Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 817: Conservation Wins and Losses with Senator Martin Heinrich

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Ep. 817: Conservation Wins and Losses with Senator Martin Heinrich · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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  Speaker 1: Anything brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting,
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  Speaker 1: dot com. That's f I R S T L I
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: T E dot com.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Holy Smokes.
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  Speaker 1: Joined today by Senator Martin Heinert from New Mexico. Doctor
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Randall Williams is here, not in his normal seat. Callahan
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: is here, not in his normal seat, and we're here
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit like little State of the
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Union stuff with Senator Heinrich center. Heinrich has held a
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: seat since twenty thirteen. He's the avid hunter and angler.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: In fact, behind me, it is a yellow supercub. Like
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of the front of a yellow supercub. There's a strong
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: chance that you've been in there's a one in three. Well, no,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it's if I was better at statistics, you startied engineering,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you might be able to figure this out. If there's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: three If there's three planes, there's three planes, and you
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: went there and back.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: For some reason, I was on that one twice, and
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I think Micah was too, and then Carter was on
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: the other one. How do you know that one? But
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I mean when we flew in. But there's three that
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  Speaker 2: are yellow. Oh I couldn't.
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  Speaker 1: So what are the odds if you only went one way?
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  Speaker 2: It's a one in three. I honestly never took a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: probability class. They like pushed us straight into calculus, and
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  Speaker 2: so I could mess that up real quick.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, there's a good.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Chance classic politician not answer in the question.
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  Speaker 1: The covading the subject. Yea, Yeah, there's a good chance
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  Speaker 1: he flew in that year. A few years ago, I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: had the We had a great time, and I had
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the pleasure of going on a caribou hunt with Senator Heinrich.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: He I had COVID, yep.
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  Speaker 1: I had my one boy and you had your two boys,
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  Speaker 1: and we were able to camp and do some caribou hunting.
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  Speaker 2: Had a great time.
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  Speaker 1: Studied engineering at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missou.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as they say.
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  Speaker 1: Early on established a strong link to the outdoors tradition
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing. As a kid grew up on his
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  Speaker 1: family's property in Missouri, but he's been in New Mexico
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: for thirty years. Commutes to d C for official business,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: but lives with his family in Albuquerque.
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  Speaker 2: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been in your office in Washington, d C.
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  Speaker 1: It's loud and proud.
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  Speaker 2: I try to make it a little little slice of home.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's loud and proud. It's like it's like a
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  Speaker 1: hunting office.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it's It's my refuge. It's like I
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: want to be able to go into work and deal
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  Speaker 2: with a whole lot of issues, some of which I
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  Speaker 2: absolutely love, which you know, conservation is kind of what
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: gets me on the plane on Monday morning, leaving blue
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: skies and mountains for all the bullshit in DC. But
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: having that around me and having you know, things that
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: remind me of home and remind me of those hunts.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: It it puts me in the right frame of mind.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: How is that generally received that you have sort of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you got skulls and antlers and a lot
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: of New Mexico.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Actually, people love it. I've had so many people tell
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  Speaker 2: me you have the most beautiful office in the Senate
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Office buildings that I've been into. It's rarely a jarring
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: thing for people, and for New Mexicans too. We you know,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: we have this history of like Georgia O'Keeffe painted all
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: of those skulls, and so because all my stuff is
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: generally European mounts, for some reason, people people have a
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: different for relationship with that. From an artistic point of view,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I guess then a typical shoulder mount and so I
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: get a lot of a lot of uh, you know,
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  Speaker 2: positive feedback on it.
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  Speaker 3: I kind of strategically advantage though, too, because like when
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I walk into your office, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: ask Heinrich some tough questions here, and then I sit down.
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  Speaker 3: I'm like, first one being, let's talk about that antelope.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like, hm, disarming, it is disarming, Yeah, I.
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  Speaker 1: Got It's like, Senator, I got a tough question. You're
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  Speaker 1: probably gonna want to evade the answer on this one.
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  Speaker 1: You're gonna be You're gonna be slippery. Where exactly did
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  Speaker 1: you get that antelope?
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  Speaker 3: Don't give me that slippery politicians guy was to apply
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: for an antelope tech.
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  Speaker 1: And don't give me that evasive politician stuff. Tell me
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: exactly where you got it we're gonna run through a
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: whole ton of issues just to get your take on.
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  Speaker 1: So these are the things that what we're gonna talk about. So,
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  Speaker 1: as a senator one of a hundred votes, right, we're
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about things that Some things are things that
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  Speaker 1: you've voted on, you you've dealt with from a policy perspective.
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  Speaker 1: Some of these things, admittedly are things that you've watched
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  Speaker 1: from a federal perspective, but they haven't really come across
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  Speaker 1: your desk.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: For instance, one, I'm gonna let's start out by talking
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: about as we kind of run through the country and
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: run through issues, we're gonna talk about one which we've
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: followed a great deal over the years, which.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Is the.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Corner crossing debate. And the reason I'm bringing this up
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  Speaker 1: with you is is right after the Supreme Court recently
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  Speaker 1: decided not to take on the corner crossing issue, rejected
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: an appeal, right coming out of the Ninth Circuit, you
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  Speaker 1: did a very circuit sorry, coming out of the tenth Circuit?
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  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Telling circuit? Right? Yeah? Yeah? Man? How many times
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: have I told that story? Wolf stuff is not? Oh?
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: That came the Supreme Court decision came out. I'll let
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you lay the whole thing up. The Supreme Court decision
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: came out, and I was pleased to see you did
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: a very informative.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think most around the country don't know
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: what corner crossing is, why it's important. And I think
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: we all owe a debt of gratitude to the four
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  Speaker 2: hunters who were tied up in this legal mess for years,
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  Speaker 2: because they did such an incredible job of going the
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: extra mile to make sure that their fact pattern was
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  Speaker 2: clean right so we could have a clean court case.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that was reflected in both the decision
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  Speaker 2: in the ten Circuit and then the rejection of the
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: appeal by the Supreme Court. At its core, I think
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: what this is is we're getting back to what the
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: actual law of the land is, which is that there
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: is a federal law called the Unlawful Enclosures Act that
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: says you can go from public to public and that
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  Speaker 2: supersedes county trespass law state trespass law. You can't keep
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  Speaker 2: someone whether it's for stock growing purposes or hunting or
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  Speaker 2: any other legal right that they have to use that land.
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  Speaker 2: And that's a like late eighteen hundreds law that was
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  Speaker 2: largely ignored or tried to be evaded for years and
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: years of state law, and this is a return to
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  Speaker 2: that law being the law of the land. What. I
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  Speaker 2: got a handful of questions on this, And remember I'm
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: an engineer, not a lawyer. I just read the I
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: understand the same legal briefs that you do. But I've
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: spent a lot of time talking to my ag about this,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: you know, going through really trying to dig deep to understand,
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  Speaker 2: you know, what the decision might be based on the
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  Speaker 2: fact pattern here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because your state in New Mexico is in the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: district that decided that corner crossing is legal, that's exactly right.
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  Speaker 1: So a first question, and I'm sure Callan Randall might
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  Speaker 1: have comments or questions on issue, but just is it
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  Speaker 1: possible to get into the heads of the Supreme Court
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  Speaker 1: justices someone brings that when they decide not to hear something.
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  Speaker 2: Is it? Is it?
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  Speaker 1: Can it be a combination of things like is it
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  Speaker 1: that's not that interesting that we don't have time for that?
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  Speaker 2: Is that a factor? Or is it No?
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  Speaker 1: It's quite clear what's true and right, and we'd be
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: wasting time pretending that there's a wishy washy, this tooday
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  Speaker 1: that needs to be sorted out.
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  Speaker 2: They have a very limited amount of time and they're
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: looking for places where they think maybe a lower court
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  Speaker 2: got it wrong, and you know, based on the information
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  Speaker 2: they have, is it worth a second look or did
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  Speaker 2: the lower court just do its job? And basically we
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  Speaker 2: don't see a big red flag here, Okay, So it
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  Speaker 2: doesn't mean that there couldn't be another case that came
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  Speaker 2: from the Ninth Circuit where their decision might be somewhat different.
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  Speaker 2: I think what my hope would be is that if
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  Speaker 2: there are other circuits that take this on, that they
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  Speaker 2: also that were able to do it with a clean
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  Speaker 2: case that really doesn't have a lot of distractions, because
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  Speaker 2: that's you know, when those guys took a ladder out there.
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  Speaker 2: If you look at the case law, you know people
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  Speaker 2: were using the Unlawful Enclosures Act to drive their sheep
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  Speaker 2: around corners and there was forage impacted, and they were
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  Speaker 2: much cleaner than that. They were like, we're going to
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  Speaker 2: make this as perfect as possible, so that the case
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  Speaker 2: law that says you can't harass people going from public
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  Speaker 2: to public, you can't keep people out of their resource,
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  Speaker 2: is going to be very clearly applied.
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  Speaker 3: Which comes in like when proving damages, right, Like, that's
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: like the interesting thing about the.
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  Speaker 2: Sheep pisely and it's like cheap.
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  Speaker 3: Gray is along the way. There's going to be damages
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: that you could prove to that forest.
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  Speaker 2: And yet the case law said, even if forage is impacted,
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  Speaker 2: you can still take your stock as long as your
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: you know, minimized, your intent is not, which is amazing. Right,
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  Speaker 2: You're going from public to public and this whole issue
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  Speaker 2: of air rights and the fact that the case law
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: says you can't harass people and yet in this case,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: clearly these hunters were harassed. I think it just made
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: for a very clean case and we all benefit from that.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: What uh? What is?
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: First of all, I want to make sure I got
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: something right. If I got If I'm wrong, I'm asking
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: its to because you guys live here. If I'm wrong
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: about this, we'll just cut this. We'll phil can bleep
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: this whole part.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Out, did it? I haven't looked exactly.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Is it true that since the Supreme Court decision, Montana
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: has expressed or clarified that it remains unlawful to corner.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Cross that's Montana fishing game.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: How, So I don't.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: I don't say the state has, but I say Montana
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Fish and Game has. How is a huge question because
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: in the past they've gone the other way in the
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: exact same form. It's a memo, Hey, just so you know,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: we're not gonna write citations for corner crossing. So I mean,
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: that's a great question.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: But they the way that they.
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  Speaker 4: Worded is they say it's not considered a lawful form
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  Speaker 4: of access, so it doesn't.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: I think what they're trying to say, and I think
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: they're on very thin ice here because a state law
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: is superseded by a federal law. So what they're trying
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: to say is Montana and I haven't read the Montana law,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: but I think the idea is Montana has a trespass law,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: and we're going to apply that, and we're not in
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: that circuit over there that got this clarified, and so
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: you know, it does leave all this ambiguity. I don't
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: think that's a valid point of view, because you have
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: a federal law that says, no, you can go from
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: as long as you go from public to public and
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you're not damaging someone else's property, you should be in
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: theory on good stead here. And I think they made
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: a choice to go out on a limb.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Because if it came, if someone was prosecuted and they
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: fought it and started to appeal it, the same Unlawful
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Enclosures Act would apply. That would be the foundation of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the discussion all over again.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, And the way that Montana is and again Montana
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Fishwilie from Parks is doing this is saying we aren't
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: going to just be looking for corner crossers. We're not
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: going to be writing citations. What we're going to do
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: is if a landowner wants to press the issue, we're
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: going to come look at the facts of the situation.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: We're going to then call the county attorney's office, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: the county attorney is going to make the decision as
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: to whether or not to issue a citation. So I mean,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: they're really kicking the cam to somebody else, to somebody else.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: The buck doesn't stop. Yeah, and we've we've experienced that
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: in New Mexico. You know, we went through this whole
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: stream access fight for years and years. Want to get
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: to that in the language and go ahead, let's talk
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: about it.
