Latest / The Wild Idea / Tim Mahoney: The Irish Wilderness and the Art of Passing a Bill
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- Bill 0:01 This is Bren in Dublin, Ireland, and you're listening to the wild idea. Welcome to another conversation for a wild and connected world what we call the wild idea podcast. My name is Bill Hodge, and along with my friend and co host, Anders Reynolds, we have been digging into the intersection of wild nature and our own human nature, and we get back to geeking out around politics and public land debates. And let me just say for this one, Top of the morning to you there Anders. Anders Reynolds 0:31 Oh, hi, Bill Happy St Patrick's Day. Oh, man, I am. I'm so excited about this episode. We have the appropriately named Timothy Mahoney here with us today. Tim is, as people are going to find out, he is my political mentor, and I the timing really on this couldn't be better, because, you know, just earlier this month, I know you lost two of your political mentors, or at least they left office in Ryan Zinke and Steve Danes. And I'm just, I'm just checking in on you, buddy. How are you doing? Bill 1:05 Yeah, it's one of those head scratchers where, I mean, it's a particularly the senator Danes announcing that he's not seeking reelection, like, minutes, maybe an hour before the deadline, he withdrew his name and then immediately anointed somebody to run in his stead. It's been a bit of trying to figure out what's really behind all of this. Congressman Zinke, who, as many of you know, helped co found the public land caucus, but then has done a lot of things that I would consider hostile to public lands. He at least came out and specifically said he's got a lot of surgeries coming up for some injuries from when he was a Navy SEAL. Several people have pointed out to me he has looked pretty tired and haggard lately. I don't know what was behind both of them within a week of each other, both deciding to not seek reelection. I'm wondering if it's about whether that they're reading the tea leaves that Montana might be swinging back. It just swung One Direction recently, in the last, I don't know, five, six years, but yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting thing to speculate on, to really wonder what's going on behind the scenes. It's politics is funny business everywhere, but it's certainly interesting here in Montana. It's harder Anders Reynolds 2:17 for me to say with Dan's, but you know, my instinct is with Zinke. I think the prognosticators are, are right, that the house is going to flip. And if you're Ryan Zinke, you're thinking, do I want to sit around and be in the minority and not get anything done? And, you know, I barely like this job in the first place. Nobody likes doing that job. I gotta think that's impacting him, too. But Bill, what I want to know is, how are you handling all the all the pressure you're getting to run for office right now? You seem pretty You seem pretty cool. Bill 2:47 I'm pretty cool. Because no matter, no matter how real or fake that pressure might be, there is a bulwark against that ever happening. And that would be Laura Hodge, my choice. My choice would be to run for office or to stay married. And I am planning to stay married, Anders Reynolds 3:08 and she's got the dirt. She's got the dirt on you. I'm afraid you might have some dirt. Oh, we, she and I have, like, a shared, password protected Google Drive. This is called Build dirt. Bill 3:19 What I'm curious. Let's, let's open that let's open that spreadsheet. Let's, let's talk what, what's, what's the top of that list? What are you going to drop into the news cycle to derail any campaign of mine? Anders Reynolds 3:34 Oh, I'm reluctant to go down this road, because I know it's going to boomerang back to me. And you're, you're going to say you have dirt. But what I know that the viewers may not, is that there is no dirt, so you got nothing. I know that you're bluffing. What I have is, as you all know, I have a folder on my phone that's just pictures of you ruining beautiful vistas. It's like pictures I've tried to take of like, gorgeous alpine lakes or, you know, a view from, like a fire lookout tower, or a gorgeous like seashore, and you'll just be standing in it, sort of, kind of ruining the whole thing, like something that would be beautiful, except for your involvement, a little bit, a little bit like this podcast, Bill 4:19 yeah, I kind of, kind of thought that might be, what would be in your portfolio there, what you would use. I mean, it's not, you know, it's not exactly the Access Hollywood video, but I will say they're not flattering photos of me, and I would love some time to get a hold of your phone and delete those. I have some of you. I will share. I have some of you as well. Anders Reynolds 4:43 I think if a video of me in West Virginia, that's what I know is coming of my dance that I