Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't
Speaker 1: Predict Anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the
Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where
Speaker 1: you stand with on x. Okay, we're joined here today
Speaker 1: by special guest Carter Smith, Executive director of Texans Park
Speaker 1: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Yeah. Great to be with
Speaker 1: you all. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna like ask ask
Speaker 1: them easy questions to start. The first question I have
Speaker 1: is not easy. You're aware of how um, how people
Speaker 1: who don't live in Texas are often baffled by Texas.
Speaker 1: The the the number of um animals and just it's
Speaker 1: bewildering to be. Yeah, the scale, the diversity. You had
Speaker 1: a bit of a mythology around all that in there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you can be driving down the road and there's
Speaker 1: a zebra standing there. It's just we hear. It's that's
Speaker 1: why it's gonna be down here, because we hear from
Speaker 1: so many people, you know, people right in and we
Speaker 1: here from so many people who have they speak about
Speaker 1: like people from the Northern Tier States whatever speak about
Speaker 1: Texas as though they're asking about another country. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so it's good to come down and talk to
Speaker 1: the official I don't like to go by the official
Speaker 1: voice of Texas. Yeah, I'm not quite that formal formal stage.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well I'm gonna ask you to cut
Speaker 1: that immediately. You're you're from here, right, I am, Yeah,
Speaker 1: grew up here. It's got up one foot in the shitty,
Speaker 1: one foot in the country called Allston home our family
Speaker 1: right and farmed in central and South Texas, and and
Speaker 1: so it was kind of the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: Ran a cattle ranch. We did, yeah, calfe operation and
Speaker 1: and um my really uncle took full responsibility for that
Speaker 1: when we played a part is as well. Um it
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting growing up to see my cousins
Speaker 1: really gravitate more to the bag side. You know. I
Speaker 1: was always a lot more interested in you know, trapping
Speaker 1: hogs and you know, catching bull frogs and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So so let's just support your cafe operation. No, no,
Speaker 1: that was a separate operation. And so there was there
Speaker 1: was just a dry land row crop operation, Sorghum and
Speaker 1: corn um Lee sat out to a neighbor that have
Speaker 1: been there forever um and so and then we had
Speaker 1: a little cattle operation off on that off to the
Speaker 1: side on that place as well. And uh and so
Speaker 1: you know, that's really where I discovered the outdoors growing up.
Speaker 1: All my my friends love to punt and fish and
Speaker 1: be outside. That was pretty pretty natural, you know. Thankfully
Speaker 1: I had this blessed childhood where I had places to
Speaker 1: go and could also take take friends. But um, it
Speaker 1: was a pretty easy assimilation into the outdoors. Not so
Speaker 1: much for kids today. Did you guys on your guys properties,
Speaker 1: you guys involved in the oil and gas to impression tests. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously you know, you look right now
Speaker 1: what's going on in the Permian um and it has
Speaker 1: dramatically changed the energy landscape. Just a huge voluminous production
Speaker 1: of oil and gas out in out in West Texas.
Speaker 1: You know all of those notions of energy independence, um.
Speaker 1: And you know the fact that you have now the
Speaker 1: US as an exporter of oil and gas. You know,
Speaker 1: the the amount of production that's coming out of West Texas,
Speaker 1: it's just astronomical, um. But yeah, the the ranch of
Speaker 1: my father grew up on UM and that where I
Speaker 1: spent a good part of my childhood. You know, there
Speaker 1: was legacy production that um you know went back to
Speaker 1: the forties and fifties and some that was you know,
Speaker 1: during during our lifetime, and UM, you know it was
Speaker 1: always the trick is to balance that with the other
Speaker 1: things going on at the ranch, um and uh, make
Speaker 1: sure that there was a a coexistence. But I certainly
Speaker 1: don't want to give the listeners an impression that all
Speaker 1: of Texas is covered with pump jack's. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not their hot spots where oil and gas is produced.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a critical resource for the stake generates
Speaker 1: lots of revenues, you might imagine lots of lots of jobs.
Speaker 1: But UM, it's not as if that's an activity that
Speaker 1: blankets the entire state. It's localized obviously, where the oil
Speaker 1: and gas is and where it's viable to get out
Speaker 1: of the get out of the earth. Did you when
Speaker 1: you were young, did you know you're gonna go into
Speaker 1: wild I didn't. Um, you know it's I really I
Speaker 1: didn't have a good sense that, um, you could pursue
Speaker 1: that is a vocation later on, Yeah, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: When we were kids, like some man of the kids,
Speaker 1: like the Hunting Fish, the only thing you could think
Speaker 1: of is everyone would say that they're gonna be a
Speaker 1: game Yeah right. It's like, I don't know, it seems
Speaker 1: like is aware of yeah well, and you know, to
Speaker 1: be fair, I had that too growing up. UM. There
Speaker 1: was a game boarding in Zalez County and one of
Speaker 1: Williamson County that were you know, at the palace and
Speaker 1: the farming ranch all the all the time. They're wonderful mentors,
Speaker 1: wonderful role models. But you know, Steve, really i'd say
Speaker 1: it was college UM, and I was sort of mandering
Speaker 1: my way through trying to figure out what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. No one full well, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: go to law school UM. And I sat down one
Speaker 1: evening with a Parks and Wildlife game boarden and a
Speaker 1: Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist and that was really the
Speaker 1: epiphany that you know, I could pursue that is a
Speaker 1: is a vocation. And I wouldn't talk to a couple
Speaker 1: of my biology professors at the University of Texas and UM,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, if you're really interested in
Speaker 1: pursuing wildlife biology or wildlife management. You need to transfer
Speaker 1: to another school that has more of an applied resource
Speaker 1: management program. And so one of them said, go west
Speaker 1: young man to soul Ross. And I said, well, where's
Speaker 1: that And they said, that's an alpine in far west Texas.
Speaker 1: And so I, you know, dutifully looked it up. Small school,
Speaker 1: this kind of rich history and geology and wildlife and
Speaker 1: transferred to soul Ross and and then left school for
Speaker 1: a while to actually come work for Parts and Wildlife
Speaker 1: on one of their wildlife management areas. And a couple
Speaker 1: of professors from Texas Tech who were doing research on
Speaker 1: the wildlife management area convince me that, you know, Luck,
Speaker 1: you really need to go back school, finish up your
Speaker 1: degree and wildlife management. Why don't you come to Lovebuck.
Speaker 1: Let us show you around campus. Um you don't have
Speaker 1: that much to go. That's thee was a rule, now,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, it really is. It's you mean to
Speaker 1: get it like administrative level stuff, and you know it's
Speaker 1: there's certainly a lot of folks that have taken that trajectory.
Speaker 1: UM I wouldn't but the graduate program and certainly if
Speaker 1: you're gonna get employed, UM as a biologist with a
Speaker 1: state fish and Wildlife agency, you need a mattress degree
Speaker 1: for sure. It's just so hyper competitive. UM. And then
Speaker 1: candidly here, if you want to be a game board,
Speaker 1: you've got to have a college degree. Now that there's
Speaker 1: no requirement that it's in criminal justice or fisher reaeson,
Speaker 1: wildlife management or psychology or maybe any of the other
Speaker 1: fields you might think of or phil with with UM
Speaker 1: law enforcement. But you gotta have a college degree. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's a very important, I think distinguishing factor for
Speaker 1: our force. But yeah, the the advanced degree if you
Speaker 1: want to go into the biological sciences and and get
Speaker 1: into fish reason wildlife management. It's just so so competitive
Speaker 1: these days. It's just about imperative. That's what drives it
Speaker 1: in your minds, is the competition. Yeah, not like a
Speaker 1: not like a it's not a prerequisite for applications. Well,
Speaker 1: there is a prerex sid I mean typically we'll say
Speaker 1: preferred UM, you know, and so and you know, we've
Speaker 1: got plenty of biologists that UM that have undergraduate degrees
Speaker 1: and excel inside the agency, and then we have plenty
Speaker 1: of post docs. So it it runs the gamut on
Speaker 1: the continuum. But on average, I'd say, UM, these days,
Speaker 1: competing for a state Fish and Wildlife agency job, that
Speaker 1: that that at least a master job is going to help, UM,
Speaker 1: give you a little extra chance, and in in what
Speaker 1: is a very very competitive field. And you went off
Speaker 1: to Yale, I did, I did? There must have been
Speaker 1: a real shots, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. If somebody said
Speaker 1: I took a wrong turn in Waco. Uh, but you
Speaker 1: know that? Did I feel pretty? We were you well
Speaker 1: traveled or were you pretty to spent your life around Texas? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean I I had. I wouldn't say I was
Speaker 1: well traveled, but I've been outside of the state and
Speaker 1: now outside the country. Um. And I was excited about
Speaker 1: a challenge. Um, and candidly when I was kind of
Speaker 1: making my mandors through college, which was a very circuitous um,
Speaker 1: of course. Um. Before leaving Tech, I had applied to
Speaker 1: Yale and gotten in and then decided that I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do that, finished up my degree, came to
Speaker 1: work for Parks and Wildlife UM, and was here for oh,
Speaker 1: I guess almost two years, and realized I needed to
Speaker 1: go get that advanced degree, and Parks and Wildlife was
Speaker 1: looking at creating a position where I could go to
Speaker 1: a and m U, pursue my masters and continue work
Speaker 1: full time with the department, which was a huge opportunity.
Speaker 1: But I went ahead and decided to UM pursue UM
Speaker 1: admissions again into Yale end UM. I went in to
Speaker 1: talk to Bob Cook, who was the Wildlife Division director
Speaker 1: at the time and interestingly enough was my predecessor as
Speaker 1: the executive director and UM, and Bob said, Carter, We've
Speaker 1: got a terrific opportunity for you at college station. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it would work out very well. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take my parts and whild iife had off and
Speaker 1: if you were my son, I'd tell you to go east. UM.
Speaker 1: You need to go do that. You need to have
Speaker 1: a different experience in your life. Go go experience a
Speaker 1: different culture, group of people, different type of education. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it will put you in good stead.
Speaker 1: And what you did so I did? I mean, I
Speaker 1: was terrified, absolutely, yeah, but I loved it. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: wonderful university. UM. Lots of people from all over the globe,
Speaker 1: very stimulating intellectually. UM. And there I had a chance
Speaker 1: to meet a professor that really became a professional mentor
Speaker 1: for me Um a guy named Steve Kellert Um and
Speaker 1: Dr Kellert and E. O. Wilson and wrote that biofella
Speaker 1: you work. Yeah, that would be a stretch, but I
Speaker 1: did how he popularized that term biophelia. We talked about
Speaker 1: him my brothers in the college. He reads a lot
Speaker 1: of Oilson. Yeah, yeah, well you know what he was
Speaker 1: that he passed away? No, No, he is. He's still
Speaker 1: he's still alive. Um. And I think he's retired from Harvard.
Speaker 1: I mean he's probably still a professor emeritus or something.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll never forget. He's written so much on
Speaker 1: so many subjects. Just what an intellectual giant um and uh.
Speaker 1: And there was something that he wrote one tie that
Speaker 1: always stuck with me. The little guys, the little guys
Speaker 1: that ruled the world, you know. And of course he
Speaker 1: was an invertebrate biologist, and so I loved dance and
Speaker 1: all the little things. And when you think about you know,
Speaker 1: soul health and just the criticality of of of of
Speaker 1: microbes and the huge amount of biological diversity in our soil,
Speaker 1: and how that's just really the foundation for for everything.
Speaker 1: He was certainly spot on people that I mean just
Speaker 1: listeners that are curious for your talking about you can
Speaker 1: look up these comparisons of you know, if you took
Speaker 1: everything if you imagine all animal life like in an
Speaker 1: area and made a put in the pile, and then
Speaker 1: took all animal life out of the soil and put
Speaker 1: it in a pile, like the comparison of sizes, and
Speaker 1: then you get into stuff like if you took all
Speaker 1: the beatles in the world and put them in a pile,
Speaker 1: that the pile is bigger than all the humans and
Speaker 1: large mammals, and you know, pretty dramatic and it's funny,
Speaker 1: like you just you don't perceive the world that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well another good comparison to that is like the tall
Speaker 1: grass parrot. You know, you look at those big, expansive
Speaker 1: tall grasses and then you dig up the root system
Speaker 1: and uh and what's on top of the whole pales
Speaker 1: in comparison to what's beneath iceberg. That's right, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other issutingly thinking about Yale that um was was um.
Speaker 1: I mean I knew it before going there, but of
Speaker 1: course it's were aldo leopolg um, and so in the
Speaker 1: university very proud of that connection and that that ethic,
Speaker 1: and you know Gifford Pincho's time there, and and so
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of folks along history that went
Speaker 1: to school there, and you know, a lot of them
Speaker 1: you know, more in kind of policy related um um positions.
Speaker 1: But Steve Keller was just one of the brilliant thinkers,
Speaker 1: really interested in the human wildlife interface and people's attitudes
Speaker 1: towards wildlife and nature. And you know, I think for
Speaker 1: anybody that goes into a career in fisheries or wildlife
Speaker 1: management or conservational law enforcement, you quickly find out that
Speaker 1: most of your work has spent dealing with people, not creditters.
