manager, right, you know, I
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: hope that we continue to get better. I mean, you know,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: we have a lot more science than we did when
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of things were happening, and you know, the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: introduction of non native species has been such a big
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: thing in the fisheries world for native fish, and you know,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: we talked about it earlier that that those kind of
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: things really are not happening on on the scale. If
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: they're happening at all there, they're not happening on the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: scale that they were. So it's it's true. A hundred
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: years ago, fisheries management was largely about you know, getting
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: fish out in the landscape for people to catch, and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: that meant, you know, anywhere that you could get a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: trout from and go stock it that that was a
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: good thing, particularly if you could establish new populations. You know,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: people people wanted to go to Yellowstone for instance, and
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: catch Eastern brook trout and German brown troute, you know,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: along with the native fish. But for quite a long
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: time now, you know, we've had a sense that that
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: maybe on the best idea, and you know we've been working,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: you know, for the last couple of decades on on
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: doing the small things that we can to remedy that
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: in in limited places. Um. So you know, it's entirely
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: possible that we'll look back in a hundred years and
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and find things that that we did wrong or that
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: we wish we hadn't done. Um. You know, But but
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: I really, I mean, I really hope that we're you know,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: that this idea that we want to manage native species
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: and that we want to manage intact ecosystems. I would
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: be surprised if those concepts have changed dramatically in the future.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: I think the landscape will change to some degree, but
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: I think that we'll still be trying to preserve native
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: species and trying to do the best that we can
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: to two manage ecosystems. You know that. The other thing
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: I guess that I would say about that is is
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: that you know, Teddy Roosevelter's a quote that I that
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: I love. Um. He said that in any moment of decision,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: the best thing that you can do is the right thing,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: worst thing is nothing at all. Yeah, I don't know
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: about that. He said that, but I don't know if
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: I entirely agree with that. Well, but so you know,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: it's I guess what I would say about that is
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: he he's talking about the decision making process, right, So
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: when when I am not saying, and I want to
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: be clear, is that sometimes doing nothing is the right
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: thing to do, and sometimes we make decisions to do nothing,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: you know, because we think that's the best thing for
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: the resource. My my point is that you know, we
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: are really often faced with problems that are relatively clear.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: A species that is in decline, right, something that is
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: is going away, and we want to work to stop that.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: We want to keep that species on the landscape. So
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the solutions are not usually nearly as clear as the problem, right. Yeah,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: it's often very hard to understand what can I do
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: to make this situation better? But we we have to
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: make a decision. I mean, we have, you know, if
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: we want to stop the decline, we have to try
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: to do something. And so I think it's important to
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: consider that the standard can't be that we always get
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: it right of the time. The standard has got to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: be that we do the best we can with the
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: information that we have when we come to a point
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: that we have to make a decision, and that we're
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: brave in making that decision and trying to do something
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: understanding that in a hundred years somebody might look back
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: and go, man, those people were way off the mark.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: How much of the stuff you do, how much of
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: it comes down to like emergencies or is it more
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: like these like general kind of long term trends. It's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: more Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting way to look
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: at it. I would say that it's it's, uh, it's
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: more slow burning emergencies. You know, it's slow burning emergency.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: It's it's things that you know that you know are
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: probably headed in a bad direction, and you know, but
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: it also takes a long time to implement solutions. Yeah. Well,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: when I say, like what I would classif as emergency,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: we recently had a conversation with someone working on Mexican
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: gray wolves, okay, and they had you know, there was
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: a point when there was seven in existence. Okay. I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: feel like at that point you're sort of in emergency land. Yeah.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I mean I think any time that if your goal
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: is to have them not go away, that's an emergency, right.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Other things are these like I would say, like salmon
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight so Pacific North like it's
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: emergency status right now, I would argue, Okay, other things
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: are like man, you know, like like, for instance, there's
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: we've seen some declines of turkeys in some states, and
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: it's kind of mysterious, like what's going on with turkeys?
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I like, not quite emergency yet, but definitely something that
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: warrants watching for. Well, yeah, and I mean, ultimately our
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: hope would be that that we don't get surprised by
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: things like that nearly as often anymore. Right, So you know,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: I'm I don't know, I know, I like the hunt turkeys.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know, you know a whole lot about turkey
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: biology or or the turkey science world. But you know,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: I would suspect that we know in part that turkeys
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: are in decline because there's monitoring data out there about
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: turkeys that state fish and wildlife agencies are collecting, probably
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: harvest data, you know, as as well as on the
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: ground things like you know, nest success and and had
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: success in those kinds of metrics, and you know, all
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: of that is aimed at understanding what's going on, so
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: that instead of something getting all the way to the
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: emergency stage, you know that that we're able to try
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: to start implementing solutions before before we get to the
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: last seven in captivity. Just yeah, it's a prevent emergencies. Right.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: What do you when you when you take like the
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: long the long view on wildlife and wildlife funding, what
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: what are some of your feelings? Well, I mean, what
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: are some of the things that you're like optimistic about.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: What are some things you're pessimistic about? You know, that's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that there's a whole lot that that
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: I am really personally pessimistic about on the funding side
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: of things. Um. You know you're familiar with the argument
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: right that Thursday that if Americans um were too you know,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: become increasingly urbanized and they and they dissociate from hunting
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: and fishing. Okay, we have less people out doing these activities, um,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: less people buying firearms that you're gonna see a diminishment
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: in dollars to go to wildlife. That doesn't keep you
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: up at like you like you're not like that's just
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: too hard to think about? Are too much unknown? Yeah,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: I mean it's that would certainly be be one of
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: those things that for me right now and in my
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: role with the agency, you know, um, I've got plenty
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: of on the ground immediate kind of problems. Yeah, I
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: think I think it's you know, it's it's a great question.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: Where do you know, where do non consumptive users for
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, fit in the picture
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: of wildlife management? And you know, how how do we
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: how do we bring them in and and make room
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: for for that viewpoint in the big picture? Um, you know,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: And and then I think that sort of gets to
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: how how can they contribute? I mean, you know, is
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: there a similar model to what we currently do with
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the money that is all tied back to the sail
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing licenses with other folks simulate looking forward?
