Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to Hunt
Speaker 1: Don't Meet e podcast, you can't predict anything presented by
Speaker 1: first light, Go farther, stay longer ed Arnett, I didn't
Speaker 1: know until I don't think I knew till now. He
Speaker 1: used to be a bat like a bat biologist. I did,
Speaker 1: But I just can't picture because I figured. I always
Speaker 1: figure you um that your biology interests are dovetailed with
Speaker 1: your hunting interests, but bats that's not really the case.
Speaker 1: They certainly were. I grew up always wanting to be
Speaker 1: a biologist and wanting to study big game like most
Speaker 1: biologist A lot of biologists do, and uh I F
Speaker 1: I did my master's on big orange cheap so I
Speaker 1: fulfilled that for a long time. And UH when I
Speaker 1: went to work at in the Pacific Northwest, I started
Speaker 1: working a lot more on nine game issues. And when
Speaker 1: I worked to work for Timber Company Warehouser, I really
Speaker 1: started engaging in bat research. My PhD was on UH
Speaker 1: bats and forest management did a lot of work on
Speaker 1: wind energy and bats. And before I came to t
Speaker 1: RCP and got to meet you, guys. I was running
Speaker 1: conservation programs for Bat Conservation International and led a bunch
Speaker 1: of research on wind energy and back kills across the country.
Speaker 1: So you mean like bats running into um windmills or
Speaker 1: not wind mills, but they're being hit by the turning blades.
Speaker 1: They don't run into them. Bats have a very unique
Speaker 1: echolocation system and they helps them sea in the dark.
Speaker 1: And if there's too many of them that run into things,
Speaker 1: there would be what I'd call losers and Darwin's causino.
Speaker 1: They're not supposed to run into things, so they're getting
Speaker 1: hit by the turbans. So what was what was wire
Speaker 1: Houser's interest in bats? So you know, like if you
Speaker 1: if for you listeners, if you got a ream of
Speaker 1: printer paper laying around, there's a very good chance if
Speaker 1: you go look at that printer paper, it will say
Speaker 1: wire Houser on it was their interest in UH in bats.
Speaker 1: So back in when I UH finished up my graduate
Speaker 1: program on my big run Cheap study, I went to
Speaker 1: the Northwest and I was working for the Forest Service,
Speaker 1: then went to work with Warehouser. The reason I mentioned
Speaker 1: the Forest Service job as I started that literally a
Speaker 1: month after they listed the Northern spot at owl and
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, um I uh I basically
Speaker 1: um applied for this job and got it, and um
Speaker 1: you know, at that time, spotted owl's were driving a
Speaker 1: lot of the issues for this forest product. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: good ahead, I got a comment. But it's an endangered
Speaker 1: species issue. And so my job we were hired on
Speaker 1: basically to look at all of the managed forest and
Speaker 1: all the different kind is wildlife that use managed forests,
Speaker 1: and how in fact managed forest provide habitat or don't,
Speaker 1: and what we could do in a in a intensively
Speaker 1: managed forest context to manage all these species that could
Speaker 1: be listed in the future. Back at that time they
Speaker 1: were called Category two species, which all that really meant
Speaker 1: was there was a designation that they could be listed
Speaker 1: in the future. So Warehouser hired a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: myself included, to look at things beyond just spotted owl
Speaker 1: another endangered species issues because in their mind, all the
Speaker 1: trouble that spotted owl, all the controversy and trouble and
Speaker 1: just bad for business stuff that the spotted owl brought
Speaker 1: onto the logging industry, they were thinking of themselves, what's
Speaker 1: the next thing that's going to come up, and how
Speaker 1: can we get out ahead of that. That's exactly right,
Speaker 1: which is like being a responsible player, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They were thinking ahead of the game, whatever their regardless
Speaker 1: of their motivation. Of the motive. Yeah, obviously there were
Speaker 1: business ties to that, community relationships and those kind of
Speaker 1: being good neighbors and that kind of stuff, but the
Speaker 1: reality was it was all about you know, the future,
Speaker 1: licensed to operate and at that time and there still
Speaker 1: are today a number of species that are potentially going
Speaker 1: to be listed. So I did most of my work.
Speaker 1: I shifted from most of the work on four legged
Speaker 1: ungulets and you know, other four legged critters to nothing
Speaker 1: but songbirds, amphibians in stream amphibians in particular those that
Speaker 1: utilize small streams and forests, and bats. So that's how
Speaker 1: I got into it. And uh, one thing led to
Speaker 1: another and started working pretty intensively on bats and developed
Speaker 1: a PhD dissertation project on it, and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: So what was the what was the vulnerability of the bats?
Speaker 1: Like what was the harvest timber? Harvests? Like they were
Speaker 1: what do they needed? What were they using timber for? Next?
Speaker 1: What they need? Yeah, they need them for roosting. Um
Speaker 1: for both maternity roots where they have their young. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some old roots behind x full eating bark. So the
Speaker 1: crevices in bark. And you've seen this walking around the woods,
Speaker 1: dead trees, they'll go into woodpecker holes. Sometimes they'll uh
Speaker 1: just a just a slight crack and a live tree
Speaker 1: can create a place for bats. So they either roost
Speaker 1: during the night, you know, they do what's called night roosting.
Speaker 1: But they also have maternity colonies. And sometimes you'll be
Speaker 1: walking around next time you're out to Ponderosa Pine forest,
Speaker 1: you might see a big slab of bark peeling off
Speaker 1: of dead tree. There might be two or three hundred
Speaker 1: bats under that thing, just depending on how big their
Speaker 1: what species of bat is this so um, it could
Speaker 1: be any any of a number of species. There's what
Speaker 1: we call the crevice roosting species, and that could be
Speaker 1: anything from big brown to little brown bats. What's called
Speaker 1: the long eared myotis. That was the pictures you were
Speaker 1: looking at a little while ago in my house. That
Speaker 1: was a long eared myotis getting a drink of water. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's several of them that use uh use those crevices.
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of having not paid a whole hell of
Speaker 1: attention to bats in my life. I didn't either take
Speaker 1: like I got that hunting fishing problem that you get,
Speaker 1: where like I I spent a lot of time observing,
Speaker 1: thinking about, reading about talking about game, either game species
Speaker 1: or like charismatic animals. Right, so animals that maybe animals
Speaker 1: that sort of have something to do with hunting and fishing,
Speaker 1: even if they're only a peripheral player. Right, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna hunt humpback whales, but I'm interested in humpback
Speaker 1: whales because when I'm out fishing salmon and haliban and whatnot,
Speaker 1: I'm observing humpbacks and watching them fish, and so they
Speaker 1: sort of enter my consciousness. Right, But like, the bat
Speaker 1: has never had a real in hold with me, and
Speaker 1: and it does it for most people. I mean, most
Speaker 1: hunters probably wondering if they could hit him with a
Speaker 1: shotgun when they're running around in the evening, you know.
Speaker 1: But the reality is they're ridiculously important to ecosystems, and
Speaker 1: the insectivorous bad to eat insects at a rate that
Speaker 1: can all oftentimes render the uh U render That's maybe
Speaker 1: not the right word, but lessen the need for pesticides
Speaker 1: and in agricultural systems because they eat so many insects.
Speaker 1: There's some studies in Texas that demonstrate it's into the
Speaker 1: multi billions of dollars in terms of loss or the
Speaker 1: reduction of agricultural pests. Um they but they also important pollinators.
Speaker 1: They're important seed dispersers across the world. They eat just
Speaker 1: about everything, those that eat blood, those that eat fish.
Speaker 1: Some have specialized hooks for catching fish. All the bad
Speaker 1: pictures you've seen around my players there, they're all insectivorous bats,
Speaker 1: but they play a vital role. And you know, the
Speaker 1: interesting thing, we started calling things like this. You know
Speaker 1: you've heard LBJ the little brown jobs for dickey birds.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then uh and then in the LBMs
Speaker 1: in mycology lb M little brown mushrooms, little brown mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Like if you're out mush mushroom hunting and you see
Speaker 1: a little brown mushroom, it's like, just keep walking. You'll
Speaker 1: never positively identify that thing. Or that's kind of like
Speaker 1: the just a term like we got your you know, morals, corals, bleats, LBMs,
Speaker 1: little brown mushroom. We started calling bats and other things
Speaker 1: like them. They are not so charismatic, microfuno. But they're critical.
Speaker 1: They're absolutely critical. And it started, Yeah, I start getting
Speaker 1: you to think about ecosystems and and you know, biological
Speaker 1: communities and systems. Everything's interconnected. Elder Leopold called the cogs
Speaker 1: and wheels, cogs on the wheels exactly right. You know,
Speaker 1: I was in Um, I was in the say shells.
Speaker 1: You know where to say shells are like they sit
Speaker 1: off if you imagine if you went due east out
Speaker 1: of Somalia, wig at hell in the Indian Ocean. To
Speaker 1: say shells are so far removed that no one even
Speaker 1: knew they had never been colonized. No one knew about
Speaker 1: them until they came up with like intercontinental shipping. Like
Speaker 1: no indigenous people as wasn't like the Polynesian Islands, where
Speaker 1: indigenous people eventually found all the like Hawaii and everything.
Speaker 1: No one ever stepped foot on the stay shells until
Speaker 1: someone showed up in like in a full on ship.
Speaker 1: No one knew they were there, but we were there.
Speaker 1: The only native mammal on the say shells is the bat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big huge freaking bats. Yeah that's what they were. Come
Speaker 1: out at night, look like a jet, like a bat
Speaker 1: the kind of bat that would like bite your neck,
Speaker 1: could kill you, but not like fruit in in some
Speaker 1: some countries are still consumption of bats. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: one of the few times I ever paid attention to
Speaker 1: a bat. And my kids like to go on They
Speaker 1: like it to me to go on YouTube and pull
Speaker 1: up videos of Aboriginal Australians hunting baths boomerangs, which is like,
Speaker 1: if you've got kids, that's big ship to a kid.
Speaker 1: Hit the back of the boomerang is endlessly fascinating to children.
Speaker 1: That's a hell of a lot of skill to These
Speaker 1: guys are good man. They round them up and cook them. Um,
Speaker 1: So we have like I can't remember where we left
Speaker 1: off we're talking to we're talking about stage gross. Yes
Speaker 1: you want, I gotta I know where we're left off.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, I wrote it down. How long ago was
Speaker 1: it that we had a sage grouse conversation? A year
Speaker 1: ago and maybe a month? Okay, so we're doing a
Speaker 1: year ago checking on something. And here's why, here's why
Speaker 1: you should care. Here's why you should care about stage grouse.
Speaker 1: Besides the fact that it's just like a it passes
Speaker 1: the test that I put out earlier. The test I
Speaker 1: put out, We're like, I'm interested in things that have
Speaker 1: hunting efficient implications. So there's that with sage grouse. So
Speaker 1: you know, this is a game bird, the largest grouse
Speaker 1: species we have. Um, it's a very it's an iconic
Speaker 1: bird that is symbolizes is kind of of a symbol
Speaker 1: of a certain biome or a certain habitat type of
Speaker 1: the great sage brush sees um. And also it's really
Speaker 1: important to watch because earlier we're talking about the spotted out.
Speaker 1: If you're only remember the spotted owl debate, the spotted
Speaker 1: owl be kind of came to this sort of bird
Speaker 1: that was a proxy for a broader argument. And the
Speaker 1: broader argument was about, um, to what level do we
Speaker 1: inconvenience are commercial activities? To what degree are we willing
Speaker 1: to inconvenience are commercial activities out of deference to wildlife?
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Ed? That's very fair. So it became
Speaker 1: like it became this symbol of a national debate about
Speaker 1: if we had to turn we can make money doing something,
Speaker 1: but that we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna perhaps lose
Speaker 1: species of wildlife in order to make that money. Is
Speaker 1: it worthwhile or not? Like do we push ahead or
Speaker 1: do we pull back? And it was sad for the
Speaker 1: bird because here's this bird has no idea any of
Speaker 1: this is going on. But the bird becomes like a
Speaker 1: maligned creature. Yeah, the bird becomes like the punchline to
Speaker 1: a joke or a threat. Sure, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of that going around in the nineties. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: want to be like the bird's reputation kind of suffered
Speaker 1: and in a way, like if you think about these
Speaker 1: sort of debates, we're sort of in a current thing
Speaker 1: now with you know, we're security now like gray wolves, okay,
Speaker 1: where the gray wolve sort of stands in as a
Speaker 1: symbol of this bigger argument about do are we gonna
Speaker 1: allow an animal beyond the landscape that is so inconvenient
Speaker 1: to some people live Like it's an inconvenient to livestock
Speaker 1: producers and a lot of hunters perceived it as being
Speaker 1: very inconvenient to them, And so what is our tolerance
Speaker 1: level going to be of this species? And it suffers
Speaker 1: in a similar way that the spotted owl suffering. It's
Speaker 1: always sad to see this happen where the wolf, like
Speaker 1: this animal that cannot that would be incapable of comprehending
Speaker 1: the debate that he's in. Like wolves exist without the
Speaker 1: knowledge that this conversation is taking place. They don't know.
