Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 892: Ryan Callaghan on Public Lands and Conservation

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Ep. 892: Ryan Callaghan on Public Lands and Conservation · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
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  Speaker 1: out at first light dot com. That's f I R
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: S T L I T E dot com. Good lord,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it's Ryan Callahan back from the dead. Yeah, you're back
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: from fatherhood. You had a baby.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I assisted in having a baby.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I understand how long ago?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Uh we So Friday is the birthday, so it's very
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: easy to keep track unless you're in between Fridays like
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  Speaker 2: we are right now. So it's two and a half weeks,
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  Speaker 2: three weeks, first child, three and a half weeks. Yeah,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: first first child ever and baby boy came out seven
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  Speaker 2: pounds five ounces.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And that's a stat that people share. But I don't
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: think that.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: That's it's all relatively Yeah, I don't.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Know that that means a lot to people.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Everything perfectly average, like the doc said, like perfectly average,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: big hands, big feet, but might grow into those type
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  Speaker 2: of things, and it was kind of hilarious.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Average little baby, yes.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, perfectly average, but you're like, oh, kind of like
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: clown hands and clown feet, which is funny. And then
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: definitely my hairline, which is a bummer for that kid.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: The baby has your hairline. Yeah, it's like high up.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, widows peak comes back real.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Far born with widows peak.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: What's your biggest takeaway so far being a dad?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: I you know, like the biggest thing is I'm like,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: it's not that big of a deal. Like I think
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: we're blessed for the fact that it's not. We don't
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: follow in any like the horror story categories. It is
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: a hands on thing. But the thing that I just
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: keep coming back to is I'm like, oh my god,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: I cannot paid parental leave. How did people manage this
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: without paid parental leave? I'm like, that is such an
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: like that is the thing that makes this thing doable.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Like just you know they give you in the military,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the dad three days. Oh yeah, you got three days. Well.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I was talking to my buddy Kyler, who I used
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: to build houses with, and he's like, two days per kid.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: That's what we do, you know. And I'm like, I'll
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: just like so blown away by like I get a
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: focus on this as my job and get through that
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: initial learning curve. It's all a learning curve, but and
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: will be forever I suppose. But I'm just blown away
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: by that, like this is and I just feel like
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: it's got to like make for better relationships with you know,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: between the parent and child bond.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: It gets to be there and help a little bit
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: at first. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You know. I took note that you somehow managed to
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: get the baby out of the hospital without having a name. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And when we had our kids, I felt that by
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the time we went away, they had a name.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: How how did you What did you have to say
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  Speaker 1: to say that I don't know the name yet?
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: You know, the thing that I think got us out
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: of there without the name is the fact that somebody
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: was like, well, I thought you legally had to have
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: a name him, and I said, no, you don't, and
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the hospital admin person kind of pauses for a second.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: You get you guys discussed.
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  Speaker 2: It, yeah, yeah, because we were fully being like, oh, yeah,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: we're going to see the little nipper. This is how
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the whole thing's gonna go and by the time we leave,
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  Speaker 2: we'll have the name.
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  Speaker 1: He looks like a chucky exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And You're just bugged non stop to the point where
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, Sam has got to get some rest,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: you know. But every shift change, there's vitals and then
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: all the things, and and so we just got to
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: the point where, like, we have got to get out
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of here. There's no rest, there's no time to actually
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: just like sit with this and figure things out. And
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  Speaker 2: then yeah, I will tell you that we are still
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: nameless here at three and a half weeks in, but
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  Speaker 2: we are very very close to about three names right now.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, now the mother ye shared I heard his
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: second hand. Sam shared with another friend of ours that
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  Speaker 1: she said it took Cal months to name his dog.
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  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: So I don't know, Maybe it's gonna take a while.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of it might be a generational thing, or
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  Speaker 2: it might just be certain people. But I've a lot
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: of the folks in my extended friends and family have
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: been like, oh yeah, none of my kids Nate came
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: home with a name.
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  Speaker 1: Oh really.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I felt like, I don't know why, I don't know
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  Speaker 1: where I got the idea, but I just came away
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: thinking that it was like like it was like an
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  Speaker 1: edict from God that you name before they come out.
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  Speaker 2: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, now that I'm learning, it's not it's too late.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: They all got names.
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  Speaker 2: My grandpa passed away like three months before. He had
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: like this this series. The complications that were like, you're
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: gonna have to go in and get your chest drained
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: and all these things in order to stay alive to
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: meet this baby. And he was in perfect mind and
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, so his bummer ninety one or ninety two,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: ninety one, ninety two and and uh and you know,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: he's a James. And so I was like, you know,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: I can't get the name James out of my head
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: because I was so excited for this, for Grams to
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: meet this kid. And then you know, I was like, hey,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: you got to stick around. He's like, well, how long
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: is that going to be? It was like three months,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: and he's like yeah, and didn't make it. Yeah, He's
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: like I'll see him later technically, yeah, yeah, because he
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: just was he had you know, he's an old doc
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: and stuff. Didn't you know, do not resuscitate some of
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: the things. Sure, he had his plan laid out of
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: like that one.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't know it so he passed away. Yeah yeah,
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  Speaker 1: maybe I can't. I don't think I knew that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like three and a half months ago, now,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: you know so, but that was like and I think
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  Speaker 2: James is still in the running.
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  Speaker 1: Huh.
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  Speaker 2: But now we're like so far down the name rabbit hole.
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  Speaker 2: There's like the social pressure of being like, oh, you
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: guys waited three months and you came up with Jim.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, yeah, they're expected some real razzle dazzle now, man,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: they're expecting like something crazy, you know, exactly.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And a bunch of folks were like, Snort was
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: such an awesome name for your dog. We're really really
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: can't wait to hear what you name the kid.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well you could take Snort, give that name
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: to the kid, and then think of a new name
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: for the dog, Yes, if you needed to do something
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  Speaker 1: like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we also kind of already did that because
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I had gotten in a panic about getting the new
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: puppy to give Snort some backup prior to the kids showing.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: That didn't happen. But the breeder that I got Snort
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  Speaker 2: from her, the Snort's sister, the same litter was having
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: her last litter, and uh, I was like, oh my god,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I got to have one of those dogs. And I
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: just just got that dog yesterday. Oh so that dog
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: got one of the kid names right away, So we
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: name named the puppy roll.
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  Speaker 1: Like you took a discard and gave it to the dog.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, you you have a two and a half week
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  Speaker 1: old baby and you went and brought a dog into
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  Speaker 1: the house.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the dog's way more advanced than the kid.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Is.
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  Speaker 2: Dog's eight weeks.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Old because they're living in dog years.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, man much. I love babies. I want to
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: talk about your other big life change. So, uh, A
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: lot of your listeners know Cal from Cal's Weekend review,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and a lot of you know that Cal recently went
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: over not even what I don't know if you months ago,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: six months ago, six months now, six months ago, Cal
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  Speaker 1: took over as I believe that.
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  Speaker 2: Is it CEO as president and CEO president.
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  Speaker 1: And CEO of the conservation organization Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.
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  Speaker 1: What's going on. How's that been?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? I mean it's been awesome. I mean, as you know,
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  Speaker 2: like I found like every which way to make all
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: my previous jobs harder than they needed to be because
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I was always trying to find good conservation stories or
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: angles or or ways to make bigger impacts. And that
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: gets it's a way more complicated job, but it's also
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: in a way more simple and focused because it's like
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: that's what I'm doing as my job every minute of
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  Speaker 2: the day.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're leading a team of how many people.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Right now? We are thirty six? Yeah? Yeah, So membership organization,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: active membership, you know, we got it like a bunch
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: of members that aren't active active membership. We're a little
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: over thirty thousand right now growing, which is great to see.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And then forty four chapters active chapters across North America,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: you know we have they're not chapters anymore because they're
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: officially standalone nonprofits in Canada at Alberta and British Columbia
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: and which is you know out here we have a
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: lot of cross border issues, conservation issues. And then yeah,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: we have everybody kind of works on everything, but it's
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: like a stewardship, so like hands on dirt, underneath fingernails,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: side of the house policy, and and I kind of
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: break it down into like community building, right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So people know like people that follow these things, people
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: that support the organ know that BHA, as it's commonly known,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the BHA stands for public lands, But like, like, how
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: do you describe like a layer deeper? How do you
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: describe BHA to somebody when you say, like, our mission
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: is to what?
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: scope of the organization and I'm not beating up on anybody, right,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: but it's like trout unlimited okay general yeah, yeah, and
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: then people are like, well, what does it at BH?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: What is it there?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Got it?