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Is there a way that non consumptive wildlife users? Is
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: there a way we would find that they would start
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: funding some stuff with wildlife? Well, I know it's not
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: your department, but it's like a thing that you've here discussed. Well,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: you just as a guy that likes to spend time outdoors,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, right, And I mean I think, you know,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: I guess I think to some degree it is the
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: department that I work in, and you know, in the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: sense that that I work with lots of threatened and
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: endangered and imperiled fish, and you know that that would
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: be the kind of funding that you know, that could
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: really boost budgets for those things. Um, you know, we
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: we talk about this sometimes at work, you know what
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, one thing and it almost it almost sounds funny,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: but one thing that people can do to support fish
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: and wildlife conservation in the states that they live in
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: is to buy a hunting or fishing license, whether they
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: go out or not. And you know, I mean again,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I suppose some folks might chuckle at that,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: but you know, when you look at the fact that
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that we spend a lot of state money, you know,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: on non game fish and wildlife, and that the formulas
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: for money coming to the states through the excise programs
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: through PR and DJ are based on how many licenses.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: It's like matching dollars. It's like when you listen to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: NPR fundraise and they talk about matching dollars. Yeah, you're
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: basically getting three to one back. Yeah they should just
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: why don't this Why don't the state the states just
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: start selling Um, I guess they do, like duck stamp,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: that's federal, But why does the state just like have
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: a thing that they just put out there. Well, and
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: then they who likes to look at and have no
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: license plates. No, no, no, they have like uh they're
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: like what like recreation cards they call them or things
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: like that. I don't I'm not a tax stamps. Yeah.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: So we we have a habitat stamp program, which would
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: be another thing. You know, somebody could just buy a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: habitat stamp um. I believe all of that money gets
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: matched again, and you can also make a donation on
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: your license plate motor vehicle stuff to go to state. Yeah. So,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: so like most states, ours is called Share with Wildlife
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: m and a lot of that Year with Wildlife funding
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: actually gets matched against state wildlife grant money, you know.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: So that's that's almost exclusively spent on on non game.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: Does that bring any money in? Uh? You know, I
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: don't know the numbers for for what's there. It's it's
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: not you know, it's not millions of dollars. So so,
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: you know, but I think the path that you were
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: going down earlier is like the Holy grail right for
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: this kind of funding, which would be an excise tax
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: on other outdoor equipment, every damn backpack that gets sold
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: in the country. Well and right, you know that I
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: think that I think we should pay that ship. I
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: would just I would draw like I would come in
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: and I'd go down to r I and I'd be like, yep,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: all this ship right, and just do that across the board. Yeah,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: you know, you're at skis anything if you're doing a thing,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: if you're doing a thing in the out of doors.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: If I was just like the the emperor of the world, okay,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: just the emperor of the country, I would say that
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: if you're doing an outdoor activity, I'm going to tax
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: your ship ten percent. Yeah, have a tat and wildlife, right,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: I mean then unless you can convince me that when
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: you see it elk, you don't look at it, then
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I'd give you like some kind of exemption. If I'm
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: the emperor, that's how I'm gonna run it. That's how
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna run the program. Yeah, you know obviously, like
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: you're really telling me honestly you don't look at wildlife,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: like really don't look at it. Then if that's the case,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: if you look out your windows like holy ship out,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: you pay for all your ship. That's what I would do. Yeah,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: and I can't you know, I would never advocate a
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: legislative position, but you know, I mean, I know, but
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: here's the thing you could be buying. You could be
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: buying a little like pocket pistol, okay, for home defense.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: You're paying for wildlife. How does that have How does
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: they have more to do with wildlife than a pair
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: of hiking boots. It's an imperfect system right now. I'm
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: not saying we should excuse those people. I just think that. Yeah,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: and again you're like, you know, I know you don't
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: want to, you can't like you don't want to give
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: an opinion about this because of the capacity in which
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: you hear. But I just feel like if that person
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: is paying or do with hiking boots, should damn should
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: be paying at least a DJ. They sort of did
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: that with the boat fuel. I didn't know that because
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: it's not like only fishermen or Yeah, yesterday I saw
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of people out there that obviously are chipping
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: in and they weren't doing any fishing. Yeah, so that
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: you're right, some dude pulling wakeboards is like a is
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: like an urban person who has a concealed carry and
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: every time they buy AMMO or whatever they're kicking in. Yeah,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: the dude pulling weakeboards is paying for fish. Yeah, we've
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: heard reasons why this actor or these things happen gone through.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: What's interesting to me is that we out often ask
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: like a lot of people we work with aren't necessarily
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: hunters and fishermen, but they are rock climbers and skiers
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: and whatever. And everybody we ask are like, yeah, sure,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I pay what I've heard, and I've only been like,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: I've had some conversations around us, and I heard. An
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: argument they make is that so many people who make like,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: for instance, apparel okay, sown goods, right, sown goods. It's imported,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: and they're already under such a tax burden from importing
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: their materials or importing manufactured goods that they're saying, we're
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: tax too much already. We can't afford to add yet
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: another tax. And I don't know if you went and
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: asked the gun industry like can you afford more taxes
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: and not gonna be like, oh, yeah, no problem. Anybody's
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: gonna say that. But that's the argument you hear. And
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: they resisted because people go to like outdoor retailers and
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: push them on this idea and they don't want it.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: They don't want it. But meanwhile, the hunting, the hunting
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: and fishing industries were like, please do it, let's do it.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: But Roosevelt put Roosevelt put it to and Franklin Roselt
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: put to. He's like, no one will pay for this
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: except you. If you want this to happen, you will
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: have to pay for it because no one else is
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: going to do it. And they did it. M Advocating