Speaker 1: They have know, like if they don't know anything else
Speaker 1: of the world, to be on their own experience. Like
Speaker 1: if you ask a wolf in Wyoming, he doesn't know
Speaker 1: that there's a bunch in Alaska, but they're missing from
Speaker 1: other areas. It's just like way outside. He just like
Speaker 1: understands his little realm. But meanwhile we're talking about them.
Speaker 1: Is this big and become this big single and it
Speaker 1: becomes something that winds up being like the animal itself
Speaker 1: becomes controversial when all he's doing is putting us in
Speaker 1: a situation where we need to discuss our tolerances, but
Speaker 1: he becomes sort of a victim of it. That's all
Speaker 1: like a preface to say that right now, if you
Speaker 1: want to understand wildlife politics and kind of where we're
Speaker 1: headed and the kind of conversations that we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to have, the current version, the current spotted out
Speaker 1: like today's spotted out real quickly, wad what happened to?
Speaker 1: How's the spotted all doing now? Is he good? No?
Speaker 1: They're not off the list? Um and just to add
Speaker 1: one quick thing to that. You know, they became the
Speaker 1: poster child, and in my view, um really kind of
Speaker 1: zembled the metaphor if you can't see the forest because
Speaker 1: of the trees in Freddy and everybody focused on spotted owls,
Speaker 1: but it was really about that ecosystem and about accelerated
Speaker 1: harvest of old growth forest and how important old growth
Speaker 1: forests were. We learned a lot about, you know, at
Speaker 1: that time, there wasn't an immense amount of research, particularly
Speaker 1: in managed forest, and I think we learned a lot about,
Speaker 1: you know, how you can manage structural features and habitat
Speaker 1: features for the animal without necessarily having older forests, but
Speaker 1: you have older forest conditions. And but what I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people realized in with the spotted owl
Speaker 1: as the poster child, that this is about an ecosystem
Speaker 1: that's vital to so many different creatures and you can
Speaker 1: manage you can you can preserve old growth forest, but
Speaker 1: you can also learn and also manage for habitat in
Speaker 1: managed forests as well. Yeah, and in the same way
Speaker 1: that that spotted owl became a poster child or symbolic
Speaker 1: of old growth forest, we're gonna talk about now like
Speaker 1: with sage grouse. The sage grouse is sort of standing
Speaker 1: in as this as the poster child of sagebrush. Yep,
Speaker 1: and like a better one. I think that would ring
Speaker 1: with more people. Perhaps would be if the if, the
Speaker 1: if the American prong horn or antelope. We're in as
Speaker 1: rough of a spot as the as the sage grouse is.
Speaker 1: I think people might be seeing this different, more well
Speaker 1: known creature and kind more like there's just like kind
Speaker 1: of like a cooler it's just bigger, it's more recognizable.
Speaker 1: You know, you should picture people that animal. They're gonna know.
Speaker 1: To start a conversation about stage grouse, you almost gotta
Speaker 1: be like, okay, here's what one looks like, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't really know, right. But to wrap
Speaker 1: up the point I was making earlier and leading into this,
Speaker 1: this conversation that we're having about in like economically inconvenient
Speaker 1: animals and what and how much do we curtail activities
Speaker 1: in order to ensure that we don't drive species to extinction,
Speaker 1: and we about extinction, it's we're talking about making things
Speaker 1: gone forever. This conversation will always be going on. It's
Speaker 1: just the players will change. That's right on the wildlife
Speaker 1: and the human front. Yeah, the wildlife. And it's good
Speaker 1: because you know what at a time, if we hadn't
Speaker 1: figured out electricity, um, and we were driving and when
Speaker 1: we were driving uh, some whales to extinction and driving
Speaker 1: some whales to near extinction in order to make fuel
Speaker 1: oil for city lamps, we would have been having this
Speaker 1: conversation in the eighteen hundreds instead of what we did.
Speaker 1: But the whale was saved by electricity or probably no, yeah,
Speaker 1: by the other thing. No, not electricity, yeah, but but
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. So, which is at the heart of this discussion,
Speaker 1: which we exchanged what you have to bring even more
Speaker 1: full circuit wines about this. So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: stage grouss. But remember we're talking about stage guss. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a current version of something that will always
Speaker 1: be happening in our society, in our country, which is
Speaker 1: a country that places a tremendous value on wildlife and
Speaker 1: also we play a tremendous value on economic prosperity. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: if I may, before I tell you where we left
Speaker 1: off and start into that. You also made a point
Speaker 1: in the last podcast that really hammers home on this
Speaker 1: because you were talking about you'd think if you went
Speaker 1: to the Philippines or some other place you could just
Speaker 1: catch the hell out of fish, and not always the case.
Speaker 1: And there's that linkage between, uh, that social and economic
Speaker 1: component with conservation that's vital. I mean, we want wildlife
Speaker 1: in this country. We have um a variety of laws
Speaker 1: and principles that we work from to keep wildlife. We have,
Speaker 1: you know, the legacy at Theodore Roosevelt and and all
Speaker 1: of the people that he worked with and we're colleagues with,
Speaker 1: and thereafter that, you know, define that social um desire
Speaker 1: to have wildlife in our landscapes, and then we've been
Speaker 1: trying to figure out that economic balance ever since. But
Speaker 1: make no mistake, if we had five million people in
Speaker 1: the US and hardly any resources, we wouldn't have very
Speaker 1: many wildlife either. That's the funny thing I find like
Speaker 1: this is uh, you know, like guys that like to
Speaker 1: get all ready for like societal collapse, like prepper type
Speaker 1: of guys there are real fired up about having the
Speaker 1: right kind of hunting guns. Like you see him online
Speaker 1: debating like what's the perfect gun for post apocalyptic hunting scenarios.
Speaker 1: It'd be like, dude, post apocalyptic scenarios or like societal
Speaker 1: collapses in failed states generally mean there is no wildlife.
Speaker 1: You don't have a failure, you don't have like robust
Speaker 1: wildlife within a failed state. That's right, the first thing
Speaker 1: that goes And that was your point. What was I
Speaker 1: thought about that? Well, that was the whole point of
Speaker 1: I thought. You know, the discussion about the Philippines where
Speaker 1: you're talking about going fishing and hard to confine the
Speaker 1: fish because they poperished scenario I was reading on. I
Speaker 1: just turned into the frontier days again are coming through
Speaker 1: the road. You know this one guy, this one prep
Speaker 1: rouse reading no one time he was talking about he's
Speaker 1: like laying it out for his buddies and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the thing though, man, in a real post apocalyptic,
Speaker 1: you know, societal collapse scenario, you need a gun that's
Speaker 1: real good for rats and dogs. Because he was like
Speaker 1: he's planning on he's gonna be eating these rats, but
Speaker 1: he thinks that the dogs are gonna be out trying
Speaker 1: to kill you, that the dogs are gonna pack up.
Speaker 1: Like this is the level of detail, like like like
Speaker 1: like prepper guys get into He's got it all sorted out.
Speaker 1: But all right, so a year ago, where was the
Speaker 1: Can you just lay out for me what's going on
Speaker 1: with stage grouse? Okay, what's going on in general? What
Speaker 1: was going on a year ago? And then we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on what happened since a year ago. Okay, So
Speaker 1: when you and Ronnie were out hunting and we hooked
Speaker 1: up and talked about stage grouse, it was days literally
Speaker 1: days after the um decision was made as a not
Speaker 1: warranted decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service to list
Speaker 1: and provide protections under the Endangered Species Act for sage grouse,
Speaker 1: meaning they they looked at the stage grouse issue and
Speaker 1: tried to figure out, like, do we need to make
Speaker 1: give them a Danger Species Act protection? Correct all the
Speaker 1: numbers and said, you know what, we thought we might
Speaker 1: need to, but we don't. Well they didn't run. They
Speaker 1: ran a lot of numbers, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: that went into that that we'll get into on what
Speaker 1: it took to get to that decision. But not everything
Speaker 1: was in place, and that's why it's so important for
Speaker 1: our talk today about what still isn't yet in place
Speaker 1: per se and what's being considered. But what led up
Speaker 1: to that where decades of research, a lot of concern
Speaker 1: back at the nineties from biologists not not not you know,
Speaker 1: uh ngo, I got it's killing me. I gotta interrupt.
Speaker 1: You go ahead. Can you back up a hundred fifty years?
Speaker 1: Oh man? Not not detail level, but tell how like
Speaker 1: I know it's impossible staying and like this kind of
Speaker 1: question drives biologist nuts. How many of these birds were there?
Speaker 1: Where were they living? And how much has their habitat
Speaker 1: been reduced? And how much has their numbers been reduced?
Speaker 1: So people kind of understanding, well, how this even came
Speaker 1: to be? Yep, Um, they are an obligate of sage brush,
Speaker 1: which means they cannot live without sage brush in their lives.
Speaker 1: So you didn't have them in the east or the south,
Speaker 1: or in Illinois or you know, in the mid heart
Speaker 1: of the Midwest, you know. So so went the stage
Speaker 1: grounse as sage brush did. So they were everywhere where
Speaker 1: there was sage brush. And at that time there were
Speaker 1: fourteen states I believe at least three provinces um that
Speaker 1: had extensive sage brush habitat. There was an estimate, and
Speaker 1: I remember we talked about this because you asked me
Speaker 1: if I knew where the sixty million bisons figure came from.
Speaker 1: It was gues estimated. I'll say, at best sixteen million
Speaker 1: stage grouse at the turn of the century, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, before the turn of the century, before Europeans,
Speaker 1: who knows if in the sagebrush like portions of the
Speaker 1: sage brush sees were like the hundredth meridian in west,
Speaker 1: in the Great Plains and in the Great Basin. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's right, and they no longer exists in three states,
Speaker 1: and now we have them in eleven states. It's estimated
Speaker 1: that about fifty of the habitat has been lost, and
Speaker 1: that was one of the metrics that led the service
Speaker 1: to consider the species for listening. They've lost half their habitat.
Speaker 1: It's been fragmented, it's been degradated. Um, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of threats to the remaining habitat, and the numbers have
Speaker 1: been going down for a long time now, as you
Speaker 1: well know. UM. Game bird populations fluctuate on an annual basis,
Speaker 1: sometime on you know, eight to ten year cycles, but
Speaker 1: it's all tied to precipitation and the quality of the
Speaker 1: habitat and the right rain could double their numbers. The
Speaker 1: wrong hailstorm could have exactly yeah, that's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: so they always have these oscillations on any given year.
Speaker 1: But the long term trend has been about one percent
Speaker 1: decline since nineteen six up until the last figure in
Speaker 1: that particular um study that that I often referenced through
Speaker 1: the Western Association of Fish and Wilife Agencies was in
Speaker 1: the numbers went up quite a bit. Uh this year
Speaker 1: they're they're down more so, they fluctuate, but the long
Speaker 1: term trend has been down, and that's largely because they've
Speaker 1: been losing habitat. And even if their sage brush out there,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean it's quality and good condition that
Speaker 1: that renders it suitable for the birds. So that's part
Speaker 1: of the reason that they were even being considered to
Speaker 1: be listed in the first place. We were down somewhere
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of two to four hundred thousand birds,
Speaker 1: which in of itself isn't necessarily an alarmingly low number.
Speaker 1: But the longer you kick that can down the road,
Speaker 1: the more likely it is to go down to maybe
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you're at fifty going, oh ship, Now
Speaker 1: what do we do? And it may be irreversible at
Speaker 1: that point in time. Would you call uh sage grouse
Speaker 1: an indicator species? Yes, and we often refer to him that.
Speaker 1: Another term would be an umbrella species, whereby if you
Speaker 1: if you manage habitat across a landscape for that particular species,
Speaker 1: you're very likely to encompass a variety of other critters
Speaker 1: that that live in that system. We often use that term.
Speaker 1: What's the term? It's like, it's not there's a term.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a similar like Bergman's rule or Bergman's
Speaker 1: principle has got a name attached to it. But there's
Speaker 1: a term for when you have like like with um
Speaker 1: passenger pigeons, you can have three billion of them and
Speaker 1: they're fine, but somehow you can't have fifty thousand of them.
