Latest / Follow the Leighder / Hunters, Conservation, and Public Lands | Project Upland

Transcript

Hunters, Conservation, and Public Lands | Project Upland · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks, and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder... I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining me, folks, this is from two sides of the country. We got coaches here today. AJ joining us from New Hampshire and Jennifer joining us from Washington State. Welcome both to the studio. AJ, how's it going over there in New Hampshire? A.J.: Can't complain. It's falls here and the leaves are changing color, so I'm happy. Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. And leaves changing over there in Washington, Jennifer? Jennifer: They are. I'm in the central part of the state, which is not the wet side that people think about. And so yes, we get beautiful fall colors and perfect days. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Beautiful. And I love Central Washington too. I had some ti a bit was it two summers ago I spent time in Yakima, Jennifer: Mm, yep. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and and that whole area and just wow, wow. And then of course New Hampshire. My dad used to take me to New England pretty frequently. He loves baseball. So that was like his thing. He'd take us up to ba go watch baseball. He is A.J.: He's a Boston fan. Leigh/@followtheleighder: he is a Boston fan. But folks, that is not why I gathered these beautiful, wonderful people from Project Upland to to Upland to Talk about baseball. No, today I want to talk about conservation and why it is absolutely critical. Folks, are when we talk about Project Upland, and I want to AJ, I know you are the founder here, and of course Jennifer is the creative director, or so sorry, AJ DeRosa is the founder and creative director of Project Upland, and Jennifer Wapinski is the director of operations as well as the president. This is the Project Upland Foundation. This is all about conservation. and does quite get entangled in conversations with hunting, public lands, tribal management, conservation. We did conservation, but I mean this is a very large, interconnected topic is is the topic of conservation. Can you talk to us, AJ? Just how you went about founding Project Upland. A.J.: Yeah. you know, I wouldn't say it's some profound story of altruistic motivations for conservation. It was an excuse to go hunting more often. and it spiraled into just a hobby into what we see it today. And you know, I've spent a little more than a decade finding people that are smarter, more talented, and whatnot than me to turn Project Upland into what it is today. Hence Jennifer. and you know, you the the title of director of operations is a generous way of saying Jennifer is way better at running a company than me. Jennifer: Mm. A.J.: and so yeah and over the years you know I've I've always been involved in conservation in some capacity whether it's nonprofits or whatnot. But as Project Upling grew, our voice grew and that voice became we articulated that voice more. we spent a lot of time researching. You know, at the end of the day we're we're journalists. So you do a lot of researching and you start to learn a lot of things. And in our hunting community, you know, there could be a debate of whether it's purposefully suppressed or just at this point we've lost the narrative so far that we just don't remember. But the the truth when you get un under under everything is far different than what you see in hunting culture and conservation. and we've really drifted. So Project Upland somehow found itself incidentally being a strong voice for reason and really trying to bring what I always say bring us back to being Eldo Leopold's and not Ted Nugent's. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Yeah, I I like that direction. Jennifer, I mean, w were you a big hunter? What brought you into Project Upland? Jennifer: I I am what we refer to as an adult onset hunter. So I didn't start hunting until my 30s. and I came into it not as a family legacy, not as something I had grown up doing, but it started with a being an intersection between loving outdoor activities and having a curiosity about where my food came from. And that has snowballed completely out of control in the last decade for me, but it it It, you know, started with fishing and then it moved into bird hunting and now it's moving into keeping livestock and big game hunting and that sort of thing. But I joined Project Upland first because I wrote a story about my first dog and and submitted it. And then that that accelerated and and now I'm a co owner along with AJ. And you know, at our at our core, we're a publishing company. We produce a magazine about upland bird hunting. we produce a couple of films each year. We publish about a book. Per year. And so we ultimately are storytellers and we want to tell the story of hunting and hunters. And as time goes on, and we really think about what we are doing and what message are we sending? And what do we have control over in terms of what we say? We just really feel this burden of portraying hunting to the rest of the world in a way that's responsible. And shows the the best side of it. and at the same time bringing into the hunting community this need to understand that you're part of the bigger picture of conservation and public lands and science and science-based management. It's all interconnected. And the more hunters understand that and the more hunters are perceived as being a part of that, we think the better the future is for not only the environment and our public lands, but also for the hunting community. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. And that's I mean, that's a great point that you were making. You're you're a media company. You're your storytelling. Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: How in the last several years, can you talk about some of the stories? I mean, y'all have been doing this for a while. Have you seen a change in stories or tone in stories just as politics or the landscape has changed, or have people just continued to write about the hunting? Like have you seen any sort of concerns come up in your writing? Jennifer: Yeah, I I think that's chicken and an egg question because are are we Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Jennifer: seeing more stories coming or are we steering the ship in that direction? and I think, you know, certainly last year, last summer, we had the the big very public public lands fight, and outdoor groups from all across the spectrum, from the REI crowd to the Cabela's crowd, suddenly saw that we had this shared interest that we we wanted to protect our public lands and to speak up for for those that wanted to sell them. But I think part of the message that's really important is that neither political party owns hunting. I think there's a lot of stereotypes about what a hunter is and how they vote and what their values are. And we want to challenge that. There are a lot of people on the liberal side of the aisle that own guns. that do not want to take your guns and that value that interconnectedness between science and where our food comes from and the environment. And and it's it's incorrect and it's disingenuous to say that that's strictly a a right side of the aisle activity. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and absolute yeah. And and to a right side of the aisle or inhumane. I mean, like, there's certainly ways you can be inhumane about protocols, but I mean, the more you look into it, the more you learn. It is a very there's there's a sacredness to it that I found. Like talking to a lot of hunters. There's a a woman's hunting school here in Missoula, Montana called the Venery. And she in her and it specifically like it's both firearm and archery and and talking about there's like a whole section on it on on the emotional aspect of it and and embracing that side. And I don't know that a lot of folks know that that you can have that, that there are trainers or people mentors that are absolutely human about exactly what you're walking into and have done this for a long time. And I just the the mentorship in the community I found Without even being like really in the hunting world. I I I do firearm shooting at the range, but I'm not in hunting yet. I'd like to go into bow archery hunting, but it's just been like the community is just really embracing and really prioritize safety. Like, I mean, over it was just I don't know, I think people get this idea of a bunch of gun nuts, you know? Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I That it's a very, very small, very zealous part of any part of the community of firearm owners. And ninety-nine percent of people take that very seriously and very responsibly. Can you talk about what is going on? We can go by region if you'd like and and look at specific problems, or we can just kind of talk about nationally, but there is Quite a number of things with our public lands, rolling back of environmental regulations, possibly mining and data, AI data centers and whatnot. Talk to us as someone who either one of you can decide too, who wants to choose. But but talk to my listeners about what you are seeing from the conservation side of the world and leading into some concerns you have for the f near future. How How is a conservation how are you feeling about certain policies and conservation? Let's just go let's just go with that. And Jennifer, if you have an answer or we can go to AJ. Either one of you wants to pop in. Jennifer: I I I was gonna toss that one to AJ to start. A.J.: you know, there's a couple different layers. There's the funding layer, which is a significant one. and then there's obviously rollbacks of regulations. and it's incredibly nuanced and incredibly complex. And it's whether people realize it or not, it's already a dis disaster. And even if we come back from what we've done, it's gonna take decades. you know besides doing Project Upland, I serve as the chairman of a Hampshire Fish and Game Commission. So I'm often on the front lines of policy and funding crises and what that means. And federal policy affects state agencies and how we manage my wildlife immensely. and so everything from this kind of wholesale agreement to roll back the Endangered Species Act by one political party. you know, hunters have lost you know, we're we're incredibly naive because all of us grew up With the benefits of the Endangered Species Act. You know, we have more deer to hunt, more birds to shoot, more, you know, all these different things. There is more of it as a result of the Endangered Species Act. So we're divorced from that crisis and we can't see the benefits we've reaped. So there's this wholesale agreement to get rid of this because it restricts things. It doesn't make things better. And it's that's not the truth. And then you look at the funding mechanisms, and whether it's scientific research for the US geological geological my god Jennifer help me out here thank you surveys Jennifer: Geological. A.J.: which which is you're talking about indexes which are monitoring species and how species populations are fluctuating. Well the science of these things wildlife management requires data to exist in perpetuity forever. The longer an index exists, the longer we track something The more we know, the more we can decide what goes up and down in populations. So on a federal level, you're seeing these things defunded, you're seeing these things reduced. There's a quiet push to take our duck surveys, our waterfall surveys that we've traditionally done every year to move them to three years, every three years. And the threats that that will actually do with policy change like that are gonna have cascading effects for generations. you know, we're we're incredibly naive because the True conservation movement happened at the you know turn of the 20th century. And what it looked like in the wild in the 1920s versus what it looks like in 2020s is vastly different. We are incredibly spoiled. and we are now going in the wrong direction. and these policies, and that's just it. It's it's the problem is that there's, you know, we struggle with this as Project Upland. We're a small group of people and for us to cover every issue, there's just not enough days in the week. there's not enough time to just look at every little fact, whether it's NOAA being defunded and now you have an estuary that lose funding and now you have waterfowl areas that now are less regulated as a result, which results in issues. You have just these random small things that you might not think matters or where we go from, you know, the The general consensus in the science community for wildlife management was to move towards a habitat-based style management, which that you manage for habitat and therefore many species win. What we're seeing right now from the current administration is a removal of habitat management. So d destroying a habitat doesn't matter if you can't prove an animal's there. And we've gone through this in the state of New Hampshire with rollbacks around endangered species stuff. And this is the problem is. For some species, they don't live in a specific habitat all year. They only live in that habitat part of the year. And that can be even more dramatic when you go out west and you have large species like mule deer or elk that are migrating greater distances. never mind. You have sage grouse that are, you know, have a 40 mile s you know radius of where they're living and have sight fidelity for breeding. Where if you come in and you frack there, that's it. That they're just dead. They're they're not smart enough. Or I I shouldn't say smart enough. They're not adaptable enough to just move and start breeding somewhere else. So these things are things that we might never recover from. And if we do recover from, it could take a hundred years. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I have so many questions. Jennifer, before I ask, do you do you have anything to Jennifer: Yeah. A.J.: Ha ha Leigh/@followtheleighder: add to that? Jennifer: so just to underscore what he was saying, there's a continuity in data that really matters. And decisions are made on data that we have collected every year. And if we stop doing that, okay, we save a little bit of money now. But in 10, 20, 30 years, we've now lost, we have no vision of what our data looks like at this time period. We don't we don't know what's happening to species. We don't know what's happening in these bird counts. You know, we don't know exactly what it is that we're trying to solve for if we don't collect the data. And and not collecting data is l akin to sticking your head in the in the sand. It doesn't make the problem go away. Now you just don't have facts to talk around. and so that's why keeping this funding going year after year is not at all wasteful. And it's it's an important part of making smart decisions on how we prioritize conservation in the future. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Do all have a a rough estimate of how much money was cut from funding towards data collection or data research? No, that's okay. A.J.: That that it I I would tell you that even, you know, proactively doing stuff in a state agency, we can barely figure that out. And we don't know when some of it's gonna happen. it's it's right now, you know, it's very reactionary for state agencies. And I th so I think there's an important factor here is that when a lot of conservations talked about specifically for hunters. Whether hunters realize it or not, they're specifically talking about state wildlife agencies. And so state wildlife agencies, although they're regulating their state and they're doing work in their state, they're largely funded through federal mechanisms. And so therefore there comes this level of federal reliance. and so there's cascading effects that happen. when these things happen. So when people say things like, you know, hunters pay for conservation, they're talking about Pittman Robinson, which is a federal mechanism to tax firearms and ammunition. And then that money doesn't just, you know, like go off into the federal government and be done. What happens is that goes to fund all of the 50 state agents wildlife agencies that actually manage wildlife in each of our states. So so there is this kind of separation of federal and state, but ultimately to all lands and state management outside of when we talk about obviously federal lands and we start talking about BLM, national parks, monuments, whatever it might be, then the mechanisms are a bit different. So Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. But something like a beaver manager or a stream morphologist would probably fall under this funding. A.J.: Yeah, so essentially, yeah, a lot of biologists, first Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. A.J.: agencies are being paid for by federal funding. And what happens is is it's it's a and I'll super simplify it. So we come up with one dollar to pay that biologist and the federal government sends us three dollars in match. So we've turned one dollar into four dollars. So if and I'm gonna do simple round numbers, I hope biologists are making more than forty grand a year, but if they're making forty grand a year, the state's paying ten grand for it and the feds are probably paying for the other thirty grand. So Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay, thank you. And that's common and that's pretty standard throughout across the states. This okay. A.J.: It is. so yeah, and that so there's an important caveat to that, which is wildlife agencies don't just do game species and they don't do just hunting, they do angling. and obviously they're they are also the agencies that are tasked with enforcing the Endangered Species Act. So they're doing non-game management as well. and if you actually look at the data, it works out to you know, there's a big claim you'll see in the hunting communities that hunters pay for all of conservation. Couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, it's it's an unfortunate spin. Our culture is riddled with this just kind of corruption of messaging. hunters, it works out to about on average, about 22% of a state agency's budget comes directly from hunters. And that means direct sale of licenses. And then what's important for Pittman Robinson is that. The vast amount of money is not coming from hunters buying guns and ammunitions. It's coming from target shooters buying guns and ammunition. So when you actually take that national average on who's just going out and target shooting versus who's actually hunting, the number comes all the way down to about 22% of each state agency. And it's also important to remember, too, that on federal lands, state agencies are the ones that are setting. season limits, they're setting hunting dates, they're most likely enforcing hunting and angling laws. there's some cases where the feds might do some of that, but it largely falls to state responsibility. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you for explaining and walking out the mental map for folks. Jennifer: Mm-hmm. A.J.: huh. Leigh/@followtheleighder: talk to us too. Okay. What that that funding aspect and and really breaking that myth about how hunters are the backbone of the conservation world. They are in terms of of that for sure. Talk about y you've already mentioned the Endangered Species Act. You know, out here we talk about wolf reintroduction. And we don't have to go down that if you don't want to, but but mainly talking about s not just wolves, but how some of these introductory programs have helped or hurt either hunting or conservation. Have have they you're nodding. Jennifer, I don't do you want to answer this? Jennifer: well a a story came to mind. so to paint a little bit clearer picture here, we are Project Upland is a publishing company. We just this year launched the Project Upland Foundation, which is a nonprofit sort of arm that that is affiliated with Project Upland, but is its own independent charity. And our aim is to connect hunters to research and the funding of research and to support research projects that are being done on game bird species and their habitat. And so as part of that, we are getting to talk to some really cool people that are doing cutting edge research on various game bird species. And and so as part of that, we're working with a researcher out of it's University of Montana, right? yeah A.J.: Yep. Darth or McDonald. Jennifer: Yeah, that's right. Or it was Montana State. I'm trying to make sure I I get the right that's right. Montana State University. A.J.: Montana State University. Yeah. Jennifer: and he was doing a Sharptail Grouse reintroduction reintroduction project west of the Continental Divide. And so they get all this money, they get all this work, they get postdocs working on this, reintroducing Sharp Tail into this particular area. Project's done, funding's gone, everybody applauds. They don't have funding to go back in and check and see, were we successful? And so they put the birds there and they'd learned as best as they could what they were going to need and where to put them. It was, it's a historical part of their range that they're not currently in. But without that continuity of funding that we were talking about, he doesn't have the data points to go back and look because the grant has expired and the work is over. He can't say, were we successful? And if yes, why? And if no, why not? in in order to really understand the full picture of of the outcomes of that project. And so that kind of thing is frustrating for people who who work in this space who who want the best possible outcomes, but don't have the budget. You know, their their next project is something else and they don't have budget