Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. You're telling me. You're telling me nine
Speaker 1: point five two nine point five to million acres of
Speaker 1: American ground, public publicly owned American ground is inaccessible. The
Speaker 1: people who like to hunting fish and walk around landlocked landlocked.
Speaker 1: If you added up all the acreage I own, that's
Speaker 1: four point to five six million times the acres I own.
Speaker 1: It's a big chunk of land. Dude. Yeah, Uh, how
Speaker 1: do you put it in terms of how do you
Speaker 1: put it in terms of like, you know, everybody, when
Speaker 1: everyone's trying to make something seem big, they compared to
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. Right, if you want to make something small,
Speaker 1: you compare it to Texas. But you guys don't even
Speaker 1: need to do the Rhode Island comparison. New Hampshire in
Speaker 1: Connecticut right to state combo. Still it's still the dinky
Speaker 1: states in the East. But still nine point five two
Speaker 1: million acres of landlocked land in America. Well, isn't yellow
Speaker 1: still like two million acres. It's a way of putting it.
Speaker 1: It's like five times that size five Yellowstone National Parks
Speaker 1: owned by the American people but not accessible to the public,
Speaker 1: and most of them are BLM land. It's mostly BLM
Speaker 1: and it's like a Western deal, right, But there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of landlocked land in the East. Not that
Speaker 1: what listen, Easterners do not now because this is gonna
Speaker 1: because we're talking about your ground, your dirt here. It's
Speaker 1: just far away from your house, I'm sure. But it's
Speaker 1: in the West. Well, that's what we looked at. I mean,
Speaker 1: the majority of it is. But I'm sure there's landlocked
Speaker 1: lands across the nation that we just have them looked at.
Speaker 1: Can you guys introduce yourselves? Go ahead, John, all right, Sure.
Speaker 1: I'm Joel Webster. I'm the Western Lands Director with Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Conservation Partnership TRCP. I'm based in Montana. I grew
Speaker 1: up out West and I work across the West on
Speaker 1: public land issues, so habitat conservation, but also access. I'm
Speaker 1: Eric stick Freedom, the founder of on x. We make
Speaker 1: a GPS app that helps people get outdoors and stay
Speaker 1: safe and stay legal and stay frustrated when they're looking
Speaker 1: at and when they're looking at landlocked land. Being like dude,
Speaker 1: but it's right there. I just can't get to it.
Speaker 1: No matter how I finagle my way around, I can't
Speaker 1: them that get to it. We're gonna define landlocked playing
Speaker 1: a minute here, okay, And I'm Lisa Nichols. I'm one
Speaker 1: of the g I S supervisors at on X, and
Speaker 1: explain g i S geographic information systems or geographic information
Speaker 1: science UM basically compiling data that has a location component
Speaker 1: into a system so that you can make maps from
Speaker 1: it or run analyzes like this. Okay, And then Mark
Speaker 1: Kenny from Wire to Hunt's here, Sir, Mark Gills is
Speaker 1: on a daily basis. I don't know about daily basis.
Speaker 1: Being in Michigan, you do it a lot. You're just
Speaker 1: dealing with the R day. Why are you? Why are
Speaker 1: you trying to knock me down? You gotta be like
Speaker 1: hourly bro. I was dealing with this like two weeks
Speaker 1: ago on my white Tail hunt Montana and then this
Speaker 1: weekend chasing ELK. I wasn't dealing with this all the time,
Speaker 1: but I was looking at a couple of situations like
Speaker 1: that on my map using my Onyx maps all weekend.
Speaker 1: So yeah, very we're we're very well aware of the
Speaker 1: issue and then jay as poodless, well get anything you
Speaker 1: want to hell here still here after all these years,
Speaker 1: So define landlocked man? Like I I think I feel
Speaker 1: like everybody's cann know because one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: to talk about is uh, I like to talk about
Speaker 1: corner happened, how it's right kind of right behind not recommended?
Speaker 1: Well yeah yeah yeah the day I defind I like
Speaker 1: my two favorite subjects lately would be like different names
Speaker 1: for how one loads chew and then um things that
Speaker 1: make Turkey's gobble, and then corner happened is right up
Speaker 1: there with it. But but we're we'll get into corner happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe who wants to take on what a landlocked land is? Okay?
Speaker 1: So um For this analysis, we were just looking at
Speaker 1: places where public roads do not provide access to pieces
Speaker 1: of public land. So certainly there's opportunities to fly into
Speaker 1: places with helicopters. There's opportunities to access places um by water.
Speaker 1: When you say public roads, public roads or trails or anything,
Speaker 1: well just for this was public roads. Yeah, there's certainly
Speaker 1: places where you could hike in. You know that a
Speaker 1: landowner would allow you to cross their land, or that
Speaker 1: there's an established trail and there's a trailhead outside of
Speaker 1: the land. But for this purpose, for the purpose of
Speaker 1: this analysis, we were just looking at access from roads. Uh, quickly,
Speaker 1: what happens that number? If you turn it into that
Speaker 1: you can walk in across public land. It's just not
Speaker 1: um something that we could really capture with the data.
Speaker 1: What do you call NASH what do you call designated wilderness?
Speaker 1: You can't walk, you can't drive on it. It's not landlocked.
Speaker 1: We explain the direct indirect analysis. So yeah, so UM,
Speaker 1: we kind of broke it down into two different categories.
Speaker 1: So the direct access component would be like if you
Speaker 1: had a public road that would cross or intersect a
Speaker 1: peace of public land or actually skirt alongside next to
Speaker 1: the public land where you could park your vehicle, get
Speaker 1: out and get right onto the public land without crossing
Speaker 1: any sort of private property. UM, that's direct access. And
Speaker 1: then the indirect access component was if you could access um,
Speaker 1: a piece of public land through another accessible land, so
Speaker 1: like if you could take BLM to get to force
Speaker 1: service or vice versa. UM, then then we considered that
Speaker 1: indirect access and that's not counted in this figure. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if if you could access it indirectly. It's
Speaker 1: not part of this number. It's not part of the
Speaker 1: nine million. And I think trail access across private land
Speaker 1: to public land with established permanent easements, which we'll get into,
Speaker 1: that's pretty rare. That's rare. It's pretty rare. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got you. But Steve to like to your point of
Speaker 1: can you walk across it? Yeah, if there's a road
Speaker 1: that touches any piece of that public land, and it's
Speaker 1: a huge chunk of public land, we considered it accessible
Speaker 1: as long as there was a public road touching it.
Speaker 1: Anywhere you could walk across, anywhere there might be trails.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it was considered in the will, not
Speaker 1: considered in the number of of land law. A million
Speaker 1: acre parcel with one roil to the corner that would
Speaker 1: be considered accessible. So it's not that you need to
Speaker 1: be able to drive across, but you can get to it,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um. So I think actually, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to look at accessibility um in terms of like terrain right, Um,
Speaker 1: Like there could be a giant piece of land that
Speaker 1: has an access point on one side of it and
Speaker 1: the other side of it's very difficult to access. Um
Speaker 1: that by is you know that's pretty inaccessible, but that
Speaker 1: was not counted to this report. So I think you
Speaker 1: can actually argue that there's a lot more land than
Speaker 1: this that isn't accessible if you wanted to change the definition.
Speaker 1: But we had to create a definition. So that's what
Speaker 1: we did. Can we talk from it, uh? Can we
Speaker 1: talk from it? Just to help people understand what we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Dirty Hills situation, because here you have like,
Speaker 1: unless it's a better case, unless there's a better case study,
Speaker 1: do you guys not like that one because it's so sticky?
Speaker 1: I think it's great virchel. Okay, So there is a
Speaker 1: place in Montana known as the Dirty Hills, which five
Speaker 1: years ago, ten years ago, whatever it was, no one
Speaker 1: knew what the Dirty Hills were. But they've become an emblem, right,
Speaker 1: they become like symbolic of landlocked lands in general. Where
Speaker 1: you have a acre two acre chunk of ground that
Speaker 1: has really good hunting on it, has a lot of
Speaker 1: elk on it, surrounded by lands owned by uh two individuals.
Speaker 1: I think there's a pair of brothers the own lands
Speaker 1: surrounding this thing. There's no public access to it, and
Speaker 1: what kind of makes it one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: makes it kind of sticky and and interesting is that
Speaker 1: at some point in time people started saying, well, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I can't access it by walking in or driving in,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna find a way to start accessing it with aircraft.
Speaker 1: So some number of people, maybe thirty to sixty people
Speaker 1: a year, have begun flying in on helicopters or flying
Speaker 1: in on fixed wing aircraft and landing on old roads
Speaker 1: to go and hunt this land locked area. And I
Speaker 1: think on one hand they're making a statement is that fair?
Speaker 1: And no one hand, they just want to get some
Speaker 1: good hunting. There's a lot of good hunting. I think
Speaker 1: it's almost like, um, it's not even civil disobedience, because
Speaker 1: it's not disobedient. It's like exercising of one's rights to
Speaker 1: fly in to the Dirty Hills. The way this gets
Speaker 1: even more interesting as a as a case study, is
Speaker 1: that the same people that own the Dirty Hills own
Speaker 1: a bunch more properties, including a property that is has
Speaker 1: the potential to block vehicular access to fifty tho acres
Speaker 1: of public land. And some years ago they proposed to
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Land Management. They came and said, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I'll give you one of my ranches
Speaker 1: which will open up roaded access to fifty thousand acres
Speaker 1: of public land in exchange for the two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred acres of public land you own in the middle
Speaker 1: of my ranch. And the BLM wasn't able to take
Speaker 1: the deal. I must pay some big balls on that ranch.
Speaker 1: Well some so when when this ranch that allows the
Speaker 1: access to the fifty acres, when they enrolled themselves in
Speaker 1: a public access program, eight hundred public users signed up
Speaker 1: to access through that ranch. So eight hundred public users
Speaker 1: use that ranch to access the Bullwhacker Creek drainage, and
Speaker 1: around thirty people hunt this Dirty Hills section. So there
Speaker 1: was like competing interests for some people saying it's not
Speaker 1: a fair swap, the hunting opportunities aren't equal, or it's
Speaker 1: not a fair swap for whatever. But anyways, the BLM,
Speaker 1: I think not because they were interested. Because of cost
Speaker 1: and manpower and other issues with with roads and whatnot,
Speaker 1: they were not able to to seriously entertain the deal.
Speaker 1: While are you guys giving knowing glances, Well, I think
Speaker 1: the reason that deal wasn't entertained is because there was
Speaker 1: so much backlash from from Montana sportsman in Central Montana.
Speaker 1: You mean the thirty guys that like hunting Dirfy Hills. No,
Speaker 1: I mean there was significant blowback from that proposal. What
Speaker 1: was the I only see the real quick. I only like,
Speaker 1: without knowing the particulars, it seemed like at the surface level,
Speaker 1: for what I explained, it seems like an enticing deal.
Speaker 1: But I haven't dug into it. What makes it not enticing?
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm not claiming to be an expert
Speaker 1: on a sort of ball whacker deal. I do know
Speaker 1: that there was an alternative route proposed, um, you know
Speaker 1: to access those blm lands we've wanted off canoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can also get in there if you walk
Speaker 1: along ways from a different direction. I just know that
Speaker 1: there's some folks that are pretty passionate about the dirties
Speaker 1: and they'd love to hunt it. Um you know, some
Speaker 1: pretty good all cutting and then there's some big bowls
Speaker 1: on that ranch around there, and so aircraft. I think
Speaker 1: part of it too is that, um there was a
Speaker 1: big you know, legal fight over and now we'll get
Speaker 1: into Eastman's probably later, but um, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a route that crossed that ranch that was open to
Speaker 1: the public and then the Wilkes brothers who owned that
Speaker 1: piece of property closed it. There was some litigation over
Speaker 1: that that went to court, and um, the sportsman's community
Speaker 1: lost people who are involved in that. And so as
Speaker 1: a result that that route was closed. And so I
Speaker 1: also think that there's UM a little bit of a
Speaker 1: taste in people's mouths. Yeah, I got you. There's another one, um,
Speaker 1: just to give it people another example of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. We're talking about struggles over landlocked lands. There's
Speaker 1: a ranch in Colorado where Joel, you and I have
Speaker 1: been there. Why are you give an annoying lands? But
Speaker 1: we're good, Okay. There's a ranch called the High Lonesome
Speaker 1: Ranch who's in a big legal piss and match with
Speaker 1: the county in this case where there's a county road
Speaker 1: that accesses public lands and they're in a protracted legal
Speaker 1: battle where where the county gets outspent the county or
Speaker 1: you know, they put forty dollars in the legal fees
Speaker 1: and it's not I don't know if it's sustainable. They
Speaker 1: keep getting outspent. But they're saying, hey, man, that's our road.