Speaker 1: M hmm. It's like a word for this that just
Speaker 1: sounds like a tipping point. There's a point at which
Speaker 1: there's a point at which like you could never maintain
Speaker 1: you could maintain a species, and we now know you
Speaker 1: couldn't maintain a species of ten passenger pigeons. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has to be that there has to be like a
Speaker 1: million or none. Oh, I see what you're saying, and
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not sure. I can tell you. One
Speaker 1: term some types people confuse with the indicator species is keystone.
Speaker 1: That's very different. If if sage grouse were to somehow
Speaker 1: miraculously go away, and we certainly hope they don't, I
Speaker 1: doubt there is a key stone effect. If you take
Speaker 1: wolves out of an ecosystem, and we saw this with
Speaker 1: the Yello stone, you can have cast our beaver, for example,
Speaker 1: you can have huge impacts on other other parts of
Speaker 1: the systems. That makes sense. Yeah, if the sage grouse goes,
Speaker 1: you're not likely to see some like cascading series of
Speaker 1: you won't see like some ecological collapse. However, though, um,
Speaker 1: if sage grouse go, that means their habitats gone. So
Speaker 1: my guests would be a lot of other species would
Speaker 1: go with them, not because they went, but because if
Speaker 1: it's because the stage brush is gone. At the stage
Speaker 1: brush is gone, you're gonna lose twenty seven that's exactly right,
Speaker 1: or some some profound number of you know, and as
Speaker 1: we've discussed before to the question on the indicator species,
Speaker 1: there's three hundred and fifty at least three hundred fifty
Speaker 1: species of plants and animals that are dependent on the
Speaker 1: stage rust ecosystem in some way, shape or form, and
Speaker 1: including some big time game animals exactly mule deer animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we probably both have stories on chasing deer and
Speaker 1: busting sage. I got a current one from this buck.
Speaker 1: My cousin and I just killed and satres busting up
Speaker 1: all over the place while we're trying to put a
Speaker 1: sneak on the stamp deer. So they utilize the same systems. Alright,
Speaker 1: So back to our timeline. Uh So the Department of
Speaker 1: a Tier at the time, Sally Jewel, no, Secretary Sally
Speaker 1: Jewel inherited that from Ken's Sal's are Ken's sales are
Speaker 1: kind of started all this with the you know, um
Speaker 1: and may uh some good headway with the states and
Speaker 1: then and then Secretary Jewel came in afterwards. Um uh.
Speaker 1: The states were working on their individual state plans back
Speaker 1: in two thousand tens when this really kicked off, because
Speaker 1: there was in fact a lawsuit that that said what
Speaker 1: what happened back prior to the decision, the bird was
Speaker 1: determined to be warranted for protections under the essay, but precluded.
Speaker 1: And what that meant was they definitely warranted those protections,
Speaker 1: but there were a bunch of other species that had
Speaker 1: higher priority that were ahead of them. So that's what
Speaker 1: the precluded part means now. And that was the wake
Speaker 1: up call to the states into industry that you better
Speaker 1: sort this out or it's gonna get real bad for you.
Speaker 1: That's right, And what really kicked that off. And you'll
Speaker 1: hear a lot of people talk about the sue and
Speaker 1: settle scenario. There's no doubt there was a lawsuit that
Speaker 1: forced the decision and Judge Windmill, who was the federal
Speaker 1: uh judge that was handed this uh this lawsuit said
Speaker 1: no fish and wilife service. You're gonna go back and
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna actually make a determination, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you five years to do it. So that's
Speaker 1: where that whole timeline came in. If that hadn't happened,
Speaker 1: who knows how serious people would have taken this. You
Speaker 1: always got a good christ got to have a good crisis,
Speaker 1: you know, to start doing something. It seems like our
Speaker 1: histories replete with that, unfortunately. But the proactive is always
Speaker 1: got to be a little less than the than the reactive.
Speaker 1: So this was a reaction that lawsuit, and everybody did
Speaker 1: take it serious and started putting state plans together, the
Speaker 1: federal start agencies start working on their federal plans. The
Speaker 1: services trying to get their head around how this is
Speaker 1: all going to stitch together into a comprehensive strategy that
Speaker 1: would get them either to a warrant it or not
Speaker 1: warrant a decision. And just let me just step into
Speaker 1: some people follow the kind of like when I say
Speaker 1: that with a wake up call, like if a species,
Speaker 1: like let's say the stage gross, if the sage grouse
Speaker 1: were to get listed and and get Endangered Species Act protections,
Speaker 1: that is gonna shut down a lot of land use
Speaker 1: activities in places that are vital to sage grouse. So
Speaker 1: one thing is damn sure is gonna happen is you're
Speaker 1: not gonna hunt them anymore. So hunting seasons are done done.
Speaker 1: What it also done is a lot of cattle grazing
Speaker 1: sheep grazing operations are gonna be affected, probably, but primarily
Speaker 1: is going to be like energy development, energy extraction, that
Speaker 1: industry is gonna be just locked out of a lot
Speaker 1: of places. Let me say a wake up call. These
Speaker 1: guys might have never paid any attention to sage grouse hunters,
Speaker 1: definitely do. Someone says, you know what, I see a
Speaker 1: I sense a long term problem for sage grouse. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say that I'm gonna I'm gonna argue that they
Speaker 1: that they should be listened under the ESA, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna soothe the Feds for having not done it. The
Speaker 1: Feds look at it, they come up to a settlement
Speaker 1: that says we need time to determine to to figure
Speaker 1: out this is true or not. Now all these groups
Speaker 1: from guys that sportsman's groups like the hunt them and
Speaker 1: any other business in states that host this business are like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, if this goes down, our economy goes down.
Speaker 1: So we now are all of a sudden real interested
Speaker 1: in sage grouse. Thus the impending crisis that kick started.
Speaker 1: Everybody the hammer, It's like the hammer over your head
Speaker 1: is the es A. And now there's a big movement
Speaker 1: to try to make the s A the hammerings not
Speaker 1: so hammer like this was. But that's a whole other
Speaker 1: conversations a conversation. But yeah, pull some teeth out of
Speaker 1: that jaw Well to bring that full circle backrobab. We
Speaker 1: started this with how I got into bats. That's exactly
Speaker 1: what Warehousers saw with what happened with the spotted owl.
Speaker 1: It literally shut down entire community. We're not talking just
Speaker 1: you know, three of us getting kicked off our job.
Speaker 1: We're talking entire parts of states going you know, having
Speaker 1: true economic collapse. And and the industry saw the kinds
Speaker 1: of revenues that were wrapped up in in the protection zones,
Speaker 1: and they said, okay, we can't do this again. Let's start,
Speaker 1: let's start being more proactive. That's why I was hired
Speaker 1: to study mats. It seems haigh because one of the
Speaker 1: beautiful things about America's that there's some like elements of
Speaker 1: America that values wildlife so highly. But so okay, so
Speaker 1: to get back on track here, so I want to
Speaker 1: make sure we get discovered. So so that's all going on,
Speaker 1: and you were you were just getting too okay. The
Speaker 1: States started to be like, who what what's the stage? Gross? Um?
Speaker 1: You I mean to describe a stre were getting to
Speaker 1: the well of sudden getting really interested. Why why do
Speaker 1: we care about this? Creator? Yeah, So you know, the
Speaker 1: States started putting their plans, and make make no mistake,
Speaker 1: the state biologists been watching this for a long time.
Speaker 1: It just sometimes it takes that looming crisis. They were aware,
Speaker 1: they were aware of it, and they had they were
Speaker 1: been doing things research, monitoring, some habitat projects, those kinds
Speaker 1: of things, but there wasn't a you know, a comprehensive
Speaker 1: strategy for many of the states. Wyoming led the way
Speaker 1: they started it in two thousand eight UM, and then
Speaker 1: other states followed. And so you had all these state
Speaker 1: level efforts going on. You had the federal agencies putting
Speaker 1: their plans together, and then in two thousand and ten
Speaker 1: you had something pretty extraordinary, which was the National UH
Speaker 1: Natural Natural Resources Conservation Service in OURCS put an initiative
Speaker 1: together called the States Grouse Initiative that was pumping millions
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars into private landowners to incentivize them
Speaker 1: to change their grazing practices. Do UH do some fencing
Speaker 1: and water type projects that were favorable to stags, grouse,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things, cut juniper trees, and it
Speaker 1: incentivized conservation on private lands. So you have those three
Speaker 1: legs of that stool that kind of put together made
Speaker 1: a good, solid, comprehensive package in addition to a fire strategy,
Speaker 1: a fire fighting strategy that crossed political boundaries between Feds
Speaker 1: and states and counties. And I don't want to get
Speaker 1: into that because that's an extensive conversation in of itself,
Speaker 1: but just make no mistake, firefighting wasn't always as coordinated,
Speaker 1: and it probably still has some issues today. But at
Speaker 1: least there's a plan in a strategy in place to
Speaker 1: try to fight fire in the Great Basin in particular,
Speaker 1: where fire is a huge threat to sage grouse habitat,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I think in Nevada they lost well
Speaker 1: over a million and a half acres just this year.
Speaker 1: So you could say it's not working, but the other
Speaker 1: ship beats it out. Yeah, yeah, well and cheat grass
Speaker 1: comes back. And it's a vicious cycle with that cheat
Speaker 1: grass because it's a real flashy fuel that burns, burns
Speaker 1: even more extensive than so, so you have catastrophic fire
Speaker 1: destroys the stage brush, and the stage brush just never
Speaker 1: gets the leg up because it's getting beat up by
Speaker 1: It takes a long time to come back, and it varies,
Speaker 1: you know, some it depends on precipitation, elevation and the
Speaker 1: vegetation community. Right, so you've got site potential on any
Speaker 1: given piece of land that you can grow certain kinds
Speaker 1: of vegetation really well and sometimes you can't. And that
Speaker 1: you know, as you go up in elevation and to
Speaker 1: get into like Mountain big sage systems with with higher precipitation, um,
Speaker 1: they have more resistance and resilience if you will, to
Speaker 1: fires and they come back more readily than out in
Speaker 1: you know, parts of the Great Basin for just as
Speaker 1: an example where there's much lower precipitation, different soil regime,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But anyway, all those legs of
Speaker 1: that stool were really important for the Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: Service to say, Okay, we've got federal plans that are
Speaker 1: pretty solid, um, we've got a lot of state plans
Speaker 1: uh varying degrees of ability to address all these different
Speaker 1: threats to sage grouse. We've got these private land efforts,
Speaker 1: lots of money going into that, and we've got this
Speaker 1: firefighting strategy. That's what got them in a comprehensive way
Speaker 1: to that not warranted decision. None of those things probably
Speaker 1: could have stood alone on their own. You needed that
Speaker 1: comprehensive nature. So they were they were able to say, like,
Speaker 1: all right, we trust all these like inner like these
Speaker 1: interrelated plans and parts that you've put in place. We
Speaker 1: trust that that you're going to recover stage girls. That's
Speaker 1: in essence, That's exactly what they said. Now and when
Speaker 1: that announcement king, So it was a big deal, like
Speaker 1: you know, you had the governors from several states, oh collected,
Speaker 1: there's a big speech that people. Were people really thinking
Speaker 1: that they didn't know what the answer was going to be? Um,
Speaker 1: like how serious were they on the stage? No, don't
Speaker 1: care about the stage that like that here, but I
Speaker 1: mean like like was it did you know all along?
Speaker 1: Like here's a predict okay, like here's another issue, like
Speaker 1: I anticipate that pebble mind in Bristol Bay will not happen.
Speaker 1: I believe it will never happen. Now, were there people
Speaker 1: that said the listing will never happen? Or was it
Speaker 1: really like people really felt that. I don't think that
Speaker 1: anybody felt that it was a real possibility. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I that was an absolutely real possibility, no question about that.
Speaker 1: Sorry I didn't follow your line there. I Um no,
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody sat back and said that's never
Speaker 1: gonna happen. They may have in two thousand ten UM
Speaker 1: or even before that, but I can sure you're leading
Speaker 1: up to it, everybody knew that that was was a
Speaker 1: very strong possibility, and I don't think anybody really knew
Speaker 1: up until the day of the announcement except those of
Speaker 1: us that were really working on it extensively. I felt,
Speaker 1: just as a biologist just thinking about what the determinations
Speaker 1: have threatened and endangered mean, and you know the criteria
Speaker 1: by which they decide those um you know, I thought
Speaker 1: about it in that context. I thought about it in
Speaker 1: what I could see playing out on the landscape. I
Speaker 1: didn't think they could get a warranted They should get
Speaker 1: a warranted. I felt that it would be not warranted
Speaker 1: with all of those pieces in place. However, if they're
Speaker 1: looking at the same data you're looking at, you feel
Speaker 1: like it should be. I feel I didn't feel I
Speaker 1: didn't think they could withstand legally a suit if they
Speaker 1: did list the bird with all that in place, I really,
Speaker 1: I really felt like we had enough to Now that
Speaker 1: gets to the question of Okay, how much is enough?