Speaker 1: It's really funny you mention next. We had a leading
Speaker 1: mountain lion biologist on recently and he like in being circumspects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I mostly deal with people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd rather deal with lines, but I'm dealing with people. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd rather deal with deer, but I mostly deal with people. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Were you familiar with the writings of Aldo Leopold before
Speaker 1: before you went to school Sad County? You know, I
Speaker 1: grew up all that kind of stuff. Well a little later,
Speaker 1: I you know that that that came to me in college.
Speaker 1: I think the Saint Kenny Almanac was was actually a
Speaker 1: literature class. I had it at first all I went
Speaker 1: to Swann University of South and UM and it just
Speaker 1: really resonated with me. I mean his prose was so elegant.
Speaker 1: I mean it was so compelling, and he just wrote
Speaker 1: about the outdoors in ways that really spoke to me,
Speaker 1: um and in ways that no one had done and
Speaker 1: no one had done. Yeah yeah. And what's interesting about
Speaker 1: that writing is it's timeless, right. I mean we read
Speaker 1: it today and we thank god that was written, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy years ago or so, and it's as relevant today
Speaker 1: as it was in anything in there. I reread it
Speaker 1: now and then anything in there that feels dated, it's
Speaker 1: not actually dated, but it almost feels prophetic, like like
Speaker 1: the most of it feels like everything feels relevant and now,
Speaker 1: and then you read something and it feels like, man,
Speaker 1: he really was looking kind of forward or and I say,
Speaker 1: it's so much prophetic. We're talking about things that wanted
Speaker 1: being proving to be pretty timeless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: I think the whole stewardship ethic, you know, and of
Speaker 1: course at a private land state like Texas. Um, that's
Speaker 1: very Germaine to what we what we do. And I
Speaker 1: think Aldo Leopold wrote very very persuasively and movingly about
Speaker 1: the criticality of that ethic and making sure we do
Speaker 1: everything we can to help foster and engender that in
Speaker 1: our in our private lands managers and our private landowners.
Speaker 1: And so when you say private land state, US are
Speaker 1: in the nineties, yeah, and you know, proudly so, I
Speaker 1: mean that's part of the kind of the rich tradition
Speaker 1: of of Texas and so um, we're a very proudly
Speaker 1: private lands state. And and also you know, certainly from
Speaker 1: a conservation perspective here in Texas, if you're gonna get
Speaker 1: anything done any kind of a meaningful scale in Texas,
Speaker 1: it needs to be in concert and partnership with with
Speaker 1: private landowners. And so that's a big driver for us. Well,
Speaker 1: I imagine, I mean just that you know, you have
Speaker 1: to be realistic about it. I'm sure there's plenty of
Speaker 1: people that would like to have some more public land
Speaker 1: opportunities in a state like this. Wildlife conservation is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen on private lands. It's where yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you bet. I don't want to skip too much, but
Speaker 1: you wanted with the Nature Conservancy. I did. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I worked for the Nature Conservancy and that was kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting transition. I um. When I left Yale,
Speaker 1: I was up in Canada for a while, up in
Speaker 1: the boreal forest, um way hoose work, which is pretty
Speaker 1: interesting and uh. And then I got talked into coming
Speaker 1: back to Texas from some interestingly enough, some parts and
Speaker 1: wildlife biologist friends that were really concerned about the development
Speaker 1: of the Katie Perrie west of Houston and just a
Speaker 1: waterfowl mecca, historic prairie wetland areas, lots of rice farming
Speaker 1: at the time. But Houston was, you know, on its
Speaker 1: inexorable march westward and um and there was a need
Speaker 1: for kind of a nature conservancy like organization that could
Speaker 1: work with parties to try to help protect some of
Speaker 1: that habitat before it all became impervious cover. It's so
Speaker 1: I got in pervious so so so just like this tabletop,
Speaker 1: you know, the parking lot, the asphalt, nothing gets like
Speaker 1: yeah yeah and so um and so Houston's moving west,
Speaker 1: You've got all this valuable rice farm habitat, wetlands, residual prairie,
Speaker 1: tons of waterfowl. UM. But you know, the concern was
Speaker 1: it was gonna get paved over unless there was somebody
Speaker 1: actively working to go out and work with landowners to
Speaker 1: try to figure out a way to conserve it. So interestingly,
Speaker 1: a group of waterfowl guides uh, rice farmers UM, a
Speaker 1: couple of developers, real estate attorneys, UM, and some of
Speaker 1: Houston's got the middle of the road conservationists said we
Speaker 1: need to create a land trust like organization. That was
Speaker 1: the coalition. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So they credit this
Speaker 1: Katie Perry conservance. Real quick. Oh you know what, hold
Speaker 1: that thought, all hold the thought? What were you looking
Speaker 1: at with moos? So we were looking at a variety
Speaker 1: of things and is kind of this concept about trophic
Speaker 1: cascades and whether or not systems were controlled top down
Speaker 1: through her beavery or more bottom up through nutrient related considerations.
Speaker 1: And at the who's in the driver's Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: who's in the driver's seat and so in and you
Speaker 1: know how our forest management practices UM contributing to either um,
Speaker 1: you know, helping or hurting moose populations. And there was
Speaker 1: this this this Kotaria Universities that was working up on
Speaker 1: a Cree Indian reservation UM with funding from the National
Speaker 1: Science Foundation, and so they were looking at a wide
Speaker 1: variety of things. And it was University of Saskatchewan, University
Speaker 1: of British Columbia, University of Washington, Harvard, Yale, a couple
Speaker 1: of couple of others, and so there were there were
Speaker 1: professors and grad students from all over UM and we
Speaker 1: lived on this Kre Indian reservation and UM and and
Speaker 1: worked very closely with the First Nations Community, UM, the
Speaker 1: Saskatchewan provincial government on a variety of kind of research
Speaker 1: related topics. And my job was to help kind of
Speaker 1: keep all of that going. There were certain uh numbers
Speaker 1: from the community that we had to hire for jobs
Speaker 1: associated with the research. When researchers in their grad students
Speaker 1: would come up, I'd have to help them kind of
Speaker 1: get acclimated and help them get their research projects get
Speaker 1: get set up. And so he was a pretty eclectic
Speaker 1: mix of things that we were we were we were
Speaker 1: studying the moose stuff, obviously is what caught my attention
Speaker 1: the most, because I knew so little about moose before
Speaker 1: I got up there, and it was just interesting to
Speaker 1: be around a big game animal that was so you
Speaker 1: know iconic um in those in those in those forests,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'll always treasure that time. Just uh but
Speaker 1: the culture shock was about like going to New Haven, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Uh so in the other direction, in the other direction. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, and I ended up making my way back
Speaker 1: to Katie at the behest of of of folks here
Speaker 1: to help start this land trust, which I knew absolutely
Speaker 1: what was the Yeah, when you talk about the land
Speaker 1: trust for Katy Prairie, what was the what was the
Speaker 1: developer participants? You know, so the developer participation were really
Speaker 1: a couple faults of Syrah Club was suing everybody over
Speaker 1: you know, development of wet lands, violations of the Clean
Speaker 1: Water Act. I mean it was World War three over
Speaker 1: there on the on the on the Katie Perry um.
Speaker 1: And so they were trying to find, let's create some
Speaker 1: organization in the radical center that can apply to everybody
Speaker 1: that's doing something applied, pragmatic, getting something done. It's not
Speaker 1: just a purely litigation oriented strategy. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: and I would say it the the the area was
Speaker 1: was pretty agricultural oriented, so it wasn't like a fit
Speaker 1: for an organization like the Nature Conservancy. And so that
Speaker 1: was the genesis for for for the land trust being created.
Speaker 1: You mean men, the nature conservants is generally associated with
Speaker 1: less disturbed less disturbed lands, Yeah, exactly. And and then
Speaker 1: I think folks wanted wanted a group that it was
Speaker 1: a local um. You know, it was locally driven. The
Speaker 1: board was local, people knew who they were, representatives from
Speaker 1: these different sectors that you know, kind of aligned around
Speaker 1: a plan to help protect parts of that, Katy Perry.
Speaker 1: And you know, to your question, the real estate developers
Speaker 1: saw it as a as a quality of life issue.
Speaker 1: They saw it also as an appreciation to real estate
Speaker 1: is there was going to be development out there. There
Speaker 1: is development out there, but having open spaces, parks, wildlife areas,
Speaker 1: they saw that, or at least some of them saw
Speaker 1: that as a value add to what inevitably was going
Speaker 1: to be the you know, future growth of Houston. And
Speaker 1: so having some of that preserved, they saw that as
Speaker 1: a as a proverbial win win playing yeah, playing the
Speaker 1: long game. And I'll tell you what's what's proved interesting
Speaker 1: about that too. If you look at um Hurricane Harvey, UM,
Speaker 1: when it perched over Houston and West Houston and dumped,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty inches of rain. You know, that area
Speaker 1: west of Houston, you know, becomes the receiving ground for
Speaker 1: all of that rain. And the more that can slow down,
Speaker 1: the more it can can penetrate into the soil percolate
Speaker 1: down there. As opposed to just running off concrete into
Speaker 1: a buy you, the less flooding it's gonna cost. So
Speaker 1: so as it turned out. You know what the Katie
Speaker 1: Perry Conservancy was doing when I started there, you know,
Speaker 1: it's all about waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. Um. Today it's
Speaker 1: a whole lot more about UH kind of an unconventional
Speaker 1: flood control strategy and preserving open space to help with
Speaker 1: attenuating UH floods into Houston in addition to protecting open
Speaker 1: space and wildlife habitat and places that people can can
Speaker 1: go to get outside people. Yeah, yeah, they still do,
Speaker 1: which is terrific, you know, And um, we don't have
Speaker 1: the huge amounts of snow geese that we used to have.
Speaker 1: When I was there, those rice fields and wetlands were
Speaker 1: just absolutely covered with snow geese. There was one of them.
Speaker 1: But even that was an anomal though, right, well, it
Speaker 1: was an anomaly because you know that rice attracted him,
Speaker 1: and UM, I like that that. Yeah, yeah, just the Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, Yeah, a lot of them, but
Speaker 1: you know, lots of ducks of all stripes. You know,
Speaker 1: we're here at the tip of the funnel on the
Speaker 1: Central Flyway, so we get lots of waterfowl that that
Speaker 1: come through here. And we spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: here at the agency working to conserve waterfowl habitat and
Speaker 1: and make sure we're doing our part along the along
Speaker 1: the flyway and um. And so that Katie Purry provided
Speaker 1: a pretty unique point a little further inland from the coast. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, those big flocks of snow geese have kind
Speaker 1: of gone away. Um, they seemed a lot of them
Speaker 1: moved over to Arkansas where you still have a lot
Speaker 1: of rice country. And yeah, we just don't have the numbers.
Speaker 1: Did you. Did you keep up as an angler through
Speaker 1: all this Yeah, yeah, no, I never lost that. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know that certainly was my immersion in the
Speaker 1: out of doors is loved up, you know, hunting fish
Speaker 1: growing up. If I could, you know, died funding, I
Speaker 1: you know, I would be the peppist, you know, A
Speaker 1: way to go. I think from my perspective, I just
Speaker 1: I just love that, UM. But I've always tried to
Speaker 1: make time for it. UM. Now, you know, to be fair,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of folks that I love to
Speaker 1: hunt fish and so I want to, you know, go
Speaker 1: get a a have a career as a wildlife biologists
Speaker 1: or a game warden. It's not like you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of copious free time to do all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so people get kind of disabused of that notion. It's
Speaker 1: a professional job and you're gonna have to make time
Speaker 1: just like anybody else to do the things you love.
Speaker 1: Then you came here. Now, then I went to work
Speaker 1: for the Nature Conservancy and UM, and so I was recruited,
Speaker 1: UH go work for the Nature Conservancy in South Texas
Speaker 1: and Northern Mexico's a project in the Lagana Mata tom
Speaker 1: Alepis and look at the madri in Texas. UM looking
Speaker 1: at kind of a binational conservation strategy with UM, and
Speaker 1: they wanted somebody that could relate well to landowners and
Speaker 1: would be comfortable. At the time working in Northern Mexico
Speaker 1: is a different times. Then it's flamed by now and
Speaker 1: so by national working in two countries UM and so
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting about the Laguna Madre system. You know,
Speaker 1: the one of the five largest hyper saline, super salty
Speaker 1: lagoons in the world. You have it in South Texas
Speaker 1: basically from Corpus to Brownsville. Then you've got the real
Speaker 1: Grand and then you have the Mexican Laguna Madre south
Speaker 1: of that, and they're both of them again super salty,
Speaker 1: loaded with you know, red fish and trout and redheaded
Speaker 1: ducks and peregrine falcons and kemps, ready sea turtles and
Speaker 1: shore birds and wading birds and reddish eGRID. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's the amount of wildlife is stunning. Is
Speaker 1: it in good shape on both sides of the border.
Speaker 1: You know, there are um, there are there are differences. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think has helped the
Speaker 1: Texas side quite a bit is the big expanse of
Speaker 1: ranch country, undeveloped branch country that borders the Laguna Madre.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the King Ranch, the Kennedy Ranch,
Speaker 1: some of our state's most uh fabled in largest ranches.
