Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast calling at you shirtless severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You can't
Speaker 1: forget anything, alright, Virgil, let's just start out and have
Speaker 1: you just get right into it. Introduce yourself, like right
Speaker 1: off for anybody even says anything interesting. Thanks Steve. I'm
Speaker 1: Virgil Warm director and Idaho Fishing Game. Um, it's the
Speaker 1: greatest job in the world. Like, that's the top that's
Speaker 1: the top dog individual. Well, I have you, but yeah,
Speaker 1: in our agency, um, the director uh oversees the operations
Speaker 1: of the entire agency and you, guys in the crowning
Speaker 1: achievement of your career, right, is this passage of the
Speaker 1: new pine squirrel season? Well, I won't say it's a
Speaker 1: crowning achievement. Yeah. A couple of years ago, one of
Speaker 1: our commissioners just asked the question can we kill Plaine squirrels?
Speaker 1: You know, they're commonly known as red squirrels, And the
Speaker 1: the answer was they're protected wildlife. And then he goes, why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's always been that way. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: came up because we I was just talking about how
Speaker 1: last night we were eating some pine squirrels for dinner.
Speaker 1: And I was saying, how everywhere that I've ever lived
Speaker 1: lists the pine squirrel or red squirrel um as a
Speaker 1: non protected, non game species mean no close season, no
Speaker 1: bag limit. And I would have never have guessed the
Speaker 1: Idaho was an exception to that, because like people don't
Speaker 1: really get after them. You know, they're a common household pest,
Speaker 1: because if a squirrel gets in your attic, it's probably
Speaker 1: a pine squirrel. In the northern tier States, um, they pray.
Speaker 1: A surprising thing is they pray on snowshoe hair leveretts.
Speaker 1: Do you know that in in Alberta, they did a
Speaker 1: mortality study on snowshoe hairs and most of the ones
Speaker 1: that went missing were found in pine squirrel mittens. I
Speaker 1: got a body that watch would kill a bird one time.
Speaker 1: A Yeah, they like to kill. They like to kill
Speaker 1: snowsh your hair leveretts, and they're like the baby birds
Speaker 1: out of nests. But we'll see the pine scenes. They're
Speaker 1: they're stashes, their mittens, whatever you want to call them,
Speaker 1: become an important food source in the winter for some
Speaker 1: birds and other wildlife because they can get into those
Speaker 1: stashes and you see grizzlies in the spring will come
Speaker 1: out and excavate them, you know, pull them all out.
Speaker 1: So you guys realize there's no season for him, and
Speaker 1: what kind of magic needs to happen. You know, It's
Speaker 1: not as easy as just waving a wand and saying
Speaker 1: the season's open. We had to go through rulemaking to
Speaker 1: make them non protected first, and then we had to
Speaker 1: go through the process of proposing a season, getting public comment,
Speaker 1: and then the Commission approving it. They just finally approved
Speaker 1: that at their last commission meetings. So we will have
Speaker 1: a pine squirrel season from one extreme to the other.
Speaker 1: It's eight per day, twenty four in possession, so and
Speaker 1: it's got an open season that'll be from August through
Speaker 1: marcht one, so you know there's a close period and
Speaker 1: that conforms with our open season for other um rabbits
Speaker 1: and other small games. So just for consistency reasons, we
Speaker 1: kept all of that. You're gonna run them like small game.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have any regulations around and I don't
Speaker 1: imagine you have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels. Uh,
Speaker 1: we do have thriving populations of fox and gray squirrels,
Speaker 1: mostly in urban areas, and uh, there is no protection
Speaker 1: on those. You can kill as many of those as
Speaker 1: you want because they're because they're a non native. There
Speaker 1: are non native non protected wildlife because most of them
Speaker 1: are in urban areas were discharged of firearms is prohibited.
Speaker 1: Um that we don't see much use of them, although
Speaker 1: there are a few folks, uh that that utilize them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a Missouri native. I was raised. Probably
Speaker 1: the first thing I killed was either a rabbit or squirrel,
Speaker 1: so one of the two had to be what I
Speaker 1: was shooting at exactly. Um next to Virgil Chris, Chris
Speaker 1: just hanging out. Chris is the old friend of mine
Speaker 1: who should you should come out of the show a
Speaker 1: lot more? I want to Yeah, I mean my friends,
Speaker 1: I'm not a big podcast listener. I watched the show
Speaker 1: of the Mediator show all the time, but my friends
Speaker 1: listened to it all the time. I told him when
Speaker 1: I was doing today, they said, seriously, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Anti podcast listen? No, Um, I'm not. But to steal
Speaker 1: an old favorite phrase of yours that you stole from
Speaker 1: Ian Fraser. You know, hunting or fishing is something I'd
Speaker 1: rather do than talk about. So um, I'm not Antipope cast.