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly our em EF Yeah. And intentionally, the scope
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: of BHA was really broad because they wanted to fill
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: all these gaps that were kind of getting left out
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: of some of these species specific hook and bullet organizations
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: and oftentimes that it would just be like b A
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: lambland Okay, wilderness. Uh, And there's wilderness organizations out there,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: but there weren't any that were really like firmly pro hunt,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: pro fish.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: They may have been at one point and they work
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: on similar issues, but it's not like the masthead and Uh,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: that idea is sound, but it makes the mission huge.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: I think the benefit is we can think a little
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: more holistically. But the negative is we get spread really thin.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: So by and large, if we were a like a
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: for profit business building the widget, as they say in
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: the business world, that widget would be conservation leaders, and
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it's like people who show up and want to do stuff,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: and that is advocate for their issues, which you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: if you're working on behalf of BHA, it's our issues too.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: But public land, public water, public wildlife, and the access
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: word would be like access to those things, and that
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: can get kind of nuanced on the wildlife side of things,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: but it makes the organization a little more swift and adaptable.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: And then on stewardship, it is literally coming out in
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: augmenting landscapes, so habitat work, which for us would buy
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: and large be trail improvements and juniper removal, some planting,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: but our migration corridor work is really really significant, and
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: again because of our scope, nobody really knows about it.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: But we just got the Bureau of Land Management's Conservation
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Partner of the Year award, really which like we just
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: punched so far out of our weight class. There are
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of really big organizations get this, that have
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: hundreds of employees and dealing in many, many millions of
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: dollars of federal grant work to do this stuff. And
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: so yeah, really incredible that that we got this award.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And we almost exclusively remove or augment fence within migration corridors,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: which basically you have your big.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Grazing is doing like the physical the physical work, so
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: people might use GPS collar data or car crash data
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: to know that these are problematic areas along migration corridors
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and do the physical hands on work of removing barriers.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and oftentimes it's it's your grazer on the ground
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: who has their allotment and they're like, you can't keep
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: a fence up here. Oh, like we build them in
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: the spring and winter migration comes and they all go
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: down type of thing. And so we'll go in there
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: survey those fence lines. And so you have like your
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: your allotment fences, which kind of by design of the
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: BLM are always firm, like they're always up, non negotiable,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: and we'll go in and augment those those fences to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: wildlife friendly. And then you have your interior fences that
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: basically create pastures within that A lot those ones are negotiable,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: so if they there's a lot the US used to
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: produce a lot of sheep, and there's a lot of that,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, square fencing out there on the landscape that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you're supposed to call it. And
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: just for people listening, like everybody can picture a barbed
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: wire fence, and you'll talk about whether it's three strand
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: or four strand whatever, And and for wildlife friendly fencing,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: there's considerations about how low the bottom strand is, meaning
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: can prong horn or whatever get under it. There's considerations
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: about how high the top strand is, like can it
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: well it stop stuff from being able to jump it? Right?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Does that have barbs on it that could hang stuff up.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Then there's this other question of when you put these
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: these panels in that have like eight inch squares, yeah,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: which no big games getting no big games getting through
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: that by going under right, Yeah.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And and it's a small game thing too, or at
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: their hell on sage grouse and like if you can
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: picture an animal on the landscape, you can find it
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: dead in one of those fences somehow, some way, mountain lions,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: bobcats everything. But so go in, cut that stuff down,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: roll it up, pack it out, also installing virtual fence,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: so there's yeah, there's big grants out there for the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: actual producer to trial virtual fencing. Right, so we'll put
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: up the and then it's vents is the working, Yeah,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: put up towers for the creates the connectivity for each
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: individual collar kid. And so there's a bunch of cool
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: stuff happening out there. And the BLM uses their own
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: math to like measure impact on there and depending on
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: where you are in those migration corridors, you can you know,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: it's all hard. But we had one project last year
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: that was a one day fence poll two point one
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: miles and the impact because of the location was over
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: thirty thousand miles of positive impact within that migration corridor.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Help me understand that it's.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: I think it's because of bottlenecks that animals are moving
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: through and dispersing too, got it? And then and then
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: some of them are six miles and way less too.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: So our job, the steward teamship team's job is to
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: look at these projects. And then because most of what
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: we do and this is like the doing things the
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: hard way, but I think in the long run the
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: better way is were trying to empower whoever wants to
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: show up to do the work. So volunteers because we
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: want people to have that sense of ownership in their
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: public lands and resources. So and then they're all mixed groups.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: So you have a lot of people who will because
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: we'll put up signage at like riis and and try
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: to get people from all slices of the pie to
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: show up, and they're in this mixed group. And we
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: try to get people to camp out on a Friday night,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: so you leave work with your car, camp and stuff,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: ideally show up Friday night. Oftentimes we try to have
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: some sort of wild game food there for the volunteers,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: and then we get to talk about wild food and
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: where it comes from and and everybody gets a taste
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: of that. The next morning, you get a brief on
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: what we're going to do that day, you get tools,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: you get team leads. We get lots and lots of
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: repeat volunteers on these things, so they get you know,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: you kind of have like crew chiefs that are volunteers too,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: and then you're out there rubbing shoulders with hunters, non hunters, birders, whatever.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: You know, people who just thought it was was neat
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: and certainly people at all across the skill level spectrum,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: and then you have this sweat equity in your public lands.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: You have Bureau of Land Management professionals out there. Oftentimes
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: you have the grazers out there too, And it's really
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the secret sauce, right, because you have people who are like,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: nobody gives a shit about this stuff, and then they
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: kind of get blown away by.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Like, oh yeah, man, he's.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Are really random people.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: People showing up and doing it.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Care about this stuff. So we've gotten two thousand volunteers
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: out on the landscape right now. And you know, the idea,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: right is like there'll be like a little ripple effect
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: within those communities and and they get it to be like,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is really hard stuff, but it
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: has an outsized impact and rub shoulders with new people
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: tried wild game for the first time. And so our
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: stewardship coordinators have a really hard job because they're handling
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: a lot of logistics and trying to find these projects
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: where you can conceivably draw from a bunch of population
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: centers to get people out and then make sure that
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: you have people on the ground too that are supportive
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: of the right because you have a lot of burned
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: out folks on the landscape who are like because these contracts,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: some of these contracts don't get bit on. Some of
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: these contracts get picked up by groups that are well
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: intentioned but just can't get things done on the landscape.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And we want to have a stellar reputation, right, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: so far it's working right. So we got got that award,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: which is you want.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: To get like if you say you're gonna do it,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do it. Yeah. Yeah, Now you guys here,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: you brought me this shirt, Phil, can you see this? Good?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Cal brought me this shirt. So Michigan says this land
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is my land, but it's like them I Michigan and
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: it shows an orange, it shows public land.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you buddy, Phil.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Tell me why you can best see this? Sucker. Okay,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: here's Michigan. Those public land in orange. Okay, this is
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: all public land in Michigan. And you were saying the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: point of the shirt is show here's a stick like
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: we Oftentimes a lot of guys, especially people out west,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: associate public land with out west and I'm just taught you.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: You mentioned big gain migrations, juniper encroachment. Okay, these are
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: like these are sort of like Western things. But then
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: you got forty four forty four chapters all over in
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the east, right, what like help me understand that? So Michigan,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I get it. Like, man, there's a boatload of public
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: land in Michigan. But if you go south of there, Ohio, Indiana,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: right much less. Right, you get up in the northeast,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: you get more. But you got these pockets where there's
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: not much, but you got chapters there, and you got
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: volunteers there. If what is the what is the eastern
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: equivalent of pulling fences? What is the Eastern equivalent of
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: improved grasslands by removing junipers in areas where junipers are
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: encroaching on Western grasslands? Like what does that look like
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: somewhere else?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Well, the juniper like the green glacier thing that I
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: know we've covered on meat Eater before. That juniper encroachment
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: into our grasslands is a major issue throughout the whole
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: prairie states. And we'll do some of that work in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: and and then there's there's a lot of burning you know,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: out out in most states too. And then just low
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: barrier to entry, right like what BHA has been doing
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: well and and really My dream right is, is to
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: have an accessible conservation group to where it's like, if
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: you don't have a bunch of money, we still got
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: plenty of things for you to do. If you don't
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I want to go to a banquet, we got stuff
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: for you to do if you know. I want the
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: whole political spectrum, the whole working class spectrum, to be
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: invested in their public land, public water, in public wildlife,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: even if you never step foot or interact with those things.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I got lots of arguments as to why they should matter.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: But if you show up to these community events, you
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: get to meet these people firsthand, and you may not
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: have a thing in common other than the fact that
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: you appreciate this stuff. But turns out that's a lot right.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: So stewardship in some areas may never get beyond a
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: public land trash pickup, but oftentimes we'll make them. You know,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: it's like what we talk about a lot, right, It's
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: like you can have a really strong mess message as
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: long as it's like eighty percent fun. So we'll have
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: a biologists come out and talk about turkeys, uh, and
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: why what you're doing picking up trash in this area
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: is a good thing for that resource or talk about
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: burning ecology stuff like that. Have giveaways, but make it
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: like a family friendly event because you know, one of
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: the things that I'm very convinced on is like we
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: got to get this stewardship ownership mindset, like indoctrinated into
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: people in as young as we can get them, because
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: That's some Aldo Leopold stuff man like that being an
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: active participant. Yeah, out on the landscape, man like his
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: thing of like the you know, the the person wielding
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the person wielding the acts or whatever. You know, like
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: like the person out working on the landscape as a conservationist,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: And and I would ask.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I love going down and winning. I love
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: going down and bidding on auction items at the banquet
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: as much as the next guy. But like there's more
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: There's this thing that I think has gotten us in
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: trouble over the years, which is like somebody else will
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: do it for us, and that that is part of
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: the benefit of a membership organization. Like we have people
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: at the state House at the capitol because you have
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: a job and you cannot be there, but we work
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: our asses off to empower volunteers to be there. Too,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and get that feeling of empowerment and and ownership of
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I get to represent myself and my community at the
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Fishing Game committee or in front of Congress even, Right.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: But I feel really strongly that we kind of got
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: in this like oh, the ranger will come by and
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: pick that up type of mindset. The government's going to
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: do it for me. And it's like, now we're in
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: this crazy political football age where you can take whole
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: programs of the government doing it for you and they're
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: gone in the blink of an eye, right, and then
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, well, everybody gonna get so pissed that
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: we're gonna be like, okay, sell it. Right. Well, there's
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: all sorts of ways that we can try to prevent
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: that through working within the political spectrum, but the surefire
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: way to prevent that is if everybody just gives a
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: shit and it's like, oh my god, this is ours.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It's a national treasure. We're invested in this, and I
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: learned about this in kindergarten in grade school, and you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: we are invested as Americans in our natural resources, and
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: so much so that they go on beyond the next administration. Right,
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: we're talking about these things in perpetuity. And that's part
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: of what community building will do, is you go, oh,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: the burden's not just mine, it's Steve Vanelli's and Fill
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: the engineer and all these people from across the spectrum,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: like we all are invested in this. It is ours,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: it's our American right, and it's you get away from
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: some of this this kind of politics stuff, this choosing
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: side stuff, because this stuff is squarely in the middle.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: There's a level of realizing about public lands and public
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: land resources and in a personal responsibility to them. There's
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: a level of maturity that is required to see those
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: places that way. And I say this from my own experience,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and I've mentioned I've talked about this a bunch before.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: I grew up near what was that Manistee National Forest.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I think it's got a slightly more complicated name now,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: but it's time the southern end of Manaste National Forest.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: We hunted on it, hunted rabbits on it, trapped it,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: recreated on it, had bb gun wars on it. It
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: was like we viewed it and treated it as though
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: it fell from the sky. It was just that it
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: was there, always had been there, always would be there.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: And there was no sense of personal ownership right, And
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: it would be that you'd go to Keger parties and
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the Keger parties, he'd be on the National forest and