Speaker 1: And the fact that and in great shape and they
Speaker 1: very actively manage those ranches for wildlife and conservation and
Speaker 1: and range land health and so forth. Um. It's so
Speaker 1: the lack of development along the Laguna Madre both um,
Speaker 1: largely on the mainland side because of the big ranches,
Speaker 1: but then of course podral And National Seashore, longest you know,
Speaker 1: undeveloped stretch of barrier island in the world. UM, coupled
Speaker 1: with another big swath of protected land that's part of
Speaker 1: the US Fish and Wildlife Service Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife
Speaker 1: Refuge on South Padrea Island means that, Um, you just
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of developmental pressures in the Laguna
Speaker 1: Madre until you get deep down into the into the
Speaker 1: rear Grand Valley near the Mexico border. Um. It's so
Speaker 1: Texas site pretty good shape. Um, you know, get into Mexico.
Speaker 1: Oh that that that system um still biologically very unique.
Speaker 1: Um fished awfully hard. Um because even like the one
Speaker 1: you guys in Texas when it was such a slow
Speaker 1: down on commercial red fish netting and stuff, they probably
Speaker 1: those practices that probably continue to imagine they do they
Speaker 1: continue down there. Um. You know, they'll put these big
Speaker 1: nets across those little bayous and inlets and just hammer
Speaker 1: the fish of all kinds, and you know, candidly. Our
Speaker 1: gameboard spent a fair amount of time, um, dealing with
Speaker 1: a legal Mexican commercial fishermen coming into Texas. And so
Speaker 1: they'll come in these little pongas and they'll set these
Speaker 1: long lines and they will hammer our you know, sharks
Speaker 1: and rechnaw because you're just flirting with a with a
Speaker 1: you're flirting with a marine marine border. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: they come over, they set their lines, and they come back,
Speaker 1: and they get in and out and and it's a
Speaker 1: real game of cat and mouse. Um. But it's that
Speaker 1: that pressure has really intensified over the years, I think
Speaker 1: is you know, some of those fisheries in Mexico had
Speaker 1: so much pressure on them that, um, it's just been
Speaker 1: worth the risk to them to come over and try
Speaker 1: to sneak across the international boundary and fish and Texas waters.
Speaker 1: And so our our law enforcement team spends a lot
Speaker 1: of work and making sure they're protecting our resources. In
Speaker 1: that record, hey uh yeah, hit him with the question
Speaker 1: you were talking about wanting to ask them what's out
Speaker 1: of order? But it's now Yeah, I didn't know we
Speaker 1: had an order. We'd like to keep it secret. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. No man, we're running through like, uh,
Speaker 1: think about it like your childhood. Yeah, I say the
Speaker 1: secret Yeah, no, I got it. I got we got
Speaker 1: peeled off on international borders. Yeah, but we were wondering
Speaker 1: how much you work in concert with like the Mexican
Speaker 1: government now as Texas parks and wildlife with critters that
Speaker 1: are you know, they're living that zone, might don't care
Speaker 1: about whether yeah, exactly, they don't know migratory wat water phone.
Speaker 1: It's got to be a conversation, right it is. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And in fact, we have a liasion that works here
Speaker 1: UM whose sole job it is to um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of work with some of our international partners. And
Speaker 1: so a big part of her job has been with
Speaker 1: working with our counterparts in Mexico on you know, fisheries
Speaker 1: and wildlife issues. And you're right, you know, bighorn sheep
Speaker 1: or redheaded ducks could care less whether or not you know,
Speaker 1: they're in the Wevley owned um or you know, West
Speaker 1: Texas UM or the coast of Texas or the coast
Speaker 1: of coast of Mexico. And so we still continue that
Speaker 1: work fairly actively, not as actively as it once was,
Speaker 1: just you know, to be fair, the conversations are good. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, we have there's an international joint venture of
Speaker 1: the Rear Grand joint Venture works on bird related priorities
Speaker 1: in both Texas and Mexico that were very actively involved in.
Speaker 1: UM will frequently host workshops for UM Mexican biologists to
Speaker 1: come to to to come to Texas where we can
Speaker 1: help share information and disseminate information UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: regrettably thanks changed UM in Northern Mexico and that has
Speaker 1: put a damper on, you know, some of our travel
Speaker 1: and the ease of working across borders to UM share
Speaker 1: resources and work collaboratively on projects and again, whether that's
Speaker 1: UM Kim's readily seat turtles on the coast and protecting
Speaker 1: nesting beaches or working together on you know, red headed
Speaker 1: duck related management or big horn sheep or whatever. But
Speaker 1: they're still for still a dialogue and that's good when
Speaker 1: we see that things have changed, are you referring to
Speaker 1: just like the escalation of drug related violence and it
Speaker 1: also things about things about border security really really more
Speaker 1: the former than the ladder. Yeah, the escalation of the
Speaker 1: of the cartels and the penetration into into northern Mexico.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just issues associated with safety that we
Speaker 1: have to be very very mindful of, um, because of
Speaker 1: the areas in which, um, you know, our folks work. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's that reminds me of a point
Speaker 1: I like to raise with people now and then, um,
Speaker 1: where you grow up with this the idyllic cents or
Speaker 1: not even let me put it different way, like people
Speaker 1: imagine this sort of post apocalyptic situation where wildlife thrives,
Speaker 1: and I always find myself pointing out the people if
Speaker 1: you look, what like chaos does not serve wildlife? Well yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: like stable, well functioning governments serve wildlife well bad. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that I used to remember going to
Speaker 1: places like going to the Southern Philippines when I was younger,
Speaker 1: and I had my snoricling mask, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it'll be no one's ever seen in these and you
Speaker 1: go there and you can't find a fish. There's no
Speaker 1: regulatory structure, no enforcement, no protection, just illegal fishing, illegal methods,
Speaker 1: using explosives, using poisons, no one to say no, that's
Speaker 1: not right, not just after you're like, yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: places that work smooth, they have very well well, And
Speaker 1: I think there's three legsure that tool, right, I mean
Speaker 1: there's the biology shot, there's the enforcement shot, and then
Speaker 1: there's the dedicated fun inside. And you've got to have
Speaker 1: all three of those for those systems to function. And
Speaker 1: so to your point, I think you're right where you've
Speaker 1: got stable governments and you've got you know, hunters, anglers,
Speaker 1: outdoor enthusiasts wherever you are on the consumptive or non
Speaker 1: consumptive space, and there's dedicated funding streams to support that.
Speaker 1: You have professional scientists, and then you have a professional
Speaker 1: law enforcement force that's that's charged with taking care of
Speaker 1: that and protecting it. That's where you see the fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife thrive. Your right. You know, are you familiar
Speaker 1: We're gonna get back on tracking a minute, but are
Speaker 1: you familiar with the How would you describe Shane Mahoney
Speaker 1: we've ever had him on the show. You I know,
Speaker 1: Shannon very very charismatic, very eloquent, very very passionate. But
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, he's he's like a wildlife philosopher. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and that's a great way to put a wonderful
Speaker 1: ambassador for the North American. He is a deep, deep
Speaker 1: thinker about wildlife and the history of governments and conservation
Speaker 1: and what war works have done. But you know, wildlife
Speaker 1: philosopher is a is a terrific I think Moniker for
Speaker 1: for Shane and and all the good he does all
Speaker 1: around the world. He raised the point with me that
Speaker 1: that kind of reflects what you're just saying where you're
Speaker 1: talking about the system of But like like scientific management
Speaker 1: to biologists, you have a funding structure. You have private
Speaker 1: landowners who want to see wild motivated to want to
Speaker 1: see wildlife, fund their property and enjoy wildlife. And he's
Speaker 1: describing all these functions that make our wildlife system work, um,
Speaker 1: and how complex it is and interwoven it is. And
Speaker 1: he said, one of the reasons our system is resilient
Speaker 1: is you can't cut the head off the snake. There's
Speaker 1: not like a thing. There's not like some crystal thing
Speaker 1: that makes it work. Many things work, and if you
Speaker 1: if someone were to go in for whatever nefarious reason,
Speaker 1: we're like I'm going to destroy it, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: clear what to do. Like we have a it's it's
Speaker 1: a very well supported very well yeah, thankfully, thankfully, Yeah
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, um, okay back contract. Now, so you
Speaker 1: got this question answered. Check, give us, give us a breakdown. Well,
Speaker 1: the lands where you're at now lands for right now.
Speaker 1: So you do that conservancy, that nic conservancy for the
Speaker 1: whole damn state. Yeah, I know. It wasn't that much
Speaker 1: of epiphany, that easier transition, to say the least. Probably
Speaker 1: thankfully I didn't know what I didn't know. Um, And
Speaker 1: but no, I I was happily doing my work at
Speaker 1: the Nature Conservancy. Really enjoyed the conservation work. It felt
Speaker 1: like it was impactful in Texas, which was really my
Speaker 1: UM area of focus. Although you know, as I said,
Speaker 1: I'd worked in northern Mexico for a while as well,
Speaker 1: But you know, Texas being my home ground, that's that's
Speaker 1: where I was interested in in in in focusing. And
Speaker 1: and then I got recruited, Uh, kind of gauged my
Speaker 1: interest in coming back to parks and while life in
Speaker 1: this in this job, and um, you came back to
Speaker 1: serve the rouler in I did. I did? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: um and what a privilege, I mean, really, what a privilege.
Speaker 1: I Um, I care deeply about my home ground, just
Speaker 1: as I expect most people care about theirs. And so
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity to work with a group of
Speaker 1: colleagues that are so passionate about you know, place and
Speaker 1: our natural heritage, in our in our history, UM and
Speaker 1: our wild things and wild places. UM. I love that
Speaker 1: about this agency and so UM the people were a
Speaker 1: huge attraction to me just because I've I've i've always
Speaker 1: held the department in very high esteem because of the
Speaker 1: professionals that I knew that worked for the department in
Speaker 1: different quarters UM, And so that was appealing to me.
Speaker 1: And then just the opportunity to do things at a
Speaker 1: little larger scale to give back, not just in the
Speaker 1: stewardship related side, which I'm particularly passionate about, but also
Speaker 1: the outdoor recreation side. I I really believe firmly that
Speaker 1: if we're going to grow the next generation of conservationists,
Speaker 1: that we've got to figure out ways to immerse them
Speaker 1: in the outdoors. Now. It may not have been and
Speaker 1: probably won't be the same way I was immersed in
Speaker 1: the outdoors or either of you were, um, but wherever
Speaker 1: they are, wherever they're at, we need to figure out
Speaker 1: ways to introduce them and connect them. And I felt
Speaker 1: like Parks and Wildlife understood that from a from a
Speaker 1: state agency perspective, and if there was an opportunity to
Speaker 1: help grow that and expand that, and that really that
Speaker 1: really appealed to me is a is a way to
Speaker 1: give back to the state that's given me a whole lot.
Speaker 1: You probably can't even answer this. Do people come along
Speaker 1: and never vet you as an interior secretary as Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: their their their bar is much higher uh than next.
Speaker 1: I feel that's your next place. Oh you know, I
Speaker 1: love Texas and you have to dynamite me out of here.
Speaker 1: I think it's or shoot me out of here, which
Speaker 1: others probably a line of folks want to do. That
Speaker 1: give me an overview on um just like the scale
Speaker 1: of Texas Parts and Wildlife Department. Well, so you know,
Speaker 1: we cover the whole state, you know, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four counties, hundred and fifty million acres or so
Speaker 1: a terrestrial wildlife habitat um Our boundaries go out nine
Speaker 1: nautical miles into the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: miles of rivers and creeks and streams, you know roughly,
Speaker 1: you know, with our Mandering shoreline a little over four
Speaker 1: thousand miles of that. So it is, it is big,
Speaker 1: and it is vast. You know, you draw a straight line,
Speaker 1: I think it's three hundred and sixty seven miles. You
Speaker 1: do all the you know, bays and estuaries and so forth,
Speaker 1: and it's it's scaled up considerably along the along the coast.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting statistic about Prince of Wales Island
Speaker 1: and the Island of Hawaii, Prince Will's Island. It's half
Speaker 1: size or a third size, best twice the coastline. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly the same phenomena. But you know, the scale is
Speaker 1: is fascinating. You know, ten or eleven different ecoregions, um,
Speaker 1: you know, from the deserts to the coast, to the subtropics,
Speaker 1: down into the Rio Grand Valley, the southern terminus of
Speaker 1: the High Plains, the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains,
Speaker 1: you know, the Edwards Plateau, and the central part of
Speaker 1: the state. A place at E. O. Wilson of all people,
Speaker 1: called the twenty six bow diversity hotspot in all the world,
Speaker 1: just because of the proliferation of interesting fish and wildlife
Speaker 1: organisms and plants that that reside there. The Big Thicket,
Speaker 1: which is you know, more like the south over in
Speaker 1: the eastern part of our state. And so it is big,
Speaker 1: and it is diverse. Is an artifact of the size,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the accident of geography thing. It's
Speaker 1: situated a pretty interesting part of the globe all and
Speaker 1: you've got stuff that from a passing glance you can
Speaker 1: think it was tropical jungle. Yeah, and then you have
Speaker 1: it's amazing cause you go up and you have the
Speaker 1: like short grass prairie right off at Texas Panhandle, right
Speaker 1: because guys would guys would talk about traveling for days
Speaker 1: without seeing a tree. Yeah, and did and it looks
Speaker 1: like the Great Plains. Yeah, absolutely got those rolling, undulating hills.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you'd hit a little bottom with some
Speaker 1: cotton woods and a spring fed creek and and and
Speaker 1: you know, a lot gamier than people realize. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there are parts of the Panhandle that you know, I'd
Speaker 1: pluck us all down in and you'd say, sure, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm here in Kansas, I'm in Nebraska. But you're in
Speaker 1: the Texas painting or conversely, parts of far West Texas
Speaker 1: where you get up in some of the mountains um
Speaker 1: and you get some ponderosa pine and aspen, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think you're in New Mexico or Colorado and So
Speaker 1: that's that's fun to be able to work in the
Speaker 1: state that has that level of diversity of kind of
Speaker 1: plant and animal communities and to play a role in
Speaker 1: helping to manage them and conserve them. What's you guys
Speaker 1: best guests on how many deer? Say? You know? And
Speaker 1: our best guess is a is A is a good
Speaker 1: way to put it. But you know, maybe in the
Speaker 1: five million range. I'm gonna look at what I told
Speaker 1: here about twenty eight million people. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: we grow by about a thousand Texans a day, so
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, seriously, seriously, Yeah, yeah, it's impressive.