Speaker 1: I just I write a lot, and I need uh.
Speaker 1: When I'm done writing, I need to get out of
Speaker 1: the word world. You know. Just listen to silence, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember reading somewhere that people are saying you can't
Speaker 1: appreciate music without appreciating silence, because music is an interruption
Speaker 1: of silence. Sure. I bet John Cage would love that, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know who said, I'm just gonna act like
Speaker 1: I said that. I remember an old squirrel hassan fop
Speaker 1: for meal that you made. You remember that? Yeah, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we used to get after him right here in town,
Speaker 1: right here. But uh, you know live trap nowise and squirrels?
Speaker 1: Oh is that how you're getting them? In? Other ways?
Speaker 1: We go, we go honest, we go out of state
Speaker 1: that we'd go, you know, hunt them around. Uh plug
Speaker 1: your book real quick. Okay, Well, my my last book
Speaker 1: is called Body of Water. It's a nonfiction book from
Speaker 1: Milkweed Editions about uh really that centers around a man
Speaker 1: named David Pender who was the first Bahamian bone fishing guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: He went to uh he grew up on a small
Speaker 1: island called deep Water Key, and a rich Floridian man
Speaker 1: named Gil Drake, Floridian man named Gil Drake actually bought
Speaker 1: an island from the Crown um the English Crown called
Speaker 1: deep Water Key and hired David Pender too excavate the
Speaker 1: mangroves from the island, and over time hired Pender to
Speaker 1: be his first fishing guide bone fish guide in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: So Pender made about five dollars a day at the time,
Speaker 1: and over the last fifty or so years, the bone
Speaker 1: fishing industry has become the trux of the eco to
Speaker 1: tourism industry in the Bahamas, so a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars a year. Basically, this little fish that we
Speaker 1: used to throw into Purina food bags has become the
Speaker 1: crux of an island, the entire island's economy. Really, first
Speaker 1: bone fish I ever saw, and this is the way
Speaker 1: after bone fish became what bone fish are. The first
Speaker 1: one I ever saw is leading dead on the side
Speaker 1: of the road. Where is that Mexico? He's done on
Speaker 1: the side of the road with the weirdest thing. I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, it's not how you want to see
Speaker 1: your first bone fish. In the r day, a buddy
Speaker 1: mine from Hawaii sent me a picture just a classic
Speaker 1: grip and grim with a whole bunch of dead bonefish
Speaker 1: lander because they make fish patties out of here, they
Speaker 1: call it. Then they don't. They catch mountain deep water,
Speaker 1: huge bonfish my brother called a big bone fish and
Speaker 1: a hundred feet of water in Hawaii. Right, So they
Speaker 1: don't look like they're like a flats fish. They're they
Speaker 1: act like they're just a fish to eat, a bony
Speaker 1: ass fish to eat. Right. I remember your your discussion
Speaker 1: in meat Eat or the book about your first experience
Speaker 1: releasing these fish. That's when I found my first dead
Speaker 1: one on the side of the road like a road
Speaker 1: killed bone fish, and then caught my first ones and
Speaker 1: let them go. And meanwhile we like killed every other fish.
Speaker 1: We didn't know what it was to like fuel our
Speaker 1: journey to let bone and fish go because you gotta
Speaker 1: eat something. We pull fish out like what's that, I
Speaker 1: don't know, eat it and let all that, let all
Speaker 1: the old ones go. Did you ever end up beating
Speaker 1: a bone fishing bone fish one? What was it? Like?
Speaker 1: You said, just boning paying the fine white flesh. Totally fine,
Speaker 1: you gotta pick it. To quote and Fraser again, who
Speaker 1: I think might have stole this from John McPhee, but
Speaker 1: he's talking about eating rochad right, and he said, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like fixing a watch, like picking the meat,
Speaker 1: like all the bones. You know. It feels like you're
Speaker 1: like dismanling a watch to get it apart. But I
Speaker 1: ate one down there, barracoutaite a lot of those kind
Speaker 1: of fish. But it's a cool book. We should maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes dedicate the whole conversation about the books. It tells
Speaker 1: the story about a fish that no one cares about
Speaker 1: becoming a fish that's like a billion dollar industry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should. I'll come back anytime. I'm glad you're living
Speaker 1: in Bozeman. Now. I remember when you used to speaking
Speaker 1: of picking fish, remember fishing for whitefish and making something.
Speaker 1: I was talking about that yesterday. Yeah, tedious, but great recipe.