allocated to go back and check and see, you know. How how did we do and and how would we do it differently next time? Leigh/@followtheleighder: You know, one thing that you brought up was how the per how spoiled we are. And I think AJU said this, that we're so spoiled because of the solutions or policies that we've enacted in the past. I just read a book, it was Harley Hoschild, Harley Russell Hoschild, Strangers in their own land, but it was talking about I want to say Louisiana, where because the rivers and swamps have been cleaned up or they've been cleaner because of environmental regulations. People are thinking, we don't need those. And they're rolling Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: them back in some of, I mean, pretty gnarly environments, you know, that might be around fracking or oil or or otherwise or just refinery type things. And I was thinking about that, like the level spoiled you'd have to be to look at something that, you know, people before us were like, hey, we should do this so that more generations can continue to enjoy this. And then we decide that we're good. I don't know. That that doesn't Doesn't seem very A.J.: We've went through this. We've went through this as a culture more than once. And I don't think people realize that. And that was, you know, we we hunted populations to near extinction at the turn of the century. Passenger pigeons are gone forever. we had all these catastrophic c collapses. And if you actually look at the writing of the time where there were people who were advocating towards politicians who were scientists, who were foresters, saying, Hey, listen, like I'm coming from Europe, you know, these were a lot of these folks were immigrants, and they're some of the most famous conservation. People we know, like John Muir, and they came here and they said, Hey, I know that you guys think that this stuff goes on forever, that you you're going out west and you think the trees are just gonna always be there, and you think that all these things are just, you know, the bison are just gonna be endless. and it turns out that that's not true. And and the reaction that we have in the turn of the century is this extreme regulation, you know. I I I think. A lot of people don't realize that, you know, Teddy Roosevelt has more in common with Bernie Sanders and AOC than he does with the modern Republican Party. And what he did was aggressively regulate commercial operations at to a point where he was ousted from his own party. and so this aggressive pushback happened. And, you know, we celebrate this now. You know, this is Hunter's whole claim to fame, you know. We we used to literally whitetail deer where I grew up, they didn't even exist. and and when I was even first old enough to hunt, you'd be lucky to see a a deer and my part of the country. Now they're overpopulated. you know, so point being, this has all come back and we've seen this, and now our reaction is in the opposite direction. you know, like which is like, well, why did we need to regulate these things? And there's just so much of it. And what we're doing is we're actually dooming ourselves again. and The hunting community in particular has i in my opinion has has and I I don't know how purposeful it is, but nevertheless, and you asked about predators, and this comes down to predators. We wildlife management, because it was so game driven, and I mean game as in when when you call something a game species, meaning it's hunted. The original wildlife managers of the early 20th century managed for more game. They weren't saying we want more chestnut-sided warblers. They were saying we want more whitetails, you know, and those are two fundamentally different visions. And especially in the time, it made sense. So, what did we do? We created policies like let's kill all the predators, because the predators are killing the rest of the whitetail that we didn't hunt to extinction just yet. and we obviously banned market hunting, which was a big thing. And then we actually created hunting laws that required, you know, certain limits, certain seasons. We started regulating all this stuff. Well, you come forward now to where we are today, and essentially what that did is we succeeded, but now we've overpopulated game animals and hunters again are spoiled. So a hunter doesn't want to go out and hunt deer in a place that has five to six deer per square mile. Which is probably the healthy balance for a whitetail population in a forested area. They want to go out in an area that has fifty to sixty deer per square mile, you know? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hm. A.J.: And so because now you see a ton of deer every day and you can be picky and choosy and it's it's easier. I I mean we're hitting the easy button. But now there's catastrophic environmental things that happen. The overgrazing of whitale deer in the east coast has resulted in the decimation of native plants, which is s done everything from spread ticks to cause the decline in birds because of all the nesting habitat that's destroyed. You have all these cascading things that happen. And then you look at this and we now realize that hunters ultimately can't kill enough deer to to make that happen. Or you have something even more sinister, which you folks are dealing with a lot more out west. I'm lucky in New Hampshire that we don't have CWD yet, which is chronic wasting disease. Jennifer: Mm-hmm. A.J.: Yes. And so, but it's it New York is the closest state it's been detected, but it's coming. And the truth is, when we reintroduce predators, whether people like it or not, the reintroduction of predators, predators are going to be the number one line of defense we have for any hope against controlling CWD. It's not going to be hunters. The amount of like the ability Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. A.J.: for us to do that or or the you know a a Wolves go out and they hunt in packs. They take down the weakest animals. They're gonna take down the CWD animals. They're gonna do all those things. Hunters don't wanna shoot CWD animals, you know. They don't wanna Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. A.J.: shoot the animal that's sickly looking. They don't, you know, like so you have all these things. So again, we have this innate a culture as hunters that we want abundance. And we did all this abundance. And in those acts of abundance, we've doomed other species. And whether that's the reduction of predators, and now this weird. kind of cultural phenomenon that we just, you know, we act like predators or I guess every pun intended the big bad wolf and they're not. and all the way to just not realizing that you know a cascade in in biodiversity has catastrophic effects when you have less insects, you have less other species and that keeps moving up the food chain. And these collapses will happen suddenly. And whether people realize it or not, we're marching towards that. Now, on top of that, throw in climate change. And I don't want to be all doom and gloom here, but I Jennifer: Ha ha A.J.: very much work on the front lines of this stuff stuff. And excuse my language, we are absolutely screwed. And now adding current politics and and Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah. A.J.: any hope we had of staying ahead of it is just being is just thrown up. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And thank you for bringing that up. No, no, no. Well, A.J.: Sorry. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and and you talking about how numbers have fluctuated over time. I went to a talk out here and it was saying how particularly w the beaver population plummeted when the West started to be settled because it was easier and cheaper to trap and eat beaver. Like it became a it became like a low income kind of thing that was more than a squirrel. But like you didn't have to do the rig or morole of a a larger animal. And then those numbers plummeted and they're back up now. And I mean, I have all the praise in the world for beavers, but like whether it's like beavers or or wolves, there's also speaking of conservation and how things naturally work themselves out. Like, I I've heard of stories internationally of where how big cats around like jungle cats are a massive primary defense between jungle diseases and that village and just having like those cats like without a lot more animals would come back. And I was just like, that's just it nature already has systems in place. So Jennifer, I'm curious with with your you know, you you talk about you're running this more as like the the company side of it and seeing this, you know. on the foundation nonprofit and then also as a media storytelling. What how does American conservation or really specifically hunting American hunting ha what does that look like and is it different compared to other countries? Jennifer: Yeah, great question. and I I one of my many hobbies is my hunting dogs and we have a a a breed that is from Germany and so I do a lot of travel at least once a year, maybe twice a year, go back to Germany and visit the dogs there, but spend a lot of time with hunters and understand how their hunting culture is, what their laws are and and how they how hunters are. of the landscape. And what's particularly interesting to me about Europe and Germany in particular is hunting is much more of, I would say almost part of the agricultural picture than it is here where it's more recreational. I mean, yes, don't get me wrong, of course, it's it's it's a recreational activity, but the way that hunting is managed, there's there's no such thing as public land, right? So they're they're on private land leases where they lease the hunting rights of a particular parcel. But a forester looks at that small property, not the bigger picture, but the small property and says, what can this hold for species by species? How many roe deer can we have on this? How many red stag can we have on this? How many wild boar can we have on this? And then the hunters are obligated to take a certain number each year. And if they don't, they pay penalties for it. So they are obligated to Bring the numbers down to meet that target count, population count for every species. And that's not just the game animals. You know, they're they're gonna be going after the predators to keep the numbers appropriate. They're gonna, you know, look for the martens and the foxes to keep everything in balance. And so it's it's very strictly managed from a resource standpoint, but those resources are the property of. the landowner, which is hugely different from coming to America, where our resources, our our wildlife, our public lands are meant to be held in the public trust and they are to be managed to the benefit of the people. And and so just this idea that we can go out on a piece of public land and with respect to state game laws and seasons and all that can recreate as we wish and take species, you know, hunt them as we wish. That is such a a very different way of looking at wildlife and hunting as an activity than it is, you know, particularly in Europe and in other parts of the world where it is much more about managing for the forests and the land than it is about strictly being a an enjoyment activity. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Are there differences and now I just have to ask between American Jennifer: Ha. Leigh/@followtheleighder: hunting con hunting communities and and German hunting? Like was there Jennifer: so one thing I will say is that in order to obtain your German hunting license, you have to go to school for it. And you have a couple different options of how intensely you want to do it, whether it's just in the evenings or a full-time thing or whatever, but you're looking at a one to two year process of education before you're given a hunting license. And that differs so much from our hunter's education here, which is primarily a safety thing. You know, I like for me, I did an online course and then I spent eight hours one day doing a a field training with some instructors. And basically that's just demonstrating that you can be safe with a firearm. Their hunting education is forestry management. And so they are learning about the species of the trees. They are learning about, you know, all the different components of this habitat and how hunting plays into that as part of maintaining that ecological balance. And so I I Things, you know, d not every American is gonna love the the degree of regulation that they have, but I love the idea of educating hunters not only in the pursuit of the species that they're after, but the larger ecological ecological picture of of how hunters fit into the habitat. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And it sounds so much more holistic. Like it almost like that style, and I know what you're saying, like a lot of folks are not gonna be happy about that Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: level of regulation. One to two years, I know my Montana Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: f my Montana listeners are like, What? What? Jennifer: People revolted here when you had to go to hunter safety, you know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I get it, but you're absolutely right. Like, on the one hand, you wanna s me you know, however, but that holistic education almost reminds me more of like an indigenous way of like the Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: whole the whole puzzle, not just the action, not just the gratuitous like let's just go in and kill it and come back. Like it's it's Jennifer: Yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I really appreciate that. Thank you for going on that little tangent and and and Jennifer: course. I d I do wanna say though, I I I I don't wanna romanticize how things are done in other places because by no means do we want to find ourselves in a situation where hunting is a pay to play activity here. And th this Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Jennifer: idea that we have access to public lands, that wildlife are a public resource, we need to understand that and and guard that fiercely, because i we could very easily end up in a situation where i you have to be fairly wealthy to to you know, obtain a hunting lease and and to obtain permission to to hunt on somebody else's land or to own the land yourself. And that's w we don't want to Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Jennifer: land there. So so there are pros and cons Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's a good point. Jennifer: to both systems, but yeah, we we by no means do we want to end up in a situation where there's no more public land or or not a public resource for the wildlife. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. You and and yes, thank you for for providing that that pay to play aspect. Like that Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: is the problem with A.J.: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: regulation is that it does breed separation. That that can do that. And again, going back to that public lands component, you are on opposite sides of the country. and I'm I'm sitting here in Montana. I've had lots of wildfires this summer. at the same time that there were funding cuts to, you know, things like smoke jumpers or things Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: to logging. Can you talk about some of the issues? you you talked about climate change, talk about conservation. How Are there specific species or certain concerns that hunters are are there yeah, that that we could on the not I don't know if like risk of losing, but yeah, of course with the Endangered Species Act, but like what are some things that hunters really need to to keep in mind, especially going into midterms? A.J.: I I would say as bird hunters, we are not spoiled when it comes to abundance, because most native game birds are not trending in a good direction. you know, you look at American woodcock, which are actually probably one of the more stable populations, especially for eastern game birds, still has an annual annual decline of two percent in the eastern flyway. you look at rough grouse and because of climate change, because most people don't realize they need snow. They need a lot of snow and they need snow that doesn't freeze and unfreeze. and so probably within my lifetime, rough grouse will be essentially gone from the lower 48 states in any huntable populations. you look at sage grouse and the crisis of energy fracking and the fragmentation of habitat around sage steps. the encroachment of cheat grass or the encroachment of different types of trees and stuff on sage steps that are causing these declines. prairie chickens, huge benefactory of the Endangered Species Act are now thrown out the door. you know, lesser prairie chickens were unlisted. you know, so point being as bird hunters, things don't actually look too good for us. we've always been fighting an uphill battle. Game birds tend to often be bellwether species. And for folks that don't know what a bellwether species is, a bellwether species usually represents a species that requires highly complex and different habitats. So rough grouse, Aldo Leopold, referred to Rough Grouse as a bellwether bird for forests, and essentially They require early successional growth, they require mature trees, they require all this different various types of habitat to live out their entire twelve month life cycle that they go through. And when you don't have that, there's a dramatic drop and they're incredibly insensitive to it. They can't survive fragmentation like most game birds. So point being, for us in the game bird world, there is generally a decline issue. Not to say that there isn't in big game. I mean, mule deer migration is a huge issue. Elk migration's a huge issue. you know, in fact, we don't even know truly, like we're actually moving today we're actually moving more towards large mammals being able to make full migrations than we have in the past when we're doing stuff like building bridges and Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. A.J.: you know, to overpass highways and stuff like we've actually done incredible amounts to try to recreate what we've ultimately destroyed, you know. waterfowl, you know, a whole other thing. I mean, the problem is is that if their breeding ground somewhere is destroyed, it doesn't matter if they normally come and migrate down to Louisiana because they died, you know, six states up north of you. So so Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. A.J.: So the the issues are complex in in that regard as far as you know decline's concerned. There are, you know, obviously wild successful things. I mean, black bear in most states are populated through the roof to the point of overabundance. same with whitetailed deer. so there there are kind of various versions of these stories in yeah, but I think it's important to remember that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. A.J.: Game management in one of the biggest crises that we're grappling with in 2026 is that we did actually build this entire wildlife management idea around hunting and angling. and the problem is that that left all sorts of species to the wayside. And so, point being, there's no primary funding mechanism for those things. There are funds that exist, like whether it's Land and Water Act. various things that could create habitat, whether it is the Endangered Species Act or whatnot. But the Endangered Species Act, this is kind of the thing, right? Like you you we should be doing things enough before something thing be some before Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. A.J.: something becomes endangered. Like that's a last resort. In fact, very few things are ever gonna come off the Endangered Species Act. especially Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. A.J.: s smaller things. you know Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. A.J.: the smaller the critter is the less likely it is to survive that listing. as as far as so, you know, instance of that type of policy, when you think about election cycles, we've gone through many iterations of what people know as RAWA or Recovering America's Wildlife Act, which failed multiple times. we did a bunch of media coverage around it the last time it was trying to pass. And what that was was to create what Pittman Robinson does for game species or the Sports Fish Restoration Act does for game species. Fish. so that's essentially the fishing version of Pittman Robinson. what RAWA would have done or Recovering America's Wildlife Act, it would have created this funding mechanism for non-game species. So what would have happened is it would have created this massive pool of money through the federal government. So now a state can say, well, hey, you know, I need to manage for brown nosed bats, which are declining. and as a result, now I can take my $1 that I somehow found in my state to manage for brown nose bats, and that gets mashed three three dollars by the feds. And now you create this massive funding source so we can start to plug these different things. The problem is that the Endangered Species Act, especially in which the time it was passed, was very reactionary because of some serious crises. The Endangered Species Act, people need to realize is a last resort. It should scare you when it's being used. It like we should be scared. And the problem is that we're sitting here fighting about the Endangered Species Act. And the reality is that we need to put policies and funding mechanisms and things in place that stop things from even getting to that point in the first place. And believe it or not, for all the successes America has done in conservation, we still kind of suck at it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I I mean, I recently not recently, two years ago, I I had the opportunity to go to Scotland and and Sweden and I got to see how they manage their national parks. And of course, like you said, Jennifer, they're totally different than the United States. even I golly, I mean, just as this is like a little drag on Americans, sorry, Americans, but a lot of our national parks are not dog friendly because Americans are bad at training dogs. sorry. Yeah, I there yeah, there are A.J.: That doesn't surprise Jennifer. Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: like I'm okay, yeah, you're right. You're you're not gonna be offended by that. You're like, yeah, tell me about it. I but I do. Like I I I have been to k to Canada, Scotland, Sweden, like where they they just have a different relationship with a lot of different things. And I think part of it is approaching things a little bit more holistically instead of just like this into like, let's look at the the whole thing. Jennifer, you I know we're we're pushing up right against time here, but can you talk to us a little bit about Project Upland and how, you know, us as followers can we support, donate, subscribe? Like what what how can we uplift Project Upland? Jennifer: Sure, thanks. so so two pieces to this answer. The first is our for-profit business, Project Upland. And we have a a quarterly magazine that we produce. we have decided with that magazine to be subscriber funded, meaning we do not rely on advertisers to to foot the bill for the magazine. And so yes, we have some ads, but we're very selective about what goes in there and and the the majority of That effort is funded by our subscribers. And so because of that, we're not beholden to, you know, what the latest gun company or dog food company wants us to say or not say or or whatever. So, so we want to tell stories for our subscribers. a lot of what we've talked about here today has been the direction that we've been going with our magazine and with our online content and of just this real burden on our hearts to portray hunters in a in a positive way, to portray the right kind of hunting, like AJ said, more Aldo Leopolds, fewer Ted Nugents, you know, to to to show the world that hunting, being a hunter does not make you a bloodthirsty, out for blood bad person, that that it is very much a part of a healthy environment. and so that's the attitude that we want to take to everything that we publish. And so You can check out our website, projectupland.com, to kind of get a feel for our voice and who we are. we encourage you to subscribe to the magazine, especially if you are an upland bird hunter or curious about upland bird hunting, but really if you just love birds and if you're open to the idea that you can love something and hunt it and participate in that whole piece of its life cycle. so that's the the business side of it. Then on the foundation. Project Upland Foundation. Our website is Project Upland Foundation.org. We because we just launched that this spring, we are just starting to wrap up our first real campaign, which was raising money for Sharptail Grouse, which those funds are going directly to Dr. Lance McNew's research lab at Montana State University. And those are that's going towards Sharptail Grouse research. Our next campaign following that is going to be on Dusky Grouse. We want to these are proof of concept campaigns. And so we're going to raise some money and then we're going to donate that money. And then we're going to turn around and we're going to tell the story of what did that money do? What is this lab working on? Why does this matter? Once we get a few proof of concepts under our belt, we'd like to grow that into more of a general fund where we have money available and then we can. accept applications for and hand out grants for important research. and and a lot of this money is filling gaps. You know, it we're a small business. It's just a handful of people working on it. And we're not kidding ourselves. We're not rolling in the millions of dollars here that we're trying to give out as grants. But right, right. But Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. W with your subscriber paid. Yeah, right. Jennifer: a lot of this funding that's unallocated money can fill very important gaps that are not filled by grants. You know, a a grant that somebody receives to do work on a project has very strict boundaries of what that money can be used for and what it can't be used for, and after which point in time you cannot use it. And, you know, professors are telling us, I've got cameras out in the woods that are ready to collect data from me, but that project ended and I can no longer I have no money for the subscription for the cloud storage to continue collecting data. I have the equipment, I've got the people, I but I I Can't I have nothing that's earmarked for, you know, some of the silly little stuff like cloud storage subscriptions. And so being able to fill those spaces can have a huge impact, even with the small amount of money, because we are not may we're not requiring that it's allocated for one very specific use case. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you, Jennifer, and to my listeners. I hope that y'all go and and explore, especially I was just reading AJ's article on the roughed grouse and the different colors. So it's a little bit of it's it's kind of like exactly what she was saying. It was stories weaved in with scientific facts. It I'm I'm laughing, because I do this on on my platform on Instagram, where I mainly talk about theology or women's history in public lands. Like that's my background, but and military. But Like I'll just pop in someday and be like, let's talk about trees. And it's just like, Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: we gotta we gotta know what the maple is all about, y'all. And like and and I did a whole series on gemstones. And it really is. It it does like take us to con to to constantly be uplifting the science, the awe, the wonder behind all of it, so that we can have that data so that we can continue to protect it and be good, responsible stewards. Like this is It it it I someone today I was watching a video and it was lab Leo. I don't know, but I need to figure out. But it was some it was anyway. but it showed all of the satellites that are were around Earth and it was something like twenty thousand satellites, and it was so full, like it looked like the COVID virus image, you know, it's like that ball and it has a bunch of spikes all over. That's exactly, and I was like, We're such a virus even like We've even made Earth look like it. Like this is Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: grow. That's just satellites. It's just space junk. They were saying like a quarter of them don't even work. Like they've broken off. And I was just like, come on. You know? And all of it. Sorry, I know that was a tangent listeners, but they're used to it. Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: my my last question for you, AJ. Can you or for both of you if you both want to chime in? But I What are some actions that people listeners today can do to to to get going towards conservation and hunting? What are what are whether it's you know, resharing or reposting or following you, or just some other ways that they could get involved locally? A.J.: I'm gonna give a weird one. it's maybe the lens to look through when you come to the space, which I think hunters fail at and new hunters are unaware of. And that's that conservation for hunting in America has a profoundly liberal history. our policies that carried hunting came from the New Deal, Pittman Robinson, the Duck Stamp Act, that type of stuff. TRCP, I mean I'm sorry, Teddy Roosevelt. was the you know, he was one of the founding members of the Progressive Party. his politics were not welcome inside the Republican Party. And I want people to realize that the success of hunting is from an incredibly socialized system. we have intentionally insulated these animals from capitalism. We've intentionally pooled resources together to do things. We've created public lands, we've created you know, essentially the North American model of conservation, which is about access for all. It's about all all these things that said in certain rooms to the wrong people, they, you know, will say communism or socialism and all those things. But that's your truth. That is our truth as hunters. And we're largely divorced by that. And I want people to realize that the people that fought were largely Democrats. They were progressive Democrats. And those are the people that gave us the legacy we have today. And I don't think, you know, the Democrat Party is some profound fix for hunting. In fact, I think that the Democrat Party has largely been divorced by from their own legacy of what they've done for hunting. And in the opposite end of the spectrum, Republicans have hijacked that narrative and acted as if they were the sole protectors of of. hunting and the reality is is that for the most part their policies have been disastrous. And so point being, my call to action would be is remember that history. And what can you do? How can you act on that history? Well maybe it's actually getting involved in your party, like if you are a Democrat and saying, hey, you know what, I'm a Democrat and I'm a hunter. And I believe in incredibly progr furthermore, maybe you're a progressive, you know, and reclaiming that part of our history And understanding it. And whatever you, and this is the big thing I say to everybody: the facts are all there. Do your own research. Read and understand how all these things happened. And then make your reform decision about who you think is actually worried about the everyday hunter being able to hunt in the future in a knot. And the answer is pretty clear. And part Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, absolutely. A.J.: of that is us doing the hard work to make sure that we're represented. And that hard work is. volunteerism, not just in conservation groups, but in political campaigns. It's trying to be the voice of reason. It's trying to get into rooms to say, hey, by the way, hunter over here in the corner, and I have a couple opinions that I think matter. And in fact, I'm part of your history here. those things are important. And I hope that people can challenge the norm and go out and make their own kind of version of that and their own self-identity. Hunting In of itself is an identity. It's not a political identity, even though it has been corrupted in that way. so form it up to your identity. Like, like, it's okay to feel profound emotions around killing animals. In fact, if you don't, there's something wrong. you know, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you. Jennifer: Mm-hmm. A.J.: there's there's all sorts of things. It's okay to feel afraid of guns. They they can kill things. You should have to have a profound amount of respect for them. so point being. Hunting comes great responsibility. And that responsibility goes to the animals, which have everything to lose. We don't. It goes to those guns that can kill innocent people, never mind animals, you know, and it even goes to the policies and the politics that we do that this is it. Like we have to care about future generations because right now, as a hunter, I'm benefiting from pe people who cared in the past that I don't know, that I never met. that I might not even know their name. And and it's incredibly selfish for us to just look at what's right in front of us and not think about what's out a hundred years from now. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Amen. That was beautiful. That was right there. You just pulled that from the pocket. That was Jennifer: Ha A.J.: I'm f I might be on the soapbox a little too often. Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, and and Jennifer, if you'd like to wrap us up as, you know, take us out. What is some what are some calls to action that folks can do? Jennifer: Yeah, well I certainly can't top that, but vote. Like like it matters. It really does. And the future of hunting is not the Second Amendment and and protected access to guns. First of all, we're not in danger of losing our guns. And secondly, what are we gonna do if there's nothing to hunt and no land to access and no habitat? And like it's such a more complex issue than than what we try to say that it is. So Get educated, look and see who is making, you know, policy decisions that benefit wildlife, who is looking at it from a extractive, consumptive make money off of it standpoint, and who is investing in it for future generations and and decide and vote accordingly. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. This is actually my second podcast today where I was like, You have to vote. Vote, all of you. Get Jennifer: And get your friends to go out and about, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: your front, yeah, make a whole party out of it. Like get on Instagram Jennifer: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and make it like be very vocal and visible about that. Absolutely. Well, AJ and Jennifer, this has been really awesome. And I hope that you will consider coming back for a second interview sometime, maybe after a little bit later, a couple months from now. But also it would be really cool if we could offline talk about how we could all come together and maybe do some content together and just film like I come out to you in New Hampshire, Washington, then of course y'all come to Montana and I can connect you with my crew too. So like and I know you probably already know people. I'll I'll shake your hand. I'll meet your you can introduce some of my friends. And you're like, we know everybody. We Jennifer: Ha ha A.J.: We don't. We're we're we're actually outsiders at the end of the day. Jennifer: We are, yeah. A.J.: We are industry outsiders. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, okay, Jennifer: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: okay. I'll just well, I I love outsiders. We'll just go kicking indoors and I'll be like, they're with me. Jennifer: Perfect. A.J.: Ha Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, folks, that was another episode of Follow the Leighder... I'm your host, Leigh Larson. Do not forget to like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. Drop some comments. You have any questions? I'll hit them up in the next interview. Again, this has been another episode of Follow the Leighder... Until next time, see ya. A.J.: Thank you.