Speaker 1: Our our growth rate has just been um, pretty high
Speaker 1: and pretty because roughly, yeah, what's driving it? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the economy. Yeah, the economy. Um. I mean people come
Speaker 1: here for business quality, quality, alive. Um. You know, eighty
Speaker 1: six percent of us live in nine major metropolitan areas,
Speaker 1: so you know, Texas spite of all that vast rural
Speaker 1: nature nature um empty in the middle, empty in the middle,
Speaker 1: um um or populous in the middle and in empty
Speaker 1: on the on the fench. Yeah. Yeah, so five million,
Speaker 1: roughly five million deer. If I be a deer, if
Speaker 1: I've made white tails. Someone then came and said to you, um,
Speaker 1: like they wanted to make a bet with you, a
Speaker 1: bout how right the number was? Yeah? Like how how
Speaker 1: how possibly wrong could a number like that be? Well,
Speaker 1: and you guys sit around trying to like, because five
Speaker 1: million sounds like a pretty convenient round number. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I and you know take that again? Is it from
Speaker 1: looking at densities and then multiplying. Yeah, So our our
Speaker 1: our biologists are actively involved, you know, with survey of
Speaker 1: all kinds of animals um year round, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on what the species is. You know, certainly why tell
Speaker 1: deer surveyed very very extensively, not only by biologists with
Speaker 1: this department, but by private landowners and others. But five
Speaker 1: million is an estimate, and so that's a rounding number
Speaker 1: from me um and so is that accurate within plus
Speaker 1: or minus ten properly? We got a lot of deer
Speaker 1: um and in many cases too many deer. And so
Speaker 1: you know the issue is not so much how do
Speaker 1: we bring back deer in our state. We've already done
Speaker 1: that very very successfully. The challenges is how do we
Speaker 1: get hunters to shoot enough dear? How do we get
Speaker 1: landowners to accept allowing hunters to shoot enough dear without
Speaker 1: being concerned that you know, they've shot all my dear.
Speaker 1: You know, really interesting because a friend of mine this,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say who said this because because
Speaker 1: it sounds cynical, but he was this is not you talking,
Speaker 1: it's me talking, but a friend. And I was, like,
Speaker 1: he says, I'm always baffled. I hear someone say white
Speaker 1: tail conservation, white tail conservation is shooting white tails. Well,
Speaker 1: but to be fair, you know they're parts of the
Speaker 1: South and parts of the country and where white tail
Speaker 1: numbers have declined. Uh, and so you know why that's happening. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, probably myriad reasons. In Texas, that's not the case.
Speaker 1: So when you say too many, too many by what
Speaker 1: measure like too many according to who? Yeah, too many
Speaker 1: according to what the habitat can reasonably sustain. So it's
Speaker 1: not egg it's not car insurers. No, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we hear from you know, some farmers in
Speaker 1: certain locales about about deer densities being too high and
Speaker 1: concern about crop depardation. That's really a very very small
Speaker 1: part of what we deal with. Um. Occasionally we'll hear
Speaker 1: uh from an insurer about you know, dear vehicle accidents.
Speaker 1: But that's really an anomaly that that does happen. Oh, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean occasionally, but it's you know, it's it's really
Speaker 1: more the poor motorists to you know, hit a deer
Speaker 1: and then well that's the state's deer, and so the
Speaker 1: state needs to pay me for the damage to my
Speaker 1: car and my lost trip and this and that there.
Speaker 1: Everybody's dear. Uh it's so uh yeah, No, we don't
Speaker 1: have any liability associated with that, I mean always, so
Speaker 1: that's something people test. Oh, it's occasionally, you know, it's uh,
Speaker 1: It's probably been a couple of years since since I've
Speaker 1: heard somebody make a vigorous case in that in that regard.
Speaker 1: But um, but you know, we do have a lot
Speaker 1: of dear vehicle accidents. It's something you can have a
Speaker 1: lot of dear Ferrell Hawk accidents. Um, you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta be mindful driving in rural areas. It is hitting
Speaker 1: your car, yes, yeah, and that'll call serious damage. I
Speaker 1: mean you look like hitting a bear. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's right around Austin there's a a um a loop
Speaker 1: that was that was built a new tollway and when
Speaker 1: it put in, It was put in. It seemed like
Speaker 1: there was a vehicle Ferrell hag collision every single day. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, And this just happened for a year or two,
Speaker 1: and finally a couple of the counties got together and said,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got to start working on some Ferrell
Speaker 1: hawks lost. That's a public safety problem. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all these other myriad problems associated with Ferrell hawks,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, a a a loop around Austin
Speaker 1: and San Antonio with a eighty five mile hour speed
Speaker 1: limit and somebody hitting a Ferrell hag, that's a recipe
Speaker 1: for real problems. Um so um so, yeah, deer hall
Speaker 1: collisions are up? Are are are? Is it? One of
Speaker 1: the things that keep us laying awake at night about
Speaker 1: the things that let's talk about hogs because I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of hard questions. Let's just do them now. Um,
Speaker 1: what's the ballpark on hawgs? Can you even venture to guess?
Speaker 1: Do you have more hogs and deer? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: You know the numbers that that that I hear consistently,
Speaker 1: and you know, you listen to the margin of ara
Speaker 1: this or somewhere between two to four million hawks. So
Speaker 1: how accurate is that? Nobody knows we were They're hard
Speaker 1: to count, you know, because they're largely nocturnal UM, and
Speaker 1: they're not really good methodologies UM that are established and
Speaker 1: that are being practiced on a regular enough basis to
Speaker 1: estimate numbers. And again remember with you know species, I
Speaker 1: there a lot of arrested as trends over time, right,
Speaker 1: the exact numbers are less important than the trends and
Speaker 1: in other specific um um into season in in metrics.
Speaker 1: But lots of hogs every we have we have farall
Speaker 1: hawks and every one our counties now um so counties,
Speaker 1: you guys got two hundred and fifty four and that's
Speaker 1: not so your hog distribution map is the state. It
Speaker 1: is the state. It is the state. And I even
Speaker 1: on that like crazy West Texas, Yeah, where you couldn't
Speaker 1: think there's there's a country there, avelena country, very little
Speaker 1: surface water, UM, not a lot of top soil. It
Speaker 1: is astounding how adaptable and resilient those feral hogs are.
Speaker 1: Well they displace have alena. Yeah. I think that when
Speaker 1: when hogs will come into an area and really take
Speaker 1: over UM, oftentimes that will disrupt UM. You know, those
Speaker 1: those very strict social structures that um that UH have
Speaker 1: alna live in and will displace them from from a
Speaker 1: from a habitat utilization perspective. So we certainly see that.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you if you could um wave a
Speaker 1: magic one. This is our favorite question when it comes
Speaker 1: to pigs, because a lot of times we have people
Speaker 1: who even work in the hog or adication industry and
Speaker 1: we're asking if you can wave a magic wine and
Speaker 1: have pigs go away. They'll say no, I wouldn't waive it.
Speaker 1: And not only and not just because I do this
Speaker 1: for a living, but they just come to appreciate them
Speaker 1: all the time. They're a fashioning animal archtype. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's say, here you are, I present you with this wine.
Speaker 1: As much as there's an industry in your state, it
Speaker 1: people come here. I got friends that come from Montana
Speaker 1: to Texas. Yeah, it would you would you waive the
Speaker 1: one and it would be absolutely gone from the state.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a that's a great question. You could
Speaker 1: have to put me in that camp that's decidedly mixed
Speaker 1: professionally and personally. You know, professionally be the right thing
Speaker 1: because you've probably been hunting your whole life my whole life.
Speaker 1: I grew up with him and I do have a
Speaker 1: deep appreciation for him and they are fun to chase,
Speaker 1: and we've got a lot of landowners that enjoy that.
Speaker 1: But we certainly have an equal matter more that um
Speaker 1: are just run over with hogs, huge problems. So how
Speaker 1: do you how do you like? There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a balance between these two things. No, and there's
Speaker 1: it's a it's an interesting push pull. But you know, professionally, UH,
Speaker 1: we are pushing hard to to do everything we can
Speaker 1: to UM encourage landowners and hunters and others to UM
Speaker 1: trap as many hogs, shoot as many hogs. You know,
Speaker 1: we're working on a fascinating uh natural toxicon that is
Speaker 1: derived from sodium nitrite, you know, food preservative, and our
Speaker 1: biologists have been working in concert with scientists from UM
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand and here in Texas in U.
Speaker 1: S d A to test that toxicon. It's a toxic
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a bait. It's a pellet um
Speaker 1: that's got a very specific delivery mechanism to preclude other
Speaker 1: non target spec not lethal to deer, not lethal to birds,
Speaker 1: not lethal to cattle, and so we're still in the
Speaker 1: testing phase. Yeah, I got to Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: clearly we UM. I don't want to have some unintended
Speaker 1: impact on all the other species of wildlife and things
Speaker 1: that we that we care about. But it's been a
Speaker 1: fascinating study by our biologists at one of our wildlife
Speaker 1: management area and so they've gone back to the drawing
Speaker 1: board with UM. The size of the pellet, UM, the
Speaker 1: amount of the toxicon and the pellet. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: about this is sodium nitride hogs that eat it in
Speaker 1: a certain quantity, it stops the oxygen flow to the brain.
Speaker 1: So they'll eat it and then they'll go off and
Speaker 1: kind of go to sleep. So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like other kinds of pesticides that you hear about that
Speaker 1: you know, have some pretty dramatic effects and UM and
Speaker 1: so we're you know, advert into those kind of concerns,
Speaker 1: but we're particularly concerned about I want to make sure
Speaker 1: we've done everything to attenuate impacts on non target species, right,
Speaker 1: we want to focus on hogs. So we're not ready
Speaker 1: for UM to have EPA approval yet and have that
Speaker 1: that would require that would require ep approval Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're rigorous testing and we've been working on the
Speaker 1: is for eight years or now, um testing different pellet formulations,
Speaker 1: a lot of cooperation from other entities, right, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in that, a lot of interests.
Speaker 1: You know. Similarly, though you know your point earlier, we've
Speaker 1: got you know, landowners in part of the state that
Speaker 1: have operations that you know, hunters come in from from
Speaker 1: from out of state in state to hunt Farrell hawks,
Speaker 1: and so you know, they'd be real concerned about controlled
Speaker 1: and and a landowner's choice. And really, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, people have to get comfortable with the
Speaker 1: fact that you're not gonna you're not gonna radicate Farrell hawks.
Speaker 1: You can manage them, you can try to control them,
Speaker 1: but you're probably not gonna radicate magic one scenario you
Speaker 1: don't not realistic. Yeah, how far out might be? I mean,
Speaker 1: let's say you got there, you know, let's say toy
Speaker 1: and I tried. Yeah, let's say you got there. Like,
Speaker 1: how far out might something like that be? If you know,
Speaker 1: I think runs a normal course in the process, I
Speaker 1: think we'd still be several years away. And by that,
Speaker 1: you know, say a minimum of three there's more field
Speaker 1: testing that would have to be done. You know, we've
Speaker 1: been doing this in a in a in a setting
Speaker 1: on a Wildlife Management UM area in which we've been
Speaker 1: able to test it in pretty controlled environments. We've gone
Speaker 1: out with UM Wildlife Services and done some preliminary field
Speaker 1: tests and that's caused just to kind of go back
Speaker 1: and again look at that baked formulation, the palatability, look
Speaker 1: at the level of the toxicut um in there, and
Speaker 1: so probably we'll go back out in the field sometime
Speaker 1: in the next year to test that again, but we're
Speaker 1: several years away from that. You say, sodium night not tried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: My question is does that start kind of the brining process,
Speaker 1: so that is it safe for human consumption afterwards? Like
Speaker 1: you can right to the smoker. Yeah, there's yeah, just
Speaker 1: right there, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, No, I don't think it
Speaker 1: does that that for you. But but obviously we are
Speaker 1: concerned about you know, somebody shoots a feral hall that
Speaker 1: uh ended up eating some of that, babe, other animals
Speaker 1: eating that. Yeah, you bet, you bet so. I we're
Speaker 1: making sure that we're we're looking at every facet of
Speaker 1: this both from a non target perspective, but also the
Speaker 1: human health and say it would be it would be
Speaker 1: wildly irresponsible not to right. So, um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a state Fish and Wildlife agency. We have to we
Speaker 1: have to do that. And this is a pretty unique
Speaker 1: area of research for us UM. And so we've got
Speaker 1: a real dedicated team of biologists and scientists again working
Speaker 1: in active partnership with U s d A and other
Speaker 1: research institutions on this. But there's a real hunger out
Speaker 1: there for some kind of a solution to the feral
Speaker 1: hog problem. Um. You can't shoot your way out of it.