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  Speaker 2: But our game and Fish Department, Uh, we're in the
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: midst of changing it to the Department of Wildlife. But
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: irrespective they they have not been willing to take the
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: bowl by the horns and just issue guidance so that
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: people know what is uh, you know, when you're going
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: to be in trouble and when you're not. And that's
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: a problem when you have the law enforcement agency that
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: is most likely to be involved in this conflict not
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: willing to draw a bright line for the public. That's
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: going to invite some some challenges. Yeah. Yeah. And meanwhile,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: we've got our Attorney General going out and finding places
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: where people put concert tina wire across the Pacops River
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: and sending them a letter and say, hey, take it down.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah, which is great? Like that, that's
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: that's the kind of certainty people need, and if you
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: need to, like it would also be perfectly appropriate to say,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: this stretch of the Chama River that has private on
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: both sides, we recognize the work that people have done
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: to improve that habitat, and so that's only going to
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: be catch and release or it's only going to be
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: fished this way or that way, because we're trying to
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: protect the quality and the you know, the quality of
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: that fishery. They just haven't really taken the bowl by
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: the horns at all, and so it's been left to
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: people like the Attorney General to enforce the ruling that
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: came down from the state Supreme Court.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, since since you brought that up, I wanted to
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: talk about it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Tell us about the stream access.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Long tile, the ongoing yeah, and how it applies, how
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it might be applied in other places in the West.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Like what do we mean when we say stream access law.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So in the state of New Mexico, historically stream access
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: we did not have a standard of navigability that exists
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: in some other places. And that means, you know, the
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: place A lot of states said any place where commerce
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: was done, meaning if you floated a log down the river,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: for example, to a mill, those are public rights of way.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: That's not precisely in New Mexico. We've got a little
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: bit of a different history because of the Spanish background,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: and we didn't become a you know, we didn't join
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: the Union until the Treaty of Guadalupe Dalgo and then
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: a state nearly nineteen hundreds. Our constitution articulates something that
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: other states don't have, and so we always had a
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: standard historically that not only could you float down a river,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: but you could also wade up and down that river,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: so long as you work in the stream and not
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: on the private property on either side.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, when I'm trying to explain the navigability
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: thing to people in terms of our rivers here in
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: other states as well, I always I always try to
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: begin it like this. Let's just let's start with the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Mississippi River. Now, say that one guy has private property
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: on one side of the Mississippi River, and then directly
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: across from him, another guy has private property. It's ludicrous
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to think that these two property owners could stop all.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Commercial traffic up and down the mississip And everyone will
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: be like, well, of course not.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, So now that we've established it, that's smaller.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Let's go smaller and smaller and smaller until we hit
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the point where it's not so obvious.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Right in an arid state like New Mexico or next
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: door in Arizona, you know, you there is the Rio Grand,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the HeLa, our biggest the Pecos, our biggest rivers are
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: at some points in the year in a condition where
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: you can walk across them. So if you don't have waiting,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: you don't really have a public right of way. And
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: that's basically what the Supreme Court ruled is that there
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: is a right for the public to be able to
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: access up and down those streams, so long as they,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: you know, comply with all the other laws. Don't letter,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: et cetera. Don't you know, harm someone's property on either side,
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: or step onto a portion of the bank that is
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: above the high water line.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: So what was the long like what has been the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: long standing question in New Mexico that needed to be
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that needs to be clarified.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: There was an effort by a previous governor and a
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: group of landowners who I would just characterize as maybe
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: being recently to the state to try and move the
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: standard more like Texas and less like New Mexico. And
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: they had a lot of success passing some laws and
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: some rules in the Department of Game and Fish that
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: people did not think were consistent with the history and
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: the constitution. And so then there was a challenge, and
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: that legal challenge played out over the course of quite
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: a number of years, and the Supreme Court ruled know
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: that these laws this and it was you know, they
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: tried to rewrite it based on navigability, and that wasn't
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: our history. So the Supreme Court threw it out and said, no,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: you have stream access in the state of New Mexico.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And how is it defined now does someone have to
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: go back and prove that something was used for commerce
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: it does not know?
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: That's that's the navigability standard. That is not the standard
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: in New Mexico. All unreserved waters are the property the
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: public under the state constitution.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I explored this one time Lolo Creek. You guys have
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: been there. I one time was curious about this whole question,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and it was you can look up and find it's logs,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: references to law going in at certain points, and there's
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: a there's a specific point on this creek comes off
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: the Bitterroot Divide, flows down into the Bitterroot River.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: There's a point in this.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Creek as you ascend it, there's a point at which
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: it stops being navigable.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: And I think it's based on like historical.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just in and this gets used on
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: both sides for pro access and anti access obviously, but
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: I was, I mean just in Colorado on Tuesday night
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: and we were having the stream access conversation in Colorado.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Was this the Onyx.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was a great, great event
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: in the Boulder Theater there. But you know, the way
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Colorado's stream access is written is off of like commercial
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: trade navigability, and people were kind of debating this stuff
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: and they just weren't thinking back far enough and I
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: just said, well, you know, from my perspective, considering the
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: deep deep fur trade history in the state of Colorado,
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I would think very hard before I had said there
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: was no commercial use of any water in this state.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: You know who's going to find it? If you put
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: randle on it, you'll find.
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I feel like I beg to differ. You're
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: telling me three hundred beaver hides down that to market, right.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: We had when I was guiding up in Alaska, you
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: needed a you needed a Coastguard license to drive a
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: boat on this big glacial river that was you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: hundreds of yards wide, and then all the little streams
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: that were super sketchy where people sunk boats and had
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: boat accidents and everything like that. You didn't need a
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: license to do that because there'd never been any commerce.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: And so it was like depending on it was, it's
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: one of these cases where it's very arbitrary and actually
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: doesn't really work with the regulatory framework to achieve the
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: entire ended an outcome.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: But it was just one of those funny things.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: It's like, as soon as you get off the safe water,
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: you can get up into the sketchy stuff anarchy. Then
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: you don't need a coastguard license.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that got clarified. Yeah, and now we're kind
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: of you kind of started a little bit. You mentioned
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: something I imagine a little bit at the end of
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the story. Now that it's been clarified, they're going around
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: and having people remedy obstructions.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly the you know, the Attorney General went out and
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: looked at the paykos where this has been a particularly
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: uh sort of intense conflict, and you know, said letter
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: letters to folks and said, if you know you have
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: a certain amount of time, please remedy this. This is
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: clearly the law of the land now, and to his credit,
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: most of those structures have been Yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So people have accepted what's what's truth.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: I think legally because there's a real you know, the
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: next step would have been bosure too, you know, legal remedies.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I think for the most part. For the
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: most part, people, You know, our goal in New Mexico
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: is to be one pro access and two pro good behavior,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Like we need to make sure that people are meeting
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: their responsibilities if they're going to use corner crossing or
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: stream access to to fish or hunt or recreat or
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. And I think marrying those two together
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: and having a lot of public interaction and education is
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: the best way to have the most access with the
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: least conflict.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Cal and I have discussed this recently on the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: corner crossing issue as now that it's been clarified in
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a large chunk of the American West, and it's probably
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: it's likely to be clarified to some extent or another
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: in the coming years and more of the American West.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: It's going to fall on land you, it's going to
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: fall on access seekers. To do this in a way
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: minimizes conflict, that minimizes stress, or else it's going to
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: become you risk making it an issue all over again.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent be responsible, And that's that should be
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: the mantra for sportsmen all the time. It's like, think
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: about how your actions are going to reflect on all
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: of us.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: This kind of bursts people's bubble. But I try to
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: point it out because we think we get so fixated
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: on what we're going to get by accessing this square
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: mile through the corner and then get on over to
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: the next square mile through the corner, which is, you know, awesome,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: it's an adventure and everything that we have. But the
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: private land access is everywhere, including the corner. They're the
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: public landowner as well.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And including the public.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but they can access all that stuff way
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: easier than the folks that are restricted to accessing through
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: the corner. So the we got to think of long
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: term wins here, not this short term little access win,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Like we want everybody to be on board with this
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: as much as possible, for.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Sure, and we also have tools for that, right I mean,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: I think you and I first met at the Saboso,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: which was ironically the most landlocked bl and wilderness area,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Like you just couldn't get there legally capital W designated wilderness.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: I did that in two thousand and nine because I'd
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: been allowed permission on horseback to go in there and
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: see the place. But the next step was we used
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: landed water conservation funds to open it up to the public.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: In a way that you know that that also was
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: consistent with local landowners who wanted to grant that access
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: for you know, for a fair compensation.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's I'm sure this is in your notes
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: somewhere too. But two members of the Stewardship Caucus right now.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: So we had Heinrich working on this opening up this
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: wilderness area. And then now Congressman z Inkee was then
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Secretary of the Interior z Inky, and he was the
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: one who got the BLM to accept new acreage that
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: allowed access to the wilderness.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: They took a gift of land that allowed that to
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: be opened up to the public.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Rimrock Rose Ranch.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: It didn't start out so great with me and Ryan,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: but I was like at some point, I said, rather
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: than us arguing about this in Washington, d C. Secretary,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: why don't you come out to New Mexico and we'll
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: settle up some horses and we'll go look at this place.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: And that got through a lot of the words to
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: what made sense on the ground, and we made progress.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Plus New Mexicans like, once you're there, New Mexican hospitality
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: is just a real thing. And the stories that came
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: out from the rim Rock Rose owners. They if this
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: is like a good lesson to spoiled kids, like what
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: you say to your parents, because the kids were like, yeah,
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: we can't wait to get the ranch so we can
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: sell it, and the parents were like, oh, okay. Duley noted,
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: I don't careful what you say.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he let let's let's jump up to Alaska, because man,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: so much has happened to Alaska. With Alaska under the
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Trump administration. There's been so much news out of Alaska,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: and every little bit of the news like takes another
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: nick out of my heart.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: It's kind of hole. I don't know.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I hold. I was hoping that
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: they would like, look another direction. I don't know what
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: I it wasn't It was a naive hope.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I just there's been a lot of hits to a
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: lot of things I care a lot about in Alaska.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I just want to curious what your take on what
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: we're actually going to see happen, how long these processes
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: play out. Let's start with the Arctic National wild there refuge.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I earlier called it antwar, and you joked me, you
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: never call it antwar.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't call it antwar. That sounds like a
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: small Middle Eastern country that would be a logical place
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: to be exploring for oil and gas. Right. They also
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: call it the ten O two area.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that goes on a balance sheet.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got some ten fitties, some ten o two
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: here for my f one. And so I think this
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: one's complicated in that in the twenty seventeen Reconciliation Bill
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: they allowed for leasing of the Arctic Refuge. The good
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: news is that went terribly Like, no legitimate companies who
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: actually had a history of producing oil and gas, no majors,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: no independence with deep pockets and a long history of
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: actually doing exploration and production in hard to reach places
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: bid on that. It was all the ATA, which is
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: sort of the Alaska Economic Development kind of a hail
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: mary operation were they Was.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: There reluctance based off public pressure or was there reluctance
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: based off economics?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: It's both, Okay, it's a very expense one. Like who
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: wants to be the face of developing America's greatest national
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: wildlife refuge? Like there is some social risk to doing
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: that if you're a Conoco Phillips or a BP or
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: an Exceonomobile or whoever, like is that the story you
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: want to be articulating every day when we have these
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: really productive basins in other places that are much lower
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: hanging fruit and much cheaper to produce in so you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: you might be able to produce a barrel of oil
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: for a fraction of the cost in the West Texas
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Permian or the New Mexico Permian when you get that
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: far from existing infrastructure. I've had a lot of folks
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: from Alaska who are pretty pro oil and gas development
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: say I just don't know that the resources there to
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: justify this, and that's why you haven't seen a big
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: player come in, you know, very different than Willow that
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: we're looking at in the Western Arctic, where you know,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: real money was dropped to be able to produce those
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: barrels of oil. It's not clear that's there in the
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Arctic Refuge, and that is probably our best hope of
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: seeing the refuge remain intact. Really did it just in
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: the end, no one's going to take de bait well
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: because right now, like we've got an existing law that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: until there's a different majority, you know, it used to
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: be the Arctic Refuge was somewhat of This is one
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: of the things we've got to figure out how to
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: bridge and I'm looking forward to Cal's next job because
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I think he's one of those people who can do this.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Some of these issues used to be very bipartisan, and
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the Arctic Refuge is one of them. If you look
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: back in time, it got more and more comfortably partisan
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: over time. Fewer and fewer people have actually been there
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: on the ground, and I count myself as absolutely blessed
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: to have seen that place, and so it's become comfortably partisan,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: and we've lost the bipartisan and even like there used
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: to be more concern from some of the sportsman groups
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: about you know, the eiders that are uniquely there and
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: not only a few other places left on the planet.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: So that one right now, the politics of it don't
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: look great, but the economics of it don't look good either,
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: And that's at the end of the day. I just
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know that it's going to be recoverable. The
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: juice isn't worth the squeeze. And you know, we could
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: also see the politics change if there's a different majority
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: next year in the House and Senate, which are easily
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: could be.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: When you get to these issues like like the artic
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge that has have this real this The
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: expression news is like a ping pong, you know, I'm
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: trying to put people. Yeah, like one administration comes, they
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: undo a ruling. The next administration comes, they put the
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: ruling back, and then it seems like your whole lifetime
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: passes with these rulings.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bouncing.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: How does something like the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, what happens?