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you'd burn tires and burn palettes and you know, tenth
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: grade whatever and then walk away because it's just here.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Someone will get it, do you know what I mean?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: And it was like it took and I don't know
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: if I if I had someone telling me the conservation
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: history of those spaces and someone telling me what is
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: required to maintain these places and the deliberate actions that
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: took place to make them here and to make them
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: available and make them public, even if you told me that,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: it might not have clicked. That I was a certain
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: age anyway for sure, But I think that it would
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: have definitely helped if someone had articulated it to me.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: But I don't think it was really even known or
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: recognized by our elders. Yeah, like people didn't the turn
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: like this is in Michigan. The vocabulary wasn't there, yep,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? No one even are
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the grown ups. If I'd have said why is this here?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: No one would have said, oh, it was because of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: this act of Congress or the actions of this president,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: and like here's the all all the deliberate steps that
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: took place to make it what it is, And here's
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the management strategy, and here's what does happen and doesn't happen,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and here's the work that goes into it. It was absent.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: It was absent. I don't know what I'm telling you.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you something you already know. But when you
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: go out in the woods, you see where people like
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: just decided to like shoot trees down for target practice
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and like trash a place. It is it's because it's
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: like they view it like a like a guarantee. Do
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: you follow me?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Oh? And there's that, and there there is just what
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: you said, like they don't know yeah, like when we
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: were Yeah, I'm having a lot of conversations with with
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: landowners here in the state of Montana, like like mid
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: level the large landowners in the state of Montana, and
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of just like for sure, and certain
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: things that come out and and it's like the percentage
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: of folks who display poor behave you're on private and
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: public land. The vast, vast, vast majority just do not
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: have a freaking clue at this point, sure, right, they
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: have no idea about agriculture. They have no idea about
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of whether it's in the regulation book or not,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: the kind of like the Hunter's Code, the ethics of
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: certain things, the stuff that we talk about a lot
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: like just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right in
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: all cases type of thing. And and then there's a
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: percentage that are just doing bad stuff.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Right. But if I had, man, I feel like I
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: feel like when I was a kid, if it had
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: been that my old man dragged us out to go
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: do a stream project on the national forest, or in
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: some way instilled this idea that like, this is sweet
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and it's here because people. It's not here by accident, yep,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: it's here because people work for it and cherish it.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: It might have set me off in a different direction earlier,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: but I think a lot of places it's absent, Man,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: it's absent. So what I'm getting at with that is
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: it like that kind of work of just even results,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: like the labor that you're talking about, results in a
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: good result or sorry, it yields a good result moving
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: a fence and proving migration. But it's more than that
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: because it probably is very eye opening for people to
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden understand like, oh, I see what
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: this is. You know, I understand now what this is. Man,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: This is like a thing we fight for.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Cash to go that grant money we can it's in
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: our power to use that cash to go pay contractors,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: right and just third party of the whole deal.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Sure, But.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: What's the long term effect of yeah, right, it's like
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I would say, not much in comparison.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, to make it, Yeah, to build, to build
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: a generation of people who kind of who just are
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: invited to see it as a thing that you labor for.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know, that's the thing that people labor for and
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: is the thing that took deliberate actions to create for.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: You would make it a lot harder to go ship
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: it up.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: And I think we've had as a nation as a
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: buy and large like an ethos of serious reverence for
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: public wildlife for instance, right, Like there's all you can
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: research all sorts of articles that were in papers of
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: like saw a deer today, right, white tailed deer was
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: spotted on so and So's place out by whatever it
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: was in the in the.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Newspaper, like it was noteworthy.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a it was a really big deal.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: And and so there's this era of extreme scarcity that
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: came on the back end of an era of I
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: would say, like abundance to greed, which led into oh
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: my god, I better get it before it's gone. It's
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: going to be gone anyway. And then here comes this
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: overwhelming surge of again reverence and what we call conservation today.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: And then I think your dad's era, right, it was like,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: I really don't want to think about anything. By and large,
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: I've been through a lot. I'm more out here for
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: a level of independence and therapy of some sort. And
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: now I can point to, like many many examples across
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Westerns dates, they're seeing a lot of hunter pressure relative
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: to the history of those states, or doll Sheep in Alaska,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: where a hunter behavior anecdotally has really changed around that resource.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: Where it used to just be like you'd get laughed
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: out of town if you shot a legal ram, but
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: now it's like a legal ram is what you're after,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: because by god, if I don't get it now, yep,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: it's going away anyway. Type of mindset. Right, And throughout
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: all of these changes in history, our federal workforce peaked
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies, and the demands on that public
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: ground have only increased, and that workforce hasn't increased along
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: with those demands. And now we're dropping way back down.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: And my only point here is that at the beginning
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: of the national parks or the forest system, the refuge system,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: there was never a point in time where there were
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: so many wardens on the landscape that you were going
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: to get caught.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Right, it was a social contract out there that was like,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: by god, you better respect this stuff.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: It was the other users on the landscape that were
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: really enforcing these things, plus the idea of the super
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: sneaky woods wise game warden that was going to pop
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: out of nowhere type of thing.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Right. You know what's funny about that, man, ih We
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: hunted fished all the time. Because I was very little kid.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: I never got checked by a game ward until I
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: was twenty years old. Yeah, and believe that twenty years old,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: never laid that, not that I didn't lay eyes on one,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: never got checked by one, You're right. I mean it
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: really is like a like speeding. You know, you kind
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: of don't speed because you don't want a ticket.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: But in fishing, game law there is a social contract. Right.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: You don't go like, I better get a license because
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I'll get checked today. You're just like you feel this
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: moral obligation to get your license.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Right, The math does not add up on getting checked.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: You do it out of some like because you do
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: it because you believe in the system to some degree.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean we were relatively small conservation group, right,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: But I mean, if that is the goal, it will
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: never end. But I would sure like it too, right,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Like if we had a nationalistic pride in these resources,
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: and they are resources. Extraction is part of who we
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: are as well. But there's been many times throughout our
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: history where we were like, oh my god, we need
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: to self regulate, and that self regulation turns into it
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: a whole system of regulations because it has just got
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: to happen. And what's really interesting right now is like
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: I know through conversations, you know, from the White House,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: throughout the Senate and the House, there there is a
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: drive right now for deregulation. Yeah, And a lot of
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: the people who are pushing for deregulation are not connected
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: to these resources at all. There are many degrees of separation, sure,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: but they are running off of well, that's what the
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: people want, right, and our job, as is the job
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: of a TRCP and many other conservation groups, is to say, like, yeah,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: there's changes that can be made, and there's antiquated things
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: out there that don't make sense. But the reason that
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: we're having this conversation right now is only because of
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: regulation and the adherence to.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Those Oh that there's anything left to argue about.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, on the hunt and fishing side of things, we
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: just wouldn't be having this conversation. Yeah, right, it's I.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Mean, you're yeah, you're bringing up a huge point. I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: always like to bring up this point that there's not
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: a politician alive today that wouldn't like to be favorably
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: compared to Theodore Roosevelt. Right, anyone would be like, oh,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: if you're going to favorably compare me to tr please
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I'll accept. Not only that there are politicians that claim
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the mantle of tr that are undeserving of that, but
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: they want it so bad they'll just take it for themselves. Yep,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: they'll draw comparisons. It's like, I'm sorry, he was a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: regulation guy. He was a regulation guy because lack of
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: regulation had brought us into the dark ages. Of American wildlife.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: And so when we applaud when anyone applauds the North
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: American model, when they applaud tr or TR being up
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: on Mount Rushmore, what you're applauding is you're applauding someone
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: saying we are going to put limits. We are going
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to regulate harvest, we're going to regulate sale of wildlife,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: We're going to regulate timber extraction. It to then land
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: in the spot to land and then land in the
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: luxury of saying that the American way is to deregulate,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: it's it's mind boggling. Memories are so short.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Memories are so short. You know, obviously there's an opportunity
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: here right now too. But one of the things that
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: is certainly part of our mission at BHA is like
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: we have got to get if if you love doing
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: anything on public lands, or seeing anything on public lands,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: or seeing migratory birds, songbirds, whatever, it is like you
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: have got to get active here and you've got to
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: start associating with other groups and finding these big common themes.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Right So, obviously I know you guys have covered like
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Roadless Rule a bunch the Executive order on OHV use
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: oil and gas lease sales. H deregulation through the big
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: beautiful bill list really does go on and on. That
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: is the theme that is happening here is broad deregulation,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: because that's what the American people want, right, and we
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: have got to be like wait, wait, not that and
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: not that, and this could can be done better.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: And but there's a model of there's a model of
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: pointing to there's sort of a rhetorical strategy where you
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: go find examples of regulations that are antiquated, or regulations
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: that don't work, or regulations that are just goofy, and
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: maybe you always have been goofy right or excessive, and
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: you go, because of that, let's just ditch the whole thing.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: You know. It's a point I bring up. Like a
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: way I think about it is is if you look,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: if you go back to COVID COVID restrictions, you could
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: look and say and I saw people do it. I
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: did it. The minute someone's like, man, you shouldn't you
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: need to be scared of the boxes that were delivered
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: in your yard, like leave them out there for a
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: couple of days, you know, And then you hear someone
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: say like, well that that's that's ridiculous, and you're like
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you get fixated on how dumb that was, and then
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: you get to where like, I'm not listening to any
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of this stuff, right, you know what I mean?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Like remember the box thing?
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the box thing there far off, I'm done
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: washing my hands. The box thing was crazy. That's like
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a human way where you you find you sort of
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: see this category of things. One of those things seems crazy,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: and instead of isolating out the crazy one, you get
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: where you're just done. Oh yeah, you're done. You see
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: it in friendships, you have a great friendship with someone
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: and they do a thing a couple of times. Eventually
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you're just like, I know, I know he's got some
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: nice things. I'm done. Yep. You know I think that
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: there is We hit these in like regulatory stuff where
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you'll hear about a crazy thing and then people get like, ah, yeah, absolutely,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: we'll just go back to the old way, you know,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: and you kind of go like you want to be like, well,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: let's let's let's address the real problems, but let's keep
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: our eyes on what the goal is here, yep, Like,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: like we agree that we want clean air and clean
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: water and healthy wildlife population, Like we agree on that,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: and sure, let's talk about these things that are off,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: but we don't. We just we jump to a radical
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: we jump to a radical thing. Absolutely there's some government
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: waste kill the whole thing, you know.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Uh, insanely diverse landscape that we have, right, like blessed
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: as an American with unbelievable opportunities that it can be
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: so wildly different from an edge of one state to
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: another state, or the end of a watershed to the
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: top end of a watershed. The people on the ground
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: understand that you can't like blanket manage all of this stuff,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Like it is complicated and it does take time, and
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: it takes real on the ground knowledge to inform how
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: that stuff doesn't needs to be managed and that complicated,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: you know, time consuming approach to something that we will
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: never be able to recreate ever gets wrapped up in
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: this like, well'll see the government can't do anything.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, right, what this might be hard to answer.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: What when you're talking about like you're you're talking about
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: doing work on BLM land, right, So you're coming in
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and doing like you're you're coming in on there's federal
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: property and you're coming in and doing work on federal property,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: So you have private people coming in and doing work
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: on federal property, or you could have private people a
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: private organization coming in and helping clear trails on federal land.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: So there's jobs that need to be done on public
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: lands that aren't getting done, aren't getting done all the way,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: and so there's a need for private people to come
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: in and do it. Have you seen in your time
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: and your role and you've been involved in BHA for
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: a very long time as a board member, but so
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: in your time there, particularly in your time in the
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: leadership position, have you seen like literal situations where doge
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: cuts have left things undone that then that then private
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: organizations have found a way to go in and get
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: taken care of. Or is it not or is it
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: not that literal?