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: for any taxes on a political level two is like
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: political different world suicide. It's a different world now than
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: it was. But I think it's like it would solve
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: so many of our problems. Maybe it doesn't need to
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: be ten to eleven. We're getting a light yeah, because
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: they're like, we'll give them like a lightweight user break. Mhm.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, the revenue needs to be generated somehow,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: so it's got to come from somewhere. Didn't the state
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: that the state somewhere to add a little bit on
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: a sales tax for wild Yeah? Um, I believe. I
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: believe it may have been Missouri, but I think you
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: should confirm that one dude down there. Um, so you know,
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: I would mention that please that if if in in
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: the mythical world that that were ever to happen, my
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: emperor idea, right, that. You know, if they were going
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: to be similar programs to PR and DJ, they would
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: have to come with matching state funds. There would have
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: to be a matching source of state revenue. If it
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: was exactly the same model. You don't want to all
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: go into the federal kittie. Well, you know, I mean
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: because just to say that right now we have we
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: have license sale dollars that we match against, you know,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: to do the whole reimbursement things we talked about her.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: So I'll think of a remedy to that. Then I
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: would say that that all states are gonna have to
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: add a one percent sales tax to fun fishing wildlife
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: to give matching dollars a draw off. My backpacker tacks,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: that's fine. How do you start a movement like a
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: like a movement, I don't know, you to be hard
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: pressed to get people to pay more. Man, No, that's
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Though, every time we ask the people,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: we've yet to have everything. I know that every backpacker
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: I knows, like dude, that would totally pat if I
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: knew that that's how it work. If I knew that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: that's how it worked, And that's where I went out
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: happily packed. I think there's a gray when it's voluntary
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: or mandated. When she started getting told what to do,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: because some people just like the relief of being told
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: what to do. I don't know, I'll go along, all right, Mike,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: what else? Man? What else? What else? You got? Yeah?
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: So you know, we we covered We covered a couple
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: of those. Why do we manage non game fishing, wildlife,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: species arguments, and legal, ethical, ecological right. So those those
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: are the three that we talked about. But you know,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: there are three really pragmatic reasons why if you say,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not personally concerned about non game animals,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: you know that there are still some reasons why it's
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: in your best interests that your state is managing those things.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: So the first one, and you know you guys have
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: talked a lot about it in the past, is um it.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: We think as a state agency that it's a good
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: thing for us to maintain as much management control over
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: species as as we can. It's generally in the state's
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: interest to manage its own fishing wildlife, so we want
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: to as opposed to what as opposed to federal manager.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: So we want to do what we can in part
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: because it's the right thing to do, in part because
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: it's our interests from a management perspective to keep animals
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: from getting listed under the endangered species to maintain your jurisdiction, right,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: So we want to know what's going on with those
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: animals out in the landscape, you know, and we want
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: to work towards conserving those animals in the cases when
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: we can, particularly if we think that they're in decline,
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: that helps keep them off the list. And then animals
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: once they do get on the list, or if they
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: do get on the list, we want to work towards
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: recovery to bring more management authority back to the state.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, I want to be clear, we work
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: with lots of federal partners very closely in very productive ways.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: You know. It is it is not that, you know,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: we're not interested in working with our federal partners. It's
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: just that, you know, from the state's perspective, keeping things
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: off the list and recovering animals once they're on helps
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: us maintain more more management authority. Yeah, it's like doing
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: your You're doing your job, right, So you know, that's
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: that's one pragmatic reason is to head off listing and
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: work towards recovery in the cases where things are listed,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: because if it gets listed and the FEDS assumed control
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: of it, there might be things that would happen that
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: would have negative implications for people in your state. Well yeah,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: and so that that really ties to to the second
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: part of that, which is that because the Fish and
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Wildlife Service administers these federal aid programs, that's what you know,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: call them federal aid programs. Um, we to get that money,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: we have to ensure that we are complying with all
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the federal laws. So getting the money creates this next
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: us to the federal govern an which means that you know,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: we have to consult on almost everything we do or
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: every project that we use money on, we have to
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: that everybody understands what the potential impacts two animals that
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: are listed under ESA will be. And there's other federal
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: laws like the National Environmental Policy Act NIPA, you know,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: and other things that we have to comply with. And
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: and so a really good give I need to back
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: up on that one. So you're saying, like, let's say
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: you wanted to do a project, Um, you're gonna do
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: a thing to help out trout, okay, trout habitat you're
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: saying that you also need to make sure that that
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: work isn't going to impact an endangered speed an endanger
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: threatened species. That's yeah, that's exactly right. And so you know,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: a really good example that that kind of ties these
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: two things together is that there's currently action to list
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: to partial in the lift Rio grande chub. Rio grande
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: chub exists in a lot of places in New Mexico.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: Some of those places are recreational rainbow trout fisheries that
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: we stocked with rainbow trout. Right, so we use Dingle
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: Johnson money at our hatcheries, you know, to raise the
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: fish and to drive him out there to stock them.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: And there's you know, there's a there's a fair number
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: of high use fisheries in New Mexico that you know
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: wouldn't sustain wild trout populations at the kind of harvest,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: and those rainbow trout aren't good for the chubbs. Well,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't know that I would
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: say that out of hand. Um, I don't know that
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: we have great data on on good or not. There
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: are a lot of places that we There are places
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: that we stock Rio grande chub or I'm sorry that