Speaker 1: You can't trap your way out of it. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: So you would say within Texas, like more than fifty
Speaker 1: of your constituents would say, let's try to make less hogs. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: what are the main what are the mean wise? Like,
Speaker 1: what are what are the main arguments against hogs? Yeah? Destructive,
Speaker 1: you know, a lack of real kind of meaningful predators
Speaker 1: on them. Their populations just go up and up. You know,
Speaker 1: they're tearing up fields, tearing up roads, tearing up tank damns,
Speaker 1: you know, displacing native species. Um, I'd say those are
Speaker 1: the principal ones. It's just kind of their their destructive
Speaker 1: and unchecked nature in terms of how they grow, you know,
Speaker 1: with their gestation period is what three months, three weeks
Speaker 1: and three days, so they're having litters all the time,
Speaker 1: and their litters you know maybe you know, ten, twelve,
Speaker 1: fifteen piglets, and so it's just hard to get the
Speaker 1: brakes on them. And a deer, a deer is gonna
Speaker 1: kick off, yeah, but she was gonna kick off one
Speaker 1: or two funds a year, that's right, That's right, And
Speaker 1: she's gonna kick off what Yeah, And so they're gonna
Speaker 1: they're probably gonna have you know, two groups of hogs
Speaker 1: every year, sometimes three, um, And they reach sexual maturity
Speaker 1: at a very young age. And you know it in
Speaker 1: coots will kill hogs and mountlines will kill hogs, but
Speaker 1: but not in a way that's keeping those numbers in check.
Speaker 1: And certainly hunters aren't doing that either. Explain what exactly
Speaker 1: what is the regulatory structure around shooting hogs from helicopters?
Speaker 1: How does this work? How does that work? So UM's
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion about that. Sure. So first off,
Speaker 1: the pilot has to have an aerial wildlife management apartment,
Speaker 1: and remember everything the overarching governance for that is the
Speaker 1: Federal Airborne Hunting Acts. So there's a there's a federal
Speaker 1: regulation which governs what states can do. Now, states can
Speaker 1: work within the parameters of that federal act, but there's
Speaker 1: an overarching federal Airborne Hunting Act that basically says you
Speaker 1: can't hunt from a helicopter or a next wing aircraft. Now,
Speaker 1: so how does that translate into people shooting hogs out
Speaker 1: of a helicopter in Texas which aerial and then our
Speaker 1: coyotes here and yeah, right, so UM in Texas UM,
Speaker 1: the Texas Parts and Wildlife Department, we essentially serve as
Speaker 1: the agent for helping to permit activities under that Airborne
Speaker 1: Hunting Act. And so we'll issue an aerial management permit
Speaker 1: to a helicopter operator and so that's an annual permit,
Speaker 1: has to be renewed. There's certain reporting related requirements and
Speaker 1: that's required if you're gonna you know, count wildlife from
Speaker 1: the air, if you're going to talk photograph wildlife from there,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna trap wildlife from the air, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna shoot hogs or coats from there, you've got to
Speaker 1: have that aerial Wildlife management permit. You also have to
Speaker 1: have what's called a landowner authorization agreement or what we
Speaker 1: call the acronym and l o A landowner authorization Agreement
Speaker 1: LAY and l o A is approved by the landowner
Speaker 1: on whose property you're flying over and say shooting hogs
Speaker 1: or codes out of the helicopter. So the landowner has
Speaker 1: to approve it has to approve the activity. So whether
Speaker 1: that's a wildlife census or maybe it's a trapping of
Speaker 1: exotics um um or shooting codes or hogs out of
Speaker 1: a helicopter. And then there are agents and sub agents
Speaker 1: of the landowner that are approved on that landowner authorization agreement,
Speaker 1: and so those can be observers and they can be
Speaker 1: shooters on the helicopter, but it's a it's jail referenced.
Speaker 1: The landowner has says, you know, within these boundaries, I've
Speaker 1: approved this map. You have this letter authorization agreement to
Speaker 1: conduct those aerial management activities, whatever they are. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the regulatory permitting structure, um that we have
Speaker 1: put in place here. Um, there's been a real uh boom,
Speaker 1: i'd say, in the last um three to five years
Speaker 1: of helicopter companies marketing to people to you know, come
Speaker 1: be designated agents and and and shoot um out of
Speaker 1: their helicopter to shoot hogs out of a helicopter. But
Speaker 1: it's critically important that um, that that you've got that
Speaker 1: landowner authorization agreement and you're identified again as as a
Speaker 1: as an agent or a sub agent, and that you're
Speaker 1: only flying and shooting over property which you have permission,
Speaker 1: and that your pilot is properly and that you're and
Speaker 1: that your pilot is properly licensed. And again there's reporting
Speaker 1: requirements and other compliance things that they have to they
Speaker 1: have to meet. We've um, UM. It's been an important
Speaker 1: tool for landowners. Yeah, yeah, landowners will use that and
Speaker 1: particularly um like a guy can realize a guy can
Speaker 1: realize real movement of a problem. It can. But but
Speaker 1: I think you look at it seasonally and temporally know
Speaker 1: and so so let's say, um, you know, you want
Speaker 1: to target hogs, and you you go up in the
Speaker 1: air and you've got some shooters, You've got a good pilot,
Speaker 1: and you find number of sounders and you hammer those hogs. Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna knock them back for a while. You may
Speaker 1: chase him on to somebody else's property, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: realize some relief. Now that's not permanent relief because they're
Speaker 1: gonna come back right nature a bore as a vacuum,
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to manage them, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to stay after them. But it can help give a
Speaker 1: temporary reprieve. So you know, when we're recommending those activities, again,
Speaker 1: from a feral hog perspective, it's you know, shoot shoot
Speaker 1: off and um. You know, you can hunt year round,
Speaker 1: there's no limits. UM. Legislation passed in our recent legislative
Speaker 1: session that if you're a landowner or a landowner's designated agent,
Speaker 1: you don't need a hunting license to hunt feral hogs. UM.
Speaker 1: But if you're us out shooting Farrell hogs or hunting
Speaker 1: Farrell hogs and you're not witnessing them in the act
Speaker 1: of depredating livestock or crops, uh, you really need a
Speaker 1: hunting license. So there's a little bit of a dichotomy
Speaker 1: um there from an enforcement perspective. But again, we we
Speaker 1: encourage the harvest of Farrell hogs. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we've tried to throw everything but the kitchen sink at
Speaker 1: it in Texas. UM. But but it still feels a
Speaker 1: little bit like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill
Speaker 1: at times. To what extent do you agree with the
Speaker 1: statement that enthusiasm around hog hunting actually drives increases hog
Speaker 1: numbers in Texas. Well, I think that's fair in parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's fair in parts, Um, because people love
Speaker 1: coming to Texas to hunt hogs, and that's great. We
Speaker 1: want folks from out of state to come give us
Speaker 1: a chance to showcase our state, just like you know
Speaker 1: other states would like to do that or do that
Speaker 1: as well, and do it very very well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I know we welcome and want folks to come to
Speaker 1: Texas to hunt hogs or deer, turkeys or quail or
Speaker 1: doves or waterfowl or whatever. Does that drive increased numbers
Speaker 1: or helped to artificially problem up? Well, I guess in
Speaker 1: the sense that is opposed to a management philosophy in
Speaker 1: that area in which people are really working to actively
Speaker 1: control them keep the numbers down. Yeah, it probably works
Speaker 1: against us. Um, is that the principal reason why hog
Speaker 1: numbers are just off the charts high in Texas, Probably
Speaker 1: not meaning high rates of reproduction, no real significant perdation.
Speaker 1: We don't shoot enough of them to be able to
Speaker 1: keep up with their biology of of of of reproduction
Speaker 1: and so um. Those factors have much more of a
Speaker 1: bearing than um the fact that you may have landowners
Speaker 1: in certain areas that you know, see see wild hogs
Speaker 1: as a resource for them. They are people who pay
Speaker 1: good money, need to come stay at their places and
Speaker 1: have a having experience hunting. Hogs love it. The great
Speaker 1: revenue stream for them, diversifies their operation, maybe makes it
Speaker 1: more likely that um, you know, they're able to manage
Speaker 1: their land, keep the family the property and the family
Speaker 1: and so forth. But I wouldn't say that as a
Speaker 1: big tipping point for why we have so many hogs
Speaker 1: in Texas. And imagine too, once they're established that it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. But you're I'm sure you're familiar with
Speaker 1: this that some states that are on the edge of
Speaker 1: the expansion of hogs will preemptively band hog hunting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to de incentivize individuals who might think it'd be cool
Speaker 1: to bring them home. I don't blame them and cut
Speaker 1: it loose, yeah, And I will worry about that. Is
Speaker 1: some you know, disingenuous person comes and traps up load
Speaker 1: of hogs and Texas and then illegally transports them across
Speaker 1: state line and thanks, wouldn't this be fun to release
Speaker 1: them on my property? And you know state accident. I
Speaker 1: mean absolutely has happened, and it absolutely has happened. It
Speaker 1: does happen, um, and that's problem. But you guys have
Speaker 1: probably had hogs since then. We've had dogs for a
Speaker 1: long time, you know. Um, it's essentially like this place
Speaker 1: at this point, it's one could almost start to think
Speaker 1: of it as almost a native and not really. But
Speaker 1: we've been here hundreds of years. They've naturalized, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how I think they've naturalized. You know, you think
Speaker 1: about hogs being brought over by the spaniards, Um, some
Speaker 1: of those practices, you know, I mean they turn them
Speaker 1: loose in the bottom lands and let them get fat
Speaker 1: in the winter and eat acorrange and uh and then
Speaker 1: looked up, you know, round them up such as it was.
Speaker 1: And and obviously then you had those feral hogs. Hogs
Speaker 1: that were originally domestic, get out, reproduce, start to rewild,
Speaker 1: produce a subsequent generation, produce another one. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we've got wild hogs and and and in those numbers
Speaker 1: have just grown, and their geography has grown since I've
Speaker 1: had this job, which will be twelve years in January. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: no badge of honor here, but UM I think when
Speaker 1: I started, there were still maybe fifteen counties or so
Speaker 1: that we didn't have feral hogs in and would have thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way they're gonna get to El Paso, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's the what are they going to do there?
Speaker 1: And and then all of a sudden, well, it's seven
Speaker 1: counties that don't, then it's three, then it's one, and
Speaker 1: then pretty saying Okay, we've documented hawgs in every countyon
Speaker 1: and no one's come looking to kick you out of here. Oh.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they look for other reasons, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I've been blamed singlely for that that problem. One
Speaker 1: more question for you. I was reading the piece one
Speaker 1: time and I was talking about that somehow there's been
Speaker 1: like an oversight and shooting hogs some hot air balloons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: wasn't the what had was somehow illegal in the state?
Speaker 1: Remedied this is this true? Yeah? Yeah, No, there was
Speaker 1: someone someone identified a problem that like once they looked
Speaker 1: at the rule books, they realized they couldn't hunt from
Speaker 1: a hot air balloon. Yeah, and you know whether that's happened,
Speaker 1: I guess, but it's just so it's such a funny
Speaker 1: thing to realize. Was like like the when you look
Speaker 1: at the detail, you realize that hot air balloons are excluded.
Speaker 1: Let's go close time on that guy's hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no doubt, no doubt. Uh. Tell me about elk a
Speaker 1: little bit, because I know from I'm a member of
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation every year and I read I
Speaker 1: did a lot of greg work. Yeah, I read their
Speaker 1: their magazine. They come out with Bugle, and I think
Speaker 1: it was in there that I read a piece where
Speaker 1: Texas had a weird situation where elk had been extrapated
Speaker 1: out of Texas. Wasn't They've been gone for hundred plus years.
Speaker 1: There's some elk back now, and there's some sort of
Speaker 1: pro and on. There's pros and cons to whether elk
Speaker 1: would be regarded as a native animal in Texas and
Speaker 1: arguing about to what degree were they really present and where? Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you break this down talking about no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm acutely familiar with with that. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountnel Foundation just does terrific, terrific work. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. I don't remember it being I don't
Speaker 1: know that it was super critical of Texas. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: but it but it's but it's been a topic of
Speaker 1: interest for a while, I think because it helps explain
Speaker 1: wildlife politics. Yeah. Yeah, So, you know, historically they were
Speaker 1: elk in Texas and and probably covered a fair amount
Speaker 1: of the states. I mean, they were in the bresh lands,
Speaker 1: you know, UM, kind of down through the central part
Speaker 1: of the state. You know, maybe even along part of
Speaker 1: the part of the coast, um and um. And then
Speaker 1: you're right sometime in the you know, mid the late
Speaker 1: teen late eighteen hundreds, they really contracted and you know
Speaker 1: there were some relic elk up in the Guadalupe Mountains
Speaker 1: on the New Mexico border. UM. Probably some free range
Speaker 1: in elk that still wandered through the Texas Panhandle and
Speaker 1: parts of other parts of West Texas, but largely extirpated
Speaker 1: from the state. But we as an agency, we consider
Speaker 1: elk to be native historically they were here. As an agency,
Speaker 1: they were, they are they are a native species of wildlife.