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Like what could happen?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: That just clarifies it right to be what it is,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: meaning there's no every new administration, they don't say we're
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: gonna do rare earth minerals in Yellowstone National Park. It's
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: just become that it's not.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Discussed legislation, not a budget, not something tucked into a
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: budget that passed with fifty one votes, okay, but permanent
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: legislation with sixty votes, which means you have to have
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: some level of compromise and willingness to for there to
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: be a trade space to get to sixty, and that's
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: not an easy thing, but that would create real certainty.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: So sixty votes out of one hundred saying we're taking
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: and the refuge, we're taking anmar off the table is
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: a sixty out of one hundred vote thing.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: That's right, and that's in the old days. In the
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: old days in nineteen eighty that happened, right, And that's
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: why we have so many of the amazing places that
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: we have in Alaska is because there were times when
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: that was possible. But you know, at the moment, I
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: sure don't see it.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm guessing you don't feel the same way about
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Ambler Road. And just for listeners, when I explain with this,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is is Ambler Road is a term used for a
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the word road.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Because what it is at its core is this proposal
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: to run a two hundred and fifty mile road through
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the Brooks Range of Alaska in order to make an
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: industrial corridor for all manner of industrial development. It puts
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of focus on the road. But what basically
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the way one should think about it would be like
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the Ambler Industrial.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: District, Yeah, mining district, Yeah, but the.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Airplanes, Like this is needs a road.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: This isn't just a gravel road. This is you know,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: forty nine bridges and it's crossing thousands of streams, including
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: eleven major rivers. It's in an area where there is
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: a deep reliance on subsistence for things like she fish,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: and it is going to become an industrial corridor with
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: multiple mines at the end of that corridor. And I
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: think one of the things, there's a real there's conflict
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: in Alaska around it. That conflict has not necessarily bled
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: over to a willingness by either of Alaska's senators to
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: second guests their advocacy for this. But in addition to
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the fisheries resource and the that is huge and I
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: can't I can't even put into words how beautiful this
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: place is. Like if you go through, it's going to
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: punch through get to the Arctic National Preserve. It goes
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: on the south shore of Inyocook Lake. I mean, these
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: are some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: in my life. And it's then there's the caribou herd, right,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: like the Western Arctic caribou herd used to be one
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: of the largest herds left, but it has been in
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: major decline. And this is going to be a road
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: that's that's a elevated gravel right, multiple feet three to
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: eight feet high of make a gravel pit every so
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: many miles and use that gravel to create an elevated
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: structure that all of the industrial you know, dump trucks
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: and things will travel on. What we know about caribou
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: is sometimes they will walk across the road, but if
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: there's an elevated structure, And the best data I've seen
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: from this is what happened at Red dog Mine, where
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: they did a much shorter but similar road. Those caribou
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: ball up for weeks and don't want to cross it,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: and eventually they do and then they haul ask and
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: so they lose weeks of putting on fat. They're in
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: poorer condition. You know, this is already a herd that's
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: in steep decline and is absolutely critical for subsistence in
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: that area. And so I worry that this is the
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: end of the Western Arctic caribou herd being a great
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: herd of caribou. And you overlay that with what's happened
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: to a last scar already, which you see Alaska has
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: warmed so much that you get these these rain events
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: in the winter that are really hard on doll sheep,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: They're really hard on caribou, They're really hard on muskoks
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: where it like rains and then freezes, and then you
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: have a vegetation change, which is a huge change just
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: because it's warmer now in the summer, and so you
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: have a huge vegetation change that caribou are grappling with.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And it's no surprise that one of the great migrations
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: on the planet is you know, in real jeopardy.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Man, the caribou example means a lot to me. Like,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: I understand the example, but my take on it has
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: just like my take on it from the start has
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: been that I'm sympathetic to the economy issue. I'm sympathetic
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: to the jobs issue. When I talk to friends of
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: mine that you know, I'm an outsider. I don't live
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: in Alaska. When I talked to bodies of mind that
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: live in Alaska and they bring up jobs and job
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: creation and financial security, I'm like, I understand, man, I'm
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: not belittling that stuff. I'm not rolling my eyes about it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I understand the real jobs. Yeah, I understand the concern.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But in thinking long term American interests and short term
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: sort of like spiritual wellbeing and the long term future
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: of hunting, angling wilderness, I'm like, it's most valuable state
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: is what.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: It is right now. Yeah, it's not going anywhere. It's
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: going to be there. If some.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Down the road. A century from now, two centuries from now,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: there could be some dramatically different challenges, dramatically different issues
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: facing the country. It's there, the minerals are there, but
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: like we're not code read right now. The best thing
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: we can do is hang on to our best, our
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: last vestiges of wilderness.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Like wherever they are, they're not making more. Hold them,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: hold them.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: It's like my wife used to work in Amazon. She
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of Amazon stock. When it goes up
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: a little bit, she just you know, it goes up,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: goes down, she holds onto it, and you know what,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: over time, it's you know what I'm saying, It's like, dude,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: it's like the most it's the most brilliant thing on
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the planet. Look what this country has. You're gonna industrialize
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: all this and will be like every other damn country.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: It's all this stuff gone.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Well, I especially like all the stuff that's going on
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: right now now. It's not that different than it has
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: been over history. But I'm like, when are we gonna
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: start talking about water in terms of like national defense?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Like what do we need as a country If you're
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: thinking about this country in perpetuity, which I think we
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: should be doing right, Like we're gonna need places to
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: grow food, We're gonna need water to drink, We're going
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: to need our country to be able to sustain us.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: And a lot of the decisions that we're making right
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: now are like short term gain and irreplaceable in the
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: long term.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: You take that twin metals proposed mind by the boundary waters,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: which is you know, right in the you know that
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: water will flow from where the mindset would be into
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the boundary waters, right, and that that product And look,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: my dad was at Anacona Copper as an exploration geologist
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: when he was growing up. My grandfather worked at Battle
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Mountain and in Nevada. I'm not minimizing the need for
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: mining we have. We have copper mines in New Mexico
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: that produce a lot of copper and produce good jobs.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: But you're gonna you're gonna mine that and then you're
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: going to send it to China to process, so you're
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: going to get the front end resource commodity money, but
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: then you're going to buy it back once it's been
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's what third world countries do. Like that
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense? And especially when you're talking about
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: an economic and cultural engine with the the cachet at
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: the boundary waters. Mm hmm. I wanted to comment on
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: something comment you made about national defense. It's old water.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: No, no, I was gonna saying it's hyperbolic, and I
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: just do it to scare my kids. I like to
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: tell them that I'm like, in your lifetime, I won't
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: be around for this, but in your lifetime you'll be
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: eating bugs and they'll fight wars over water. I'd like
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: to tell them.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: That, have a good day school.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I tell them that at dinner, I'll be long on,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: just so you know, so don't come whining to me.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: You'll be eating grasshoppers and fighting wars over water. Have
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: a good night. Uh So, what do you think will
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: happen there? We didn't get to that part. We talked
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: about what what you know, We talked about how we
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: feel about it.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Ambler Road is a long way along, and so I'm
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: sure there will be litigation. There are you know, the
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Tanana Tribal Council and others that are very invested in
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: the the the subsistence resources there. I don't think it's
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: the end, but this thing is way along. Okay, it's
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: a long way and there are some Native corps too
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: that have to have to agree for the road to
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: cross their land, and that's not a complete done deal yet,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: but there there are a lot of negotiations that I
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: think are fairly far along there as well. So money, Yeah,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I am, and you know you fact checked me on this,
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: but I think the government just took a ownership stake
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: in the developer, which is like mockers, like the the
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: definition of you know, the government should never own the
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: means of production. This, this whole idea of like cutting
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: deals and taking ownership stakes in foreign mining companies, to
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: me is like nothing I've ever seen in my life.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we took a ten percent. The federal government took
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: a ten percent ownership stake in Trilogy Medals Real in
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: October of this year.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: I didn't know Canadian mining for I was unaware of that.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's in October, YEP invested thirty six million dollars
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: in this Canadian.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Does that make it harder to be impartial.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: For so you know what, you got a lot of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: money online?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean it is interesting, right, Like there's
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: all these natural things that are happening everywhere, but in
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: this case of the ambler district where it's got all
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: these awesome resources we can call them on the on
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: the back foot or fighting an uphill battle. And then
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: this road, even though there's not like a current plan
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: for public access along it, it's going to also provide
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: additional pressures in the forms of take. It would be
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: like the only mining camp in the history of the
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: world where there weren't dudes interested in hunting fishing if
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: it did not. And then it's got the additional hurdle
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: of what really happens long term to this caribou herd
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: when it balls up, waste a bunch of energy and
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: then spends a bunch of energy hauling ass away from
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: the road on the back end once it finally crosses.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: We don't know the answer to that. And then the
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: fishery side of things, like what is the long term
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: effects on these fisheries? And yeah, like is the long
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: term subsistence plan to just take the money and run?