think was, you tend to bring that up a lot. Bill 4:51 I think the thing I would do for you is, is I would wait. It would have to take a it would be like late in your campaign, it would be like you've picked up momentum and there's been. Lots of ads for, you know, Anders for Congress out there, and lots of like you sounded really, really smart. And the theme of your campaign would become just, you know, let's send a thinker's man to to Congress. And at the very end, I would release the YouTube video of your appearance on Jeopardy to debunk that myth of your your outstanding knowledge. Anders Reynolds 5:24 Oh, god, that's so rude anybody, any that the myth has been debunked. Anybody listening to this podcast knows that you're the brains behind it, and I cannot wait to see what like questions you've got cooked up today, Bill 5:38 because it's a good one today too, buddy, because it's like your mentor, your political mentor. I I'm ready to to dig into some dirt on you from Tim himself. So Well, Tim, thanks for joining us today for this special St Patrick's Day edition of diving in to how wilderness campaigns work in a discussion about the Irish wilderness. So thanks for joining us today, Tim, really glad you're here. Very happy to be here. So Tim, you've held leadership roles at The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, the Pew Charitable Trusts. You've also lobbied on behalf of like the League of Conservation Voters Campaign for America's wilderness Alaska Native corporations and land conservancies in the northwest and Southern California. I'm curious, could you tell our audience how those sort of experiences shape the way you think about what is a durable conservation win? Well, that's Speaker 1 6:30 a good question. I came into the environmental movement in 1975 as an unpaid volunteer at The Wilderness Society in Denver. I felt like we were just continually playing defense, fighting timber sales here and there, fighting road building. And didn't take me very long to realize that wilderness was about as strong a protection as we could ever give to land, and if we wanted to protect an ecosystem, the best that we could humanly do was to protect it In law. I went to Washington originally because I was overseeing the wilderness society's role in a national review of roadless areas, the rare two campaign. And I just went to Washington when the rare two wilderness recommendations and well recommendations for non wilderness areas. Went to Washington, and then I learned I had a knack for it, for for working in the Congress that essentially made me unemployable anywhere else. Bill 7:54 That's great. At some point in that role, you got to serve as a as a mentor for Anders, and I get to ask you some questions about that a little bit later, about what that mentor relationship looked like when you've got such a hard person to mentor, as I'm sure Anders was, when you look at the arc of modern public lands policies since you've been at this since the 1970s you know what? What do you think separates the campaigns that succeeded from the ones that stalled and never made it across the finish line. Is there any handful of things that might might be the things that helped those campaigns succeed versus the ones that didn't? Speaker 1 8:33 We were agile. We were willing to take risks. We didn't bog down in doctrine. A lot of campaigns that are defensive, the the other side essentially dictates the agenda, and we just fight. And that's a very easy thing for people to do, and then it doesn't require any guilty conscious. You can fight the good fight. And if you lose, you lose, you feel good about yourself. But in environmental groups, and maybe many groups that are defined by ideas, can get caught up in doctrine. Can get up, get get rigid about whether we should take a step forward, if it means we have to take slightly less than what we wanted. And when we do that, we ossify the campaign. Can't go forward to pass a bill into law, you have to have a majority of the Congress agreeing with you or not fighting you. And to do that, you have to make some friends, and you might have to work with some people that otherwise you wouldn't work with. Uh, you might not even like them, but you might wind up paired with other causes that are not your favorite cause, but to be flexible and to work your way is the way to get something actually protected by law and to be very virtuous and not get the bill passed, doesn't do you a whole heck of a lot of good recording. Anders Reynolds 10:28 This podcast is an exercise in working with someone I don't like very much. Tim, I am so so so happy you're here. I've wanted to have you on the podcast for a long time, as Bill knows, like I really look up and admire you and sort of blame you for sending me down this path of wilderness advocacy. And I just, you know our audience won't know this, but I just really want to thank you for wearing green today. You look. Speaker 1 10:58 I was getting dressed and tried to figure out what I was going to put on. Anders Reynolds 11:04 Wilderness designation used to feel more routine in Congress than it does today. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was routine, but maybe today it feels more rare. It feels like we're experiencing a big loss in wilderness literacy, maybe not just among elected officials, but among their staff. I'm curious if you could say what's changed. Speaker 1 11:30 Well, when I came into Washington in the 1970s i i was very, very fortunate. There were giants in the Congress for environmental protection, clean air, clean water, people like Edmund Muskie, Henry Jackson, Frank Church, Mark Hadfield and the house, we were lucky to have Morris Udall, Philip Burton from San Francisco, who developed a passion for national parks. I worked very closely with a man named John Seiberling who represented Akron, Ohio and came to Congress as an anti war candidate after the killings at Kent State, which was in his district. He wanted to protect Parklands outside of between Akron and Cleveland. He ultimately wound up being a key leader on the Alaska Lands Act and in virtually every Wilderness Area act that passed in the 1980s and he was exceedingly accessible, as was Mo Udall at working with us and teaching us. They were extremely receptive to hearing our ideas. It never got easy, but the rare two process where whereby all these proposals were in front of the Congress at the same time did give us something to work with. And in my professional life, I develop a knowledge of different types of campaigns, different circumstances that you would encounter in a congress, whether you had a lot of votes, or whether you didn't have very many votes, whether you're working with a hostile member of Congress who was opposed to the wilderness area, or one that was for it, but lived in a city and sort of learn different ways in which, you know, the cat could be skinned. That was a fortunate thing after the 1994 election, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, wilderness legislation kind of dried up. I was doing most of my work with Alaska Natives at that time, and we were working with the Clinton administration and the Alaska governorship. We weren't working with the Congress. And environmental groups interested in land protection, became very enamored of national monuments, and persuading the Clinton administration to set aside lands as national monuments as a way to protect them, believing that was as good as as a wilderness. And in doing so, the institutional memory of how you pass a wilderness Bill slipped when I came back to working on wilderness in 22,001 working with Campaign for America's wilderness and The Wilderness Society, I found not only not. Only did environmental leaders not really know how to pass a bill, they had some rather rigid ideas about how it had to be done. I can remember one meeting I had in California in which they explained that they had been working on a roadless inventory in California, and they had 7 million acres of of land, and they wanted it all protected, and that if Senator Barbara Boxer, one of the strongest environmentalists in the Congress, wouldn't sponsor their 7 million acre bill, they would take it to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from Manhattan and and see if she would sponsor it. And it was difficult to kind of find a way to work with those who were a little more flexible in their approach and wanted to work with Senator Boxer instead of making demands on her. And in fact, some of the most rigid advocates for the 7 million acres or nothing approach left the campaign, and that was just as well, because they weren't going to be a positive force, and we found working boxer. State director was a former was a good friend and a former colleague of mine, who had got started on wilderness when she was a college student in Colorado, and she had me come out to meet with boxer staff, because they didn't know what wilderness was, and frankly, neither did boxer the institutional memory had gone away in less than a decade. So I think when politics are difficult, what you find is people find alternative things to do, and the institutional memory can be endangered. Anders Reynolds 17:09 Bill, I think you're seeing why I wanted to have Tim on. This is a master class in wilderness advocacy. I'm so excited to keep Bill 17:18 how much he rubbed off on how you approach things, too. Anders Reynolds 17:22 I taught him nothing in exchange. Tim, I do want to shift from your story to sort of the machinery behind these kind of campaigns. You know, for people who see wilderness designation is just a line drawn on a map, a finished line drawn on a map. I'm hoping you can help pull us back a little and explore how a wilderness campaign actually works. Who's