Speaker 1: That's an open road. The ranch has a gated They
Speaker 1: say no, it's not open. We got a gate across
Speaker 1: it to prevent to prevent people from accessing big chunks
Speaker 1: of public land. So the point being, these are like
Speaker 1: battles that are being waited. There's like battles being waged
Speaker 1: around public land access all the time. And I know
Speaker 1: that you're not coming out of saying that everything should
Speaker 1: turn into a fight, because there's a lot of situations
Speaker 1: where these things can be resolved with willing sellers, willing buyers,
Speaker 1: there's public money available. I don't want to act like
Speaker 1: it's all the contentious and nasty and people suing each other,
Speaker 1: but I'm just trying to raise the idea that there
Speaker 1: are little battles in the war over public land access
Speaker 1: that do turn ugly and contentious. And I think those
Speaker 1: battles are becoming more common as we see a shift
Speaker 1: in ownership patterns across the West, with you know, new
Speaker 1: people moving in with a lot of money who aren't
Speaker 1: from there that maybe don't you know, traditionally a lot
Speaker 1: of these places are open um. You know, just by
Speaker 1: knocking on the door helping somebody out on their ranch
Speaker 1: or whatever, you get access to go hunt their property.
Speaker 1: And that's changed, and so as a result, there's more
Speaker 1: and more conflict, and um, I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: think what's going on in Colorado, I think what's happened
Speaker 1: in the Crazy Mountains. Um, it's just emblematic of what's
Speaker 1: happening in today's world. And I think the intent of
Speaker 1: this project we're working on and then we put together
Speaker 1: here that was really focused on cooperative solutions that bring
Speaker 1: people together to help solve this problem prevent that from
Speaker 1: happening in the first place. Can you give me a
Speaker 1: quick rundown and anyone on if you had to say,
Speaker 1: like generally, what allowed um lands to become landlocked? Like
Speaker 1: what were the mechanisms in place that it seems like
Speaker 1: a really weird oversight, Right, Well, I think it just
Speaker 1: happened by the nature of the West and how the
Speaker 1: West was settled. Um, there's a whole you know, bunch
Speaker 1: of laws that are tied to I mean, I'll start
Speaker 1: out with the Homestead Act, right, which in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: two was the first one, and there were several where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, settlers are coming out um from the east
Speaker 1: and coming out here and getting their hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: acres and they're gonna make a go at it. But
Speaker 1: that was when you like stake the claim. That's right.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of movies on that, um, and you
Speaker 1: know that that that's where it all began. But then
Speaker 1: you know, there were the railroad land grants where there
Speaker 1: are these individual um attempts by Congress to get these
Speaker 1: railroads to these specific areas where, um, if a company
Speaker 1: went and built a railroad, they get alternating sections, so
Speaker 1: a checkerboard checkerboarded style landscape. UM, you know, alternating sections
Speaker 1: will be given to that railroad across the lands. If
Speaker 1: you'd have a you know, one section zoned by the
Speaker 1: federal government or the General Land Office at the time,
Speaker 1: and then the other section zoned by that railroad. And
Speaker 1: they allowed him to be corner to corner, corner to corner.
Speaker 1: And I know you guys have talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the access. So there that's like you can, I mean
Speaker 1: there you can like vividly see the problem. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's other crazy stuff too, like during the depression, and um,
Speaker 1: there's this one thing, this one law that was called
Speaker 1: the Bankhead Jones Farm Tenant Act, which I find really interesting.
Speaker 1: It was past the seven and what it did is
Speaker 1: it bought a bunch of like um, you know, failed
Speaker 1: farms back from private landowners in places where it just
Speaker 1: wasn't suitable for farming. People had gone and homestead of
Speaker 1: that land. It was rough and rocky, and they probably
Speaker 1: used it pretty hard and it just wasn't proving. And
Speaker 1: so the federal government actually went and bought that land back,
Speaker 1: and that went back. Originally all went to them, the
Speaker 1: four Service, but some of them ended up going to
Speaker 1: the BLM. And if you look at like the Dakota
Speaker 1: Grasslands and in North Dakota and South Dakota like that
Speaker 1: that bad lands country, which is really great meldeer hunting. UM.
Speaker 1: You look at like the high line in Montana, and
Speaker 1: then also the lowest town like some of that breaks
Speaker 1: country right or right right right around it anyway. Um.
Speaker 1: And then also down in Wyoming and uh in New
Speaker 1: Mexico and Colorado, there's just eleven million acres went went
Speaker 1: back to the federalist state that were private, right. And
Speaker 1: this is all happening and disjointed, and so as long
Speaker 1: as they're surrounding neighbors stayed solvent. That piece of land
Speaker 1: in the middle became federally owned but not federally accessible,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. And then there's like you know
Speaker 1: the notorious Oregon in California sort of railroad scheme where um,
Speaker 1: there were like three point seven million acres made available
Speaker 1: um for a railroad company that would build a railroad
Speaker 1: across western Oregon again in a checkerboard pattern, and then
Speaker 1: they were required to uh sell that land as settlers
Speaker 1: for a hundred and sixty acre chunks for two dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty cents an acre. But they found it about
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Man, what's that at that price? All right,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. I'll take it. And I think they
Speaker 1: felt the same way because they wanted to turn into
Speaker 1: timber companies, and so instead of giving it to settlers,
Speaker 1: they figured out a scheme to turn it into timber
Speaker 1: companies so they could cut a bunch of trees and
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money and just to have like
Speaker 1: ghost individuals purchases. Yeah, they go down to the bar,
Speaker 1: I think, and get somebody to help them to come
Speaker 1: in and buy that land for two lany cents an acre,
Speaker 1: and then they get it from him for the same price. Probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know what they'd give them an exchange for it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was some compensation, but then they just
Speaker 1: accumulated these you know, mass holding to land and then
Speaker 1: you know that county people went to jail for it.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen sixteen, two point eight million acres
Speaker 1: of that land came back to the General Land Office,
Speaker 1: which eventually became BLM Land Oregon. In California, lands in
Speaker 1: like a southwest and northern California, And if you look
Speaker 1: at that on the map, it's a mess and that
Speaker 1: stuff want to be in a messy and inexcestible messy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And some of it's accessible because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: timber production in that country where you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of timber roads, and so they kind of cut in
Speaker 1: and out of the checkerboard patterns. So not all checkerboard
Speaker 1: lands are inaccessible, right, especially like in timber country where
Speaker 1: oftentimes a four service will own a road easeman across
Speaker 1: that private land onto their own section, and as a result,
Speaker 1: that access is sort of maintained to some of those
Speaker 1: sections where those roads exist, but not all. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about a lot more. When we say a section,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a square mile. So like if you
Speaker 1: live in one of the many states that has townships.
Speaker 1: Your township is six by six, so six so thirty
Speaker 1: six square miles is a township. A square mile is
Speaker 1: only six hundred forty acres. But what's the biggest chunk
Speaker 1: of landlocked land in the country. The biggest one that
Speaker 1: we found was twenty two thousand, two hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: four acres in southern Wyoming. Twenty two thousand acres in
Speaker 1: one chunk, it's like thirty five square miles. So, without
Speaker 1: getting into names, does the dude who owns some of
Speaker 1: this is he just like man, um, I really like
Speaker 1: this set up where basically you have access to a
Speaker 1: lot of land, you have no tax burden. I'm sure
Speaker 1: some dudes are, oh they got yeah. Yeah. Some people
Speaker 1: gotta hate that this is a conversation that's going on
Speaker 1: right now. They gotta be like, man, I just want
Speaker 1: to keep quiet, enjoy my two acres of land that
Speaker 1: I don't pay taxes on. There are like five to
Speaker 1: twenty acre parcels all over the place that have no
Speaker 1: permanent legal public access And doesn't mean that some of
Speaker 1: them are acre pieces just all over the place. There's
Speaker 1: tons of them. I see where you got it broken
Speaker 1: out by state where California has almost a half million,
Speaker 1: but then Wyoming far and away three million acres in
Speaker 1: Wyoming's landlocked. It's not something you want to win at, dude.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. So how um this has always been the
Speaker 1: case because like one was Bankhead Jones. Again, it was
Speaker 1: in thirty seven, Okay, So we started making our problems
Speaker 1: around the time they were caught in big railroads like
Speaker 1: the Northern Pacific and stuff. Eighteen sixty two with the
Speaker 1: homestead X when it really started and people begin to
Speaker 1: accumulate chunks of land, and they were just I mean,
Speaker 1: if you look at you know, if you a few
Speaker 1: hunt right you you're trying to figure out, like where's
Speaker 1: that topography where I can go kill Amelie Buck or
Speaker 1: whatever in eastern Montana or eastern you know, Wyoming, and
Speaker 1: you're looking Often times that public land is like following
Speaker 1: a like a little break of a of a stream,
Speaker 1: or it's in some bad lands or some coolies where
Speaker 1: it's just not good farmland or ranch land. And so
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys were they were settling the
Speaker 1: prime land and Nevada, they were settling, you know, the
Speaker 1: right parian areas where the water was. That's the only
Speaker 1: place there's water, and they're leaving the uplands in public. Um.
Speaker 1: The railroad stuff is a real mess in in Nevada,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, in places like eastern Montana and Wyoming,
Speaker 1: like it was really about, you know, how is which
Speaker 1: land is most suitable for for farming and ranching and
Speaker 1: the rest was left public and it's rough, it's rough country.
Speaker 1: And so these guys would you know, some people would
Speaker 1: be really good at accumulating land and these giant ranches
Speaker 1: and they just ended up, you know, having these public
Speaker 1: parcels inside their estates. And it wasn't it wasn't inadvertent,
Speaker 1: but it happened. So what is your um and why
Speaker 1: do you guys explain how TRCP and on X worked
Speaker 1: together to compile information and what the goal of it was.
Speaker 1: But what was the thing that initiated the conversation in
Speaker 1: the first place. Well, Julie, you can tell your story
Speaker 1: what you learned from being in d C. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it is um. Yeah. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: happened at the beginning of this administration under the Secretary
Speaker 1: Ryan Zinki of the Department of the Interior is he
Speaker 1: issued a series of secretarial orders, which are like directives
Speaker 1: to the different bureaus of the Department of the Interior.
Speaker 1: And so you've got like the U. S. Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service and National Park Service. In the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Land Management the BLM, you know, the largest public land
Speaker 1: management agency in the country. They administered two million acres
Speaker 1: and and through these orders, there a couple of them
Speaker 1: where he directed the bureaus to identify places where access
Speaker 1: is limited or non existent and opportunities to make those
Speaker 1: lands accessible. Really, yeah, it's good stuff. That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: And um, what what did they what do they have
Speaker 1: in mind there? Because was it looking for ways to
Speaker 1: spend Land and Water Conservation Fund money or Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think they recognize that, you know, public assets access is
Speaker 1: a huge issue for the hunting and fishing community, and
Speaker 1: I think they wanted to do something that was beneficial
Speaker 1: for the hunting and fishing community tied to access. And
Speaker 1: this is a pretty logical place to go. But what
Speaker 1: surprised me a little bit is is knowing that it
Speaker 1: was gonna be that it was going to be received,
Speaker 1: it was almost inevitably going to be received as adversarial
Speaker 1: to private landowners. Doesn't need to be I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is all about being respectful to private property
Speaker 1: owners and and focusing on cooperative and voluntary agreements, not
Speaker 1: forcing anybody to do anything with you, like eminent domain
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is all about willing buyer willing seller
Speaker 1: type arrangements, you know. I think the secretary you know,
Speaker 1: and I'll give him credit for this. He has been
Speaker 1: ever since he was in Congress, he's been pretty clear
Speaker 1: about his support from land and water conservation, phone, he
Speaker 1: has been pretty good on access um and so I
Speaker 1: think on those issues like this is sort of a
Speaker 1: natural fit for him. I um. But one of the
Speaker 1: things we noticed, and I noticed just you know, I
Speaker 1: know West, I'm from West. I've been using on access technology,
Speaker 1: you know, first with my handheld GPS down with my
Speaker 1: smartphone for years. And just like a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who live out here and hunt a lot on public land,
Speaker 1: I've learned how to navigate public lands using that phone.
Speaker 1: And you didn't know how to use a map in
Speaker 1: the old days. Well, I think it's pretty different when
Speaker 1: that's that's why this this is gonna hear me out.
