Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved?

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Ep. 845: Can Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock Be Saved? · The MeatEater Podcast

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  Speaker 1: We're joining today by the one of the greatest guests,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: oh man. I mean, for like in terms of just
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: consistent performances over the years, dude, one of the greatest
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: guests of all time. Greatest guests, I mean like I'm
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: not talking about just of Guess do you feel like
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I'm buttering them up a little much?
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: You're going big.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect it, dude, I don't know.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Normally he tries to knock you down. First builds you back.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: If you took all the greatest guests, oh man, and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: then had a showdown among those guests, yeah, Carl would
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  Speaker 1: emerge top. Maybe not the top, but like he would.
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  Speaker 2: He might be too nice to make it to the top.
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  Speaker 1: He'd be up there, Carl malc wild like wildlife biologists,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: long history at the every time you've ever been on,
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  Speaker 1: I think you've been on. No, every time you've ever
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: been on, you've been on as a guy from the
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  Speaker 1: four Service. That is true. That is true.
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  Speaker 3: Yep, you and I started doing podcasts not long after
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  Speaker 3: I joined Federal Service, which was back in late twenty eleven.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, but Carl's got a very deep history and all
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  Speaker 1: things outdoors. Grew up big time hunter, big time angler,
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  Speaker 1: got into things like weird stuff man like, got into
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  Speaker 1: doing deer work on uh, deer work on air airport runways.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, wildlife damage management.
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  Speaker 1: Wildlife damage management, got so into muskrat trapp And I
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  Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, brody. Nope, Phil probably
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  Speaker 1: knows about this. Got so in the muskrat trap and
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  Speaker 1: that he used to put in a bid to lock
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  Speaker 1: down a chunk Oh, don't tell me. I can't think
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  Speaker 1: of a chunk of marsh oricon.
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  Speaker 2: Marsh's famous one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah in the world like some of the best muskrats
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  Speaker 1: on the planet. He used to put in a bid
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  Speaker 1: to get his own private chunk of the marsh, the
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  Speaker 1: Horcon Marsh. During the during the mini boom, the mini
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  Speaker 1: boom of like twenty eleven to twenty fourteen.
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  Speaker 2: Did you have like trapping rivals, like trapping wars.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's its own section. Yeah, with my.
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  Speaker 2: People like people like didn't come in.
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  Speaker 3: And no, no, I mean the federal the federal agents
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  Speaker 3: out there.
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  Speaker 1: Stay close that microphils. Oh, you already got yours on.
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  Speaker 3: The federal agents there do not mess around and these
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  Speaker 3: boundaries are very clearly defined. That was with my dear
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  Speaker 3: buddy Jacob Zeiski.
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  Speaker 1: Will we get how many muskrats are you guys catching?
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  Speaker 1: Hundreds hundreds?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and uh during the mini boom, Yeah, because they
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  Speaker 3: would do a sting out there, the federal agents would
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  Speaker 3: do a sting out there. There's a highway that cuts
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  Speaker 3: east west across Horicon Marsh, and there's so many muskrat
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  Speaker 3: trappers going across this bridge. Federal agents would put a
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  Speaker 3: road killed muskrat out there and see who had stopped
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  Speaker 3: to pick it up, because that was one of one
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  Speaker 3: of the ways that they could pinpoint folks who are
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  Speaker 3: not following the rules because it was technically illegal to
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  Speaker 3: gather up a road killed muskrat.
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  Speaker 2: That seems kind of that seems kind cheap.
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  Speaker 1: I knew, I knew, I knew what your sentiments would
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  Speaker 1: be on that. But but the parks that situation.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, point point is they strictly enforced those boundaries.
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  Speaker 1: Uh. I got a return to that in a minute.
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  Speaker 1: Here to tell you something interesting. The reason Carl's what
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: we're here to talk about is rough grouse and also
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  Speaker 1: and also American woodcut because Carl is now the VP
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  Speaker 1: of Conservation at the Rough Grouse Society and the American
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  Speaker 1: Woodcock Society. And what we're here to find out about
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  Speaker 1: is this, are rough grouse screwed? If so, how screwed?
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  Speaker 1: And what? Like? Why, what's it going to take? What
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  Speaker 1: is the what is the future of the bird in America?
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  Speaker 1: Before we're going to get into all that. Before we do,
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  Speaker 1: I'll tell you a funny story. My friend Stu, who's
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  Speaker 1: a trapper and saw the Illinois. He's been on the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: show Stu Miller's Stu Miller Coon Creek Outdoor. He makes
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  Speaker 1: some of the best if you want to see good
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  Speaker 1: fur handling information online, I don't think anybody has better
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: for handling information than Stu Miller from Coon Creek Outdoors.
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  Speaker 1: Like if you were like how do you skin and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: flash and stretch and otter raccoon, kyote whatever. Stew Is
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  Speaker 1: has a phenomenal series on YouTube. Anyhow, he was trapping
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  Speaker 1: in Kansas. You know, skunks are real high right now?
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  Speaker 1: All he wants to tail? Interesting, Okay, Stu said when
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  Speaker 1: he was in Kansas, he was seeing dead skunks on
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  Speaker 1: the side of the road. Road kills skunks on the
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  Speaker 1: side of the road minus their tail. Now, everybody's used
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: to seeing deer on the side of the road somehow
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  Speaker 1: minus their head, but skunk's minus their tail on the side.
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  Speaker 2: I just saw a nice skunk on the side of
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  Speaker 2: the road yesterday.
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  Speaker 1: Because it could be thirty bucks laying they want the
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  Speaker 1: tailor bill and if you cut the tail and you
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: learn what you're doing, you can cut it without getting
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  Speaker 1: into the sacks. How many guys hop out and cut
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  Speaker 1: a little too close to the base, yeah, and have
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  Speaker 1: just a mess that they are not was it worth
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  Speaker 1: the thirty bucks? Ready to deal with a right grade? Like? Like,
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  Speaker 1: how are just before we get in all the details
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  Speaker 1: like the in your organization? What is up with rough
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  Speaker 1: grouse right now? I mean, why are we seeing like
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  Speaker 1: like there's states that had rough grouse seasons that don't
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  Speaker 1: have rough grouse seasons, like restrictions are down. Yeah, it
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  Speaker 1: just doesn't you know, it just doesn't feel like we're
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  Speaker 1: in the good old days of rough grouse hunting. That
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  Speaker 1: is true much of the country.
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  Speaker 3: That is true, and I think, you know, as we
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  Speaker 3: get into the topic at hand, I want to just
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  Speaker 3: kind of like zoom back, and we're going to be
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: talking about rough grouse in American woodcock over the course
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  Speaker 3: of this conversation, but I really want to frame it
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  Speaker 3: in terms of what's going on with forests and forest
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  Speaker 3: habitat and kind of the history of these forested ecosystems
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  Speaker 3: focus primarily east of the Mississippi River, which is sort
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  Speaker 3: of the core of what we think about being habitat
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  Speaker 3: for rough grouse and American woodcock and the upland bird
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  Speaker 3: hunting tradition that goes with it. Recognizing there's certainly plenty
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  Speaker 3: of forest grouse west of the Mississippi as well, we
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  Speaker 3: can talk about that too, But I think the history
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  Speaker 3: of these forests and what the status of rough grouse
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  Speaker 3: in American woodcock today tell us about the status of
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  Speaker 3: these forests is the most important part of this conversation
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  Speaker 3: because I think, you know, I'm somebody who loves these birds.
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  Speaker 3: There's plenty of people out there who do, but there's
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  Speaker 3: a lot more people that really appreciate forested ecosystems. And
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  Speaker 3: being able to understand the dynamics of those places and
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  Speaker 3: understand what we can and should be doing differently to
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  Speaker 3: make sure that we leave these places better than we
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  Speaker 3: found them is a much bigger and deeper and more
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  Speaker 3: significant conversation than just what's the letter grade of current
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  Speaker 3: status for rough grouse American woodcock? And those two things
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  Speaker 3: are inextricably linked, So I really want to anchor into
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  Speaker 3: kind of the history and status of forests. But to
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  Speaker 3: answer your question.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I want to say that opening bit, were you saying,
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  Speaker 1: we can't talk about rough grouse without talking about forest
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  Speaker 1: and forest health. Yeah. Now, if I had sat down
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  Speaker 1: on my chair and the first thing out of your
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  Speaker 1: mouth was we can't talk about rough grouse without talking
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  Speaker 1: about mosquitoes and West Noile virus, or we can't talk
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  Speaker 1: about rough grouse without talking about avian influenza, like, I
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been surprised.
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  Speaker 3: Well, those things, we can talk about all those things,
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  Speaker 3: And I thought you cheat.
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  Speaker 1: It up like it's we're talking about we're talking about
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about forests for sure.
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  Speaker 3: And I love the fact that you're bringing up you're
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  Speaker 3: bringing up west now virus, You're bringing up avian influenza.
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  Speaker 3: West now virus, by the way, a way bigger deal
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  Speaker 3: for rough grouse. And I want to talk a little
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  Speaker 3: bit about the sort of moderating or mediating effect that
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  Speaker 3: good habitat can have on helping a species like rough
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  Speaker 3: grouse while facing a stressor like an expanding disease, which
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  Speaker 3: west nolvirus is. And there's some really interesting interconnections between
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  Speaker 3: habitat rough grouse abundance and distribution, and climate as well.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of the.
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  Speaker 3: Really great examples of how shifting climate can influence a
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  Speaker 3: disease vector that has very clear ramifications for the status
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  Speaker 3: of a species that many people care a lot about.
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  Speaker 3: But at the bottom line, the story of how these
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  Speaker 3: forests have changed, and I think even just the misconceptions
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  Speaker 3: of what these forests are.
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  Speaker 1: Is something that.
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  Speaker 3: I think we can turn some light bulbs on for folks.
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  Speaker 2: Can I tee you up like a lot with this
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  Speaker 2: whole thing about like going back in time, Like, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: why was it because like rough grouse, Like I feel
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  Speaker 2: like the pin of their like popularity and like king
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  Speaker 2: of the forest or you know, their nickname and all that.
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  Speaker 2: Like that's like in the past, that reputation that they had.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think it's like a thing with hunters like
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  Speaker 2: it used to be. Like why was it like when
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  Speaker 2: my dad was like he was a big rough grouse hunter,
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  Speaker 2: Like and why was it so good in the seventies
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  Speaker 2: when he was out there in Pennsylvania and there was
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  Speaker 2: just grouse everywhere?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like ammo Ads shot Ads were like the featured kidder.
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  Speaker 1: It was like you go back far, no cottontail rabbits
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  Speaker 1: and stuff. But there's a point where like ammo Ads
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  Speaker 1: was like grouse the king of the game bird, which
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: which I was raised to call pats Yeah partridge.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a good debate. We grew up just I
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: was a little bit north in the northern lord.
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  Speaker 1: Within that, like what is within that you got you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: probably got a way to hit this, but like what
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: is the sort of timeline? And then also where are
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  Speaker 1: we talking about? That might be the best thing, just
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: real quick, Yeah, where are we talking about? Yeah?
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  Speaker 3: So I think focusing the conversation on the midwestern United States,
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  Speaker 3: down into Ohio, Indiana, across into the mid Atlantic and
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  Speaker 3: up into the Northeast main continues to have tremendous grouse hunting,
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  Speaker 3: and down into the Appalachian Mountains as well. You know,
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  Speaker 3: a lot of people associate rough grouse rightly so with
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: the presence of aspen. Aspen's one of those species for
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  Speaker 3: grouse that provides tremendous cover and also availability of food.
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  Speaker 3: But if you start looking at more southern grouse habitat essentially,
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  Speaker 3: if you have good structure, if you have high stem densities,
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  Speaker 3: and if you have the sun hitting the forest floor
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  Speaker 3: and promoting robust availability of various massed species, you can
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  Speaker 3: have grouse all the way down into northern Georgia. But
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  Speaker 3: the general storyline, Brody, We could talk about Pennsylvania a
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: little bit as an example where just in the span
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: of the last handful of decades, any states, particularly at
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  Speaker 3: the southern extent of their range, are seeing grouse decline rapidly,
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  Speaker 3: and it's noteworthy. You know, a lot of folks understand
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: the dynamics around sage grouse decline. Like sage grouse get
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: a lot of attention rightly so. Sage grouse habitat sagebrush
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  Speaker 3: ecosystems are tremendously imperiled for a variety of reasons. That
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  Speaker 3: story is out there, and it's noteworthy to me that
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  Speaker 3: you have this species. To your point, Brody, that like
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  Speaker 3: in your dad's generation in Art, in our father's generations,
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  Speaker 3: grouse were.
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  Speaker 1: A big deal.
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  Speaker 3: And I think the simplest and best answer to why
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  Speaker 3: that's not the case is that fewer and fewer people
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  Speaker 3: have access to robust populations. Now where I spend a
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: lot of my time grouse and woodcock hunting, which is
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: across the northern tier of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. We
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: are still in the good old days. It's phenomenal and
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  Speaker 3: I had great, rough.
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  Speaker 1: Good old days relative even to the good old days.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and there's a cyclical dynamic at play
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  Speaker 3: with grouse woodcock, So just a sort of if we
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: step back and look at the big picture, the general
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  Speaker 3: story is one of decline for both of these species,
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  Speaker 3: having nothing to do with hunting pressure, having everything to
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: do with habitat and also some of these other variables,
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  Speaker 3: Like we can talk about the disease issues, but habitat
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  Speaker 3: is the bottom line, and at the southern extent of
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: their range where we start getting into some of the
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: more acute issues with disease dynamics, the influence of climate.