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: we stock rainbow trout that also have Rio grande chub.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: So it it's not a completely exclusive thing, you know.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: But like again, you know, from a pragmatic perspective, if
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: real ground a chub were to be listed, there would
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: be a consultation that would have to happen about the
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: potential impacts of rainbow trout on chub and that would
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: have an effect to you know, the average trout fisherman
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: out there who utilizes those. Yeah that, if that, it
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: could spell bad ship for rainbow trout in some place.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Not that I'm a fan of rainbow trout, but it
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: could spell bad ship for rainbow trout if that, if
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: the chub got listed as an endangered species, yeah, I
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: mean it it had, it would have the potential to
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: to change that landscape. And have you ever read the
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: book arguing that that lays out a really lucid argument
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: that the rainbow of describing the rainbow trout as a
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: synthetic fish and entirely synthetic fish. And there's Tealverston. I
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: think the man made fish. It's it's it's when you
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: start reading the history of that fish and how it's
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: been spread around and how it all came to be. Yeah,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: it's like a make believe fish. Yeah, and again, you know,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: very popular make belief fish. But the path of that
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: people look at and associate it somehow with wildness or
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: pristineness is laughable. Yeah, except for very few watersheds. I
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: don't want to make a value judgment about rainbow trout.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: We certainly have a lot of folks. People love them,
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: people love them, but it's it's like it's kind of
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Dorn you raise in your hand, but you live
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: in actual rainbow trout country, so you don't county the
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: Pacific rim you could, you could. Yeah, it's okay to
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: like rainbow trout on the Pacific route. It's all the
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: other people. If you, if you when you flush your toilet,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: if that water flows into the Pacific, you can like
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: rainbow trout. You flush your toilet and it doesn't. You
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: should not like them. Okay. That's coming from me, alright,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: not our guests rule. And you know I would provide
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: one perspective on that. I mean, I you know, I
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: grew up in Pennsylvania, right, and that they stock a
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: lot of trout in Pennsylvania. And I grew up fishing rainbows. Oh,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: we did was fishing non natives in Michigan. I'm not
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: saying like I'm not holier than thou. I'm just saying
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: it's like we've created a weird situation all over the country.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: When I was growing up, we we did fish something.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: We fished native fish. We spend a ton of time
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: fishing a lot of things that had been introduced into
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: our ecosystem to the detriment of native species, right. And
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: I think that we're gonna have if we're looking long ways,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: I think that we're going to continue that there's gonna
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: be a forced reckoning with that going forward. And you've
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: kind of alluded it to yourself a little bit. I mean,
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: I you know, I think to a degree, we're we're
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: in the reckoning. We're we're at least constantly looking for
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: a balance. I mean for you know, how and where
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: we manage water specifically for native fish, you know, in
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: other places where we manage water for recreational opportunities, and
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we recently published a statewide fisheries management plan.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: If you know, if anybody's interested in a particular water
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico, you can go in there and it
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: will outline, you know, what are our main management objective is.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: And and that is not to say, you know, just
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: because it says the water is going to be managed
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: for native fish that they're absolutely won't be any sport
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: fish there, but you know, it does provide some insight
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: into what the state's thinking. Yeah, because a lot but
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: because a lot of the relationships are totally harmonious, Like
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: it's really hard. People try, but people don't have a
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: lot of luck. And there are exceptions to this, but
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: like generally people look and be like, it's hard to
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: find rock solid evidence that turkeys are delaterious in all
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: the places they've been introduced, right, It's like there's some
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: suspicions here and there, but it's just generally like when
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: you put turkeys on the ground, we haven't yet identified
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: away in which that's a major screw up, quite like
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: we had when you put common carp into a waterway.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: There's a tremendous amount of evidence that suggests we shouldn't
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: have dumped carp everywhere, right, you know, you know, and
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, to my point, even I worked in the
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: Elsta National Park before I worked for New Mexico UM,
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: and even there, in their current Native fish Conservation plan,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: you know, they identify a portion of the park it's
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: uh the Firehole River, the Given River below the falls,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: and the Madison where you know, they are essentially saying,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: this is an area that is a high value recreational
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: trout fishery, and we, at least in the I believe
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: the twenty year time frame of that plan, don't intend
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: to do native fish work in that reach. That's the balance.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: So they're saying, like, we're gonna have room for non
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: native trout, brown trout, rainbow trout. We're making room for
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: those fisheries because people value it. Well, they're not necessarily
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: saying they're not making room in the sense that they're
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: expanding them in any way. They're they're just not actively
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: working to control non native trout in those places. Yeah.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: So so go back to talk about the thing you
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: guys published the where you can look up your waterway. Yeah,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's the it's the statewide UH Fisheries Management Plan.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: It's available through the New Mexico Department. It lays out
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: like what long term goals are. Yeah. It it lays
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: out what are what our management objectives are in uh
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: in the waters of the state. Is there anything in
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: there that's real like introversial? Um? You know, I suppose
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: that that would that would depend who you ask it. Uh.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: It has largely been supported by by the public, and
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: of course it was approved by by our commissions. So UM,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: you know, there may be folks that are unhappy with
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: with the direction some specific waters are going. But of
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: course it's a quite a hard thing to do to
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: make everybody happy all the time. So does that exhaust
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: your list of why? Your list of things about why
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: we should I want to hear the long list, not
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: want more? I got you know. The last one is
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: is that UM, when we work on on projects that
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: benefit non game animals, they almost always have ancillary benefits
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: for things that we more generally associate with hunting or angling. UM.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: I've been working on a project for Chihuahua chub in
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: the Members River, which is in southwestern New Mexico, kind
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: of south of the HeLa. How big is this chub?