Speaker 1: What do you want? I mean, grouse do you want,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna have sixteen million again or whatever the
Speaker 1: hell the number one was. So you're saying that that, uh,
Speaker 1: you're saying it. Had they said we're gonna list the
Speaker 1: stage growth, you felt that that you could have beat
Speaker 1: him in court. I think if someone would have sued
Speaker 1: to say that was an inappropriate decision, as was done
Speaker 1: with lesser prayer chickens a few years ago, that um
Speaker 1: that the court would have said, no, I think there
Speaker 1: is enough here. You you you're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: not warranted. Um now, mind you, after they not warranted
Speaker 1: was was put in place. Lawsuits came on both ends
Speaker 1: of the extreme. You had. You had the hard left,
Speaker 1: some of the hard left environmental groups that sued because
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was enough, and some of the
Speaker 1: industry groups suited because I thought it was too much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone thinks at the mark because I got somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah I had. I recently had a politician
Speaker 1: telling me that he always knows when he's found his
Speaker 1: spot when the far left and the far right are
Speaker 1: about the same. Mad, because then I know I've probably
Speaker 1: got about where I need to be. But but it
Speaker 1: was like it was generally in the in the hunting
Speaker 1: and like in the sportsman world. In the hunting world,
Speaker 1: it was generally applauded the not necessary because people were
Speaker 1: so euphoric about, uh, the fact that all these like
Speaker 1: disparate groups came together on behalf of this bird. So
Speaker 1: people thought, like this new conservation strategy that you it,
Speaker 1: that that people could come together, sportsmen's groups, industry, the
Speaker 1: political world could come together see a problem coming down
Speaker 1: the line, address the problem effectively and not need to
Speaker 1: get into the game of of of using the Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act. That we were gonna like solve problems in
Speaker 1: some kind of way of like working together. Everyone's making
Speaker 1: a little bit of sacrifice, everyone's putting up with a
Speaker 1: little bit of inconvenience and stopping and preventing it from
Speaker 1: becoming a cultural war. And and I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that just a little bit because I experienced firsthand
Speaker 1: both the spot of owl approach and in that era
Speaker 1: and and sage grouse, and there they were very different,
Speaker 1: and you hit the nail right on the head. We
Speaker 1: brought all of these groups together to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Now it wasn't as proactive and and uh as as
Speaker 1: maybe we needed to maybe that should have started back
Speaker 1: in two thousand five or two thousand we could got
Speaker 1: ahead of the curve even better. But it's not that
Speaker 1: back in the days of the spotted owl that the
Speaker 1: regulatory agencies weren't talking to the industry. They were talking
Speaker 1: to counties, they were talking to all the different factions.
Speaker 1: It's just it was just different back then. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't as comprehensive and cohesive as it feels like
Speaker 1: the sage grouse effort was. And mind you, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot more players on the sage grouse front than
Speaker 1: there were on the timber and you know, the on
Speaker 1: the spotted owl issue, and that really wound up being
Speaker 1: kind of a one size fits all. Do you hear
Speaker 1: that rhetoric all the time, one size fits all federal
Speaker 1: top down. That's really not how it was. Some will
Speaker 1: argue with me, and that's fine. They can argue all
Speaker 1: they want. But the reality is the sage grouse issue
Speaker 1: was a little bit more organic and a little bit
Speaker 1: more UH, you know, driven by state level UH players
Speaker 1: and local working groups, collaborations with the states and the
Speaker 1: fits and the and the counties and all the different industries.
Speaker 1: The sportsman's groups were involved. Hell, we weren't involved with
Speaker 1: spotted owls um because guys like me, they aren't interested
Speaker 1: that nobody was going to shoot a spoted owl, you know.
Speaker 1: And and uh, but you know, we weren't thinking as
Speaker 1: big about ecosystems. Then if you think about spotted owlgy
Speaker 1: you start thinking about tu leolk for example, or some
Speaker 1: other you know, or other types of species that we
Speaker 1: might hunt in in old growth forest systems. But we
Speaker 1: weren't thinking like that. We weren't even invited to the
Speaker 1: table the sportsman's groups. And you know that that plan
Speaker 1: not to get too far down the spotted out path.
Speaker 1: But the reality is that plan came down after a
Speaker 1: presidential summit that Clinton held. They brought some players together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they brought some players together. Then the FEDS went back
Speaker 1: and wrote it and implemented it specifically to federal lands.
Speaker 1: It's not the private lands weren't considered or somehow regulated,
Speaker 1: but they weren't part of the bigger picture strategy. And
Speaker 1: I can remember even having discussions when I was doing
Speaker 1: some of my batwork talking about um, you know the
Speaker 1: role of private lands and endangered species in the Northwest,
Speaker 1: and and spotted owls weren't on our lands, weren't even
Speaker 1: necessarily considered as part of the recovery process because it
Speaker 1: was all about reserve systems on federal lands. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that really was kind of a one size fits all
Speaker 1: kind of a strategy. And back to your question, how
Speaker 1: they do and they're not doing so good, And maybe
Speaker 1: if we would have done it like the sage grouse
Speaker 1: way back then in the nineteen eighties, it might have
Speaker 1: been a different outcome because they weren't even really considering
Speaker 1: private lands that much. Private lands were still regulated, but
Speaker 1: it was just kind of written off that the managed
Speaker 1: forest doesn't provide anything for spotted owls and we've got
Speaker 1: to conserve them this way with a preservation system. That's
Speaker 1: not at all what happened with the sage grouse. And again,
Speaker 1: kind of the point I was trying to make is
Speaker 1: we've always talked to these different factions, but we never
Speaker 1: we haven't done it in a way we did with
Speaker 1: with the sage grouse issue. It's a new way of
Speaker 1: doing and conservation. I think it's the way we have
Speaker 1: to do it with anything this at the stage forward
Speaker 1: landscape scale, multiple species, and everybody at the table from
Speaker 1: the front end. And that doesn't mean every individual or
Speaker 1: every group, but you get those diverse voices in on
Speaker 1: the front end sportsmen, groups, industry, and that's how you're
Speaker 1: going to get to making both both ends of the
Speaker 1: extremes mad, probably because you find enough players that are
Speaker 1: willing to work to a compromise to the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what this was in my humble opinion. And then
Speaker 1: and then what happened a month or so after we
Speaker 1: spoke last year, We had an election. So where we
Speaker 1: left off, you gave us a hypothetical, like you like
Speaker 1: to do, We're gonna bury ourselves in a time capsule
Speaker 1: right here in this spot where we were doing that
Speaker 1: podcast out in the sticks in five years from now,
Speaker 1: where we're gonna be. And I expressed lots of optimism.
Speaker 1: And I didn't say it then, but I'd say, now, oh,
Speaker 1: we're all gonna go hunt in sage grouse and do
Speaker 1: a celebratory hunt. I was pretty optimistic because I felt,
Speaker 1: like I told you earlier, I felt like they got
Speaker 1: to a not warranted in a legitimate and credible way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't perfect um and everybody sacrifice something, but we
Speaker 1: got a good comprehensive strategy that I didn't feel um
Speaker 1: was going to yield stage grouse winding up on the
Speaker 1: you know, the threatened or an injured species list at
Speaker 1: some point down the road if it was implemented. That's
Speaker 1: the key. So earlier he said, crunching the numbers. Well,
Speaker 1: part of that was crunching the numbers to see what
Speaker 1: the trends in the habitat and what the trends in
Speaker 1: the in the numbers of sage grouse were doing. But
Speaker 1: what the Fishing Wilife Service used extensively in this decision,
Speaker 1: it was something called the Peace Policy PEC, the Policy
Speaker 1: for to the Policy to Evaluate Conservation Effects. It's policy
Speaker 1: that was put in place in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: and what it basically says is that when we make
Speaker 1: a decision about it, and we the Fishing Wildlife Service,
Speaker 1: are making a decision about a threatened or endangered species,
Speaker 1: we will look at things that may manifest in the future.
Speaker 1: There's some regulatory certainty or some kind of administrative policy
Speaker 1: or some level of certainty that these things are going
Speaker 1: to be implemented in the future, and we can consider
Speaker 1: that as part of our decision. And I can assure you.
Speaker 1: That was extensively used in this particular decision because the
Speaker 1: federal plans haven't played out yet. So like to go
Speaker 1: to some guy, you're gonna buy the house from the guy,
Speaker 1: and you're like, man, you know the porch has fallen
Speaker 1: off the guys that listen, bro, I'm gonna fix this
Speaker 1: porch before the sale goes through. And you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm trusting that the ports is gonna be fixed. And
Speaker 1: you come back and the house, go on and do
Speaker 1: the deal because the guy is going to fix the porch.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you come back and it's not
Speaker 1: fixed you yet? Man? There was no assurance. No, But
Speaker 1: if you sign that in a contract, in the agreement
Speaker 1: that you sign when you buy a house, it's like,
Speaker 1: we agree to these things. You come back, it better
Speaker 1: be fixed or you're gonna sue your ass. That's the
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good metaphor because that's basically what the
Speaker 1: Fishing Wilife Service looked at. I've got signed federal plans.
Speaker 1: These are amendments to the Resource Management Plans for the
Speaker 1: BLM and the Forest Plans for the Forest Service that
Speaker 1: codifies they're going to do these things. That's an assurance
Speaker 1: to the service that something's going to happen in the
Speaker 1: right direction. Um. That when we left off before, it
Speaker 1: was kind of like there was a lot of promises
Speaker 1: had been made, but the fulfillment stage hadn't begun, that's right,
Speaker 1: and we were like, what six eight days after they've
Speaker 1: been signed, ink was hardly dry. Now, if I pop
Speaker 1: out of that timecats up there in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: Wyoming where we all are hut in stats grouse and
Speaker 1: we were chatting about this, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's up in the air a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm still optimistic that we're going to do the
Speaker 1: right thing. And what has happened since then, we had
Speaker 1: an election and a change in the administration. Secretary Zinci
Speaker 1: is now in charge of the Department of Interior. UM.
Speaker 1: A couple of things that happened in between there somewhere
Speaker 1: and about January or February. Remember we've talked about some
Speaker 1: of the bad language, and you've helped us with some
Speaker 1: of this on the National Defense Authorization Act and some
Speaker 1: of these bad writers on these policies that basically was
Speaker 1: handing over UH management authority to the States gave gugnatorial
Speaker 1: veto power over any decision on stage, brush lands and
Speaker 1: the federal lands. Those kinds of things not not necessarily
Speaker 1: the best policy that we would we would agree with,
Speaker 1: and we advocated pretty strongly against that. We'd only seen
Speaker 1: that come out of the House in February. We saw
Speaker 1: a centate version of that, and that that woke us
Speaker 1: up a little bit that now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there may be some potential traction here on both houses,
Speaker 1: like where the House and Senate, So the US House
Speaker 1: and Senate, your congressman and senators coming and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: on second thought, let's not do what we said we're
Speaker 1: going to do. The stay at the stage goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do something different. Let's let's hand it back over
Speaker 1: to the different on different climate, now, different political climate,
Speaker 1: different administration. I wish I kind of wish I hadn't
Speaker 1: said all that ship because it's not kind of inconvenient,
Speaker 1: But that that woke us up a little bit, and
Speaker 1: only to the extent there were political motivations for the
Speaker 1: why that was done and such, and they don't need
Speaker 1: to get into it. But the reality was we now
Speaker 1: had a House and Senate version threatening some pretty bad legislation.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we thought would be interesting
Speaker 1: and we worked with the Department of Interior at the
Speaker 1: time for us to get a secretary. We knew there
Speaker 1: were issues with the States. Let me back up just
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean, look, not everybody got what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Some of the grazing community was unhappy with
Speaker 1: certain prescriptions and some things that were playing out in
Speaker 1: the plans. Um there were mining is interests that were
Speaker 1: fired up. Um, there was um and this gets a
Speaker 1: little bit in the weeds, but there was a designate,
Speaker 1: a prescription if you will, in these stage grounse amendments
Speaker 1: that were solidified in September of that added a designation
Speaker 1: called focal areas. Now what these were. There's about thirty
Speaker 1: five million acres across BLM land of what's called priority habitat.