Speaker 1: Um on down the line. Oh yeas w you have
Speaker 1: headsets on? What are you doing? Just monitoring? They're just
Speaker 1: taking yeah, entourage. Oh yeah, let's go ahead. Then we're
Speaker 1: gonna dive into and then we're gonna dive into all things, uh,
Speaker 1: fisheries and wildlife management. Yeah, tell us from the Meat
Speaker 1: Eater Crew, Virgil, can you start out I have a
Speaker 1: thousand things to ask you. One of the questions I
Speaker 1: want to ask you later once we get going, is
Speaker 1: when you hear hunters and anglers talk bad about fish
Speaker 1: and game, what are the most legitimate complaints and what
Speaker 1: are the least legitimate complaints? But I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about that yet, but just know that that's coming,
Speaker 1: so dig deep to try to give a thing like
Speaker 1: what is the most legitimate complaints that you found in
Speaker 1: your career in the lifetime of service? I think first,
Speaker 1: I think could be interesting to talk about where your
Speaker 1: department sort of ends, and you can make it general
Speaker 1: like the IDAHO right is your area of expertise, but
Speaker 1: you probably enough exposure from all the other agencies to
Speaker 1: like like where where does what does the Game Commission?
Speaker 1: And what is its relationship to your department? And and
Speaker 1: how do you move from one of those? I think
Speaker 1: that this is this is something that's not well understood,
Speaker 1: and it might be a good basis for the conversation here.
Speaker 1: That really is And I certainly our Game Commission Idahoe
Speaker 1: Fish and Game Commission is integral to our agency. Uh.
Speaker 1: They are the policy and regulatory setting body for the
Speaker 1: department Officient Game. As director, I set as the director
Speaker 1: of the Idaho Department of Fishing Game. I'm also a
Speaker 1: non voting member of the Idaho Fishing Game Commission. My
Speaker 1: other title is Secretary Officient Game, and that interfaces the Department,
Speaker 1: through the Director and the Commission in Idaho. The Director
Speaker 1: serves at the pleasure of the Commission, a seven person
Speaker 1: board appointed by the Governor UH for staggered four year terms.
Speaker 1: They can be appointed to two terms confirmed by the
Speaker 1: Senate as confirmed by the state Senate. Our commissioners are
Speaker 1: as a director appointed by a commission, I do not
Speaker 1: have to go through that that political process with the legislature.
Speaker 1: They do that, and so that's the firewall or the
Speaker 1: buffer that's there. But the governor selects those commissioners and
Speaker 1: the commission. The governor selects the commissioners, the commissioner selects you,
Speaker 1: the director, and you have a term limit of two
Speaker 1: terms for the commissioners, so they can serve two four
Speaker 1: year terms. And then they turn out the director has
Speaker 1: no term limit, so you can keep going and keep
Speaker 1: goingment Now it's you serve the pleasure and so at
Speaker 1: any time for commissioners decide they want somebody new, you've
Speaker 1: got your walking papers. How many commissioners are there seven
Speaker 1: and that varies, okay, but they set the rules. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, we talked about and I don't want to
Speaker 1: put too much into this because it's a pretty small
Speaker 1: issue pine squirrel season that has the goal of the
Speaker 1: commission right, correct, But the Commission draws so much of
Speaker 1: their information from the Department because the Commission's not doing
Speaker 1: not game surveys. So that's where the Department and Commission
Speaker 1: are linked in. The first initiative in the state of
Speaker 1: Idaho was approved by voters in the state that created
Speaker 1: the Commission prior to ninety eight. We were formed as
Speaker 1: an agency in eight the Department Official Game prior to that,
Speaker 1: the director was appointed by the governor. It was completely
Speaker 1: partisan and most of the st spoils the war and
Speaker 1: it is and many of the staff were non professional
Speaker 1: and it was a very partisan UH structure. Decline of
Speaker 1: trying to recover Elkords, trying to get hunting back and
Speaker 1: going in the twenties and thirties, UH failed miserably because
Speaker 1: we didn't have that professional workforce out there doing the
Speaker 1: survey work. The initiative formed the Commission and put the
Speaker 1: Commission in its position of hiring the director and gave
Speaker 1: very specific roles to each body and the department access
Speaker 1: staff and managers of that public trust that's out there.
Speaker 1: The Commission is the the trust holder along with the
Speaker 1: legislature UH, they are the ones that are responsible for
Speaker 1: how to how to UH deal with that trust. We
Speaker 1: just make recommendations and manage it per their direction. So
Speaker 1: up until the time pine squirrels were protected, that was
Speaker 1: the direction. Then they decided they as the UH trust manager,
Speaker 1: they wanted to do something different. We said, there's not
Speaker 1: a problem biologically. They went on with the rules. And
Speaker 1: so we interact very closely with our commission. Who how
Speaker 1: often does the Commission butt heads of the department like
Speaker 1: meaning presuming there's people in the Commission who have an
Speaker 1: extagrind right like because they're from different walks of life,
Speaker 1: is it happens? We don't see it a lot. UH.
Speaker 1: Generally the Commission tries to work as a team together,
Speaker 1: but they are appointed to represent geographic areas of the state,
Speaker 1: and they're they're pretty much they have a district and
Speaker 1: those that district is very similar to our administrative regions.