Speaker 1: That's why I hate on X because it used to
Speaker 1: be that you had to have special secret e skills
Speaker 1: to find how to get into places now anyone. So
Speaker 1: it's like how I hated the Internet because I was
Speaker 1: good in the library and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they made information just available to everyone, and I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: now I lost my advantage and on X. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: lets you get to walk around and look at the
Speaker 1: landscape and understand it in a large scale sense easily.
Speaker 1: That's fair. It makes you Yeah, I'm joking about not
Speaker 1: like it. I'm just saying, like it was like when
Speaker 1: we used to drive around with like stacks of maps
Speaker 1: trying to put these complex puzzles together of how to
Speaker 1: get into these hard to reach places. It's just at
Speaker 1: your fingertips. Some of them are hard though, Like I
Speaker 1: just know going in some of these places where you
Speaker 1: had a lot of private and you had these small
Speaker 1: slivers of public, and you're trying to figure out, like
Speaker 1: how do I line it up with my map and
Speaker 1: my odometer and figure how I can hit that hundred
Speaker 1: yards shot where that public land hits that public road
Speaker 1: where I know I can get on there. And you
Speaker 1: get there and there's no survey markers, there's no fence
Speaker 1: and delineate it and I'm just like, I'm not gonna risk.
Speaker 1: We would bail. We would bail all the time on
Speaker 1: missions like that, because the minute you hit a fence
Speaker 1: that doesn't like line up with your understanding. I don't
Speaker 1: like to hunt looking over my shoulder. So when we
Speaker 1: used to try to do things off paper, um, it
Speaker 1: didn't give you the certainty because we had this conversation
Speaker 1: there day where we're using on x LK hunting and
Speaker 1: we're showing a property boundary and the fence. In the
Speaker 1: old days, I would have viewed this fence as being
Speaker 1: inviable right a line fence clearly not on the line.
Speaker 1: And then the more you look at it more, you
Speaker 1: can see that they ran the fence just in what
Speaker 1: looked like good suitable place to run defense. But the
Speaker 1: fence didn't conform at all to the property line. And
Speaker 1: the old days would to be like, well, the fence
Speaker 1: knows better than me, and I would have just let
Speaker 1: the fence win the argument. And now you kind of
Speaker 1: look and there's another way to there's like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's an extra data point to put in there when
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out where you're at. I don't
Speaker 1: want to sidetrack too much. Are you guys are one
Speaker 1: of the few that actually knew how to use those
Speaker 1: paper maps to to do those things. That's why we
Speaker 1: wanted to That's one of the reasons we went to
Speaker 1: the Department of the Interior and to d C too
Speaker 1: educate them on how hunters and the public are actually
Speaker 1: using technology to help access any type of public land
Speaker 1: and if it's accessible, the public is finding a way
Speaker 1: to access even in the case of air flight in
Speaker 1: the dirty Hills, they if it's accessible by some legal means,
Speaker 1: they're going to get there, so because they know about it.
Speaker 1: When you are evaluating acquisition and disposal of public land,
Speaker 1: make sure you take access into consideration. That was one
Speaker 1: of the big things that Jewel wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: everybody understood in DC. I also didn't want them to
Speaker 1: only be looking at putting in new trailheads with big
Speaker 1: parking lots and toilets, like developed facilities that are really costly.
Speaker 1: And I think you look back to like, you know
Speaker 1: what you think about the way that the public access
Speaker 1: is public lands. Right, we drive up to the trailhead,
Speaker 1: we park our car, I go used to pit toilet.
Speaker 1: We might have a picnic there and then you can
Speaker 1: hike in on the trail, right. And I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who still think that that's how
Speaker 1: everybody accesses public lands. And that's that's a good point,
Speaker 1: because we even use the term trailhead in the absence
Speaker 1: of trailheads, it's kind of means sort of like where
Speaker 1: I started to walk. Yeah, yeah, And and one of
Speaker 1: the things that we were I was really worried about
Speaker 1: in particular, are just you know, you got folks back
Speaker 1: in d C. They're looking at how to provide access
Speaker 1: right and they've got this big chunk at two million
Speaker 1: acres of public land UM, and they're gonna be very
Speaker 1: likely trying to figure out how to create another access
Speaker 1: point on that instead of thinking about what about this
Speaker 1: five thousand acre chunk over here UM that has awesome
Speaker 1: hunting UM opportunities potentially UM, but it's lower profile, it's
Speaker 1: not a sexy but it's really UM purposefully important And
Speaker 1: and that's something that I think this project feeds into
Speaker 1: in terms of this report UM, but also that visit
Speaker 1: is just really trying to help direct their work. We're
Speaker 1: really trying to help them focus on the fact that
Speaker 1: they should be looking at these smaller chunks that you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, heck, five ten square miles, if you could
Speaker 1: buy forty acres to tie that to a road or
Speaker 1: buy buy an easement, you could open that up to
Speaker 1: the public. It's not that expensive. It's pretty actually pretty inexpensive.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge amount of land you just opened
Speaker 1: up for everybody to go use and doesn't require a
Speaker 1: toilet and a parking area and you know, maintenance and
Speaker 1: all that. So basically like advising on how to get
Speaker 1: kind of more bang for the buck on public access,
Speaker 1: that's right, but also to not ignore these lands either,
Speaker 1: which I think historically people haven't been looking at them
Speaker 1: because this technology didn't exist. People thought that they couldn't
Speaker 1: be accessed, and so people have been ignoring them for
Speaker 1: a really long time. And that's changed in recent years
Speaker 1: and we're we're trying to help drive that change. So
Speaker 1: what was the moment when what was the moment when
Speaker 1: when like a nonprofit and a tech company decided to
Speaker 1: like come together around an idea. Well, we had I
Speaker 1: guess that was late seventeen. As a company, we had
Speaker 1: defined for ourselves a company purpose to give back to
Speaker 1: access related causes. Because that's why what's what made our
Speaker 1: company what we are today. We we show people where
Speaker 1: you can go in the outdoors, so we wanted to
Speaker 1: give back to that, so we defined a company purpose
Speaker 1: for getting back to access related causes. Starting started to
Speaker 1: look around. And that's when by who knows what, higher
Speaker 1: power Jewel shows up on her doorstep and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got this problem. You would you mind coming to
Speaker 1: d C and talking about how technology helps people access
Speaker 1: these public lands in eastern Montana and random But but
Speaker 1: at that point you hadn't started to put together all
Speaker 1: the information, right, So because we made that, we started
Speaker 1: to can this presentation for d C and then we're like, oh, Joel,
Speaker 1: we were talking about, let's let's present like a use
Speaker 1: case of eastern Montana how many landlocked public lands that
Speaker 1: there are, so we can give them an idea of
Speaker 1: the scale of the issue. And we did that and like, well,
Speaker 1: now we got LDBCF coming up, why don't we do
Speaker 1: a full analysis and I get the whole picture of
Speaker 1: the western landlocked public lands? So is this analysis more
Speaker 1: exhausted than anything that the FEDS have put together? If
Speaker 1: I haven't seen anything else like it? And part of
Speaker 1: the reason I think this happened is because the FEDS
Speaker 1: have expressed and interest in this, Like we've been done
Speaker 1: and sat with not only with the Interior officials about
Speaker 1: this at the Department of the Interior, we sat down
Speaker 1: with Beer of Land Management staff and and they're like,
Speaker 1: we've been directed to figure out, you know, where these
Speaker 1: inaccessible lands are, and we're trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do here, and we're just looking at
Speaker 1: each other like, well, maybe we can help with this.
Speaker 1: Well I don't think they necessarily can, because our team
Speaker 1: has done a ton more to actually look at the
Speaker 1: public lands compare them with the parcel data, and they
Speaker 1: will We'll use those BLM data sets that say this
Speaker 1: is public, this is private, and they'll have all these
Speaker 1: errors in it, and we compare that with the tax
Speaker 1: records and it says there's an owner that you say
Speaker 1: this is BLM land, but there's actually an owner on it,
Speaker 1: so there's a conflict there, and we determine that actually
Speaker 1: it is privately owned. So we actually have done that
Speaker 1: across the West, across a lot of the US to
Speaker 1: make the most accurate picture of land ownership, which our
Speaker 1: customers really love. Ninety three is BLM land landlocked acreage
Speaker 1: belongs to BLM. That's right. So that's what you're primarily
Speaker 1: having a conversation with. And I think there's certainly other
Speaker 1: access challenges with Forest Service land. But because of the
Speaker 1: way that, like the Forest Service was established, right with
Speaker 1: these forest reserves of people like Theodore Roosevelt setting them aside,
Speaker 1: or the refuge system or the parks, right, those are
Speaker 1: identified areas of importance that were set aside a long
Speaker 1: time ago because people are like these are special be
Speaker 1: a M lands kind of happened by accident in a way,
Speaker 1: although I have to admit there, like some of my
Speaker 1: favorite hunting and fishing countries, I love them. I love
Speaker 1: them like I love I really like them because I
Speaker 1: feel that I'm BLM land. You get the greatest sense
Speaker 1: of sort of the greatest sense of kind of freedom
Speaker 1: and also the greatest sense of in a weird way
Speaker 1: oftentimes like an exclusivity where there's just always like BLM
Speaker 1: kind of like HIGHI holes out there, you know, like
Speaker 1: not very visited places. I think that that you know,
Speaker 1: the national forces by the mirror fact of being national
Speaker 1: forests generates some amount of user awareness, but there's just
Speaker 1: like some BLM lands, you get out there and you
Speaker 1: just feel like you could sit there a month and
Speaker 1: nothing's gonna change. You know. They're also great for a
Speaker 1: Western style hunting and if you like to sit behind
Speaker 1: a spotter and glass things up from a mile away. Now,
Speaker 1: am I correct? This is just federal lands you guys
Speaker 1: looked at. That's right. Do we have any idea of
Speaker 1: what the quantity of state lands might be their land
Speaker 1: left because I've run across a lot of that too.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. Yeah, So we just were looking
Speaker 1: at federal lands because UM, state and local land have
Speaker 1: so many different uses. So there's a lot of times
Speaker 1: where state lands are to generate revenue for the state.
Speaker 1: Same thing with you know, municipal lands county and city
Speaker 1: lands UM and so they might not the state and
Speaker 1: municipal lands might actually not be for public use UM.
Speaker 1: And so in order to do this sort of standardized
Speaker 1: analysis across all thirteen states, we we just limited it
Speaker 1: to UM the federal land for the output. But if
Speaker 1: there was a way to cross state land that was
Speaker 1: open to access federal land, we did include UM, or
Speaker 1: rather we didn't include that in the total landlocked acreage
Speaker 1: figures and it's just a time thing. I mean, r
Speaker 1: g AS teams mainly focused on creating accurate landownership and
Speaker 1: updating landownership. So I had sprung this on him after
Speaker 1: the whole years plan was out there, and they graciously
Speaker 1: took it on and did a great job and put
Speaker 1: an extra time to make it happen. And it's that
Speaker 1: if you had to guess where is state land at,
Speaker 1: if you had to take a wild stab at the
Speaker 1: total for all I got, God, I have percented, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's what I like to do. Tell me that
Speaker 1: you'd be surprised if it was less than X and
Speaker 1: surprised if it was more than X. Why. I have
Speaker 1: no idea how to answer that. I told you, if
Speaker 1: I told you, you know what, there's only one section
Speaker 1: of landlocked state land in the American West, would that
Speaker 1: surprise you that that's not true? Okay? If I told
Speaker 1: you there is a billion acres, So we're getting closer. Now,
Speaker 1: Let's say I came to you and said, a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand acres of state land, it's only a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: acres across these all thirteen states. Hundred thousand acres I
Speaker 1: think still be higher than so it's a sizeable. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty high. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: the way that the states for granted land, they received
Speaker 1: two sections per township, and so they're like randomly situated
Speaker 1: in the landscape. I think I saw and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pulling from memory here, so it might be slightly off
Speaker 1: on the acreage, but I think Montana that d NRC
Speaker 1: did an evaluation and they found one point two million
Speaker 1: acres in the state of Montana state lands were landlocked.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And I mean you think about it, You've
Speaker 1: got you've got these you know, these these sections, right
Speaker 1: and and it was at sixteen and thirty six. Is
Speaker 1: that I think the two sections that of every township
Speaker 1: were given to the states and UM as a result
Speaker 1: of that, like they're just randomly placed on the landscape,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes they'll be in holdings right on National forest
Speaker 1: or BLM land, but oftentimes two they're just stuck right
Speaker 1: in our and some of them are inside national parks too. UM.
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of a mess. And I know that,
Speaker 1: UM there's certain states that are working on trying to
Speaker 1: address that issue, but it's the whole again, historical way
Speaker 1: in which the lands are allocated has resulted in this situation.
