Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I am joined by Hale Herring to discuss
Speaker 2: the return of the public land grab movement and other
Speaker 2: conservation related issues and threats that we're going to have
Speaker 2: to keep an eye on heading into the new year.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camera for
Speaker 2: Conservation initiative. And today we're continuing our series looking forward
Speaker 2: into twenty twenty five and the new year, and the
Speaker 2: focus today is public lands and conservation related issues. We
Speaker 2: talked the big beginning of the year, kind of looking
Speaker 2: back on twenty four and things that Tony and I
Speaker 2: have learned as we look towards planning our next year
Speaker 2: worth of projects. Last week, I think it was we
Speaker 2: talked with Jake about planning and looking forward to a
Speaker 2: new year of habitat improvements. Now today we're going to
Speaker 2: go a little bit bigger picture, looking across the nation
Speaker 2: at the issues that are going to potentially impact all
Speaker 2: of us who enjoy hunting and fishing on wild public
Speaker 2: places and also private land related places too. But today, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: we need to kind of turn back the clock to
Speaker 2: a set of issues that was talked a lot about
Speaker 2: here on the podcast you know, five, six, seven, eight
Speaker 2: years ago, and that being the land transfer movement, the
Speaker 2: public land grab movement, folks trying to get rid of
Speaker 2: our public lands, transfer them, sell them, degrade them, overutilize
Speaker 2: them for things that are not conducive to hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing and healthy wildlife populations and clean air and clean water.
Speaker 3: All that kind of good stuff.
Speaker 2: This is a set of topics that has to be
Speaker 2: discussed again, and my guest today is someone who's perfectly
Speaker 2: suited to do that. It's Hail Hearing. Hell is the
Speaker 2: host of Backcountry and Hunters and Anglers podcast. He's also
Speaker 2: a long time outdoor writer and journalist. He's covered the
Speaker 2: conservation and environment related beats and kind of the intersection
Speaker 2: of those topics with hunting and fishing. He's covered that
Speaker 2: for decades, I believe, and he's actually now working on
Speaker 2: a book exploring some of these topics, in particular the
Speaker 2: history of our public land. So Hell is a wealth
Speaker 2: of information and he's someone who has been tracking the
Speaker 2: latest iteration of these public land threats. And I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the key things that we need to
Speaker 2: understand now, is that maybe for a minute, we felt
Speaker 2: like we'd won the battle, we'd kind of stopped this
Speaker 2: land transfer movement in its tracks. Back in eighteen nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: there was a decent bit of good news on the
Speaker 2: public lands side of things, and over the last four
Speaker 2: years there has been a lot more of that positive
Speaker 2: changes when it comes to management of our public lands,
Speaker 2: expanding public lands again, increasing protections on our public lands again.
Speaker 2: But it appears that new forces are ascending. New leaders,
Speaker 2: new influencers, new political think tanks and groups with different
Speaker 2: goals and different aims now are in a position to
Speaker 2: influence change for us in a not so good way.
Speaker 2: And we've started to see the beginnings of that. And
Speaker 2: one of those ways has been what Hell has described
Speaker 2: as the slickest land grab attempt yet, which was this
Speaker 2: lawsuit that the State of Utah recently filed back at
Speaker 2: the end of twenty twenty for looking for the disposal,
Speaker 2: asking the Supreme Court for the disposal of eighteen point
Speaker 2: five million acres of public lands in Utah.
Speaker 3: And then in.
Speaker 2: Another like thirteen fourteen, maybe fifteen other states signed on
Speaker 2: in support of that lawsuit, states like Idaho, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska.
Speaker 2: These states were in support of this. So this is
Speaker 2: a new way. This is a new back door way
Speaker 2: to try to get folks to get folks hands on
Speaker 2: our public lands. And of course, as we've talked many times,
Speaker 2: we got to keep public lands in public hands. So
Speaker 2: our discussion today is going to be about what this
Speaker 2: latest land grab attempt means and the good news on
Speaker 2: that front, which is just a couple days ago the
Speaker 2: lawsuit was struck down by the Supreme by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: So we're going to discuss what this lawsuit was about,
Speaker 2: why the Supreme Court shot it down, what that means
Speaker 2: for the future, what a all of this might point
Speaker 2: towards over the coming year or years, as far as
Speaker 2: how the public land grab movement might be shifting. In
Speaker 2: what we need to do as hunters and anglers and
Speaker 2: outdoors people to make sure that we are ready for
Speaker 2: this and ready for some new challenges coming down the
Speaker 2: pipeline because it is now time to re engage. We're
Speaker 2: going to discuss this. We're going to discuss why twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. In the next few years, we as a
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing community are going to have to kind
Speaker 2: of get on it again. Maybe we've been sitting back
Speaker 2: on our laurels a bit recently, sitting pretty feeling comfortable.
Speaker 2: No longer we need to rally. We need to stand
Speaker 2: back up and get busy, because if we don't, we
Speaker 2: are once again faced with the very real threat of
Speaker 2: losing places we really care about. Places like the Boundary Waters,
Speaker 2: places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, places like the
Speaker 2: Tongus National Forest, places like the hundreds of millions of
Speaker 2: acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management across the
Speaker 2: American West. That's what we're discussing today. Hale is the
Speaker 2: perfect guy to discuss it with. I will give a
Speaker 2: one quick soft plug. If this whole land transfer movement thing,
Speaker 2: if the history of how our public lands have been
Speaker 2: traded and managed and now are under threat, if that's
Speaker 2: kind of new to you, if you haven't been following
Speaker 2: this story over the last decade with us here on
Speaker 2: Wired Hunt, I gotta plug my book. You can see
Speaker 2: it behind me if you're watching the video. It's called
Speaker 2: That Wild Country and Epic Journey into the past, present,
Speaker 2: and Future of America's Public Lands. That book was my
Speaker 2: my attempt to try to get the average person up
Speaker 2: to speed on what's going on and do it in
Speaker 2: a fun, adventurous, compelling way. So there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: stories about my adventures on public lands, hunting and fishing
Speaker 2: and backpacking and rafting and doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And along the way, I'm going to get you all
Speaker 2: up to speed on how we acquired six hundred and
Speaker 2: forty million acres of federal public lands, how we is
Speaker 2: America and have access to these things, and the crazy
Speaker 2: story that led to that, as well as the debates
Speaker 2: and controversies and concerning threats that we will be facing
Speaker 2: here in the future to make sure we maintain that
Speaker 2: access in these incredible places for us to go out
Speaker 2: there and camp and hunt and fish and have a
Speaker 2: hell of a time. So check out That Wild Country.
Speaker 2: There are maybe autograph copies still on the media website.
Speaker 2: If not, going over to Amazon pick up a copy
Speaker 2: and lets.
Speaker 3: You do that.
Speaker 2: Tune into the rest of this podcast with hal Herring.
Speaker 2: It's a good one. It's an important one.
Speaker 3: Thanks for being.
Speaker 2: Here all right here with me now on the line
Speaker 2: is mister Hale Herring.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 4: Hell thanks for really having me man man Mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always appreciate you making time to do this.
Speaker 2: These are some of my favorite chats. And that's for
Speaker 2: another reasons. One because you're just a wealth of information
Speaker 2: and second because you are someone who from afar gives
Speaker 2: me both hope and inspiration when it comes to the
Speaker 2: future of our wild places, public lands, wildlife through your podcast,
Speaker 2: through your words you have You've done that for a
Speaker 2: lot of people. Hell, so I want to thank you
Speaker 2: here at the outset for doing that.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. It ain't really I wasn't really trying
Speaker 4: to do that. That's how I feel. I've had it.
Speaker 4: If it comes through, it's just it's just the way
Speaker 4: I've lived it. Like my life has been so I've
Speaker 4: been so lucky, raised my kids and my family with
Speaker 4: the public lands and hunting and fishing Missouri River catfish
Speaker 4: and I mean I just and all the way back
Speaker 4: where I grew up in Alabama. It's like I've been lucky,
Speaker 4: so my passion for all this is kind of borne
Speaker 4: in and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to fake that when it's that deep
Speaker 2: in your bones and your history.
Speaker 3: And same for me. It's uh, it's these things.
Speaker 2: They have given us so much, So much of our
Speaker 2: lives have revolved around these places, these pursuits, these critters
Speaker 2: you can't help but want to make sure they're still wrong.
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that this this pumper can
Speaker 2: keep on ticking right, you know.
Speaker 4: I feel like there's a there is kind of in
Speaker 4: my case, I've been so lucky with it. If there
Speaker 4: is a quid pro quo. Yeah, And then being a
Speaker 4: reporter like Field and Stream, I got to deep dive
Speaker 4: into like some of the things that can go wrong
Speaker 4: and some of the things that have gone right.
Speaker 2: You know, and and and that's I guess why I
Speaker 2: wanted to have you back on here again. I wish
Speaker 2: we had good things that we maybe do have some
Speaker 2: good things to talk about. But I think the major
Speaker 2: impetus for giving you a ring again is the fact
Speaker 2: that the boogeyman of six, seven, eight, nine years ago
Speaker 2: that we were talking about with the public land transfer movement,
Speaker 2: the divestment of public lands, the idea of selling or
Speaker 2: transferring public lands that was getting really concerning in twenty fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in that window, we're starting to see that starting
Speaker 2: to rear its ugly head again. I think for a
Speaker 2: minute there folks kind of felt like, all right, we've
Speaker 2: got it tamped down. We got this thing as a
Speaker 2: political poison pill. If you try to mess with our
Speaker 2: public lands, it's going to be political suicide for you, right.
Speaker 2: And in some of these recent years we felt pretty
Speaker 2: good about things. But there have been some recent changes,
Speaker 2: some recent attempts I think that are maybe forcing us
Speaker 2: to open our eyes again to a new series of threats.
Speaker 2: In this lawsuit coming out of Utah is maybe the
Speaker 2: most glaring of those. And literally the day that we
Speaker 2: started record, the day that we're recording this, some big
Speaker 2: news has opened up on that front. Can you just
Speaker 2: give us a quick rundown of what this latest attempt
Speaker 2: to take our public lands was coming out of Utah,
Speaker 2: why that was so concerning, and then what happened today?
Speaker 4: Sure, and we can all be thankful that we live
Speaker 4: in a country with a you can argue with however
Speaker 4: you want, but with a functioning Supreme Court of the
Speaker 4: United States. You know, anyway, we can argue about its
Speaker 4: composition and all that, but the court did rule. It's
Speaker 4: not for me or for you. The court ruled on
Speaker 4: the basis of the lawsuit. The lawsuit was the State
Speaker 4: of Utah filed a lawsuit against the United States federal government,
Speaker 4: our government claiming that and I'm not sure how they
Speaker 4: picked eighteen point five million acres of BLM Bureau of
Speaker 4: Land Management managed public lands in Utah had to be
Speaker 4: gotten rid of, had to be disposed of. They claimed
Speaker 4: that it was unconstitutional for the US government to maintain
Speaker 4: control or management of those lands under the good okay,
Speaker 4: because they were unappropriated. And to try to get that
Speaker 4: short but make it understandable is like people, if you
Speaker 4: know about the homestead Acts. Right, So the United States
Speaker 4: government gave away, for a very small fee, starting in
Speaker 4: eighteen sixty two, parcels little land to settle the West.