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Up to ten or twelve inches? It's it is in
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: the essay listed species. UM. So we've been working to
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: do habitat improvement, which includes work in the Riparian Corridor
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: for the chub and for cherich how leopard frog also
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: a listed species of frog. Um, you know. But but
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: overall we're doing habitat improvement work both in the river
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: and in the Riparian corridor. And that Reparian corridor has havelina,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: it has mule, deer, quail. Uh. The last time I
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: was down there, I saw bear tracks along the river.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: It's not the kind of place that a guy from
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania would expect to encounter bear tracks. But but they're there, um,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: you know, as well as bats and uh rio grande
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: sucker and other nine game um fish and wildlife. So
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: you know that you will have a benefit for that
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: system on the whole. So even though somebody could look
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: at it and say you're spending money on chubb, while
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: that's true, there's also ancillary benefits for other fish and wildlife. Yeah. Um,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: do you do anybody fish with those chubs? Uh? Not
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: that I know of. I've I've seen them rise to
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: uh two, you know, may flies on the surface of
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: the river. In theory, you could do you feel that
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: there cases where you get do you ever feel blowback
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: from people saying like, why are we spending money? Like
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: do you hear it? We're people within government, like even
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: elected people, um will kind of lampoon yeah, you know,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: mock the idea of spending money on things that no
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: one like cares, like quote cares about. I mean, like
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: you know, probably like you I hear about it. It's
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: not been a personal experience that I've that I've had
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: were where I had a project that got lampooned in
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: that way and shutdown. I mean, there was a fellow
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: running for president last fall that was mocking a smelt
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: in the He was mocking like actually mocking the fish,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: mocking a smelt in California as being too small to
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: care about. I mean, it does happen, Yeah, I mean
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: there's there is politics and involved in everything, and you know,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: some consideration of politics is is probably always prudent, Like
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: why would anyone care about that? Yeah? And that's you know,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: let me count the weights, right, And that's in part
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: what I hope to provide people is you know, if
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: you get into those conversations about why should I care
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: about that, you know there's a couple of reasons. I mean,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: you know, some some pragmatic reasons about you know, why,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: particularly as hunters and anglers, we should care about working
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: with non game fish and wildlife. The thing that that
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: I returned to again and again and thinking about this
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: and talking about it with other hunters and fishermen is um,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: it's just kind of like a sickening kind of audacity
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: that we would somehow come to the idea that's that
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: certain species don't warrant existing, like you want to talk
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: about sort of human hubris and arrogance would be that.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: And I don't care what your understanding of the world
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: is if you have this a completely secular view, if
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: you have a religious view of the world, Like, there's
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: no worldview that I think could really support the idea
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: that we could sit back and let species that exist
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: on this earth vanish because we in this particular moment
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: in time don't really care about it. It's just like
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: it just strikes me as being like absolutely immoral. Yeah,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: And I don't throw that stuff around, Like I don't
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: weigh in on a lot of like social morality issues.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of like a you know, when it comes
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: like general terms of morality, I'm kind of like a um.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: Privacy of your own home kind of guy. Right, Like,
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: I don't really believe in getting in there and legislating
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: activities between consenting adults and stuff. Uh, but when it
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: comes to like moral issues, I feel that wiping things
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: off of the face of the earth gone forever, you
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: are playing with some ship that you should not be
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: playing with. Yeah, I think that's the you know, that's
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: the ethical argument, right, is that that's the right thing
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: to do to to preserve our natural history as intact
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: as we can. The idea that some people find it
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: acceptable that we would have less species on earth, you know,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: but then some people get swept up in the some
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: people get slept up in the idea that like things
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: go extinct all the time. So it's okay, right, we
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: used to have these big as huge dinosaurs and they're
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: gone now, so I guess doesn't matter. It's kind of
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: like people argue that, but I find it's such like
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: a flawed way of thinking that because extinctions do happen,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: that we would just open it up and allow them
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: to happen, especially from human caused activities. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: you know, because you can't argue that's not natural. Even
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: the genesis that we spoke with a right, She's like, extinction.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: Extinction is natural. Yeah, far more things have gone extinct
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: than here in existence right now. But that's not but
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: but our activities exactly, So I think on our watch,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: we can't let it happen on our watch. And there's
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: a matter of time scale at play there too, I mean,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: you know, get in a geological time, you know. Uh.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: And John John McFee has a have you ever read
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: Annals of the Former World? So John McFee wrote three
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: books about geology, and when they were they were eventually
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: published together as Annals of the Former World. And in
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: this book there's there's a couple of things. One he
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: says that if he was gonna, if he had to
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: sum up his his trilogy in one sentence, it would
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: be that the peak of Mount Everest is marine limestone.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: So the top of Mount Everest is rock that was
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: laid out on the bottom of an ocean. But another
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: point he makes is that if you imagine life on Earth,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: so not just like the form, but life on Earth.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: If you imagines being a man's outstretched arms, his life
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: on Earth from one fingertip to the other fingertip as
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: a timeline, you could remove human history with one stroke
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: of a nail file. Right, It's a powerful image. And
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: when you imagine the amount of extinctions that have occurred
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: under our watch, and that one's the amount of extinctions
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: that we have conducted in that one stroke of a
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: nail file, that we're not living at a sustainable rate
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: as far as letting ship slide, you know, and a
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: lot of that ship would have been good hunting fish
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: in the passenger pitch, right, So it is it does
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: impact hunters and fishermen. Man, there's a lot of ship
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: that had been a good to hunt you can't hunt anymore.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: What else, Mike, you know, other things you want to
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: talk about? No, I mean, you know, I think I
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: think we we we covered most of it there. I
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: think there are a couple interesting points when, you know,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: when we sort of come at at things from the
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: perspective of of you know, what what our agencies doing
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: with the money and and what does what do those
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: things mean not just to hunters and anglers but to
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: other folks? Right? So, um, you know, we mentioned that
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: law enforcement is not reimbursable under Wildlife Sports fish restoration. Next,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: that's a little surprising because they're doing enforcement on too
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: for the betterment of wildlife. But okay, I'll tell you, like,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: at face value, I I like, I except what you're saying.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: But it is a little bit surprising to me, right,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: And I mean I think it is a little bit
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: surprising because you know, I mean, we essentially police our
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: own ranks in that way, right, I mean we're completely
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: paying for, uh, you know, a law enforcement system to
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: protect the resource. That's ultimately what it's about, right, is
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: to protect those resources. Yeah, and poachers a lot of
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: probably aren't buying licenses, so they're not even paying into this.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: They're not even paying for the guy that's going to
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: arrest them. That's right there. I mean, you know, they're
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: they're they're doing it for us so that you know,
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: the license buyers have a resource to recreate through. But