Speaker 1: When I started whitetail hunting in Montana a few years
Speaker 1: ago on public land, I was trying to find spots
Speaker 1: like this, some decent public land. I was in a
Speaker 1: river valley where there's much state land. Found some stuff
Speaker 1: that looked like it had road access to it. I
Speaker 1: was really excited. Showed up there and there's no trespassing
Speaker 1: signs on the roads that come right off the main
Speaker 1: county road, like ten yards in and so confusingly, this
Speaker 1: show's public land on the map. I was looking at
Speaker 1: a paper map at this point. I'm like, this shirt
Speaker 1: looks like public So I wasn't sure. They called local
Speaker 1: game war ner, whatever official it was, whatever office. I
Speaker 1: can't remember who I called. But turns out that neighbor,
Speaker 1: a rancher through there, bought the railroad line that runs
Speaker 1: right along the side of that blocked all the road
Speaker 1: access to this. Several state parcels that were right there
Speaker 1: along the road, but just a five yard wide railroad
Speaker 1: or ten yard wide past Eastman or whatever that. When
Speaker 1: we were verifying some of these parcels, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things, um that Lisa and her team did
Speaker 1: is they they flagged about sixty parcels that were big
Speaker 1: they had what they called questionable access and so there
Speaker 1: were like identified two tracks crossing ranches onto these public
Speaker 1: parcels and we weren't sure whether or not they had
Speaker 1: access or not. And so um she handed that over
Speaker 1: to the TRCP team and we put this out to
Speaker 1: our field reps, who then reached out to like the
Speaker 1: BLM and for A service lands and realty specialists, and
Speaker 1: they reached out to the county recorders and we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out whether or not there were Eastmans to
Speaker 1: these parcels and it was actually, um, pretty astounding how
Speaker 1: few there were. Um. But one of the things we
Speaker 1: found was also these these crazy railroad lines like running
Speaker 1: through these parcels that separated them and stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: just like, what's going on here? And I wasn't I
Speaker 1: didn't I wasn't aware that they actually owned that land.
Speaker 1: I figured they just you known, their tracks on top
Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, it's kind of crazy. So what
Speaker 1: was the process of compiling all the information and who
Speaker 1: did you decide? Who do you decide then to present
Speaker 1: it to? Uh? So you know, one of the advantages
Speaker 1: that we had coming into this UM. You know, as
Speaker 1: on X we we already had a lot of this
Speaker 1: data compiled for our products. So, like Eric was saying, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, we could have just used the public land
Speaker 1: data sets directly from the public agencies, but those are
Speaker 1: typically generalized boundaries, and so to really drill down to
Speaker 1: the scale of analysis, we had to use data that
Speaker 1: had already been reconciled with the private parcel data UM.
Speaker 1: So we already had that done UM. So that gave
Speaker 1: us a finer scale to work with. And then UM,
Speaker 1: you know, the second step was to really define landlocked.
Speaker 1: As we said, you know, there's certainly places where you
Speaker 1: can access it from water, from the air, from hiking in.
Speaker 1: But in order to really address this large scale thirteen
Speaker 1: state area western half of the United States practically, UM,
Speaker 1: we had to we had to normalize what we were
Speaker 1: going to call accessible UM and and so that's when
Speaker 1: we decided to just look at road access. And then
Speaker 1: from there we had to decide what was a public
Speaker 1: road versus a private road. But there's no national data
Speaker 1: set for public versus private road. Most road data sets
Speaker 1: that are available UM are classified according to um, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's an interstate highway, a county road, or surface
Speaker 1: type pavement versus dirt versus gravel. So there's no classification
Speaker 1: in these data sets. So UM our in house road
Speaker 1: data expert sort of advise that we do. We define
Speaker 1: a public road as anything that's maintained at the county
Speaker 1: level or higher, and then some for service road classifications.
Speaker 1: So once we pulled that data, we were able to
Speaker 1: look at UM, you know, a road right of way
Speaker 1: standard width, and then we we looked at where those
Speaker 1: UM road right of ways crossed the public lands, and
Speaker 1: then we were able to factor in UM through using
Speaker 1: the magics of g I S the indirect access as well.
Speaker 1: And then anything that essentially uh the road right of
Speaker 1: way across the public land, we gave it a flag.
Speaker 1: So every single record of public land got a flag
Speaker 1: as either landlocked or not landlocked. And then we had
Speaker 1: a script that or you know, an algorithm that would
Speaker 1: add all that up by state and by agency, and
Speaker 1: that's how we came up with these numbers. When you
Speaker 1: when you guys were doing this, were you doing it
Speaker 1: because you wanted to make the public aware of the
Speaker 1: magnitude I'll call it a problem. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you use that word you want to make the public
Speaker 1: aware of the magnitude of the problem, or you're doing
Speaker 1: it because you felt that it would be useful for
Speaker 1: land management agencies too have all this at their fingertips. Both.
Speaker 1: It's also trying to help get the land Trust to
Speaker 1: to help them address the issue. But um, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the tool to solve this problem, at least
Speaker 1: in terms of voluntary means of people working together, there
Speaker 1: is a land and Water Conservation Fund which uses none
Speaker 1: of you've talked about this on the show, but whole
Speaker 1: lunch man, Yeah, uses that revenue. Talk about it more,
Speaker 1: all right, real quick uses revenue from offshore oil and
Speaker 1: gas development. Um. And then there's basically there's a Congress
Speaker 1: it's a federal program where it's been around since nine
Speaker 1: and every yearllion dollars go from offshore oil and gas
Speaker 1: receipts and go into a trust fund. Back up on
Speaker 1: that a little bit, because offshore stuff is owned. Offshore
Speaker 1: oil leases are are federal oil EIAs. Is that they're
Speaker 1: not individually owned, that's right, and they have to pay
Speaker 1: their energy companies at the point pay royalties on those
Speaker 1: the US government and the Land and Water Conservation Fund
Speaker 1: like earmarks, gets a portion of those. And in every county,
Speaker 1: now here's a not western thing. Every single county in
Speaker 1: the United States of America has had a land and
Speaker 1: water conservation project baseball fields, municipal swimming pools, boat launches
Speaker 1: on up to you know, major major access points in
Speaker 1: the in the large parcels of previously landlocked stuff. It's
Speaker 1: like the key I mean, it is the key driver
Speaker 1: for public access. That's right, everything recreation, and like half
Speaker 1: of it goes to the states and local governments and
Speaker 1: half of it goes to federal programs for the most
Speaker 1: part in recent years. Um, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: talking loans around this subject real quick, get into what's
Speaker 1: going on with it. Yeah. Sure. So the program UM
Speaker 1: is currently scheduled to expire on September thirties. So I
Speaker 1: imagine bout time this show airs, UM, this program will
Speaker 1: have expired, the authorization will be gone because they throw
Speaker 1: a little it's meant to like initially it was funded,
Speaker 1: it had like decades, right, twenty five years, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then then they kind of like through like a lifeline.
Speaker 1: Yeah I got and no one can even explain why
Speaker 1: it's controversial. Well, it's it's like the one thing that
Speaker 1: like senators seem to agree on. It's not anymore so
Speaker 1: on sept Um Chairman Bishop, Rob Bishop, you had on
Speaker 1: your show. Um, you know he helped. He worked out
Speaker 1: a deal with Democrats with Khovan that committee and they
Speaker 1: moved a bill out of committee. That's great. Um, it's clean.
Speaker 1: It uh actually increases funding for access acquisition. Um, it's
Speaker 1: a fantastic bill. And I know you know he was
Speaker 1: on your show and he floated the idea. It was interesting,
Speaker 1: the Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars should be used
Speaker 1: to train oil field engineers. He's done the right thing
Speaker 1: here and I want to give him credit for that
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and that part of it didn't make
Speaker 1: it in there. That's right. And um they did. They
Speaker 1: did right by Sportsman too by increasing the access allocation.
Speaker 1: And let me explain something real quick. UM. So LBCF
Speaker 1: has been around since nineteen This is one of things
Speaker 1: we discovered this project. Um, but it wasn't until you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve that they actually specifically started to specifically
Speaker 1: direct money to public access. And so what we found
Speaker 1: is is when we're putting this report together, we wanted
Speaker 1: to find some like great case studies right and of
Speaker 1: public access being opened up with l WCF, they've only
Speaker 1: been funding the public access piece of it for six years.
Speaker 1: And so while there's some good checkerboard consolidation projects that
Speaker 1: are from a long time ago, these isolated parcels, so
Speaker 1: these chunks like to the checkerboard of the checkerboards on
Speaker 1: the landscape, the isolated parcels are like these individual pieces
Speaker 1: that everyone knows about. When we talked about checkerboards, are
Speaker 1: you nervous about that, Yannes, I think we should hit
Speaker 1: it real quick ahead. You haven't done anything. I'm just
Speaker 1: over here making sure the red light is still on
Speaker 1: and look at it at least every five seconds. It's
Speaker 1: gonna do a guest appear. Imagine to do a guest
Speaker 1: appearance and explain a checkerboarded what we mean when we
Speaker 1: say it's all when you come back. I was like,
Speaker 1: how'd you like that new area? And you go, oh, dude,
Speaker 1: it's all checkerboarded in less than sixty seconds. That's my goal.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're looking at the wall with a big
Speaker 1: map on it and then transposed checkerboard on there. And
Speaker 1: let's just say that all the black spots are private,
Speaker 1: all the red spots are public well, and and that
Speaker 1: sort of in most states. And you guys correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's really been defined.
Speaker 1: In most states. You can't go from red to red.
Speaker 1: You can't hop on that corner. So that's what we
Speaker 1: mean by checkerboarded. Only step in the red places, but
Speaker 1: you can't cross you you can't corner hop. You can't
Speaker 1: corner hop. You can't bring your foot over any black either,
Speaker 1: even if you're only setting it down in the red,
Speaker 1: because the lines are infinitely thin, and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other issues. Um, And you can only step foot in
Speaker 1: the red if there's a public road that goes and
Speaker 1: touches it. And to even enter the red piece that
Speaker 1: has to have a public road. Is that anything that's
Speaker 1: been broke? Is that an access idea that's been broached
Speaker 1: at all? They trying to get that access corner corner.
Speaker 1: I think you're beating your head against the wall. They
Speaker 1: floated to the idea in a number of places, a
Speaker 1: number of states. It's it's uneasy. It's uneasy. People will
Speaker 1: be a number of states people have been cited for it,
Speaker 1: challenged it. It hasn't been solved to really anyone's satisfaction.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much more how much of this landlocked
Speaker 1: land could be solved for simply by allowing stepping from
Speaker 1: corner corner, which seems like reasonable public I would say that, well,
Speaker 1: with the bulk of it, I would say a large
Speaker 1: portion of it. You'd be surprised. Maybe he can plug
Speaker 1: that outgum really real quick, and I'll give you two figures.
Speaker 1: We've had that question a few times, just saying like,
Speaker 1: if we just changed the policy on corner crossing, exactly
Speaker 1: how many acres would that open up? And um, you
Speaker 1: know that's certainly a data challenge right there. Challenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a data challenge, mean challenging. Uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's places where the corners aren't actually being represented by corners, uh,
Speaker 1: in the actual data sets. And so um, you know
Speaker 1: when you look at it, you know, like your human
Speaker 1: eye can kind of see that it looks like a corner,
Speaker 1: but if you zoom way way way way way way
Speaker 1: in the data itself is not actually meeting at a
Speaker 1: precise corner. And so in order to define that, it
Speaker 1: would it would. I mean, it's it can be done.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of like, do we have the
Speaker 1: time to really assign someone to every to to explore
Speaker 1: every section. Yeah, you're trying to capture things with broad strokes.
Speaker 1: Although although I think she's pointing to the one place
Speaker 1: where you can legally cross some corners where they do overlap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the edges of the surveys. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: a real if you're a real student of the map.
Speaker 1: So like some surveyors screwed up and now you could
Speaker 1: do it. Well, you when they did those township range sections,
Speaker 1: but Earth isn't square, so they put all these squares
Speaker 1: on there. Occasionally they had to do this correction where
Speaker 1: there's either a gap or an overlap. When there's an overlap.
Speaker 1: Once you guys published like a state by state guide,
Speaker 1: they because you would hate us. This is an onex
Speaker 1: pro tap right here. Wow, that's that's good. I've seen
Speaker 1: in both ways. But yeah, in Colorado, RA used to guide,
Speaker 1: we had that exactly. I just kept like coming up
Speaker 1: to this corner that we thought was the corner, and
Speaker 1: then we realized that it was actually an overlap of
Speaker 1: ten ft And the next thing you know, we were
Speaker 1: just gliding over that. I think. I think if you
Speaker 1: can show the map and how it overlaps, that's the law.