Speaker 4: We had already given away huge amounts in the east, right,
Speaker 4: but in the West was opening up after the Civil War,
Speaker 4: and so those lands, they were unappropriated lands that were
Speaker 4: given to homesteaders. The great piece of history. It's one
Speaker 4: of the reasons the United States is the way it is.
Speaker 4: You know, it was a Jeffersonian concept from the beginning.
Speaker 4: You know a lot about it, Mark and I. But
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to boil it down. But yeah, so Utah, nobody,
Speaker 4: nobody wanted these desert rock lands in Utah at that time,
Speaker 4: and so they remained a part of the federal lands.
Speaker 4: And Utah is claiming that they are unappropriated and so
Speaker 4: they have to be gotten rid of. Okay, So the
Speaker 4: problem with that, there's a lot of problems with the lawsuit,
Speaker 4: which the Supreme Court found quickly this morning, was that
Speaker 4: these lands are appropriated. They are federal public lands managed
Speaker 4: for multiple use for the American.
Speaker 3: People by the Bureau of Land Management.
Speaker 4: By the Bureau of Land Management. In this case, the
Speaker 4: problem with the lawsuit was that if it had been successful,
Speaker 4: thirteen other states signed on to this boondoggle. And that's
Speaker 4: a problem of the American culture wars right now, I
Speaker 4: can tell you because the state of Alabama signed on
Speaker 4: to this, and I guess they figured it unappropriated. Bankhead
Speaker 4: National Forest, where some of the greatest public land in
Speaker 4: the Southeast was also they're going to get a hold
Speaker 4: of that. I don't know what they're planning. What the
Speaker 4: concept was. I think it was a culture war thing.
Speaker 4: We're all against the federal government. We better prove that
Speaker 4: by signing on to this nutball lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because by signing this amicus brief, as I understand it,
Speaker 2: that was nothing more than kind of ceremonial, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: they're signing onto this would not in any way change
Speaker 2: the outcome of the lawsuit, right.
Speaker 4: No, it would not, but it certainly threw a gauntlet
Speaker 4: down as to who what these people believe about our
Speaker 4: public lands and hunting and public hunting and fishing in
Speaker 4: the Southeast and there we've got a big We've got
Speaker 4: a big problem. This is this the amicus brief with
Speaker 4: the additional signings shows us that we have a big
Speaker 4: problem in amongst conservation, hunting and fishing and public lands
Speaker 4: users in the United States.
Speaker 2: Basically fifteen or sixteen states with a government that is
Speaker 2: antagonistic towards our public lands.
Speaker 4: Yes, was what that would show well? With with elected officials, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I would say, yeah, I mean, the governments, whatever we
Speaker 4: make it, we vote for these dudes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wyoming, Yeah, Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Alabama.
Speaker 3: I think one or two of the Dakota's. There was
Speaker 3: a long list of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think a whole lot of our listeners
Speaker 2: live in those states. Yes, And I think that's a
Speaker 2: clear sign that we've got some talking to do to
Speaker 2: our representatives.
Speaker 4: We do, and and so the so the the lawsuit
Speaker 4: was tossed out this morning, dismissed this morning by the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court, with this enormous list of case law behind it.
Speaker 4: Behind the dismissal that this this lawsuit is not valid.
Speaker 4: Right that those lands are appropriated and they are appropriated
Speaker 4: by That's not what this frime court said. They just
Speaker 4: said the lawsuit wasn't valid. But the fact is is
Speaker 4: that you know, the origins that we were talking before
Speaker 4: we get record that the origins of this were the
Speaker 4: anger from the off road vehicle community. This is what
Speaker 4: I understand at the Bureau of Land Management for closing
Speaker 4: down and trying to recover some places that that had
Speaker 4: been become very overused by damaged right damage totally. Uh
Speaker 4: And like Labyrinthe Canyon and the mo Ebb. I mean,
Speaker 4: if you've ever gone to the Rock Crawler festival down there,
Speaker 4: you know it's pretty pretty big. It's huge are these
Speaker 4: are This is a huge industry.
Speaker 2: I ended up down there once by accident at the
Speaker 2: same time as the Easter weekend GSA.
Speaker 4: Festival or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was it was wild, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Wow. And and I don't share in rock hopping and
Speaker 4: you know, like like mad Max in on the on
Speaker 4: the desert, right, but it's cool that other people do.
Speaker 2: And that was, you know, one of my big takeaways
Speaker 2: while I was down there. And what makes federal management
Speaker 2: of our public lands so special is that we have
Speaker 2: this multiple use mandate on them, right that stipulates that
Speaker 2: this land is not just for the cattle grazers, not
Speaker 2: just for the rock climbers, not just for the deer hunters,
Speaker 2: or the miners or the oil drillers or the loggers
Speaker 2: or the bird watchers. It's for all of us. And
Speaker 2: there has to be some compromise there to to manage
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, nobody can get everything they want. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just like living in a family or or sharing
Speaker 4: a house with people. But the what what made me
Speaker 4: amazed about this was that the impetus for this lawsuit,
Speaker 4: and this we talked about this is kind of this
Speaker 4: is like with the Bundies and all those other folks
Speaker 4: too that were in the in the more it advised
Speaker 4: Sagebrush rebel movement was if they got what they said
Speaker 4: they wanted, they would be the ones that would be
Speaker 4: the first loss. They would have to pay to go
Speaker 4: rock hopping on the desert, and there would be huge
Speaker 4: places like like when you think about the Amungiri Resort
Speaker 4: down there just south of the Utah border in Arizona
Speaker 4: where they charge what thirty eight hundred dollars a night
Speaker 4: and they pick you up and fly you up in
Speaker 4: a helicopter to do sunrise yoga on the mesa and
Speaker 4: they have like, you know, little servants that come and
Speaker 4: bring you the dates or whatever and make sure that
Speaker 4: you're hydrated in the h you're not going on like
Speaker 4: a good camera. But those people would be happy to
Speaker 4: buy another thirty forty fifty thousand acres of this, of
Speaker 4: course they would.
Speaker 2: And so that's I mean, that's the same worry that
Speaker 2: we had back in twenty sixteen about the land transfer
Speaker 2: movement was basically, if federal public lands go to states,
Speaker 2: states have a mandate to have a positive ROI on
Speaker 2: those state lands. They have to make money off of them,
Speaker 2: and they simply would not be able to do that
Speaker 2: with this level of land and the management needed the
Speaker 2: risk of wildfires and a thousand other things that would
Speaker 2: just bankrupt a state inevitably leading them to have to
Speaker 2: sell these lands. Right, isn't that still the case with
Speaker 2: this situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's for sure that case. I mean Idaho did
Speaker 4: a full study of that, and like they had to
Speaker 4: cut down every tree, all the timber immediately in order
Speaker 4: to p off like the management you know, costs. But
Speaker 4: this this lawsuit was even more kind of wild because
Speaker 4: if you look at the PR campaign for it, it
Speaker 4: was stand for our Land or something, you know. But
Speaker 4: the lawsuit actually said that the lands have to be
Speaker 4: disposed of, that the federal government couldn't hold them. This
Speaker 4: one didn't say they had to be transferred right to
Speaker 4: the states. So this this was this was you're basically
Speaker 4: a taxpayer in Utah was basically paying a PR firm
Speaker 4: and a law firm to carry a lawsuit to take
Speaker 4: away the very place they hike, hunt, or ride their
Speaker 4: rock crawler. This one was like we're talking about the
Speaker 4: Overton window, the things that are acceptable. This one was
Speaker 4: throwing the Overton window over way off to right field
Speaker 4: left field? And is that why?
Speaker 2: I heard you say this on your on your podcast
Speaker 2: at one point that this was maybe the slickest attempt
Speaker 2: yet that you've seen for stealing our public lands. And
Speaker 2: and there's a little bit of I think one thing
Speaker 2: I worry about is issue fatigue over this thing. Right,
Speaker 2: we keep on talking about challenges to public lands, the
Speaker 2: threats to our public lands, and folks have been hearing
Speaker 2: this for years and years and years now, and there's
Speaker 2: this worry that eventually folks will stop paying attention. But
Speaker 2: this one seemed like one that rose a lot more red.
Speaker 3: Flags than usual. Why why was that?
Speaker 2: Why did this one stand out as so concerning and
Speaker 2: and maybe pretending something even more concerning in the future.
Speaker 4: Well, because it was an incredible propaganda campaign. This one
Speaker 4: was better. I was coming back we did uh we
Speaker 4: were working Bureau Land Management uh sagebrush planting job in
Speaker 4: October and we had one of them was in Colorado
Speaker 4: and we came back to the Utah cardor Wassat's cardor there,
Speaker 4: you know, and I saw those giant signs with these
Speaker 4: like super nice looking people standing on them with their kids,
Speaker 4: going stand for our land. And I thought it was
Speaker 4: I mean, did you see the billboards. No not, They're
Speaker 4: very very high end. Uh. And then it would say
Speaker 4: go to stand for our land dot org. And then
Speaker 4: there would be a map of the United States which
Speaker 4: was like completely red west of the Mississippi, you know,
Speaker 4: like the federal government controls everything. And it was funny
Speaker 4: because they had even put all the Indian reservations on there.
Speaker 4: And it was a but it was a slick propaganda campaign,
Speaker 4: something like the Bundees and the the old Sagebrush rebel guys.
Speaker 4: They would have never they would have never done this.
Speaker 4: This was the governor of Utah and using the taxpayer
Speaker 4: money to create a slick propaganda campaign to divest the
Speaker 4: American people of some of the greatest red rock country
Speaker 4: in the world.
Speaker 2: This idea, though, that they're putting out there, the federal
Speaker 2: government owns all your land. The big bad boogeyman bureaucrats
Speaker 2: in DC are making horrible decisions. We the state, you,
Speaker 2: the people here close to these lands, you should have
Speaker 2: You should be able to control these places. The states
Speaker 2: should be managing these places, et cetera. That it first glance,
Speaker 2: might seem like an appealing message. Why And one other
Speaker 2: thing I'll add is that we often hear and sometimes
Speaker 2: have seen real shortcomings with federal management sometimes of our lands. Right,
Speaker 2: it's not always perfect. There's a lot of challenges. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of a lot of issues, right, So
Speaker 2: it's not perfect over there. So people love to complain
Speaker 2: about federal management of everything. But in this case public lands. Sure,
Speaker 2: why I guess what would you say to someone with
Speaker 2: that set of critiques? Why is federal management actually a
Speaker 2: good thing to continue? And why is it that this idea,
Speaker 2: this alluring idea of local control, Why is that a
Speaker 2: little bit of snake oil.