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  Speaker 3: So Pennsylvania, for example, there's a really important elevational gradient
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  Speaker 3: at play here where you know, you can think about
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  Speaker 3: grouse contracting northward, so sort of retreating from a latitude perspective.
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  Speaker 3: But then there's all this also, this elevational retreat that's
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  Speaker 3: occurring where grouse are being pushed higher and higher is
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  Speaker 3: one of the same, right right, exactly, because those climatic
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: variables are influencing the availability of habitat, and in the
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: case of West Nile virus, the presence of the mosquitos
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: that carry West Nile is influenced by longer, wetter summers,
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  Speaker 3: so you have the disease sort of marching up slope
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: as climates continue.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: You mentioned aspens for grouse, Like can you give people
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: like what is like the ideal chunk of rough grouse habitat?
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: What's it look like? Because you hear like early success, Yeah,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: a lot like things like that, Like if people aren't
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: seeing them or around them as much anymore, Like what
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: does a good chunk of grouse habitat look like Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: If I have one word to answer that question, the
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: answers young, young forest habitat super important. Yes, Early successional
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: habitat is very important in a lot of the work
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: that we do at the rough Grouse Society. In American
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Woodcock Society is focused on trying to get more early
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: successional habitat on the ground. The reason for that is
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: not because early successional habitat is the only thing that matters.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: The reason for that is that we are limited in
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: early successional habitat. We're an organization that's very interested in
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: overall forest health, and in terms of these eastern forests,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: the bottom line there is diversity of habitat. We want
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: young forest, we want middle aged forest, we want old forest,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: and we want these things in a juxtaposition where in
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: individual grouse, because these birds have a very strong site fidelity,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: they do not travel to great distances, but having the
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: access to these different age classes over the course of
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: their life cycle for foraging, for raising their broods, for
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: escaping predators. It's that availability of diverse habitat within a
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: small area and being able to maintain that over time
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: is a huge part of the challenge. Right, So if
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: we go back, if we go back and think about
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: what these forests were like centuries ago, this idea of
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: diversity is critically important, and I think one of the
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: I'll give you two misconceptions when it comes to forests.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: Number one, I think a lot of people when they
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: step into the forests, like where we grew up, Steve,
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: or where you grew up Brody, Michigan, Pennsylvania, you walk
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: into the woods and it's this peaceful, serene, beautiful place,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: and it's easy to fall into the trap of failing
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: to recognize the complexity, for one, the interconnections among different
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: species in that system, and then also the fact that
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: there is a constant battle playing out among all of
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: these species at a time scale that makes it hard
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: for us to perceive. So everybody in the forest, woody vegetation, grasses, forbs, shrubs,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: all the plants from the understory to the canopy are
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: duking it out in real time for access to nutrients,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: access to sunlight. And historically in these forests there were
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: a lot of drivers of disturbance that are gone now.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And this is one of the things that I think
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: is both most interesting and also saddest to contemplate when
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: you think about the forests of the eastern United States,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: and again I'm thinking like east of the Mississippi River.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And when the first European settlers arrived on the East coast,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: they did not arrive to some massive, homogeneous, pristine, untouched forest.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: What they arrived two was a very complex system that
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: had a tremendous diversity of drivers influencing the structure of
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: that forest, and it included wildlife that we all I
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: think we can think about these species in their own right,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: but we don't often think about them as drivers of ecosystems.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: So species like elk, species like bison, species like beavers,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: species like passenger pigeons, and also the people who are
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: already here burning these landscapes to benefit those species I
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: just mentioned, particularly elk and bison, but maintaining the landscape
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: in a way that made their lives possible. So you
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: have all of these interesting connections between those inhabitants of
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: the North American continent that have been tremendously disrupted. So
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: elk largely gone from the east, although amazing work being done.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Of course, we're all familiar with Rocky Mountain, Elk Foundation
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: and the work that they're doing with state agency partners
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: to bring elk back. That's phenomenal. RF is a great
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: partner of ours, by the way, a lot of partnership
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: opportunities there. We're talking about el ca habitat and grouse
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: habitat in the same breath, Bison gone, passenger pigeons gone
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: gone right, and beaver's like nothing like they were at
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: European contact with this continent, and then indigenous fire largely gone.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: So these five drivers that created all of this heterogeneity,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: all of this diversity in structure, and the one that
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: I really wanted, like we can if any of those geeks,
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: either of you guys out and you want to dig
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: deeper into any of them, we can dig deeper. But
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about passenger pigeons just for a minute,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: because I think a lot of folks, you know, we all,
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: if you're a nerd around conservation and wildlife in America,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: we all know the stories of like the sky blackening
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: and the rivers of birds, and John James Audubon and
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: others trying to come up with estimates of the billions
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: of passenger pigeons, like one in four land birds in
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: North America being a passenger pigeon, right, just like you
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: can't wrap your head around it. Those are all stories
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: that are really familiar to us. But I want to
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: flag one of the most sort of haunting books that
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: folks probably haven't heard of, written by a guy named
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: Peter Matheson, called Wildlife in America. And in that book,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Matheson does a phenomenal job of capturing the stories in
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: just the most haunting and poetic language around the loss
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: of wildlife on this continent over the span of the
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: last handful of centuries. And one of the things that's
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: most memorable about that book for me is the way
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: that he talks about the passenger pigeons and them as
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: a driver of disturbance. And this is the important part.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: And there are stories like up around Potoski Mischig of
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: these that's what the last big shoot was well, and
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: these nesting events that would span for tens of miles
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: in length and multiple miles in width where the forest
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: was absolutely inundated and in some cases decimated by the
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: presence of nesting passenger pigeons, so they would come through.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: And these were birds that were heavily dependent on mast
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: species like oak species like beach species like American chestnut,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And there's a whole other story of loss right the
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: loss of chestnut to the blight starting in nineteen oh four.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: But the passenger pigeons, they'd find a place where they
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: had the resources that they would need to nest. They
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: had the structural support with the tree canopy, they had
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: availability of masts, et cetera. And they would they would
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: arrive in such numbers that they would physically level portions
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: of the forest. Like if you were out there during
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: one of these nesting events, you would just hear from
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: miles in any direction the sound of branches breaking, of
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: trees falling, of guano raining down to the point where
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: the forest floor would have inches of accumulated droppings that
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: would be so high in nutrient content that that would
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: have its own set of effects on vegetation, like basically
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: killing the understory because it was so nutrient rich with
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: all this pigeon guano raining down, And the birds themselves
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: would reset succession in those places where they would nest.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: The next year, they're not coming back to nest in
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: that same spot again, but years down the line, those
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: systems would recover and promote the availability of the very
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: habitat features that the passenger pigeons need to thrive. So
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: if you step back and think about the continental scale
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: of that species interacting with the land, it's not unlike
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: any a beaver or any other ecosystem engineer, where they're
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: influencing their own habitat in a way that benefits themselves
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: over time, over generations, right, but also influences the structure
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: to the advantage of all of these other plant and
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: animal species that occupy that habitat. And that's just one
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: of the five examples that I gave you. You know,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: we can talk about bison and they're wallowing, or the
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: fact that they established these movement corridors that were the
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: precursors to a lot of our roads and highways, right
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: roads exactly the traces right the buffalo traces they would leave.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: They would leave a path of disruption. And so this idea,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: and this is one of the biggest challenges if you
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: think about current conditioning these systems now and trying to
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: get good habitat back on the ground for species like
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: rough grouse in American woodcock, there's this misconception of what
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: forests are which I touched on, like failing to see
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: the fact that all of these species are out there,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: that the vegetation is battling for resources in real time,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: and the reality that for thousands of years, for hundreds
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: of thousands of years prior to European settlement of this continent,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: these forests were tremendously disrupted by a whole host of
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: drivers that have been eliminated from the system. So what
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: that means in terms of current context is if we're
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: taking a hands off approach to these systems, we are
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: starving them of the things that they need, the things
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: that the forest needs to provide the types of habitat
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: and diversity, not just for rough grouse in American woodcock,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: as much as I love those two species, but for
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: a whole host of plant and animal species. And this
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: is why if we look at land bird conservation more broadly,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: I've got to copy of the twenty twenty five US
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: State of the Birds Report here in front of me.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Any bird species that depends upon that diversity of habitat
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: in a forested context is struggling, like we are seeing
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: tremendous loss. Like think about Whipperwill's. They're a good example.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: When you grew up you're hearing that whipper will whipper
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: will call yeah, And now if you hear when you're like, oh,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: you know, that was like the sound of summer in
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: our childhoods. Right, they have dropped off a cliff, and
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: we could go through the list. Golden wing warblers are
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: one that's commonly brought up, so it's important to recognize,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: and I think from the standpoint of our organization too,
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: there's an advantage of being able to sort of hitch
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: our wagon up to these two iconic upland game bird species.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: But I also want to make sure that people understand
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: the why of our work is about much more than
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: thinking about having lots of grouse and woodcock to hunt.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: What we're trying to do is find ways to redeem
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: our responsibilities to the places that we love and help
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: leave these forested ecosystems in a state that's going to
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: be better for wildlife and for people into the future.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: So that's a that's I think a good entry point
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: into this conversation about current condition for those couple of.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Species you you mentioned disturbance being important, and like, if
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: you talk to a couple of my buddies in Pennsylvania
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: that are still like die hard grouse hunters despite yeah,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: the fact that they might only flush a few birds
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: in an entire season. Yeah, Like it's always like they
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: don't log enough, they don't log enough, they don't log enough.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Like is that like?
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: And I know like West Nile and Avian flu like
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: play a role, but like, is that perspective from just
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: like a grouse hunter? Is there a lot of.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Truth to that? There is?