Speaker 1: Now here's where the rubber hits the road. You translate.
Speaker 1: That will show me where elk are in Texas and
Speaker 1: how they get there, if they always been there, where
Speaker 1: they introduced and that, And it's a really eclectic mix
Speaker 1: of situation so like um like, for example, elk absent
Speaker 1: largely from big parts of Transpacas or West Texas are
Speaker 1: mountainous country historically no, no, no, in recent time, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and so let's say forty years ago, Parks
Speaker 1: and Wildlife works to then go get elk from rocky
Speaker 1: mountain states to restock elk in parts of West Texas.
Speaker 1: And so we've got elk in the mountains, and that
Speaker 1: was going on. Was that going on four years ago? Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: already forty years ago, so that was certainly certainly going on. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, lots of efforts of course, is biologists were
Speaker 1: working to restock fish and game populations that had been
Speaker 1: um pushed lower for a variety of and sometimes with
Speaker 1: the kind of a cavalier approach and in in in
Speaker 1: some as you look back on it, uh, some of
Speaker 1: it looks a little bit that way. Clear everybody out
Speaker 1: and drive off. And then we've come a lot, we've
Speaker 1: come along to what we've got a long way, Uh,
Speaker 1: in that in that regard, particularly with disease concerns and
Speaker 1: you know, concerned about health related issues, capture related, my apathy,
Speaker 1: all those issues that that translocating animals has come a
Speaker 1: long long way since the wild West days and when
Speaker 1: you're referring to. But so, the department did a lot
Speaker 1: of restocking of elk in the in the state. Um,
Speaker 1: in state, in the we're treated as a game animal
Speaker 1: up until I think the mid nineties, and the legislature
Speaker 1: was petitioned by landowners out in West Texas to declassify
Speaker 1: it as as no longer being a game man because
Speaker 1: that would mean what So what that means is is
Speaker 1: no longer it now became classified as an exotic and
Speaker 1: so no seasons, no bag limits, you need a hunting license.
Speaker 1: But basically, as a landowner, you could manage the hunting
Speaker 1: of elk or opportunity to hunt on your on your
Speaker 1: property or ranch without worried about, well the elk season
Speaker 1: is only a month long or I'm only going to
Speaker 1: get three bull tags. Um. You know, basically you had
Speaker 1: the ability to decide how you were going to manage elk,
Speaker 1: how you were gonna hunt elk, and so how how
Speaker 1: is the state. If someone proposed that, for dear, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't like it. No, So how is how what is
Speaker 1: the argument? I mean, I understand, just I understand on
Speaker 1: the individual land on their basis, most people and I
Speaker 1: would be included in this. Probably most people are gonna
Speaker 1: want a higher degree of autonomy on one's own property.
Speaker 1: But like I said, someone Canden proposed that to you,
Speaker 1: Like I said, you know what for no on um,
Speaker 1: I want you to just give me the okay to
Speaker 1: do what I want with mallards that are on my property.
Speaker 1: I want a hunt the year around as much as
Speaker 1: I want. You're gonna say no, way to resist. But
Speaker 1: but here's what I didn't finish on the history of
Speaker 1: elk in Texas. What also began to crop up were
Speaker 1: private individuals bringing in elk from captive elk farms, and essentially,
Speaker 1: um there were all of these kind of high fence
Speaker 1: hunting ranges in which you know, elk might be placed
Speaker 1: on in in areas where probably historically there weren't elk,
Speaker 1: or they were intermittent at best, And so you had
Speaker 1: kind of all these captive elk herds, and so the
Speaker 1: state became kind of a grab bag of of of
Speaker 1: elk from different locations, managed differently different settings. UM. So
Speaker 1: we've been in this situation now where elk, while we
Speaker 1: consider them native um statutorially, they're still considered an exotic
Speaker 1: and so you don't have the same kind of regulations
Speaker 1: that um, you know, traditional big game have and you
Speaker 1: have like you don't have management authority over we we
Speaker 1: don't have management authority. They continued to do. They continue
Speaker 1: to thrive in areas that would be regarded as potentially
Speaker 1: historic range. Yeah. So the elk are doing pretty well
Speaker 1: in parts of West Texas. So for example, you know,
Speaker 1: the Davis Mountains is a very popular area for people
Speaker 1: to go hunt you know, free range elk in a
Speaker 1: mountain setting that looks like New Mexico, and so you
Speaker 1: know places you might have a legitimate chance at a
Speaker 1: four bull um, so pretty significant bull elk. You know,
Speaker 1: it a at what people would think of you know
Speaker 1: today is kind of a traditional Western kind of mountain
Speaker 1: mountain hunt. Um. But that dichotomy that you mentioned about,
Speaker 1: you know, some groups would like to see him reclassified
Speaker 1: as a game animal and have the state takeover management
Speaker 1: of them. Others want to make sure they stay in
Speaker 1: their current form where they've got that kind of autonomy
Speaker 1: that you spoke to that tends to split landowners right
Speaker 1: down the middle and West Texas. Some of them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we like the way it is. We want to continue
Speaker 1: to have that independence. Others of them say no, we'd
Speaker 1: like to see it be a game animal. The elk farms,
Speaker 1: the kind of the elk ranches, that's a whole separate deal,
Speaker 1: separate and apart from you know, free range elk populations
Speaker 1: in in far West Texas. I think you'd have to
Speaker 1: treat those differently. Um, just very very different settings in
Speaker 1: in in in circumstances from a management perspective, and uh
Speaker 1: and so that in fact that the state's Animal Health
Speaker 1: Commission has really the regulatory jurisdiction over elk is an
Speaker 1: exotic not the not fortune Wildlife Department. You just mentioned
Speaker 1: the difference between elk herd that might be rolling around
Speaker 1: freely and the elk herd that might be contained an
Speaker 1: offense on one individual's private property. Explain to me the
Speaker 1: regulatory difference. Let's leave elk aside, and let's just talk
Speaker 1: about deer or something else. How does the state view
Speaker 1: those two things differently? Where free ranging deer um that
Speaker 1: are you know, it could be on county land, that
Speaker 1: could be on an individual's private farm. They're moving around
Speaker 1: the state. You know, the people own them. And then
Speaker 1: you have deer herds that are privately held and held
Speaker 1: in to a specific land owned property by offense. Does
Speaker 1: the state have to treat those two different deer populations
Speaker 1: differently or is your view that it's it's all dear
Speaker 1: and it all falls under the same regulatory structure. All
Speaker 1: all deer belong to the people of Texas. The public
Speaker 1: trust doctrine in this notion of public ownership of wildlife prevails,
Speaker 1: UM and there's a long history of that, not just
Speaker 1: in our state, but all across the country. That's the
Speaker 1: foundation for the North American model UM, and that's what
Speaker 1: we subscribe to. And certainly legally and UM philosophically. You know,
Speaker 1: we believe that all dear, irrespective of whether they live
Speaker 1: behind a low fence or a high fence, or in
Speaker 1: a captive game form or out you know, in a
Speaker 1: completely free range environment, those deers still belong to the
Speaker 1: people of Texas, and so so in a high fence atmosphere,
Speaker 1: even where you bring in you might bring in like
Speaker 1: introduced for genetic purposes, introduced new deer by dear move
Speaker 1: them around. That still has to be managed according to
Speaker 1: rules set by the state. Yes, And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that is that interface between you know, free
Speaker 1: range populations of deer and captive populations of deer. The
Speaker 1: release of active bred deer into you know, high fenced
Speaker 1: ranches or what are called release sites, there's still ample
Speaker 1: opportunity for those deer to connect and and and have connections.
Speaker 1: And of course we all know fences are are are
Speaker 1: anything but infallible. You know, it's like blow out, a
Speaker 1: water gap goes down, a tree falls on them. You know,
Speaker 1: a bull runs through uh a fence, um, whatever, the
Speaker 1: group of hogs runs under whatever. So you know, by
Speaker 1: by no means or those impenetrable. So high fence operation
Speaker 1: in Texas there's still an opening day. Yeah, there's still
Speaker 1: a there's still an opening day of of of of
Speaker 1: deer season. And you know that's one of those great traditions,
Speaker 1: rites of passage. And and I wouldn't think of all
Speaker 1: high fence properties is somehow radically different than all low
Speaker 1: fence properties either. Um, you know, because because the scale, yeah,
Speaker 1: the scale of them. That's a that's a great point.
Speaker 1: And don't think and and and you know, our listeners
Speaker 1: shouldn't think that because somebody has a high fence around
Speaker 1: their ranch that they're involved in the breeding of deer,
Speaker 1: the captive breeding of of deer. That's that's that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case. I mean, we have two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand landowners in our state and about a thousand
Speaker 1: deer breeders. But you know, there are lots of high
Speaker 1: fenced ranches, but the scale of them may be very
Speaker 1: vast um and and so you still have the same
Speaker 1: kind of opportunities for uh, you know, fair chase and
Speaker 1: in in in hunting. However you choose to to hunt,
Speaker 1: there may be a high fence around you know, some
Speaker 1: or all of those property, and that that fence maybe
Speaker 1: uh more or less uh effective at keeping deer in
Speaker 1: or out. Um And so, you know, folks tend to
Speaker 1: think about Texas, you know, in that way and have
Speaker 1: this very kind of negative or pejorative perspective on on
Speaker 1: on on high fences if you come from states in
Speaker 1: which that's not so commonplace. What really really focus on
Speaker 1: is the management behind the fence. What are they doing
Speaker 1: from a habitat management perspective, how are they managing it
Speaker 1: to promote habitat diversity? How are they managing the game?
Speaker 1: They're the non game, the unique species, And so the
Speaker 1: issue is more that management and stewardship, not so much
Speaker 1: the height of the fence. Can you explain some of
Speaker 1: the some of the governments around um xiotics and movement
Speaker 1: of EOCTs, Like like, I'm assuming I couldn't, let's say,
Speaker 1: somehow got my hands on a truckload of jaguars. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming I can't just turn the jaguars loose. Yeah no, So,
Speaker 1: so what is okay and what's not okay? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: So those kind of wild dangerous animals obvious legal prohibitions
Speaker 1: on first being able to have one and captivate or
Speaker 1: much less released one into the end of the wild. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: after some hurricane or storm um in some area, you know,
Speaker 1: we may get a call about somebody that had a
Speaker 1: line that nobody knew about, and you know, obviously there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of concern about that for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. But you guys, you guys will have a
Speaker 1: list of the world's animals with a checker and x next,
Speaker 1: we don't in parts and wildlife doesn't regulate exochs um.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not that's not what we do, at
Speaker 1: least on the animal side. We have some overlap there
Speaker 1: on aquatic exotic plants that were involved in but that's
Speaker 1: a whole different, different area of management and stewardship and control.
Speaker 1: But from an exotic animal perspective, that is managed through
Speaker 1: the state's Animal Health Commission UM, and so different regulatory
Speaker 1: structure in in entity. You know, there's certainly landowners all
Speaker 1: across Texas that have got interest in exotic game. That's
Speaker 1: very popular fallow deer, access to your black buck antelope
Speaker 1: all day out, or you know, many many free range
Speaker 1: environments now um. And so a lot of folks interesting that.
Speaker 1: From a wildlife and a hunting per aspective, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty popular in our state, but we don't have
Speaker 1: any regulatory authority. You gotta have a hunting license to
Speaker 1: to hunt them. Um. But what about situations where that
Speaker 1: stuff winds up impacting the things that you do have
Speaker 1: prove view over? Yeah, great, great questions. So so most
Speaker 1: of our wildlife work in Texas, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: is on private lands. It's it's in concert with private landowners.
Speaker 1: It's voluntary, it's collaborative. Put this in perspective. You know,
Speaker 1: we provide technical assistance on wildlife management to landowners all
Speaker 1: over the state and we have roughly thirty million plus
Speaker 1: acres under a department approved wildlife management plan that's about
Speaker 1: of the state. So that's kind of evidence of that
Speaker 1: and that interest. You know, the first thing our biologists
Speaker 1: are going to do with their landowner partners are what
Speaker 1: are your goals, what are your interests, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: for landowners are interested in both exotics and native game,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to respect that. We're obviously much
Speaker 1: more interested on the native game, and that's what we're
Speaker 1: going to work to help promote and really spend most
Speaker 1: of our time on um. And you know, we've encouraged
Speaker 1: them to make sure that those numbers of exotics are
Speaker 1: managed in such a way that it doesn't have an
Speaker 1: adverse impact on the on the native game and particularly
Speaker 1: the native habitat um. But again, we want to be
Speaker 1: very sensitive to the goals of the individual land owner.
Speaker 1: So if a landowner is very interested in you know,
Speaker 1: his or her access tore on their property or their
Speaker 1: black buck antelope, um, to the extent that can be
Speaker 1: incorporated into a wildlife management plan because the landowners are
Speaker 1: going to be managing for that anyway, um, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna hunt them, they're gonna enjoy them, they're gonna utilize
Speaker 1: them to the extent that all that can be balanced.