Speaker 4: Well, because you have way more input into federally controlled
Speaker 4: public lands. Federally manages public lands, and you ever will
Speaker 4: under SITTLA. If you look at this, that SITTLA is
Speaker 4: a state Land Board of Utah and they've been selling
Speaker 4: off state lands at a great clip. Now, this that
Speaker 4: state transfer movement will tell you right away that well,
Speaker 4: we're not letting these aren't school trust lands. We're taking
Speaker 4: over huge sections of federally managed public lands and we're
Speaker 4: not going to make them school trust lands. So we
Speaker 4: can do whatever we want with them. But the fact is,
Speaker 4: what do they want to do. Do you think you
Speaker 4: would have more local control over Sittla lands. You can't
Speaker 4: even you can't even camp on state lands in Colorado
Speaker 4: without permission, if I if I understand that right. Montana
Speaker 4: fought a huge lawsuit in the nineteen eighties over public
Speaker 4: access to state land Section. I mean, it's just let
Speaker 4: me tell you, I think there is a lot of
Speaker 4: mismanagement of every kind in America all the time, and
Speaker 4: in Sudan and in Brazil and in Finland. Human beings
Speaker 4: do good things and they do bad things, and federal
Speaker 4: management of public lands is always in conflict, and it
Speaker 4: should be. If you and I are inherit a great,
Speaker 4: big mansion with our twelve siblings, we're going to argue
Speaker 4: over whether the bathroom fixtures ought to be gold, how
Speaker 4: steep the steps ought to be. When Grandma comes, we're
Speaker 4: gonna argue over that, and we're gonna make mistakes, and
Speaker 4: somebody's gonna paint the living room, you know, purple, and
Speaker 4: you're gonna be furious about that. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that you give the mansion away to some dude from
Speaker 4: Norway and everybody in the family live out on the
Speaker 4: streets looking back at the mansion and going like, oh, man,
Speaker 4: remember when I had that bedroom upstairs and we.
Speaker 3: Played chess, and wasn't that nice?
Speaker 4: Wasn't it great? And so I'm a big fan one.
Speaker 4: I think that if we look at public land management
Speaker 4: since eighteen ninety one when we had the first forest
Speaker 4: reserve signed by President Harrison, you will find missteps, and
Speaker 4: you will find all kinds of all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: You will find good mostly good people working very hard
Speaker 4: to try to do the right thing as they understand
Speaker 4: it at that time, and you will see one of
Speaker 4: the greatest success stories that Aldo Leopold. Aldo Leopold would
Speaker 4: approve of seventy percent right. Sixty percent even Aldo Leopold,
Speaker 4: the great conservation thinker of his time, who worked for
Speaker 4: the Soil Conservation Service during the dust Bowl and was
Speaker 4: the proponent of the first wilderness area, he would approve
Speaker 4: about sixty percent right. And dude, when you have this
Speaker 4: wonderful thing, you got to argue over the management. And
Speaker 4: that's what we do. And this is good. It's good
Speaker 4: to argue over. It's good for the OHV people to say,
Speaker 4: bolm is stepping on my toes. I want to do this,
Speaker 4: I want to do that, and people argue over that,
Speaker 4: and they go out and look at Labyrinth Canyon and
Speaker 4: they look at the places and they say, ah, this
Speaker 4: is too much impact for me. And then somebody else goes,
Speaker 4: ain't no impact here. This is wonderful. I love this.
Speaker 4: Shooting on public lands is always going to be a
Speaker 4: big It's going to be a big issue going forward.
Speaker 4: Of course, can you take your refrigerator out there, you
Speaker 4: blow it up with the ak and you drive off,
Speaker 4: and somebody else goes like, oh my god, look at
Speaker 4: this horrible thing. Right, and so you can't really do
Speaker 4: that if you want to keep on acting that way. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so we but it's not just compromise either. It's bringing people.
Speaker 4: This is the great unifier the United States. Public land
Speaker 4: unifies right left, Republican, Democrat, Independent. This is the last
Speaker 4: of the great commons in this country.
Speaker 2: And I think a key thing to remember is despite
Speaker 2: the fact that we can point to plenty of things
Speaker 2: that aren't just raight, we're plenty of things that we
Speaker 2: personally aren't quite happy with we have. We are the
Speaker 2: envy of the world in many cases with what we have,
Speaker 2: with this imperfect yet still really damn good system. To
Speaker 2: carefully manage these lands as best as possible for the
Speaker 2: greatest number of people. With this multiple use mandate, we
Speaker 2: have built in a set of people hate bureaucracy, but
Speaker 2: sometimes when you have something as precious as this public
Speaker 2: land estate, we should have a lot of guardrails in place.
Speaker 2: We should have a lot of process in place, We
Speaker 2: should have a lot of public input opportunities. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it slows things down sometimes. Yes, it causes some speed
Speaker 2: bumps and challenges, but it's that important. If you if
Speaker 2: the states had this, none of that's.
Speaker 5: There, no no, and and people, you know they the
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies were the environmental decade, you know, when we
Speaker 5: set a lot of that federal policy and law in place.
Speaker 4: Flipmu for instance, in nineteen seventy six, the need for process,
Speaker 4: a National Environmental Policy Act. Night was that seventy six, I.
Speaker 3: Think somewhere in the ballpark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And these are onerous and they're difficult to deal with,
Speaker 4: and sometimes we we'll go back and look at them
Speaker 4: and say do we need this? And that's the beauty
Speaker 4: of having the mansion, having the land. We can figure
Speaker 4: out and we'll make mistakes, and you know, if the
Speaker 4: bureaucracy has gotten so overwhelming and bloated that it's not
Speaker 4: working for public land management anymore. We have the voting power,
Speaker 4: we have the citizen power to change that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: I think a great example of that was, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty whenever.
Speaker 3: That was when.
Speaker 2: As we moved through this land transfer movement, we were
Speaker 2: able we as a collective outdoor collection of communities, hunters
Speaker 2: and anglers and climbers and mountain bikers and outdoor enthusias
Speaker 2: of all stripes, really stood up and rallied around public
Speaker 2: lands and said, hey, this is not okay to transfer
Speaker 2: these to states, this is not oka to to dispose
Speaker 2: of them. And it got to a point where where
Speaker 2: to get re elected in twenty twenty as a senator,
Speaker 2: several Republican senators had to really make strong stands on
Speaker 2: public lands and get the president at the time to sign,
Speaker 2: for example, the Great American out Doors Act into law,
Speaker 2: things that would show a win on the public lands
Speaker 2: side of things. To help get the support of hunters
Speaker 2: and anglers and other people who care about these things.
Speaker 2: We were able to make it a political necessity. We
Speaker 2: were able to influence change, and that that was just
Speaker 2: for me a very encouraging sign that when we come
Speaker 2: together on some of these things, we can steer the
Speaker 2: ship that's right.
Speaker 4: And I mean I envision a day when, you know,
Speaker 4: never it's never going to stop people trying to get
Speaker 4: a hold of the Utah pubbet lands, when somebody will
Speaker 4: buy them or you know, and there's money to be
Speaker 4: made off of getting rid of our public lands. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can imagine what somebody would pay for the Talladega
Speaker 4: National Forest in Alabama for instance, like like it would
Speaker 4: be a lot, you know. So you have to choose.
Speaker 4: The people have to choose to keep this institution that
Speaker 4: we've inherited. You gotta choose. You gotta choose every and
Speaker 4: kind of it's kind of like being on a personal
Speaker 4: level of self discipline. You gotta choose every day today,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna I'm gonna get up early,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna get to work. I'm gonna make my things happen.
Speaker 4: You got to choose this every day because the world,
Speaker 4: if you just let this slide, you'll lose the public lands.
Speaker 4: It's just they're too valuable.
Speaker 2: Well, and the thing about other people, it's it's an
Speaker 2: unfortunate imbalance. We have to show up for every single fight,
Speaker 2: and we've got to win as many of them as
Speaker 2: we can. And even if we win one of these fights,
Speaker 2: like you just said, there's gonna be another one next
Speaker 2: month or next year, five years down the road, are
Speaker 2: fifty years down the road. These will continue over and
Speaker 2: over and over again. On the flip side, if we
Speaker 2: lose one of these battles, we lose some piece of
Speaker 2: land or some classification of whatever it is. You lose
Speaker 2: one of these battles, you lose these places forever in
Speaker 2: many cases. So it's it's it's it's something we can't
Speaker 2: take lately.
Speaker 4: No, and for one of the dangers of living in
Speaker 4: a functioning country is that you become incredibly complacent. I
Speaker 4: mean it's like I would I often I oftn ask
Speaker 4: people to imagine what the United States would be like.
Speaker 4: Say you're raising your grandchildren in a place where the
Speaker 4: public lands have been that whole idea has been lost,
Speaker 4: and maybe you kept the national parks where you can
Speaker 4: go if you you know you can't take your dog.
Speaker 4: You gotta obey all the rules because everybody's there. You know,
Speaker 4: you can't go out on the Blm Lands and walk
Speaker 4: for a week. You can't go out in the Missouri
Speaker 4: Breaks of Montana and and go illk hunting without paying
Speaker 4: or getting permission. You know, you can't float the Missouri
Speaker 4: River in camp I just ask people. You can't go
Speaker 4: to the Sipsy Wilderness in Alabama or the Bienville National
Speaker 4: Forest in Mississippi and just go down to the creek
Speaker 4: with the kids. You gotta either pay or you got
Speaker 4: to own it. I ask people all the time, what
Speaker 4: would that would your country? How would that affect you? Well,
Speaker 4: for a growing number of people, mark they don't care.
Speaker 4: They don't go outside. They're own their game boys or
Speaker 4: whatever you call it. And you know, and they don't care.
Speaker 4: But for us, for the people who know, and the
Speaker 4: people who know what our country, the beauty of our country,
Speaker 4: American dirt, right, American water, American mountains. This is how
Speaker 4: you get to experience this. This is where the rich
Speaker 4: and the poor they all get the same. This is
Speaker 4: America to me, and it's not just to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 2: different parts of our American society, government, political system that
Speaker 2: feel very out of our hands, that fear feel out
Speaker 2: of our control, that feel so far above us and
Speaker 2: what well, yes, yes that is true. But my point being,
Speaker 2: I personally don't feel like I have much influence over
Speaker 2: or could really change something when it comes to let's say,
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence policy and how that's going to impact the
Speaker 2: future of our government and defense system and privacy matters,
Speaker 2: let's say, but public lands and wildlife. Actually, we have
Speaker 2: some pretty strong tangible means to influence decisions there. There
Speaker 2: are there are systems in place, and it's it's really
Speaker 2: I mean, it's still huge, but it's still relatively approachable
Speaker 2: enough that our voice is actually mattered. There are clear,
Speaker 2: simple things we can do that can help, Like, we
Speaker 2: can change this. This is a part of our country
Speaker 2: that we should not feel nihilistic about because we actually
Speaker 2: can change the narrative.