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Like very interesting.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Another move I've seen, I've seen another move the world
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: has seen is a movement of a volley. I'm trying
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: to think of my ping pong lingo serve in the
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: ping pong analogy, the roadless rule. There's a hit on
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: one side, there's a hit on the other side. The
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: hit on one side hit on the other side.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't think the analogy holds as
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: well for the roadless rule because educate me. Because the
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: roadless Rule was first crafted in what was it ninety nine,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: right before the change in administration, Right, so you know
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: this is under Clinton. Yeah, Chris Wood, who is now
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: the president and CEO of Troad Unlimited, was working for
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: the Chief of the Forest Service. They did this whole
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: big public process. I remember going to roadless Rule public
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: hearings in New Mexico at the time, and then the
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Bush administration.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Can you tell what? Can you explain what we're talking about?
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: So this is what the rule means.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: This is a rule. It's actually a very flexible tool,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: but it says these roadless lands are really critical to
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: things like wild trout and salmon populations. There were most
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: of our endangered species. Is like, they're a small portial
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: portion of the overall national forest footprint, but they're incredibly
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: powerful in terms of unique species and species of concern
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: from I mean, when I think about roadless I mostly
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: think about elk, but I also think about things like
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Rio Grande cutthroat trout habitat HeLa trout habitat in New Mexico.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: And so they protected those things and said, you can
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: still go in there and do a fuels treatment, or
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: you can go in there and and make habitat modifications,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: but afterwards, you're not going to leave your footprints there.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: You're not going to leave an open road. That then
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: becomes a source of degradation for those roadless areas.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, now a few years less strict in a wilderness area.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Less strict than the wilderness area, much more flexible. A
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: lot of in Montana, there have been huge treatments in
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: roadless areas, for example. Then the Bush administration said, okay,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: we're going to change this rule. We're not going to
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: get rid of it, We're going to change it and
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: say that there can also be a governor initiated process
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: to tweak to make sure it fits their individual state.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: So you had conservative governors like generation Idaho who negotiated
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: the roadless rule for Idaho. Colorado has a state based
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: roadless rule that is that is unique, and so the
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: roadless rule held. It got modified a little bit under
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: the Bush administration. We never modified ours in the state
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: of New Mexico because people weren't up in arms about it.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: It made sense. It's like the pell and CEO's where
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: we have desert, big horned sheep and coups deer, and
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: you know, people really valued the habitat that was protected.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't until the first Trump administration that the
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: ping pong match really started. So now we're full on
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: ping pong match and clearly so.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: What happened in Trump won with the roles rule.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Gosh, you're putting me on the spot. I can't remember precisely.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll stay with the current.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: But they are, they're, you know, moving forward to repeal this.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of the ironies is they are
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: not holding public meetings all over the country like when
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: it was created, which kind of sends that tell that
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: you know, we've already figured out what we want to
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: do and we're just going to do that and you
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: can send your little node in and tell us we're wrong,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: but we're plowing.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: For what is the what is the primary motivation to
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: repeal the World is Rule? I mean, is it a
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: spec is it like a specific industry in a specific location.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Is it a general annoyance.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's a general annoyance and dogma. That's that.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: So much of this revolves around the phrase energy dominance,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: which means that energy and minerals trumps every other use.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: And we don't want to we don't want to get
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: in the business of balancing uses. We're going to do
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: minerals and energy at least traditional energy at any cost.
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's what's driving it, because it's
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: not this is not where the good timber is. For example, Uh,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: this is not. It tends to be really steep and
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: hard to road. The Forest Service has one of the
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: biggest road networks on the face of the planet. They
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: have three hundred and seventy thousand miles of roads. They
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: have a six billion dollar backrop log because they can't
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: maintain the roads that we want them to maintain that
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: are open roads for all of us to use. And
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: so for some people the question is when you're in
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: a hole like that, would why not just stop digging? No,
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: if you need to go in like this is a
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: this is a flexible tool if you need to. They've
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: dressed it up largely in fire treatment but the reality
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: is we're down thirty eight percent or something like that
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: in fire treatments this year because they fired everybody at
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: the bors service. They chased people out.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: But that's that same expediency you see, That's that same
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: political expedience you see all the time. We were talking
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: about this recently with the with the rolling bag land
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: protections within one hundred miles of the borders. Oh yeah,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: where you pretend you take what what ever fashionable issue
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: there is.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: It was housing last week and this week it's the border.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: So when it was the most recent sell off, they
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: started out, they're like, what would catch.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: What would catch hold? Affordable housing?
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And you take this thing you've always wanted to do
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: and put a bottle of You take the same bottle
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: of wine, and you put a label on that. The
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: label is affordable housing.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Affordable housing cabernet. Yeah. Yeah. And so.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: That issue of taking these like expedient things anyways, border security, Yeah,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: that's a hot one right now. People want secure borders.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Let's call rolling back all these wilderness protections. Somehow will
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: act like this has to do with border security, and
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: this just goes on.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: You know, it makes you the very cynical to look
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: at it. Yeah, this is why the public doesn't like politics,
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: because they just see it as cynical and dishonest. But
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: do you really want to mandate roads in Glacier National
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Park and the Boundary waters and Big Bend National like
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: literally mandate new roads along the border. You go look
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: at Santa Atlanta Canyon and Big Bend and it's a
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: pretty good not a lot of people and natural boundary.
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: And it's I mean, it's a huge chunk of the
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: Bob Marshall Wilderness here in Montana Rocky Mountain Front, and
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: then for the entire rest of the state. You can
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: pretty much drive that right now.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: And it also opens up out to one hundred miles
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: from the border. It changes the rules for national wildlife refuges,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: national parks, wilderness areas to say you can just drive
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: wherever you want to go. Now, there are wilderness bills
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: that actually say, including I think when we did Oregon Mountains,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Desert Peaks, and maybe when Arizona did all those border
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: wilderness areas. If you're in hot pursuit of somebody who's
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: trying to get away, you can follow them, but you
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: can't just drive off road for the fun of it,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: and those those border roadless areas creates some of the
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: best impediments to people crossing. Like where people like to
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: cross is where you've got like highway to in Mexico
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: right on one side of the border, and then they
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: can get to another road on the other side of
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: the border and drive like hell. Like these national parks
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: and wilderness areas actually are an effective, an effective means
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: of border control.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Well, that's what's interesting when you go through the Borderland
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Protection Act, right, is like it's provided for like basically
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: all of that is provided for in I suppose like
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: slightly more cumbersome ways. There's just actual checks and balances
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: to it.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: That's exactly. You actually have to have a conversation between
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: the Coronado National Forest and the border, which happens every day. Yeah.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: I mean when we wrote the we did the organ
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Mountains to Peaks National Monument, and then we came back
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: afterwards and designated wilderness inside of that monument, and we
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: had a ton of conversations with the Border Patrol and
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: I went out there and I looked at where their
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: important facilities were and we made sure that we took
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: that into account and that they could see from certain
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: high points to be able to surveil the entire border,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: which was actually easier in some of those cases before
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: we had a ballard wall there so that we could
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: get people because we could see them coming. So it
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: was it was all very nuanced because everybody was at
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: the table, which is kind of when policy actually works.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: And then like in the Roadless Rule. I know you
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: and I have talked about this in the past, right,
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: I mean there are some examples of like things provided
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: for in the Roadless Rule that get litigated to death
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: in terms of like urban interface timber management. But that's
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: like a couple thousand acres. And then the fifty eight
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: million acre scheme of the Roadless Rule. Yeah, and that's
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: like the flag that they're waving of, like, well, we
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: can't cut two thousand acres in what thirty seven states?
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: So we're going to rescind fifty eight million acres worth
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: of protections.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: And you know what, if you had fixed our Forests Act,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: which we're trying to get across the Western which would
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: largely address that in the Senate, I think it's like
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Padilla Hickenlooper. But I've been working with that group to
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: try that to get that moved and in good shape.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: If you had that and then you hired back the
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: people you chased out of the Forest Service, you could
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: do a lot of treatment. I mean, we are seeing
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: a giant reduction in the number of acres treated in
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: the Southwest because there's nobody to pick up the phone
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: at the Forest Service.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: We kind of got a little bit sidetracked because we
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: were getting to the point of taking a thing, taking
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: a current issue, and using it to apply leverage to
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: an old grievance. And we had mentioned this, like rescinding
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: the roleless rule. People will point out, well, this will
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: help for fire mitigation because people are like, oh, yeah,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: that's right. Last year, like Palisades, you know, Pacific Palisades
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: or whatever, burnt down to the ground.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: This is important, we should do this. There were a
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: couple of roads in the palisades. Yeah.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, So you take these these current ideas and
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: take old grievances and try to get them through.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: But with the but I just feel like on the
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: roadless thing, there.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Has to be maybe I'm wrong, there has to be
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: a specific individual collection of individuals that that have someone's ear,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: and there's like a thing, a specific thing. But I
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: think as they would like to see happen. I mean,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: I don't mean be conspiratorial.
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: But it's Project twenty twenty five. Like so much of
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: this stuff is things that got that and you know,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: you say things in campaigns, they're not all well thought through,
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: and so a lot of this is based on really
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: very doctrinaire, you know, positions that were taking as part
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: of the campaign that are now being forced down into
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: these agencies. Got it?
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because it's not like some guy made a
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: phone call. It's like, sometimes I could remake the country.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: I would remake it in this deregulated industry first extraction
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: first model, which would include X, Y and Z.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: And that's RUSS vote at the OMB, the Office of
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Management and Budget, who like helped craft that whole plan
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: and now it's implementation time. But it doesn't all work
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: on the ground.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: But do you think those people are having the same
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: conversations with their Now I'm not gonna have to deal
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: with this.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: But grasshoppers and I don't know about eating bugs. But
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what this You will live in a
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: natureless world. Okay, here's one that you and I agree
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: might disagree on. We've agreed on most these things. Everything
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: so far, here's what we might disagree on. I I'm
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: going to move to the subject of renewables yep man
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: in the same way, the same way that I talk
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: about being apprehensive, not apprehensive adversarial toward Ambler Road, or
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the same way adversarial toward developing the Arctic National Wildlifreo.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Is adversarial the right word.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: You don't try to say don't like it.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I don't like it when someone talks about doing to
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the doing things to landscapes that would feel that way
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: to the landscape, Like the landscape doesn't know that you're
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: doing this for solar panels or a wind farm or oil.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: The acreage doesn't know. The acreage doesn't care in some respects,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: the animals don't care. Like what they know is you
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: industrialized it. And I'm not going to lecture you on this,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: but that's why I hear your thoughts on it. How
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: do you feel? What do you think when you think
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: of taking Bureau of Land Management lands, say yep, and
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: in effect industrializing them for renewables, Like how does that
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: balance out in your head?