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: There's certain like staffing is a huge issue because like
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: it's not and like there was a time where there
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: just literally wasn't a person in the office who could
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: physically handle the check, couldn't write the check, sign it,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: put it in a mailbox. Yeah, you just that has
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: to get done somehow, and there wasn't a backup mechanism
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: for that. When we talk about inventorying, a a fence
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: line for example. You know there there's a lot of
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: communication on the ground with with the people on the ground,
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: would be a rangeland ecologist or you know on the
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: forest service side, Uh, any any number of people, right,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: h they get stretched in on a on a bunch
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: of things because they're not going out there to address
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: problem A, and they run across problem B and they
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: just ignore it. So there's gaps that I think the
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: private sector is is very capable of filling in. But
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: oftentimes it's that historical knowledge on a landscape. Sure, that
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: is the real conduit to making that private sector work
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: anywhere near efficient.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you guys can't just roll up in the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: truck and decide what fence you want to start working on.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I mean it's gotta go. Yeah, it's got to go.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: You're coming in on what road?
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I'll see that.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well you need to drive three hundred miles around
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: and come in on this road and it'll be faster
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: and way less wear and tear on your equipment than
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: trying to come in on the road that's fifty miles long.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: So you find places where like just those there's gaps
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and those pieces yep, like like pass through individuals aren't.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: There yep, yep. For sure, Yeah, for sure.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Can you think of anything from the last let's go
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning of the current administration. What are
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: things that happen in like Trump too, and a lot
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: of things get I want to preface that a little bit.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: A lot of things get plugged to like the administration
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: that are probably well outside of the White the view
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: of the White House, right, Like you'll hear like you
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: know Trump is doing X or the administration is doing X.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, yes, the administration, but many layers removed
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: from the White House, meaning in the White House, are
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: probably not aware of this is coming from downstream? Right,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: But can you think of many cases or any cases
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of things that have come out in the last year
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and a half that that you can applaud, like, like,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: what are you looking at that excites you?
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean I and I'm not.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Saying you have to provide something because I see I've
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: seen some.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Things, oh for sure, But well I do I want many.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Things to excite me as I've seen to depress me that.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: As you know, right, Like, if you're you're in a
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: leadership position, you have a lot of people providing you
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: with information and and some of those people may or
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: may not have agendas, but they do want typically to
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: make things go well, and they're probably outsourcing information too.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: And we've come across many things here recently where we've
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: heard directly from high level officials, conversations like, well, we
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: were told that everybody wanted this, and you're telling me
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: that that's not true. And why are we getting so
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: much negative feedback on this thing that was overwhelmingly positive
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: And you have the feeling in the back of your
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: mind of like, oh, you were misinformed.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Give me an example. So let me I don't want
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: to leave you. I don't want to leave you trying
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: to struggle to understand my intents. Let me let me
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: ask it a little bit differently our our organization, like
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: like at Mediator, we've talked a lot about We covered
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: in Trump won, we covered a little bit during the
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Biden administration. We covered again in Trump two of the
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: move and Trump two being the biggest move in this
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: direction was like freeing up hunting and fishing opportunities, refuges,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: refuges something so yeah. In some areas administered by the
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: National Parks Service and we've explained it, applauded it, defended
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: the rationale. Okay, the today, someone sends me an op
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: ed of someone saying, like a lot of media organizations,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: he doesn't name names, he's like a lot of media organizations,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of wildlife organizations, a lot of conservation organizations,
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: refuse to acknowledge any of the positives, you know. And
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I looked at that, and I'm like, man, that doesn't
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: ring true to me. Yeah, I've read about this refuge
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: system all over They expanded hunting and fishing access on
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: refuge systems. The New York Times attacked it unfairly, and
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: I addressed why I thought it was an unfair attack.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: We applauded it when it happened the first time, applauded it.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Now like no one's ignoring this, But there has been
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: a in my mind, there's been an undeniable feeling of it,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: of of cascading bad news. And so I just want
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: to I want to ask you from like a your
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: position to not be guilty of what the op ed
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: was saying, Like from your position, Yeah, what have you
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: seen this? Man? Like, what are you seeing lately at
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the federal level that you're applauding or that you're liking, you.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Know, I mean several executive orders h and I brought
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: up the HB one. It's a good example. It's having
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: negative consequences right now, unfortunately. But many of the executive
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: orders are big statements that do at the end say
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: like unless there's currently a travel management plan.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: In place, yeah right, yep, Like I see, you know,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: I was put in the idea. I was putting like this,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: like if I said, let's say I said to my kids,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, don't even ask me. Don't even ask me
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: if you can spend the night at your friend's house.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to hear any requests about that. It's done.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: And then later I say, I don't know what the
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: answer will be on an individual basis, but I'm okay
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: to field requests now, but I don't know what I'll say.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: You can at least bring the request to me. So
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: some of these things have this like this, and it
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: gets put in the press like oh, it's all open now,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: you can drive anywhere you want now, yep, you know,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: But you look at me, like if you read it,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the fine print just says we'll see case by case
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: basis right, but something shifts.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and when it comes time to have a
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: new travel management plan, it's going to be these things
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: are going to be considered. Right, But for the time being,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: if there's a travel management plan in place, that is
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: the law. Yeah and yeah, A lot of a lot
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: of media, because of this need want for hyperbole, have
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: really really put a ding on our public lands because
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: they're saying, oh, all this stuff's open now, and that
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: is not the case. And I can go into a
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: bunch of work that we're doing right now to try
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: to help some positive messaging around that.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: So what really is in the what really is everybody
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: saw the headlines or not everybody, but there's a lot
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: of headlines like help me, help me describe the general
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: headline off road use? Like what would be the general
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: headline you saw about off road use?
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, the general it would be like Trump rolls back
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: bedrock travel management plans. It opens the paves the way
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: for off road use would probably be the thing.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: Right, But what is happening there? Let's take this example,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: like what is happening there? Well, so when I saw it,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't get a I didn't get a feeling without
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: you know, my knee jerk reaction must be like, oh, yep, yep,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: I don't like the sounds of that.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: First of all, off road on BLM and Forest Service
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: Land is kind of a misnomer because you can go
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: off road on these designated roads and trails, not cross
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: country travel.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When I say off road, they mean off of pavement,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: off of designated highways, off of county roads.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big thoroughfare er, main artery type of thing. And
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: then that's broken into single track motorized. Of course, there's
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: single track non motorized wilderness, no bicycles, right, And then
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: you have your fifty inch or less width restriction four
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: wheel and then you have your your full size like
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: jeep trail, high clearance vehicle roads, and that's like that's
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: where you do your off roading. And then there's certain
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: areas where there is a designated spot for ripping around
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: wherever you want, and it is visually the place to
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: do that. Hard to mistake it for.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: On some big sand dune or something.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then so what the OHV order did was
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: it said this Nixon era executive order. And then I
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: want to say it's Carter, I'm a little sleep deprived, right,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: now Carter Era OHV executive order, we're going to rescind
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: those they were you know, I would say like very
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: forward thinking as far as like, hey, as this user
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: group and technology expands, the impacts that we're seeing today
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: are only going to be exacerbated on the landscape. We
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: have a lot of industry out and this is something
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: that gets lost a lot, right, is we have a
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: lot of extractive use industry that's out there, and it
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: will be a danger to individuals and an impediment to
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: those industries if people are writing where every hell and gone,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: and it will impact the return that we have on
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: our growing for us, for the timber industry, and it's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: it's a bad look. It causes erosion, which impacts our
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: road systems and our culverts and our spawning habitats and
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: our streams and you know the typical cascading effects. Right.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: And and then the thing that most people saw was
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: the switch from a de facto closed unless posted open
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: to open and less posted closed. And the way that
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: that works is every district has m v U M,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: a motor vehicle use map, which I always thought was
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: a really sweet idea. It's you know, you can go
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: get an armload of them if you want, and they're
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: typically at gas stations that are selling off road gas
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: and they're at your ranger district offices and stuff like that.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: But you have that map in your possession. It shows
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: the exactly what's open to what, and then it's supposed
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: to work. Is kind of like an affidavit in your
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: pocket too, to be like, oh, I know the rules
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: and then you know because of like years and years
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: and years of litigation, the way those things are posted
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: and signed. They all have open dates and closed dates,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: and if you want to color outside the lines on
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: those for trail condition closures or whatever, if it's not
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: within the dates, you're not going to get ticketed. You
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: might get a talking to. But that's how that whole
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: system works. And the implication of those headlines being like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: oh my god, it's all doom and gloom, armygeddon, it's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: all over a lot of people were like, oh okay,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: and more.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: What do you mean when you say okay? What do
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: you mean?