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: And I think the language is really important too, And
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about the way that we frame up
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: this work. And you know, logging, logging can be a
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: terrible thing, and it can be a tremendous thing. And
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: part of the problem is when it comes to social
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: license and public discourse around what doing right by these
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: forest means. There's not enough time or effort put into
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: having like a really thoughtful, nuanced conversation about what it
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: is we're talking about. So logging, Like, let's talk about
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: logging part of the challenge.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: And like I'll just to clarify, we're talking about logging.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: You're talking about there's these historic forest disturbers, YEP passenger pigeons,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: fire by health beaver. Yeah, beaver's large animals that are
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: like out disturbing forests, grazing, bowling stuff over, knocking stuff down,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: clearing stuff out, and over time we've developed a system
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: where we have one a lot of those places become
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: paved over or grassed over, or golf coursed over, or
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: parking lotted over or subdivisioned over, and so they're out. Yep,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that's all just out. What remains is wood lots. At times,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: wood lots that aren't having habitat disturbance on them. They grow, grow, grow,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: grow grow yep. Right, yep. So when we talk about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: just for people, just for listeners, don't stand when we
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: talk about logging, I mean, Carl get into it, but
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: we're what we're talking about is like a modern disturbance driver. Yep. Right.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: So when Brody's saying, if a rough grouse sky, if
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: a rough grouse hunter, or a guy in Lower you know,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan where I grew up, when
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: we bitch about that there's no logging, yep. What we're
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: saying is there's it's not that we you know, it's
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: not like you know, I used to cut fire with ice,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: be a tree surgeon. I understand the siren song or
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the chainsaw. Right, nothing brings the old man out of you. Yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: anohing brings an old man out of his house, right,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: hearing the chainsaw down the road. So, but when people talk,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: they're not they're not lamenting the act of logging, right,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: they're not necessarily meant lamenting the loss of jobs around logging.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: What they're talking about is they're lamenting what happens after
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: you log, yeah, which is you invite a lot of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: sunlight onto the forest floor and it grows up thick.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: The kind of stuff where if you're out walking around
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: with your wife, you just go around, right, you go
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: around it, unless he's crossing with you, man, you might
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: go unless like yeah, the kind of stuff that the
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: only business you have going through it is grouse right,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: like that thick right right, and that so we talked
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: about logging. We're talking about is the thick the period
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of carver tells how many years. It's a long time. Yeah,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: it's enough to like kind of get used to it
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: where you have a thick stuff. Yeah.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate this question because I want to
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: I want to go back to this idea of the
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: forests that were you know, pre pre European settlement, all
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: that disturbance happening, and then there's a really important story
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: that we can't lose track of. Where this word logging, right,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: What I want to get at is the idea that
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: not all, not all logging is the same.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Sure, And so if we go back to this arc
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: of time post European settlement and think about the things
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: that happened on these forests from east to west and
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: the wholesale liquidation of forest resources, I mean, like the
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: most sort of vivid, powerful example of intensive resource extraction
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: that you can imagine, right, This is when the White
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: Pines of the Lake States, our childhood home range, Steve,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: when those forests were being liquidated. This is the chapter
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: of the Northeast and mid Atlantic and the declining chestnuts
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: being felled, and all of the clearing for agriculture, and
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: all the fragmentation that was happening, the forests just being liquidated,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: building the cities of Chicago, all the lumber that was
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: being shipped across the Great Lakes to build these exploding communities.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: It was a period of tremendous exploitation of the land.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the problems is when
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: people think about word like logging, what a lot of.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Folks here is exploitation, right.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: So it's important to honor the reality that in a
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: lot of places in our country we do not have
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: a long history. Man, We're talking about a few centuries here,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: and so for the majority of that time, we have
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: not had our act together in terms of how we
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: think about logging being done in service to the land
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: as opposed to being a source of exploitation of the land.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: So I want to make sure we paint this picture
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: with a lot of intent, and we have to own
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: the fact that places like I'm thinking about the Monongahila
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: National Forest as an example right now in West Virginia,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: where on Forest Service land like there was clear cutting,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: there was a tremendous amount of erosion, there were huge
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: impacts to these incredibly biod verse streams. A legacy of
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: terrible management, you can't even call it management, a legacy
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: of exploitation of forest resources. And if I think back
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: to like I remember being in maybe sixth or seventh
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: grade and them talking about logging the rainforest, right, and
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: how much rainforest is being lost in Brazil, And you know,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: every day there's this many square miles of rainforest being
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: cut down, spotted out on the sure the spotted owl
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: wars man like Pacific Northwest. This tension between trying to
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: keep an imperiled species on the landscape and that industry
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: that's like the backbone of those rural Northwest communities. So
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: there's all this history that gets wrapped up in this
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: word logging, right, that you have to be eyes wide
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: open about. And I think it's also a fallacy to
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: suggest that all logging that's happening today is good logging.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: There are plenty of examples where people are high grading forests.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: They're just basically thinking about they're thinking about what value
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: can be taken from this land now, as opposed to
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: thinking about what forest conditions for the future am I
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: trying to create. That's a very important distinction. And that's
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: not to say that it's impossible to extract value, like
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: monetary value from a forest and also put that forest
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: on a trajectory to be healthier as a result of
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: that intervention. That is one hundred percent possible. In order
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: to do that, though you need robust industry, like there
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: has to be a market. You cannot move habitat without
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: being able to move wood and the forest products industry
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: is in a difficult state of affairs right now. So
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of smart people putting a lot of
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: thought into how to revitalize the forest products industry. But
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: just in the past week, I read in my home
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: state of Wisconsin. Now there's a little mill up in
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: the town of Mozennie, where by the way, I chased
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: a couple of bears around as a grad student. Right
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: there in Mosany, they are shutting down a couple of
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: their their paper production machines and and they're going to
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: be jobs lost. There's going to be an impact at
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: this Mosan email. And that's just the most recent in
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: a long string of mill reductions, mill closures, the disruption
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: of these these forest products industries that are important for
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: so many reasons. But one aspect of it is this
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: relationship between habitat and rural economies. So being able to
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: find ways to reinvigorate the forest products industry. And there's
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: some cool examples of things on the horizon, things in
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: the works, things like mass timber, trying to trying to
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: replace steel in the construction of high rise buildings with
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: mass timber. And there's there's an amazing building in down
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: On Milwaukee that was just constructed using essentially replacements for
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: where you'd have steel beams using these laminated wood products.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: So that's an example. There's a push to find ways
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: to convert woody biomass into sustainable aviation fuel. That's a
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: budding industry. There's some amazing work going on looking at
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: very high quality packaging being derived from molded wood fiber,
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: so trying to replace all the plastic that we have
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: everywhere around us all the time. Basically anywhere you see plastic,
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: there's probably a potential to replace that plastic with a
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: molded wood fiber product. So there's reasons for optimism, but
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: in terms of the overall picture of the forest products industry,
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of reason for concern right now and
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of reason for action in terms of policy,
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: in terms of having conversations with the public around the
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: importance of these concepts. But this idea that logging has
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: the potential to be good and grouse hunters grumbling like man,
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: there hasn't been enough logging. What I hope they mean is,
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: and what I think they mean, and what I mean
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: when I say that is there hasn't been enough active
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: forest management where we are thinking both about what value
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: are we extracting from these systems, and I would argue,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: even more importantly, thinking about our long term commitment and
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: responsibility these places, and what are we leaving behind.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's the key question.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: If you're focused, if you're focused more on what you're
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: taking than what you're leaving behind, you're probably looking at
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: it from a more extractive standpoint. If you're thinking about
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: both of those things in concert, that's a beautiful space
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: to operate. And I think we've got a ton of
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: examples of the kind of work that we're doing on
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: public land on private land with a lot of partners
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: to derive both forms of value.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I think about our go ahead, but you know, think
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: about our mutual friend Doug. Yeah, yeah, no, he needs
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: to make he manages a family farm, yeah, spending their
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: family a long time. He needs to make the farm
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: pay yeah, right right. They do timber harvest. Absolutely. This
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: is very small scale in terms of talking about the
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: entire everything east of the Mississippi. It's a little, it's
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: a little, it's a perfect little chunk. But when you're
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: looking at what Doug's gonna cut, he's explaining to you
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: what it's gonna look like in five years? Right? Do
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: you follow what I'm saying. He's like, he's got he's
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: got a dollar figure rolling to his head, but he's like,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and it'll be like this, yes, and then I'm gonna
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: do yes. You know what I'm saying, I do. And Doug.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: You know, I was just with Doug this past weekend.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: We're both up in Minneapolis at Pheasant Fest, and I
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: was talking with Doug. Doug is Doug is absolutely emblematic
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: of that philosophy where, yeah, he's got the farm, he
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: needs to make it pay. He agonized over decisions about
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: whether to cut down some of the oak trees that
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: they harvested that were, you know, there for generations prior
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: to him showing up. But he's making those decisions with
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: an eye on the financial side of it, which is
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent his responsibility, and also thinking about that
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: that legacy. You know, it's not ours, it's it's our turn.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: What is he doing to make sure that the folks
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: who have the next turn are grateful?
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: In hindsight, Let's be clear, too, Doug agonizes over what
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: to do about mud puddles. Well, but on the one hand,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: but but he's coming at He's coming at it from
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that space, man, and I think you know that.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: So on the private land context, this is one of
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: the things. This is one of the reasons why I
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: think there's a lot of a lot of room for
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: optimism and hope as you have so many people who
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: cherish these forests for which they have personal responsibility, and
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: there's value in the forest products, and there's a need
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: for good intervention in those systems. And again, this isn't
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: a new thing, right, It's not a new thing for
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: humans to be looking at the land and trying to
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: figure out how to engage with it in a way
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: that makes the land better and makes the humans' lives better.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: That's actually, like, that's the story of our species for millennia, right,
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: We've been in the business of manipulating the ecosystem to
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: benefit ourselves. Unfortunately, we're at a period in human history
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: now where fewer and fewer of us have those levers
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: of responsibility at our fingertips. And there are also a
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: lot of people who have those levers of responsibility at
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: their fingertips who.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Don't know what to do right.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: They don't know how to care for a forest they
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: haven't been taught that, you know, the expertise that somebody
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: like Doug has the training and the knowledge. He is
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: an outlier in that regard. But where I think he
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: is not an outlier is in having a desire to
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: do the right thing for the forest under his purview.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of folks want to do the
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: right thing but don't know where to start. So for
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: an organization like ours, being able to work with those
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: private landowners and help them think through how to generate
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: revenue from their forest, but doing that through the lens
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: of what are they leaving in terms of future habitat value?
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: That is a really cool service. And you know we're
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: doing that in a private lands context as well with
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: agencies like the Forest Service, like state departments of natural Resources,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: where we're helping them implement their management plans which are
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: always rooted in this idea of sustainable and wise use
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: but also desired future conditions. So those are really good spaces.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: So where does the like, where does the wildlife co
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: oponent come in? Like from fishing game agencies, like are
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: they in? Are they like we want to improve this
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: for grouse and everything else? But like say Pennsylvania game commissioner.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Do they come to you guys and say, this patch
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: of forests like used to be good for grouse, we'd
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: like it to return to being good for grouse. Like
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: is that stuff that you guys do like working with
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: game agencies?
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Totally? But wasn't it historically? Though? If you think of
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the metaphor of like, you know, people say, like the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: tailwag and the dog. For a long time the dog,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the dog was industry. They inadvertently, they accidentally created great habitat.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I would think the history this big chunk of ground
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: right like that we would walk over and hunt as
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: a kid. Had it always been the property of this
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: summer camp. I'm sure historically had been logged, but it
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: hadn't been logged in forever. And it was giant oaks
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: with canopies that interlocked. Yeah, and there was no now
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: and then the sassafrass, maybe a big white pine. But
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: for the most part it was just wide open and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the ground was covered in like inches of oak leaves.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: It had squirrels in it, but there was nothing. There
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: was not much in there. It sold. The first thing
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I did was do a timber harvest. A couple of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: years after that timber harvest, the first time we ever
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: ever saw a deer in there, the first time we
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: ever ever saw a ruffed grouse in there, all kind
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: of grape vine, multi floor rows, thickets, and then wham houses.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: But you, but you. It was like no one was saying, Hey,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go do timber stand improvement on the
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: old summer camp. It was inadvertent yep. So people when
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: we talk about like the return of logging or forest
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: service products, we're talking about like like making the dog healthy. Yeah. Yeah.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you hear a lot about
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: like like habitat work, But imagine habitat work is limited
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: in scale because it's not financing itself. Yeah, I see
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: where you're going what I'm saying. So is it more
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: so in restoring forests or restoring forests to have successional
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: forests where you have these patchworks of different things happening,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Like can you even get at can you scale conservation
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: work or will that never work? You'd have to scale industry.
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: I love the language of making the dog healthy again. Yeah,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good way of looking at it, because.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: That's a broad he's bringing up. He's bringing up well,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: how about when the dog wags, when the tail wags dog,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: when we do like habitat work, which would woud up
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: being like a little chunk, yeah or whatever. I don't know,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe not.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: I mean maybe like if agencies are flush with money.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, And there's a lot of different directions we
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: could go here. So so let me just focus in
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: on this idea of trying to scale up conservation outcomes
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: and forested habitats.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I like that conservation outcomes. Yeah, and.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: It's expensive work. Yeah, Like a lot of the things
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: that we do, we're involved in non native invasive species
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: control like buckthorn removal or timber stand improvement treatments prescribe fire.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Just to give folks like a sense of the cost
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: of some of these treatments. Imagine anywhere between like five
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: hundred dollars an acre and a couple thousand bucks an
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: acre to do a treatment, right, Like, no one's making profit, No,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: this is so this is where there's it's non commercial work.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: Like if we're if we're contracting or if we're going
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: in and trying to like have people in there with
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: like a hand felling crew with chainsaws trying to implement
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: a habitat project where there's not a commercial angle. It
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: is expensive, it is tremendously difficult to scale that up.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Contrasting model that I think is really powerful and really cool.
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: We've got a number of national forests where we're partnering
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: on stewardship agreements, where the Forest Service has the ability
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: to hand responsibility over for the administration of timber sales
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: to a nonprofit organization like ours. We can administer the
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: timber sale, generate revenue through the timber, cover all the
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: administrative costs of handling the sale, and then also have
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars left over
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: from the value in that timber that we can put
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: right into the ground.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Why are they letting you do that? That's great, but
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I could picture an reasons They're not going to want
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: to do that. Well, so think about it. Think about it.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: They they have.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: More work to do on these forests than they can
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: get done. They have backlogs of habitat need, they have
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: limited capacity. And the way to look at it is
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: not that somehow a nonprofit organization like the Rough Grouse
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: Society is somehow benefiting in isolation. The way to look
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: at it is we have such alignment with the Forest
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Service in mission delivery that we are joined at the
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: hip trying to implement the Forest Service's mission. We're there
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: providing additional capacity and that revenue. To be clear, that
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: revenue is not coming to the Rough Grouse Society and
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: American Woodcock Society. It's paying for our staff time to
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: help do that work. Like we have as an example,
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: we have an amazing young forester on the Green Mountain
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: National Forest, young lady named Mellie Napper, who's spent administering
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: timber sales on the Green Mountain National Forest, and she
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: basically functions as a Forest Service employee. She's there at
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: the office, she's out painting the sale, she's administering the sale,
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: interacting with the folks who are executing on the sale.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: She's fielding questions from the public. She's talking to reporters
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: about the why of the work. She's representing our organization
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: and the Forest Service, and even more importantly, she's representing
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: the story about why this work is so important, which
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: is a win for everybody involved. And in a period
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: of time where the Forest Service cannot hire additional people,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: they don't have enough people to implement their mission. Being
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: able to work with a partner to fill some of
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: those gaps. That is a win for the Forest Service.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: When you get guys do that does the logging like
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: the whoever gets the actual logging work the concession for that.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Do they do that work differently than they would if
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: they weren't working through you, like if they were just
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: like for a service timbersale, we're going in and we're
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: getting our stuff versus for a service timbersale through the
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: rough grouse aside.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: No, they do it the same. And here's why. In
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: order for that sale to move forward, it has to
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: be cleared through the exact same process that any other
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: activity on the forest.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: So they're not going in there, you're not, like, this
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: is kind of the habitat results we're looking.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: For in advance.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: No, and in this case, like so this this example
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: on the Green Mountain National Forest.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Where's that National Forest? It's in Vermont?
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: And the decision in that case, I might have a
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: word slightly off, but I believe the name of this
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: project is the Early Successional Attack Creation Project.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Love the Forest Service right to the point.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and and you know, and in Forest Service parlance,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: you have what's called an interdisciplinary team that gets together
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: to develop a proposed action. So you have biologists and
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: soil scientists and silviculturists and folks who are experts on
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: heritage and our responsibilities uh to archaeological resources, et cetera.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Everybody gets together and looks at a piece of ground
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: and says, all right, what do we want to do here.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: In the case of a project like this early successional
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: habitat creation project, the biologists are the ones in the
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: driver's seat. There it's a veg management project, right, there's
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: and there's valuable timber being harvested, but the whole focus
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: is on what kind of trees, like what are we
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: leaving behind in the in the wake of this treatment?