Speaker 4: And we have since eighteen ninety one podcast I was
Speaker 4: looked up. They had this guy, I think it was
Speaker 4: in the twenties. They were the Week's Act had been
Speaker 4: passed nineteen eleven, which allowed the federal government to buy
Speaker 4: like logged out and abandoned lands in the East. Right,
Speaker 4: they wanted their own national forests, and they had this guy,
Speaker 4: Uncle Joe Kennon. He was a Senator from Illinois, and
Speaker 4: every time anybody brought up in Congress that you know,
Speaker 4: to purchase like the Apalachical and National forests, he would say,
Speaker 4: not one cent for scenery. And he would yell the
Speaker 4: same thing over and over, rope and uh. And so
Speaker 4: we have we have had this. We have had Uncle
Speaker 4: Joe Cannon with us since eighteen ninety one. At least
Speaker 4: we had him with the robber barons in Montana, you know,
Speaker 4: who said those who follow us can damn well take
Speaker 4: care of themselves and then like drink some kind of
Speaker 4: like super good liquor, you know, and while making fun
Speaker 4: of all the people like working in the mine. But
Speaker 4: we've had these people forever, and I think of Uncle
Speaker 4: Joe Cannon. They still set up the Bankhead National Forest
Speaker 4: in Alabama, Appalachian in Florida, the White Mountains National Forest.
Speaker 4: He was yelling not one ship for trainery while we
Speaker 4: while the rest of us were getting all this beautiful
Speaker 4: stuff done. Right. Yeah. So what's happened more recently that
Speaker 4: I really want to see changed is that we have
Speaker 4: thrown public lands and conservation and clean water and the
Speaker 4: future of our hunting vision in a culture war basket
Speaker 4: where somehow it landed on the left side when it
Speaker 4: couldn't be no more.
Speaker 6: The most destructive environmental regimes on earth have been communists
Speaker 6: have been leftists, true, and like Pinochet, and Chili was
Speaker 6: a right winger and he was pretty bad.
Speaker 4: Rady gave away the really sold their rivers. But the
Speaker 4: trick was authoritarian regimes on right or left have been
Speaker 4: terrible for people's freedom and for the environment. But we
Speaker 4: have got to get conservation in the public lands out
Speaker 4: of the culture wars basket. And we it's not in
Speaker 4: there for me, it's not in there for you, But
Speaker 4: we've got to get them out, and we've got to
Speaker 4: bring them in front of the two political parties and
Speaker 4: say this is what we're gonna do, buddy, little little feller.
Speaker 4: We're keeping the National Forest Bureau of Land Management lands.
Speaker 4: We're keeping all of our public lands and our National
Speaker 4: Wildlife refuges, which are unbelievable crown jewels. We're keeping all
Speaker 4: that stuff. We're gonna have clean water to fish in
Speaker 4: and drink and big, strong, healthy kids raised on big
Speaker 4: clean air because this is America. And now you can
Speaker 4: argue over how to achieve that yeah, boys and girls
Speaker 4: in Congress. But that goal is one that is going
Speaker 4: to be outside of your political like grooviness, whatever it
Speaker 4: is you're doing with the big signs where you're taking
Speaker 4: the tax payer money and making big signs in Utah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and with that action.
Speaker 2: And rather than this being an argument over is this
Speaker 2: a goal that you know one party is going to
Speaker 2: pursue and one's not. How about we argue over the
Speaker 2: solutions rather than like doesn't matter, because it matters. We
Speaker 2: have to make it known to both parties that this
Speaker 2: matters to us. And then yeah, let's get the right
Speaker 2: side and the left side to then debate and argue
Speaker 2: and you know, butt heads over the right ways to
Speaker 2: get there. But when it's all on one side, we're
Speaker 2: in trouble.
Speaker 4: We're in trouble. And it's not I mean, I just
Speaker 4: don't think, well, I know people, people who know if
Speaker 4: you fish or hunt, particularly, you know that you can't
Speaker 4: do that without clean water and public lands and public access.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not like some kind of theory. It's
Speaker 4: not abstract. And the other problem is is we inherited this.
Speaker 4: I'm older than you are, but you and I have
Speaker 4: come up in a time where we had these things
Speaker 4: based on the work and hard fault battles of our forebears.
Speaker 4: I mean, the same kind of way we fought King George,
Speaker 4: like we got this, we don't really have the right
Speaker 4: to go, like, ah, it's just too much, you know,
Speaker 4: like Beavis and butthead that thing where they were going
Speaker 4: to save the people in the burning airplane but they
Speaker 4: couldn't get the door opened, and he goes, he go
Speaker 4: Beavis says, a, this is too hard, and the other
Speaker 4: guy goes, yes, something's hard, it's not worth doing, and
Speaker 4: they just leave and the planet bloods up. It's like
Speaker 4: we inherited something wonderful, yeah, and we just can't. It
Speaker 4: ain't gonna go on my watch.
Speaker 2: No, so so it I'm I'm happy that our conversation
Speaker 2: today is one that has some good news, which is
Speaker 2: that this lawsuit that was still concerning for a lot
Speaker 2: of people has been thrown out, so that battle was won.
Speaker 2: We got you know, that gopher was knocked on the head.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, that gopher. There's many other gophers coming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some more gophers coming, right. It seems like this
Speaker 2: is a sign of more to come. Can you can
Speaker 2: you can you elaborate a little bit of what you
Speaker 2: think might be coming next or what we need to
Speaker 2: be keeping an eye out, because it seems like this
Speaker 2: is not an anomaly, right right.
Speaker 4: So the the problem with politics in the United States
Speaker 4: right now is that it's become oversimplified, you know, And
Speaker 4: that's true, and in this public land so that the
Speaker 4: public land thing should not be a political issue, but
Speaker 4: it is. So what I think is coming is that
Speaker 4: we are going to see more and more defunding of
Speaker 4: the agencies that manage these lands. I know that the
Speaker 4: wildlife refuges are kind of in funding crisis now, and
Speaker 4: you're gonna see more and more. It's it's there's actually
Speaker 4: a strategy here that's been going on since the seventies eighties,
Speaker 4: where it's called defund and decry. So Congress doesn't allogate
Speaker 4: the money to the to the say the US Forest
Speaker 4: Service or the Forest Service has to spend all its
Speaker 4: money on fires that doesn't get any more, and then
Speaker 4: there's no trail work done, and then there's no there's
Speaker 4: no creek restoration work done, there's no logging clean up done,
Speaker 4: and people go like the the campground isn't clean enough,
Speaker 4: and people go, this is ridiculous. I didn't bring my
Speaker 4: family out here to look at a turned over outhouse.
Speaker 4: And then you say, then somebody goes, you know, what
Speaker 4: would really be good is if they didn't have this
Speaker 4: far service stuff anyway, because they're not doing the job,
Speaker 4: are they so? And that's what is that. I see
Speaker 4: that coming big time, and and I see overcrowding of
Speaker 4: public lands. I thought it was gonna bring more constituents
Speaker 4: in just to celebrate public lands. But in places overcrowded
Speaker 4: on public lands, like during the COVID years year or
Speaker 4: whatever that was, uh, people are going, man, this is awful.
Speaker 4: There's too many people. And so I see that people
Speaker 4: the ones who want to divest us of the public lands,
Speaker 4: they're gonna be getting working the budgets down and they're
Speaker 4: gonna be pointing out every instance of mismanagement and then going,
Speaker 4: wouldn't it be good if like you didn't even have
Speaker 4: this mansion?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, you know, like you said, politics has unfortunately
Speaker 2: gotten I guess I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 3: But politics are tribal.
Speaker 2: They raise a lot of emotions that you get these
Speaker 2: like team kind of ideas where if you identify as
Speaker 2: a Republican or identify as a Democrat, you feel like
Speaker 2: you're kind of you have to take everything in that bucket, right.
Speaker 2: But if you were to look at the administration coming
Speaker 2: in here next week and set everything else aside, everything
Speaker 2: else that might that they're doing good, every decision that
Speaker 2: we might be in supportive and if you look simply
Speaker 2: at what happened last time around when it comes to
Speaker 2: public lands, there are a series of trends which I
Speaker 2: think fall in line with what you just said. I mean,
Speaker 2: for example, last time the guy put in charge of
Speaker 2: the Bureau of Land Management was one of the most
Speaker 2: prominent folks speaking out against public lands, speaking out about
Speaker 2: disposing of public lands, and that guy was put in
Speaker 2: charge of the public lands last time. The playbook was
Speaker 2: written by this guy again for the upcoming administration on
Speaker 2: how to get rid of public lands, how to like
Speaker 2: you said, defund, decry, etc. There was this death of
Speaker 2: a thousand cuts that was taking place over the course
Speaker 2: of that four years, where you saw many of our
Speaker 2: national monuments significantly reduced in size, like Bear's Ears, where
Speaker 2: I know you spend a bunch of time recently, Ascalante,
Speaker 2: you saw some of some very special places, there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of conversation around whether they are the right
Speaker 2: place for really risky mining projects, things like you know
Speaker 2: the Boundary Waters area where that was opened up possibly
Speaker 2: for leases, and then most recently that was a moratorium
Speaker 2: was put in place, but there we might see that
Speaker 2: opened up again. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
Speaker 2: an incredible iconic landscape of America, has been debated for
Speaker 2: many decades, and whether or not that's to be opened
Speaker 2: up for drilling never was opened up until this last administration.
Speaker 2: The Roadless Rule something that's protected these last roadless areas
Speaker 2: across our national forests that was rescinded in the areas
Speaker 2: such as the Tongest National Forest. So there's there's all
Speaker 2: of these different examples where public lands and healthy wild
Speaker 2: places were kind of slashed away at, picked away at,
Speaker 2: picked away at, picked away at, defunded, et cetera. Everything
Speaker 2: else aside in this one arena, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: sign for concern based on what happened last time around.
Speaker 4: Yes, do you expect a.
Speaker 2: That to continue as it was? Do you think it's
Speaker 2: going to accelerate given the fact that there's not a
Speaker 2: second time around they're shooting for.
Speaker 3: This is like, this is it?
Speaker 2: Do you have any other thoughts predictions on as far
Speaker 2: as what we need to be keeping tabs on, prepared
Speaker 2: to fight back on anything like that.