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: So in New Mexico we were kind of like Montana.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: We've got a lot of public land, but we've also
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: got a lot of private land, and so we have
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: not seen the intense industrial renewable development that I recently
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: saw when I went and visited my like where I
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: was born, my aunt in Falla, Nevada, and I spent
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: time between Reno and Fallon, and I went, holy shit,
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: Like that's that's a very intense use. And I think
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: we should avoid that on public lands because there are
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: other uses. That's not to say we shouldn't develop those renewables,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: but I don't think public lands should be the first place.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: You know, we just did a three and a half
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: gigawatt renewables development in New Mexico.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: That I how that sounds like a lot?
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like three and a half nuclear power plants.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: It's the biggest clean energy project ever built in the
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Western Hemisphere. It's online, is it is energized and will
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: soon off. Takers will soon be taking the power, so
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: they electricities up, turbans are spinning, and it's hot. It
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: sits on private land around the town of Corona, New Mexico.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: How many acres a lot, and so typically it was
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: giga watsworth, gigawatsworth and it was you know, the local landowners.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: Some liked it and some didn't. And so the ones
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: who didn't want a turbine chose not to have a
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: turbine on their land. The ones who did are getting
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: a substantial amount of you know, it impacted one percent
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: of their cover, but it dramatically increased their ability to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: keep that ranch operation viable. That's a more balanced approach,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: I think than when you see solar panels and you
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: can't quail hunting that spot anymore, or the a latte
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: can't use that public land anymore, and so it becomes
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: a more nuanced question that I think applies to. I
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: think the lesson that you articulated is it shouldn't matter
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: whether it's traditional energy or new energy. We should be
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: looking out trying to make sure that the critters on
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: the landscape are not overwhelmed by industrial development.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: What also, let's say the landowners that didn't participate, they
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: don't want them on their land. It is man like,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: it's a big play on those people to be like,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: they don't want it on their land, but now there's skyline.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Everything they look at is nothing but those things, and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: it probably impacts them negatively on value because now they're
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: in the middle of a wind farm.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: We have not seen data for the second thing. I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: think the first thing is valid, but you also have to,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: like I think there's a recognition in this country right
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: now that we need to be a country that can
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: build big things, and so you have to have those
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: hard conversations and figure out where the trade off is,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: where the juice is worth the squeeze, and where it's not.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: But then that's five hundred and fifty miles of Like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: I worked on this project for seventeen plus years, my
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: entire my entire time in federal public office, and it
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: meant twenty billion dollars of economic input into the states
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: of New Mexico and Arizona. It meant an enormous amount
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: of power onto the grid, a lot of really good jobs.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: And you know, the people building that power line, they
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: had a lot of them had Liuna or IBW on
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: one side of their hard hat and Trump on the other.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: You know, it's those are the kind of decisions you
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: have to make. But I don't think we need to
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: be stupid about it. There are places that should never,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: never be developed too, and we kind of know where
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: those special places are. There's got any comments on that one.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I guess. I mean that's a tough conversation, right,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: But so when you talk about like the give and take,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: what was the this is what you're giving up part
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: of that conversation and how'd you tackle that?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it was around where should all
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: of these facilities go? So you know, you don't want
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: to when you're doing a wind farm if there's a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: sensitive species like a lesser prairie chicken, that's off the table,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: and if there's when it comes to the route of
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: the transmission line, would I I think this whole industry
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: is much more sophisticated than it was twenty years ago,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: and we're going to see the same level of unsophistication
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: from all these AI data centers. A lot of projects
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: got killed twenty years ago because they didn't do the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: front end work. You go in and you talk to everybody.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: You talk to the landowners, you talk to the conservation groups,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: you talk to the county. One of the other lessons
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: is if you want tolerance for a project, there better
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: be some direct benefit to the people who are impacted
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: by that project. And that's that's all. Like in China,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: they just you know, send a send an email and
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: say we're doing this and this dam is really important,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: so your house is going to have to You're gonna
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: have to move.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: The whole public comment period, do not do the.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Public commat period. We took eighteen years to try and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: get that balance right.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: And then are there like replace you know, we always
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: talk about replacement costs, which is largely like on public
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: land a lot, but on a private So the in
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: like you're talking about.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: In terms of one of the things the developer did
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: is there in the midst of buying habitat in both
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Arizona and New Mexico. In the case of New Mexico,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: it's like to protect very you know uh Riparian both
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: sky habitat that we're not getting more of right that
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: comes with water rights. That's really super precious stuff, the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: kind of thing you would see at a national wildlife
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: refuge like Bosca, Dell Apache or state wildlife management areas.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: And then they're in the state of Arizona. I think
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: because the local constituents were different and had different needs,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: they're actually looking at a gave uh preservation like protecting
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: at GAVI's that are also incredibly important for some of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: the bats that have been in decline in in the
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: Sonora and country.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: Interesting. Yeah, so it's like replacing wildlife services would or
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: what is it sorry, I'm space when we're talking about
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: like a chunk of blam, it's the environmental services, habitat
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: services replacing those for whatever the project is, exactly right.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: That's why I Conico Phillips is huge with the greater
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: sage grouse right, Like they replace they got to replace
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of sage grouse habitat.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you know what I told them was
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: early on, I'm like, Okay, if if you're going to have,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: for example, if there's going to be a situation where
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: sandhills or other waterfowl are gonna we're gonna lose the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: to crashing into these towers, let's make sure we have
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: more than enough habitat to more than compensate for that. Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: In your view, am I right or wrong in thinking that, uh,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: we ought to be leaning into nuclear power from a
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: habitat preservation standpoint, meaning it's it's local, it's localized, it's
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of bang for your buck. When it comes
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: to acreage, there's a there's a I'm recognizing Chernobyl three
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Mile Island, like, there's some real catastrophes that have come
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: out of this in the past. But when I you know,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I look, not being an expert, by looking, I'm like, man,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like we should be revisiting this.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: Is it safer?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: Can it be made safer because it allows us to
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: hang on to wildlife habitat and make juice?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Yep, No, I think so. And I think what gives
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: the biggest challenge for nuclear is that historically it's never
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: been able to be produced cheap enough to compete with
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: other sources of power on the grid.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 6: And I know I didn't even know that that was
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: that that was true. Oh yeah, yeah, it's considered an
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 6: expensive way. Oh yeah, very much. But the idea, so
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 6: you have these light water reactors that are the last
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 6: forty years worth of nuclear development in this country, including
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: two that got put on the grid during the Biden
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: administration in Georgia, the first time in years we actually
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: put a lightwater reactor on the grid. Those are the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 6: sort of traditional, big, complicated and often big overruns in cost.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 6: What's being attempted right now is to create small, modular reactors.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 6: So the idea is to have something that's more inherently
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 6: safe in terms of if you lose power having an accident,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 6: it just trends towards stability. You don't have like this
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: Rube Goldberg thing where you have to do a whole
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: bunch of stuff to cool this thing off, and if
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 6: you can't cool it off, you're in big trouble. And
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: then you have the situation that Japan went through a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 6: few years ago.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, forgot, I forgot that one when I named Yeah,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: I should name that one, and not Chernobyl.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then if they're small and simple in their design,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: you actually get the advantage that you get in a
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: factory of bringing down cost over time. So every every
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: time the number of solar panels in the country doubled,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: the cost for solar panels went down twenty percent. So
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: it started out at like seventy seven dollars a lot
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: and then it landed well under a dollar a lot. Yep.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: You can start to get a natural reduction in costs
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: if you can make them small and modular. And the
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: idea is if you can do that, and then there's
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: there's this willingness to pay more for power right now
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: because of all these data centered demands that you can
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: have a new nuclear renaissance that is safer, that is
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: more tailored to you know, you can have one or
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: you can have five, depending on what your needs are.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of work being done in that
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: space right now by some really good companies, and I
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: think hopefully literally the next few years we're going to
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: see the first of those come online.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to grows to oversimplify something and say that
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: there is a partisan nature to energy sources.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Yep, you know, but with nuclear that I'm just okay
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: being facetious.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I thought you're being like legitimate skeptical. So I mean, like,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: you know, the American left generally supportive of renewables, the
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: American right generally supportive of fossil fuels.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Just I mean, just generally, what like.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Is there a heart isn't split a nuclear There was
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: a fashionable for one side or the other to like it.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: There was for a long time, and what was it?
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: It was largely like you had, you know, after Three
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: Mile Island, there were a lot of traditional environmental groups
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: that worked very hard to put a stop to nuclear power.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of conflation too, between nuclear power
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: and weapons and you know I talked to the Iranians
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: about that. Yeah. I worked in a research reactor in college.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: I then moved out to New Mexico where we have
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Sandia National Labs and Los Alamos National Labs. What I've
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: seen change over the course of the last eighteen years
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: is there are a lot more Democrats now from states
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: like Delaware, Rhode Island, New Jersey like including some very
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: progressive memory like Corey Booker, who have embraced nuclear and
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: so it's become pretty darn by partisan. And in fact,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: in the last Congress there was I think it's called
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: the Advance Act that we moved all the way to
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: the President's desk to try to pivot and have the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: right regulatory environment for some of these new designs and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: to have an American nuclear renaissance. And one step beyond that,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: just to make it interesting, is because I come from
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: a technical background, I've always been fascinated with fusion because
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: we've we've understood the physics forever, we just couldn't get
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: the engineering stuff figured out. And I think we're seeing
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: investment flow into fusion companies in a way that has
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: never happened in the past. And so I think that
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: that's a you know, down the road, keep an eye
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: on that, Okay.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: I'd be lying of like if you, you know, I
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: could tell my kids all about the water wars coming up.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: If if I got under a lot of pressure to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: break down fission infusion, it's pretty try to bring it
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: back around to the water wars.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: In fissions you're breaking stuff apart, and infusion you're squeezing
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: it all together.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: I could have said that, but that would that would
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: be the end. And as someone st but what does
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: that mean, I would say, I'm not I don't know.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that means. In fission, and you
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: also have a lot of waste products and infusion typically
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: you don't and so that's another advantage which one generates
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: waste fission. So every light water reactor is a fission reactor.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: And we have have always had this challenge of what
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: do you do with all those uh spent nuclear rods? Okaya? Oh?
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Speaking of which, where in my garage? It's usually where
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: these things go.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: This is this is just a little side note. Where
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: does it stand?
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: Do you remember?