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: So we've just get been getting a lot of reports
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: from districts all across North America saying like we're seeing
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: rampant cross country travel, motorized cross country travel and the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: destruction of signs and gates, and as well as the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: promotion of essentially fake news like that everything's open now
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: versus hey. Travel management plans right responsibly.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Right, like any changes that actually occur are forthcoming as
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: they consider rule changes. But it wasn't something that all
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: of a sudden announced from now on, unless if it
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't say you can't go there, you can go wherever
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: you want.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep, And you know there's all sorts of implications there.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: But to go back to like the broader scale of management,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: when you kind of get into the nuances of all
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: the tools in the toolbox of management, where you get
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: really ticked. That is like, well, why is this for
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: a service road? Buttery smooth and at the end of it,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: there's a big maintained campground and nice toilets and potable
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: water or you know, frost free taps that you can
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: get instant water at your campsite. While as this camp
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: this road is full of potholes, you got to go
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: really slow, especially if you're towing a camper. And then
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: there's primitive sites at the end of that, and it's like, well,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: they don't know what they're doing. Well, a lot of
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: times your travel management plan, your maintenance plan, those are
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: always to disperse the amount of pressure that you get
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: within your forest or BLM area. Right, So you're like, yep,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: this one is you know, way more conducive to bringing
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: in big pump trucks to hit the pit toilets and
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: maintaining at a larger scale, and it's very family friendly.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: We're going to divert a lot of people here. This
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: road over here is more of a pain in the butt.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: The site's more remote, it's actually more sensitive to so
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: we actually want a little less human pressure up there.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: So that is the reason that the road's a pain
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: in the ass.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Like no one's trying to make it a high traffic
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: area exactly.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: And we also don't have the staff to maintain that
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: one on every single day basis like we do down here,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: which is why we're diverting more traffic down here type
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: What do you think what on the on that OHV
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: on the off road rule change or paving the way
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: for rule changes going forward, What is the real deep
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: down motivating factor? Like what is someone after?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: I think it is another case of just like the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: pendulum swinging really hard I think roadless rule is also
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: a case of the pendulum swinging really hard where and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: we've gotten direct feedback as to I just want to say, like,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: our communication at BHA has changed a lot, and I'm
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: adamant that we take an issue, we break it down
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: in a non partisan fashion, take it or leave it.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: It is just what's happening. There's a page break. Here's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: BHA's position and why yep. And we're a membership organization,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: which is awesome because I get to say, like, this
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: is what the membership wants and we actually, yeah, we
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: just we've had some high level meetings because people have
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: been paying attention to our communications and saying like, hey,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: thank you for not raking us over the calls on this.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Got it? We were told everybody wants this. No, like
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: we were told that why is it that we're getting
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: beat up here here, here, here, and here, And I say, well,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: we represent a bunch of people who actually love this,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: and it is not always congruous with that. And the
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: reason that we're in this situation is because you know,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: certain we kind of divert certain people up certain trails,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: and we divert other people up other trails. And when
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: you're riding really fast on a dirt bike. You don't
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: really want to be stopping for backpackers all the time.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of how we have this system. And conversely,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: you got to string of mules. You don't want mountain
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: bikes or or motorbikes ripping really fast, especially in spots
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: where there's no place to divert. Right so Capital w
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Wilderness and some WSA ground and stuff like that. Right So,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: there's just a huge burden of education that has to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: happen here. And within the first Trump administration, this Trumpe administration,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: they move incredibly fast, ye incredibly fast, and there's a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: bunch of catchup that's happening. And I posted when this
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: OAHV order came out said, listen, I'm not worried about
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: the motorized use community at large. I'm not aware of
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: any motorized groups that want to see habitat destruction, that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: want to see a decrease in wildlife populations that you know.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: No one has that policy.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: They don't, they don't, that's not part of the mission statement.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: But every single user group out there has people that
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: are more than willing to color outside the lines. And
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: I am worried that because of the way that this
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: is messaged, that we're going to see those people out
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: there representing the outdoor community, and it is it's a
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: burden on all of us. Right. It's like if you
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: get if you don't have folks who are out there
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: using public lands frequently, even just on like this is
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: what I do most weekends type of basis, you show
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: up and you're like, oh my god, the people that
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: come out to these places are total pigs. Right, Just
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: as I've been reaching out to a lot of motorized
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: industry folks and a lot of athletes right now to
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: say like, hey, let's work on some messaging that's on
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: responsible uset and the response has been like oh absolutely.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Really yeah, yeah yeah. Now take the Roldest rule and
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, and the Roldest rule in very simple
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: terms for listeners to understand the road. This rule. It's
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: one of those political ping pongs that bounce back and forth.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: But it'll be like, are were cutting new roads onto
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: national forest lands. It became especially relevant to Tongus National
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Forest where there was is remains a desire to cut
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: in roads on national forests that would lead to old
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: growth timber cuts, cut in roads where the government would
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: cut in roads on national forest land to facilitate mining activities,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: and other things. The roadless Rule came out and said
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: that not constructing large scale roads and areas that are
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: through some formula designated to be like without roads, So
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: not tapping into areas that are that are enough of
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: a size to be regarded as an area that has
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: that is roadless. Right, doesn't prevent you from cutting a
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: little whatever driveway somewhere or something, but from building roads
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: to access new areas, and it would go in under
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: an administration and then it would get revoked or people
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: would attempt to revoke it. Right right now, we're in
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: process again of undoing the roadless ruling. Okay, So going
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: back to the time of being able to cut in
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: roads to facilitate mining, to cut in roads to facilitate
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: to cuts in some cases, the cut in roads to
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: facilitate timber improvement that isn't even related to mining, but
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: just to do timber improvement work. When I asked you
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: on the OHV thing, I ask you, like, what is
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: someone really driving at there? Like are they pursuing a
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: particular end? And you said, it's just kind of a
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: pendulum swing of trying to do a large scale reversal
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: of a of a restriction that was in place with
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: the roleless rule. Is it like, is undoing the roleless
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Rule meant to drive a particular project somewhere or do
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: you accept it as just a more general movement or
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: is it tied to some like distinct thing that someone
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: wants to do somewhere, but in order for them to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: do it, they have to undo the roleless Rule.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: You know, I think it's both that there's some you know,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: real specific projects in mind. I really don't think it's timber.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: I think I think it would be like mineral extraction,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: and it is just part of this theme of like
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: broad deregulation. I think there's parts of the roadless Rule
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: that need to be like greatly reformed. We're talking so
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: every state could have had their own version of the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: roadless Rule. Idaho and Colorado are the only states that
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: did that. So we're really talking about like forty five
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: million acres. And we've said from the very beginning, it's like, well,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: tell us what you really want, because the timber industry says,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: this isn't about timber, it's not going to be forty
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: five million acres, Like we're talking a few thousand here
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: here and here and and maybe a couple hundred miles
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: a road. Let's talk about.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: That, like inviting the conversation to get down to like
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: if if this is about a thing, let's talk about
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: the thing. Yeah, yeah, got it.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: And we haven't gotten there yet. I will tell you
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: that there's legitimate gripes on the roadless rule because it
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: is open to a little bit of interpretation. And there's
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: been areas districts for us where the managers decided that
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: they wanted to like a little extra buffer around their
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: roadless they're categorized roadless areas, right, And it's like, yeah,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: I mean just think all the conversations we've had about
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: like the national park has got an end somewhere you
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: don't get a buffer or else just call it park
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: or don't.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: You Yeah, just for listeners, what Cal's refering to is
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: you might have I mean, everybody in the world has
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: sort of Yellowstone National Park. Oftentimes there's wildlife management issues.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: There's there's wildlife management decisions that are made along the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: border where the park has a gray area, Right, there's
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: like if the if you imagine the park is black
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: on a map and out of the park is white
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: on a map. They create certain gray areas for wildlife
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: management and for other management practices to to create like
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I said, a buffer Yeah, a buffer zone, meaning it
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: won't be that it wouldn't be that cities get built
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: up to the wall to the line, because you're trying
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: to you're trying to mitigate impacts on the edge that
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: might affect the interior.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep. And then from a wildlife perspective, red it's
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: like we have like wolf management zones in Montana that
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: are right against the park ye. Because socially it was
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: decided like, well, if wolves are gonna leave the park,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: they're probably gonna get really beat up right on the
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: edge of the park, and then there's gonna be a
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: little education curve, and the further they get away, the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: more wary they're going to be, their survivability is going
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: to be higher.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So some wolf pack that spends seventy five percent
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: of the time in the park and they tend to
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: wander over to some little area, there might be some
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: extra regulation where they wander over in order to protect
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: the integrity of the of a popular pack, wildlife viewing
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: pack in the park. Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, on the roadless side of things, you know,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: there's like viable sold timber projects that were tied up
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: in a lot of red tape because they were adjacent.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: To okay, right, and then it and that causes frustration.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: Big time frustration, right, and it like I can see
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: how that leads to like it's totally flawed through the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: whole thing out.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like someone's saying, no, I get it, we can't
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: We're not going to cut in the park. But you're
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: saying I can't cut by the park.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and not only not by the park, but
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: how far away from the park.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: And then the roadless rule as it's written, you can
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: build roads or reopen roads temporarily to go in and
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: do wildfire mitigation. You can go in and do like
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: habitat work. And oftentimes that stuff gets litigated to death
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: and tied up. And sometimes it's just not even a
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: conversation that people are willing to have because it will
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: get litigated and tied up.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: And so the proper implementation and this is where I
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: think concerts has a real all of us groups have
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: a real failure is we work like hell to build
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: something like the roadless Rule, and then the implementation part,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: like we're in it for the sanctuary areas, Like, by god,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: we got some areas carved out here where there's not
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: gonna be roads. It's human powered only, it's going to
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: exclude folks who aren't willing to do that. I'm going
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: to have a little honey hole and that's our focus.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: Or we protected, like really protected these zones from anything
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: but natural erosion. We're going to have great chinook sakae
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: salmon boltrout spawning there forever type of thing. Well, we
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: don't show up when the litigation groups show up and say,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: oh no, you guys can't do a habitat improvement project.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: You guys can't go in there and do wildfire mitigation
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: as it's outlined within the roadless Rule. Yeah right, And
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: so you know, I haven't put my money where the
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: mouth is yet, but I've had a lot of conversations
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: to see, like how it would be feasible for a
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: group like backcountry hunters and anglers two way in on
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: those on behalf of proactive management. Yeah not, because I
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: think that's exactly why we're here. But I do want
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: to take that argument out of the quiver right and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: be like, yeah, we came to the table, we signed
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: the dotted line. We agree that this is how the
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: roadless rule should function, So shouldn't we have some skin
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: in making it function that way.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: It's so interesting you bring that up, because I was
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: discussing this with a friend of mine a couple of
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: days ago, and we were talking about the way the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: conservation community will get activated around certain marquee very high
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: value around the protection of certain marquee very high value
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: areas and resist development on those places. We saw it
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: with a coalition of people from across the sporting and
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: outdoor and birding and commercial fishing spectrum in opposition to
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: developing a mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay. Right.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Everybody saw that. We saw not nearly as dramatic, but
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: a coming together around protecting the headwaters leading into the
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: Boundary Waters Wilderness area. Maybe even less than that, but
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: seeing a coalition of people questioning the idea of pushing
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: back against the idea of building a two hundred and
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: fifty mile industrial corridor into the range called Ambler Road.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: And what we were talking about is is like when
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: it's a no, we come out to say no, right yep.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: And if someone came to me and said okay, then okay,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: I get it. You don't like that, you don't like that,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: you don't like that, what is okay?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: Yep?
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: What is okay? It's a fault. It's like a negative
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: about me. It's a fault that I would say, I
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'll have to tell you when I hear.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean?
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: Because that's an argument that we use on their roadless rule, right,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: It is like, okay, if you're talking about timber, what
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: about all this high alpine terrain where it's so highly
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: irrodable you can't build a road and there happens to
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: be no timber. Can we still call that inventory roadless? Yeah,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: if you want the timber, right, Like, so it's the
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: same argument, yeah, right.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: But I mean, like, but I sometimes wonder is if
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: you if if you are, if you're gonna come and
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: you're going to be in opposition to some things, at
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: what point do you have an obligation to go and say,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: but here is what's okay yep yep? Or is it
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: morally okay to just be like, no, I'm the guy
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: that tells you when it's no. I don't know the guy.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know the yes guy.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: I I don't think it is. I think the answer though,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: is like it is just complicated. We have a insanely
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: diverse landscape, a tree faller back when those were the
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: dudes really doing the work on the landscape, and there
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: still are are plenty. But it's a dye and breed.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: They will tell you like, you can't cut the same
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: tree twice, meaning that the asspect matters, the slope, the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: picture of the tree, all the things. It is a
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: tree by tree calculation, right, which is why it's it's hard,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: and it takes skilled people with lots of lots of knowledge,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: lots of practice. So I think people are capable of
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: being the yes person when it comes to a renewable
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: project such as you know a good timber project, right,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: good timber project pays lots of dividends on the wildlife
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: side of things. But you're gonna have to wait, but
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: it you know, it will come back. Right. You're gonna
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: eat that cow elk tag for for that zone maybe
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: this year, but there's gonna be parts of it next year.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: You can hunt and then there's more of it the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: following year, yeah, right, and then it's probably gonna suck
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: for a while as once in fifteen years down the road,
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: depending on where.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: You'll be sweet for ten years after the cut and
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: then laying for a year and then like increasingly better
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: than eventually Yeah, go away, and you look forward to that.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: But those areas also do their own job of spreading
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: out the pressure on public land, right, because we all
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: have those spots where it takes us years to be like,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: you know what, this place used to be sweet, but
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: I've just been coming here and it sucked the last
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: three years. Time to go find a new spot. Well,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: you've been sitting there pounding your head against you know,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: a dense mat of trees. Somebody else is being like,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this place is sweet. There's nobody here,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: you know, on the other side of that block, right,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: And so those changes in the landscape are always a
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: negative and a positive for all of us out there.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: It's just like the game. So yeah, I do think
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: it is possible to be the yes person, but you
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: got to be involved enough to be like, oh, this
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: project's proposed, is there a mechanism for us to weigh
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: in on that.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think that that probably I think that
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: it would be a good pressure relief valve if the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: for the conservation community to maybe get more involved in
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: what's more involved in pointing out and facilitating what's okay.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: But a lot of it is there's just absolutism, yes,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: and and and and there's been a lot of absolutists
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: that are very celebrated yep, and regarded as effective, you know,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: like like like Edward Abbey was a desert absolutist to
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: the point where he's sort of to the point where
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: he not even tacitly, to the point where through fiction
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: he like glorified eco terrorism, right, Like, he was an absolutist,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people would look and say, like absolutism,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: anything else is you know, anything else is you're weak?