Speaker 4: I do so. One the last one twenty sixteen through
Speaker 4: we saw the rescinding of the monuments in Utah, right,
Speaker 4: so there was a weird quid pro quo there where
Speaker 4: Utah kind of delivered for President Trump and so they
Speaker 4: got these things in return. And that's a big can
Speaker 4: of worms. It's really interesting. I think people should that
Speaker 4: are listening to this should be looking at that, like,
Speaker 4: you know, you deliver so x number the majority of
Speaker 4: the vote and you'll get this. You know, did the
Speaker 4: American people want the reduction of Bears, Ears or Grand
Speaker 4: Staircase Escalante? They did not, and they said that repeatedly,
Speaker 4: but they got that. That's what happened to us anyway.
Speaker 4: So in a sense that was a but in a
Speaker 4: sense that was a quid pro quo to the Utah.
Speaker 4: So I think that's really repulsive and I don't think
Speaker 4: that the American people are going to accept that. But
Speaker 4: like the appointment of William Parker Penley as head of
Speaker 4: the BLM, who is this fossil from the early Reagan
Speaker 4: years who was so scandal ridden even then as a
Speaker 4: young man that he went out with James Watt back
Speaker 4: in those days. Right, But so so there was this
Speaker 4: fossil there that they found because they were, as President
Speaker 4: Trump said, the first time, we were highly unprepared to win.
Speaker 4: We were really not prepared. We didn't understand so much
Speaker 4: of what we wanted to do during those four years.
Speaker 4: Whether you agree with that or not. Right, So, on
Speaker 4: this administration this time, as my wife said this the
Speaker 4: other day, the American people voted to kick over the
Speaker 4: apple cart for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: a lot of apples have spilled out, and we're going
Speaker 4: to determine. Now, this is way different than the first administration,
Speaker 4: although it's so similar in that it is radically pro business. Okay,
Speaker 4: so if you can make money mining out right outside
Speaker 4: the boundary waters, that's going to be on the table,
Speaker 4: and the America people will be asked to engage deeply
Speaker 4: to say we're pro business as well, we understand these things.
Speaker 4: To have a multinational global company come and put in
Speaker 4: jeopardy to boundary waters, it's not our dear idea of
Speaker 4: good business. We're not going to do that, Okay. Ambler
Speaker 4: Road in Alaska probably not good business to open that
Speaker 4: up again. I would ask anybody to listen to the
Speaker 4: podcast I did with John Leshie about the eighteen seventy
Speaker 4: two mining law. We're talking about expanding mining on public
Speaker 4: lands in the United States East and West under a
Speaker 4: law written in eighteen seventy two to encourage a guy
Speaker 4: with a pickaxe and a burrow to go grab public
Speaker 4: land to make it his own and dig a hole
Speaker 4: and find something that we needed. That law has to
Speaker 4: be reformed, repealed, rescinded before we can do mining in
Speaker 4: America in a in a sensible fashion of good business.
Speaker 4: So the fact that that law is not on the
Speaker 4: table here, that's very concerning. People should be working on
Speaker 4: that now. The American people should demand that American minerals
Speaker 4: are used for by American companies to produce American jobs
Speaker 4: and American resources. All right. So there's going to be
Speaker 4: a radical pro business emphasis in the Trump administration, Okay,
Speaker 4: but I myself am not afraid. I think that we
Speaker 4: should be wary, and we should say that's good business
Speaker 4: and that's not good business, and we will stand for this,
Speaker 4: and we will not stand for this, and we're going
Speaker 4: to be able to do that. And for instance, the
Speaker 4: government efficiency or whatever, the department of whatever that extraining
Speaker 4: this extracurricular thing is, we could use that mark, We
Speaker 4: could use that, We could use that in public lands management.
Speaker 4: How do we make public lands management better, more efficient?
Speaker 4: How do we get local communities employed finn and timber
Speaker 4: in the Tongus? How do we get local communities employed
Speaker 4: restoring creeks in the bitter Root after those fires? Right?
Speaker 4: Because we are not doing that right now and it's
Speaker 4: not good.
Speaker 3: Doesn't that come back though, to the budget issues?
Speaker 4: So much of it we don't on prioritization of the budget.
Speaker 4: I noticed that we have lots of budget for certain
Speaker 4: things that I don't particularly think are healthy. I'm saying,
Speaker 4: like the American people are going to have to say,
Speaker 4: you know, creek restoration on public lands is a priority
Speaker 4: for me, and you can do whatever you want with
Speaker 4: this money, but we would like to see it allocated
Speaker 4: in this way more efficiently as well. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: not sure that that building new RV parks is really
Speaker 4: a great use of the money. For instance, Yeah, when
Speaker 4: you have areas where you could, you could fence off
Speaker 4: rapoia in places and create incredible fisheries in clean water
Speaker 4: down Street when you have just all of this work
Speaker 4: that we could be do with. So I just I'm
Speaker 4: not afraid of this. I may turn out to be
Speaker 4: a Pollyanna or overly optimistic, but I believe that when
Speaker 4: the American people decided to upset the apple cart here
Speaker 4: that it doesn't mean that we want filthier water and
Speaker 4: no public lands and and all of us to have
Speaker 4: our all our rare earth materials stolen by some company
Speaker 4: from Chili.
Speaker 2: Would you would you say, though, given what seems to
Speaker 2: be a pretty clear, as you said, probi business emphasis
Speaker 2: for the next four years, very pro business, if we
Speaker 2: were to grow complacent and bury our heads and our
Speaker 2: phones and our Netflix shows, and or just being out
Speaker 2: in the woods by ourselves, hunting and fishing and just
Speaker 2: doing our own thing, if we were to do that
Speaker 2: and not engage, whether it's going to come up in
Speaker 2: the next four years with this radical, very pro business agenda,
Speaker 2: would it be fair to say that we could.
Speaker 3: Expect to see a lot of these special places.
Speaker 2: In danger if we don't make sure we're in it.
Speaker 4: One hundred and Not only that, but they're the the
Speaker 4: the powers that wont to take over public lands and
Speaker 4: sell them to their wealthy friends. Our ascendant right now, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean the I mean, we have probably
Speaker 4: the most billionaires making policy that we've ever had, and
Speaker 4: the few is like normal people. So you're gonna have
Speaker 4: to counter that. But there's three hun undred and forty
Speaker 4: something million Americans. Let me, I have a quote that
Speaker 4: I always use, and it's perfect for this thing. The
Speaker 4: struggle may be a moral one, or it may be
Speaker 4: a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical,
Speaker 4: but there will be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without
Speaker 4: a demand. It never did, and it never did. Will
Speaker 4: find out just what any people will quietly submit to,
Speaker 4: And you have found out the exact measure of injustice
Speaker 4: and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these
Speaker 4: will continue until they're resisted with words or blows or both.
Speaker 4: The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
Speaker 4: those whom they oppress. That was Frederick Douglass talking about
Speaker 4: slavery in the South. Wow. So that's what I think.
Speaker 4: If you are not willing to stand up, or if
Speaker 4: you're watching and the running on the treadmill at the
Speaker 4: gym watching Fox News. They're making you think there's only
Speaker 4: two kinds of Americans and they hate each other and
Speaker 4: they won't ever agree on anything. And I don't know
Speaker 4: why the other side does it too, I guess, but
Speaker 4: I don't know why they're what motive we have for
Speaker 4: dividing the American people, But if we remain this divided,
Speaker 4: we'll lose the public lands and the conservation that supports
Speaker 4: hunting and fishing. We shouldn't be divided over that.
Speaker 2: We have talked about various permutations of this issue, you know,
Speaker 2: at least over the last decade. You and I I
Speaker 2: know what You've talked about many many other people over
Speaker 2: many decades. So now in twenty twenty five, we're quarter
Speaker 2: of the way through this new millennia.
Speaker 3: I guess it'd be or sorry century. What can we
Speaker 3: do now?
Speaker 2: What are the most positive productive means for not just
Speaker 2: enduring what might be coming, but also influencing in a
Speaker 2: positive way. What's the battle cry? What's the game plan
Speaker 2: here of these coming years?
Speaker 4: I think we're going to have to So the energy
Speaker 4: is on the right wing at the moment, and we
Speaker 4: as conservatives or whatever you political label you want to
Speaker 4: put on most hunters and fishermen are going to have
Speaker 4: to get through to the elected people, the people we
Speaker 4: vote for, that these things are priorities and that they
Speaker 4: will not be thrown in some basket of culture war topics.
Speaker 4: That these are the wildlife refuge system. It's so wonderful,
Speaker 4: like it is such a crown jewel of America. The
Speaker 4: national forests are so important to us, our us as
Speaker 4: as Americans, our identity, our freedom. Okay, these are not
Speaker 4: political footballs. And so we're going to have to get
Speaker 4: through into this pro business community that we that there
Speaker 4: are certain things we will not be, we will not accept,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean this is another topic. But we
Speaker 4: we have huge success stories all the way back to
Speaker 4: eighteen ninety one on conservation in America, and huge the
Speaker 4: dextervation of the bison, the loss of almost all the
Speaker 4: waterfowl that you know. So we we had these huge
Speaker 4: failures and these enormous successes, and we're doing both right
Speaker 4: now again. But we're like we're failing with clean water
Speaker 4: throughout the Midwest, really failing. And we let the Clean
Speaker 4: Water Act be trimmed back to its original definition in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy two to the point where we're failing to
Speaker 4: protect the clean water that supports fishing and swimming and
Speaker 4: all that. So we have these huge failures, and the
Speaker 4: folks that we just elected are not the ideal people
Speaker 4: to address that. Let's say that I'm going to be
Speaker 4: very objective here. The folks that we just object elected.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, for instance, will tell you that he doesn't
Speaker 4: know anything about that. That's what he told the Farm
Speaker 4: Bureau when they rescinded the Waters of the US rule
Speaker 4: last time. He said, I don't even know what it is,
Speaker 4: but it's terrible, and you folks told me that we
Speaker 4: don't want it, and so I'm getting rid of it.
Speaker 4: He said the same thing about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Speaker 4: He said, nobody cares about this. It's open, right. So
Speaker 4: obviously people didn't speak up and say that's not true.
Speaker 4: We do care about it. And you may not support
Speaker 4: the Waters of the US rule, but I'll bet you
Speaker 4: don't support eating drinking blue green algae in de moins.
Speaker 4: So these folks, I see this as an opportunity, mark totally.
Speaker 4: I don't think somebody like Elon Musk is so focused
Speaker 4: on Mars or Venus or whatever that planet they want
Speaker 4: to go to, which is fine with me. I'm like,
Speaker 4: have at it, man, little rockets, you know, like I
Speaker 4: like smart people. Sure, right, But here's the thing. A
Speaker 4: guy who's spending a lot of time thinking about Mars
Speaker 4: and stuff, he's probably not thinking about the water fishing
Speaker 4: in Des Moines, yes, or in Sioux Falls. And that's
Speaker 4: our business and that's what we know. And so but
Speaker 4: I would say this, I doubt that President Trump or
Speaker 4: Elon Musk or vvak Ramus, I bet none of them
Speaker 4: actually are going like, you know, what I really want
Speaker 4: to do is get rid of the Talladega National Forest, right,
Speaker 4: you know, you know what I bet i'd like to do.