Speaker 1: So we've got seven of those. And every so often
Speaker 1: you see um a difference in the way that the
Speaker 1: commissioners themselves to go. As director, I manage the agency
Speaker 1: to make recommendations. Where we have a disconnect is if
Speaker 1: for some reason, through public input, somebody wants a season change.
Speaker 1: But someone said, hey, there's I'm seeing fewer and fewer deer,
Speaker 1: and then you look and you he actually is probably
Speaker 1: seeing fewer and fewer deer. Let's say it's legitimate, and
Speaker 1: as an individual, I suspect that that's the case they
Speaker 1: are seeing. But our survey work, we look at it
Speaker 1: and we go, you know, we killed more deer last
Speaker 1: year in that unit than we've ever killed before. Our
Speaker 1: survey information says that the buck doo ratios in there
Speaker 1: are above policy. And so you have that disconnect between
Speaker 1: what you see in the spot you hunt and what
Speaker 1: we see when we try to manage a larger piece
Speaker 1: of real estate. And so that goes to the commission.
Speaker 1: They get public input all the time, like that. We're
Speaker 1: in the idle of it right now with some deer
Speaker 1: setting stuff that's going on, Like tell me what you mean,
Speaker 1: white tailed deer. We're we're adopting a new white Tailed
Speaker 1: Deer plan, and in that process the question of do
Speaker 1: we know what we're talking about in this particular piece
Speaker 1: of real estate versus what the data is for game
Speaker 1: management units on a larger piece. And and so the
Speaker 1: Commission is in a situation where the biological information would
Speaker 1: suggest one thing, and what individuals that are motivated to
Speaker 1: get involved in the decision making process show up at
Speaker 1: a public meeting say that isn't right. And you know what,
Speaker 1: they're probably not wrong about where they're hunting, what they
Speaker 1: see their specific spot, but what it does that mean
Speaker 1: that that's the way it is everywhere. And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of wisdom and balancing that the Commission has to
Speaker 1: go through to sort through. Here's the science as we're
Speaker 1: trying to present it to you, and here's the public
Speaker 1: input that has some veried input. We can tell you
Speaker 1: all about this, but I can't say that what Joe
Speaker 1: Hunter over here sees is incorrect. And so that is
Speaker 1: where the beauty of the Commission processes. They're there to
Speaker 1: balance out perhaps the scientific information that we provide them
Speaker 1: with some of the input from the public of what
Speaker 1: they desire. As trust Um users, they're the they're the
Speaker 1: ones who get the benefit of that public trust of wildlife.
Speaker 1: We manage it. The Commission is a trustee for that
Speaker 1: and and so we go back and forth through that
Speaker 1: process UH constantly with with our commission. Most of the
Speaker 1: time nine ten per cent of what is out there
Speaker 1: for public input, we get good public input. We get
Speaker 1: agreement with the biological information it goes through. We just
Speaker 1: approved phishing regulations for three years, a new phish management
Speaker 1: plan for six years. At this last commission neating two
Speaker 1: weeks ago took fifteen minutes, no dissenting anything. It took
Speaker 1: a year, took a year of public input to get
Speaker 1: to that point. But by the time we got to
Speaker 1: that point, we didn't have any issues. That's not true
Speaker 1: with our deer, elk and other wildlife management issues. We
Speaker 1: had no dissenting votes on point squirrels, So that one
Speaker 1: went pretty easy. Brings people together together. But but white
Speaker 1: tail deer are a big thing right now. They tell
Speaker 1: me what because there's a lot of them, not a
Speaker 1: lot of them we're seeing um because of way hunting
Speaker 1: occurs in Idaho with the ability to move around. We
Speaker 1: have a white tail tag for the late season white
Speaker 1: tail hunt. UM that that you have to decide whether
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt during the early mule deer in general
Speaker 1: deer season, or whether you want to hunt white tail only.
Speaker 1: And you get that white tail tag. A lot of
Speaker 1: people prefer white too, I do, and and consequently they
Speaker 1: all go to these really neat spots and so they're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot more hunters. So you're out there driving
Speaker 1: around where you go buy and you see six camps
Speaker 1: in the spot you didn't see but one camp four
Speaker 1: or five years ago. Then you go out hunting and
Speaker 1: you don't see the deer immediately. There's a problem. And
Speaker 1: this is occurring in the clear Water and several other
Speaker 1: units around that, coupled with loss of access on private lands,
Speaker 1: creates this uh perception that hunting for me isn't as
Speaker 1: good as it used to be, and people perception is
Speaker 1: correct for that person. People are attributing this to forcing
Speaker 1: people to make this decision about what they want to hunt.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. They're also saying there's too many
Speaker 1: non residents, and non residents can be both people from
Speaker 1: out of state as well as people like myself from
Speaker 1: Boise coming up into their area to hunt UH. And
Speaker 1: it's it's that social tension that comes with using a
Speaker 1: resource out there. And as users, you've probably all seen that.