Speaker 1: That's just something that our biologists have to work through.
Speaker 1: But we're focused on the native game. That's our area
Speaker 1: of emphasis. But then if someone owns an if someone
Speaker 1: has a property of private property and the owner and
Speaker 1: exotic on the private property, if that exotic animal escapes,
Speaker 1: they no longer on that animal. Correct. No, you'd have
Speaker 1: to get you know, permission from a neighbor to go
Speaker 1: and try to recapture that that animal. That that that
Speaker 1: ownership doesn't extend like a loose cow or a loose horse.
Speaker 1: So there's some some differences there. You know, if I
Speaker 1: had that you know, heard of of of of access
Speaker 1: to here and it went over to your ranch, no no, no,
Speaker 1: or come over and fly over and trap them and
Speaker 1: bring them back, Um, you'd have the ability to file
Speaker 1: you know, trespassing charges against me. So i'd have to
Speaker 1: have your permission. Yeah, But I would not be able
Speaker 1: to go run down and sell your cattle. No, no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Have there been cases in Texas where you
Speaker 1: guys have had to where there's been an introduction of
Speaker 1: an exotic where you had to go and sort of
Speaker 1: catch it and stop it successfully. Or is the nature
Speaker 1: of the landscape here such that when things get out
Speaker 1: there just kind of out, you know, more of the
Speaker 1: latter than the former. When we're thinking about, um, wildlife
Speaker 1: and particularly large ungulates you know again, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of deer and elk like animals that we hunt. You
Speaker 1: got to remember that this kind of history of landowners
Speaker 1: bringing in exotic game for sport and also for wildlife conservation,
Speaker 1: you know, helping to you know, bring back populations of
Speaker 1: scimitar horned ore. Yeah. It's interesting where oftentimes it's been
Speaker 1: that Texas will have more of some species than it
Speaker 1: doesn't it's native, yeah, that's right, um. And it's it
Speaker 1: helps prevent genetic extinction, that exactly, exactly. Um. But that's
Speaker 1: been going on since the thirties and forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: so there's a long history. So you know, you would say,
Speaker 1: you know, take your most most well known and populist
Speaker 1: exotic game animals axis or fallow or psycho or black
Speaker 1: buck or all dad. You know, they've really naturalized. Um,
Speaker 1: not native, but they've naturalized, so they're here to stay UM.
Speaker 1: Where today, what we would see is perhaps there is
Speaker 1: a a really invasive or exotic uh fish or a
Speaker 1: snake um or a plant that our biologists are made
Speaker 1: aware of in a localized area. More likely the result
Speaker 1: of somebody tired of having something as a pet and
Speaker 1: they turn it loose in a city park or a
Speaker 1: county park. We're gonna find it and we're gonna kill it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. And that's the ounce of prevention is worth
Speaker 1: a pound to cure um because just as you said,
Speaker 1: you want to jump on that and stop it from
Speaker 1: being a problem. UM. And you don't have to to
Speaker 1: to look any further to something like you know, zebra
Speaker 1: muscles um or giant Salvinian water hyacinth. You know, exotic
Speaker 1: plants highly de Yeah, they just take off. So we
Speaker 1: find an outbreak like that in a like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go hammer it with with herbicide to see what we
Speaker 1: can do to help kill those plants to keep it
Speaker 1: from getting established. We don't see that, so much in
Speaker 1: terms of big animals. But you know, occasionally our our
Speaker 1: our biologists will get a call about again a snake
Speaker 1: UM or you know something or a fish. It's localized
Speaker 1: that we can find and and and try to deal
Speaker 1: with that problem before it spreads. What is your perspective
Speaker 1: on concerns about UM with chronic wasting disease significant? You know,
Speaker 1: when you look at deer and deer hunting um in
Speaker 1: Texas and the magnitude of that, just how important it
Speaker 1: is um from you know, not just the million hundred
Speaker 1: thousand hunters that we have of in Texas, but um,
Speaker 1: how important that is to real estate values in our state.
Speaker 1: I mean basically rural land values or And that's that's
Speaker 1: a good point. I never thought of, man, Yes, because
Speaker 1: the huge owning deer properties you've got huge said that
Speaker 1: people would be become obviously less interesting. Yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know they'd be very concerned about it. Um. You know
Speaker 1: just how important hunting is our rural communities around the
Speaker 1: state from a tourism perspective and economic development. I mean,
Speaker 1: you go to these little towns and the central part
Speaker 1: of the state opening weekend their season, and of cafes
Speaker 1: and motels and the hardware stores and the gas stations
Speaker 1: are packed to the gills. So people on camouflage and
Speaker 1: so that's real money. UM, that that's out of county money,
Speaker 1: and it makes an impact locally. And so you guys
Speaker 1: have had a couple of positives now right, we we have.
Speaker 1: So we've got we've got kind of three nodes of
Speaker 1: c w D and our our states by no means pervasive. UM.
Speaker 1: The first node is out right near the New Mexico border,
Speaker 1: just east of El Paso and a little mountain range
Speaker 1: called the Waco Mountains, which is pretty isolated. We found
Speaker 1: it there in mule deer. Then we found it up
Speaker 1: um in the Panhandle, the northern part of our state,
Speaker 1: very close to the New Mexico line. UM. Again we
Speaker 1: think with free range animals coming over from New Mexico.
Speaker 1: But we found it mule deer, we found it in
Speaker 1: a couple of elk, we found it in a couple
Speaker 1: of white tail, and then down in Central Texas kind
Speaker 1: of the heart of some of the most populous deer country. UM,
Speaker 1: we found chronic wasting disease in four pretty large captive
Speaker 1: breeding operations and UM. And so we've been working very
Speaker 1: actively to help deal with that. UM, what are the
Speaker 1: what are the biggest limitations right now on presumably you
Speaker 1: can do everything you wish you could do. What's the
Speaker 1: limitation on from your perspective on on trying to slow
Speaker 1: it get rid of it? I mean, can you You
Speaker 1: can't get rid of it? I mean that's what you think, Like,
Speaker 1: Texas will not go back to being free in CWD. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't think we I don't
Speaker 1: think we will. But that doesn't mean we're complacent about
Speaker 1: it somehow lay behind the log and say, hey, we've
Speaker 1: got it in these three isolated areas, so we're not
Speaker 1: going to worry about it everywhere else. Absolutely to the contrary.
Speaker 1: So our strategy is focused on three goals. UM. You know, first,
Speaker 1: we want to minimize the impacts of c w D
Speaker 1: to all of our dear populations, whether it's free range
Speaker 1: or captive UM. Secondly, we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: we minimize the impact from c w D to UM
Speaker 1: hunting and hunting based economies, and that includes real estate values,
Speaker 1: rural communities, tourism, hunter expenditures, all that. And then, last,
Speaker 1: but not least, is we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: our management actions are done in such a way that
Speaker 1: we maintain the trust and confidence of our hunters and
Speaker 1: our private landowners absolutely critical. So those are the three
Speaker 1: tenants of our efforts. And then from a from a
Speaker 1: strategy perspective, we're focused on two things. First is early detection,
Speaker 1: so if it's out there, we want to find it
Speaker 1: so that all of a sudden, you know, we can
Speaker 1: get mandatory testing in place, we can get carcass movement
Speaker 1: restrictions in place, we can get prohibitions on moving live
Speaker 1: dear into and out of those those those areas in place,
Speaker 1: so early, so very active. From a surveillance perspective, our
Speaker 1: biologists are spending a lot of time, you know, collecting
Speaker 1: brain samples throughout the year, but particularly during hunting season,
Speaker 1: and we've stratified the state um according to kind of
Speaker 1: statistical grids to to to sample at levels that gives
Speaker 1: us you know, varying level of confidence or degrees of
Speaker 1: confidence that we find it dependent on the sample size.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of effort on the early
Speaker 1: detection and the sampling, and then it becomes a containment issue.
Speaker 1: Um um. I'm not aware of any situation um in
Speaker 1: any kind of a free range environment in which anybody
Speaker 1: has really gotten rid of it, so it gets it.
Speaker 1: How do you arrest the spread of it? And the
Speaker 1: two biggest threats to that, of course, or large aggregations
Speaker 1: of animals, right, and then the movement of an animal
Speaker 1: from an infected area to another area. You know, they
Speaker 1: move on a trailer or whatever, some artificial movement of
Speaker 1: of of of deer, So you know, working to kind
Speaker 1: of manage densities in those areas and then also make
Speaker 1: sure that we don't have movement of deer into route
Speaker 1: of areas that we know have f c w D. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a big issue for our our state just because
Speaker 1: deer hunting, deer management, enjoyment of rural land is so
Speaker 1: tied to the health and enjoyment of deer populations in
Speaker 1: our state that we have got to take an aggressive
Speaker 1: strategy in dealing with it. Thankfully, we have it in
Speaker 1: three isolated areas and that's how we want to keep it.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that you've gotten adequate federal support. I'm
Speaker 1: working with c W That coordination and support are are
Speaker 1: all the states. It is kind of duking it out
Speaker 1: on their own well, and I think that's a real
Speaker 1: issue UM that's out there. You know, historically we had
Speaker 1: financial support through U. S D a APHIST to help
Speaker 1: with UM monitoring, UM the surveillance because we're we're spending
Speaker 1: very very conservatively, you know, let's say a million and
Speaker 1: a half dollars a year on just the CWD surveillance.
Speaker 1: Remember that's time that that biologists also could be spending
Speaker 1: working with landowners on habitat management, wildlife management, you know,
Speaker 1: working on game non game whatever whatever other priorities that
Speaker 1: we have out there. So there's a real opportunity cost
Speaker 1: of time. Historically, we did have some federal funding to
Speaker 1: to help with that. Now, as I understand it, there
Speaker 1: is proposed funding this year in the House Appropriations Bill
Speaker 1: UM for the Department of Agriculture to help ensure that
Speaker 1: there's going to be some funding made available to the
Speaker 1: states to help support that that surveillance. That would be helpful. Undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: there is a need for great or coordination across our
Speaker 1: country with respect to how do we deal with it.
Speaker 1: And you know, as I look at that UM, I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, one, I mean, states have the
Speaker 1: jurisdictional authority over deer and elk UM largely there's some
Speaker 1: exceptions to that, but but mostly and we need to
Speaker 1: respect those jurisdictional boundaries, and states need to be able
Speaker 1: to choose how to respond to things just depending on
Speaker 1: what the cultural and political currents are of the state.
Speaker 1: Those are just realities that we have to deal with
Speaker 1: in wildlife politics, as you as you said, But we
Speaker 1: could benefit from, um, from additional federal funding coming to
Speaker 1: the states to help support adaptive management, more surveillance, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I think we could also benefit from a more coordinated,
Speaker 1: comprehensive look at targeted research, particularly testing and evaluating these
Speaker 1: adaptive management strategies that states are implementing kind of into
Speaker 1: pendant of one another. But you know, it's not all
Speaker 1: done in some kind of a rigorous experimental design type
Speaker 1: type setting. So some targeted research to test that. And
Speaker 1: it needs to be over time, right, It needs to
Speaker 1: be longitudinal. You can't just study this kind of an
Speaker 1: issue for two years traditional master's student and say hey,
Speaker 1: we're done. You need to commit to that over over
Speaker 1: a much longer period of time. UM. We also see
Speaker 1: capacity issues in uh in testing labs for CWD, and
Speaker 1: so you know we have the Texas A and M
Speaker 1: the Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab does a fabulous job. They're
Speaker 1: really good partners of ours on UM. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: testing work as CWD samples, whether that's from you know,
Speaker 1: free range UH populations or from captive red facilities. They
Speaker 1: really work hard at that, but the capacity is constrained,
Speaker 1: so there's a lag in testing those animals. So hunter
Speaker 1: kills a deer UH, it's in an area in which
Speaker 1: it's a mandatory testing area, and you know, if they
Speaker 1: have to wait six weeks for that sample to come
Speaker 1: back to no fault of of of our lab. It's
Speaker 1: just a capacity issue. It'd be nice if we could
Speaker 1: accelerate that with additional capacity. The last thing that I
Speaker 1: think that could probably get some help on federally UM
Speaker 1: is work on a more coordinated, consistent message for hunters
Speaker 1: to help explain c w D, why it is, why
Speaker 1: it matters, and what they can do to help address it.
Speaker 1: UM find that there's still a lot of ignorance out
Speaker 1: there about the disease, a lack of awareness UM hunters
Speaker 1: that may be unwittingly contributing to the spread of it
Speaker 1: through the movement of infected carcass parts. So there's just
Speaker 1: some just distrust and some distrust of of of government.
Speaker 1: Are people are using it as a sort of proxy
Speaker 1: our fearmongering, right, I mean, I you know you hear
Speaker 1: that too. It's it's a fairmongering issue. It's um, you
Speaker 1: have more dear uh killed by cars than you do
Speaker 1: by c w D. How many times have you heard
Speaker 1: that argument? And so it affects such a relatively small
Speaker 1: number of animals across the country or a particular state
Speaker 1: in some cases that why are you so concerned about it? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a brain disease. It's always fatal, fatal.