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: And that's that's what that's the language that we use.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: It's a treatment as opposed to an exploitation of a resource.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: So in that case, you have the sale, you have
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: someone bid, right, it's open to public bidding.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: You have an operator business coming into bidding.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're there to make money, right, And they are
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: there to make money and also they are the source
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: of capacity to implement the vege management outcome. Period Without
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: industry we cannot get the work done. But in this model,
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: you're leveraging the value in the timber to pay for
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: all of those administrative costs, and then you have this
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: surplus of value. And this is the really cool part.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: And in some cases we're talking literally hundreds of thousands
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: of dollars from some of these timber sales. Where you
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: then turn around and say, all right, with this money,
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: what other good things do we want to do on
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: the forest. So it could be things like replacing undersized
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: culverts at roadstream crossings to promote aquatic organism passage. It
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: could be paying for decommissioning roads that are resulting in
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: stream sedimentation. It could be helping cover the cost of
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: a prescribed fire. It could be helping treat non native
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: invasive species, etc.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Etc. Et cetera.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: So in that model, the forest services were lying on
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: partner organizations like ours to unlock the value in the
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: timber in a way that leaves the forest habitat better.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: So that to me, like, that's the dog as healthy
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: as the dog can be, and the tail also like
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: really benefiting from the healthy dog. But you got to
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: have industry there to be able to have in the
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: green River Forest.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: What is the product the Green Mountain? What is the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: product they're cranking out that, like dimensional lumber? Yeah, probably hard,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: They're hard. They're they're harvesting hardwood there primarily. Yeah. Okay,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: so like veneer logs and trim and whatever else.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, got it. Yeah, I mean pulp. You know,
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: the pulp market has been one of the real weak spots.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: So why why is that? Well huge cause because like
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: we're you know, you know, we grew up in the
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: same area. Yeah, when stuff got when stuff happened there,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: it was pulp, right, yeah, cutting pulp. Man that with
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: all that great rough grouse country and like the up
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: or Northern Lower Peninsula was like cutting pulp. It was pulp.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: And you were looking at stuff you weren't looking when
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: you were a kid and you were looking at logging.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: You weren't looking at old growth logging, right, you were
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: looking stuff that had been logged several times.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, second growth, third growth, I mean in those
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: four ESTs. But that's making paper, making paper, And you know,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm I'm old school. I'm sitting here, I've got
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: like stacks of paper around me from stuff I printed off,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: you know, notes and things for the conversation today. But
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: this is rare. Man, Like, when's the last time you
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: bought a newspaper? Right, I mean now, like the thing
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: in terms of.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Because they and also they taught you to think it
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: was bad.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Well that's true, you know, like going I think about
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: this every time I'm in the bathroom.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: And you got both sides save tree.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: You got paper towel, and you got the you got
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: the electric hand dryer. Right, I've gotten in the habit
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: of going for the paper towel every time, man, like
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: use up some.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Of that paper towel.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the uh, you know, now, like one area
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: where there's still I would say, like robust and growing demand,
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: like cardboard boxes for Amazon. Like there's a portion of
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: the industry where pack we're making a lot, we're shipping
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: a lot of stuff around. But when it comes to
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: when it comes to like newsprint, I mean, newsprint's basically dead. Right,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Like if you've got a subscription, like pick your favorite newspaper,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: you're probably looking at it on your phone, as opposed
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: to waiting for the kid on his bicycle to throw
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: the paper against your door on a Sunday morning. Right,
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: So it's been a tremendous disruption to the demand for pulp,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: and a lot of those pulp mills have closed down
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: just in the span of the last I mean, I
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: told you about the one in Mozenee just in the
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: last week. But if you look at the last decade,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: we've lost a tremendous amount of pulp capacity. But on
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: the wildlife side, you think of it in terms of
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: demand for those habitat outcomes to be implemented, right, So
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: there's this really important connection. And just to hammer this
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: one more time, like, without robust forest products industry, the
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: ability to deliver habitat outcomes at scale is tremendously compromised.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: So there's just not a situation where like wildlife management
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: agencies or the Forest Service or whatever are just going
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: to like go in and chop trees down just for
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: the sake of chopping them down.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: So now we start getting into this whole other realm
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: that I think is also very timely and very important,
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: and we could have a whole other conversation on this one.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: But just in terms of thinking about conservation funding and
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: the constraints that a lot of state agencies are starting
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: to feel, Steve, you and I've been sharing materials and
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: texting back and forth a bit about the financial woes
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: of some of the some of the states that are
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: near and dear to our hearts, some thinking specifically about
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: Michigan and Wisconsin. Is a couple of examples right now
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: where just trying to make ends meet under a funding
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: model that was built on the backs of hunting and
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: fishing license sales. Where that model is, from my perspective,
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: starting to unravel. There are cracks in the foundations starting
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: to show.
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: And Carl believes that the declining numbers of hunters is
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: of is like an existential threat to conservation.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, I agree. I'll give you a kind of
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: a different scenario. In Pennsylvania, there's shiploads of state game
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: lands that the Game Commission you know, owns and manages,
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: and they have like historically had tons of racking leases
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: on those lands, and that like they're flushed, like they
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: have money that they can put into potentially projects like this.
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: I understand that's like probably the rare case as far
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: as these agencies go, But yeah, you know, it's something
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: to think about.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: It is it is, and I you know, I would
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I would rephrase your characterization of my perspective on this
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: a little bit, Steve, I think.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I did a great job. I'll prop I'll push
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: back a little.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I said, like half a sentence, you said I
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: that I, Carl, believe declining hunter participation poses an existential
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: threat to conservation.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: You need to clarify that.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, go ahead. What I think is the declining
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: participation in hunting is representative of a broader trend that
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: is a real threat to conservation.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: What's the broader trend?
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: So from my standpoint, I look at hunting in particular,
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: but really like a whole suite of outdoor activities that
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: are pathways to people having a connection to the land
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: as being sort of the backbone of conservation. Like if
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: you don't have people who feel a sense of connection
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: to the natural world.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Just less people around who give it.
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: Right, that's a blunt way of putting it, but it's like,
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: if you don't have people who feel that sense of responsibility,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: that is an existential threat. I think the hunter participation
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: piece and I and I do believe and I'm obviously
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: biased here, but I think these activities of hunting and
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: fishing and trapping and procuring food from the land in
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: any form. It's one of the most just obvious, deep
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: significant kinds of relationship that you can have to a place.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's so visceral, right, It's a very personal,
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: visceral connection to the land. Which is not to say
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: that it's the only way to develop an appreciation for place.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: I don't believe that at all. I think there are
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of different pathways to caring for the land.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: But the fact that we see these declines in participation
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: in activity like hunting, which are I believe among the
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: most strong and meaningful relationships to the land that a
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: person can have, that is representative of this broader trend
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: of disconnection and apathy around conservation, and that I believe
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: is an existential threat.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: I want to comment on that, but I want listeners
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: to understand very well that this is Steve talking and
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: not Carl talking about Okay, I don't want Carl to
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: get rolled up and just.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: Say I don't have you read it.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: There was a I think it was the New York Times.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: There was an op ed, but the guys arguing he's like,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: he's arguing that part of the he argues it as
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party has moved away from conservation, particularly under
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration. And he's like, because you don't have
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: those old style hunting and fishing like in that circle,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: aren't like the old style hunting and fishing.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Republicans don't care about hunting.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: These are Florida golfers. Do you know what I'm saying?
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: And he was kind of saying that like that, like this,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: like it's kind of like this is a moment of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: kind of like the indoor Republican you follow me following, Yeah,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: and had a bunch of examples, but it's like they
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: just they don't they don't know, and they don't care. Yeah,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: they're not. Their vacation isn't fly fishing, Yeah, Jackson Hole.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Like their vacation is West Palm Beach or whatever. The
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: one I can't remember what's the nice one? Is it Western?
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: I don't know, never been.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: There's one that's like super swank. Either Palm Beach or
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: West Palm Beach is super swank. And one's not like
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein lived in one but kind of did his
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: pursuits in the other one. I can't remember how it
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: all worked.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: But like what you're talking about, like the lack of connection,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: and it ties into this too, whether it's Republican or Democrat.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Like there's like when I grew up, people knew what
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: a rough grouse and a woodcock word.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: It was a pet I mean, But.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: Like you could ask someone anywhere on the East Coast
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: or the Midwest and they might have no They'd be like,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that thing is. What they look like,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Exactly, And I think, you know, this idea of finding
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: opportunities for folks from whatever political persuasion, but also whatever
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: sort of circumstance in which they enter their human experience.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: So whether you're born in a rural community, whether you're
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: born in an urban community, whether you're born in a
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: conservative family or a liberal family, this idea of a
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: sense of connection to place and a sense of responsibility
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: to place and also to community. You know, we talk
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: a lot about in this country. We talk a lot
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: about rights. Right rights are a big deal, and they are.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: But the flip side of all of these rights that
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: we have are certain unalienable rights. As Americans, we don't
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: spend enough time thinking about responsibilities and what it means
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: to go through life in a way where we are
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: enjoying the rights that we have been given, but also
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: asking ourselves what are we doing to redeem the responsibilities
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: that we have as members of our community? Yeah, but
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: those are those are I think big important questions that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: in the conservation space. It's like, if your community extends
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: to the places and the species that you interact with,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: whether it's as a hunter or otherwise, it frames your
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: worldview such that decisions around policy you start thinking, You
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: start thinking in terms of what kind of world do
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: you want to create? What kind of world do you
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: want to leave behind? And that that framing, to me,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: is one of the keys to success in terms of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: having a really vibrant, healthy culture as a nation, which
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: I would suggest we've got some room to improve right
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: now on that front. So just thinking in terms of
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: how are we positioning ourselves to take care of the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: things that take care of us? Okay, how are we
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: showing up in our community. There's a there's an education
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: component to it, for sure.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: You and I don't want to hover too long on
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: this thing about declining hunter participation in the Midwest or wherever,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: but a thought on it nationally. But nat you okay,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: you'll say, you're like, well, it's it's it's a part.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: It's a part of people disentangling themselves, stepping away from
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: caring about wild landscapes. There are plenty of people that
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: aren't going to come out of those backgrounds that would say, oh,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: I love seeing wildlife, I love walking in the woods.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: But what they don't know, because they weren't culturally educated
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: around like a hunting, angling outdoor background, what they don't
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: know is they don't know how to look critically at
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: what they're seeing. Meaning if they see someone cutting a tree, boom,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: that's bad, right percent. Okay, if they walk through a
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: big closed canopy forest, it's easy to walk through and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: it's really pretty because there's a bunch of big trees.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: They love all that stuff, but they don't know. They're
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: not looking at it. And I'm not saying there's only
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: one way to get there. They're not looking at it
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: with a hunter's eye or an educated eye. About what
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: are you not seeing? Yeah, yes, that is true. Right,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: you're seeing handful woodpeckers up in the top, some squirrels,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: not many, right, But they're like, this is perfect, it's
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: a big woods. Yeah, like it takes I don't know
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: a level of exposure, and some kind of like professional
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: understanding a little bit to start to move not just
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: from caring about places, but to like understanding them. Yeah, well,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: because a lot of people care, they just don't care
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: in the right way. Right. It's like the kind of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: people who think that the way to support wildlife is
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: to be an animal rights activist. Right in their mind,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, well, of course it is right. They
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: don't understand the damage they do.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: Yes, I agree with that point. I also think there
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: are there are a lot of non hunters who care
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: about these concepts and are very supportive of hunting. In fact,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: there are more non hunters who are supportive of hunting
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: than there are hunters. So you know, if to be
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: careful of painting with too broad a brush, I agree.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: But I mean, we're in some ways I'm not countering you.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I'm saying somebodys we're saying, we're talking about the same
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. And I want to say there's an instinctive.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying is, I don't think that we're going
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: to run out of if let's say hunting does decline
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: or declines long term or something. We're not going to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: run out of people who would tell you they love wildlife.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: I picture we run out of people who knowing what
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: that we run, we risk running out of people who
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: understand what that means.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there'd still be a lot of people around who
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: care about the Yellowstone version of wild Yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: They would tell you, like, I love wildlife. It's like,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: but you don't understand it.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: The language that comes to my mind is I'm thinking
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: about rather than focusing on a particular activity, whether it's
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: whether it's hunting or wildlife, viewing this idea of thinking
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: in terms of encouraging experiences for people that foster a
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: sense of connection and responsibility to a place. Because if
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: you have that sense of responsibility and you want to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: execute on that, you need to know what the place
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: needs from you. And I think hunting is a phenomenal
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: gateway to just like experiencing in a visceral way, a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: sense of being part of a system. Right, It's like
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: you are not observing, you are a participant, actively engaged
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: in a system, which is something we have been doing
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: since the beginning of our species existence. But I think
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: in terms of messaging, as you were talking, I'm just
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: looking back at this twenty twenty five State of the
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: Birds report, and it talks in here about there being
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: one hundred million Americans engaged in birding and the economic
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: impact of that, et cetera. So well, give me a
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: moment here, man. That just makes me I'm not surprised.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: I'm not surprised to hear that. But listen, here's the thing.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing. So here here, let me give you
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: like a sense.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: You don't want to know why I'm rolling my eyes? Okay,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: go ahead, so listen listen here.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: I do want I do want to hear your thoughts
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: on this, but I want to give it give some
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: shout outs. So organizations including American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: of Ornithology, Ducks Unlimited, National Audibond.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Society, can you tell me how many birds are? One
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: hundred million?