Speaker 4: I'd like to pollute mobile base so nobody can fish
Speaker 4: in it or have a nice house on it. They're
Speaker 4: not doing that. And these are jd Vance for instance,
Speaker 4: when to Yale whatever, the guy has some education, he's
Speaker 4: not gonna say that clean water is not important. So
Speaker 4: it's up to us now to put some apples back
Speaker 4: in this apple cart and say this apple's really important.
Speaker 4: Don't let that one go down the hill. And I
Speaker 4: honestly think that we're in a place where we could have,
Speaker 4: We could effect positive change in the United States right
Speaker 4: now that to me, we've been a little too complacent
Speaker 4: to do. We've kind of rested on the laurels of
Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies and a Wilderness Act of sixty four
Speaker 4: and the dust bowl stuff. You know, that's what I think.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty excited. Actually. I think it's a very dangerous
Speaker 4: time for all the reasons you mentioned, and I think
Speaker 4: that times of danger kind of make me feel better.
Speaker 2: So what are some specific tactics or actions that we
Speaker 2: as individuals can take to help make sure that we
Speaker 2: grab this apple, put it back in the cart, and say, hey, folks,
Speaker 2: this one's really important. Do not screw this one up,
Speaker 2: give this one some tender love and care. Listen to us.
Speaker 3: How do we actually do that?
Speaker 4: Hell?
Speaker 2: Because I it's an idea and it's a sentiment that
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense, But I think a lot
Speaker 2: of folks then still wonder, like, well, what does that
Speaker 2: mean to my daily life, or what does that mean
Speaker 2: for me this week? Or how do why is an
Speaker 2: individual in Des Moines, Iowa actually do that?
Speaker 4: Well, I've decided and it's I do handle the podcast
Speaker 4: or back undrenders and anglers. So maybe I have a
Speaker 4: conflict of interest there, but I decided in the last
Speaker 4: ten years looking, I've been writing this book for five
Speaker 4: and a lot of the research was on how did
Speaker 4: we get like how did you get the Clean Water
Speaker 4: Act passed? You know? And one as a as a
Speaker 4: as an individual, read books and listen to podcasts and
Speaker 4: and and really concentrate on what it is that you
Speaker 4: think is important in life. I'm this is kind of like, like,
Speaker 4: like what this is. I wrote a piece for Field
Speaker 4: and Stream years ago and it was in response to
Speaker 4: unfettered energy development on their own plateau which I went
Speaker 4: to see and I thought, this is not good, right
Speaker 4: this We can get the energy without doing this right?
Speaker 4: And uh, I wrote a piece called what do you
Speaker 4: really believe in? And so number one, I'm going to
Speaker 4: answer this as quickly as I can. What do I
Speaker 4: really believe in? You know, like clean water and having
Speaker 4: kids swimming and catching crawdads and a creek that doesn't
Speaker 4: poison them, having public lands where I can go, like
Speaker 4: a person can go hunting for a week or even
Speaker 4: a day, or you could just take a six pack
Speaker 4: of beer out and sit on the river, you know, right,
Speaker 4: so I think that the hunters and fishermen are listening
Speaker 4: to your podcast are going to say, I do believe
Speaker 4: in these things. I believe in them strongly. And the
Speaker 4: second thing, which it took me a while because I'm
Speaker 4: kind of highly individualistic, was that old Hemingway thing from
Speaker 4: to have and have not, where the guy says a
Speaker 4: man alone just ain't got no chance. And the truth
Speaker 4: is is Trout Unlimited backcountry hunters and anglers, Isaac Walton
Speaker 4: League Ducks Unlimited to the Mix is probably the greatest
Speaker 4: wetlands conservation group in the world. They all have problems.
Speaker 4: They're running by human beings, and human beings are fallible, yes,
Speaker 4: but Americans in large teams have really driven the positive
Speaker 4: changes that we're talking about. And that I hate. I
Speaker 4: don't hate to say it, I just it took me
Speaker 4: a long time to get to this is you gotta
Speaker 4: join with like minded brothers and sisters. And those numbers
Speaker 4: equate to a politician going like sending the staff. We
Speaker 4: got to meet these folks. Sorry, I don't want to
Speaker 4: hear about clean water in Iowa, but there's like twenty
Speaker 4: five thousand people who might not vote for me next time.
Speaker 4: And then one of the old time politicians. I think
Speaker 4: a guy told me this once in DC. He said, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a good idea, Now make me do it. That's it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And it's tough because used to be sportsman. In the
Speaker 4: nineteen thirties, they had all of these local sportsmen groups
Speaker 4: and Montana was full of them. I don't know about
Speaker 4: where you grew up, if it was or not, but
Speaker 4: Montana was full of them. Or Valley County Sportsmen, great
Speaker 4: prickly pair of sportsmen, Hellgate hunters and anglers in Missoula,
Speaker 4: and they were incredibly politically active on a statewide and
Speaker 4: local level. And those they got older and older. I
Speaker 4: would go to the meetings, you know, and everybody got
Speaker 4: older and older, and then they just kind of they're
Speaker 4: still around, some of them, but they've they've waned in power,
Speaker 4: and so I would like to see that again. But
Speaker 4: I don't think we're gonna see that because people are
Speaker 4: so busy, man, Like you got little kids. My kids
Speaker 4: are grown and I'm still like like college tuition. Oh,
Speaker 4: and everybody's busy, but it's not. You're not too busy
Speaker 4: really to join like back huntry hunters and anglers or
Speaker 4: or Trout Unlimited or something. Yeah, and they're thereby amplify
Speaker 4: your voice, multiply your voice. That's my answer. I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what is the public lands equivalent to that? Like National
Speaker 4: Forest Foundation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, like you said, BHA is about as
Speaker 2: good of a modern day version of these sportsman's clubs too,
Speaker 2: right with Pine Knights and things like that. Like that's
Speaker 2: that's the best example I've seen of the younger crowd
Speaker 2: activating as a community.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I would let me add this to And you've
Speaker 4: done some of this, I've done some I've done some
Speaker 4: of it, But I would like to do more volunteering
Speaker 4: with like these BHA things and in meeting people of
Speaker 4: like mind. Ye. I gotta tell you. I was. I
Speaker 4: was feeling very beat down the other day, and I
Speaker 4: was working on a chapter in my book which involved Alabama.
Speaker 4: And I called a young guy there who's a biologist
Speaker 4: and a fanatical hunting and fision guy, and he was
Speaker 4: on his way to waterfowl hunting up in North Alabama,
Speaker 4: and it happened to be in a place that I
Speaker 4: went to in high school. And we got it on
Speaker 4: Google Earth and we looked at it, and I felt
Speaker 4: better for three days after just talking with Joe Jenkins
Speaker 4: and his enthusiasm for going hunting down there, and I
Speaker 4: realized that there's all these people who love the same
Speaker 4: things I do and are are really motivated to fight
Speaker 4: for them, and that you meet those It's like those
Speaker 4: fence removal things they had in Colorado and in eastern
Speaker 4: Montana while wetlands restoration planting projects. It's, yeah, we gotta
Speaker 4: we gotta seek out people of like mind and begin
Speaker 4: to form tribe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get that snowball rolling and those little local volunteer
Speaker 2: efforts might not save the world today, but those are
Speaker 2: those start points. And like you said, you bring community together,
Speaker 2: you establish new connections, you build energy off of each other,
Speaker 2: you gain your tank is refueled by being around other
Speaker 2: like minded people. Yeah, so such a great example.
Speaker 4: You know, stories and then and I just saw it
Speaker 4: like if I were, if I were really young now,
Speaker 4: I'd be volunteering on a lot of those to try
Speaker 4: to find people of like mine. Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was such a great You know, I've
Speaker 2: done ten of those over the last twenty four months
Speaker 2: or so for the Working for Wildlife tour, and that
Speaker 2: was my biggest takeaway from that was just the power
Speaker 2: of bringing these people together that all care about this stuff,
Speaker 2: and so many signs of hope just by being around
Speaker 2: each other and hearing stories and doing something actual, tangible,
Speaker 2: positive right here and now you're making a positi difference.
Speaker 2: Right now, you are regaining agency. We talked earlier about
Speaker 2: how so much feels outside of our control. But when
Speaker 2: you're out there on the ground planting a tree alongside
Speaker 2: another guy or girl who also loves hunting or fishing
Speaker 2: in the outdoors, you can't help but feel a little
Speaker 2: bit better, and you can't help but be inspired to
Speaker 2: do a little bit better the next time too.
Speaker 4: I mean that's how we've been doing it since cave
Speaker 4: man days, right, Yeah, Like get that mammoth and then
Speaker 4: everybody think happy everybody was when you got the mammoth,
Speaker 4: and like you're clapping him on the back. You might
Speaker 4: hate this guy, you know when you're not hunting, but
Speaker 4: you're going like, man, what a good shot with that
Speaker 4: at laddle, right, Like this is community and the and
Speaker 4: the ladies are all happy. They're like hauling the meat back,
Speaker 4: you know, and it's like this is community, this is tribe.
Speaker 4: It's something in us. It's as old as human beings, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: And I was I was following y'all when you were
Speaker 4: doing that. We were actually and see, I've been doing
Speaker 4: this big planting job, but that's a paid job with
Speaker 4: the Mule Deer Foundation. It's it's a beautiful job, but
Speaker 4: it's not the same. Everybody's there to you know, it's work.
Speaker 4: Everybody's with a huge gold but it's work. And those
Speaker 4: volunteer things. We rolled fence, and dude, it was so
Speaker 4: I know you've been doing this, but it was so
Speaker 4: it is actionable, quantifiable yep. Right, we were taking they
Speaker 4: were dead. There was hair and dead mule deer at
Speaker 4: this crossing and that fence was completely useless. It was
Speaker 4: just left there from after a forest fire like twenty
Speaker 4: years ago. And we rolled that fence right out of
Speaker 4: that mule deer trail that came from the high country
Speaker 4: to the to the winter room.
Speaker 3: You did it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Observable, actionable, quantifiable. That's that's what I kept asking people,
Speaker 4: like with the climate chain stuff and all that that
Speaker 4: I got so dis engaged from because I was like,
Speaker 4: I was like, I just need to see something actionable, quantifiable,
Speaker 4: and observable, and that's you know, planting, restoring wetlands, restoring grassland,
Speaker 4: clanton trees, burning fuels reduction yep. I was like, I
Speaker 4: won't add actionable, quantifiable, observable, and those volunteer projects are
Speaker 4: all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, such a great example. So I was going
Speaker 2: to ask you a question which you just already answered mostly,
Speaker 2: but I will give you an opportunity to add anything
Speaker 2: else to it. The question being, you know, one of
Speaker 2: the first things you said that we should do entering
Speaker 2: this era is to get educated, right, to pay attention
Speaker 2: to this stuff. And so I think this is something
Speaker 2: I've brought up to you maybe every time we've talked
Speaker 2: some version of this. But you know, there's the famous
Speaker 2: Leopold quote the curse of an ecological education is discovering
Speaker 2: that you live in a world of wounds, something along
Speaker 2: those lines. He said, Basically, the more we educate ourselves
Speaker 2: on these issues, the more we pay attention to the
Speaker 2: news about the environment and public lands and wildlife, the
Speaker 2: more you're going to realize there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: in danger, there's a lot of stuff getting you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that's not doing great right.
