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