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: But and that includes eighty million of those in the mean?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: It means people. It means when someone asks you, you
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: say you like birds.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's I think that's an important data point, man.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: I believe that's an important data point. And guess what
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: that includes.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: Virtually there's so there's over two hundred million people in
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: this country who.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: Don't I get what you're saying about these people that
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: are interested.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: People who have enough interest to be like, yeah, birds
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: are cool you.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I would also would roll what an extraordinarily low barrier
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: to entry? Do you like birds? Yes? Okay, I'm gonna
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: put you down on my list of.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Birders, And I would say, like you were talking about
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: hunters versus not hunters earlier, like a hunter a good
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: chance he's gonna walk around on chunk woods and be like, man,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: there's no rough browse here, there's no wood gut here.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: A lot of those hundred million birders they wouldn't.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: I would be like, okay, but to be on my list,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: do you have a bird book? And like you gotta
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: like there has to be some cardinal and an oriole
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: test them. So the Scheckter bookshelves. There's got to be
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: something other than being like I like birds. Listen.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: The reason I'm bringing this up is not to get
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: you off fired up about the data.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Why live with four birders? Sure?
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 3: And by the way, the report also it talks about
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: like including virtually every hunter, Like what hunter is going
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: to say? You know, No, when I'm out elk hunting,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: I always avert my eyes when I see Lewis's wood.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: Damn birds, right, these damn.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Birds keep interrupting my el cutt, right, but that's why
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: I rolled mys so I'm not surprised you did. But
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: there are going to be times where these concepts that
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: I think we hold deer around people's connection to place,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: having the voices of other organizations in this space with
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: us who are coming at it from a different lens.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: So like American Bird Conservancy is a great example that
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: is that is a nonprofit where there is so much
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: alignment in terms of what we want to get done
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: on the ground, and they're talking to a slightly different audience,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: and they are one hundred percent supportive of the kinds
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: of hunting that we're talking about, sustainable, responsible relationship based.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: There's no mismatch in terms of what we want to
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: see happen, and it's rooted in good science. And so
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: like this State of the Birds report, you can go
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: ecosystem by ecosystem through the country and talk about the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: status of sea ducks, western forest birds, shore birds, dabbling,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: whatever you want to look at. The point I want
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: to make here though, is when it comes to a
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: very troubling picture in terms of bird conservation, including but
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: not limited to rough grouse in American woodcock in the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: eastern forests of the United States. We know what we
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: need to do in these systems, like we have the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: science to tell us what we need to do. It's
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: a matter of figuring out how do you scale up
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: and have those outcomes delivered. And we're watching as these species,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: whether we're talking about whipperwills or woodcock, we're watching not
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: even a gradual like in the span of our lifetime.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: We're watching these declines happen before our eyes because of
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: our inability to take care of these habitats. So having
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: an organization or a chorus of voices that are coming
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: from different perspectives and talking to different audiences, and obviously
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: the Rough gross Society in American Woodcock Society, we're a
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: very proud hunter conservationist oriented group. But I would offer
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: that anybody who cares about forest health should be really
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: happy about the work that we're doing, whether they ever
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: want to pick up a shotgun or not. Like we're
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: in exactly the same business as the Audubon Society, American
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: Bird Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, Like we're partnering with these
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: organizations to try to get the same things done.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying, though I don't mean a
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: hack on all those guys. I understand what you're saying
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: in that if you can get again the one hundred million,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: come on. But whatever, how many are truly there.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: Feeling less than one in three people who are into
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: birds in there?
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's like an saying where no, Okay,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: let's say you got let's say you pulled Americans and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: said do you like the thought of a beach? Okay,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: hmm and two hundred million ever be like yeah, y sure,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, hey, when was the last time you
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: were at a beach? Right, it's a smaller number, okay,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: And then be like, do you plan your schedule around
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: visiting a beach every year? Now, there's a smaller number.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Somewhere within that hundred million is hiding a number of like.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: Diehard birders, hardcore burners, or.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Hardcore beach goers. We're like, no, next weekend, I'm flying
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: down to Florida to go to the beach. I'm like that,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I'm waxing myself to be as we speak, like that's
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: a beach going to be fair to.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Carl though, like hunters suffer from myopia just as much
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: as everyone else. Right, Like, I might be aware of
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: this this bad thing that's happening to rough grouse and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: woodcock and not be aware of a bunch of other
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: things that are happening with other species that the hardcore
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: birders might be aware.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I know. But the reason and we spent way too
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: much time in this say, but I have to I
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: have to have my point to hear the hunt. I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: don't think, oh they If I thought to myself, oh,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: thank god, there's one hundred million die hard birder allies
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: out there wanting to fix America's forests, that'd be great,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: But I don't think that. Yeah, I think it's probably
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: like maybe ten million, maybe as many as there are hunters,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: like like birders.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, birders who are like America's forest ready, because when
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: you go out and just ask people like do you
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: like seeing a bird?
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: You're not collecting Yeah, people who want to fix America's forests. Right.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: But so a counterpoint to that argument is, if you
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: were to ask the question about caring about fixing America's forests,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: you might find a lot of other allies who care
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: about it for reasons other than birds.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Bring them on I just couldn't have you say that
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: number without comment. But I'm not surprised that that's here's
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the way to change, here's the way it changes. I
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: picture there's two things happening with habitat, okay, okay, Like
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: there's loss meaning irrevocable harm, yes, development, right, and then
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: neglect yeah, good word? Okay? Can I don't know, Like,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: how do you picture the relationship between those two numbers, Like, meaning,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: for every one hundred acres of subprime bird habitat in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: the eastern US, right, for every one hundred acres of
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: prime habitat that's been lost in the last fifty years,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: what is the ratio of acres lost to irrevocable damage, yeah,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: pavement whatever. And what is the acres lost to mismanagement
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: or neglect? Yeah?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to hazard a guess on that, but
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: those are the two keys. And I think one thing
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: that I could put a little bit finer point on here.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, we know all of us have the stories
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: of the places where we grew up playing the woodlot
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: that you describe with the oak trees getting cut and
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: then all of a sudden boom houses popping up.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: We've all got those stories rights, we depressed. Every time
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I visit my mom.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: I listen, there's a place. There's a place where I
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: had my sort of illicit campground along trout Stream in
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: leland On County that the last time I went check
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: it out, there was a trampoline sitting where my fire.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: Pit used to be.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: So we've all got those places, right. We know we're
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: losing ground to development, of course, fragmentation, et cetera. The
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: story of the I like the word neglect because I
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: think a lot of folks, you know, if you're driving
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: through the forests of the eastern United States and looking
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: out your window, you're like, yeah.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a lot of forest here.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: What we have is a lot of the the forests
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: that have regrown after that era of exploitation, and so
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: we have a tremendous amount of like middle aged forest
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: that is very homogeneous, very much the same, like eighty
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: to one and twenty years old. I mean, yeah, so
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: I'm using like some non precise, non scientific language, but
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: if you think about the timeline of when these forests
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: were slicked off, when the when the era of exploitation
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: and liquidation of our timber resources occurred, a lot of
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: what we have now is the growth that has replaced.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: If you were standing in a middle aged forest, what would.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: You be seeing.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: Well, that's so, that's great, especially in these in these landscapes.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you a few things you're going to see.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: You're going to see. Take a canopy overhead that is
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: allowing very little sunlight to hit the forest floor. You're
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: going to see very little understory, plant diversity or community.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: There's leaf litter on.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: A lot of leaf litter.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: And I'll throw I'll throw a cool term out here
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: and a shout out to one of my retired Forest
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: Service colleagues, a guy named Greg Miwaki, who coined this
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: term mesofication, which refers to the increasing sort of moisture
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: tolerance of a forest over time. So a lot of
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: our forests in the East, when you think about that
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: era of all this disruption occurring the passenger pigeons, the bison,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: the elk, you had four forest where things were drier
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: as a result of more sunlight hitting the forest floor.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: So in places like Indiana is a perfect example where
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: the species of woody vegetation that are less tolerant of shade,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: so like oaks, are a prime example, we historically had
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: tons more oaks on the landscape, much more fire maintaining
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: those oaks. If you just take a hands off approaching
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: those systems, remove all those drivers of disturbance, you'll start
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: a successional process where in the understore you'll start getting
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: shade tolerant species like red Maple's a good example that'll
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: come up in the understory. And then if the oaks
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: are dropping their acorns in a sea of red maple seedlings,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: those oak seedlings are going to be out competed because
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: they don't do as well in the absence of direct sunlight.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: So you have a canopy come up eventually to where
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: red maple will be the dominant species and the oaks
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: will not come back. So that transition from shade intolerant
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: to shade tolerant species, which corresponds to increasing moisture content
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: in the understory. That's musification referring to a more music
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: site as opposed to a more it's xeric site. So
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: a music site is more moist, a xerox site is
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: more dry. My good buddy Gregnawaki was the one who
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: kind of termed this this musification idea through his research
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: looking at that change over time. So if you're in
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: this forest stand, you're going to have a very consistent
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: aged overstory. Like all the trees came up in the
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: same cohort, made it to the canopy, they're now shading
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: out the understory. You don't have the robust grass forbed
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: shrub understory. You don't have a lot of mid mid
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: canopy complexity.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: Squirrel, see you way too far away, squirrel, see you
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: way too far away.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: There's and you're not going to have. You're not going
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: to have nesting habitat for a whole spec a whole
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: cadre of species of birds that require that diversity. And
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: also so like the understory plant community, the pollinators. You know,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: we could talk about rusty patch bumblebee comes to mind,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: a species listed under the Endangered Species Act, where we're
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: not talking about birds anymore, we're talking about insects. But
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: it's the same story of disturbance being a limiting factor.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: So the forest is going to have a closed canopy,
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: it's going to be real shady, it's going to look
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: the same as far as you can see. And I
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: think if folks pay attention as you're driving through a
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: lot of these eastern forests. You're going to notice some
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: of those characteristics. And I'll throw one more thing out
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: there for you. Now, that's very different from what things
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: looked like three or four hundred years ago on these landscapes,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: and that is an overabundance of white tail deer, which
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: are not a replacement for the elk and the bison.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: The browsing dynamics of white tail deer in these systems
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: are a very different driver of disruption ecologically.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: Come up, they're not.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: Letting any of those species join the you know, the
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: older age classes. So this is where you get into
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: maybe an feature that you're going to see in a
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: lot of places as a pronounced browse line from white
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: tail deer, which is a whole other set of ecological issues.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: So this is where you know, we can't fall into
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: the trap of thinking, oh, well, we've got deer, and
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: so maybe deer playing the role that elker bison did.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: Deer in the absence of sufficient predation are another driver
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: of a decline of ecological integrity in these systems. So
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: that's I think a good picture of what you'd see.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: And then the other piece is if you are one
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: of these maybe ten million diehard burds. And you're out
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: there with your Cornell Lab of Ornithology app and you're
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: listening to the birds, you're going to hear very little
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: diversity in those systems as well, for a variety of reasons,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: but the structural complexity lacking being one of the keys.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ask about the woodcock because you guys
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: just recently kind of took woodcock under your officially under
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: your umbrella. Yeah, are they Are they more at risk
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: for these kinds of problems because they migrate? Or are
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: they better able to deal with these problems because they
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: migrate because rough grasse, like you said, like small home range,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: right right, woodcock might fly nine hundred one.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: Thousand, Yeah, twice a year.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: Brody, you're the man. I'm so glad we could talk
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: about woodcock a little bit man.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: Timberdoodle, timberdoodle, mud bat man, bog partridge, bog sucker, the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: names go on. Uh yeah, the timberdoodle.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you, because if you asked my my buddy in
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: Pennsylvania I was talking about, he would be like, holy crap,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: is the woodcock hunting good these days?
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: Well? Was it really?