Speaker 1: It receives the highest priority and the most restrictive types
Speaker 1: of prescriptions to manage sage brush. You can't occupy the
Speaker 1: surface a certain number of miles or some buffer distance
Speaker 1: around the breeding grounds for for sage grounse um, other
Speaker 1: kinds of prescriptions that just basically try to keep it
Speaker 1: intact in in in in good habitat, quality and condition.
Speaker 1: So on top of that, about a third of those acres,
Speaker 1: about ten million acres of that was scheduled for what
Speaker 1: was called these focal areas, and it would and they
Speaker 1: had to, uh are they The suggestion was to withdraw
Speaker 1: them from mining. So basically it removes them from the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two mining law. Now this gets complicated, but
Speaker 1: all you have to know about the eighteen seventy two
Speaker 1: mining law, I mean it was kind of a land rush,
Speaker 1: kind of a of a prospector's um law back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, where you know, allowed people you and
Speaker 1: I go out and stake a claim on public lands.
Speaker 1: We just go out and look. It allows people to
Speaker 1: go look for for um minerals without even asking the
Speaker 1: federal government's permission. Now, you can't do anything with it
Speaker 1: until you get permission. That's a permitting issue and such.
Speaker 1: But it allows you to go stake a claim, and
Speaker 1: if you have a valid claim um, it takes precedence
Speaker 1: over surface rights. So subsurface can always take precedent over
Speaker 1: surface rights. So if I literally really didn't own my
Speaker 1: and my four acres here in the back lot there,
Speaker 1: if I didn't own my mineral rights. Literally, an oil
Speaker 1: and gas company, if they owned my mineral rights, they
Speaker 1: could come in and put a well right back there
Speaker 1: in my yard today because your because your service rights
Speaker 1: cannot obstruct their ability to get there. And that goes
Speaker 1: back to the Mineral Leasing while Act of ninety I
Speaker 1: believe as well. So so this was a way. So
Speaker 1: they had ten million acres and they and they wanted
Speaker 1: to withdraw all um, withdraw those acres from mineral claim.
Speaker 1: And basically but ten million acres we would be withdrawn
Speaker 1: from mineral claim. How many million acres would be with
Speaker 1: drawn if the bird had been lifted. That's a really
Speaker 1: good point. Um, Yeah, it could have been a lot more.
Speaker 1: It would have been a lot more. Potentially hundreds of millions. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean hundreds of millions, but there's only a couple
Speaker 1: hundred million. But it's certainly wherever there were minerals in stage,
Speaker 1: it would have been impacted, no question. And really what
Speaker 1: it was it was it was it was a reserve.
Speaker 1: Ecologically speaking, the concept is sound. You know, you're trying
Speaker 1: to get it's really the only way the Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service can get ahead of the eighteen seventy two
Speaker 1: mining law is to withdraw those mineral right opportunity, you know,
Speaker 1: those opportunities way on the front end of planning. And
Speaker 1: that's what they were really trying to do is saying,
Speaker 1: these are the this is the best of the best habitat.
Speaker 1: This is where we'd like to see minerals withdrawn. And
Speaker 1: these are basically reserves for sage brush. And it also
Speaker 1: set prioritization of you know, a variety of other things
Speaker 1: vegetation management, firefighting, all those kinds of things. But I
Speaker 1: can tell you that dropping that designation on top and
Speaker 1: keep in mind it's a subset of the priority habitat,
Speaker 1: so it's already designated as priority habitat and already has
Speaker 1: various restrictions around it that are codified in the in
Speaker 1: the resource man. It's just like instead is super protected.
Speaker 1: It's super duper protected, exactly so and um, if they
Speaker 1: went away, it would just take the dooper away really so. Um.
Speaker 1: But by law you have to do an environmental impact
Speaker 1: statement um on the withdrawal specifically, And to make a
Speaker 1: long story short, and Nevada the this went to the courts,
Speaker 1: UH mining industry and other suit on that and basically
Speaker 1: the court said, no, you have to go back and
Speaker 1: do you violated the National Environmental Policy Act. You have
Speaker 1: to go back and do a supplemental e I S
Speaker 1: Environmental Impact Statement to supplement the ones that are already existing,
Speaker 1: and and so that was decided, and then the mineral
Speaker 1: withdraw part of that was decided was basically decided upon
Speaker 1: a not very long ago, a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: where the BLM just said, we're not gonna, We're not gonna.
Speaker 1: We're going with the no action alternative of this e
Speaker 1: I S, which is we're not going to withdraw minerals
Speaker 1: from these areas. So that was the decision that was made.
Speaker 1: So now you have these focal areas, but you can
Speaker 1: still do mining claims within them. So basically they're managed
Speaker 1: just as if they're priority habitat. Very little has changed.
Speaker 1: But that designation of focal areas came down pretty pretty
Speaker 1: late in the game, and it made a lot of
Speaker 1: the states mad and a lot of the players, man,
Speaker 1: and it's become a hot button issue states and industry players. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it really has become a hot button issue.
Speaker 1: A couple other things that are in those plans um
Speaker 1: that are you know, there's argument from the oil and
Speaker 1: gas industry about density disturbance caps. There's a maximum amount
Speaker 1: of disturbance that you can have in a particular landscape
Speaker 1: because sage grouse are very sensitive to infrastructure development and
Speaker 1: disturbance from vehicles and all the things that go with
Speaker 1: developing an oil and gas well or wind facility or
Speaker 1: anything else. So there's caps to that and buffers around
Speaker 1: the lacking areas or the breeding sites where males go
Speaker 1: to to find find the girls, and they're very sensitive
Speaker 1: that disturbance. So there have been the science basically supports that,
Speaker 1: you know, once you get over a certain amount of disturbance,
Speaker 1: you're gonna start seeing, you know, plumbering population numbers of
Speaker 1: males at least attending the lex which theoretically track with
Speaker 1: the population. So there's arguments about that. There were concerns
Speaker 1: about grazing prescriptions. Notably, there's a seven inch double height
Speaker 1: that desires to have about seven inches of grass available
Speaker 1: when the birds are nesting for nesting covers so they
Speaker 1: can avoid predators. Um, everybody's hung up on that seven inches.
Speaker 1: There's actually quite a bit of flexibility in the plans,
Speaker 1: but there are many that want that removed, which would
Speaker 1: take an amendment. It would take a full blown plan amendment.
Speaker 1: And so there's all kinds of concerns that were generated
Speaker 1: and that led um Mr Zinky to do a review
Speaker 1: of the plans, and we we were supportive of a
Speaker 1: secretarial order that tried to address these issues with the
Speaker 1: states rather than blowing it up with this bad legislation
Speaker 1: I was leading to alluding to earlier, where we now
Speaker 1: have a house and a center version. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this has got a little more attraction than I used to.
Speaker 1: A better way would be for the Secretary to try
Speaker 1: to address these very specific issues that that may or
Speaker 1: may not affect grouse, you know deeply in the long run.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just adjusting the boundaries a little bit, or
Speaker 1: or changing changing a few pieces of the prescription. You
Speaker 1: still get the same outcome in the long run, but
Speaker 1: you get rid of this toxic language, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So they quietly come in, what are the problems? How
Speaker 1: can we fix the problems not really damaging the plan? Right,
Speaker 1: And you're hopeful for that kind of treatment, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And what we were really hoping for, well, and we
Speaker 1: were hoping that the Secretary of Order would be very
Speaker 1: specific to the issues. But what it did was it
Speaker 1: called to put together a review team, and that review
Speaker 1: team consisted of the Fishing Wilife Service and BLM and
Speaker 1: some other players that were charged with basically looking at
Speaker 1: all these plans and listening to the states, listening to
Speaker 1: the stakeholders, and try to determine what the issues really were. Now,
Speaker 1: that in of itself is not an egregious act. If
Speaker 1: you or I were voted into Secretary of Interior next
Speaker 1: next time around, pointed appointed. Yeah, I mean you'd want
Speaker 1: to you'd want to take a look at what the
Speaker 1: predecessors did and just make some assessments. There's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. But our concern was how Mr Zinky was
Speaker 1: starting to talk about sage grouse. He was talking about
Speaker 1: managing population numbers, and he was talking about captive rearing
Speaker 1: programs to predator control, all these kinds of things that
Speaker 1: people have talked about and thought about a lot. But
Speaker 1: he wasn't talking about him the way biologists would talk
Speaker 1: about him. He was actually talking about him, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: as if they were going to be mitigation tools to
Speaker 1: open up oil and gas. But you just captive, rear
Speaker 1: a few birds and throw them outain. All's good and well, okay,
Speaker 1: But here here getting into an important piece that we
Speaker 1: need to back up. Yea, because the original plan to
Speaker 1: recover sage grouse dealt with not going out and just
Speaker 1: counting up birds, right, So not going out and saying
Speaker 1: like how many birds should we have? But it came
Speaker 1: down and looking like how much how many birds and
Speaker 1: how much available habitat Because a hail storm at the
Speaker 1: wrong on the wrong day in the spring, a hail
Speaker 1: storm can cut your population in half, that's right, by
Speaker 1: cracking the eggs. All this stuff is habitat based, So
Speaker 1: you can destroy a whole. You can destroy a whole
Speaker 1: like brewd like you know, what do you call a
Speaker 1: bunch of brood? You can destroy like a whole area
Speaker 1: is brood clutch and then when they hatch, so you
Speaker 1: can have a bad hail storm on just the wrong
Speaker 1: day cracks thousands of bird eggs, let's say, and so
Speaker 1: then you have a falling population. If you just go
Speaker 1: by bird numbers, it's not particularly telling because you could
Speaker 1: have a really good situation where you like, there's so
Speaker 1: much habitat, so much food, I have no doubt the
Speaker 1: next spring we're gonna totally rebound because all this stuff
Speaker 1: the hard to get ships there. The birds will be
Speaker 1: fine if you give them the habitat. And this is
Speaker 1: what conservation always comes down. It's like it generally when
Speaker 1: people are talking about like a conservation issue, the the
Speaker 1: wildlife populations respond to the habitat. Yeah, it's jeney. Watch habitat.
Speaker 1: If you look at the work, like if you can
Speaker 1: look at the work that Rocky Mountain out Foundation does,
Speaker 1: the work the National Wild Turkey Federation does, Duck's Unlimited. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: these organizations are very focused on available habitat, knowing that
Speaker 1: the animals will take care of themselves. That's right if
Speaker 1: you give them a place to do it. So so
Speaker 1: the idea of like the recovery plan for sage grouse
Speaker 1: was really focused on habitat. The new idea is, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's just count birds and we will raise
Speaker 1: them in a pen and turn them loose and then count.
Speaker 1: So if we don't get the number that we want,
Speaker 1: will make it that we get the number we want
Speaker 1: by just letting them go like chickens and then counting
Speaker 1: at the right moment and be like see they're all there,
Speaker 1: which is fatally flawed and doomed, doomed to fail, but
Speaker 1: almost kind of cynical. It's like, oh, you want birds,
Speaker 1: do you here you go, buddy tomorrow. Which if we
Speaker 1: learned anything and other wild birds and other wild bird recoveries,
Speaker 1: is that pen raised birds don't work. That's right, especially
Speaker 1: for native grouse in the wild. Turkey, they spent millions
Speaker 1: thinking they were going to recover the wild turkey introduction
Speaker 1: program and the one and then what it wound up
Speaker 1: taking was it want up taking that you would capture birds,
Speaker 1: capture wild birds whose ants esters were wild and move
Speaker 1: those birds into new areas and you would recover the population.
Speaker 1: That's what it took. With turkeys, they spent the Turkey
Speaker 1: Federation in many states spent a small fortune learning that
Speaker 1: lesson at Water's prairie chicken. I mean, the only reason
Speaker 1: we really still have any at Water's prairie chicken is
Speaker 1: because of a captive wearing program. But they can't get
Speaker 1: the birds that have been captively reared to then raise
Speaker 1: their own young out in the wild. Something that's lost.
Speaker 1: So you just gotta keep dumping them, and you're in
Speaker 1: this perpetual cycle of having to put birds on the
Speaker 1: landscapes to say that we still have Atwater's prairie chickens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to get a census, if you'd be interesting,
Speaker 1: it might even exist so much a drop of map
Speaker 1: that shows like the ringneck pheasant is not as much
Speaker 1: as you see like pheasants, pheasants, peasants in America. The
Speaker 1: ringneck feasant is not a native bird. Right if you'd
Speaker 1: made a map showing the usual to have a map
Speaker 1: of the US with one color showing where we have
Speaker 1: pheasants and one color showing where we would have since
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for releasing programs, Yeah, that'd be an
Speaker 1: interesting and interesting map. Chuckers too. I can tell you
Speaker 1: the one, The part that shows where we'd have birds
Speaker 1: it wasn't for supplemental stocking would be way, way, way
Speaker 1: smaller than the part showing where peasants are. Yep, it
Speaker 1: would you know where they first reintroduced peasants Lambt Valley, Oregon?