involved, learn more about the pressure points, how it all begins. So let's ground your expertise in a specific place, and we're using St Patrick's Day as an excuse to visit the Irish wilderness in Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest. So in 1984 Congress designated the Irish wilderness for people unfamiliar with that landscape. What makes it worth protecting? Speaker 1 18:13 Well, we're talking about rugged lands in the Ozark Mountains, Missouri's national forests. They're not high mountains, but they are rugged. Missouri had a history in the 60s, 70s, 80s, of wilderness advocacy, mostly led by John Carroll, who probably founded the Missouri wilderness association or Alliance, or whatever they were, and organized several bills passed in the 70s and early 80s, protecting lands that were fairly conflict Free. But the Irish wilderness was not conflict free. It sat on top of lead deposits. You might not think of lead as being a very valuable mineral, but we use it. And the st Joe lead company from Missouri, I believe, controlled something like 70% of the lead market because of the potential for lead mining in this part of the Ozarks, the opposition to wilderness in the local area was great, And in the Irish wilderness, or any wilderness campaign, I never as a Washington DC person, I would never deal with the area unless the work was done first on the ground so John Carroll and the hundreds of people in Missouri who advocate. It on behalf of wilderness, were the ones that got this thing up and running as a viable campaign, even against this, the opposition that it faced in southern Missouri, I guess I came upon the Irish wilderness in the early 80s, maybe 1981 when it was introduced in the Senate by Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton and Republican Senator Jack Danforth of Missouri. And they did that only after having heard from hundreds and hundreds of people in the state Anders Reynolds 20:41 and the Irish wilderness, it took multiple legislative attempts right before finally passing. I mean, I want to know what that process was like. I'd love to hear stories behind trying to get this thing passed. But, you know, I also want to know what you think that tells us about patience or persistence or even good political timing. Speaker 1 21:03 Well, the Congress was a little different in those days. I mentioned that Jack Danforth was a sponsor. He's a Republican, a more moderate republican than some, but we also had very conservative anti environmental or pro development Democrats. Things were not as cut and dried along partisan lines as they sometimes seem today. Most of Missouri's congressional delegation representing rural areas was Republican. There were Democrats in St Louis district, in the Kansas City District, and one very conservative Democrat, Harold Volkmer in northeast Missouri, coming from Hannibal. And Volkmer was well known at the time as an advocate for gun owners and for the National Rifle Association and from leading the charge in the House of Representatives against gun restrictions that had previously been put into law. Harold Volkmer became our wilderness champion in the house, a conservative Republican who was endorsed by the NRA he was becoming less popular in the Democratic Party, and he was that endangered rural Democrat that was trying to walk a tightrope in a very conservative district. For him, ultimately, sponsoring the Irish wilderness was a way to appeal to the left part of the party, even though they detested his work on guns, he wasn't persuaded for a couple of years later, while They were working on him from Missouri at the beginning the local Congressman Bill Emerson, who was from Cape Girardeau in the Missouri boot heel, which is where the Irish wilderness resided, he was working closely With st Joe lead in opposition to any wilderness protection in the early 80s, following Ronald Reagan's election, the margin of the majority in the in the House of Representatives was still democratic, but narrowly so. So Emerson needed democratic help in order to stymie a bill, and he found it from Jerry Huckabee, a conservative Democrat from Northwest Louisiana who was a champion for the oil industry, the timber industry and the mining industry, and sat on the committee, the interior committee that handled wilderness matters in the house. Today, it's the Natural Resources Committee. So together, Emerson and Huckabee made a strong bipartisan team against wilderness protection in the Congress that was 1981 82 the Senate passed the bill by a voice vote. This was very common in those days comity, if both senators from a state wanted a bill that only concerned their state, other senators deferred to them, and it wasn't subjected to to holds or opposition from people in other places. So even though the Senate was controlled by a Republican majority, and the. Senate committee that the bill was