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah? So if you're the only birds, but we can
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: trust him with his own beak.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: Listen, Woodcock Man, just do a whole separate episode just
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: on Woodcock.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Listen. Here's the thing.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: A really cool aspect of working for this organization is
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: you have the opportunity to focus on this high sight
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: fidelity king of king of Upland game birds, where you know,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: everything we've been talking around about forest diversity and managing
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: it at a tight local scale is the key. And
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: then you get to shift gears and talk about a
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: migratory Upland game bird that is just this like bizarre,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: amazing outlier.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: Birders love them because they do that cool little dance.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: Go down to the gas line, like not a mile
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: away from the house and watch them.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: They are They are so damn cool. There might be
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: one of my half jokingly sometimes say to folks on
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: our team at RGS and AWS, I'm like, you know,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: people think I came for the rough gross, but I'm
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: really here for the Woodcock Man. So I think the
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: answer to your question, Brody is the fact that Woodcock
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: operate ecologically at a continental scale. You need you really
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: need those habitat elements to be in the right places
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: at the right times. At a at a scale that
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: makes it makes the system much more fragile to disruption, right,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: and we're seeing that in terms of woodcock declines. So
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: I'll give you like a quick stat here that's helpful.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: State agencies. State fish and Wildlife agencies are responsible for
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: developing state wildlife Action plans in order to qualify for
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: federal funding through Pittman Robertson at So, every state Fish
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: and Wildlife agency has a state Wildlife Action Plan. And
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: one of the things that happens in these state Wildlife
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: Action plans is they go through all the species and
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: they try to identify what ones warrant listing as a
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: species of greatest conservation need. That's an indicator that a
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: particular critter is in some level of decline or threat.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: And for rough grouse, there are currently eighteen states that
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: have rough grouse listed as.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: A species of greatest Ohio.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: Ohio is right now considering what to do with their
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: hunting season, and there's a proposal on the table. Just
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: in the next couple of weeks they're going to be
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: talking about a proposal to reduce the rough grouse hunting
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 3: season to include just a handful of properties where we
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: know we still have grouse on the landscape versus just
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: closing it out right. But back to this idea of
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: the state Wildlife Action Plan. So eighteen of them have
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: rough grouse listed, twenty nine of them have American woodcocks.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: Really the greatest conservation need, and that includes Michigan, Wisconsin,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: Minnesota like states where we're sort of in the bread
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: basket of upland bird hunting. And this year, one of
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: the highlights of the time I've been with this organization
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: was I had a chance back in December to go
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: down to Louisiana, flew down to Baton Rouge and had
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: a chance to spend some time with folks from the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: state agency down there, and we went out and banded.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: We banded fifty three woodcock one night on one of
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: their state game areas, which was an absolute oh man.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: It is such a cool example of technology and action.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: So the biologists down there, and I'll give a shout
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: out to Richard Temple at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: and Fisheries, he and the team from the state. First,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: they have a drone with infrared and they fly it
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: over these open fields at night and the infrared camera
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: can I mean, these woodcock glow like they blow up
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: out of the background. And then the drone also has
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: a spotlight on it, so they can hover like I
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: don't know, one hundred feet above the field see where
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: these woodcock are. And then they can they have a
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: camera with such incredible resolution that you can, like you
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: can see the woodcock blink from the drone, and if
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: a woodcock defecates, you can see like the heat of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: the splash at a woodcock's back. So it's just incredible
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: view of the field. And then we go out with
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: like a four wheeler and spotlights on the ground, and
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: basically it's like a deer in the headlights. You shine
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: a spotlight on the woodcock and you can take a
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: fishing net or even you can grab them by your
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: bare hand with the spotlight shining on the bird. And
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: then we're aging them and sexing them and releasing them.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: And I have to say, like, after having a lot
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: of woodcock, like dead woodcock in my hands, or having
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: a woodcock that's crippled and you're dispatching it, to have
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: these little woodcock that we're banding and releasing watching them
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: fly away out of my hands was it was pretty
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: damn cool man. So we did all this banding work
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: and then also did some hunting. I was down there
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: for the opener of the woodcock season, got to hunt
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: with a guy named Paul Paul Frischertz and Keene Jones,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: who are a couple of guys down there looking to
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: kind of resurrect a American Woodcock Society chapter and their
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: bevy of pointing dogs. But the coolest part about all
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: of that experience was when the biologist, this guy, Richard Temple,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: showed me the map of the band return data. Saw
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: all these woodcock that their their band right there on
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: Baton Rouge. He puts up this map of where the
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: bands have been returned from, Like hunters have shot a
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: woodcock that's banned and they call it in, just like
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: what we're used to with ducks and geese. And there
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: were a couple of points that were within like fifteen
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: miles of my family camp up in the west, like
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 3: right where I grouse in Woodcock con Man. So these birds,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: you know, you're down here, like worried about your dog
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: running into a cotton mouth. There's alligators hanging out in
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: these like bayous hanging out with all these great Cajun
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: upland bird hunting guys. But it's exactly exactly the same
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: individual birds that were chasing around like in October up
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota. Here they are down in you know,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: the Gulf coast in December. So I had that experience.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: And then I'm flying back, you know, I'm on my
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: trip from Baton Rouge back up to Milwaukee, and I'm
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: looking out the window, just watching the miles right pass
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: under the plane, and I'm thinking about this, these little
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: birds like just making that. And then they're also nesting,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: like they're they're laying eggs and hatching chicks during their
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: return migrations north too. So you've got the you've got
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: like the summer ground in the north, you've got the
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: wintering ground, and then there's all this stopover habitat where
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: we know these birds are nesting. Part of the reason
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: we know that is this amazing collaborative called the Eastern
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 3: Woodcock Migration Research.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: They're not nesting in their northern chunk.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: They do most of their nesting in their northern chunk.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: But what the recent research has demonstrated is that there
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: are hens rearing clutches rearing chicks during this you know,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: it's not like a cut and dried, like I'm going
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: back to Minnesota to lay my eggs right like it's
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: happening over that latitudinal gradient north yep. And so I've been,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: you know, academically like, oh, yeah, they're migratory. And your
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: buddy him talking about man, the woodcock cutting sure has.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Been great lately.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, it might be like Monday, there's woodcock everywhere,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: and then Tuesday like right gone, right, And anybody who's
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 3: hunted woodcock when when you hit these migration events, it
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: can be like you can't you can't walk without bumping birds,
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: like I've had. I've had situations where you know, I'm
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: hunting pointing dogs. I'll have a dog on point, a
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: bird goes up, shoot the bird, dog goes to retrieve
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: the bird, but like points another bird on its way
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: to get the dead bird, or it's bringing a bird
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: back and pointing another bird on there. Like when you
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: get into these flights, it can be amazing. But the
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: big picture in terms of woodcock numbers is a gradual
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: decline continentally. So you need the good habitat in the north.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: You need the good habitat in the south. You need
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: the habitat along the way. And one of the really
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: exciting things is this this work being let out of
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 3: the University of Maine, the Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: The two leads Eric Blomberg and doctor Amber Roth are
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: leading a collaborative to try to understand the use of
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: habitat during this migratory period. And they've put out at
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: this point over seven hundred backpack transmitters on Woodcock. They
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: and their collaborators, lots of other academic institutions. One of
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 3: our team members, one of our forest conservation director, Sarah
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: serv has been a collaborator in this work. They've got
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: like thirty thousand, actually close to forty thousand GPS coordinates
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 3: of migrating Woodcock now, so we can see at the
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: flyway scale, like here are places that are very important
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: for us to think about providing habitat, whether it's along
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: the Atlantic coast or along the Mississippi Flyway. Being able
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 3: to target these treatments in a way where you're providing
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: key habitat in places where it might be limited, and
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: it gives you just some tremendous insights into the trials
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: and tribulations. I mean one thing folks are interested in.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: Looking at recent news stories, these big spring storms or
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: I guess late winter storms is a better way to
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: describe it. Obviously that have happened on the East coast.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: There have been some tremendous woodcock casualties as a result.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: There's a point in New Jersey called Cape May, which
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: is sort of like a funnel along the Atlantic Flyway
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: that is notorious for getting lots lots of young woodcock
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: and into that area. And that's a place where a
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: couple of big storms go between frozen ground and snowfall
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: and really cold temperatures. They had hundreds of woodcock die
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: on site, like freezing and starving on site during these
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: migration events. So that all paints a picture of just
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: how demanding for a bird of that size these seasonal
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: migrations are. Like any bird that makes it through one
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: of those cycles and is able to reproduce and rear offspring,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: it's a hell of an accomplishment.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you know, a two three year old turkey's
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: an old man, Like gobbler's an old man. Like how
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: like rough grouse and woodcock like I assume like not
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: many make a pass the first.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: Year, very high mortality from one age class to the next,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: for sure.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: And in the case of woodcock, you know, the migration
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: poses a whole set of risks that rough grouse aren't
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: subject to. You know, they're flying into windows, they're flying
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: into buildings, they're getting smoked by owls. A lot of
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: the movement that woodcock are engaging in during migration is
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: happening at night as well, so they Yeah, they're subject
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: to very high mortality. And certainly in the case of
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: grouse too, Like there's nothing in the woods that eats
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: meat that doesn't want to eat a grouse, right, Like
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: a grouse is a snack for anything out there, So
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: very high mortality during that first Basically, if you look
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: at from year zero to one, one to two, two
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: to three, every one of those stages, you're seeing very
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: immortality for both of these species.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: I had a question I wanted to ask you, and
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: that actually has to do with turkeys and maybe a
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: conspiracy theory. Is there any correlation between like the rise
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: of the wild turkey, like the comeback, yeah, and the
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: fall of the grouse because it's kind of like happening
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: at the same time, right.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard those stories, and I think my answer
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: to that is when it comes to thinking about drivers
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 3: of either success or failure for both rough grouse and
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: wild turkeys, and like, pick your hunted species if you
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: want to just look at us at this from the
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: lens of hunting, I mean whitetail deer. You mentioned your
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: story from Michigan, Steve.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: We're dealing with.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: Species that evolved with forests where disturbance equals habitat period.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: So when we talk about doing things that are good
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: for grouse, or doing things that are good for turkey,
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: or doing things that are good for white tail deer,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: we're talking about benefiting the four and the rising tide
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: lifting all boats, and this idea of like, oh, we've
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: got turkeys back on the landscape now, that's going to
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: be terrible for grouse. My answer to that would be
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: if we have good habitat and a good juxtaposition of
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: that diversity that's accessible to turkeys and to grouse. There
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: may be some flukey case where a turkey disturbs ground
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: a ground nest. I'm sure that happens. I mean, turkeys
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: are They're a source of disturbance and disruption. They're clawn
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: and dig in, and I have no doubt that that
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: has happened and does happen. But nest mortality is par
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 3: for the course. There's a whole host of other things
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: out there that are taking out nests too. We should
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: never expect rough grouse or woodcock to you know, succeed
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: in every nesting attempt. But if we have really good habitat,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: and if we have lots of females attempting to nest,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: we're going to have lots of birds. So I would
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: I would debunk that a bit and say, focusing in
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: on habitat, it.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Brings up there's an interesting point to it that that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: there's an interesting point you make that I hadn't thought
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: of a lot of times we because we focus on
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: like as hunters or anglers or whatever, you focus on
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: your favorite game species, right, meaning like you might look
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: maybe you bass fish some lake and you kind of track,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: like what's going on with the bass that lake? And
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: you'll you'll have pet theories about what impacted bass, right,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: Or you might look at like what's impacting mule deer? Yeah,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: And you look and it's like you find this suite
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: of factors that maybe like pertains very particularly to mule deer,
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: or some things that pertain very particularly to elk. Right,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to think of what the woodcock and rough
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: grouse decline as being that like we know those ones
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and love them, but what we're talking about is like
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: land birds. Yeah, forest health. Yeah, what we're talking about
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: is forest health. Yeah, because I think that you tend
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: to like, in my mind, like if i'm you know, whatever,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: if I'm talking about black tail deer on some island
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: in Alaska, I'm usually looking at what is impacting black
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: tail deer? Yeah. Right, It's interesting to take a thing
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: like this and be like, what is impacting birds? Right?
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: One of which or two of which are these ones
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: that you're intensely focused on, but that that unbeknownst to you,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: they're they're going away as well. You know, yes, but
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: you missed it. You missed it because you're just thinking
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: about the ones you are looking for, you know, right.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And even if you want to get into some
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: of the specific drivers, like just briefly back to this
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: idea of the West Nile virus as a cause of decline,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: they're too the idea that you can really focus on
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: habitat quality to help kind of buffer the impact of
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: that disease agent. If you think about a bird, that's like,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: I'm getting at this idea of cumulative effects, right.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: If you have a bird that is.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: Struggling to take in enough calories, and it's also subject
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: to slightly higher predation risk because it doesn't have the
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 3: structural complexity to hide from death from above you know, hawks,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: owls or coyotes, fox, whatever, and then on top of
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: that you add a disease that's further weakening that bird
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: versus a bird that is diseased but also has really
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: good forage, really good habitat. It's not any one of
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: these things, right. It's very rare in ecological science to
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: be like, no, there's the cause, there's the effect, right.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 3: Much more often it's these complex interconnections and feedback loops
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: and death by a thousand cuts as a to well,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 3: here's the one thing that explains it all. But in
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: the case of these eastern forests, it's like, the one
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: thing that explains it all is that we have not
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 3: done a good job of maintaining the diversity and disturbance,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: and that includes everything ranging from driving passenger pigeons to
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 3: extinction extirpating eastern elk and bison up through. I love
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: the word use neglect because I think that is a
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 3: perfect label for many of our eastern forests, is that
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: they have been neglected. And part of the tragedy is
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: that now you have people who I think their hearts
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 3: are in the right place, but they're strongly advocating for
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: continuing to neglect the forests that they claim to love.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: Cutting down all those trees in this place, neglect by inaction,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: just letting them sit.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this idea, that this idea, and I think this
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: is such a powerful it's such a powerful thing to
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: really think about, because a lot of folks, who I
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: believe have their hearts in the right place, they think
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: about human beings as being only capable of making things
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: worse in the environment. We're the problem too many people.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 3: You know, all we do is pillage and pollute. And
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: when you really start looking at our history as a species,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: and you start looking at all the different cultures and
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: relationships that people have to different ecosystems around the planet
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: and thinking about it more carefully, for the vast majority
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: of our existence, we have been in the business of
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: actively taking care of the places that support our existence.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: We have been we have been dependent on the act
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: that we take mediated through the land for our very survival.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: So this idea that somehow you step back and take
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: a hands off approach nature will take care of itself.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 3: That ignores the reality that we are fundamentally a part
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: of nature, right So it it it's a troubling worldview
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: at the deepest of levels because it takes this role
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 3: that we should be embracing and points to that as
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: if it's a problem. The only thing we can do
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: is make things worse in the environment. That is just
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: simply not the case. We have been in the business
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: of interacting with and being a part of these systems.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: And that's the thing, man, the more I'm thinking through this,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: that's the problem is it takes us and removes us
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: from the system and we you know, we look over there,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 3: there's nature. Don't mess it up, as opposed to we
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: are in this thing. And if you want to zoom
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: back to like a global scale, whether you live in
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: an urban environment, whether you live in a rural landscape,
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: whether you're in a flavella somewhere in South America, or
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 3: whether you're living in remote Alaska, all of us are
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 3: existing within this closed system, right, and we're all making
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 3: decisions individually and cumulatively that influenced the trajectory of that
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: closed system. So approaching it in a way where you're
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: actually embracing the fact that you have a responsibility to
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: take action to try to make things better for the future,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: as opposed to, well, that's nature over there. I'm over
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 3: here doing my thing, let nature figure it out like
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 3: that is a very deeply flawed worldview in my opinion,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: m H.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: When we talk about the anthroposcene meaning that, like the
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: anthroposcene is this concept that you know, like we think
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: of the places scene as the ice ages that was
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: followed by the Holocene, let me be very quickly entered the anthropoiscene,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: meaning that humans. When people use that term, what they're
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: saying is that humans are the dominant force, the dominant
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: global force on habitats, the dominant global force on ecology,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: or the dominant force. Part of recognizing that needs to
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: be embracing that role to be like, Okay, if that's
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: the case, then maybe we need to be the dominant
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: force of good as well in someplace love that.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean, there's no more powerful ecosystem engineer
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: than Homo sapiens, right, Like, we have been manipulating the
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: face of this planet to benefit ourselves for forever, but
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: we have we have absolutely reached a point in our
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 3: history as a species where we have we have these
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 3: controls at our disposal and we can either do things
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 3: that will promote a future of continued prosperity or and
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: in a lot of places, this is already reality. We've
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: gone so far down this path of manipulating the system
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 3: for short term gain that we've compromised the ability of
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: those systems to be a source of prosperity to us.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of cleanup work to do in
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: those places. But I think what you just said is
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: a super important message.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: It's like.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 3: We need to acknowledge that reality and then approach that
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 3: with a focus on what are our responsibilities in light
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: of that reality?