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's still an issue the Yucca Mountain Repository fight.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: What came of that where is all the stuff that
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: was going to go in Yucca Mountain.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: It's it's sitting at a bunch of sites around the
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: country at lightwater reactors, primarily sitting in cooling pools.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: So they's never it's we've for now abandoned the idea
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: of having a central repository.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: Certainly and deep within the earth in Nevada because there
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: was never buy in from Nevada, which is a tough way.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: You know, that's a real tough sell.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: And you had Republicans and Democrats who represented Nevada over
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: the years, including a majority leader. I mean, that's not
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: a recipe for success.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: No, it's it's like, if you put it to a
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: national vote, you know, it'd be funny to see how
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: the vote would split with people that lived in the state.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: A bunch of time, let's put it in your state.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: I've had California senators who are no longer with us
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: look at New Mexico and go, oh, we're going to
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: send all this to you. And that's a real dynamic
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: in Congress, same party as me. But you know, meanwhile,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: we've done our part. We actually have a deep salt
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: repository that we use for transuranic waste, not for power waste,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: but for things that the government has done over the years.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: And so New Mexico, in my view, has kind of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: done our part. Okay, what is what was that word used?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: Trans transuranic waste, And it's it's waste from the production
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: of our nuclear deterrent that is being stored deep underground
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: in in salt.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, you put the like excavated into salt exactly, so.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: Like literally there's a very deep elevator they excavate out
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: from there. They put the canis stirs from you know,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: Los Alamos or Idaho National lab or wherever into those
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: blocks of salt, into those open caverns of salt, and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: then over the time, over time, the salt actually moves
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: back in and just encapsulate right next to the arc
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: of the Covenant. What else it is New Mexico.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: A pair of truck keys I'm missing? Okay, here here's
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: one that's gonna blow people's minds.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: There's a.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Lot of talk about a lot of talk in certain
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: political circles about us having too much public land. Too
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: much public land, not something I tend to complain about,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: but there is like this, like we should we got
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: too much public land. H You've been involved in a
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: number of You've been involved in a number of exploits
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: which have generated public land. Uh tell us those stories
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: you mentioned Savonosa people love it.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like the thing is I mean, yeah, I'm really
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: intrigued with Montana. I want to spend more time here.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: But there are a lot of folks on the land here.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Like there's a lot if you go hiking or fishing.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: You know, my constituents want more places to hunt fish,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: sit around the campfire with their best friends and their
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: family members and make great memories. And it's a proven
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: economic generator. So uh, I have never found it a
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: negative to create, for example, a new wildlife management area
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: in New Mexico, or to use landed water conservation fund
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: dollars too. You know, we we Actually the Vice Caldera
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: National Preserve is an interesting model in that it is
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: managed by the Park Service. But the way I wrote
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: the legislation, the the the management of the elk hunt
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: is it's a New Mexico gaming fish and so it is,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: in my view, one of the best managed pieces of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: public ground in the West.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: That's a very interesting that's an interesting formula to.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: Me, Yeah, because we wanted we you know, we knew
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: what we had the community buy in. They wanted all
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: of these geologic resources, the volcanism, the the incredible of
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: you would love this obsidian minds there that produced weapons
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: grade you know, points for all over the Western United
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: States in Mexico, all of those things. Everybody knew the
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Park Service was the best thing to take care of those.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: But they also wanted it to be a continued tradition
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: of fishing and elk hunting in particular, and so we
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: figured out a way to do that, and in my view,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: it's been an amazing success. It is really really healthy
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: and you can walk off of one of the main
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: gravel roads there and have a bull elk bugling at
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: one o'clock in the afternoon fifty yards off the road.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: It's a different dynamic. It's like how elk used to
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: be before they were all pressured because they have good
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: travel management, but they also have this incredible back country
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: elcut yep, yep.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And then but get into the most recent story, there's
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: a there's a tribal component to it of a ranch that.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: We're talking about. VIA's coldera.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: No no, no, no, the one you guys just worked on.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: The Lbar. Yeah, okay, So Elbar Elbar used to be
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: one ranch. When it came up for sale a few
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: years ago, it had been split into two ranches. It's
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: in an area that's incredibly important to the Pueblos, which
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: are a group of a little less than two dozen
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: tribes in New Mexico and one in Texas. And it's
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: around Mount Taylor, which is a very important religious site
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: for both Pueblos and the Navajo Nation. When it came
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: up for sale, people were like, we haven't been in
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: there in generations, and so we made a run at
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: making it a wildlife management area. So there were a
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: lot of national environmental groups that do this kind of work,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: and maybe environmental is not the right work, but the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: people who do you know, who actually buy land to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: protect it.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: So this is a this is a family family that
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: is they've decided it is time to sell, and they put.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: It on selling it as a trophy property to somebody
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: from out of state. They were in discussions with Trust
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: for Public Land about let's make this a wildlife management area.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: So we had to raise trying to remember, it was
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: a fifty four thousand acre property split between two pieces
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: and we had to raise thirty four million dollars in
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: thirteen months. But people were excited about it, and the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: pueblos went to the legislature and the governor and said,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: this would be really great. Wildlife management areas have tags
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: that go to residents, so that attracted a certain segment
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: of the population in a state where we don't. We
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: frankly as residents struggle to get tags in New Mexico
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: because our balance is not what it is in other states.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: And so we had this amazing coming together of forces
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: and were able to in thirteen months create fifty four
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: thousand acres of new public land.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: But like, where did that chunk of money? I mean,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: how much did the state have that they were willing
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: to dedicate it to it? Like, where does that money
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: come from that fast?
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: There were some people who who gave zero interest loans
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: to get it to close in the amount of time,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: Like there.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: Were don't like effectively a donor.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. Uh, I will name check one
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: Johnny Morris really from Best pro and a number of
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: other people that that stepped forward and wrote checks.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: So that like understanding that time that mattered, Yeah, time.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: That the real limit here was not that we weren't
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: going to be able to raise the money, but could
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: we do it in the time that mattered. The legislature
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: stepped forward, you know, we had those Pueblo leaders governors
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: going to the governor and the legislature and saying, we
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: got to do this now. One of the really innovative
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: things that we did on that project was state game
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: and fish have those dollars that come from the FEDS
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: in terms of Pittman Robertson dollars, right, but they weren't
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: sitting on a pile of it. So we said, if
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: we if some folks will help TPL close this deal,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: we can pay them back as our Pittman Robertson dollars
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: come in over time. So the financing recoganism was as
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: creative it is really what made that deal come together.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: And now we have a I mean, it's fifty four
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: thousand acres, but it's adjacent to a very special unit
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: of National Force Service land. It's adjacent to a number
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: of BLM Wilderness study areas, and so the complex there
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: is really special. And I used to, you know, when
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: I was guiding outdoor groups back in the late nineties
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: I used to sit on top of Mount Taylor and
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: look at that landscape and be like, man, I would
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: like to hunt elkin. There. We have already reintroduced thanks
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: to the good folks at New Mexico Game and Fish,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: we've already reintroduced pronghorn back into that landscape within the
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: first two years.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Oh that's wild man gratulations on that one. Who was
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: the on that on putting that convoluted process together?
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: Who is the.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I think of people that spend their lives
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: and mergers acquisitions.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Who is.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Who, like what agency? Who is doing the Like Okay,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: here's this money and that'll come in this pot, but
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: then they're going to need their money back by that date.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: And this money's coming in no strings attached.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: And so in this case, Trust for Public Land was
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: the lead NGO, and they're doing all the bean counting. Yeah,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: and this is a guy that I've worked with on
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of land deals over the years, and
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: they started out as little tiny land deals and you know,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: filling and in holding here and there. And when this
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: one came up, he was like, you need to come
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: see this property. And when I saw it, I was sold.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: I mean there were elk running everywhere, and there was
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: a big flock of turkeys, and it had all of
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: these different elevations, so it had both summer and winter
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: range habitat, a lot of vertical habit that potentially could
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: be bighorn sheep reintroduction sites in the future. And so
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: I just played a role of connecting people. And then
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: we had leaders at the state legislature that did an
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: incredible job. There's a there's a guy there, a state
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: representative who is the chair of the State of the
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: Finance Committee in the House, Nathan Small, who was a
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: real leader on this, and so Trust for Public Land
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: was the glue. And then there were a whole bunch
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: of other people that found ways to bring resources to
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: the table and the timeframe that needed to be done.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: Here's a civics question. Okay, you're you're a US senator.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: So your mandate is the go represent the people in
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: New Mexico and Washington, d C.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: On federal policy. What is it?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: What is the dynamic when you knock on the door
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: of like New Mexico's Wildlife Department, New Mexico Game fished you,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there a little bit like what are
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: you doing here, you.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: Know sometimes yeah, yeah, sometimes, But in New Mexico, we
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: have a long history and we are a state that
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: is Are you familiar with the phrase the resource curse?
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: You know, It's like there are a lot of countries
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: that have had commodity economies and it makes it harder
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: to do the new things and makes it harder to diversify.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: It makes it harder to and so I've always believed
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: that when you have you know, you have challenge, real
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: challenges with inner generational poverty, when you don't have as
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: many good jobs as you would like to have, like
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: we have a lot of challenges in New Mexico, and
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: I have always believed I am not going to stay
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: in my federal lane. I will work with anyone who
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: wants to work with me, whether that's a city councilor
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: who's just trying to bring a really good business to
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: their community, whether that's somebody at the state House who
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: wants to work on a wildlife management area. Like I
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: have run my office in a different way. We're not
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: a think tank. It's not just my job to vote
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: on individual pieces of legislation. If if we have a
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: team of people who can make something better in the state,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: even if it's not clearly in my lane, I will
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: help guys. Got what do you guys got?
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: Do you want to go back to ping pong balls?
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Hit him with the ping pong that very poetic. Actually, well, no,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: he likes it.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: He didn't like the analogy in one place where I
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: applied it, But go ahead.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, Waters of the United States, that's like, that's a
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: ping pong ball. It's getting battered around heavily.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: And I'm notice.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, for our our hunting folks, like
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: the intermittent streams, intermittent wetlands, we still hear a lot
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: of sound bites from people being like, you know, these
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: wetlands sometimes not even wet, you know, which is exactly
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: God almighty, what uh? How much do you deal with this?