in the Energy Committee had Jim McClure from Idaho, who was, was the chair, and was a leader against us on many wilderness bills, but he supported this one, or he did not object to it, because the Missouri senators were for it. So in 1982 the Senate bill came over to the house, and John Seiberling, the subcommittee chair handling wilderness, wanted to try to pass it, but it was December 1982 there were very few days left in the Congress. We knew, because of Emerson and just the sheer numbers of Republicans in the House that he could get to vote, that we could not pass this bill under a suspension of the rules. That is normally the way in which a non controversial bill passes in the house. It requires a two thirds vote, and no amendments are allowed, and it's over in 10 to 20 minutes. Instead, we had to do the extraordinary thing. We tried to get a rule, a closed rule. A rule is the way in which a house takes up legislation, and the rule has to be voted upon and pass before the house can actually take up a bill under regular order. A closed rule means no amendments will be allowed. It was very unusual in the early 80s to see a closed rule, but we were afraid that if it was opened up for amendments, a gutting amendment could kill the bill. So better to risk the closed rule. As it turned out, in 1982 we lost the closed rule on the floor of the house. It was the I think I had been involved in bills where we failed to pass the bill on suspension that was considered pretty humiliating, but we had never lost a rules vote. This was part of my education. Was, as people say, we never did this. Well we did then we lost it, and the bill was dead for that Congress, and we also knew that we had fierce opposition in the House of Representatives. Bill 27:46 So it fails in 82 but you finally get it across the finish line in 84 when a bill finally passes. And maybe you can answer this by shining the light on what happened from 82 to 84 but when the bill, wilderness bill finally passes, how much of it is vision and how much of it is compromised drawn on a boundary map. Speaker 1 28:11 In this case, we tried to pass the original bill, which would have protected over 17,000 acres of land. It would have been the largest wilderness area in that part of the world. Considering wilderness areas east of the 100th meridian, it would have been one of the largest areas there that was protected at that time the Senate had hearing. Senator Danforth was not a member of the Senate Energy Committee, but he asked to go up onto the dais and sit with the members of the Energy Committee. And as a courtesy, they allowed him to do that, and in that way, he could take part in the hearing and talk to the witnesses and the witness in opposition was, I believe, a county commissioner from Morgan County, where where the Irish wilderness was located, and he was adamant that there was no support for wilderness in southern Missouri, there was no support for it in the county, and the only support for the wilderness was from St Louis and Kansas City. And at that point, Senator Danforth asked the chairman If he could speak, and he said, on the contrary, as part of my re election campaign in 1982 I traveled to every county in Missouri, and I heard about the Irish wilderness in almost every county, and so there is broad support for this. Well, why did that happen? Speaker 1 30:01 someone in the campaign had leaked a copy of Senator Dan fourth schedule to John Carroll and the Missouri wilderness advocates. John made sure that he could and this was the campaign gimmick popular at the time. I don't know how many counties Missouri has a whole bunch, and so sometimes Danforth would just be driving in to a county meet with people drive on to the next county, and what John Carroll did was make sure that a wilderness supporter showed up in that county, and was there when Danforth appeared and would say, what can you do to protect the Irish wilderness in this way? Danforth believed that we had support everywhere, and he told the county commissioner that that was the case. Well, it was very well supported bill. But whether it was supported in every county, I don't know. But in any case, the bill passed again in 1983 in the Senate, same thing, no opposition, and it came to the house. So this time the house had more time to work. It had all of the year 1984 and because they ran out of time the year before, they got to work right away, we'll probably want to back up here and find a way to to talk this through. There was another thing that happened in in 1982 and that is the Irish wilderness received a special provision in an appropriations bill, a provision that said that no leasing of minerals can occur in the 17,000 some odd acres of land called the Irish wilderness, as depicted on this map, and that was part of the appropriations bill providing money for the Departments of Interior and for the United