Speaker 1: They first place they were introduced in young guns. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and young guns he kicks up pheasant. Yeah, and remember
Speaker 1: thinking where there's peasants around back then? Yeah? Or that too, Uh,
Speaker 1: they get their stuff on button in the last and
Speaker 1: Mohicans they kill a red deer, red stag that's right
Speaker 1: in the east. Yeah, it's hard to pull that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff over on hunting guys. That's right. Like we
Speaker 1: watched movies and we're like, we always know when we
Speaker 1: smell something fishy with the wildlife. They used to like
Speaker 1: watching the old Johnny White Smueller Tar San movies and
Speaker 1: I'd hear a bird in the background. Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: freaking pilated woodpecker. Not endemic to Africa, I'm pretty sure. Alright,
Speaker 1: So yeah, so they get the idea. Yeah, you were
Speaker 1: just getting to the the incoming secretary starts talking about
Speaker 1: birds in a way that it doesn't sound like. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like we're on this sort of thing about
Speaker 1: how we're going to save the bird by that's right,
Speaker 1: protecting habitat, that's right. And you've also got an administration
Speaker 1: that is promoting energy. It was independence, now it's dominance.
Speaker 1: We just saw report come out recently from the Department
Speaker 1: Material on energy burdens and as you get you guys
Speaker 1: might imagine just about anything could be considered a burden
Speaker 1: to development. Um, so there's a lot of things aligning
Speaker 1: that make us concerned and nervous about this amendment process.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's no different than opening up the
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act or any piece of legislation. If it's
Speaker 1: targeted and specific to increasing efficiency and effectiveness and those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. That's hard to argue. But you know,
Speaker 1: everybody starts to want to hang an ornament on the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree and all of a sudden it falls down,
Speaker 1: So you know the motivations behind um the review. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, we're fine and solid. I'd want to review
Speaker 1: things that a predecessor had done before. But how that
Speaker 1: plays out is going to be interesting because we have yet.
Speaker 1: As I said about the Peace policy earlier, that not
Speaker 1: warranted decision was predicated heavily on things being implemented into
Speaker 1: the future, and not all BLM offices are implementing the
Speaker 1: plans in their fullest extent. There's a lot of confusion
Speaker 1: right now about where this is all gonna go. And
Speaker 1: you know, some some states and some offices are moving
Speaker 1: right ahead and some are still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: So but regardless, we have we have yet to see
Speaker 1: full blown implementation across the board, across age lands of
Speaker 1: these plants. So that's kind of weird short sighted that's
Speaker 1: going on right where if you have an administration come in,
Speaker 1: who an administration come in where they're like they they
Speaker 1: are not really worried about the bird, more worried about industry,
Speaker 1: and then you let the bird falter. You need to
Speaker 1: like think ahead because we have a thing that happens
Speaker 1: in this country where we have wild political vacillations, the
Speaker 1: pendulum swing as what we call, and someone else might
Speaker 1: come in in four years or in eight years. Another
Speaker 1: person is going to come in and they're gonna have
Speaker 1: their own appointee for the Secretary of Interior, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna look and be like, sons of bitches never did
Speaker 1: do the sage grouse thing. Right now, I am going
Speaker 1: to list them. Yeah. The fact that people go like, oh,
Speaker 1: the current climate will always be here, so let's just
Speaker 1: screw this whole sage grouse thing. You think that you'd
Speaker 1: still be real interested in solving the problem because you're
Speaker 1: not always going to have your people in charge. Well,
Speaker 1: you're you're interjecting long term thinking and rational thoughts, Stephen.
Speaker 1: Everybody thinks that way, you know, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: sometimes they just three thinks out to the next quarter
Speaker 1: and that's a year out maybe. Now that's long term
Speaker 1: thinking and planning. And look what happened with the Spotted Ault.
Speaker 1: Now that we've used that as our one of our
Speaker 1: talking points in this that pendulum swung hard, and too
Speaker 1: far hard in my opinion. I mean, we haven't seen
Speaker 1: meaningful timber harvest in a lot of places, particularly northwest,
Speaker 1: but for a long time since then. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got old growth logging just just shut down. But a
Speaker 1: lot of logging on public lands is shut down. There's
Speaker 1: not much of a timber industry here in the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountains either, quite frankly a little bit. But you know,
Speaker 1: you as you guys drive around and hut, you can
Speaker 1: see dead trees, lots of standing forest. You know, there's
Speaker 1: there's just it was a big pendulum swinging back then. Um,
Speaker 1: But prior to that, it was swung the other direction.
Speaker 1: They were they were cutting federal lands as if they
Speaker 1: were private lands to some extent. So and then, and
Speaker 1: make no mistake, the industry was warned well before the
Speaker 1: listing of the Spotted All. I know, the people that
Speaker 1: did the warning back in the seventies, they said, look,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be an issue for wars and we
Speaker 1: need to deal with it. And really about the only
Speaker 1: thing that happened in the in the years to come
Speaker 1: right before the listing was increased, accelerated timber harvest, which
Speaker 1: exacerbated the issue. So almost almost in a in a
Speaker 1: in a gosh, if we don't have the in the
Speaker 1: sense of, if we don't even have the habitat, we
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about this. But it didn't quite
Speaker 1: work out that that that that that like thinking of
Speaker 1: the next quarter, like profit earnings for the next quarter,
Speaker 1: next year, and very few people looking at what business
Speaker 1: like in five years, and this pendulum now is going
Speaker 1: to swing back eventually. Just listen. It's there's no way
Speaker 1: if they don't get if they don't get serious about
Speaker 1: this problem, there's no way that in four years someone's
Speaker 1: not gonna say, like, some of a bit, you should
Speaker 1: have got more serious about this problem. That's right, And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still hopeful back to our time capsule
Speaker 1: thing five years from now. I'm still hopeful because we
Speaker 1: haven't nothing's really been done yet. Um it's but the
Speaker 1: stage is set and so the amendment process. Let me
Speaker 1: back up a little bit. So this report comes out
Speaker 1: UM Midsummer, so from the Secretary of the Secretarial Order
Speaker 1: came out and said, we're going to review these plans
Speaker 1: and look at them all, look at all these issues.
Speaker 1: It generated a list of issues that people had and
Speaker 1: then this review team, which is a very credible group
Speaker 1: of individuals, put together a matrix of actions. So some
Speaker 1: of them were short terms, some of them were long term.
Speaker 1: So for example, UM, if they wanted to completely eliminate
Speaker 1: these focal areas, it would require a plan amendment. If
Speaker 1: they wanted to change certain prescriptions in UM the grazing section,
Speaker 1: that might require an amendment. Now, the amendment process in
Speaker 1: BLM planning is extensive, at minimum probably eighteen months, it
Speaker 1: could go out for another three years. So some of
Speaker 1: these things that need to be fixed, we felt a
Speaker 1: lot of those things could be fixed with just clarification, training,
Speaker 1: better instruction, and here's how you need to implement these things.
Speaker 1: Others UM might require a plan amendment. But our position was,
Speaker 1: why don't you let this play out a little bit
Speaker 1: and just actually implement the plans, gather some information and
Speaker 1: see what needs to be fixed. Then, but there's a
Speaker 1: rush you know, people are kind of looking at the
Speaker 1: clock and this administration may or may not be around
Speaker 1: in and it's going to take three years probably to
Speaker 1: get through this amendment process. So now what's happening is
Speaker 1: there's they're going to open up the plans potentially for
Speaker 1: an amendment process. Right now, they're taking public comment on
Speaker 1: um the federal plans and whether they should be amended
Speaker 1: and changed basically, so you've got them codified now in
Speaker 1: the current resource management plan that was that was changed
Speaker 1: in September fifteen that got us to the not warranted.
Speaker 1: Now they're looking at change in it. We haven't even
Speaker 1: hardly gotten started yet. So so where's the where's the
Speaker 1: like the sportsman community add on this? Now? Well, if
Speaker 1: you look at like like the hunter based conservation community,
Speaker 1: where do they tend to be on what should be happening? Well,
Speaker 1: I know of no mainstream or or other type organization
Speaker 1: that is engaged or cognizantly cognizant aware of the issue
Speaker 1: that really wants this opened up, except a couple of
Speaker 1: fringe element type groups. But the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: sports and groups don't want to to open these plans up.
Speaker 1: They want to get them implemented, I mean, everybody refined, implemented. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, no credible scientists or biologists would say
Speaker 1: that it's a bad idea to make something better if
Speaker 1: you got data to prove it. I mean, but the
Speaker 1: problem is they don't have a lot of existing information
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that something will or will not work. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if the industry wants to come back and say, well, gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't think this disturbance cap of a
Speaker 1: maximum of five cent in some landscape area is correct.
Speaker 1: We think it should be. They don't have any data
Speaker 1: to prove that, I can assure you, but they may
Speaker 1: a lobby to have it changed. They just don't have
Speaker 1: any scientific information to back And that's kind of been
Speaker 1: our position from day one. If there is science underpinning
Speaker 1: a buffer distance or a disturbance cap in an area
Speaker 1: or whatever the prescription is, let's use that to improve
Speaker 1: the plans. But there's a lot of those areas that,
Speaker 1: in my humble opinion, don't have that science, and it's
Speaker 1: it's not supported and substantiated. A lot of times, what
Speaker 1: we'll hear industry say is that a lot of the
Speaker 1: energy studies and there's probably twenty five plus studies that
Speaker 1: have looked at energy impacts on grouse. None of them
Speaker 1: say energy development is good for grouse. That's one bit
Speaker 1: of information. All of them collectively pretty much say that
Speaker 1: it's negative at some level. And you know, I'm a scientist.
Speaker 1: I can pick or at least I used to be
Speaker 1: practitioning scientists. I can. I can find a hole in
Speaker 1: every piece of every study that's out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: ecology isn't perfect, and you can find a hole in
Speaker 1: a study. But the weight of evidence, this is like
Speaker 1: the way I like to couch this. The weight of
Speaker 1: evidence is very clear that energy development at certain levels
Speaker 1: has an impact on the bird. There's just no denying that.
Speaker 1: But one of the arguments is that while all those
Speaker 1: studies looked at the old technology, now we've got the
Speaker 1: new technology where we can put multiple pads on our
Speaker 1: multiple wells on a pad, which is true. Um, we
Speaker 1: have less disturbance on the landscape. That's true as well,
Speaker 1: but at some level that doesn't That argue doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's still disturbance on the landscape and the birds are
Speaker 1: going to respond at some level to that disturbance, So
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're drilling horizontally three miles out
Speaker 1: or straight down three it's still infrastructure and they're still disturbance.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, they're going to have to demonstrate
Speaker 1: that it's more than just a new technology that you know,
Speaker 1: they have information that would demonstrate there's a reason you
Speaker 1: can shrink those those buffers or or expand them or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen that information yet. So but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of efforts that are ongoing now and new
Speaker 1: science that's coming. But but the bottom line is we've
Speaker 1: got to implement these plans, and you know, there's some
Speaker 1: tweaking of the plans that can happen right now that
Speaker 1: it's like I said, if if the focal area boundaries
Speaker 1: were you know, to somehow that disappear, I don't think
Speaker 1: grouse are going to disappear. I also don't know that
Speaker 1: it's necessary to completely open up the plans to do that,
Speaker 1: but that may be where they go. But the thing
Speaker 1: people have to remember is that it's just a sub
Speaker 1: designation within that broader designation of priority habitat. All of
Speaker 1: that habitat is still going to be managed, you know,
Speaker 1: unless those prescriptions change. That's our concern. So what's what's
Speaker 1: the next step for people and what what should people
Speaker 1: be If people are folowing this issue, what's the thing
Speaker 1: they should be doing now? Well, the public needs to
Speaker 1: to express their and our sportsmen's community need to express themselves.