Speaker 1: I know, I do. Uh. You see it whether you're
Speaker 1: fishing or hunting. I get away from it by hunting
Speaker 1: later in the season so I don't have to deal
Speaker 1: with it, or I fish later in the season or
Speaker 1: during the shoulder periods. Montana, as an example, has their
Speaker 1: shoulder hunting seasons that they use right now. To try
Speaker 1: to distribute some of that, we try to use our
Speaker 1: regulations to do that, but it at some point we
Speaker 1: still have the people seeing something different than what are
Speaker 1: biological data. So some of the and I'll jump to
Speaker 1: your question, you know, what are the legitimate complaints for us?
Speaker 1: Add something. One of the writers that writes for us
Speaker 1: on our website, Pat dirk And, did a piece for
Speaker 1: us about comparing success rates hunter success rates with surveys
Speaker 1: about hunter satisfaction. He's the basic I mean, just to
Speaker 1: really take something long and complex and make it short,
Speaker 1: as people are just generally not happy, not happy, Like
Speaker 1: you take a relative picture a year to year of
Speaker 1: like what was good hunting and bad hunting, then to
Speaker 1: ask people to put a personal spin on it that
Speaker 1: generally viewed as being more negative than it was. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't totally agree with that dot our survey that we
Speaker 1: recently did on um mule, they're in whitetail hunters. Everybody's happy. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I'm gonna say everybody's better, but
Speaker 1: but most people are satisfied or very satisfied. Based on
Speaker 1: the survey work we did. It varies depending on the geography,
Speaker 1: it varies on what they're after. One of the things
Speaker 1: that we are in Idaho by commission direction, we're an
Speaker 1: opportunity state. We're all about being able to hunt every year.
Speaker 1: We're all about giving people that chance to get out
Speaker 1: there and to accomplish that. We have to have that
Speaker 1: that ability to hunt every year, you're going to have
Speaker 1: fewer older growth animals than you would if if you
Speaker 1: didn't go for that opportunity. And so that is an
Speaker 1: opportunity state versus a on a quality state. Utah has
Speaker 1: UH and this is based on their public input down
Speaker 1: there and a large number of hunters there in different
Speaker 1: productivity chose years ago to go with a quality system
Speaker 1: that produced a larger proportion of the herd as four
Speaker 1: point animals. Idaho has quality. Don't get me wrong. It's
Speaker 1: just we manage the productivity of that herd so that
Speaker 1: we can utilize that productivity for as many hunters as
Speaker 1: possible while still producing a pretty good number of four
Speaker 1: point animals, whether they're mule deer or whitetail. We talked
Speaker 1: about this too as being like some states are kind
Speaker 1: of split. The Colorado's quality on a mule deer opportunity
Speaker 1: on elk correct and and part of it has to
Speaker 1: do with the number of animals that are there. In general,
Speaker 1: ar mule deer haven't been doing as well as our elk,
Speaker 1: although in Idaho, with with some of the work we've
Speaker 1: been doing, as well as the easy winners we've had
Speaker 1: and the better survival on fonds, our mule deer are
Speaker 1: really up. But half of our deer harvest is whitetail
Speaker 1: in Idaho. The other half is all those dudes up
Speaker 1: in the Panhandle. And it's because we got a lot
Speaker 1: of them, and and people are turning onto them because
Speaker 1: they taste better. Now that's just my that's my bias.
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way. When my wife is not
Speaker 1: a hunter, but she is a consumer, and when I
Speaker 1: go hunting, I generally get orders as to what she
Speaker 1: prefers that bring home and and uh a white tail
Speaker 1: are much higher on the list than a stinky old
Speaker 1: mule deer. As she puts it, now, I find them
Speaker 1: both very flavorful. I like the flavor. They're both distinct
Speaker 1: and different, and enjoy eating both. In the ticket, she puts,
Speaker 1: just keep telling her just get your own ticket and
Speaker 1: come out hunting with me. But really, late, I want
Speaker 1: to get in your bio from it. But lay a
Speaker 1: good piece of marriage advice on us. Listen to your spouse,
Speaker 1: bring home my white til. Can I ask a question
Speaker 1: about so when you guys are prioritizing, um, you know,
Speaker 1: an initiative or or you know this uh the new
Speaker 1: squirrel uh listing. I mean, are you thinking, well, that's
Speaker 1: gonna be an economic boon for the state. I mean
Speaker 1: it's the squirrel thing, or I'm kidding a little bit.