Speaker 2: So what I'm always looking for are ways to maintain hope,
Speaker 2: ways not to feel like, man, this whole thing's going
Speaker 2: to the shit or eventually. You mentioned a couple of
Speaker 2: great examples ways to do that, getting involved community volunteering.
Speaker 2: You mentioned just talking to someone who's going on hunting
Speaker 2: and being.
Speaker 3: Reinvigorated through that.
Speaker 2: Do you have any other things in your life that
Speaker 2: help you stay positive, because sometimes when you zoom out
Speaker 2: and you look at the long term trajectory of our
Speaker 2: natural world and the environment and clean air and wildlife
Speaker 2: across the world and all that kind of stuff, it
Speaker 2: can get a little dark and dreary.
Speaker 3: How do you stay hopeful?
Speaker 4: Boy? I hope you don't edit that. You may have
Speaker 4: to edit this out. But uh So, the all species
Speaker 4: go through population overshoots, and not all of them, but most,
Speaker 4: and they fill up their ecological niche and then they
Speaker 4: decline in numbers. They don't go extinct. It's not like
Speaker 4: apocalypse and fire and that you right. So, human population
Speaker 4: on our planet is supposed to peak at like nine
Speaker 4: point eight ten billion, maybe twelve, I'm not sure, but
Speaker 4: it peaks at about two hundred and fifty years much
Speaker 4: less probably, and at that point, the children, our great
Speaker 4: great grandchildren are going to be living in a world
Speaker 4: that is in recovering from all of the things that
Speaker 4: people did to get insatiable resource demand. Right. So here's
Speaker 4: my point, and I call this carry in the fire.
Speaker 4: Those of us who understand how powerful the rivers and
Speaker 4: the forests and the wildlife are have a unique moment
Speaker 4: in history. What we prioritize, conserve, protect, steward now is
Speaker 4: what's going to be in that recovering world in one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty years. And so there has never been
Speaker 4: a time where it was more important to teach your
Speaker 4: children to hunt and shoot and how beautiful it is
Speaker 4: to hunt squirrels and to take food from the land
Speaker 4: and fish from the water, and know that that water
Speaker 4: is clean enough that it's going to make you strong
Speaker 4: and healthy so you can run one hundred yard dash tomorrow.
Speaker 4: It is or this is physicality too, like to teach
Speaker 4: children and to keep ourselves fit right to be powerful
Speaker 4: and strong, and to teach our children like health and
Speaker 4: connections to nature. Because this is the fire that we're
Speaker 4: going to carry through what this population overshoot into a
Speaker 4: future where maybe there's one billion people on earth and
Speaker 4: there are incredible numbers of wildlife and fish and oceans
Speaker 4: pouring around without big plastic garbage patches and stuff. Right
Speaker 4: but right now is the moment. And I think about that,
Speaker 4: and I think about Doug Talamy's Homegrown National Park stuff
Speaker 4: where they're saying, man, you don't have to have twenty acres.
Speaker 4: You can plant a pollinator belt of native plants in
Speaker 4: your yard and those pollinators are going to drive in
Speaker 4: that place. Like my own backyard garden has so much
Speaker 4: diversity in it now of these insects that I've just
Speaker 4: never seen before, and it's kind of like it's not
Speaker 4: very big, and they came from somewhere and they came
Speaker 4: there because I planted these pollinators. And it's a microcosm.
Speaker 4: But what is the microcosm except for these made up
Speaker 4: of these small things. So I'm I'm actually and it's
Speaker 4: my bias, right, Like I already wanted to teach my
Speaker 4: kid how to pike fish. And my daughter is a
Speaker 4: fisherman and and a hunter, and my son is a
Speaker 4: hunter and a fisherman, and and they they know the
Speaker 4: power of these things because my wife and I taught
Speaker 4: it to them. But it's they're carrying this fire and
Speaker 4: they're young they're not like in big conservation groups going
Speaker 4: to d C advocating with that. That's our business, right,
Speaker 4: but they know what they know where the bread's buttered,
Speaker 4: they know what's powerful. Yeah, and it's our it's our
Speaker 4: business to carry that fire through this time and so
Speaker 4: that that making sure that it goes on.
Speaker 2: It's a hell of an obligation. But we're awfully we're
Speaker 2: awfully fortunate to be able to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful obligation because for me it
Speaker 4: involves doing what I already want to do.
Speaker 3: True, it's a there's a lot worth fighting for still,
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Oh my, so much, there is so much left to
Speaker 4: not left. There's just so much there. Like I mean,
Speaker 4: I live near the Lewis in Clark National Forest, and
Speaker 4: I don't know where you're at on this, but like
Speaker 4: this morning I went, I was going to the dump
Speaker 4: and the wolf. It's called the wolf moon, this moon,
Speaker 4: this January moon, and I don't know if it's an
Speaker 4: optical illusion or not, but it was like five feet
Speaker 4: it was the biggest moon I've ever seen going down
Speaker 4: over the mountains.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I thought, just how lucky I was one to
Speaker 4: have the Bob Marshall wilderness out there west of my house,
Speaker 4: and two to see this moon and had gotten up,
Speaker 4: you know, before you've got light. So I got to
Speaker 4: see this and it was it was a thing where
Speaker 4: I just felt lucky. And to who much is given,
Speaker 4: much is expected. I think.
Speaker 2: Yep, so so true and perfect, perfect sentiments to kind
Speaker 2: of send us out here. Can can you tell us
Speaker 2: how you've you've alluded to this book project you've been
Speaker 2: working on for a few years now. Are you at
Speaker 2: a point you can tell us anything about that yet?
Speaker 2: Can you tease it? Can you give us anything as
Speaker 2: far as what to look forward to or when to
Speaker 2: look forward to it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm I'm gonna finish this year.
Speaker 3: I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I guess it'll be out next year. I'm a but uh,
Speaker 4: it's a public lands book, and it's a lot of
Speaker 4: it is profiles of and of trips like on national
Speaker 4: forests and part of it. I mean I read your
Speaker 4: book early, and you and I are how many years
Speaker 4: ago is that we talked about these projects?
Speaker 2: Well like seven, yeah, something like that, because my book
Speaker 2: came out at the end of twenty nineteen, right, so I.
Speaker 4: Think seven years ago you told me. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I got this contract, I'm working on this book, and
Speaker 4: you're like, I'm working on one too, and you'd been
Speaker 4: at it for a couple of years. But it's and
Speaker 4: your book is also experiential. You know, are talking about
Speaker 4: this before we hit the record, I wanted to do
Speaker 4: a it did turn out to be brief, but a
Speaker 4: history of how we got public lands and an understanding
Speaker 4: of all the issues regard to that. But I wanted
Speaker 4: the second part of the book to be journeys, just trips,
Speaker 4: and so I've done some incredible trips. Mostly I've sat here,
Speaker 4: as you know, as a writer, sat here like a
Speaker 4: limpet glued to this chair. But the it's like places
Speaker 4: like the Tuskegee National Forests in Alabama. It's kind of
Speaker 4: a deep dive into the history and what's there, and
Speaker 4: based around a trip there on the Bartram Trail, which
Speaker 4: if anybody's listening to this, you know, go like as
Speaker 4: the winter gets went towards spring, man, go go look
Speaker 4: at the Bartram Trail, And that's James Bartram, the naturalists
Speaker 4: who went to the Creek Nation back in seventeen nineties,
Speaker 4: I think, and recorded all the plants and all the
Speaker 4: stuff he saw. It was William Bartram, and he he
Speaker 4: wrote a book called The Travels with William Bartram, which
Speaker 4: you should people should read like this is like and
Speaker 4: that was that. That's Alabama. There's another one apple a
Speaker 4: Chicola Forests where you go through the Bradwell Bay Wilderness,
Speaker 4: which's like the strangest likes. It's water up to your
Speaker 4: waist for miles and miles. Should shone National Forests, first
Speaker 4: national forest in America, right with the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve,
Speaker 4: that very first natural forest. We do about a forty
Speaker 4: mile trip through that nice So that's where I've been
Speaker 4: man for all the last you know, three years really
Speaker 4: and it's it's like I said, I've been glued. You're glue.
Speaker 4: You get to do the trips, but then you're glued
Speaker 4: to your you really got to be glued.
Speaker 2: To the You're you're living vicariously through your own words
Speaker 2: for a while there you're wishing you could be out
Speaker 2: there adventuring again, but you're just you gotta get it
Speaker 2: on the page.
Speaker 3: I'm definitely in that.
Speaker 2: I'm in that phase right now for the new project.
Speaker 2: And uh, it takes some takes some discipline that's for sure.
Speaker 3: It's not always the easiest.
Speaker 4: Are there days where you don't get it?
Speaker 3: Are there days?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, there are some days. I I've really tried to
Speaker 2: stick to a little bit. Every day has been my
Speaker 2: mantra this time around, because the first time around, I
Speaker 2: had a lot of days I couldn't do it because
Speaker 2: I couldn't do it quite right. And so my new
Speaker 2: my new method this year, not this year, this project
Speaker 2: has been a little bit of progress every single day
Speaker 2: of the work week at least, and so that it's
Speaker 2: just kind of you're slowly chipping away at it, and
Speaker 2: it's always in the back of your mind, even when
Speaker 2: you're not the computer. You're in the shower, on a
Speaker 2: walk or something, and an idea hits you. So that's
Speaker 2: that's been my approach this time, and so far, so good.
Speaker 2: But you ask me in five.
Speaker 3: More months and I'll tell you whether or not it's
Speaker 3: worked or not.
Speaker 4: Right for sure, Well, I just I mean, I'm very
Speaker 4: impressed with your work, and to some extent, like I
Speaker 4: was when I was talking to you just then, I'm
Speaker 4: listening because I mean, I've been doing this forever and
Speaker 4: I still don't know really, I have never gotten to
Speaker 4: the point where I wake up at eight o'clock, I
Speaker 4: walk in the office at eight o'clock, and I produce
Speaker 4: words until twelve o'clock, and then I go out and
Speaker 4: go fishing. Yeah, or take the kids doing that. I
Speaker 4: never I've never done that. At it's it's always been
Speaker 4: a struggle to figure out where it starts, how to
Speaker 4: I don't know so, but it is a life we've chosen.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: The best thing that has ever happened in my writing
Speaker 2: life might be some of the best advice we could
Speaker 2: give anyone when it comes to trying to tackle some
Speaker 2: of these issues we're talking about, which has been that
Speaker 2: I have given myself permission should just do a little something,
Speaker 2: even if it's not very good, even if it's not perfect,
Speaker 2: even if it's not going to be the best book
Speaker 2: in the world. This is not the best sentence, this
Speaker 2: is not the best paragraph. It's just a little something.