Speaker 1: We've got an open action alert now. And basically what
Speaker 1: we're saying is that, you know, some target it at
Speaker 1: amendments that are supported with scientific information you know could
Speaker 1: be acceptable, but don't be throwing the baby out with
Speaker 1: the bathwater. Here and by the way, Governor's meeting hick
Speaker 1: and Looper, who you've shared the stage with and know
Speaker 1: their work quite well. Republican and Democrat, yep, both working
Speaker 1: on sage grouse. They're saying the same things. Let let
Speaker 1: the plans work, let the collaboration work. Don't make this
Speaker 1: a federal top down war on the West. Is some
Speaker 1: proclaim on on different sides of the aisle, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not that different. Let this play out and work.
Speaker 1: Some targeted changes can be acceptable, but don't don't be
Speaker 1: making major wholescale changes. So we've got an open action
Speaker 1: alert now, um, and you can just go to the
Speaker 1: Theater Roosevelt Conservation Partnership's website and take action on sage grouse,
Speaker 1: and basically what it says is that we don't want
Speaker 1: to see whole scale changes. We want to see this
Speaker 1: collaboration work um targeted changes maybe in the future. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of what it basically says. So that's what
Speaker 1: they should be doing. But they should also, you know,
Speaker 1: people should just be aware and paying attention to And
Speaker 1: it kind of comes back to what you said, this
Speaker 1: is a new way of conservation in my opinion, and
Speaker 1: many of my colleagues and many of the people you
Speaker 1: talked to say the same thing. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: way the stage grouse plans and this whole manifestation of
Speaker 1: conservation strategy to get to that not warranted decision really
Speaker 1: was a miracle and and really a a major milestone
Speaker 1: in contemporary wildline. It was such a piece of good news. Man,
Speaker 1: it was like this euphoric moment. It was. And again,
Speaker 1: not everybody got what they wanted, and some of the
Speaker 1: fringe elements are really pissed and fired up. But the
Speaker 1: bottom line is it was a hell of an effort
Speaker 1: to get it there. Now we've got to make it
Speaker 1: manifest on the landscape because right now there's a lot
Speaker 1: of areas that are just paper birds and paper habitat.
Speaker 1: It's all in in a document until it manifests on
Speaker 1: the ground. That's when we get real habitat and real birds.
Speaker 1: That's what we got to have happen. You think, from
Speaker 1: my personal perspective that the always makes me think of
Speaker 1: is that if you're like like hunters and fishermen, really
Speaker 1: it's those that you don't have a political home. No,
Speaker 1: this is me talking to person. I want to implicate
Speaker 1: you in this, but like you don't have a political
Speaker 1: home because the political world is too dirty, like from
Speaker 1: the left. Okay, like that again, I'm not implicating eding
Speaker 1: this observation at all, but from the left, from the
Speaker 1: Democrats side, you have like an atmosphere that's not like
Speaker 1: this is culturally oftentimes culturally hostile to hunters. Like right now,
Speaker 1: there's a thing in Arizona. Is a referendum coming up
Speaker 1: in Arizona. It's a band lion hunting and bobcats. I
Speaker 1: promise you a Republican did not put that up right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're always getting attacked on the Democrat side, You're
Speaker 1: always gonna attacked culturally. People are trying to restrict your rights,
Speaker 1: mess with wildlife management. Give like New Jersey cat ladies
Speaker 1: sort of an outside outsized voice, and how we managed
Speaker 1: wildlife in America banned certain hunting practices. You're just getting
Speaker 1: attacked all of time there firearms issues, and then from
Speaker 1: the Republican side, Roys gonna attack on habitat issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I want to start a new political party,
Speaker 1: call like the Roosevelt Party, which is gonna be like
Speaker 1: any kind of any kind of yeah, the Bull Moose Party.
Speaker 1: Any social issue would be like, no comment, It'll be
Speaker 1: fiscally conservative, robust, military like ardently pro habitat. I like that,
Speaker 1: and like a socially liberal social libertarian social libertarian listen,
Speaker 1: privacy of your own home, bro, like a strong respect
Speaker 1: for that, but jelly social issues, no comment. You'll figure
Speaker 1: it out on your own privately. Please. But uh it
Speaker 1: just sucks, man, And I know, like I know it.
Speaker 1: Give mean people in the political world, like who are
Speaker 1: like people who are willing to work in a bipartisan
Speaker 1: way from the right and from the left to come
Speaker 1: to like good decisions and like have wildlife in mind.
Speaker 1: Like those people do exist, but those people are generally
Speaker 1: regarded as like very quiet individuals. Yeah, that, and most
Speaker 1: people in America, like I can't understand people who speak
Speaker 1: in a pragmatic, quiet way. They can only understand just
Speaker 1: like in like loud insanity or not understand. But but
Speaker 1: they like it because it's like, oh, I get that.
Speaker 1: I can get that so easily. That's easy for me
Speaker 1: to understand. Complicated ship. I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: have time for complicated ship. I want the one sentence fixed,
Speaker 1: and you wind up. It just gets so frustrating, man.
Speaker 1: And these are complicated issues, right, and they're hard to
Speaker 1: put in one sentence, but you have to because I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys do this and in television all the time,
Speaker 1: you've got a message in a way that resonates with
Speaker 1: a much broader audience than than the three of us
Speaker 1: sitting here. And I had to do that when I
Speaker 1: was doing my science. Now that I'm glad we brought
Speaker 1: up the warehouse or connection, we'll just come back to
Speaker 1: that because I you know, I remember being a scientist
Speaker 1: in that organization. But you had to also be a
Speaker 1: pretty good communicator with those that didn't want to know.
Speaker 1: They just didn't want to underdo about all your science.
Speaker 1: I was even told one time it's like, we hired
Speaker 1: you because we thought you were a good scientist. I
Speaker 1: want to hear all that ship about statistics and such.
Speaker 1: Tell me what it means, what the bottom line is,
Speaker 1: Why should we care? What's the bottom line for the business,
Speaker 1: and how can we fix it? So you've got to
Speaker 1: You've gotta break things down and make it important to
Speaker 1: to not in this case managers, but to the public.
Speaker 1: It's like, why is it important? Why should you give
Speaker 1: a shit about sage grouse? And not that many people
Speaker 1: probably do in the big picture until you put it
Speaker 1: in a broader context. Because how we learned to address
Speaker 1: the sage grouse issue, It's gonna it's gonna have implications
Speaker 1: for every other situation when this comes up, and this
Speaker 1: will continuously come up. And right now we're talking about
Speaker 1: it with sage grouse, We're talking about it with wolves
Speaker 1: in the Upper Gray Lakes, We're talking about it with
Speaker 1: grizzly bears. Tomorrow. I don't even know who we're gonna
Speaker 1: be telling. My prediction is the Northern Great Plains and
Speaker 1: the short grass prairie, that prairie system there is going
Speaker 1: to be the next sage brush and sage crouse and
Speaker 1: ducks right well, and sharp tail grouse, prarie chickens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a big conversation ducks a long time ago.
Speaker 1: But you know the Prey Pahole region, ye, so yeah,
Speaker 1: and look at the well, look at the look at
Speaker 1: the baking, look at wind development in that kind of
Speaker 1: that that area is considered the Saudi Arabia wind. The
Speaker 1: only reason it has been developed extensively. There's no transmission
Speaker 1: right now. So so it's like there's a lot forthcoming
Speaker 1: and big. But to get into a situation where we
Speaker 1: can look at conservation issues and look at wildlife issues
Speaker 1: and sort of make like a template for how to
Speaker 1: approach long term issues that will insulate them a little
Speaker 1: bit from wild political vacillations. And I think we know
Speaker 1: how to do it. I mean, I'm not gonna tell
Speaker 1: you all the sciences there, but I've been playing this
Speaker 1: game a long time, and you know, the reality is,
Speaker 1: we've got the tools. We've got a good chunk of
Speaker 1: the science. We know conceptually how to do adaptive management,
Speaker 1: which is learning by doing. We do something on the ground,
Speaker 1: we monitor it, and then we fix it and do something.
Speaker 1: You know, We've got all those kinds of tools and
Speaker 1: now we really know who all the players need to be.
Speaker 1: We just need to incentivize the conservation efforts and make
Speaker 1: every give everybody's skin in the game. And I've always
Speaker 1: said that if we've got to make conservation and investment
Speaker 1: not an impediment, and we're doing that, you know, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. But we need to do it
Speaker 1: more because we're not growing any more acres. No, I
Speaker 1: can tell you that we're losing acres and look at
Speaker 1: Ghost the Ghost, it's we're losing acres. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: grow anymore. We've gotta do good with what we got
Speaker 1: for sure. And it's like it's even it's even more
Speaker 1: complicated because I feel like, you know, Secretary Zink, he's
Speaker 1: done a lot of great stuff with access this using
Speaker 1: other things. So it's like he's in a situation where
Speaker 1: you kind of it's like getting heat on one thing, right,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to like satisfy and do something clearly
Speaker 1: trying to do some good things for sportsman's access and
Speaker 1: other issues, and getting hammered on other stuff. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's a hard for a person to find that
Speaker 1: happy ground where just the radical right and the radical
Speaker 1: left or Piste, it wasn't being very difficult for political
Speaker 1: operators to work in this situation. And just to look
Speaker 1: at the Sage Gross site, like, here's another complicated thing.
Speaker 1: Those people like like the people in industry have been
Speaker 1: screwed before, and Western and states have been screwed before,
Speaker 1: as they keep getting screwed on wolf, on the wolf
Speaker 1: issue and on the grizzlieshoe where you like you came
Speaker 1: and said, we agreed, we agreed what grizzly bear recovery
Speaker 1: looks like. We talked about it twenty years ago. We've
Speaker 1: met that for thirteen years goal post. So it's like,
Speaker 1: and we made a plan on wolves. Do you remember
Speaker 1: we talked about what wolf recovery would look like, we
Speaker 1: achieved it. Why do we still have to talk about
Speaker 1: it now? So they do get screwed on stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like and I think screwing them on those things
Speaker 1: coming from the rat they're coming from like screwing him
Speaker 1: from the radical left perspective winds up making people put
Speaker 1: up walls and not wanting to have conversations that could
Speaker 1: be more effective. Well, it's probably one of the consequences
Speaker 1: of partisan politics. And we're very partisan now and that
Speaker 1: pendulum swings back. My fear is that it swings back
Speaker 1: the other direction too far. Can't we figure out a
Speaker 1: space in the middle my new political party, Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: I like that parties in the middle, the one in
Speaker 1: the middle. Well, I'd sign up for that party. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I get that party going and we got the House, Senate,
Speaker 1: White House, I to have all that. We have, all
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court nominees. Wildlife's gonna be solid, man. Well,
Speaker 1: good hunting and fishing, and we'll make conservation and investment
Speaker 1: for everybody's future. And in good mountain lion seasons and
Speaker 1: all appropriate locations. Any concluding thoughts, Well, yeah, you were
Speaker 1: telling me the other day we were talking about um
Speaker 1: uh mountain men, I believe, right, And how like everybody's
Speaker 1: talking about how you want to go back in time,
Speaker 1: like see what the country was like back then, right,
Speaker 1: and everybody has these like visions, right, and that's what
Speaker 1: we hope for. Well, I think like now is the
Speaker 1: time to try to like look to the future and
Speaker 1: think like that our kids are gonna want to go. Man.
Speaker 1: I wish I could have seen what that sage for
Speaker 1: see was like back then. Wish I could have seen
Speaker 1: all that. That was pretty damn cool, and we need
Speaker 1: to really keep that and you know, like keep thinking
Speaker 1: about that because it's so easy, I think, to forget
Speaker 1: with all the just it is, the partisan stuff of it,
Speaker 1: you know, and you just couldn't get wrapped up in
Speaker 1: emotions and just think about the big picture. Doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what political party you're affiliated with. Like, we all want
Speaker 1: to look back and kind of we wish we could
Speaker 1: see what this country looks like a hundred years ago. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's story. That's almost something that people like universally agree about.
Speaker 1: People who are interested in I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: wide net right. People are interested in wildlife, hunting, American history,
Speaker 1: Western history, pioneer history, Dan Boone, whatever, people are interested
Speaker 1: to that sort of ship generally are like, holy smokes man,
Speaker 1: it would have been great to see what Lewis and
Speaker 1: Clark saw. So pay attention to that little part of
Speaker 1: your brain because that a little part of your brain
Speaker 1: is telling you something important. Do you want to strive
Speaker 1: for a future that works looks more like that or
Speaker 1: less like that? Yeah, the catches don't don't hang up
Speaker 1: on it ever looking like that again, But think about
Speaker 1: what it did look like and what you could do
Speaker 1: to make it look as close to that as possible
Speaker 1: into the future, because it ain't gonna be the same.