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: Anything else as you have cracks in the you know,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: you have cracks in the fence. But I do wonder
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: about being more like like if and I don't even
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: know the answer to this, that if there had been
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: a greater effort toward negotiating certain things, we would not
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: be in this situation of talking about repealing the of
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: repealing the role in this rule you know, I don't know.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: Another case of absolutism gone wrong in a different direction,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: the wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act YEP. Is, there
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: was a time when there weren't that many wild horses around.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: People thought they were being abused and thought they were
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: going to vanish. They made a absolutism case and now
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: it has generated enormous friction YEP with wildlife managers where
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: you're like, they just left no room. There's they left
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: no room for logical, meaningful corrections to a problem.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, because you kind of get to this trap,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: like we said in the beginning, right, like we got
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: to think beyond this administration, right, and so this OHV deal.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Like I'm I spend a lot of time, Like I
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: feel like everybody knows that I gravitate towards human powered love,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: my wilderness areas, love big backpacking trips. You know, it's
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: just not like, certainly not a proficient motorized guy, but
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: I'm like, listen, every single trip I take starts with
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: a four wheel drive truck getting me to the trailhead, right,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: So I can't be anti motorized use, right, Like that
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: is the thing that facilitates everything, you know, ninety nine
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: times out of one hundred for me. And so when
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: these headlines come out and it's like, oh, all the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: motorized people want this, and I was like, no, they
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: really don't. I know that. Or it's all the motorized
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: folks or slobs and they're tearing the things up, and
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: I'm like, well, there's lots of different groups out there
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: that preach hard, responsible use all across the landscape, and
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: they are policing their own their own community, and you know,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: that's like something that we have always done is like,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: is that social contract? If you're going to represent single
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: track dirt bikes, do it in this manner. Don't do
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: it like this, right because there is the pendulum swinging
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: the other way. It's like, oh, you lose access to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: all of it stuff, and access can be weaponized. Like
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: it was the first thing that I saw on this job,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: right is like everybody you know, Dave six or seven
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: on the job. I went and testified in the House
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: Natural Resources Committee, which is pretty wild, you know, because
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: I did have like a moment of like, oh, I
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: could tank the entire organization right now, live on c
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: SPAM stressful, I can just say whatever and it would
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: probably just be done, no coming back. But you know,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: everybody there was talking was like access, access, access, access,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: And I was like, well, wait a minute, what do
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: you mean.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: I've run into this, right, it means different things to
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: different people.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: It means different things to different It's like you're like, oh,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: if we're gonna if that's good, I'm going to define
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: how I want and know that everyone thinks it's good
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: because the word is good.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: Yep. And and then we have to have this more
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: in depth conversation of being like, listen, the thing that
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: you're after is only going to survive for so long.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: If that's where we punch a big road in, if
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: we remove the seasonal closures that exist for wintering range
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: or calving areas. Like the reason that those regulations are
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: in place are so you can go have that experience.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: It's just it's only going to be there if you
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: do it in this way.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. What you want to, what
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: you're so dying to get to, is there because you can't.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in these fashions, right, that's.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: This time of year or whatever. Right, what you're wanting
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: is your wanting to You're wanting to drive to a
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: thing that wouldn't be there if you could.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: And like I high country mule deer, right, I used
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: to just love spending so much time, uh early season
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 2: scouting for mule deer and and then archery hunting that
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: high country big basin mule deer. Right, And it's like,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: if they see you one time, they're just gone, right,
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: and it can take them weeks to come back to
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: that spot. And yeah, you can go find them again somewhere.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: But having this notion that you can create access as
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: defined by whatever, Like there's some things that just are
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: not going to tolerate no, Right, If.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: I could just drive in there and finally get them
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: big old bucks that are hiding back.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: There, yeah, yeah, And it's like, well you can drive
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: aways in there and then get really really sneaky and
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: hike off trail and you know, play the wind and
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: do all the things that you pick up over the years.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: And then if you really have the mental fortitude at
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: the end of a long day, drop all your stuff
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: and slide on your stomach up there and peek your
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: head over like your good chance, like you're gonna see
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: one unless some jackass was there before you and stood
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: up on the ridge right, So, and those are tough
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: conversations to have because you know there's a lot of
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: folks out there too who are like, well, man, I'm
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: a disabled veteran. Are you against me having that experience?
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: Understand?
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: And it's like, no, I want you to have that experience.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: I would love to help facilitate that. But as a
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: guy who's had that experience a lot, you just got
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: to trust me that like that, you just can't get
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: in there that way and have that experience.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: Like, and we pick and choose all the time until
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: if we go back to roadless or this OHV executive order,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: Like I can be a big enough person to be like, Okay,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: well what are we going to open up? But what
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: are we going to close?
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: Because we we have to have that because there's just
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: there's too many of us doing too many of the
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: things to you know, point literally, like point that gun
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: of impact at these areas.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: We know through our history that it will have this
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: adverse effect that we just can't think about when we're
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: so gung ho on the opportunity.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: Right. Sure, let's jump subjects and talk about the ongoing
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: corner crossing debate, and I'll put it to you this way, well,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: just I hate doing the bat. We talked about this
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: so much, and it's such an important issue. We've covered
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: it so many times. It's always it's always changing. But
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: just a very quick, very very quick recap corn corner
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: crossing if you're just kind of joining our sort of
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: universe of shows right now. Corner crossing has to do
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: with imagine that you're looking at a checkerboard and the
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: black squares our public land? Are they black and white?
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know, black and red on the checkerboard, got of checkerboard.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: The black squares are sections of miles mile by miles
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: sections of public land. The red squares are mile by
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: mars mile by mile sections of private land. When we
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: refer to corner cross and we refer to whether it
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: is legal or not to step from the corner of
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: a black square to the corner of another black square,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: that's corner crossing, and so that your shoulder, your feet
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: are never leaving the black, but your body's passing over
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: the red. And this is a this has been a
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: debate that's playing out for a long time, particularly in
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the American West, where you have what we call checkerboarded
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: landscapes that are laid out in that same fashion through
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: the sorts through federal court. Corner crossing was made legal
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico helped me out here.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah, the tenth Circuit, tenth circuit. Yeah, the whole
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: the whole tenth Circuit. So and I wouldn't say made legal.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: I would say confirmed.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: Legal, confirmed legal, Yeah, okay, not mad Yeah, like yeah,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: that's a great question. Was yeah, it was. There was
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: there was a there was a debate. It was never
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like a change in the law. It was
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: just defining the existing law and clarifying the existing law
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: because there was there was confusion about it. Yep. But
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: it's still a big swath of the American West where
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: it's up in the air yep. And different states have
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: different interpretations. Different states open interpret you know, put out
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: different guidelines. If you had to crystal ball it a
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: year or two years, where do you think things are
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: gonna where do you think things are going to land.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Do you think that we'll see more confusion, more obfuscation
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: of whether you're you're allowed to do this, or do
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: you think that it'll that we'll see more clarity about
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: what really is allowed and what's not allowed when it
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: comes to corner crossing.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the reason that we're seeing this debate
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: get more and more intense because it used to just never. Never,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: it was a question. Certainly here in the state of Montana,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: it was never an intense debate. There's many areas within
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: the state where it was just what people did.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. For a long time, it was a question that
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: rolled around in the back of a small number of
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: people's heads. Yes, and then it became a question that
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: was in the front of many people's minds.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. And you know the reason that that is
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: right is because, like we are just developing more and
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: more of the West and people are are planting their
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: flag permanently in places that were seasonal at most, right,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: And you know, I think there is absolutely no question
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: whatsoever as to the legality. I think there's many many
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: questions right now that are getting played out. So, for instance,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: back in the tenth Circuit in Wyoming, there's a push
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: to provide landowner compensation to people adjacent to corners. So
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: there's people walking from public ground to public ground without
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: ever touching private property. Can we monetarily compensate the landowners
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: who own the private lands that touch those corners.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: There's but but that's not that would just be help
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: help me understand that, but.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: Help that state question that's coming up.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: But the state would be doing it as a good
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: will gesture that they're not doing it. They're not they're
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: not being legally forced to do.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: Legally forced to do it. There's an ask as to
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: like a real legal one would be, can you corner
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: across from federal to state? Right? In states where we
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: have a kind of a de facto public access, we
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: use state ground as public ground. Well, this was a
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: federal decision I see, not a state decision that needs
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: to be figured out.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you it's it's interesting you bring that up.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: I would never considered that. Like if I was in
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: a clarified corner crossing legal state and I saw where
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: federal land and state land were connected by corners, I
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: would never even question whether you were allowed to hop
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: that corner.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And that that is like one of the things, right,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: like the huge broad general public. You give them a
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: pop quiz on this. It is just pure confusion. They're like,
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: why in the hell would that not be legal? Right?
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: You're not touching private property. And then you get in
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: circles where people have really really gone through the grinder
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: on this and they've looked at case law and it
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: gets overly complicated. Like you you start start getting into
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: these conversations where you've kind of lost the the on
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: the ground fact a long time ago, where it's like
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: you're you're just walking from here to there. So no
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: question in my mind as to if it's legal. It
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: is legal, I think because kind of like we talked
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: about on your your motorized community or non motorized community.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: I remind people all the time, like if you're on
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: the private side of that fancy, you're a public landowner too,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: and you also have way better access to that square
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: that you're you're trying to get to. So it behooves
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: all of us to come up with common language assurances
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: that clearly define the private property, the public property, and
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: the access.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: But there is and I guess I can speak to
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: Montana where we're sitting right now, I can't speak to
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: other places there. There is like an uncertainty here where
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: the if you go and get your hunting regulation, there's
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: not a part of the hunting regulation that clarifies corner
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: crossing is okay, right, right, you get a mixed am
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: I wrong? No, you get a mixed signal yep.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it used to be if like ours are not suggestion,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: different word are. What Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks would
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: like you to do is to contact the adjacent landowner
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: for permission to corner cross That was, and then if
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: if somebody were to try to get a warden out
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: there to cite you, the warden would then have to
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: contact the county prosecutor in order to issue that citation.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: And then you know, that language ramped up to the
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: point where the state was implying, like this is illegal.