Speaker 1: What I think that I don't even want you guys
Speaker 1: to win on this because it's gonna be the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that makes you give knowing glances to each other.
Speaker 1: So I'm just talking to the honest and Mark. What
Speaker 1: I think would be a good exercise, just talking to
Speaker 1: honest Mark to have to to put together a sort
Speaker 1: of legal defense fund. Let me back up. There's a
Speaker 1: good story about when someone was trying to clarify Montana's
Speaker 1: stream access law that they knew that they had a
Speaker 1: way they wanted to challenge it. And rather than what
Speaker 1: they challenged it with was a group of women going tubing. Right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a guy shooting ducks where he's blasting
Speaker 1: shocking off crazy directions and scaring people. It was like
Speaker 1: a group of young women on a tubing trip became
Speaker 1: the thing to challenge and the legal case to challenge
Speaker 1: and clarify some issue around stream access law. I think
Speaker 1: that it would be good marketing, honest to established the
Speaker 1: legal defense fund and have someone go to a place
Speaker 1: where they can they they feel that there would be
Speaker 1: a chance do a corner hop and then and then
Speaker 1: move it through the courts and have someone voluntarily be like,
Speaker 1: I will carry this cross and if if it winds
Speaker 1: up that I'm just shocked down, you can easily get
Speaker 1: all of our fans and chip in a couple of bucks,
Speaker 1: have bucks to start this fund and then just have
Speaker 1: someone go in and just see where it leads. If
Speaker 1: you really if you went to a state where it's
Speaker 1: in question and just went to see, like, where does
Speaker 1: it really lead? If you if you really had the
Speaker 1: energy to challenge decisions and then challenge decisions and challenge
Speaker 1: decisions eventually set legal precedent, and then just be interested
Speaker 1: to clarify, maybe you'd be clarified in a way that
Speaker 1: you would that would just reaffirm the assumption that it's illegal,
Speaker 1: and then you'd be like, Okay, now we know. Back
Speaker 1: to our guests, um so I think to your point
Speaker 1: to Stephen like um um, it's my mom. I think
Speaker 1: that's the the way this issue is ever going to
Speaker 1: be solved is in a court. I don't think any
Speaker 1: legislature is ever gonna have the courage to sort of
Speaker 1: pick the battles on that issue. I do wonder though,
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason it's never gone to
Speaker 1: a state supreme court is I think most judges are
Speaker 1: probably unwilling to entertain it um. And I don't know
Speaker 1: how to set up that. I don't know how that
Speaker 1: scenario be established, but I just would imagine. I'm not
Speaker 1: taking a position on this, but I'm just sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about a scenario in my head. Like if you
Speaker 1: go to a corner pin, you got your on X
Speaker 1: app in your hand, right, and you can you you
Speaker 1: walk up, you can see the corners clearly delineated as
Speaker 1: other markers on the landscape that make it so you
Speaker 1: know for a fact you're stepping over that um, that
Speaker 1: boundary from public land to public land, never setting foot
Speaker 1: on private land um. And you were able to, you know,
Speaker 1: really demonstrate that and document that and then get sited
Speaker 1: for it and then you know, go to court, I
Speaker 1: think a judge will throw it out um. And so
Speaker 1: how do you actually get a case that's able capable
Speaker 1: of going to the top. I don't I'm not don't
Speaker 1: not a grounds. But he's not gonna convict somebody for that,
Speaker 1: you know, Like he's not going to put you in
Speaker 1: a situation to appeal it, because he's gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I that is my hypothesis. We've heard that
Speaker 1: from someone else, some people with some uh an attorney
Speaker 1: in Wyoming was explained that he's looked and he's yet
Speaker 1: to found. As much as it's illegal, I hate keep
Speaker 1: talking about this, but I do like the subject. It's
Speaker 1: a good one. As much as it's illegal. He's yet
Speaker 1: to find someone who was actually who had who not
Speaker 1: that people weren't cited, but anyone that was actually successfully prosecuted,
Speaker 1: they get cited. But when they challenge it back to
Speaker 1: our guess um. So I know it makes you uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to say that the solution is to have black helicopters
Speaker 1: flying and people kick down the doors and seize the
Speaker 1: land and in hand the land back to the American people. Like,
Speaker 1: that's not what we're really after here, right, that's not
Speaker 1: that's not the that that's not the way to increase access.
Speaker 1: Despite what social media comments might have you believed. Yes,
Speaker 1: we are supporting cooperative agreements to bring people together. What
Speaker 1: does one of these look like? I laid out the
Speaker 1: one that didn't go anywhere. Yeah, well that would have
Speaker 1: been a that would have been a hey check it out,
Speaker 1: so let me can I finish my thought real quick?
Speaker 1: From before? So there's these isolated chunks, right, and these
Speaker 1: are like these ten thousand acre parcels, are these twenty
Speaker 1: acre parcels. And they just started in directing money specifically
Speaker 1: to access. And before that, when they like scored projects, right,
Speaker 1: you were like, you bring a project forward, We're gonna
Speaker 1: acquire this private land, make it for a service or BLM.
Speaker 1: Access was not a part of the consideration. Historically. They're
Speaker 1: looking at things like ecosystems and you know, threatened species
Speaker 1: and clean water and so checkerboard stuff generally got in
Speaker 1: because it's sort of tied into that. But these big
Speaker 1: chunks I isolated, like in eastern Wyoming, they were not.
Speaker 1: And so we found through our research that in places
Speaker 1: like eastern Montana where the the Mile City Field Office,
Speaker 1: so like it's just a big chunk of Region seven, Right,
Speaker 1: everybody's heard of Region seven for meal deer um. It's
Speaker 1: a pilot deer out there, and there's never been an
Speaker 1: LWCF project out there on public land. Same with the
Speaker 1: Miles City Field Office in in Wyoming, and so as
Speaker 1: we're not even aware of any LWCF projects on those
Speaker 1: public land parcels because all that money was being directed
Speaker 1: to where you've got connectivity and and that stuff's really important.
Speaker 1: I don't want to like disparage it at all, and
Speaker 1: that stuff needs to continue to happen. Um. However, in
Speaker 1: twelve they actually started directing money specifically for the purpose
Speaker 1: of access, like saying meaning that you would point out
Speaker 1: a thing and be like, hey, if we bought this
Speaker 1: forty acre chunk that's for sale, it would open up
Speaker 1: access to this three thousand acres of that would be
Speaker 1: like an example of what you're talking and the money
Speaker 1: has to be used for that. And so this latest
Speaker 1: bill that just passed out of the House committee, UM,
Speaker 1: it has up to seven million dollars annually that would
Speaker 1: go just for access. And so this issue is in
Speaker 1: terms of solving this problem. It's in front of us.
Speaker 1: It's not something that our grandparents did, you know, like
Speaker 1: the greatest generation they were restoring wildlife. I think it's
Speaker 1: times that's right, that's right, and I think you know
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really the next years is when we
Speaker 1: open these lines up to access. And this program which
Speaker 1: is going to expire on is what we need in
Speaker 1: order to do it. But the car Okay, see now
Speaker 1: there's a couple of balls in the air right now.
Speaker 1: It's still going to expire, but the framework for an
Speaker 1: agreement has been put in place. So just to put
Speaker 1: that to bed. What needs to happen to get the
Speaker 1: l w CF funded in perfect like max funding in
Speaker 1: perpetuity being the best case scenario. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think what we need is leadership in the House and
Speaker 1: in the Senate to put it up for a vote.
Speaker 1: If they would put it up for a vote, it
Speaker 1: would pass tomorrow, but then won't happen till after the
Speaker 1: mid terms. That's right, Well, that's that is our best guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very unlikely. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives is going to be done this
Speaker 1: Friday until the election, and so we're really looking at
Speaker 1: the lame duck. Is the earliest time that this is
Speaker 1: likely going to happen. I mean, I'd love to eat
Speaker 1: my words, but um uh. And I think then at
Speaker 1: that point it's gonna depend on, you know, how good
Speaker 1: of a night the Democrats have. I think if they
Speaker 1: do really well, um, that they're gonna be like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just wait until Congress turns over and then we
Speaker 1: can write our LWCF bill. And so, um, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's the risk of that, right, Um, but I
Speaker 1: think that there's a pretty good deal on the table,
Speaker 1: and we'd like to see dedicated funding. So right now
Speaker 1: they have to appropriate it every year, so appropriators actually
Speaker 1: have to even though his money and the trust fund,
Speaker 1: they have to every year appropriate it. We want to
Speaker 1: see dedicated funding, so it's just like Social Security or Medicare,
Speaker 1: where every year it just rolls over and appropriators don't
Speaker 1: even have to mess with that money is in the
Speaker 1: pot and we know it's there. It's not a new tax, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. This has been around since sixty five. That's
Speaker 1: the one people start freaking out about it. It's not
Speaker 1: coming out of it's coming out of there's no problems
Speaker 1: federal oil leases and it's always been that way. It's
Speaker 1: just like what is being used for alright, so they're
Speaker 1: not kicking doors down. Um, there's a path forward. Does
Speaker 1: in your analysis, does it really seem like the best
Speaker 1: solution where we should be putting all of our attention
Speaker 1: is what are we doing with L WCF funds. You
Speaker 1: said that again, I'm sorry. In solving and helping to
Speaker 1: increase access to landlocked lands, is it that Oh? No, Uh,
Speaker 1: the l w CF is just one of many ways
Speaker 1: that we could begin to address this issue. Or do
Speaker 1: you look at all of the tools and the tool kits,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and it winds up being there's just
Speaker 1: like a hammer and it's the LWC. Of Well, I
Speaker 1: think the LWCF is by far and away the most
Speaker 1: powerful tool and it can do the most. However, there
Speaker 1: are other tools in the box. Um, there's also state potential.
Speaker 1: State programs or existing state programs are gonna help, you know,
Speaker 1: crack at this issue as well, And so I think
Speaker 1: we need to be looking at all options. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty seven million dollars every year specifically for
Speaker 1: access in addition to the other projects, they're doing good
Speaker 1: habitat work and benefit access by default, right, So the
Speaker 1: other LBCF projects still do good things for access, they
Speaker 1: just don't do it as their primary goal, and so
Speaker 1: as a result that the money ends up going to
Speaker 1: other places. But I mean, there's nothing, nothing even compares
Speaker 1: to this, because states just don't have that kind of
Speaker 1: money have you guys worked with any nonprofits, because I mean,
Speaker 1: like Rocky mont Olk Foundation has opened up a lot
Speaker 1: of access through acquisitions. They do great work. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got a whole team that's dedicated, i think, to utilize
Speaker 1: those LBCF funds for access. So they have a whole
Speaker 1: team that looks at these projects and the are actually
Speaker 1: making the acquisition because when the landowners willing or they
Speaker 1: have a relationship with the landowner, they've got to act
Speaker 1: on that when the landowners willing, So they have to
Speaker 1: have this coffer of money to be able to act
Speaker 1: on that transaction. Then over the five years will LBCF
Speaker 1: gets approved or however long it takes for them to
Speaker 1: go through the government process of getting the LBCF funds.
Speaker 1: So they do do that work. That's an army F
Speaker 1: to your to your point and to your question, RMF
Speaker 1: does a lot of that great work. And land local
Speaker 1: land trusts would be great organizations to give to if
Speaker 1: you want to see that's another way private funding. If
Speaker 1: we're really passionate about this issue, like hey, pony up,
Speaker 1: give the Army F give to your local land trust.
Speaker 1: And they're doing that type of work and they're utilizing
Speaker 1: LBCF when it's when they can. A very dear friend
Speaker 1: of mine passed away a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: and um his family when they resolved all of his estate,
Speaker 1: they use it to secure a bunch of foot access
Speaker 1: along the Madison through a strategic purchase. It's really cool
Speaker 1: stories like that. So it's it's interesting that the people
Speaker 1: that were looking to do that, you know, what they're doing,
Speaker 1: like those really annoying, annoying fundraisers UM on public radio,
Speaker 1: and they have what's called amplifiers, like someone who matches, Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to spend private dollars for public good,
Speaker 1: it's a great amplifier to buy land that provides connectivity
Speaker 1: to landlocked land, because you might be buying forty acres,
Speaker 1: but you're really sort of you might be buying forty
Speaker 1: acres as a public gesture, but you're handing the public acres.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just interesting when people, like when individuals
Speaker 1: like you know, chip in do my part. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: really curious to see how passionate the public is about
Speaker 1: this and will they be willing to donate organizations not
Speaker 1: old in holdings too, like just have been purchased over
Speaker 1: the years where you'll find old structures and apple trees
Speaker 1: with bears hanging on them about this time of year.