Speaker 1: But how how much are you prioritizing like revenue potential
Speaker 1: revenue over the resource or is it certainly um? Idaho
Speaker 1: gets no general funds okay. Our revenue is generated by
Speaker 1: predominantly license sales, as well as contract money and the
Speaker 1: excise tax on hangingd fishing equipment. Pittman, Robertson and Danel Johnson.
Speaker 1: What's the contract money. Contract money is mitigation money like
Speaker 1: from Bonneville Power to operate hatcheries for the mitigation of
Speaker 1: dam's Idaho Power of Vista, Um, gosh, you name it.
Speaker 1: We get contract money to work with a b p A.
Speaker 1: As an example, we've got contract money to do sage
Speaker 1: grousework for the Fish and Wildlife Service, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it most of its mitigation money to operate hatcheries
Speaker 1: for hydro power development, meaning the hydro power development impedes
Speaker 1: fish movements and they got to make up for that
Speaker 1: by running a hand correct, it's the state runs the
Speaker 1: hatches for We operate the hatcheries that they built for
Speaker 1: those facilities, and and so that's a huge piece of
Speaker 1: our budget. But as far as the discretionary funds that
Speaker 1: we get, it's almost all license money, a little tiny
Speaker 1: bit off of non game license plate sales. We have
Speaker 1: a license plate system and that generates UH together about
Speaker 1: two million dollars that runs that UH non game program
Speaker 1: um that we have in the state. So back to
Speaker 1: your question about what do we get. Do we take
Speaker 1: economics into consideration. If it was a conservation issue where
Speaker 1: you should hunt or not hunt? The answer is no.
Speaker 1: But when you're looking at the way you conduct a hunt,
Speaker 1: the way you you set seasons, how you allocate those
Speaker 1: tags to residents and non residents. Definitely, revenue is on
Speaker 1: the table as it as an item to take a
Speaker 1: look at, But by and large the Commission isn't as
Speaker 1: concerned with revenue as they are the social aspects of
Speaker 1: how this effect hunters in the field. Um, I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example. We dive into this. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Commission just recently closed steelhead fishing in the state of Ida,
Speaker 1: and the economic effects of that are huge. Well, I
Speaker 1: got a lot of but we had a public meeting
Speaker 1: last week in Riggins. Now. Riggins is on the Salmon River,
Speaker 1: a very small community, uh that has mostly natural resource
Speaker 1: based economy. Used to be timber that's gone. Now it's
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, I mean, and whitewater rafting on the
Speaker 1: main Salmon River. And the closure of a winter steelhead
Speaker 1: fishery is millions of dollars to a community that is
Speaker 1: probably getting a third of their financial revenue from steelhead fishing,
Speaker 1: another third from chinook, and the rest of it from
Speaker 1: other outdoor based recreation activities, and so it hits a
Speaker 1: community like that hard over Christmas. Goodness, who's grinch here?
Speaker 1: And I get it. Talked the numbers, I'm guessing why,
Speaker 1: but talking about what precipitated the closing. One of the
Speaker 1: people decided no we um UM. We got served with
Speaker 1: a notice of intent to be sued. UM and about
Speaker 1: forty five days ago who was bringing the suit? It
Speaker 1: was a group of five fish advocacy groups and river groups.
Speaker 1: UH that I felt like that the what we call
Speaker 1: mixed stock fishery where we fish on the hatchery fish
Speaker 1: these mitigation fish and there are wild listed steelhead in
Speaker 1: the river with him, felt that our fishery was harming
Speaker 1: those wild fish. Technically, the problem is we don't have
Speaker 1: a permit to have that mixed stock fishery. It expired
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten. The federal age and see
Speaker 1: responsible for that permit UH National Marine Fishery Service has
Speaker 1: failed to issue that permit to us since two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten. We have submitted it every year. We have
Speaker 1: complied with the terms of the permit, but they have
Speaker 1: been working on other areas that were very important for permitting.
Speaker 1: UM and I can get into the technicalities of that,
Speaker 1: but the point is we are guilty of not having
Speaker 1: a permit. So here we're getting a notice Noah or
Speaker 1: National Marine Fishery Services, go ahead and fish without the permit,
Speaker 1: comply with the terms you submitted. We don't have time
Speaker 1: to go through the process to give you that permit,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to prosecute you under the Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act. The Endangered Species Acts as a citizens lawsuit
Speaker 1: feature in it that allows private citizens to sue somebody
Speaker 1: violating it. That was I mean, this has been going
Speaker 1: on for eight years and then we get this notice
Speaker 1: intent to sue. If you go to court and are
Speaker 1: found to be guilty, I guess you would say we're
Speaker 1: not in compliance, then the state has to pay all
Speaker 1: the legal fees of the plaintiffs. And knowing what we knew,
Speaker 1: we felt that it was not useful to go through
Speaker 1: a legal defense when we really didn't have the permit
Speaker 1: trying to convince a judge, and in all likelihood the
Speaker 1: plaintiffs would have asked the judge for an emergency closure
Speaker 1: while they started in and the end result would be
Speaker 1: we would be paying the legal fees and we would
Speaker 1: have a closed steelhead system. By closing the season, we
Speaker 1: preclude them from taking us to court. So now the
Speaker 1: decision to open it back up is still with the commission.