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: Do you think that how relational is it? Like? Do
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: you think that I want to see relational? It's a
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: terrible word choice. How much do you think a habitat project,
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: Let's say you do a habitat project on one thousand acres?
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Can you do a habitat project on one thousand acres?
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: And then come back a couple of years later and
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, the grouse are back.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: It really depends on where you are. I think in
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: a lot of places the answer is going to be no.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: Once grouse are gone and you lose like a source population.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 3: And they do this, they have this life history trait
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: where you know they hatch in the spring. The broods
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: kind of stick together. If you think about bumping into
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: grouse early season when you're hunting them, oftentimes you'll flush
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: like broods of birds. You'll get almost like a covey
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: flush of grouse. But then they get into a dispersal
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 3: mode mid fall and birds start striking out to essentially
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: occupy new territory, spread their genes across the landscape, avoid competition,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: avoid in breeding. So they will cover considerable distances to
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: pioneer unoccupied habitat. But if you do a restoration project
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 3: in an area where there's no source of rough grouse,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: they're not They're not gonna find it, and we're not.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 3: There is a very poor track record of trying to
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: relocate grouse into previously occupied habitat.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: They don't do well.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: So being able to hold on to grouse where we
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: still have them and then focus on trying to restore
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 3: habitat around the places that are occupied.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: Very much better course of action. We had a researcher,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: we had a deer, but you know, it does a
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: lot of work with servants on the podcast one time
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: and he was talking about when you look like, let's
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: say your mealed your hunt, and you look in that
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: perfect stuff and you're like, God, it seems like they'd
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: be here. It looks like it would be perfect. Yeah,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: He's like, it might be they're not there. Yeah, something
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: happened to They have a lot of fidelity to their area.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: Something happened to that group. Yeah, and it might be
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: a long time. It might be perfect, It might be
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: the most perfect meal to your country or in your area,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: but there's just not any there. Yeah, because they don't
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: they haven't colonized it. Yep. They got their own. The
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: ones nearby have their little plan and they're not looking
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: for a new spot, and it can take a long
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: time to put them back when you have an event. Yeah,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: carry them away, yep.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: I think there's some applicability there, and that's in obviously
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: direct contrast with Woodcock, where they're they're going to find
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: it they're going to find it, which is one of
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: the advantages. We've talked about some of the disadvantages of
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: being a migratory species, but in advantages, you're surveying that
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 3: landscape with fresh eyes every year and taking advantage where
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 3: habitats popping out.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that putting grouse out on the
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: ground doesn't work like putting turkeys out on the ground.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 3: They have not done well with reintroduction.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: What do you think it is, because it's they just
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: don't they don't carry with them like a sort of
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: generational land use plan. It's a good question.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 3: I wish I knew. I wish I knew more about
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: the constraints on survivorship of translocated grouse. I I know
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 3: that it has been attempted in many settings, and I'm
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: aware of no successful reintroduction efforts.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: They got to do their own thing.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you got to preserve those pockets yea, and
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: build out from there. And and you know, we do
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 3: have just some tremendous strongholds still. But that the thing
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: that is both both like most frustrating and most encouraging
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 3: is that it's not we're not scratching our heads like man,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 3: if we could just figure out right, it's like we know,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 3: we know what needs to be done, and it's also
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: a set of actions that is broadly beneficial beyond these
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 3: two iconic species. So that's where like the idea of
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 3: trying to get some coalitions built around leaving those conditions,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 3: like the partnership with the Rocky Mount Elk Foundation, the
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: partnership with American Bird Conservancy, we have a shared vision
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: of what needs to be done.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those kinds of things are frustrating in their own way.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: I think when you look at big conservation problems, you
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: have the ones you'd be like like acidification of the oceans.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: You know, you're like, good luck with that, do you
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like like something that would call
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: for sort of like a global change in habits that
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: would impact every person on the planet. Yep, you know,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: like that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. But then you
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: got conservation problems where you're like, dude, it's read at
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: our fingertips. Yeah, it's right at our fingertips. It's not
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: even like it's so achievable, right Yeah, And King Sam
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: and people are like they don't even know where to begin. Yeah,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: deal me with king salmon, It's hard to know where
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: to begin.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: It'd be a bummer to see like that species, that
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: hunting opportunity to like blink out in your lifetime because
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: so much of it has gotten better over time. Right, Like,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: if you're an elk hunter, it's a pretty good time
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: to be an elk hunter, white tail hunter, you know,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 2: you name it. It's pretty good. But to see, like,
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: do you and vision the trend being more states closing
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: seasons or restricting seasons or status quo or.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think we're on a trajectory that
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: we're likely to see continued loss of opportunity.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know a couple examples.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: New Jersey's of state where they had a season that's
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: been closed. I think twenty nineteen for that one. Indiana
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: lost its season in twenty fifteen, and now rough grouse
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 3: are listed on the state endangered species list. Missouri no season,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 3: Ohio flirting with potentially a steeply restricted season.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: I think Pennsylvania had an early and a late and
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: they got rid of one. Maybe the late season like
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: after Christmas.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: Got Michigan still just got a doozy of a season. Man.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's long, Yeah, yeah, them right up through the
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 3: end of the calendar year and September fifteen, right, Yeah,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: that's right, Opener, a sacred day for those hillbelly kids
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: of the North woods man take that day off of school.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: Go squirrel and grouse, Hutton. Those are all restrictions that
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: came out like in our lifetimes for sure. Oh yeah,
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: what else? What else you got on that list?
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I just I think this is not but speak
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: to the fact that this is all southern extent, right,
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: is it because it was the poorest populations? Well, I
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: think it was just kind of naturally borderline, it was
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: naturally fringe habitat. Yeah.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're starting to get you're starting to
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 3: get into areas where the if you look at the
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: distribution aspen. I made the comment earlier that aspen is
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 3: not the key, but it's a really important aspect of
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 3: gross habitat in many places, you're starting to get into
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 3: areas where that species is not available to provide food
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 3: and cover. You're also looking at places where these forest
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 3: change dynamics that we've talked about musification lack of disturbance.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: That is absolutely the case. One of the most compelling
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 3: examples of that going back to Doug Duran the Driftless
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 3: area in southwest Wisconsin, if you look like twenty five,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 3: thirty forty years ago, grouse numbers in southwest Wisconsin were
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 3: off the charts, like phenomenal rough grouse habitat. Now it's
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 3: unusual to hear that I've talked about a drumming grouse
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 3: in the Driftless area. So yeah, so what happened just
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: the habit habitat change, lack of change gone gone for now.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: And the problem is, you know, like we were just
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 3: talking about with the sort of mule deer story there,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 3: if you get to the point where the habitat's gone
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 3: long enough in the populations dwindled to the point you're
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to say you're never going to get
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: him back, but you are facing a very steep uphill
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 3: battle at that.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: So if we're like the northern populations, like whatever, northern Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: where they're doing well, is it just like why are
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: they doing like, is it just that stuff's not getting
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: messed with? It's the right habitat and it's staying the
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: right habit like because if it if this good habitat
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: depends on disturbance, Like what kind of disturbance is going
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: on up there that keeps things?
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you're you're right, you're right in the core
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 3: of their range in terms of climate, in terms of
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: the vegetation community. You know, I'm thinking, I'm envisioning this
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: spot right now in the in the up where it's
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 3: just like this tangle of fifteen ten to fifteen year
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 3: old aspen understory of which hazel. It's like every you've
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 3: got like winter green, it's it's just food everywhere, covers phenomenal.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 3: Typically you have a good snowpack and rough grouse will
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: burrow into the snow and see thermal refuge in cold conditions.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 3: So having that snow cover is a big deal. If
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 3: you have crappy snow snow years grouser at higher risk
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 3: of freezing in cold temperatures.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: It's not good news around here, you know.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 3: So so you're in a really sweet spot. It's like,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 3: you're right, You're right in the wheelhouse of where those
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 3: birds evolve to be. And so now I'm thinking about
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 3: some very cool work that's been happening in the central
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 3: Upper Peninsula, Michigan looking at the management of these remnant
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 3: boreal forest ecosystems where you're kind of on the fringe,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 3: like I'm thinking about snowshoe hares as well, right populations
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 3: of snowshoe hares, ruffed grouse, a whole host of species
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 3: that have significance from the standpoint of food and medicine
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 3: for tribal communities. So there's some really cool work my
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 3: buddy Eric Clark and collaborators from the Susaint Retribe of
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 3: Chippewa Indians working on the Hiawatha National Forest to get
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 3: more fireback into those systems to promote the diversity of habitat.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 3: And if you go back, there are places where, particularly
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: in red pine, you can look at the dendochronology, like
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 3: the tree history of fire activity in those systems. There's
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 3: a place called Bechelor's Marsh as an example on the
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 3: Hiawatha National Forest where red pine dendochronology data shows how
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 3: frequently fire was burning through those systems prior to European settlement,
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 3: and it was very high frequency, so very often fire
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 3: at a low enough severity that the trees were surviving it.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 3: And as they've been starting to get some of those
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 3: fire regimes back into those systems with the tribe really
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 3: leading that work. The grouse response has been phenomenal, but
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 3: it's also great habitat. Like they're doing a lot of
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 3: work trying to keep moose on the landscape. We haven't
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 3: talked about moose at all. A lot of the work
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 3: that we're doing thinking about rough grouse habitat in those
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: northern Lake states, A ton of it is also phenomenal
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 3: moose habitat. There's a collaborative up on the Arrowhead in
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 3: Minnesota focused on moose habitat. We're right in the mix,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 3: partnering with the Forest Service, partnering with the state, partnering
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 3: with the tribes, trying to get moose habitat on the ground.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 3: You call it whatever the hell you want. Yeah, it's
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 3: great moose habitat. It's also great for all these other species.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 3: Talking about I think two.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: In those northern latitudes you get. I don't really, It's
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: just like just something I sort of noticed and suspect,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: I guess, is that in those northern latitudes are the
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: really deep snow, different vegetation regimes, whatever, good habitat lingers
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: long time. Hmmm, do you know what I mean? Like,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: like it's a it seems like successional force is a
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: slower process. Yeah, then it might be in other places. Yeah,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: I mean those sites like it just take a place,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: is that that stayed good. I can think of like
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: good grouse spots that have just stayed good for forever. Yeah,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: then I can think of good grouse spots. It was
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: like they were very ephemeral. Yeah, yeah, they were good
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: for a minute, totally. Yeah, you know, so there's not
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: a minute, but I mean they were good for a
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: few years. But places seem like you're like, shoot, we
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: shot grouse out of there for twenty years. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 3: We talk about like site index or site site richness,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 3: site quality, and and that takes into account. It's basically
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 3: like the capacity of a particular place to grow vegetation.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 3: And there's obviously a strong climate component to that. There's
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 3: also a really strong soil component to that. And a
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: lot of the places when I think about really good
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: grouse and woodcock habitat places where I grew up hunting,
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 3: you're dealing with pretty poor soils too.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 3: It's not like it's not like you you expose the
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: earth to the solar rays and you get like a
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: jungle immediately growing. It's a it's a more drawn out process.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 3: And that's in contrast. And I'm thinking back to the
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 3: time down in Louisiana this past winter, and the site
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: richness on those sites is like off the charts. So
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: they'll they the amount of effort and investment that they
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 3: have to make in order to keep woodcock habitat on
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: some of those state game lands. Oh it's crazy because
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 3: like they'll mow it and the next year it's like
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 3: a jungle has re emerged. Right, So you're you're pointing
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 3: to something that's.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: In a lot of that northern grouse habitat, Like in
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: the Upper Great Lakes region, you'd be like, one, why
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: no one's farming this? But because you can't, dude, because
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: in Norwegian.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: There were a lot of there were a there a
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 3: lot of frustrated potato farms in the up man a deal.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: I've noticed too, Man, you probably have seen this, Like
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of in the county where I grew up
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: and around that area, a lot of times a good
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: grouse pocket would be centered around It's gonna sound weird,
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: it'd be centered around Christmas tree plantations.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, doesn't sound weird.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: Because when you go out and hunt in late season,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: like you go home for Christmas break or something, Yeah,
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: and you go out, Yeah, all the grouse are in
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: the Christmas tree plantations. Yeah. And it always be that
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: around those big blocks, like you know whatever you got
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: like ten twenty acres of Christmas trees or something. Yeah,
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: it would always be good grouse. Yep. But there's a
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: certain look to those areas too. But I'm just saying
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: it would be like that was sort of like a
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: real holding position. I can think of one on I
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: can think of one of these that was on public land,
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: a man of see Nash Forest was a pine plantation. Yeah,
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: always good grouse in the area because they had that,
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: like you said, their homebodies and they had that like
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: feature and this other on this dude's place used to
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: grow pumpkins. Nice. He'd hired me for a couple days
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: here to pick pumpkins and bring them down and sell them.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: But he had a pine tree plant to Christmas tree plantation. Yeah,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: and always good whether they were in there or not. Yeah,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: And it was just that like I think of them
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: in there like it's where they go to survive the cold. Yeah, totally.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: So so I love that. And one of the things.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 3: When I'm looking for grouse, like really good grouse habitat,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 3: having a component of conifer in the mix is awesome.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 3: You know, it might be spruce or fur, but in
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 3: terms of shelter from predators and also in terms of
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 3: thermal protection and hiding from pre sip too, like they
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 3: do not like getting.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: Oh man, they can disappear in those those trees, those conifers.