Speaker 1: We have these examples in the report, like beaver Tail,
Speaker 1: the Bearmouth Creek. That thirty month Creek is the only
Speaker 1: example we found of isolated parcels being acquired with l
Speaker 1: WCF funding. It's currently underway and that's UM Western Rivers
Speaker 1: Conservancy who led that one. UM and uh, they've really
Speaker 1: figured out how to use this access money. So that's
Speaker 1: a that's an LWCF story. These are both beaver Tailed
Speaker 1: Bearmouth too, which is a Montana one that's done by
Speaker 1: being done by the Trust for Public Lands. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both l WCF funded success stories that open landlocked
Speaker 1: lands to the public and great success stories with cooperating
Speaker 1: with landowners and getting to the table and talking about challenge.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that it's just gonna happen that the
Speaker 1: I mean, is it like certain at this point that
Speaker 1: the l w CF will get fully funded and that
Speaker 1: it will have the that will have the money, the
Speaker 1: earmarked money for access. Well, I think we need to
Speaker 1: be diligent. I wouldn't take it for granted that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, But I think if we continue to
Speaker 1: pound the table and say we must have this. I
Speaker 1: think it will. When you were working on this, did
Speaker 1: you ever look and have kind of like a holy
Speaker 1: ship moment where you saw just some little dinky sliver
Speaker 1: of land that was that was you know, like if
Speaker 1: you could like buy an acre, it would have some
Speaker 1: dramatic impact on access issues. It was all over the place. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, there was some places, you know, just doing
Speaker 1: some quality control work after the automated process ran UM.
Speaker 1: You know, we're zooming in, panting around the map, kind
Speaker 1: of looking at different UM landownership patterns, making sure that
Speaker 1: the analysis as we ran it actually worked UM. And
Speaker 1: we saw stuff that was like, oh, well there's a
Speaker 1: road right there must be accessible, and zoom in use
Speaker 1: you know, all the imagery that we possibly could to verify,
Speaker 1: and it's like, nope, there's definitely no way to get
Speaker 1: on there without going across private There was a story
Speaker 1: in the in Bugle, the Old Foundation's magazine, about a
Speaker 1: guy that he was going to pick up some AMMO
Speaker 1: or something and had to do a long, unexpected drive
Speaker 1: up in the northern part of Montana and his wife
Speaker 1: picks up one of those His wife or girlfriend picks
Speaker 1: up one of those like little local like wheeler dealer
Speaker 1: magazines where people sell used cars and stuff out of him,
Speaker 1: and she happens to find a piece of land for
Speaker 1: sale while they're driving and they're not even really in
Speaker 1: the market, but like, oh, that's where they go to
Speaker 1: look at it, and it wound up being um and
Speaker 1: it wound up being a blocker to a bunch of
Speaker 1: public access. So that person UM help facilitate and fund
Speaker 1: the purchase of that land, and they put in they
Speaker 1: put in a little trailhead there for a BLM access.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was just like I can
Speaker 1: imagine the power at your fingertips. But this is just
Speaker 1: a dude driving along reading like a classified add in
Speaker 1: the newspaper and identified stuff. So maybe rather than our
Speaker 1: legal defense fund for the checkerboard case. That's two. I
Speaker 1: think that it would be an interesting thing if um,
Speaker 1: it would be an interesting thing to look at the
Speaker 1: places like you recognize these places where you're kind of
Speaker 1: like these like sort of wow moments of you it's
Speaker 1: so close but not there, and we're able to at
Speaker 1: the same time put something in place to monitor when
Speaker 1: those again, like the willing seller willing buyer model, to
Speaker 1: monitor when those places come up, or to make to
Speaker 1: initiate making offers on those places and just see what
Speaker 1: sort of public support one would get in and and
Speaker 1: and driving those dollars. What does that initiation look like like?
Speaker 1: So you guys brought this information to d C, right,
Speaker 1: did they do anything with it? They just go, hey, thanks,
Speaker 1: that was that's interesting? Or have you heard any feedback?
Speaker 1: Let me answer that a little differently, I guess. Um. So,
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is provide information on where
Speaker 1: these big inaccessible parcels are too people who can help
Speaker 1: open them up to cooperative agreements. And one of those
Speaker 1: partners obviously is the peer of land management. But there's
Speaker 1: also land trusts out there, and there's people out there
Speaker 1: who do this for a living, where they work with landowners.
Speaker 1: They sit down over coffee, they're non threatening, you know,
Speaker 1: they want to like work out a deal that works
Speaker 1: for that landowner as well as for the public, and
Speaker 1: can help proker those deals. Those things take years, right,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta build that trust. And so that's
Speaker 1: how I think we want to use this information, not
Speaker 1: um not create a polarizing fight with some of these
Speaker 1: landowners because as a lot of people who believe that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that it should be a right that private
Speaker 1: lewners should have to let them cross their land to
Speaker 1: access these public lands. I know it's not, but we
Speaker 1: also don't want to you know, pour gasoline on the fire.
Speaker 1: And I think Scotland they have right to Rome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's and there's prescriptive easements here, which happened in
Speaker 1: some places, but for the most part, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got a prescriptive easement. So and this is something
Speaker 1: that's you know, playing out in the Crazy Mountains right now,
Speaker 1: where you've got there's not a prescriptive eassement there, but
Speaker 1: you have checkerboard land, um, historic trails that have been
Speaker 1: open to the public for you know, a hundred years
Speaker 1: or whatever. And each state has its own set laws.
Speaker 1: But if you can prove, like through sort of regular
Speaker 1: and continuous use and other sort of conditions in a
Speaker 1: court of law that you've used that for a certain
Speaker 1: period of time, then you can get directly an easement. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's a pretty contentious process and it definitely um
Speaker 1: you know, puts people, pits people against each other because
Speaker 1: you're trying to codify a sort of loose understanding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's historic use there, and there's never been
Speaker 1: any effort to purchase that or sort of get a
Speaker 1: donation of that use like a trail or a road.
Speaker 1: I mean historically right like the BLM or the Forest
Speaker 1: Service you know, did and should have been UM acquiring
Speaker 1: easements across private land where they actually approach the landowner,
Speaker 1: they purchase that route, they get a you know whatever
Speaker 1: right away sixty ft right away across that private land,
Speaker 1: and then in perpetuity it's recorded in that that title
Speaker 1: UM or that deed or whatever that um that that's
Speaker 1: a public route. And in some of these places they
Speaker 1: never did that, and so people are using them for
Speaker 1: a hundred years, that place changes hands and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it's like, well, we don't like you coming
Speaker 1: on on our property. UM for various reasons, some of
Speaker 1: them are probably legitimate, but you know, obviously people have
Speaker 1: been using that for a long time, and so UM
Speaker 1: it creates a lot of conflict. And that was one
Speaker 1: of the things too, that you know, I think not
Speaker 1: only acquisitions are important, but we need to really be
Speaker 1: thinking about how we can secure access across these trails
Speaker 1: and roads. Because one of the things we looked at,
Speaker 1: especially when we're doing some fact checking on these big chunks,
Speaker 1: and some of them have existing routes across that private
Speaker 1: lane on the public and the public is currently using it,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing in law that protects it. And so
Speaker 1: this is we're kind of at the beginning of what
Speaker 1: could be happening with access being shut down. Um and
Speaker 1: the Crazy Mountains are just a symptom of what's to come.
Speaker 1: I think there's a potential risk with that. And and
Speaker 1: so it's really important that I think there's money on
Speaker 1: the table that people can you know, identify where these
Speaker 1: important access areas are, where we actually have access, but
Speaker 1: it's not guaranteed, and how do we maintain that access?
Speaker 1: And I think buying um, you know, an easement across
Speaker 1: that property is how we do that. And it's a
Speaker 1: lot better approach than waiting until somebody decides I don't
Speaker 1: want you anymore and want you there anymore and it
Speaker 1: goes to court. I mean that's pretty ugly really and
Speaker 1: um and so I mean that's something that you know,
Speaker 1: we've really tried to bring attention to and something we
Speaker 1: found to this project. It's actually kind of frightening. Um,
Speaker 1: how a few easements. There are things that people are
Speaker 1: enjoying now that could be taken away to Mars if
Speaker 1: if And I don't know what the situation is, but
Speaker 1: imagine there's a lot of private landowners that think that
Speaker 1: those are public routes and that there is something recorded,
Speaker 1: but there isn't. And if they became aware of that,
Speaker 1: then um, they might close it. And so it's a
Speaker 1: delicate situation. Yeah, it's frightening to think about losing acres
Speaker 1: and well, and I think some of these parcels that
Speaker 1: we've flagged as being large parcels, some of them have
Speaker 1: some public access. But the way that we um defined
Speaker 1: the landlocked is if if it requires permission from a
Speaker 1: private landowner, then it's considered landlocked. And so if it's enrolled,
Speaker 1: like if that private lands enrolled and like a state
Speaker 1: walking access program like access Yes and Idaho or whatever
Speaker 1: that that gives you access to that public land, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's temporary access, right, it's not, so it's still
Speaker 1: landlocked in terms of when it comes to permanent access.
Speaker 1: And we also found some places where there is some
Speaker 1: existing public use across private land where those landowners to
Speaker 1: continue to allow it, um, but there's nothing there that
Speaker 1: protects it tomorrow. Do you guys feel like you'll so
Speaker 1: you did this collaboration and and took this idea and
Speaker 1: produce the report and have presumably raised a lot of
Speaker 1: public awareness. Um, what's next? I mean is this? Did
Speaker 1: you guys walk off the door now and go your
Speaker 1: seven directions and never talk again? Or no, it's just
Speaker 1: the start. We're continue to work with the BLM to
Speaker 1: make sure they define those easements like where where are easements?
Speaker 1: Where are your easements? Not and at least have a
Speaker 1: data set that says these are easements, here's what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and then we can combine that with our data and
Speaker 1: then say, hey, we should probably look at this piece
Speaker 1: right here. Who knows the landowner? Who the landowner is
Speaker 1: going to be in the future, and we need to
Speaker 1: maybe secure that access point. Yeah. I forgot to mention
Speaker 1: the federal agencies oftentimes don't know where their easements are either. Um.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to get that standardiz and fixed. I
Speaker 1: think one thing too, We've had a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in land trust community and so um. You know, I
Speaker 1: have been talking with them about some specific parcels that
Speaker 1: are fairly big, but we that's one thing we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Two is how we can provide them with some information
Speaker 1: on um you know, the some most sizeable parcels that
Speaker 1: we think should be a priority for access acquisition that
Speaker 1: they can then go through in screen. But like you know,
Speaker 1: every parcel over so so big a size or whatever.
Speaker 1: Things like that we're talking about, uh at on X
Speaker 1: are you guys? Is it surprising that that you in
Speaker 1: some way not transitions but added on Like originally you're
Speaker 1: just trying to describe the world, right, You're describing the
Speaker 1: world as it is, and that led to a situation
Speaker 1: where now you're trying to um provide. You know, you're
Speaker 1: inviting the idea of change, right, You're you're looking like,
Speaker 1: here's how it is, Here's how it could be, Here's
Speaker 1: how it should be. Is that a tough decision like
Speaker 1: to go in that direction? I don't think it was tough,
Speaker 1: Just to my points earlier, like we want to be
Speaker 1: able to give back. That's what made our business, you know,
Speaker 1: showing people here's how here's where you can access, and
Speaker 1: here's the public lands, here's roads across public lands you
Speaker 1: can park on that road and go walking. Um, so we,
Speaker 1: like you said, we show people where you can access them.
Speaker 1: Now it makes sense to give back to making sure
Speaker 1: they keep securing those places where they can access. So
Speaker 1: it's natural because you view it that, Um, it's all
Speaker 1: in service of your customer. Yeah, that's it's it's all
Speaker 1: in service for helping people get outdoors and have a
Speaker 1: great experience. It's good that it's good that you're doing that.
Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't. Um, I can't see it causing
Speaker 1: any trouble for you. Yeah, there's a little. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have our landowners, our customers, and obviously the public
Speaker 1: our customers, and we want them. We we believe in
Speaker 1: the cooperation of the two groups to come together and
Speaker 1: we don't want to see anything to Joe's points of
Speaker 1: forced forcing landowners to do anything they don't want to do.