Speaker 1: You don't need to comment on this, but it's and
Speaker 1: maybe I'm even wrong about my assumption, but it would
Speaker 1: seem that the livestock industry would be very interested in
Speaker 1: c w D, keenly interested, because we like, as a
Speaker 1: hunter and a person that eats a hell of dear meat,
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about the human health considerations. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be catastrophic to the cattle industry should that disease
Speaker 1: jump a species barrier species barrier, and and also we
Speaker 1: had like the equivalent of mad cow disease, Yeah, BSc
Speaker 1: type situation. What you know the thing. And again you
Speaker 1: don't need to you don't need to get into that.
Speaker 1: But it's something I puzzle over that that you just
Speaker 1: don't hear. Maybe and maybe it's out there and I'm
Speaker 1: not privy to it. You just don't. You don't hear
Speaker 1: that industry talk about, Wow, what is this. Let's get
Speaker 1: a grip on this. We do in Texas. Yeah, Texas
Speaker 1: and Southwestern cattle raisers UM. You know, their members are
Speaker 1: terrific partners with the department. Many of them are very
Speaker 1: actively involved in wildlife management on their ranches. And you know,
Speaker 1: dear is the proverbial, you know, goose that lay the
Speaker 1: golden egg, um. And so they're actively involved, very knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about this, and they do compare the very strict testing
Speaker 1: requirements and food safety protocols on on livestock and meat
Speaker 1: um and meat related products. Because of that public safety
Speaker 1: and the making sure that the consumers are comfortable with
Speaker 1: the safety of the meat that they're eating, very very
Speaker 1: focused on that from a market perspective. So they absolutely
Speaker 1: make that parallel in terms of advocating for you know,
Speaker 1: more testing and appropriate testing in deer populations. You know,
Speaker 1: if c w D is indeed a problem. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be um surprised at the awareness or linkage. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it's not verbalized as much, or perhaps it's not talked
Speaker 1: about as much and in all states, but certainly the
Speaker 1: cattle raisers in Texas have been very very strong partners
Speaker 1: with us and our efforts to help raise awareness UM
Speaker 1: and deal with this this this issue in Texas. So, uh,
Speaker 1: last thing for you, what are the biggest challenges and
Speaker 1: opportunities you see in your position? And I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: you probably put c w D among the biggest. Third Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know c w D is
Speaker 1: one of those um emerging wildlife related challenges. You know
Speaker 1: that that that transcends boundaries that you think about all
Speaker 1: these different vectors and portals and areas of commerce into
Speaker 1: into Texas, and so you know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: white nose syndrome and bass or c w D in
Speaker 1: in deer, some rare fungal disease and amphibians, or the
Speaker 1: introduction of you know, exotic and invasive plants that proliferate
Speaker 1: and take over our legs like a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie.
Speaker 1: You know, those issues, those are those are real and
Speaker 1: I you know, we take a lot of pride in
Speaker 1: our native plant and animal communities. I mean we we
Speaker 1: we want to keep it that way, that that that
Speaker 1: native wildlife heritage, that outdoor heritage, that diversity habitats that
Speaker 1: we talked about, We want to keep those native and healthy.
Speaker 1: Um And so there are challenges for us, and so
Speaker 1: I don't want to play let's pretend. I mean we've
Speaker 1: got a big, growing state, twenty eight million people and growing,
Speaker 1: most of them very detached from the kind of things
Speaker 1: that we love. That in and of its yeah yeah. Now, Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: I think that most attitudinal surveys that irrespective of whether
Speaker 1: or not somebody is urban or rural, old or young,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. What the demographic stratify er is that today
Speaker 1: people still have some kind of desire to see wildlife
Speaker 1: conserved and protected. You know, there's still there's still positive sentiments.
Speaker 1: I think what we all worry about and appropriately is
Speaker 1: that increasing generational detachment. And what does that mean? Will
Speaker 1: that attenuate, will it subside, will it go away? What
Speaker 1: does that mean for the future of you know, hunting
Speaker 1: and angling and and and responsible and ethical fisheries and
Speaker 1: wildlife management. Will we have the support from a populace
Speaker 1: that you know doesn't hunt and fish and so therefore
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, pay into the pay into the system.
Speaker 1: Will they see the benefits of of that. So that
Speaker 1: population issue, competition for what a course, is big fragmentation
Speaker 1: of ranches. You know, it's harder to keep family ranches
Speaker 1: together for all kinds of reasons. So we see them
Speaker 1: getting smaller and more fragmented, and that inevitably leads to
Speaker 1: habitat loss, and that leads to habitat loss. So UM,
Speaker 1: there there are no shortage of challenges. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we could we could write war and peace uh on
Speaker 1: that particular topic. All of those are opportunities as well.
Speaker 1: You know, how do we better connect with UM an
Speaker 1: urban based audience, that is that is detached from the outdoors.
Speaker 1: How do we use technology not as our enemy but
Speaker 1: UM as our portal to connect people to the outdoors
Speaker 1: and get them interested to come to places. How do
Speaker 1: we invest in more you know, parks in public areas
Speaker 1: that are close to where people are so that they
Speaker 1: have easy access. How do we create more mentor programs UM?
Speaker 1: How do we how do we help shape educational programs
Speaker 1: in the schools through all ages to make sure that
Speaker 1: people we're getting a proper grounding in natural resources related literacy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, speaks to kind of this our three effort
Speaker 1: that's going on nationally where um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: for for the fishing side of thing, we've got a
Speaker 1: real opportunity to move to move the needle. Um, certainly
Speaker 1: getting people into the outdoors to enjoy wildlife. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: not going to be hunters, but we want them to
Speaker 1: appreciate hunters. We want them to appreciate hunting. We want
Speaker 1: them to appreciate wildlife management, understand the science behind it,
Speaker 1: the reasons behind it, and and and why that can
Speaker 1: help all of the species of interest that we're charged
Speaker 1: with with managing. So um, the challenges again are our
Speaker 1: opportunities is as as as well. And I think what's
Speaker 1: the the overriding concern for all of us, irrespective where
Speaker 1: we are, is trying to leave our home ground better
Speaker 1: than we found it. Our buddy dug during on where
Speaker 1: you stole it? But maybe he made it up. No,
Speaker 1: he stole it. It's not ours, it's our turn, our turn. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you got the last final thoughts? No? I mean
Speaker 1: we've covered the waterfront. Uh, pretty well, there's nothing you
Speaker 1: were dying to get wedge in there. No, gosh, we
Speaker 1: have we've I'm trying to think if there's anything we
Speaker 1: didn't cover that, let me let me hear my concluder
Speaker 1: and you can do one if you've got one, and
Speaker 1: you honest is gonna go. I mentioned Shane Mahoney earlier
Speaker 1: in the same conversation where we talked about the uh,
Speaker 1: the model, you know, complex model. Uh. He was talking
Speaker 1: about the same thing he just brought up. Was funny
Speaker 1: you mentioned technology in in people's engagement with the natural world,
Speaker 1: and he made a point that you're saying guys like
Speaker 1: him and his generation, It's true. I'm forty five and
Speaker 1: this is the same thing with me. We grew up
Speaker 1: in a world the like doesn't exist, and he like
Speaker 1: talks about you know, riding off on your bike with
Speaker 1: your twenty two right doesn't happened, And it's like is
Speaker 1: he says, so many people in and his age and
Speaker 1: again and include myself in it, are thinking like for
Speaker 1: for people to engage in the natural world, we need
Speaker 1: to recapture and deliver to them this child, this like
Speaker 1: idyllic childhood that we had growing up out in the
Speaker 1: rural parts of America where you took off in the
Speaker 1: morning with your twenty two fish and rod and came
Speaker 1: home after dark. And he's like, that's the mind frame
Speaker 1: and how we're going to re engage people with nature. Um,
Speaker 1: and the technology is bad and he says, like, that
Speaker 1: approach is not going to work. We are not going
Speaker 1: to we are not going to bring that back and
Speaker 1: make that a scalable model for wildlife engagement. And you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to find a way two make the natural world,
Speaker 1: make nature relevant in the way that people can understand,
Speaker 1: and they're going to relate to how they do. And
Speaker 1: he says that and I feel that that will happen.
Speaker 1: And technology, if it's going to happen, technology and a
Speaker 1: bracing of technology will be part of that. Amen. You
Speaker 1: will not get payment that, you will not get people
Speaker 1: to leave it behind. I couldn't agree more with that approach.
Speaker 1: It's a the the the other is just so wildly
Speaker 1: uh idealistic. Will never go back to that. There are
Speaker 1: people who pull it off. Um. You know, very local
Speaker 1: if in national terms, when we talk about like an
Speaker 1: increasingly urbanizing where we live, it's like if we're if
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it this binary thing. You have to
Speaker 1: love nature and hate technology, and that's the only way
Speaker 1: we're gonna win. You'll never win that, you know that
Speaker 1: that that if if that was a battle, which I
Speaker 1: don't think it it ever was, by the way, although
Speaker 1: people love to frame that, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: had to do with people extrapolating, making their own inferences
Speaker 1: from you know, some of the findings that drove the
Speaker 1: whole uh, you know, last Child in the Woods movement,
Speaker 1: Children to nature related movement. But I think most folks
Speaker 1: who are given this issue any real thought have come
Speaker 1: to the same conclusion is technology is here, it's here
Speaker 1: to stay, it's growing, and it's increasing part uh you
Speaker 1: and you can't make kids choose. So meet them where
Speaker 1: they're at and let them experience. It's like taking my
Speaker 1: I've got some young cousins that are you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm kind of mildly annoyed by the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, we're sitting out there, um, you know,
Speaker 1: in a ground, blind or something, and you know they
Speaker 1: want to post everything on Snapchat and Instagram and tell
Speaker 1: the story, you know, electronically and their smartphones are going
Speaker 1: ninety to nothing. But you know what, they seem to
Speaker 1: have a ball. So who is it of me to
Speaker 1: tell them? No, I want you to enjoy it my way.
Speaker 1: You can't do it your one. You gotta enjoy my mood.
Speaker 1: I say all that stuff. Yeah, well, I just don't
Speaker 1: think it worked. I'll leave you with this story. Fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, I got a buddy that UM the mind
Speaker 1: that UM ranches out in far West Texas, sprawling ranch.
Speaker 1: Gets left alone by his his wife UM with his
Speaker 1: two young daughters, and UM, I think they were four
Speaker 1: and five. She leaves to UM, going to town to
Speaker 1: see parents or something for the for the weekend, and
Speaker 1: so he's doing parent duty at the ranch. He said.
Speaker 1: He watched his two daughters UM one afternoon spend their
Speaker 1: entire afternoon within about a five ft radius of a
Speaker 1: big oak tree in their front yard, and it dawned
Speaker 1: on him at the time that hey, you don't need
Speaker 1: to take people to some big wilderness area. Yeah, we'd
Speaker 1: all love to know that they're there, UM, but people
Speaker 1: can find nature anywhere. They can find it at an
Speaker 1: undeveloped city block, a lot, a park, a little green belt,
Speaker 1: you know, sitting under a tree looking at your office
Speaker 1: building and there's a paragon falcon, you know, praying on
Speaker 1: a pigeon, you know, in downtown Chicago. UM, it's not
Speaker 1: that we don't to get people out into these wild places.
Speaker 1: We do, but let's help them discover nature in the
Speaker 1: outdoors where they are. And I thought it was interesting
Speaker 1: for that friend to have that revelation about, you know,
Speaker 1: the population as a whole, from watching his two ranch
Speaker 1: raised girls on a big, sprawling ranch, because of their
Speaker 1: interaction with one tree in their front yard and how
Speaker 1: just connected they were. That thing's pretty cool. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had an interview recently, asked you like, where's the best
Speaker 1: place to hunt deer? I said, it's close to your
Speaker 1: house as possible. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I
Speaker 1: know we're short on time. I'll leave it at this.
Speaker 1: That was a good story to finish on. Good Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us. Thanks. I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: extremely busy, so thanks for giving us so much times
Speaker 1: allowed to be here. Thank you for having all right.
Speaker 1: Tell him John starting the sky film dot com man,
Speaker 1: Tell him, Yeah, you guys need to uh go over
Speaker 1: two stars in the sky film dot Com and buy
Speaker 1: a copy of it, and I was just thinking that
Speaker 1: you ought to buy a second copy to give. I
Speaker 1: don't know how that works. You can get a link
Speaker 1: and you can give it to somebody, but you should
Speaker 1: buy it for a non hunter who's uneasy with hunt
Speaker 1: That's right, because this is it's a very good, uh
Speaker 1: deep dive into hunting. Explores all the different realms of
Speaker 1: hunting that we all know so well and they're so
Speaker 1: easy for us to talk about and understand. But uh,
Speaker 1: Steve does a really good job in the documentary of
Speaker 1: sort of you know, opening it up to and in
Speaker 1: a conversation where people that are non endemic outside of
Speaker 1: our little hunting bubble can understand all these topics that
Speaker 1: we deal with and grapple with all the time. Um,
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy it. But I also feel like if you're
Speaker 1: somebody that wants to promote hunting and make hunting cool again,
Speaker 1: you should pass it along to some folks. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: only worked on the movie. Yeah, have a good time
Speaker 1: working on it. And your honest is the he's the
Speaker 1: most honest man in show business and he's sounds you
Speaker 1: go watching. Yeah, I know I know for a fact.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys. Stars in the sky film dot com
Speaker 1: where you can find our new documentary UM available for
Speaker 1: streaming and download purchase