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: A little bit? We're trying in New Mexico to get
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: primacy back in the hands of the state groundwork first,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: so people know what we're talking about. So if if
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency who historically has been
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: in charge of making sure that wetlands don't get just
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: plowed up and developed, willy nilly, is not going to
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: do that because the Waters of the US rule and
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: the court rulings have said, if you're not connected to
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: the Mississippi River, you're not really a wetland. In New Mexico.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: That's everything, like the entire members may out closed. We
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: have our even the Rio Rangos dry sometimes yea in
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: modern day. You know the climate that we're in now,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: so we basically cannot rely on the FEDS to protect
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: those resources. And nothing is more like New Mexico is
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: a place that'll go to war over water, I mean
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: waters everything, whether you're reliant on it for agriculture, relying
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: on it for industry. Everybody recognizes it is the single
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: biggest limiting factor in a n arid state. And so
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: the state is now working on taking that back and
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: creating a structure to be able to protect waters in
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: the state on their own without relying on the EPA interesting,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: and I think you'll see that in a number of
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: places over the coming years.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: But can you can you explain a little bit We
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: did a show on as years ago, but can you
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: explain a little bit just sort of the core of
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: the question, even outside of New Mexico, just a little
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: background for people, and go back to that thing where
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: I said, picture the Mississippi. So this this like it's
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: like for terms of national security, industry, energy, the US
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: has a vested interest in protecting the Mississippi River, right,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: And there's this sort of political question of how far
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: upstream and in the thousands of directions if you follow
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: all those rivers, and in all the tributaries of those rivers,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: and in all the marshes that feed those tributaries, how
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: far upstream is it America's business, that's right, what happens there,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: and the ping pong being.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: A very different Supreme court over time, and a pendulum
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: swing from protecting a lot of wetlands. I mean, remember
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: when Daffy Duck was like the spokesperson for wetlands and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: that was like a thing for a while. I think
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: it was under the Bush administration maybe too time now
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: where even if that a wetland is connected to another wetland,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: but it's all subsurface, it's not on the surface, like
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: it's not really considered protected. And so it's been a
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: big pendulum swing. And the question is, if you care
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: about wetlands and you're in this new world where the
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: FEDS are not going to protect wetlands at EPA, what
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: are our other tools, and that hence your move or
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: hence New Mexico looking at taking that over themselves.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: Right, And this comes back to like what can you
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: do on your private property? Right, Like that's kind of
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: like the the big question trying to be balanced out
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: with the fact that like our prairie potholes, right, those
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 3: are our our migratory bird factories. Yes, all sorts of
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: migratory birds, not just the ones we eat, and plus
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 3: our pollinators.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: And there are a lot of things that are just
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: flat out exempted from from the Clean Water Act. I mean,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: much of the agricultural impact in the Midwest, you know
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: what tiling is, Yeah, where you're like that that's largely
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: exempted from from you know, the Clean Water Act.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: So yeah, tiling refers to and we were kind of
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: like in the tiling capital of the world a while ago,
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: duck Hunt. But tiling refers to is.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: This Illinois or where we were in South Dakota.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe not the capital, but it was a real conversation.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because of the downstream effects.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to refers to putting in you're basically putting in
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: perforated pipe and other pipe and just moving water faster,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: moving water out to take land that would be too
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: saturated to cultivate and drying it out so.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: You can cultivate it.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: So you're grow opening up massive acreage of of previously
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: two wetland wetlands, drying them out to plant them.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: And then you're also impacting your your flood spikes because
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: now that water's going into the system much faster. So
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: if you're going to have a flood peak moved down
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: a given watercourse, it's going to be a much steeper peak,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: and so you've lubed the whole thing up. Yeah.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were looking at I mean, there's always more
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: than one thing happening at the same time. We were
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 3: looking at like real downstream effects of this in areas
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: like outside of Aberdeen and Watertown, South Dakota, where it
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: was like a post apocalyptic.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Landscape, right, like the farm is underwater, the grain silo
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: is sticking up still.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: And side benefit there's people out there and really fancy
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: boats catching eleven inch.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: Perch yeah right, or getting a lot of ducks, getting
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of ducks, but also people fishing, catching fish
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: off people's driveways.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: Or these guys explaining to us that the really good
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: walleye fishing is the submerged roads, the county road, the
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: county the embankment that the wall. I really like to
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: lay on the embankment of the county road in places
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: where you can weighed you can put chess waiters on
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: and wide the county road and just work the work
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: the embankments because there's a wall. I layd on the embankments.
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: It was surreal, It was it was impact. Was that
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: there's a bunch of them twenty twenty surreal. Yeah, you're like, oh.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great fishes weighed down the road and you're
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: basically fishing the ditch. Yeah yeah, but yeah, I mean
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: that's the supersold laugh about.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's like interesting one because like that was
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: a huge, huge habitat Hunter led fight for so many years.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: Like coincide with with where duck stamp dollars went, which
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: I know you're very familiar with, and and the rise
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: of ducks on limited and preserving the Duck factories, right,
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: and now that pendulum swung so far the other way,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, where the hell's the education that we
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: just had twenty thirty years ago on this subject? Like
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: everybody should be up in arms on this one.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I need I need to I need to clarify
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: a thing. I kind of we kind of jump. So
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: when we were in an area where tiling was very
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: much part of the conversation, I don't want to conflate.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of conflating two things.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: We were in an area where locals were talking a
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: lot about the impacts of tiling. Happened to be that
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: it was also in flood stage. I don't want to
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: ConFlat I want listeners to think I'm conflating that that
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: that the tiles caused. You know, there's some like linear
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: relationship between those tiles and that flooding. Just the same trip, right,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: It was the same trip where we're noticing these two things.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: I do want to tell you because you your water
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: rights access guy. There's also this very interesting battle brewing
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: at the time there, which was, let's say you have
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: a lake and it's a public lake.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: Which is a state constitution deal in South Dakota two.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: I think, so it's very interesting.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: This is, yeah, the one we're getting at. So picture
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: there's just anyone listening, picture of the lake closest to.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: You that you fish on, and the lake gets a
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: lot bigger.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Now imagine that the lake is a hundred times larger,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: including its over people's yards. So you have all your
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: life gone to the lake and you've just kind of
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: gone where the lake is and fished. Well, now you're
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: fishing in someone's yard. Right.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: There was this big fight.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: Where people were stringing booy lines. People were stringing bowey
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: lines to mar what would have been like what they
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: understood to be their property line became booey lines, and
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: they're fishing on their side of the buoy. And then
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: you got on the other hand, and they're like, the
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: lake my ass, I'm in my yard. I'm on my farm.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: You couldn't come on my farm before. You're now fishing
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: my farm. Other guys like, I'm in my boat, I'm
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: on the lake.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: And part of what was a private lake because it
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: was completely surrounded by private land, now stretches out and
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: touches the county road.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: And creates a public access.
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: It was it was so hard to figure out what's
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: It was one of those where it was one of those.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: Issues where I could very clearly see all sides, but
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: I had this incredible bias as a fisherman to be
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: to think to myself well, that really opens up a
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: lot of spots.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: Right, if you.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: Understand how a guy could be like, why are you
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: fishing on my farm?
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: Right, you're going to be like, oh, listen, I totally
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: get what you're saying. Could you just point to this
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: map here and tell us where that windrow was historic?
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's gonna be crap, he's spawning. Yeah, there's
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: crowdy spawnning on your hedge rope.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: Historically, was that kind of flooding something that happened and
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: So, yes, because they were I think it was NRCS
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: or USGS was going down and pulling, pulling samples right
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 3: from the old shore line.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: That's another yes.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: And so some of this is like, oh yeah, this
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: is one hundred year floodline stuff. But then it was
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: determined to be greatly exacerbated because of acts like tiling,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: re routing water in general things like that.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: It's like, you're right, they're telling us about that. Like
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: in sort of the who's right argument, they were sort
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: of looking at what were historic lake levels?
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because like Devil's Lake has a great example
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: of like there's a marina that was built here in
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: the seventies. Now it's totally underwater, and then there's another
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: one built at this stage and it's a quarter mile
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: from the water type of thing, right, But it was
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: like the water was there long enough for somebody to
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 3: build around it.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, that was an interesting, little, oh wild, interesting
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: little venture.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: What I've asked you a bunch of questions. I'm not
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: going to invite you to ask me questions, But what
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: do you what do you wish we had touched on
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: that we didn't get to.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest story of the year was the
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: public land selloff, right, and that was also the counter narrative.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: We had a lot of threats to the places that
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: we care about in twenty twenty five. What gives me
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: hope is the breadth of the of the coalition that
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: came together around what got dropped on all of us
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: out of you know, the thin blue air that no
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: one necessarily knew for sure that was coming until it happened.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: And I was just blown away by the the breadth
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: of that coalition, right like it was. I think at
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: one point I joked it was like bunny huggers to
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: bow hunters, like everybody in between. You had RV industry folks,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: you had oh feed people, you had the greenest of
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: the of the environmental groups, you had the hook and
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: Bullet community, across the sporting sort of spectrum, like people
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: just came together. And as soon as that was real,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: and especially once that map got published that the Wilderness
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: Society did, that made it real for people, and it
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: was like, no, it's not actually about housing because these
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: like these parcels in the middle of western Alaska.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, these like these like islands off southeast Alaska.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: People just stepped up and the spontaneous nature of their
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: pushback was so it was. It was very much rooted
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: in social media. And so normally, as an elected official,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: you can choose to ignore the people call on the
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: front desk, you can choose to ignore the email. But
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: any member of the Senate is on their phone a
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: good couple hours the day, and they couldn't they couldn't
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: get away from it. Got people were just beside themselves
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: and it became a tsunami. And if we could do
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: that on a few other issues, my god, that there're
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: sky so limitous to what you could get done, you.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: Know, And Steve kind of tongue in cheek, he's like
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: he's like so there's too much public land. I think
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 3: if it were accurate, it'd be more like, so I'm
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 3: told there's too much public land, because it's like it's
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: not the end user that is out there saying there's
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: too much public land.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's like that's the that I bring up
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: that same thing all the time around it and I
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: and I like to prod this question is like the deer,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: too many deer. I'm like, man, all season long, not
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: a single guy has called me to tell me, not
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: a single one of my buddies has called me to
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: complain about all the deer, the.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: Just too many deer. I want to ask you, I'm
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: worried about mule deer in particular, and you because I
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: you know, I apply for permits in New Mexico and
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: my schedules will bear, and so if I have a
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: week off that I'm not in d C in October,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: like that's what I'm going to apply for. But you
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: get to see mule deer across their range? Are you
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: worried about the direction with mule deer?
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Very much so? And this is this is a drop
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: in the bucket, but it's it's it's a drop of
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: the bucket. But it's just like a guidance thing, a
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: family guidance thing. I've announced a moratorium for my family.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: We have a we have a meal.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: This is gonna like everything. You can't say anything doesn't
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: piss people off.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: I've announced a family moratorium on the harvest of Meldier
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: does because I'm just the same way I'm warning them
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: about eating the bugs and the fighting the wars over water.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to warn them about a future when Mulder
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: are no more, or Mulder aren't a hunt or aren't
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: a hunted thing anymore. That's right, Yeah, that they or
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: Mildier become like big horns which used to be able
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: to stand. Like you read mountain man accounts and they're
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: counting four hundred big horns on a hill where there
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: are no big horns anymore. Right, And now you can
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: apply in your state, if you live in the West,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: you can apply in your state for twenty years, for
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: thirty years and not hunt a big horn.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: I apply every year. I've never had a big horn.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: And they just because they just live in the last
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: little remaining pockets of perfect shit where all their enemies
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: can't get them, right, And it's like elk are great,
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: but there's more elk and more places, and it's something's
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: got to pay the price. White tails. I don't want
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: to say that, you know, white tails are great.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: White tails in a lot of places. Something's got to
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: pay the price. It's like, and it's just again and again,
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: mule deer get kicked in the nuts. Yeah, they're they're
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: less talentant.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: I'm really worried about it.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: Anybody can go, like, I got mualder in my yard.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: I see meal deer on the golf course.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: It's like, you do. That's but there weren't.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: There aren't as many that were there before it happened. Sure,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: there's still a meal deer that licks your car window right, like,
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: I get it, But there were ten there before.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: And if you go to the hills outside of town
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: where they used to be all over the place, you're
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: not going to see. Yeah, it's I'm deeply worried about
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: mule there this species, and I would I think there
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: is a reticence among state game and fish agencies to
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: admit how bad it is, because then we have to
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: figure something out.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: Because it's like, and I'm always an advocate of like
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: local you have to have localized regulatory structures. And a
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: thing I like to explain when demonstrating the need for
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: localized is how is it that we have elk hunting
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: in America when elk have only been recovered on less
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: than twenty percent of their native range. That doesn't make sense. Well,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: because in certain parts of certain states elk are doing fantastic.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: They're missing from Wisconsin for the most part, they're missing
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: from Michigan for the most part.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: They're missing from all these places they were.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: But in some places we have them, So you can't
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: say there's no elk hunting because they're not everywhere there.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: In some places we have numbers that are so high
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: that they're actually impacting other natural resources. So of course
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: we're gonna.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: Hunt, so there is localized But I just with one
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: thing I worry about with mieldeer is that we've drawn
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: the boxes so very very small where we're like one
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: side of the river we're trying to reduce harvest. This
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: is here, there's in this state one side of the
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: river we're trying to encourage a reduction in harvest. The
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: other side of the river we're killing dose. And when
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: you're on that river. What do you see. It's just
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: like we've gotten I feel like we've shrunk some of
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: the the the management stuff is kind of like, well,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: that guy's got problems with his field and and we're
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: not letting them.