Speaker 1: It was not really a mechanism for it anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: landowners have rights. We never heard of an eminent domain
Speaker 1: project in order to give to open up some access. No,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of folks who don't know what
Speaker 1: the law says and they imagine the worst. Yes, and
Speaker 1: there's people that don't like to lose battles, and I
Speaker 1: think that this will be the last thing I say,
Speaker 1: yeah on the issue. But um, if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, I read this piece and outside not long
Speaker 1: I was looking at some stuff along. I think it
Speaker 1: was like the Russian River. I think it's the Russian
Speaker 1: that there was, you know, for everyone's memory. You could
Speaker 1: canoe the river and get out on the beaches and
Speaker 1: have lunch. And now that's just how it always went.
Speaker 1: And then like a new class of landowner came in
Speaker 1: and they had an enhanced awareness of not what's happened,
Speaker 1: but what they could do, and it emboldened some people
Speaker 1: to be like, you know what I'm gonna like, I
Speaker 1: could make a case that I can shut that down.
Speaker 1: And then that idea became infectious. And so you had
Speaker 1: this river that had once upon a time just been
Speaker 1: like and people were shocked to learn that it wasn't
Speaker 1: actually this way. But someone that had the time and
Speaker 1: the money could come in and begin challenging public access
Speaker 1: and having some legal wins or at least clouding the
Speaker 1: issue enough to create the necessary level of uncertainty to
Speaker 1: push people away from using public resources. The story they
Speaker 1: fought that the story they followed the specific story they
Speaker 1: follow in the article, the guy winds up losing, and
Speaker 1: in fact, he was chaining off a beach that was
Speaker 1: not his to chain off. But it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: I think that that's the way in which these things
Speaker 1: get tested all the time. Is you sort of you
Speaker 1: brought this thing in the crazies too. It's like always
Speaker 1: been how we do it, and at some point in
Speaker 1: time someone comes in and starts pushing and prying on
Speaker 1: that a little bit to see where it leads, and
Speaker 1: that can lead to access loss. So I think that
Speaker 1: clarifying the stuff and earlier were like codifying and clarifying
Speaker 1: some of these issues is probably pretty important too, just
Speaker 1: to head off future dispute. That's right. And information is
Speaker 1: becoming way more available every day, and so I think
Speaker 1: because the Internet, that's right, damn Internet it is, which
Speaker 1: is an amazing resource, but I think it also informs
Speaker 1: people of things that they can do that maybe it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the interest of public access. And so um,
Speaker 1: we need this money now more than ever to maintain
Speaker 1: and secure and open access because I think the longer
Speaker 1: we wait, the harder is going to get. Yeah, professionally,
Speaker 1: where I'm at as when I look at an issue,
Speaker 1: I try to be like, what's in the best interests
Speaker 1: of hunters and anglers? And that's how I make a
Speaker 1: lot of my decisions in life. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: I don't understand both sides of it. It's great to have,
Speaker 1: you know, it's great to have exclusivity, Like I can
Speaker 1: see that, I understand, I could articulate the viewpoint, but
Speaker 1: I generally look and be like, what's in the best
Speaker 1: interest of, like the broad spectrum of hunters and anglers.
Speaker 1: And when I look at that, when it comes to access,
Speaker 1: I'm generally like, generally I believe that there should be
Speaker 1: more access, enhanced access. That's my general goal in life
Speaker 1: is to see that happen, realizing that within that there
Speaker 1: will be some contentious moments in the unhappy people. But
Speaker 1: that's generally where I'm going to lean. Um on any
Speaker 1: of these case by case scenarios to come up, we
Speaker 1: gonna say about all that, honest, I like it. There's
Speaker 1: you good job in at checkerboard deal. Yeah. When you
Speaker 1: think of the revenues brought in from the outdoor recreation
Speaker 1: industry and you think of like rural communities, if you
Speaker 1: can actually make trail heads and open up outdoor activities
Speaker 1: for some of these public lands, and you're gonna see
Speaker 1: a benefit to the community in general. And and you
Speaker 1: see the numbers like seven billion with a b billion
Speaker 1: dollar industry. It's getting Yeah, it's getting close to being
Speaker 1: the outdoor industry is getting close to me in a
Speaker 1: trillion dollar industry. It'll get there. No, yeah, absolutely, people
Speaker 1: have to start paying attention to that stuff. That it's
Speaker 1: a huge sustainable economic driver. That's right, and we'll being
Speaker 1: able to go outside. It was economically valuable. And of
Speaker 1: western hunters use public lands for their access. And you
Speaker 1: think about the fact that there's some of these places
Speaker 1: where you know a quarter of the lands are land locked.
Speaker 1: Just think about all that missed opportunity. And also Bucks
Speaker 1: is hiding out there, you know, we were talking about that.
Speaker 1: It's I gonna look at that coolly on that parcel.
Speaker 1: I bet you got some Bucks in there. One of
Speaker 1: my this is early on X days. I remember driving
Speaker 1: along one time and just like happened. I was driving
Speaker 1: on my buddy that passed like a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: We're driving down the road, um, and I have like
Speaker 1: look out, we're going Turkey hunt at one place that
Speaker 1: happened to look out and I'm looking like we're crossing
Speaker 1: this kind of coolie and uh I looked out and
Speaker 1: saw a turkey. I'm like, oh turkey remembers someone going
Speaker 1: like it's public, just like slamming on the right because
Speaker 1: like the rest of your life, you just drive baths.
Speaker 1: But now you drive around that thing open on your
Speaker 1: GPS orherever you got your phone. You just drive around going,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, look at that, look at Oh. I never
Speaker 1: knew that the little corner comes up and hits the road,
Speaker 1: you know, off you go. Yeah, That's what we're trying
Speaker 1: to make sure everybody understood is that most people probably
Speaker 1: think when they think accessing public lands, they're thinking trail head,
Speaker 1: They're thinking like this parking area. But that's truly not
Speaker 1: the case anymore. Technology. All you gotta do is drive
Speaker 1: down any road and Western United States tech the whole
Speaker 1: United States. You can be driving down an interstate and
Speaker 1: not realize the public lan that comes in touches there
Speaker 1: that you can technically park on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and start walking the knoks and crannies. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of emails from guys over the
Speaker 1: years time about all the knooks and crannies they discovered
Speaker 1: right in their neighborhood they didn't know about. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a lot of emails from people are like, I
Speaker 1: used my paper match when you figured this spot out,
Speaker 1: and now there's more people here, but they're still happy
Speaker 1: about it. I found another spot, So not a big deal.
Speaker 1: And as the rest of the world has less and
Speaker 1: less of this and just becomes more and more developed,
Speaker 1: the more we have this stuff and save it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think that like the economic value of it,
Speaker 1: we can't even foresee what it's gonna be like in
Speaker 1: a couple of generations. We look at it as a spot.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, it's Sage much Cooley where you can
Speaker 1: find a big buck. I might go there two to
Speaker 1: four weeks out of the year. There might be someone
Speaker 1: that flies over from Japan in the middle of July
Speaker 1: just to walk out there and go, this is the
Speaker 1: American West, And that's pretty cool that I can just
Speaker 1: walk off this road to walk into this country. And
Speaker 1: that person's air flight and then the uber ride and
Speaker 1: the you know, all that stuff. Just like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: we just don't know how valuable it's No, that's the
Speaker 1: point I'm always trying to make. What I'm talking about
Speaker 1: um land habitat preservation and stuff is uh, people are
Speaker 1: always asking, like we were just talking about it's a
Speaker 1: trillion dollar industry, Like people are always asking that, like
Speaker 1: it has to justify itself economically, that somehow wildlife habitat
Speaker 1: And it's like, and I'm glad people do it because
Speaker 1: it's to some people, it's the only thing they understand
Speaker 1: is the only thing they understand is they got to
Speaker 1: play dollars to it. So you have to play their
Speaker 1: game and be like, oh, you want to talk dollars, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I welcome it, dude, let's talk dollars, because there's some
Speaker 1: serious dollars that play here. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, yeah, but it's it's not quantified, like
Speaker 1: the value of it isn't quantifiable that way, but in
Speaker 1: terms of if you do go and play the dollar game.
Speaker 1: The things that I want up trying to express the
Speaker 1: people all the time is we don't know where this
Speaker 1: whole thing is headed. But when you look at globe
Speaker 1: like just the global environment and global news around habitat,
Speaker 1: you're not reading a lot of stories about all this
Speaker 1: new habitat that's being created every day. Every day, it's
Speaker 1: every day there's a net loss. Every minute of every
Speaker 1: day there's an a loss. So in forecasting out the
Speaker 1: value of I'm not even talking pristine of open, semi pristine,
Speaker 1: publicly accessible patches of undeveloped land. You cannot anticipate what
Speaker 1: that's gonna mean in one years. If you want to
Speaker 1: just talk dollars and yeah, it's shallow existence to be
Speaker 1: one that can only look at life through through dollar bills.
Speaker 1: But there are those got any concluders yearning? No, that's it,
Speaker 1: Mark Kenny. I'm just glad you guys did this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that to Steve's point, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be knocking you down, like you said the beginning.
Speaker 1: I was just dealing with this very issue two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: literally trying to hunt Bucks in Montana. Had this public
Speaker 1: land I want to hunt. I couldn't get to it.
Speaker 1: I thought I had permission to cross the private land
Speaker 1: to get to it. Then a week before the hunt
Speaker 1: found out, Oh no, I can't. Now I'm scrambling what
Speaker 1: happened there because the railroad deal that was three years ago.
Speaker 1: So every time I hunt Montana white tails, I'm dealing
Speaker 1: with this, I guess. So I had a piece of
Speaker 1: landlocked public land on the Dakotas. You don't run into
Speaker 1: this in the Dakotas. In this case, I didn't know,
Speaker 1: just quite a bit of it though, in the western side.
Speaker 1: So I go on. But yeah, so I So I
Speaker 1: had found this piece of public looked great. It was
Speaker 1: on the back side of some private land with with
Speaker 1: food on it alfalfa fields, and I thought I could
Speaker 1: access it publicly. Turns out that there's like gray areas
Speaker 1: around if you can use this river to access it
Speaker 1: or not. So I was like, okay, I need private
Speaker 1: land permission to make sure this is Golden had that
Speaker 1: permission this spring. So I was going to head back
Speaker 1: out this year as a I'm Golden, gonna go on
Speaker 1: for this hunt. It's gonna be great. And then the
Speaker 1: week before the hunt, I called the private land just
Speaker 1: a double check on it, just to be safe, and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, no, I got family coming out. When
Speaker 1: You're like, remember how you were saying exactly, And so
Speaker 1: now I'm um lost, I have nowhere to go. It's
Speaker 1: a few days before the hunt. So I was going
Speaker 1: to drive out there and use my Onyx app and
Speaker 1: just drive up and down the roads, trying to look
Speaker 1: at some new spots. And so much in this drainage
Speaker 1: of this valley that was hunting. Almost all the public
Speaker 1: land that would have white tails on it, which would
Speaker 1: be along the river was landlocked. So many pieces of
Speaker 1: land life public all along there, so that I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I just need to start knocking on doors to try
Speaker 1: to get permission to hunt the public land. And luckily
Speaker 1: I stopped by the landowner's house one more time, just
Speaker 1: hoping maybe something would change, and after a nice two
Speaker 1: hour conversation, something did change and I did get that permission.
Speaker 1: And he then says, you know what, my family isn't coming.
Speaker 1: I was lying to you. I don't think it was that.
Speaker 1: I think it was more so like maybe the date
Speaker 1: range is off or something. And he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: so and so probably won't be ou until next weekend.
Speaker 1: I think I feel like, well, I haven't been there
Speaker 1: and talked to him. I feel like it was way off.
Speaker 1: And he was like, it's easier to just it's less
Speaker 1: this frictionous a word. I don't know you have caused
Speaker 1: less friction. Yeah, to be like, oh yeah, sure, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Then it's like when people say to me like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: in a year, do you want to go do whatever?
Speaker 1: I'm I was like, yeah, man, great. Right. Then when
Speaker 1: it's a month out, I'm like, oh man, what did
Speaker 1: I say? How did I make that happen? I think
Speaker 1: then when you were coming, he's like, no, no, my
Speaker 1: cousins coming. Then he met you, He's like, this guy
Speaker 1: is all right, okay, you only think that was it.
Speaker 1: I don't care how it happened. I'm just glad it happened.
Speaker 1: I certainly appreciate it. But I mean it was so
Speaker 1: that that that big white tail Bucky got public line
Speaker 1: near this place. Yeah, that's where he gets kill it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but accessed through private accessed by a river. So that's
Speaker 1: a whole weird thing, but it should be. It's a
Speaker 1: public river, like the stream access laws allow me to
Speaker 1: walk it and fish it, but to be super safe,
Speaker 1: I also had to get permission to do that because
Speaker 1: I was accessing this public the other river to hunt.