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: If you write the governor, you get a response back
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: that says it's illegal, and always has been. The secretary,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: not the secretary of the state. The lieutenant governor, you know,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: offered her opinion. A couple of our state senators said,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: there it is. That's the law. It's illegal, which is
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: not how we create laws.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: In the They offered the opinion that it was forbidden.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: Yep, based off of case law, you.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: Know like that. They offered an interpretation which was then
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: received as someone as the giving of the law.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it is I mean, it is tricky.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: It's not tricky to read this stuff. It's not tricky
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: to come up with your own interpretations. But if you
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: were to listen to the Lieutenant governors kind of case
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: that she made, she's using all the same cases that
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: you would use to say it's legal. She's just using
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: different excerpt of those cases and a narrow, narrower interpretation,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: which also is like how the law works a lot
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: of times. Right, So I'm not like bad mouth and
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: the Lieutenant governor at all, but it is just been very,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: very interesting.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: What do you think will happen?
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: Well, ideally we have a legislative session coming up that
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: we're going to see some some legislation that comes up
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: to clarify this. At a state level, backcountry hunters and
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: anglers we entered into a lawsuit with the state of
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: Montana after hitting this wall that you know, we were
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: just told flat out out said, hey, even if this
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: went back to the previous memo where it's like corner
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: crossing is a gray area, that's okay for right now
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: until we can get legislation through because the people that
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: want to do it do it, and the people who
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: don't don't. And you know, ranchers don't want to see
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: a bunch of people piled up at corners. Hunters don't
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: want to see a bunch of people piled up at corners.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: We want this to be quiet. Yeah, is the best
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: thing for everybody.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: But if if the state, okay, in Wyoming, you had
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: a case where it got moved to federal federal court, yep,
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: If the state, if state legislators were to come in
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: and say it's illegal, yep, wouldn't that then open a
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: pathway for someone to say, you're probi is in violation
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: of federal law. And that's a no no.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, I mean that that is a thing.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: And that's why by and large, we're talking about broad
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: acceptance of legal access through the corners. We're talking about
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: extremely broad acceptance of if you enter or damage private property,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: that's that's trespass. So there's a ton of middle ground here.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: And I think that we're capable of coming up with
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: a state solution that you know, prevents a federal case.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: It prevents an escalation.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And and part of this is is totally out
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: of our hands, like that that could happen anyway.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's a question I never thought that.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: I never thought to ask, do you have any sense
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: if you went to Wyoming, Let's say there had been
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: a ballot initiative yep, and it was just very clear
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: and everyone's on everyone's ballot during a presidential election year.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: It just said like corner like, should corner crossing be legal? Yes? No?
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: And you put it out to the voters in Wyoming
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: before all this happened, What do you think the answer
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: would have been? Like?
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: Overwhelmingly yes, do you think so? Yeah?
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: I mean you know, TRCP and BHA hosted listening sessions
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 2: across the state. Obviously not everybody shows up to those things. Yeah,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: but I drove over and and sat in on a few,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: and I was really shocked by how few people actually
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: wanted to talk about corner crossing because it was just
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: like a given. They were like, oh, yeah, this is
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: something everybody else is talking about. Uh, it's something we
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: do and will continue to do kind of regardless of
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: what everybody else comes to the conclusion of. So yeah,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: I And then yeah, I mean there's a long there's
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: more paper history of corner crossing in Wyoming than there
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: than there isn't in Montana. There's there's a decent amount
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: of cases that apply in the state. There's you know,
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: no actual you know, anything that's really specifically corner crossing
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: in Montana has always been thrown out. It's never made
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: it to a judge's decision.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: That that's what that that blows my mind.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for something that's always been illegal.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that there are not people out there sitting in
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: jail or whatever who got in trouble for it.
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we do have, you know, several state programs.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of money sitting in the Habitat
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: Montana Fund, which was you know, part of the marijuana
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: tax money forty one million bucks in counting that has
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: to be used for access programs or acquiring land. You know,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: it's a little little broad on what, but it can
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: be used for habitat, building boat ramps, acquiring a new ground,
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: stuff like that, or else that cash sunsets and it
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: can go into the general fund. Some people speculate that
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: it's not being used.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: Because they wanted to go into the general to go.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: Into the general fund. But I mean, there's a lot
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: of tools in our tool belt that can make this
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: a state led initiative. I've talked to a lot of
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: folks long before we entered into this lawsuit, and then
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: after we've entered into this lawsuit, who are both all
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: of them landowners both for and against corner crossing. The
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: folks that are against corner crossing and willing to talk
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: to me, uh or asking asking me to call them
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: more more accurately.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: They do you make those calls?
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's awesome. I mean I love talking to old
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: rancherws so, but uh, they get fed up with bad
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: hunter behavior, which I totally get. And most of them
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: have been working for years to do land swaps with
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: the BLM and and can't get them through. And you know,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: so that's something that that where we've offered to help.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: And you know, I just just talked with uh one
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: one fella just like this and and did some due
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: dealer jents on whether or not this was like an
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: actual good land swap and it sounds like it really is.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: So we're trying to help accelerate that process. And then
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: we have a program where you can identify corners and
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: we can come out and mark those so people have
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: no excuse this is public, this is private. We can
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: augment fence so you can have an access point there that,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: as one old dodger pointed out to me, he's like,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: you know, I get that the lance public, but that
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: fence isn't. So we can augment that private fance and
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: keep it in good work and shape and allow legal access.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: And then there are these corners typically called problem corners,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: where there's just no way to legally access public to
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: public without stepping on private.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like just for people listening, picture that the pictures
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: that don't just it's a tree, yep, picture, there's a
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: there's a twelve inch tree at the corner, yep, right,
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: and you gotta.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: And you're supposed to do the right.
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: You wiggle around that tree, you're off where you're not
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: supposed to be.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: So yeah, So identifying those and and where the only
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: entity of any kind out there, we use r g
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: I S on the b h A website so you
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: can just punch in your lat long of where that
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: corner is. And then we have some surveyors that have
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: reached out that do this work professionally, that have offered
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: their services to to come out and mark corners. And
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: these are folks who have actually like worked with the
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: BLM to adjust corners to where they're truly supposed to be, yeah,
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: because some of them do migrate over the years because
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: they you know, people have moved pins where the pins
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: never existed, so they were going off of landmarks and
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: those change generationally sometimes. And then you know, we can
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: augment that that fence at the same time to wildlife
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: friendly fencing and and do it at no cost to
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: the landowner. As again kind of like our Stewardship project
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: idea is, I'm like, man, if you're fed up with
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: bad hunter behavior, I can't say I'm gonna fix all that,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: but I will bring a crew of people out there
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: that you're going to be really impressed with that really
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: do give a crap, and at minimum, it's going to
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: give you a little bit of fuel back in the
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: tank that hopefully lasts you until your next bad encounter
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: and then which I typically do get a chuckle out
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: of that. And then I'm working like hell trying to
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: get some funding and some folks together to put together
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: a hunting around agriculture program that ideally states will want
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: to adopt, because we hear all the time that something's
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: got to be done because people don't know how to
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: behave around working farms. And ranches anymore, and they're drawn
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: like flies to them for hunting purposes. And just the
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: basic stuff etiquette, where to park, where not to park,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: how to operate.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: Gates, driving on wet roads you shouldn't be driving on. Yeah,
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: driving across freshly planted fields, leaving gates not the way
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: you found them, yep, spooking, spooking the hell out of cows.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, recognizing where you got a bunch of colcalf
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: pairs that just got moved in from the range. They're
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: super scared. Probably just leave it alone. Yeah, you know.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: So not not hard stuff at all, but something that
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 2: everybody is getting direct asks for and it's not being
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: addressed unfortunately. And we can put together the program that
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: is built off of producer feedback. Right, the farmers and
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: the ranchers are then tell us what they want and
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: then you know, meat Eater will hopefully distribute that out.