States Forest Service. This was done with the support of a strong wilderness advocate who was the chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Committee and by the support of the two Missouri senators, and it meant that the Reagan administration, which opposed the Irish wilderness, could not lease it for minerals while the Bill was still before the Congress. This was a trick that had originally been used to protect coastal areas from oil drilling every year the appropriations bill protects the coast of California, the coast of Florida, from oil leasing, and it has to happen every year because the appropriations bill is only for one year. But in any case, we were able to get that so the Reagan administration was opposing the bill in Congress, but they were not able to process minerals that were potentially there and open for prospecting by st Joe LED. Bill 33:22 This is great inside baseball, by the way. Well, this bill had it all for us. Nerds that are on have been a part of one of the campaigns. This is, if people want to know how this sort of stuff works, that's one thing I had not actually experienced myself, is using an appropriation bill to at least forestall any degradation of the landscape before a wilderness Bill has a chance, chance to finish. So, yeah, keep keep going. I want to hear about 82 more now that you've set that stage. Speaker 1 33:52 At the same time this was happening, there was a national effort. James Watt was the Secretary of the Interior. He was a strong proponent of development, a strong proponent of mineral development. The underlying Wilderness Act had an unfortunate compromise in it that allowed West western areas to allow prospecting and mineral development up through the year of 1983 December 31 1983 so for the first 20 years of its life, the Wilderness Act did not protect against new mining claims. And while this hadn't been tested in the East, where different mining laws exist, potentially, the Reagan administration would have been able to lease the minerals. We had also secured a provision in the appropriations bill preventing the administration from leasing. Oil and Gas in wilderness areas because they were trying to that was all part of the background of these times. Any rate, 1984 so bill goes to the subcommittee and passes out, but Huckabee is on the full committee, and using the courtesy of the era, informed the chairman Udall that he would have an amendment to the Irish bill when it was considered at the full committee level. The Udall had selected the members for the subcommittees, and Huckabee wasn't on it. He stacked the subcommittee so that CyberLink had the votes he needed to put anything he wanted forward to the full committee. But in the full committee, we had a handful of conservative Democrats who very likely could vote against us in in a campaign where there was some money going on if, if there was no opposition to a bill, they didn't oppose us just for etiology, they would support us. But if there was a potential for coal mining, lead mining, oil and gas leasing, we would be in for a fight at the committee level. And in this instance, Huckabee came in with an amendment that took 2000 or 2500 acres away from the wilderness. He amended his amendment would alter the boundary by cutting off in excess of 2000 acres from the northwest corner of the area. Instead of being 17,000 some odd acres, it would be 15,000 and we lost having lost the amendment in committee, Udall and sarberling and us decided not to fight it on the floor, we could lose it again. We had lost the rule the year before. Instead, Udall would ask for a conference with the Senate, and we would have a formal conference committee between the House and the Senate to iron out their differences. And that's the way it went down. The bill still didn't pass the House overwhelmingly. Emerson was opposed. I don't know whether he was firmly opposed or whether he was just demonstrating that to his constituents, but in any case, Huckabee then voted for the bill as amended, and we asked for a conference with the Senate. Conferences are very rare. There were not so rare in those days, but they are very rare. This was a formal conference that took place in a room in the Capitol, the Mansfield room, off the Senate floor, the members of the House conference committee and the members of the Senate conference committee gathered, Volkmar, who was on the Agriculture Committee but not on the interior committee, was invited as the representative of the Agriculture Committee to the conference. Cyber Ling and Udall were in the conference. Huckabee was in the conference, and Senator McClure and Senator Jackson were in the conference on the Senate side. It was in the formal conference committee that Chairman Seiberling offered another compromise, one that would restore a little over 1000 acres to the northwest corner. And so the area, and I