Speaker 1: You have this conversation about antelope. If we listing like
Speaker 1: mule deer listing, are they going to give es a
Speaker 1: listening to the mule deer because we weren't paying attention
Speaker 1: to when for people first started bringing up to us
Speaker 1: thirty years ago that the mulder is gonna need some
Speaker 1: little teeny bit of help. Well, I've told you this,
Speaker 1: I told I think we talked about this in the
Speaker 1: last cast on on Stage Grouse. This wasn't a shock.
Speaker 1: This didn't manifest in two thousand five or ten, and
Speaker 1: wasn't court or I mean, it was court ordered, but
Speaker 1: that's not what the driver was. The driver was we
Speaker 1: drag our damn feet for a couple of three decades
Speaker 1: when we were warned, same thing was spotted els, the
Speaker 1: industry was warned, but there was no hammer immediately hovering
Speaker 1: right over the head. And that's the problem. We've been
Speaker 1: reactive throughout the history of wildlife management, and there's just
Speaker 1: so many examples of that, and we're damn lucky we
Speaker 1: got what we got. Back to the whole notion of
Speaker 1: what other countries have or don't have. So we have
Speaker 1: a lot of incentive in this country to have conservation
Speaker 1: and wildlife. Well we got to get out of and
Speaker 1: we've been having these conversations a lot on the ESA.
Speaker 1: I've been working with Governor meads Uh Endangered Species Act
Speaker 1: Initiative from the day it started, and now we're into
Speaker 1: a little bit more conversation about how do we avoid
Speaker 1: having to use the endangered species in the first place.
Speaker 1: Was was one of my fundamental tenants when I gave
Speaker 1: testimony in the first conference. We think we figured out
Speaker 1: how to avoid using it, which was on like bringing
Speaker 1: a bunch of people together to figure out how everybody's
Speaker 1: going to give a little bit to make the things
Speaker 1: and being more proactive and putting money on the front.
Speaker 1: It's like going into the mechanic after you drove the
Speaker 1: vehicle for three more thousand miles with low oil change.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, it's like, oh, you blew your engine, which
Speaker 1: just probably could have done that for forty bucks just
Speaker 1: early when it was just come down to an oil chain. Exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, just to return to a thought man, and
Speaker 1: this is kind of me just operating my own mind.
Speaker 1: But like Eldo Leopold in Sand County, Alman, Eldo Leopold
Speaker 1: talks about, Okay, I'm gonna bring this up and now
Speaker 1: I got now content trap. I gotta dig a little
Speaker 1: bit deeper. Aldo le post talking about technology. He's talking
Speaker 1: especially about hunting technology, and he was saying that like that,
Speaker 1: you can't improve the well. You can't improve the pump
Speaker 1: without improving the well. Yeah, he's not talking about oil rings,
Speaker 1: talking about water, but meaning if you're gonna make it
Speaker 1: easier and easier and easier to extract more and more
Speaker 1: and more water, you're gonna have to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to make the well better, two deeper and better,
Speaker 1: because you will suck that some bit dry if you're
Speaker 1: not thinking about both. And when I think about that's
Speaker 1: like kinds of winds up being that that partisan battle
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier. I feel that like that
Speaker 1: from the right, we're like the right side of me, Okay,
Speaker 1: the right leaning, right wing leaning side of me is
Speaker 1: usually very interested in like improving the pump, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: improving access democratically allocated public access to wildlife, like I
Speaker 1: like that to resources for us to use renewable resources,
Speaker 1: wild resources. The left leaning side of me. It's like,
Speaker 1: and let's make the well deep and wide. Ye, well
Speaker 1: and and too Yanni's point on the legacy. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite quotes that Roosevelt had was about conservation and
Speaker 1: stating that it means preservation and development. And he recognized
Speaker 1: the rights. Maybe he didn't say rights, but he recognized
Speaker 1: the needs to use these resources, but he didn't appreciate
Speaker 1: or recognize the rights to steal those from future generations.
Speaker 1: Paraphrasing a lot there. But conservation is about development and preservation.
Speaker 1: We've talked with the thousand times before. But when I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell the story again, Uh, Theodore Roosevelt right was
Speaker 1: very interested in in preserving wildlife and saving wildlife and so.
Speaker 1: And there had been a argument where someone said, so
Speaker 1: if the wildlife if is as you're saying, that wildlife
Speaker 1: belongs to the American people, we're Americans. Let us in
Speaker 1: there and let us go get it all since it's
Speaker 1: ours anyways, And he says, well, yes, it belongs to you,
Speaker 1: but it also belongs to those in the womb of time.
Speaker 1: It's not all yours right now, some of yours right now,
Speaker 1: some is for those who will follow. Man, do we
Speaker 1: need Leopold and Roosevelt back? Don't we? Somebody? Some big
Speaker 1: thinker puts it when when speaking of his family farmer
Speaker 1: has been in his family for generations, and when when
Speaker 1: thinking when thinking about decisions around his family farm, he says,
Speaker 1: of him and his siblings, you know, he'll be like,
Speaker 1: it's not ours, it's our turn. It's our turn. YEA.
Speaker 1: A great way to think about it. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Doug made that up or not, but
Speaker 1: he likes it and I like it. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's profound. You an you got any final thoughts? Then
Speaker 1: I just hope I kill an elk next week. I
Speaker 1: need to fill my freezer and take from today and
Speaker 1: and uh leave a little for tomorrow, leave a little
Speaker 1: for tomorrow. It's been great talking again. It's my fourth time.
Speaker 1: You guys need to come up with a five Timers
Speaker 1: jacket or something. If we ever do this your past
Speaker 1: like Saturday Night five Timers. What we'll do is in
Speaker 1: a year, we're gonna come talk to you anywhere. We're
Speaker 1: at fifty two episodes from now, We're gonna come to
Speaker 1: talk to you about stage grouse again, we'll see where
Speaker 1: we're at. I hope we're in a good place. I'm
Speaker 1: still optimistic, but cautious optimism. I hope that next year
Speaker 1: we're talking about they'll keep this bird's sage growls will
Speaker 1: be banging into the windows. There's so many out there
Speaker 1: that just like apparently flying around and coming in the
Speaker 1: house and throwing them out the door. Maybe maybe, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that, uh, you know, as this defines
Speaker 1: the conservation model for the future, we need to learn
Speaker 1: from it and grow and build and and look to
Speaker 1: the next one. And you don't make the same mistakes twice.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the definition of insanity. Keep trying the same
Speaker 1: thing over and hoping to get a different result doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I've learned from the mistakes in the past. Thanks again,
Speaker 1: in fifty two episodes from now, we will talking to you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys, keep doing what you're doing. Thanks that. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of things though, before you go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we appreciate all the reviews and the ratings. You guys
Speaker 1: are killing it on that. But I know, because I
Speaker 1: see how many there are, that there are still thousands
Speaker 1: of you out there that have not written a view
Speaker 1: and have not given us a rating, And Steve prefer
Speaker 1: ed just raise his hands. You give a rating it, Steve,
Speaker 1: he prefersday if you just do the five star one.
Speaker 1: If you're not gonna do the five star one, don't bother.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, don't give it like a low rating. I
Speaker 1: don't care what kind of rating. No, no, don't just
Speaker 1: give it. Just go I always say, just to make
Speaker 1: it easy, pole, go to the right most star and
Speaker 1: click it. You've never given a rating it. I've never
Speaker 1: seen the stars on what I'm listening. By the way
Speaker 1: I'm listening to it. Here's the thing people don't realize.
Speaker 1: Why people don't realize how helpful it is to us
Speaker 1: to go and give the damn five star rating ring
Speaker 1: whatever you want. No one's gonna care. But I would
Speaker 1: think that you'd be on it, being like man been
Speaker 1: on the show four times, love it. Give these guys
Speaker 1: six stars, give him sick. But you guys know everything
Speaker 1: you do is six star, ten star. Go and give ratings.
Speaker 1: We'll go find it. But I'm not on iTunes. That's
Speaker 1: maybe what we give it. That doesn't matter. Give it
Speaker 1: a geting, however you listen Stitcher iTunes. I mean there's
Speaker 1: like the vast like those two cover the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people. You can go to the to the meat
Speaker 1: eater dot com and listen right there. However you're doing it,
Speaker 1: go give it mega five star rating and then you know,
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Speaker 1: for the meat eater dot com Big Black Friday sale,
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Speaker 1: people like to shop. That's right, I believe after Black Friday,
Speaker 1: now there's a Cyber Monday and that's when you buy
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Speaker 1: if you're looking for a pocket knife, you need to
Speaker 1: go to benchmate and check out their pocket knife, especially
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Speaker 1: come to be a dumbass. And I walked into the
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Speaker 1: so you gotta new you got the new bug out,
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Speaker 1: having like a paper clip on your pocket. Exactly exactly
Speaker 1: did you hear something about this? Said the in the
Speaker 1: Ketchkan airport, it's like the thing that brings me the
Speaker 1: most happiness in all the world outside of my own children.
Speaker 1: And is it? In the Catchcan airport there's a display
Speaker 1: and there's a display of of stuff they've confiscated from people.
Speaker 1: There's in this display is a is a full on
Speaker 1: brass knuckles dagger kid. Yeah, man, guys like traveling with
Speaker 1: a brass knuckles dagger. It's the greatest played one of
Speaker 1: those cases. But I've never it's just the greatest. Like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean I can't have uh, maybe I
Speaker 1: can't bring this on Yeah, And it's got a really
Speaker 1: nice fancy bench made knife in there. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some there's some like quality blades in there too. But
Speaker 1: there's some crazy stuff that people try to bring on planes. Well,
Speaker 1: ask Ronnie Beam about that. Sometimes I don't want to
Speaker 1: go into details, but you might want to ask him,
Speaker 1: like about t s A rules, how to get letters
Speaker 1: from the T s A what else? That's all I
Speaker 1: got five stars. Hey check this out. Last time we
Speaker 1: asked for stars, a bunch of people came and gave stars.
Speaker 1: And it's good for us. So it's really helpful. I
Speaker 1: don't want to I'm not explain all why, but it's
Speaker 1: good to give them their stars. Also, as long as
Speaker 1: we're on the subject, you helping me us is if
Speaker 1: you go on all the time and you're like now
Speaker 1: and then you're like, oh, I'm gonna go listen to
Speaker 1: the Meat Eater podcast. Uh, subscribe, right, that's hugely helpful.
Speaker 1: If you subscribe and it just comes to you automatically,
Speaker 1: that's good for you because it eases you into good listening,
Speaker 1: and it's good for us because it's just it's like,
Speaker 1: it's like a demonstration of of of reach. So subscribe
Speaker 1: five stars Black Friday, right with the Monday, the Monday
Speaker 1: Cyber Monday. And it also thought your support. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: so many great conservation groups out there that generally you'll
Speaker 1: find speak with a pretty unified voice. So if if
Speaker 1: you're a hunter or a fisherman and you're and you're
Speaker 1: hearing about complicated things and you're reluctant or leary about
Speaker 1: wading into something and advocating a certain viewpoint without knowing
Speaker 1: all the sides. It is a smart idea to just
Speaker 1: kind of go and do a survey about where leading
Speaker 1: national conservation groups, like where are they making stands on
Speaker 1: certain issues? And I think that you'll find that on
Speaker 1: a lot of these issues, you'll find like a pretty
Speaker 1: good cohesion around reasonable policies and policy solutions. Uh. I
Speaker 1: like the work of the trc P, just as I
Speaker 1: like the work of many conservation groups, some of which
Speaker 1: I've named here today, but um check them out, check
Speaker 1: out others too, and go sort of gather up like
Speaker 1: how people in the conservation space and the hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing space, how are they looking at wildlife issues, resource
Speaker 1: management issues? And begin to educate yourself that way and you,
Speaker 1: hopefully we will find groups that kind of resonate with
Speaker 1: you and you can throw your support behind them. But
Speaker 1: start out but just kind of like take a look
Speaker 1: at sort of the national picture of how these conversations
Speaker 1: are going and and start to learn about it. And
Speaker 1: then you'll want to I think hopefully you want to
Speaker 1: start exercising, uh, you know, flexing some of your personal
Speaker 1: muscle by by getting behind these groups and making good
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing for not just you, but your kids
Speaker 1: and their kids. Right. That's it for me, and I
Speaker 1: can tell you it makes a difference everything Steve said,
Speaker 1: having worked in this arena now it works and it
Speaker 1: does make a difference. Stars, the five stars, the six
Speaker 1: stars works even better. The five stars works, but conservation
Speaker 1: advocacy works to it really does, and we make sure
Speaker 1: it works by amplifying your boys. So appreciate you saying that. Alright,
Speaker 1: stay tuned