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: Get a kid trying to find one that's perched up.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because they're not sitting way out. They'll sit
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: up closer towards the thing.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 3: So that's where you get, like if you're in a
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 3: hunting scenario taking turns, flanking like Kevin one dude on
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 3: the back side.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they just don't budge.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: Man, that's true. And oftentimes you know you're here, you'll
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: hear him flushing. You'll never see him. But dude, the
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: guys when you're hitting those patches, I'm talking about, the
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: dudes that are going to get the shooting are the
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: dudes on the outside, right, That's what I'm saying. Fank
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: and you and you want to kind of go like
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: if you picture a Christmas tree plantation like a lap
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: picture laptop computer. Okay, okay, and you got your pushers
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: and you're pushing it the long way. Yep. A lot
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: of guys are going to make the mistake of having
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: their pushers out Like you're entering one end of the laptop. Yeah,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: your pushers are, and you've got your sitters. Yeah, you're
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: thinking you're going to position them off the points off
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: the other end of the lap.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 3: Strategy, man, that's a good trick is to have a
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 3: guy mid laptop.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the one because a conceptualized in that pine tree
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: pass the way you are. But you think he's gonna
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: go to the end right and then hop out right,
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: you know, but they're blowing outsides and you have a gun.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. Flank Like you'll never hear me
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: talk about a standard. A flanker is somebody mobile.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's movement.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 3: They're flanking and maybe a few steps up ahead.
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: And he's recognizing those gaps in the trees that he
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: knows they're going to use to get out of there. Man.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 3: The other thing that's nice is then you can be
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 3: within eyesight of each other too, so you can take
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 3: your shot knowing where your buddy is. Yeah, right, Because
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 3: a lot of times in grouse habitat, like you can
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 3: if you're more than like thirty yards from your friend,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 3: you're not gonna be able to see him.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Carl, I had one more question for it. It's like,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: I'm surprised it didn't come up because it like it
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: usually comes up in these kind of conversations, which is
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: like predators and predator management, Like does it matter on
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: grouse because I know a lot of grouse hunters be
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: like raccoons are eating or whatever. I don't know, like I.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: Feel like, but there's something there with turkeys. But anyways, yeah, man,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: so who's killing.
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: Every nobody anymore? That's part of why you.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, everybody's killing them, man, Like grouse and woodcock
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 3: are delicious. Uh, they are little nuggets of energy on
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 3: the landscape waiting to get eaten. And the nests too,
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 3: and these systems are full of things that are going
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 3: to eat them. And that's okay.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 3: The lever that matters is the habitat to be thinking about, like, oh,
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 3: if I kill all the coyotes, kill all the fox
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 3: or these possums getting nests.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: Or whatever, that is like that is not going to
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: move the lever and people stay focused. I want people
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: thinking about habitat. Man, let let all the sort itself out.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: And and and the thing is, we had a guy this,
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: We had a guy in your seat came on top
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: of the same conversation, Bob White Quail. He was your
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: thing with habitat. He didn't do what you're doing down
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: and he was like parasites, parasites, parasites, parasites. And man,
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: we got just more negative feedback and pissed off people. Yeah,
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: because he jumped to h he had the addacity to
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: talk about.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: He also had a product he.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: Was that he worked on. Yes, yes, let me throw
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: a couple of things in what I'm saying. He shifted
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: and people were like, you gotta stay on the habitat.
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: You can't talk about right, And people were pissed. They
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: should be. Here's the thing.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing, man, let's talk about parasite loads not
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 3: unlike the conversation around West Nile. A lot of these
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 3: birds are gonna pick up all sorts of maladies, diseases, parasites,
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 3: et cetera. Having quality habitat is going to mediate those effects.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 3: It's like the thing to do. And since you brought
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 3: up Quail, I want to just briefly point out the
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 3: fact that we spend a lot of time talking about
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 3: eastern forests, and again I'm looking at the State of
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 3: the Birds report in terms of declines Eastern bird Eastern
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 3: forest birds twenty seven percent decline over the course of
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 3: the last forty years. Looking at this graph from this
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 3: report that there are two categories that have steeper declines
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 3: that I want to highlight arid land birds and grassland birds.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 3: So grassland birds in particular, and I want to tie
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 3: this back to the conversation about quail. We have talked
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 3: today about the importance of markets and being able to
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 3: move wood and not being able to move habitat without
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 3: being able to move wood. One of the challenges with
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 3: grassland ecosystems is figuring out how those ecosystems can pay
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 3: their way right This is where the Farm Bill and
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 3: programs like CRP incentivizing stewardship, and there's.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: Which isn't paying their way in the same way right now,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: and those are long term invest.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 3: Long term investments, and there's there's just some amazing success
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 3: stories of ranchers taking a long view on habitat and
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 3: trying to you know, trying to do right by grassland
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 3: birds and also right by their herds and their bottom line.
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 3: And it's it's harder in a system where you don't
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 3: have the timber helping with those economics. But I want
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 3: to just highlight, you know, folks have opportunities to be
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 3: really involved with moving the needle. And I'm thinking back
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 3: to last week being at pheasant Fest. You mentioned quail
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 3: decline and quail in a lot of places in most
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 3: places continue to struggle, and in fact, that's one of
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 3: the reasons woodcock aer getting more attention is people who
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 3: have historically loved hunting quail and have pointing dogs and
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 3: all that, they're like discovering woodcock as an alternative in
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 3: some places where quail, like in the quail Stronghold. But
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 3: I just want to highlight the experience of last week
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 3: being up in Minneapolis at pheasant Fest, so hosted by
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 3: Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, another organization that's really dialed
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 3: in on this habitat piece in a different system right
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 3: thinking about these grassland systems, and I'm a big proponent
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 3: for folks to think about being affiliated with lots of
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: different organizations and finding ways to support the missions of
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 3: lots of different organizations, and I couldn't be more impressed
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 3: with how Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever rolled out a
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 3: red carpet for our organization and a whole host of
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 3: other like prairie grouse organizations. We had this little corner,
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 3: not a little corner. We had a great space at
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 3: the at Pheasant Fest to talk about grouse conservation, both
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 3: forest grouse and prairie grouse. And the thing I love
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 3: about what Pheasants Forever is doing is taking this stance.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 3: Like I think it'd be really easy for folks to
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 3: imagine there being a lot of competition among conservation organizations.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: It does not have to be that way. Man.
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 3: There's so much work that needs to be done across
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 3: these different ecosystems. We've got a niche with thinking about
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 3: forest grouse, thinking about woodcock. But I've already told you
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 3: like there are other nonprofits, American Bird Conservancy, Audubon Society,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 3: tnc there's so much work that needs to be done
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 3: that from my perspective, there's no excuse for there to
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 3: be a sense of competition among these organizations. We've got
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 3: to be taking the tact that I saw last week
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 3: from Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, where they're creating a
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 3: space to try to elevate the missions of all these
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 3: different organizations.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: So my hope is that, well, it could be that
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: it's it could be that there's a problem where the
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: efforts are too scattered and not streamlined. Well, that's there.
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 3: There is a risk there, and that's where I think
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 3: having some strong alignment among collaborators and keeping your eye
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 3: on the prize and finding ways to leverage the strengths
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 3: and expertise of different partner organizations. I mentioned Rocky mountin
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 3: Olk Foundation earlier, another group where you know they've got
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 3: a strong presence in the West, they want to be
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 3: able to implement work in the east. We can help
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 3: them do that, so we're able to funnel some of
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 3: their conservation investments through our organization.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: So I just I hope as folks.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 3: Are thinking about all of the needs, taking some time
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 3: to learn about the bigger picture and not just not
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 3: just focus on one ecosystem or one species, but think
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 3: about these big concepts of what these landscapes need from us,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 3: and then finding ways to align and become a member
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 3: of communities with organizations that are trying.
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: To drive that.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 3: And I want to throw one other thing out that
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 3: I'm really excited about right now in terms of collaboration,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 3: and that is when we were at pheasant Fest, one
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 3: of the coolest things happen in there was we had
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 3: a partnership with the all the Leopold Foundation at pheasant Fest.
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 3: So anybody who was joining RGS and AWS as a
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 3: conservation member, they were all getting copies of Sand County
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 3: Almanac through the Leopold Foundation. And I think that's a
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 3: significant collaboration because what we are, what we are doing
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 3: with our work, and what I've been trying to communicate
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 3: through the conversation today is that the significance of this
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 3: effort is much It's about much more than just having
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 3: really good grouse and woodcock hunting, right we're asked, we're
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 3: trying to approach these big questions around responsibility to place
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 3: and thinking about showing up in community in a meaningful way.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 3: And for anybody who's familiar with Leopold's work, those should
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 3: sound like familiar concepts, and so this idea of highlighting
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 3: those ideas and that legacy through the work that we're
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 3: doing and trying to be exemplary ambassadors of that land
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 3: ethic and action is something I'm really excited about. So
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 3: just in the last week, we've gotten a h further
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 3: commitment from the Elder Leopold Foundation for anyone who joins
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 3: our organization in our membership drive right now, that deal
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 3: is going to continue online.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so if you go, we've got to We've
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 3: got a slick little u r L now to use,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 3: which is ruffed dot org and make sure you spell ruffed.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 3: Are you f f ed rough dot org? And you'll
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 3: get that's your guys website now it's this is this
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 3: is a tight little u ur L that will take
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 3: you to our rough do It'll take you to our
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 3: membership campaign right now, not rough like roughed yep, but
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 3: rough right you are you are you f f ed
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 3: dot org? And get a copy of a sand County
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 3: Almanac and get yourself a cool trucker hat with the
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 3: grouse and a woodcock on it, and uh, get newsletters
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 3: from both the Leopold Foundation and the Rough Grouse Society
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 3: in American Woodcock Society and and the thing I want
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 3: to highlight here, like memberships are great, but we're really
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out is building this idea of building
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 3: community around taking care of the land. That's what we're about,
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 3: taking care of these forests, and we do that with memberships.
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 3: We also have people who are volunteering, and I want
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 3: to I want to say a huge thank you to
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 3: everybody who volunteers to support our mission. We have tremendous
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 3: We have folks who have been volunteering for this organization
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 3: for decades, hosting banquets, fundraisers, all that kind of stuff,
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 3: just pouring a ton of time and passion. We had
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 3: volunteers at pheasant Fest helping staff our booth. So I
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 3: want to say a huge thank you to the volunteers
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 3: who are part of this organization. We have some incredibly
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 3: generous private philanthropists who support our mission. But this idea
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 3: of just having a community of people who are affiliated
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 3: with the work that we do and want to see
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 3: these forests left in a better condition than we found them,
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 3: that's what we're trying to build. And I think in
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 3: the conservation space, with some of the trends that we've
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 3: talked about around declining participation, like what is the future
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 3: of the funding model for conservation in this country, these
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 3: questions about how do we build community around these ideas
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 3: of responsibility to place. I think that is where the
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 3: answer lies, and so we want to be one of
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 3: the leaders along with our partners, in helping drive that
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 3: kind of community building. So rough dot org check it out,
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 3: join us.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Carl, Thanks Kyle, and again this is Carl Malcolm.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: He's the VP of Conservation with the Roffed Grouse Society
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: and the American Woodcock Society. Thanks so much for coming
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: on man, and please go check out so easy. Remember
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: Ruffed are you f feed dot org Get yourself a
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: membership Rough Grouse Society in the American Woodcock Society. Get
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: perhaps the greatest, not even perhaps the greatest conservation book
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: ever written. I won't to argue with that the greatest
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: conservation book ever written San Connie Almanac, but Aldo Leopold
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: and Carl doubles as a Leopold expert for you guys
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: that you guys know that if you watch Me Eater
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: the TV show and have listened to Carl's past appearances
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: on this podcast. Again, thank you, Carl.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 3: Appreciate the opportunity, Steve get to see it.