assume this had been worked out with Huckabee beforehand, but CyberLink offered the a good faith compromise that they split the difference essentially. And so instead of the 17,000 acre bill that the Senate had or the 15,000 acre bill the House had the final bill was 16,000 acres. And if you look at a map of the Irish wilderness, you'll see the northwest corner is lopped off. I don't know whether it ever developed, but another provision of the law was that the Provision in the Appropriations Committee, the appropriations bill that that was repealed, and while the Irish wilderness was protected under the Wilderness Act, the area to the northwest was open for leasing. Anders Reynolds 40:16 Tim, this is great. Unknown Speaker 40:18 Well, I didn't even do my father Hogan imitation. Anders Reynolds 40:24 By all means, you have the mic. No. Speaker 1 40:28 John Carroll used to do this. I should tell you more about this, the Irish wilderness. There's nothing particularly Irish about it, except it was settled in the 1850s by Irish Americans, Irish immigrants who were left St Louis destitute under the leadership of their parish priest, Father John Joseph Hogan, Dear Father Hogan, and it was Hogan who led them to settle in the area, this really hardscrabble area that became known as the Irish wilderness. And with the onset of the Civil War, southern Missouri was site of a lot of fighting, fighting that was essentially feuding, not real established battles, but raids, people coming in and tacking, taking livestock, taking crops, shooting up the Place and the Irish settlement did not last the Civil War. They were gone, but the story of father Hogan and the Irish settlers lasted, and it was one of the funniest campaigns John. John Carroll was a genius of a grassroots organizer, because when he was in Washington, he looked up the ancient order of the Hibernians, and he found that they had a local chapter in DC and and that the head of the local chapter was a lobbyist, I think, for the steel workers. And a asked him if they could support the wilderness bill and and the bill was supported by the ancient order of Hibernians and John Carroll and I even joined the ancient order of Siberians for a while. Anders Reynolds 42:37 And How many votes did that get you? Speaker 1 42:39 It got us one vote there was one Republican, Ray McGrath, an Irish American from I think the Buffalo area, never voted for the environment. Was a reliable vote against us, but he voted for the Irish wilderness every time, and it was because the Hibernians got him. Anders Reynolds 43:04 This narrative is so topsy turvy for me. You're talking about conference committees and comedy and and, you know, Republicans aggressively pushing wilderness and Democrats ferociously fighting back against it. It's it's a world that doesn't really exist on the Hill these days, although, of course, you see glimpses. But instead of focusing on the present, I want to ask you one last question. Where I ask you to forecast into the future. Tim, when you look ahead 20 years, do you see a revival of wilderness literacy. Do you see a revival of wilderness designations coming? Or do you think there'll be something different, a shift towards, I don't know, some other conservation framework. Speaker 1 43:53 Well, I don't really know. It's more up to you than it is up to me. What happens in the years coming. I don't believe we have found a protection vehicle as good as wilderness. So I believe it deserves to be protected. I believe that the skills necessary to work on wilderness protection are worth protecting, not just the wilderness, the skills to enact wilderness, but that requires a lot of devotion, a lot of willingness to work In rural America, work with people that you might not agree with on most things, uh, whose worldview is very different from yours, but if you can work with them, you might find some support, or you might find some common cause of linking something therefore. Something you're for. A lot of bills in the years since the Irish wilderness became coupled, a Republican bill was paired with a democratic Bill, a bill to develop an area over in one part of the state was paired with an area to protect an area in another part of the state, there were purists who decried this kind of compromise and said, you know, we should never soil our hands by endorsing that. On the other hand, how much land did they protect? How much better is the planet for their piety? So I, I certainly hope that people will continue to hone those skills. Because I, I only believe that wilderness will become only more valuable in the future. Anders Reynolds 46:03 Amen and Amen. Yeah. Bill 46:05 What a what a great way to wrap, though I am going to squeeze in one last question, particularly when you use the word piety. It made me think about Anders for a minute. So I you know, we have a couple of things in common. Tim, we both