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: But we really need states to adopt this as well
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: and use it in a fashion where people have to
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: pay attention. Right, So I want like, hey, you just
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: bought your big Game combo license. In order to complete purchase,
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: take this five minute tutorial, right, and and you know
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: people want to hunt in these places so bad. I
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: don't think that that's going to be a barrier to
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: entry at all. Hunters being hunters, we're going to complain,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: but I think we're going to take the test. And
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: I really do believe like, if we can just educate
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: a big group, right like forty thousand hunters hunting Montana
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: every year, if we can educate them a one and
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: a half percent more, that's going to be a big
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: impact on the landscape. And if we're not working hard
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: to kind of hold up our side of the social contract,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: we're going to lose access on the front range and
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: everybody's going to be in the back country.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: Man. Yeah, I like a lot of what you're saying.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: I like it really rings true to me, and you know,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: congratulations on viewing it this way. But I appreciate the
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: way you're willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for ways
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: that your own community could be working against their own
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: better interests. Meaning, you know, let's talk about bad hunter behavior.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about people kind of exploiting this corner crossing
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: thing to feel that they can just get on that
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: land however they want to get on it right, and
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: kind of holding your own community up to like a
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: certain standard and acknowledging the people that are offended by
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: bad behavior that yes, this is true, what you're seeing
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: is true. I want to make that go away, right.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean what other choice do we have too.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: Right, well, just just ignore it, yeah, ignore it and
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: let the tensions faster.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: Let the tensions faster. And then what everybody's feeling, the
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: state agencies, the agricultural producers, the hunters in areas where
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: we're seeing this really big increase in hunting pressure and
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: demand and on the resource is like that scarcity mindset
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: creeps in and it's like I don't care. I gotta
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: get mine before somebody else does, right versus you know
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: so many times, you know, I had great hunting mentors
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: growing up, and really it was like, oh, well, Pard,
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: let's leave that one for another day. Somebody else is
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: already on it type of thing, right, And looking back
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: at those scenarios then, like it'd be hard to talk
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: some people into being like, well, there's only one truck
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: at the trailhead, why wouldn't we go type of thing, right,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, somebody beat us to it, let them
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: have it. We'll go down to the next trailhead.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: You know, what do you imagine We've talked about a
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of things that are in the news now being
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: talked about right now, kind of hot, hot button issues
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: right that are on everybody's mind. What if we're having
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: this conversation a year from now or this conversation two
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: years from now, what do you think, what do you
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: think we'll be talking about, Like, what do you see
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: kind of lurking that's going to be jumping into the
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: that's going to be jumping to the front of the
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: line in terms of hot button issues.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I think there's just two broad themes that are possible, right,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of like what you said about like
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: being the no no no. I'm just in the no guy.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: I point out the things that that's wrong, and the
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: solution I don't want any part of that person is
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: real and they exist. And if everybody turns into that person,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: or the majority of us turned into that person who
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: are like I don't want the hard work of being
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: at the table. I just want to sit back and
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: throw stones and tell you what's wrong. As I see it,
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: that it's very possible that there's a bunch of those
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: people who go Holy cow. I wish I would have
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: drugged myself to the table, because I never ever thought
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: the end result would be something like this God or
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: there's the opposite of like I dropped a bunch of
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: partisan bs. I really focused on the things that I
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: really value and I know I want other people to
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: see because they will value it as well. And I kicked, screamed,
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: claud drug myself to the table. And I was consistent
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: until like we turned the tide and people saw the
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: middle ground. Because what I'm seeing, and there's all sorts
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: of people who get ticked me for this is like
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: I do see a lot of people. There's some people
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: who just want their thing and they don't care about anything.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: But I do see a lot of people who really
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: want to do the right thing, and they're just grossly
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: missing for And it takes big moments right now, like
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: we saw during the public land sell off budget reconciliation,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: where it was just like every user group was getting
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: to the table and coming together and being like, yes,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: this is valuable, we want this, we don't want it
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: to go away, how dare you sell it? And being
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 2: engaged even in the minutia in broad coalitions are the
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: things that's going to turn this thing around.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: So that example, and I know I'm kind of beating
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: it to death here, is like I can talk about
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: motorized groups all day, and I know there's tons and
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: tons of good representatives out there. But the thing that's
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: going to turn the tide for motorized groups to be like, oh, hey,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: travel managements plans are in place, practice responsible use, ride responsibly.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: Are people within the motorized community saying, hey, I want
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: this cross country moto experience that we do every year
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: because of the fact that it's pristine and the solitude
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: and the gorgeous views and all this and the limited
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: use it gets. I don't want to turn this experience
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: into that true you're sand Dun experience, or like there's
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: this event every year called King of the Hammers where
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: it's like, you know, you get to really show off
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: what you can do on off road no road. It's
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: like that stuff can exist and this stuff can exist,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: and because we like both doesn't mean we have to
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: turn this into that, right. So but again, like I
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: think a good step is acknowledging like, even though I
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: am not a representative of the motorized community, I drive
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: a four wheel drive truck to every trailhead, right, and
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: some of those roads are really long, you're real bumpy, right,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: But that that is my I don't know my vector
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: for backcountry travel for the human powered stuff too.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: So what else has come? What other kind of issues
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: are coming down? You're you're catching wind of.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: I am very concerned about Ambler Road that seems to
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: be making progress. There's a lot of a lot of
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: the typical things that we've been seeing. We're like big
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: broad statements of like everybody in Alaska is for this,
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: all the Alaska tribes are for this, all the communities.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: You know, I have a lot of calls every week
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: from guide outfitter communities saying like I don't care if
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: they say this road is not public.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: It is going.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: To create a huge impact on you know, caribou, moose trapping,
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: all all the things, the fisheries components. And and then
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: there's the side of like that road's not supposed to
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: be for us, it's a hall road, they're super dangerous.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: People aren't going out there. Why is public? Why are
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: our public dollars being spent on this thing that the
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: public isn't going to use? And then there there's just
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: like all the like the real biological science things there,
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: and the fact that like I don't care what type
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: of mitigation we do out there, like it is not
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: coming back. That scars there forever, right, Like you fly
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: over the Arctic, the coastal plane up there and where
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: they were doing that seismic testing like in the seventies,
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: Like those wheel wheel routes are still there, you know.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: And it's I think we're big enough to say, like
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: we have to have some car bouts for what always
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: has been and can always be, and like having that baseline,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: that through line should be again of national importance to Americans.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we remain I think our country remains
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: in a strong enough position where we can continue to
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: afford to have wild places in this country. You know. Oh,
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: We're in a strong enough position where we can continue
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: to invest in that and practice restraint and some of
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: our biggest contiguous pieces of wilderness. And by saying that,
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to recognize
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: it like that stuffs a luxury. It's there because we
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: decided to let it be there, and we have restrained
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: ourselves from certain activities. And that's why we have it.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: Like you look at for a long time, we had
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: wilderness because we hadn't wilderness wild places. Wildlife was there
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: because we hadn't gotten around to destroying it yet. And
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: then there's a switch, yep, and we crossed like this
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: threshold and it became it's around because we choose it
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: to be around.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, And that's what every single person needs to understand, Like,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: none of this is luck, right, It is all here
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: because people before us made real choices, sometimes very unpopular,
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: and that is why we have the luxuries that we have,
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: being able to float fish, you know, camp on public lands,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: hunt game and take it home like that is an
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: absolute luxury. And you know, the world is full of
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: examples of places that went the opposite way, right, And
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: it's like I definitely like picking and choosing there, right,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: But like if you look at Australia and the battles
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: that they've had just to have egal regulated hunting in
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: that country, because it's like it just got social, got
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: turned in such a way to where so few people
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: did it. What did it matter? Gun rights in the
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: UK few so few people, What doesn't matter? Right access
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: to wildlife in the UK for the purposes of hunting.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: You know, it was always this thing that was for
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: somebody else and it was very exclusive. So what does
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: it really matter? Right, And you know, for the folks
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: who are on the private side of the fence, and
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: they might be thinking this another public lands conversation, what
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter. It's like, well, maybe not too much to
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 2: you right now, but if you just look at the
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: history of every other place on this planet, it's coming
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: for you. So you better you better keep other folks involved,
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: you know, have a little equitable access to while places
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: and wild things, or else it's going to cross the
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: fence and get you too.
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You see that expressed, like in the case of
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: Washington State. I've seen it expressed where people actually say
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: they'll point out so few people engage in spring bear
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: hunting they shouldn't even be allowed to where it's like
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: that they pointed out yep, you know, yep.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: And I always this is all of extra active use.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: But you know, we come up with fun arguments, right.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: It's like, by and large we all agree that sex
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: is a good thing, Like we need to have sex.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: It's how people are on the planet, it's how we reproduce.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: It's just an accepted thing. At the exact same time,
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: we all kind of agree that sex shouldn't happen wherever, whenever. Right,
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: It's just like socially we're like, yeah, not on the
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: city bus.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: You know, we're open to nuance when it comes to sex. Yeah,
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: we take a nuanced approach.
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 2: But when it comes to like in the case of
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: the boundary waters, right, by god, we need copper, we
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: need mineral extraction. Like you're either for it or you're
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: against it.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: I was like, well no, not necessarily. It's like, yeah,
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: I am a consumer of goods, but you're telling me
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 2: that I have to blanket before this type of operation
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: in all landscapes at all times.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: I gotta support sex in the airport, right, Yeah, to
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: remain consistent. Yeah. Yeah, you tell people how to tell
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: people how to get involved with BHA and like, and
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: what you need most? You guys want members I'm sure,
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: But what do you guys need most?
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean membership is the absolute life blood, right Like,
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 2: if if you want an independent organization, membership is the key, right, Like,
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: if you don't want to be beholden to the changing tides,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: a membership organization is a really nice thing to be
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: a part of because those membership dollars give you that independence,
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: meaning that you're not subject to giant government grants and
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: you may hold off on certain programs.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah you don't. You're not. You don't need to curry
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: political favor favorite at all times. And also your whole
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: program doesn't get shut down when when a grant doesn't
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: come through.
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, So members membership is huge, and and that's
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: that's really my biggest ask. I'm so the reason that
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: I'm in this position is because I have always just
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: been so blown away by the rank and file member
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: of the organization and how impressive BHA members are because
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: they are there to be proactive and do something. And
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: at this point, having been around the organization for ten years,
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: we have members that are in the Senate, in Congress.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: They are fish and Game commissioners in many states. They
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: are community leaders for stewardship projects, water keepers. They're out
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: really doing good work. And they literally started because they
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: showed up at a pint night, very low barrier to entry,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: have a beer, talk about conservation. Here's a couple of
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: the issues that we're working on. And you know, we
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 2: got the people in the door and they were like,
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm not just a fundraiser. I'm a doer.
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: I want to go out and do stuff and and
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: those are the that's what we want, we want to
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: make more of and we want to enable and empower
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: those people to step up and represent at that commission meeting.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: Or go pull a couple miles of fence that benefits
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: thirty thousand miles in a migration corridor, and we can
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: give you the straight dope, the non partisan dope on
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: what's happening. And really we need to get to this
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 2: point where we're really providing the proactive legislation, right, like
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: the proactive policy that prevents some of these things from
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: being political footballs. So lots of ways to be involved,
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: will give you the tools to do it, and you'll
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: be a part of an awesome community, and the ripple
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: effects of that community are going to turn everybody into
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: stewards from this this tall on a ideal.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: So I don't get to see as much now and
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: I don't get to have as many laughs with you,
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: but man, I'm glad you're in that. I'm glad you're
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: in that role. Man. I think it's great. Oh thanks
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: to you over there. Thank you.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's consuming. And now with the
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: little nipper at the house, it's, uh, it's more powerful
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways because I'm like, oh man,
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: I all the talking ad nauseum about like doing this
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 2: for my kid certainly is a little more impactful.
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, yeah. Uh.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm like, can I get he's you know,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 2: almost four weeks old? Now can I get this guy
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 2: up to the Arctic in August? Like, is it like
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: he's gonna be able to see something? Right?
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: I remember, all, yeah, I remember all those I find
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: that it's generally you can generally get a you can
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: generally pull off more than most people think you can
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: pull off. But I also have my ass handed to
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: me a couple of times taking kids to do stuff.
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: You'll figure it out, all right, ladies and gentlemen again,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan, chief executive officer at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers,
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: a membership based organization. You can just go to BHA dot.
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: Org, Backcountry Hunters dot org.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, backcountry hunters dot org see what they're up to.
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: You can sign up for I find them quite helpfully,
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: and sign up for email. Keep your prize on stuff.
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: You'll get like Cal's take on things and other issues
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: and stay educated on what's going on, follow along and
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: hopefully hopefully find it a need to support the organization,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: support the great work they do.
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: Thanks Cal, and the action alerts well will you'll get
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: the information. Hit the action alert. It puts you directly
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: in touch with your representative or member and it's just
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: makes it easy. You can use the form letter, but
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: we want you to do it on your own, so
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: use the info. Say where you're from and what you
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: want review. Oh my god, Cal's wee can review. Lots
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: of good info there and it's it's.
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, I'm looking at you like I'm looking at you
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: totally like the the b h A CEO right now.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, life's not worth doing if you're just doing
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: one thing. You to spend those plates.
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: Also here Cal's hot take on everything conservation related. Gets
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: and also get some of those laughs I was talking
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: about by tuning in Cal's week in review right here
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. Thanks man, Thank you