Speaker 1: The permit will be done in March next spring. Were
Speaker 1: a black eye, right, yeah, I and and deservedly so
Speaker 1: we are. We probably could have been a little more
Speaker 1: aggressive with seeing that this could happen. But frankly, I
Speaker 1: knew for well, I've been director for eight years and
Speaker 1: the whole time I knew we've been playing doing this,
Speaker 1: and I felt because National Marine Fishery Service wasn't going
Speaker 1: to prosecute us, that we were okay. I never thought
Speaker 1: about our conservation friends and these other entities taking us
Speaker 1: to court. Are these fisher Are these angler based groups?
Speaker 1: For a couple of them are angler based groups, A
Speaker 1: couple of them are river based groups, angler groups desiring
Speaker 1: more wild fishing. Yeah, they've got a different agenda, and
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. Part of the agenda they
Speaker 1: were willing to not sue us if we agreed to
Speaker 1: go to no bait, single barbelous hooks fly fishing only
Speaker 1: banned the useful boats. So they were trying to say
Speaker 1: this was a conservation issue. But then they had this
Speaker 1: string of things that would have precluded most of our
Speaker 1: steelhead anglers from going fishing, just so that group could
Speaker 1: get out there, the Catch and Release group basically, and
Speaker 1: are the people of Riggings and that whole kind of
Speaker 1: valley there. They upset mostly you guys were They're upset
Speaker 1: that we allowed this to get to where it is.
Speaker 1: But at the public meeting we had last week going
Speaker 1: into town, there was a sign um, you know, public
Speaker 1: meeting so and so play such and such time, and
Speaker 1: they had the name of one of these groups just
Speaker 1: plastered on there said not welcome. So yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're doing. I have a meeting tomorrow with the board
Speaker 1: of one of these groups. The season doesn't take effect
Speaker 1: until December the seventh, I think, is when it closes.
Speaker 1: Terrible day, um, but we've got a little bit time
Speaker 1: in here. We're still negotiating. We had a negotiated settlement
Speaker 1: two weeks ago, and then when all of the planeffs left,
Speaker 1: they came back a day later and said, no, we're
Speaker 1: going to back away from our agreement. So I got
Speaker 1: a couple of quick questions. First, for Chris, uh, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're a fishing guide straight over to that country
Speaker 1: at all I do not. I know, I couldn't had
Speaker 1: that far down river. No, I grew up still heading
Speaker 1: in Michigan. So, um, we don't have these problems. Now
Speaker 1: we don't have these problems. But now I'm still lying
Speaker 1: the bank with them down there, right. I spent most
Speaker 1: most of the winter righting. So as soon as I'm
Speaker 1: off the river in late October, I'm hanging up the
Speaker 1: rods and the waiters and chasing the bird dog around.
Speaker 1: But um, but do you hear guys griping about this?
Speaker 1: So I didn't. I didn't even know about it, which
Speaker 1: tells you how how often much I've been in the
Speaker 1: woods in the last month or so. But all you know,
Speaker 1: most of the Missoula single Missoula fishing guides head over
Speaker 1: there for for a good month, and you know, drag
Speaker 1: a trailer over and right. For sure. It's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me and and uh surprising too. Now here's my question
Speaker 1: for you, Virgil, on this issue. The average letter writer
Speaker 1: who writes in with a complaint. Um, let's say you
Speaker 1: were to take all those people and make a pool
Speaker 1: of them, So forget the average You're gonna take a
Speaker 1: pool of all the people that have written a letter
Speaker 1: of complaint, how many of those individuals if if you
Speaker 1: had to guess what percentage of those individuals would be
Speaker 1: able to articulate the issue to the extent that you
Speaker 1: just articulated it to me right now? Is it well
Speaker 1: understood or do you find or are you baffled by
Speaker 1: how not well understood it is. I'm baffled by how
Speaker 1: not well understood it is. We're pushing the envelope. This
Speaker 1: closure only occurred less than two weeks ago. In fact,
Speaker 1: it'll be two weeks ago Wednesday, this coming Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: so we're we're trying to get the word out there.
Speaker 1: The form letters that I've been inundated with simply aren't accurate.