Speaker 1: And I've heard people saying there's some weird things around
Speaker 1: that have what picked this up late? Because I've never
Speaker 1: don't can you explain that if you want me to.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get clarification on this myself and
Speaker 1: I can't. I have never heard of so I know
Speaker 1: in Montana, you know, you're allowed to use you know,
Speaker 1: blow the high water mark for fishing, but you're not
Speaker 1: and you're allowed to use it for water fowl, honey,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to use it for big game hunting.
Speaker 1: And so if you go below the below the high
Speaker 1: water mark and walk up a stream to access public land,
Speaker 1: it's your rifle over your shoulder. You're technically trespassing. Um.
Speaker 1: There's an exception to this though that once you jump
Speaker 1: out on the land, you're fine. You're not supposed to
Speaker 1: cross that private land even if you're below the high
Speaker 1: water mark that I have been told, though, the way
Speaker 1: to get around that is to bring your fly right
Speaker 1: or your fishing rod or whatever. And when you leave
Speaker 1: the public land and go down um into the stream,
Speaker 1: you walk with your gun packed up in your backpack
Speaker 1: or whatever, and can you fish your way up the
Speaker 1: stream when you get to the public land, then you
Speaker 1: can lose your fishing pole and grab your gun. And
Speaker 1: I'm getting uncomfortable because I feel like we're entering into
Speaker 1: an area where something's not right. I've been told by
Speaker 1: a game warden. I've been told by a game ward
Speaker 1: And that's how you do it legal La Montana. But
Speaker 1: you certainly can float down. That's one of the methods
Speaker 1: that we talked about at the Department Interior. You can
Speaker 1: float down the river to a piece of public lane
Speaker 1: and get out. You're just talking about like being on
Speaker 1: the river. Think what you're saying. Think about what you're saying.
Speaker 1: We'll say, I'm on the Mississippi River, okay, and I'm
Speaker 1: floating down the Mississippi River and on I mean, you
Speaker 1: know wherever Mark Twain's old Stomper grounds, flowing on the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River. I got private land on each side. But
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, well here I am at
Speaker 1: the I'm down by the Daniel Boone National Forest, and
Speaker 1: I hop out of my canoe and and go hunt
Speaker 1: and be like, oh nobody. Because you've passed through land
Speaker 1: in your canoe, you're now ineligible to access public property.
Speaker 1: So it's a state law issue first off, So I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on down there. Um, but I
Speaker 1: when I'm referring to as somebody like waiting. I I
Speaker 1: don't know how that changes if you're in a boat
Speaker 1: and you do not touch at the bottom. But it's
Speaker 1: every state's access laws are different. Every state stream access
Speaker 1: laws are different, which is why we stayed far away
Speaker 1: from that. Right in Colorado, Wyoming, UM, you cannot. With
Speaker 1: exception maybe a couple of counties you cannot. Um they
Speaker 1: don't have a stream access law that that you know,
Speaker 1: favors the public. It said, it's the landowners are in
Speaker 1: control there, and so it's different in every statement. In
Speaker 1: Montown states you can't set an anchor. That's the states.
Speaker 1: You can't hop out of your boat, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so in Montana, as I understand, if you're gonna walk
Speaker 1: down the stream through private below the high water mark
Speaker 1: to go big game hunting, you must fish while you're
Speaker 1: doing that. I was told the same thing. I thought
Speaker 1: the game ward said the same thing, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was so bizarre. But yeah, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: risk anything, so I just I'll just get permission. Be
Speaker 1: a great episode. Steve would listen you. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be a whole one, but listen. First off,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a thousand emails as will clarify it.
Speaker 1: This this will not go unclarified because I'm really struggling
Speaker 1: with what I'm hearing right now. But we will. But
Speaker 1: I'm not and I'm not a certified game ward and so,
Speaker 1: and you have and you haven't presented yourself. You have
Speaker 1: not presented yourself as a subject matter expert on this
Speaker 1: particular side particular side note that Mark Kenyon so innocently raised,
Speaker 1: please verify it. Yes, yeah, and you because all you
Speaker 1: just said extra safe. You're being extra safe, which is
Speaker 1: always smart. Which it is not fun to hunt looking
Speaker 1: over your shoulder now. But to tell you truth, it
Speaker 1: was it was a little frustrating to me to have
Speaker 1: to do that, you know, to see, there's this public
Speaker 1: land right here, and then there's a public stream access
Speaker 1: law that says I should be able to that's publicly
Speaker 1: accessible via that. I could fish it, I could float it.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit confusing to me why I
Speaker 1: couldn't walk it. Huh yeah, So yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: is what it is. I'm glad I could get in
Speaker 1: there some way and hunt it. And I appreciate the
Speaker 1: private landowner very very much. Um, I appreciate the pupa
Speaker 1: wind to ladies and gentlemen. Mark Kenyon word hunt yet
Speaker 1: any concluders, Eric just on that point. I mean in Montana,
Speaker 1: if you can put in at a fishing access that
Speaker 1: you can float down and then you see a piece
Speaker 1: of public land it's touching the river, you can get
Speaker 1: out and hunting that. Joel agrees with that, but he's
Speaker 1: just talking about you're actually walking in the riverbed. Let's
Speaker 1: just to clarify that. You know, I'm with tracking. So
Speaker 1: so I could have I don't know, God, please go
Speaker 1: ahead like taking like a little rubber boat. Rubber boat rafted,
Speaker 1: no questions asked. So I would just encourage listeners to
Speaker 1: reach out to the representatives and tell them their their
Speaker 1: support for LWCF. Yeah, don't you think? And then uh,
Speaker 1: I would also encourage listeners if they're gonna look into
Speaker 1: this a little bit more, go to Unlocking public lands
Speaker 1: dot org and read through the full report, read through
Speaker 1: all the assumptions. Well that's where all this is, yep,
Speaker 1: Unlocking public lands dot org TRCP website And yeah, you
Speaker 1: can read through the full report, read through all the assumptions,
Speaker 1: and then that might answer some of the questions you're
Speaker 1: attempted to throw out there. Yeah, we put it up
Speaker 1: on the we put up links on the mediator dot
Speaker 1: com in other places. But yeah, unlocking public lands dot org.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's right, And there's actually additional resources
Speaker 1: on the website, um, where there's a few more details
Speaker 1: that break it down by agency in each state, as
Speaker 1: well as identifying the acre to the largest parcel in
Speaker 1: each state. And Deerk's point about contacting your congressional presentatives,
Speaker 1: there's an action page there, so we make it really easy.
Speaker 1: You can look at those findings and then send an
Speaker 1: email directly your decision makers because I think we need
Speaker 1: to be continuing to point out the importance of this
Speaker 1: issue and they need to reauthorize the line of Water
Speaker 1: Conservation Fund and in order to get it done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you send your message, just be like enough already exactly,
Speaker 1: everyone knows where it's going. Just get it there. It's
Speaker 1: expiring like this week, Yeah, pretty quick? Is that your concluder? Um,
Speaker 1: I'll just say that, I mean the one highlight of
Speaker 1: land Water Conservation Fund not being reauthorized permanently three years ago.
Speaker 1: As I gotta work on this school project, and um,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited about this I think it's it's been
Speaker 1: a fun project and I just want to say thanks
Speaker 1: to the Onyx team. They only make a great product,
Speaker 1: but you know they're a bunch of good people too.
Speaker 1: Um And hopefully this this uh, this report is you know,
Speaker 1: put to use and and after LWCF is reauthorized, you
Speaker 1: know we're able to start chipping away at this number. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm knocked down to knock a couple million acres off it.
Speaker 1: That's ambitious. Yeah, but I think it can be done.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, LBCF is like the big tool, right,
Speaker 1: but there's other things we can be looking at to
Speaker 1: and I think we're going to continue to investigate that.
Speaker 1: The image selection on the front of your report, the
Speaker 1: print version, is a provocative image because it's a mug
Speaker 1: who's walking through the woods. This guy's rifle, he's already
Speaker 1: to hunt. He's staring at his GPS up against the
Speaker 1: barbed wer fence. Is he thinking like I was gonna
Speaker 1: jump and run? Or is he you know, you just
Speaker 1: don't know what's going through his mind. Man. I like
Speaker 1: that he's confident. He's looking at his GPS, he knows
Speaker 1: exactly where that boundary is. He's like, oh, yeah, finally
Speaker 1: I'm here. This is my public easement, or maybe maybe
Speaker 1: there's public lands like a hundred yards away. That's what
Speaker 1: I see, is him being like, oh man, no he was.
Speaker 1: What he's saying is, oh man, this I saw that
Speaker 1: a huge deal over there five years ago. And I
Speaker 1: have my paper maps. It's actually blm across this film.
Speaker 1: I could have gone and gotten out if I had
Speaker 1: only known the truth. You got that was your concluder.
Speaker 1: Got a concluder, just more the same. You know what
Speaker 1: the concluder is. Yeah, yeah, I think I got it. Uh,
Speaker 1: just let's keep the pressure on for LBCF authorized. So
Speaker 1: you've come to um, you've come to admire the tool,
Speaker 1: oh for sure, Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool to get to work on some
Speaker 1: of these inset maps. Um. You know our our analysts
Speaker 1: who really did the groundwork here, Brian Tutt. You know,
Speaker 1: we we went back and forth, um, and then we
Speaker 1: discussed things with Joel and Randall and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we were really drilling down into some of these areas
Speaker 1: to produce these inset maps. And so yeah, it kind
Speaker 1: of brings the story alive. Yeah, that's as important for
Speaker 1: people to see like the little examples. If now you
Speaker 1: just get lost in these huge numbers, it doesn't make sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean you can see the pretty picture and
Speaker 1: you can see the pretty map, and I think it
Speaker 1: together they they tell the story. And uh so I
Speaker 1: would encourage people to go to the website and actually
Speaker 1: take a take a peek at the report itself. I
Speaker 1: got it, I got a little I'll do that. I
Speaker 1: got a little anecdote for you here, just real quick
Speaker 1: based on the inset maps at least I mentioned so
Speaker 1: on this thirty mile Creek one, we actually found a
Speaker 1: forty acre parcel that's not on the BLM maps. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that we kind of uncovered this
Speaker 1: project is all these emergent findings. You're like, whoa, you know, like,
Speaker 1: where did that come from? And um, this is one
Speaker 1: of them. So on the beaver Tailed Barmouth example, there's
Speaker 1: this Department of Transportation example, and we're trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: how our Department of Department of Transportation Montana Department of
Speaker 1: Transportation lands managed. Are they open to the public or
Speaker 1: they closed? Like are they managed like DNRC lands? And
Speaker 1: come to find out, yes, access is the same between Montana,
Speaker 1: d O T and d NRC lands unless posted otherwise. However,
Speaker 1: and in talking with the Montana Department of Transportation, they're like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's these parcels that we own, we bought in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. We don't even know we have them,
Speaker 1: and and people call us now and then asking to
Speaker 1: buy them, and that's when we realize we have them.
Speaker 1: And and then after that, after that, we we're working
Speaker 1: on this thirty mile day like, which is organ like, look,
Speaker 1: there's another forty acre parcel of BLM and so I
Speaker 1: don't think that problem is limited to the Montana Department
Speaker 1: of Transportation. Like there are, um, you know, some errors
Speaker 1: in the data. But that's one of the cool things
Speaker 1: about you know, with what on accidente with their technology
Speaker 1: is like looking at this county assessor stuff and comparing
Speaker 1: it to private lands data, is they've actually uncovered some
Speaker 1: of those parcels that aren't on your standard public land map.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of a fun little thing to
Speaker 1: that no one knew was BLM land. Well, I'm sure
Speaker 1: somewhere in some plat book in the basement of a
Speaker 1: building in Portland it's recorded as public. But when I
Speaker 1: think when they probably turned it into maps, it was
Speaker 1: missed and and so I'm sure that um it's recorded somewhere,
Speaker 1: but you know somehow when it was public, users wouldn't
Speaker 1: have way to be readily exactly exactly. So anyway, UM yeah,
Speaker 1: so check this out. Go to unlocking public lands dot org.
Speaker 1: Look at the findings, but also be sure and send
Speaker 1: a letter to your decision makers to reauthorized the Land
Speaker 1: and Water Conservation Fund. It's our most powerful public access tool.
Speaker 1: So that CONNA be the last thing anybody says, I
Speaker 1: couldn't let it go. I had to say. I thought
Speaker 1: I'm not doing my job. I appreciate that is the
Speaker 1: last thing anybody says. What Joel just said, thank you,
Speaker 1: you're your sides. Would you just said ye,