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously game wardens do um lots of things
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: that aren't just checking fishing licenses. Um. You know, for instance,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: when when there's a call about a black bear in
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: somebody's garage, it's often you know that that call ends
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: up with with the game warden and they show up
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: to try to resolve the situation, and generally, you know,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: their approaches obviously to keep people safe first, but hopefully
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: have the most positive outcome for the for the bear,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: for whatever wildlife it is when they show up, and
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: you know, they're also not asking the homeowner to see
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: their hunting license when they show up. It's a it's
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: a service that's provided to the public, you know, by
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: the hunting and angland community, by the license buyers in
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: those states. Dude, you should say that round their truck
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: brought to you by all due to lie the hunting fish,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: you know. And and I'm I mean obviously for me,
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm I couldn't be more happy that we do that,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: because you know, the goal is to have positive outcomes
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: for those animals. But you know, it is it is
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: something that that is being provided, you know. And then
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: the other thing is in a state like New Mexico,
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: most of the western states, and really you know, all
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: across the country, there's there's game wardens who's districts are
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: in remote and you know, rural places and they just
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: overall help to provide a law enforcement presence in those places.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: You know. We I mean, we hear all the time
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: about game warden's you know, being involved in in things
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: that aren't wildlife related. They're just you know, they're there
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: to help. They show up at the scene of an
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: accident to help folks. I was out in California doing
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: a story about livestock guys that investigate livestock staft and
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: they have a rural crime task Force, and I was
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: I met with game Wardans who'd gone in on drug
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: rates at the time. I think it might have changed
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: after that, but they were called into all kinds of
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: ship sure, and you know, I mean they contact all
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: kinds of folks, and you know when they make those contacts,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: they do the normal checks that you know law enforcement
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: officers do, and you know, so they just helped keep
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: things safer in general. Um. You know. Another one is
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: uh so we talked a little bit about habitat you know,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: I I uh, I got an estimate in New Mexico
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: over a ten year span, it will be about twenty
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: five million dollars that's either already been spent or or
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: we have earmarked to spend on habitat protection. And and
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: that is all just PR connected, not the fish stuff
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: that we're doing. And you know, when Jim and robertson
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: not PR public relations, but wildlife Restoration act UM. You know,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: those projects do lots of things that like are for
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: forest health and watershed health, you know, thinning, controlled burning,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: things that helped to prevent catastrophe wildfires that would have
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: serious impacts on things like people's water supplies. Right, you
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: don't when when you get catastrophic wildfire. If the town
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: that you live in has a water supply reservoir that's
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: downstream of that and you get some post fire flooding,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: you can get a lot of you know, negative consequences
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: from from that. And you know, I there's there's at
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: least one example if I can think of where you know,
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: a water supply reservoir you know more or less filled
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: up with sediment than you know, I have to drain
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: it and dredge it to get it back so that
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: it can come back on wildfire. So you know again
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: that the money is is coming through and being matched
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: by license dollars and ultimately being paid for in part,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: you know, by those license dollars. But and it's good
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: for wildlife and that's the focus of it. But everybody
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: reaps of benefit, you know, from doing things that benefit
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: ecosystem health, farce health, watershed health UM. You know, so
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: I think that that's a great thing that you know,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: that we helped to do out there in the landscape.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: The last really interesting example I'll give you is, you know,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: aquatic invasive species. Of course are are always a big thing,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: and we do a lot of work with aquatic invasive
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: species um New Mexico. You know, we are fortunate that
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: you know that through the work that we've done. You know,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: we don't have either of the two really common Asian muscles,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: so we don't have zebrew or quagga muscles, and you know,
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: we we work hard to do um inspections on watercraft
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: coming into the state, you know, and educate people about
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: those species. And yes, those species getting into systems that
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: would have ecological impacts you know, both to sport fish
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: and to non game fish and probably other well life
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: as well. But they would also have substantial impacts of
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: water infrastructure. So if you have water infrastructure for irrigation
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: that's drawing out of a reservoir and you get zebra
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: muscles in the reservoir, you're gonna have to spend some money,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: you know, basically keeping those pipes open, keeping zebra muscles
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: from actually growing to a point where it plugs up
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: that water and it's cost it costs in the Great Lakes,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: they cost hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure problems.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: And I mean to mentioned like the implications for fisheries
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: and so I you know that's that's also I mean
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: we as you know, hunters and anglers are making an
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: investment to keep those things out. And you know there
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: there is a benefit to the general public to do
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: that too. People should be kissing our asses more than
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: they do, man. People should be that you should walk
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: down the road and people should be yelling out their
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: their carbondals. Thank you hunter and fisherman. Well, and I mean,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: you know, thank you all you do for us. Really,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: why you know I wanted to come on is is
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: not not you know, not that people or you're not
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: getting the credit you deserve. No, not that, but but
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: so that when we have conversations with people who don't
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: do this, who aren't involved in the recreational side of wildlife.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: You know, I think and I think you've talked about
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: it like we're a pretty small percentage, right, like something
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: like in in two thousand and six, five percent of
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: man over sixteen years old bought or hunted for deer
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: right and and women, you know, about one percent of
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: of women, so we're not like a huge majority. And
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: it varies greatly by state state right from from less
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: than one to you know upwards higher. But yeah, nationally
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: about five. But you know, so this this thought that
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: it's going to be like some logical argument that we
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: will win or lose, I don't think it's really probably
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: how it's gonna work. But I think if we can
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: take the information about all the things you know that
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: we do, that our benefit not just to fishing wildlife
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: that we can harvest, you know, but also to non
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: game fishing wildlife and also just to the public at large.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: You know, if we can internalize that and again not
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: approach it like you know, I'm gonna hammer somebody with
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: this argument. But when we engage people and when we
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: talk to folks and when we hear things, you know
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: that we only care about elk, you know that we
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: have a standpoint and informed standpoint to come at that
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: from and say, well, you know, you know, there there
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: are some other things that your state fishing wildlife agency
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: is doing, and you know they're doing them. Revenue that's
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: generated through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, and
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: you know it does benefit you know, and by the way,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: it does help protect that watershed above your cities, you know,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: drinking water supply. I think that that can be meaningful. Yeah,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: And as we learn from Greg Blaskovitch, you need to
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: throw out the argument of I'm controlling the deer populations
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: for you. People don't care. People don't give a ship.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: And as we know, as you know, you kind of
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: sort of are, and you kind of sort of are recognized,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: like your average Joe Blow doesn't recognize the problem. No,