Speaker 2: But I did something, and I gave my self permission
Speaker 2: to just do a little bit of something, even though
Speaker 2: it's not great. And by doing that, it gets the
Speaker 2: ball rolling. And if I can just give myself permission
Speaker 2: to write a few shitty words and not feel bad
Speaker 2: about that it usually leads to me writing a bunch
Speaker 2: of okay words, which then maybe someday I can turn
Speaker 2: into some.
Speaker 3: Page is worth of good words.
Speaker 2: And I think that might be a little bit of
Speaker 2: the trick to making a difference when it comes to
Speaker 2: stewarding our public lands and standing up for wild places.
Speaker 2: It's you know what, you can do a little something today.
Speaker 2: It might not fix it all, but you could sign
Speaker 2: that petition today or maybe next week. You know, you
Speaker 2: could call your representative of your senator and yeah, that's
Speaker 2: not going to fix it all. And maybe you don't
Speaker 2: come across super eloquently on the phone, maybe you're not
Speaker 2: the best speaker, whatever it is, But but do the
Speaker 2: little bit you can today, because all of this stuff,
Speaker 2: little bit by little bit, one crappy paragraph at a time.
Speaker 2: You write a book, or you stand up for your
Speaker 2: public lands, or you save the damn world.
Speaker 4: That is so, that is so you're get on, man.
Speaker 4: I'm glad I know you. One thing, when when you
Speaker 4: finished that, I was thinking about the what the real
Speaker 4: death the doom right is to think that if I
Speaker 4: think about the book all of a sudden, and you
Speaker 4: think about like saving the public lands. Oh and or Daunte.
Speaker 4: Oh my lord, You're like, like, is there going to
Speaker 4: be any fishing in twenty twenty five? You go, I
Speaker 4: don't know. To that is to do small, actionable, quantifiable
Speaker 4: and deserrable things today and and do them while you're
Speaker 4: thinking about it, and then if the rest of the
Speaker 4: day goes the hell you did that? Ye yeah, what's that?
Speaker 3: You had a win, You had.
Speaker 4: To win a small victory. But yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 4: It's like and that's so much of our conservation world
Speaker 4: has gotten to be this like abstract thing. Oh no,
Speaker 4: like the garbage gyre in the ocean or something. You go, ah, no,
Speaker 4: what am I gonna do? Well, the answer is you're
Speaker 4: not gonna do anything about that today. You know, maybe
Speaker 4: you you good? You go over to the tap and
Speaker 4: drink a glass of water instead of buying a plastic bottle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do every little tiny thing we can is a
Speaker 2: starting point.
Speaker 3: It's the next step.
Speaker 7: It's it's progress because perfect perfect the attempt to reach
Speaker 7: perfection leads to a lot of paralysis at least never starting,
Speaker 7: least never doing anything.
Speaker 2: And uh right, yeah, we gotta fight that temptation. We
Speaker 2: gotta we gotta.
Speaker 4: Don't you think there's a there's a terrible human tendency
Speaker 4: too to go like to go to the macrocosm immediately go, well,
Speaker 4: there nothing I can do about that, and that lets
Speaker 4: you off the hook, yep, and you just like go
Speaker 4: grab the grab the coke and the funions and kick
Speaker 4: back and watch another YouTube. You know.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people that have fallen into that trap.
Speaker 4: Myself. Yeah, I mean I kind of I work against
Speaker 4: that trap, like all the time I was. I remember
Speaker 4: back when uh I used to really I was into
Speaker 4: jiu jitsu for like twenty years, you know, and still am.
Speaker 4: But I'm I've aged out of like doing it too
Speaker 4: too hard on as hard as I want to. Uh.
Speaker 4: But people would come to class, you know, and they
Speaker 4: would be all excited and they're go, I'm gonna like
Speaker 4: be a blue belt in three months. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna I'm gonna win the butte, you know. Uh intra
Speaker 4: murals like in like Christmas, and those are the people
Speaker 4: who never came They never came back to class.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And the and the people who go like, wow, man,
Speaker 8: that's a really interesting move, show me that again, and
Speaker 8: then and then they would go up the next night
Speaker 8: and the next night, you know.
Speaker 4: Uh, and it was it was very much of what
Speaker 4: we're talking about. Yeah, the people who wanted to be
Speaker 4: great now were the ones who ended up not coming back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's one small step you can take? What's one
Speaker 2: How can you get one percent better tomorrow? How can
Speaker 2: you make some small tangible difference this week?
Speaker 4: I think, Uh, have you got one that you could
Speaker 4: think of right now, Like on the on the public
Speaker 4: lands thing. I think it would be to tell your
Speaker 4: friends about the Supreme Court decision this morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right, I think so.
Speaker 2: I think that passed along the fact that hey, this
Speaker 2: is a thing that reared its ugly head again and
Speaker 2: we're fortunate that it got shot down. But hey, I
Speaker 2: think I think for me, the overwhelming takeaway from this
Speaker 2: conversation and from just kind of the moment is that
Speaker 2: it's time to re engage.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 2: There's been a little bit of sitting back on our
Speaker 2: laurels the last handful of years. It kind of felt
Speaker 2: like we we you know, won the battle there for
Speaker 2: a moment, and I think it's time to to rally.
Speaker 2: It's time to re engage, start to start really paying
Speaker 2: attention again, because uh, like you said, if we don't engage,
Speaker 2: if we don't stand up on this stuff, there's there's
Speaker 2: folks that have other incentives and other goals in mind
Speaker 2: that are very motivated and in the right position to
Speaker 2: do so.
Speaker 4: They are very motivated and at the moment, if you
Speaker 4: don't don't challenge you, if you don't stand up for
Speaker 4: what you want, those people are definitely ascendant at the moment.
Speaker 4: I mean, like the right wing think tanks like Heritage
Speaker 4: Foundation from the they have an ALEC American Legislatory Exchange
Speaker 4: Council American Lands Council ALC. These people have been deeply
Speaker 4: involved in the in the long term movement to take
Speaker 4: away the American public lands from the as long as
Speaker 4: I can my all my adult life. And these are
Speaker 4: think tanks that are mostly you know there they call
Speaker 4: themselves conservative. It's not conservative to take away the American
Speaker 4: public lands, let me tell you that. Yeah, that's about
Speaker 4: as radical an idea divesting the people of their own
Speaker 4: land as I've ever heard. But they those the planks
Speaker 4: of these think tanks. I'm doing air quotes. They think
Speaker 4: best when somebody's given them money to chair, you pick
Speaker 4: information and prove something that they want, but that they
Speaker 4: already want to get. But they are ascendant at the moment.
Speaker 4: And it is it is. It is our job as
Speaker 4: American citizens and people who know what is at stake
Speaker 4: to say no to the worst impulses. And even if
Speaker 4: we voted for these folks, especially if people say no
Speaker 4: to the especially if we vote right, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: you didn't vote to divest yourself of the of your
Speaker 4: hunting ground.
Speaker 2: And I think that that makes us that much more
Speaker 2: influential and powerful in our ability to influence change, because
Speaker 2: we can call these folks up and say, hey, buddy,
Speaker 2: I voted for you, I'm voting for you. I support this, this,
Speaker 2: and this, but on this one, you got it wrong.
Speaker 2: And if you want my support the next time around,
Speaker 2: or for your buddy who's running the next time or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you gotta change this. I'm on your team.
Speaker 2: We're on your team. We want to support you. But
Speaker 2: this is a deal, and we have the ear of
Speaker 2: these people. They might not listen at all to the
Speaker 2: left side of the aisle, but they will listen to us,
Speaker 2: So we have a we have a huge opportunity there.
Speaker 4: I think that's true. You gotta be careful that they're
Speaker 4: they're taking us for granted at this moment, and the
Speaker 4: elections and stuff have kind of given people, the politicians
Speaker 4: a complacent view of of of what will stand for. Really.
Speaker 4: I mean they that that privatizing the public lands deal
Speaker 4: was in the Republican platform in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Yep, I remember, and.
Speaker 4: You know, everybody I know still voted, and I don't
Speaker 4: know what they thought, right, Like you know Ryan Sinky
Speaker 4: in Montwna, I actually did not support that.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: Whatever you think of representatives thinking, he didn't support that,
Speaker 4: and and that was really good, I thought, And I
Speaker 4: thought that was courageous of him to make that stand. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So I think let's have more of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's that's the rally and cry I
Speaker 2: think for us leaving here today is get ready to
Speaker 2: get ready to re engage, get ready to stand up,
Speaker 2: get ready to be that squeaky wheel and uh not
Speaker 2: be complacent. So hell, I don't know when it will be,
Speaker 2: but when whenever your book comes out next year, you
Speaker 2: have a guaranteed appointment here on the wire Hunt podcast
Speaker 2: to talk all about your book. I'll be recommending every
Speaker 2: one of our listeners to pick up a copy. I
Speaker 2: can't wait to read it myself. And uh, I thank
Speaker 2: you for for everything you've shared with us here today
Speaker 2: and all the all the wisdom and inspiration over the years.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Hell it's a great, great time. Man. I've told you
Speaker 4: I was. I feel like you're the voice of your
Speaker 4: particular generation at this moment on this subject, and you're
Speaker 4: coming straight out of the hunting world, which is you
Speaker 4: couldn't have a stronger base. Yeah, I mean, hunter controvationist
Speaker 4: is a large part of why we have what we have.
Speaker 3: We got a hell of a legacy that we had
Speaker 3: to hold up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well finding dude, thank you hell yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's going to do it for us today.
Speaker 2: Appreciate you joining me here on the Wired to Hunt podcast.
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in here as hell and I discussed
Speaker 2: what is the beginning I think of an important set
Speaker 2: of conversations that we are going to be continuing this
Speaker 2: year and over the next handful of years, because we
Speaker 2: are going to have some work to do, and I
Speaker 2: believe and I trust that you're going to be joining
Speaker 2: me in doing that work. So thanks for being here.
Speaker 2: Thanks for checking out that Wild Country. If you have
Speaker 2: not already read that book that I wrote a handful
Speaker 2: of years ago.
Speaker 3: It is the perfect way to get you.
Speaker 2: Up to speed on what's happening now and what we
Speaker 2: might need to be preparing for in the future. So
Speaker 2: thank you, appreciate you being a part of this community,
Speaker 2: and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.