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: Spread. I don't know. I'm worried. Yeah, I don't sit around.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not working.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that there's a brilliant future for
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: whitetail hunting. There's a brilliant future for elk hunting. I
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: don't think there's a brilliant future for mialdeer hunting.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 3: Well, I think the game agencies have a hell of
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: a deal on their hand right Like it's it's we
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: need to find the ability for people to go out
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: and have the opportunity and promote the opportunity because that's
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 3: what brings the dollars in. But we have to constantly
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: adapt to everything, like the fragmentation of landscape, the increase
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: in population in states like Montana that typically haven't seen
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 3: a big increase in population, the adaptation of very available
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 3: new technology that increases the effected the efficacy of hunters
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: in the field a lot of times, and we don't
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: the agencies don't adapt fast and in there in fact,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 3: that's just not how they're built. It's like we need
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: to get the appropriate data together, and it's like we're
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 3: always behind, right, So it's a tough job.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a tough job.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 3: Center. I got a secret miss mission for you. I
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: want when you're up in DC and you're reb and
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: shoulders with other senators, I just want you to like
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 3: casually drop and just be like, oh yeah, A bunch
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: of my constituents were calling me, uh, just talking about
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: how how bad the mule deier population is and just
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: see what what the response is. Like you guys ever
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: had those types of day all the mule deer hunters
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: call in right in.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: One thing we can all agree on is that the
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: milier hunters.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: What a pain in the air.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and I think too.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 4: It's like, I know, there's a lot of people in
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 4: Montana that are very, very concerned about the state of
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 4: our muald deer herd and would welcome reduction and opportunity
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 4: or at least like a.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: You know, more of a man, more of a managed
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: to pros. I'm sure it's on there. I'm sure it's
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: on the horizon, but there's.
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 4: A lot of people out there who are just kick
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 4: and scream at the first sort of shrinking.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: Of the opportunity pool. You know, it's it's painful.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 4: You got to communicate the communicating the fellow hunters, the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 4: need for that sort of step.
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 3: If I could see looking across the board, and you're right,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: we get to drop in and see a bunch of
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: different management strategies. But like you look at like this,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 3: the length of the center fire rifle season in Oregon
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: where there's lots of big bulls and big mule there,
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 3: but they'll have like a five day center fire rifle season,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: And I see that as like a real possibility all
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 3: across the West, where it's like, Okay, if you want
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 3: to bring all the stuff out, the infrared and the
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: all the technology that's at your disposal, you gotta seventy
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: two hour most of our season five day seas, right,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: you're gonna and it's gonna be this little window. But
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: then if you want to have less, it's gonna be this.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 3: And if you want to get more primitive, it's gonna
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: be this. So people can have the opportunity without without
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 3: the effect on the resource.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what you're saying, I understand what you're saying,
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: but there's a big difference between managing like managing for
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: trophy meal deer hunting, and managing for the future of
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: meal deer. If someone looks and says, what is the
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: what is the long term challenges that meal deer face?
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: The long term challenge is that meald deer face. Isn't
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: that they're all getting shot, no it.
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: I'd put it at habitat habitat fragmentation.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, habitat fragmentation when I brought up, and I know
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: I introduced the idea of it, but I mean, just
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: like with my kids, I would never even a deer.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: If a dear friend of mine was had his kids
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: shooting miald your does, I'm not gonna say a word
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: to them, like at all.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to think of negative thought.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: But I'm just what I meant by that was just
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: as a way of sort of giving my kids a
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: heads up about something. I'm like, you know what, you
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: guys shoot all the white tailed That's not true because
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: I complain when they shoot me white tail does. But
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: then I got to deal with them.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: But you guys get all the white tail dos you want.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: But we're just we're not shooting Milder does go shoot
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: the white tail dos.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, as we I'm not arguing with
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 3: you here, but just as the example, it's like there's
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 3: it's like just that stacking up of effects kind of
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: like we were talking on on Ambler and it's like, well,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 3: we're not going to regulate unfortunately, like the fragmentation of
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: a big family ranch that wants to break it up.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a bummer.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 3: We can try through folks like TPL who do a
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 3: fantastic job, but.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: It's not gonna become a government position where some agency
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: comes in and says, no, you got to keep it
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: for the rest of your lives.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: Right right, exactly. Well, and you know what happened with
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: the sage grouse. We're just seeing to spendy years down
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: the road. It's the same habitat challenges. I hope I'm
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: wrong about Milder. It's hard to picture that I'm wrong.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the are like uniquely American species is like that's
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 3: where we need some like American first americanism, right, sage grouse,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: prairie chickens, antelope, mountain goats.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, real America.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 3: So they don't I don't have they don't have friends
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: on other continents, right, like we can need some some
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: popularity contests around those things.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: Uh, Senator Martin hin answer coming on and talking to us.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: Man, it's been a long time, and I'm glad I
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: did this. I think last time we did this was
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: probably twenty fifteen or something, was it right? Yeh? Did
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: we record in your office? In my office? Yeah?
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, are you gonna ask him the big question?
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. You mean like,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: was he gonna do it his life? Yeah?
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So what happens with what you got?
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: Term limits?
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: So what goes on in New Mexico? What are you
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: gonna do?
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: Uh? There are no term limits. I'm you know, what
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: I have said is I'm not running for governor right now.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: I'm focused on getting the country through a couple of
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: hard years and then we'll go from there. Not running
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: for governor. That's right.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: That we had a dude on there day that's running
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: for governor of Iowa.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's great. He's a hunter. I've known him
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: for a long time.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: He killed Yeah, two nine, I'd be happy to go along.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: No, he's say, you're not running for governor?
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a big There was a big back
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: and forth about whether I should run for governor in
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: about a year ago, and made a decision especially I think, uh,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm ranking member on Energy and Natural Resources now,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: and so I get a lot of influence on potentially
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: what happens there. We're obviously in the minority, which is
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: not a lot of fun, but you know, I could
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: I could see a path where we're back in the
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: majority and in a little over a year, so we'll
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: see what happens.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: Is it is it. I'm not talking about you, but
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: I understanding. Like if you look at the in political history, yea,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: do people there's sort of a hierarchy of influence, right,
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: Like like you know, the president, if you're a you
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: don't say I'm I'm stepping aside from being the president
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: to be the governor, right, It's just because you know,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: you generally want highest level of influence just human nature.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: Are there cases where someone has left their office as
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: a senator in order to in order to assume a
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: role as a governor and not see their term through.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know about not see their term through, but
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: like it's a tough place to be right now, and
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: so I think you're you're seeing more House members leave
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: to to run for state offices. Yeah, I mean, and
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: I think I would. I'd be very surprised if you
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: don't see a lot of retirements in the House of Representatives,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: in particular in the in the coming weeks as people
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: go home and spend the holidays with their families.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: Will Yeah, because well, I was just gonna ask about her.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: But was there a is it rumored that she was just.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: Like Michael Bennett, who's a you know, my colleague from Colorado.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: He's he's running for governor in Colorado and he's currently
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: he's currently the US Center, but he's seeing his term through.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: That's a good question. I don't know what cycle he's on.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Man, I all the time think I don't I'll
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: never do it, Like I've told my wife, I'll never
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: do it.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: But I do think it'd be interesting to go into politics. Man.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: But God, probably hate it. You've had that, We've had
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: that conversation.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: But always think about it. Wouldn't that be the worst
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: thing in the world.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: He tried to talk to me in and running for president.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 4: You know what, you know what.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: You brought it up.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna bring it up. Do you want me
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: to talk about what you were asking when we talk
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: about what happened that day? Or should we just not
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: just leave it privately between us.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I just think, uh, I think it's great that
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: there are people. I think if you, if you are
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: going to run for president one, you need to be
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: all in, all in, all in, and it tends to
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: be able to weather those campaigns. It also helps just
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: to be a little full of yourself. And I know
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: I'm in this because I want to fight for my
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: constituents who need it, and I want to stand up
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: for things like public land and wildlife that don't get
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: enough attention.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was bringing up with you. You brought it up.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: I was bringing up with you launching a primary challenge, yep.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: And I remember that when I brought up to you
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: what would happen? Yeah, I was kind of it was
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: almost like a civics question, right, But I was like,
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: why don't you do a primary challenge? And I remember
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: that you didn't even get me an answer.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the the answer is like, structurally it
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: is it that would almost be a fool's errand to
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: run against the sitting president, even with the the you know,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: the weaknesses that we can now see in that city.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: And like one, first off, I was one of the
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: people who called for jas Joe Biden to step aside,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: that said, I respect him deeply. He is somebody that
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: I have a like. This is a guy who would
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: will call up my kids out of the blue and
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: be just like, hey, how are you doing, like randomly,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: honestly because he met him when he swore me in
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: as a senator, that said, I could see the writing
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: on the wall. And you know, that's why I was
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: one of the people who stood up and said we
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: need to make a change here. None of it was ideal.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: He would have been an incredible one term president and
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: instead now we have another president who is showing signs
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: of ag and I'm not into it, for I don't
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: need the stature. And I've watched presidents have to make
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: very difficult life or death decisions and I'm not sure
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: that's my calling. So well, I always, no matter what
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: I'm doing, be focused on conservation, and I'll work with
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: anybody who from the other side or my side, or
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: what have you, to to make some progress there. Because
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: the natural world is kind of what keeps me going
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: like I go home to New Mexico, or I'll go
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: someplace with someone like yourself and see what's left of
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: the big natural world and that recharges my batteries and
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: then I can go back and fight. Yeah.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: I just like to see them hunters in the I
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: like to see hunters and fishermen in the politics.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, I know.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, even though you didn't kill a bull this year,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 3: I feel like it's still indorse.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: You know, don't get me started. You could probably you
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: could chase in whitetails back east to put some to
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: put some protein in my freezer.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, and it would be I got entled
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: the first bow hunting. I don't know, you don't want to.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: I know you're not comfortable with it, but I don't
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: know that we've had an archery. We haven't had a
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: bow hunter president yet, probably not in a while.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: God, that'd be some bad pr What do you do
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: with all those secret service and stuff?
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: And yeah, like Paul Ryan's bow Hunter that was his
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: code name, Paul. Paul and I used to you know,
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: we were in the house. We both would sleep in
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: our offices, and you know, I'd see him every morning
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: in the in the gym and brush teeth next to
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: him and we would talk bo honey. Oh really yeah,
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: it's a good thing to talk about with people. All right.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for coming on man my pleasure. Yeah,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: keep up the fight.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you you too.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, i'd like you, uh like to hear you
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: representing the perspective of people that love wild places.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: So thank you very much. Public