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: that's what you're saying. I'm saying that the average I
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: don't even know how true this is. But I feel
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: like a lot of hunters like that. That is like
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: they're like, go to It's like, oh no, this is
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: why you should like us hunter and fisherman, because we're
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: controlling the wildlife population for it, keep the deer numbers down,
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: otherwise they're all going to die of disease. And as
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: we learn from Greg, that argument does of work. People
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: don't care. And I think you in the last ten
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: minutes of given given the people a lot of like
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: great arguments and points to make you know. Yeah, but
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: the great conservationist Jim Pozwits when questioned about why, uh,
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: why does the American public like know the story? And
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: he's like, hunters don't even know the story because you
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: gotta go teach it to them their own story. They
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: don't even know their own story. You gotta teach their
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: own story to them before you have any chance of
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: the broader public understanding it. The guy engaged in it
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't even know. He just pissed his license fees went
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: up last year. It was three dollars um. Do you
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: want to hear about a couple of state funding successes
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: that are outside of the stuff that we've talked about. Yeah, man,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: that we're talking about the the some says that added
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: sales taxes, So it's Missouri and Arkansas conservation sales taxes.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: Virginia and Texas have dedicating tax revenues from outdoor gear,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: so there are two days are actually taxing tents and backpacks. Uh,
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: dedicate lottery revenues for Colorado, Arizona, Maine, and then Florida
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: and South Carolina have real estate transfer taxes that go
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: directly to Gama fish agencies. More taxes that's not gonna
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: run on no, I'm not joking. But what I do like,
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: I don't like. I don't like gonna run on more taxes,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: but I am gonna. I am gonna the idea of
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: UM of identifying other user groups who who benefit from
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: wildlife and who tend to want to have a say
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: in wildlife, that you need to earn your seat at
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: the table, right, Yeah, I mean, you know, I certainly
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: think that that when you know, folks look at that
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: and wanting to see at the table, like, you know,
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: I think it's fair to ask, you know, how they're
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: going to contribute. I mean, we have, for as hunters
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: and anglers, we have for a long time now contributed
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of resources to conserving, fishing, wildlife. Here's the
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: devil advocate argument that I can already hear brewin um
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: somewhere out there. Yeah, is that do we want that?
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: Do we want these people to have a say at
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: the table? I just want him to pay, Yeah, and
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: I wanted to pay, but have no input. I don't
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: I don't care what they think, all right, thanks, No,
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: I don't want to hear about it. You don't want
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: to hear about it because I know where you're going
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: with this. Right, yeah, because they're gonna say, well, yeah,
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be the New Jersey cat ladies all a
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: sudden are going to actually start paying, and they're gonna say, well, no,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think you should be hunting those animals anymore.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: I had someone recently bring up that I had talked
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: about New Jersey. But here's the thing I want to terrify.
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know any New Jersey cat ladies. But when
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: I closed my eyes and imagine the exactly when imagine, like,
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: like my perspective on wildlife in America, okay, and my upbringing,
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: the things that shape my perspective wildlife in America, and
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: I try to visualize the opposite of my perspective on wildlife.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: I feel that it's embodied by what I imagine A
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: old lady in New Jersey who owns a shipload of
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: cats might think. I just pictured like that would be
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: the antithesis of my own perspective, would be like a
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: cat lady, yes, because she's rescued all those cats. Just somehow,
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: I don't really I need to spend more time picturing her,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: because I might come up with a different thing or
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: a picture in New Jersey in different way. Yeah, I
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: just picture like a New Jersey cat lady being like
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: my arch rival when it comes to my perspectives on
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: wild management. So you know, I just stop saying it. Actually,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: I would lay out there that you know, we we
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: live in a representative democracy, so the concept that that
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: we can keep folks from having a seat at the
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: table maybe isn't the most sustainable approach to this in
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: the long term anyway. I mean, we we have to
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: learn to engage other folks and you know, and come
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: at some of these questions from a point of empathy. Yeah,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: because you I think you're the one that brought up
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: the idea that the five percent of the population, like,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: we live in a democracy, so um, we live like
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: as hunters and fishermen and just a lot of horners
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: of fishermen that really want to act like this isn't true.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: But as hunters and fishermen, we live at the pleasure
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: of the voting public. Who you're like, Your ability to
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: live the lifestyle you live is because cause people who
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: do not engage in the activities you engage in have
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: a generally favorable impression of those activities. If they did not,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: you would be done. You're not gonna win the You're
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: not gonna win a popular vote by just having the
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: guys that hunting fish going out and casting their ballots.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way, right, You're gonna get smoked.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: You would lose all elections to five. And things in
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: this country generally fall around a split is a landslide.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: Ship is tight now, right, So you need to have
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: al You need a lot of what I said, I
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: was joking because it's true, like you need to have
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: very strong allies that lie outside of your the activities
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: you engage in. Yeah, you need to live an exemplary lifestyle. Yeah,
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: And and you know, we need to engage those people
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: in in ways that are meaningful to them. And you know,
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: that's why I really liked the episode with Greg. I mean,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: it's really what inspired me to reach out to you guys,
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: you know about this topic because it's sort of seemed
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: like a natural segue from you know, how how do
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: we how do we talk to people? You know, what
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: are those quote unquote arguments or conversations that we can
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: have with people that do influence the way they view hunting,
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: you know, and and then the next step is, you know,
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: how how do we be more informed about some of
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: these things, particularly that you know, he laid out five
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: or six arguments, right and funding was one of them,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: or the revenue side of things was was one of
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: those arguments. And you know, how do we how do
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: we take that the next step? How do we be
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: informed when some when we say yeah, the revenue and
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: somebody comes back and says, yeah, but the revenue all
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: gets spent on things that you can catch and shoot.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: You know, what might refer into is what number is.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: But if you go back. We had a podcast episode
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: some time ago where we interviewed a guy, Greg Blaskovitch,
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: who's a social sciences researcher at Stanford, and what he
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: was doing is he was testing UM. He was he
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: was working with people who had a general like anti
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: like an identifiable anti hunting bent and he would test ideas.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: UM would test justifications of hunting with these individuals Episode
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: fifty three where they would go to people and here's
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: the person who's like identifies as an anti hunter and
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: then they would test ideas and say like, okay, well
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: what about if you knew this, how does this change
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: your perception of honey? And to look at what are
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: the the realities and rhetorics that hunters use and which
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: of those are effective, which of those moves the needle. Um,
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: So we've been referring to that a lot. You can
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: you can go back and check that out. Jum Dorney
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: got anything want to wrap up with? Man? Um? What
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: sports teams on your hat there? It's the Mariners Mariners
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: baseball Club. Yeah, we got any reluding thoughts? Well, Um,
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: it's been good to learn to sum out how our
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: tax dollars are utilized. And I appreciate the knowledge and
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: guys like Mike that are making it happen on the ground.