have had the great fortune of working for The Wilderness Society, which has such a rich history. And I'm very proud to say that I try desperately to stand on the shoulders of giants like Bob Marshall and Aldo Leopold, and just having had a chance to have worked for the organization is great. But we've also had the misfortune of both having to work with Anders, particularly, when it comes to wilderness campaigns. Do you have any good dirt on him that you could share like, was he was the was he the pain in the ass? I imagine he was as mentor. I mean, that's my final question. Speaker 1 46:55 I had a I had a job to fill in the Pew Charitable Trusts. I needed a lobbyist, or, I guess pew didn't call them lobbyists. I needed a Washington representative. We We advertised. We were looking for someone who could handle some of our proposals in the South and in the East, as well as areas in the West. And I recall that I was looking hard for someone with Hill experience. Anders was one of I had a Chief of Staff from from one office in Congress who applied, and I certainly had a lot of members from urban districts apply Anders showed up with, as far as I know, no wilderness experience. Knew nothing about it, but I was a different kind of boss that really wasn't very important to me. I figured we could teach him about wilderness. I really wanted to know whether he had any skill at understanding how Congress worked, and he had one attribute, he worked for a rural Democrat. There weren't many, and in what the the Mississippi Delta and and he and he handled Agriculture Committee. He was on the Agriculture Committee, I believe. And at any rate, Anders seemed to have some instincts for how you had to work with a conservative Democrat to survive, to get reelected and to make some progress in rural Arkansas. So I saw some promise. He also had incredible references, Bill 49:08 all of them false. I can assure you, all of them were false. Speaker 1 49:11 It volunteered to join a campaign for a man running for Attorney General, I believe, in Arkansas, and so I called him up, man. They lost, but they they gave it a good fight. So I asked about Anders. And I guess Anders had been volunteered by his mother or his aunt or something like that. He showed up and they said, you know, I'll do whatever you want. I'll I could drive the car, bring you to your campaign event, or something like that. It's some menial job. At any rate, the fellow said by the end of the campaign he was running it. I said, that's pretty good recommendation. Bill 49:55 I like that. It's such a such a great story that I will carry. Have to what I heard, though, was you just needed a warm body. And Andrews was a warm body. Anders Reynolds 50:06 He did say I had one attribute, and I noticed that not more than one, just one. I Tim, I'm amazed by your memory. You got like every detail, right? The only thing you didn't remember is, I think the first time we met, you said, you know where the bathrooms are on the hill. I can teach you the rest. It's so true. Gosh, Tim, I'm so happy you did this with us. I It's, first of all, it's just like, good to see you every time I see you, I'm so I'm so happy. But I knew that this was going to be just a great, great topic to cover with you. And I appreciate you offering us this time. Thank you so much. Speaker 1 50:41 Well, I appreciate being asked and and on behalf of father Hogan and and all the descendants of the Irish wilderness, we Aaron gubrah, Bill 50:52 I love it. Happy St Patrick's Day. Everybody coming up on the wild idea podcast, we have a conversation about equitable access to time and nature, particularly for our youth, with Dr Carrie, Besant Hauser and Dr Pooja Tandon from the trust Republic land. And we'll be bringing you the outstanding panel we had for our recent webinar on the past, present and future of the roadless rule of the United States Forest Service. We appreciate you taking the time to listen, and we want to stay in touch. So if you can take a moment, sign up for our newsletter at the wild idea.com certainly follow us on all the socials, and if you love handing out favors, we sure would love a rating or review or a recommendation on your podcast player of choice. If you want to support our work, we have added a buy me a coffee to our website. Everything helps with bringing these conversations your way. We certainly hope it is next week, but whenever it is, we will see you on down the trail. The wild idea is a production of wild idea media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bren Russell at podlad Digital, support by Holly wilkeshevsky at daypack digital. Our theme music Spring Hill Jack is from railroad Earth and was composed by John skihan. Our executive producer and ring leader is Laura Hodge. You can find the wild idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at the wild idea.com Transcribed by https://otter.ai