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: It's it's it's interesting, it's good to hear, and and
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: now I walk away feeling good about it. As opposed
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: to generally with my tax money, I feel like most
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: of the time it's being flushed on the shitter, and
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: I don't get that oppression put a fine point on it.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: I don't get that feeling. Um. And I appreciate that,
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: I really do. And I appreciate the hard work that
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: people put in to make sure that we do have
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: these opportunities in our future and hopefully down the road
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: kids features and maybe try and leave the place better
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: than we found it, and guys like you, I think
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: are making that happen, and I'm grateful. Um. Other than that,
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and get you to stop harping on
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: New Jersey because let me come up with a new
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: I would come up with a new new arch nemesis
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: right on, right on. It's going to be again. I'm
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: glad to be here. So good listen. I generally learned
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: something when I sit around this table. So good stuff.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, man, thanks for having me. I
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. Did you finish with all the reasons you
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: had to manage for non game species? Do you feel
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: like you wrapped up that point? Yeah? I think I
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: think about six reasons there. You know, he didn't got
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: to all of them. That was good interruptions in there,
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: but we got there. That's par for the course. And
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: might any last oh sorry you got no, that was it? Um,
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: the last final thing you forgot to mention? Well? Yeah,
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I just in in this line of of
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: of thinking about engaging people who aren't hunters and anglers,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: I came across a Wallace Stegner quote. And I love Stegner,
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: you know, just as far as being somebody who talked
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: a lot about arid land and and managing arid land.
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 1: You know, Stegner Stigner said in this a little bit
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: of a paraphrase that wild places, and I think I
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: would add to that wild things are part of the
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: geography of hope. And you know, when I think about that,
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 1: I think Steigna really had something there. You know that
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: that we really as people draw hope from wild things
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: and wild places. And you know, my personal history is
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: that my experience with wild things and wild places come
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: from a perspective, you know, of of hunting and fishing.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: That's how I grew up, That's how I got engaged.
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: But you know, there are other people out there that
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: came to wild things and wild places in different ways,
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: but that I believe probably experience a really similar emotional
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: connection to And I think it's good to think about,
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: you know, how pep will perceive us and we perceive them.
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I generally tend to have an emotional response
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: when I hear anything that I believe to sound threatening
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: to hunting. Yeah, but I bet you there are people
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: who don't hunt, you know who when they hear about hunting,
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: they perceive that as taking something out of the wild
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: and that that is a threat to how you know,
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: they have come to the experience and and you know,
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: coming back to that, you know that it's that there's
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: hope in you know that we we place hope and
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: wild things in wild places, and so anything that we
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: feel like diminishes that for us really draws an emotional response.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: And so you know, I think that really trying to
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 1: work to be more inclusive about you know, how we
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: talk about this stuff, having engaging conversations sometimes that are
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable with people that don't agree with us, is you know,
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: is uh is really an important thing. And you know
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: again that Stegner quote, wild places you know are part
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: of the geography of hope. A lesser known author added
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: to that. And what inspires hope from person to person
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: is a similar as views from neighboring ridges, but also
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: it's different. And I think that you know, really speaks
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: to thinking about, you know, how we experienced wild places
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: and how others experienced it and trying to find common ground. Yeah,
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: I'll work on that joker that that that means they're
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: buddy there at the top of the hill, the horse,
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: the horse cut would you call him? Are the um,
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: timber buck hunter. He shouldn't get so mad at the
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: hippies when they're out there hiking. No, he hates the hippies. Yeah,
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna eat hippies, the backpack hunters, the horror. Yeah,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: weather was nice, so there's a lot of people in
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: the woods during his haunts. This is a horseman who
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: did not have pleasant feelings for the other people on
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: the mountain, you know. But yeah, all right, there are allies, right,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: I'm open to it. I'm open to it. Um, Mike,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having me. You
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: come back sometime, I hope. So all right, Um, let's
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: talk about big horn sheep now in New Mexico next
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: time you come. Yeah, my wife's a big horn sheep
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: by allies, understand, and also an avid hunter. So that right, Yeah,
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: you guys should talk to her big horns. She's got
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: all the information about big horn sheep. I was down
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: in your state. I was down in New Mexico, um,
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: where they were doing the governor's tag auctions, and a
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: guy from the Desert Sheep of Desert Sheep Foundation or
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: some kind or someone having to do a sheep uh
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: ngo that does sheep work he was saying that h
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: in New Mexico, wildlife work comes down to water and money.
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: But with desert big horns, you don't need the water,
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: so I thought was an interesting take on that. All right,
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: thanks for tuning in.