Speaker 1: The misunderstand ending that there is a conservation benefit to
Speaker 1: this closure, Uh is wrong. Okay, that there is a
Speaker 1: catch and release mortality on these listed steelhead, but that
Speaker 1: is less than three of handling, and that's a worst
Speaker 1: case scenario. That's what that's what we use in our permit,
Speaker 1: and we predict that three out of a hundred fish
Speaker 1: handled may die as a result of that catch and
Speaker 1: release fishery, and that's the impact that we will have
Speaker 1: on these wildfish while we're catching and keeping hatchery fish. Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's something all the states do. I mean, Washington
Speaker 1: has their permit in hand, they got a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. They got there's first. So the Washington part
Speaker 1: of the Snake River will stay open even though ours
Speaker 1: will close because it's it's border water. Oregon doesn't have
Speaker 1: their permit for this fishery, but they're going to continue
Speaker 1: to fish because they didn't get sued, you know, and
Speaker 1: so he had It's a very selective um legal actions
Speaker 1: going to continue to fish or in the state of
Speaker 1: Oregon will continue fish, as will Washington on the Snake
Speaker 1: River portion. Our Salmon River and Clearwater rivers would be
Speaker 1: the ones that are predominantly affected by this, as well
Speaker 1: as Idaho licensed anglers who fish Hell's Canyon the Snake
Speaker 1: River portion. But you could continue to fish by buying
Speaker 1: a Washington license. That's the absurdity of some of this.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is the catch and release fishery
Speaker 1: is not the issue here. Um. This is partially a
Speaker 1: social issue. This is partially an issue of these advocacy
Speaker 1: groups trying to make a point that Idaho isn't doing
Speaker 1: enough as a state on down river issues, and so
Speaker 1: they're hitting us at home with a legal action on
Speaker 1: our sport fisheries. And it really doesn't hurt the department.
Speaker 1: It hurts the local communities, right you have. I mean,
Speaker 1: you you gave that, Um, you gave some percentages. But
Speaker 1: what's what's the dollar figure? You know in the town
Speaker 1: of Riggans. We've done the economic evaluation and I'm going
Speaker 1: to say the town of Riggins for this winter fishery
Speaker 1: is a million and a half dollars if my numbers now,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like a lot of money. Not. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's less than a thousand people there in the wintertime.
Speaker 1: There's probably half that been a big chunk of change.
Speaker 1: Be factor in population is a big deal. Clear Water,
Speaker 1: you know, or Pheno that area there, Um, it gets
Speaker 1: hit hard and the outfitters and guides that rely on
Speaker 1: that and cater to that. I mean, I got a
Speaker 1: heartfelt letter from a guide up on the clear Water
Speaker 1: and and he said, cash, it couldn't come at a
Speaker 1: worse time. He goes, I don't make a lot of
Speaker 1: money during this period of time, but it's gonna cost
Speaker 1: me five thousand dollars in the next six weeks. It's
Speaker 1: going to run my Christmas with my kids. Gosh, I
Speaker 1: just almost get into tears over something like that, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, dang, should we have not closed it?
Speaker 1: Let it go to court fought and try to keep
Speaker 1: it open as long as possible. We're still having that
Speaker 1: active discussion right now. But these actions that appear to
Speaker 1: be just about the department and its management really are
Speaker 1: about people and the people who use the resource and
Speaker 1: the communities that benefit from those resources. Walk me through
Speaker 1: how you how you wound up where you are now?
Speaker 1: Like that, Were you aiming through your career in fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife to wind up in this position? Or does
Speaker 1: it never? I'm by training, I'm a fisheries scientist. I
Speaker 1: was worked as a fisheries biology undergraduate degrees in education.
Speaker 1: I taught high school, came to Ido, worked on fish
Speaker 1: on steelhead as a matter of fact, and my yeah,
Speaker 1: and I worked on steelhead and cutthroat. Um got on
Speaker 1: with the department to over forty years ago, uh and
Speaker 1: worked on the South Fork and the Snake River in
Speaker 1: Idaho on cutthroat trout in the late seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 1: on a problem we were having there with declining numbers
Speaker 1: in size of fish, and got an opportunity to manage
Speaker 1: that fishery for about seven years. And that included that
Speaker 1: area that I was manager over, including the Henry's Fork
Speaker 1: and the South Fork of the Snake and some of
Speaker 1: that greatest fishing country and well in the world. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe Montana is close, but you know, we'll we'll give
Speaker 1: them since wire in Montana, I'll give him a little
Speaker 1: credit for having good fisheries. But the bottom line is
Speaker 1: then I just worked my way up when I had
Speaker 1: an opportunity and various positions as state fish manager, fishery
Speaker 1: research manager, I was bureau chief over our communications program
Speaker 1: for a while, fisheries chief. I did a stint in
Speaker 1: Oregon as director for a year, went over there and
Speaker 1: um learned a lot. I consider it now as a
Speaker 1: one year sabbatical to a different state and had an
Speaker 1: opportunity to come back Tita, who as a deputy director
Speaker 1: and turned into a director's job. So it's a really
Speaker 1: short bio when you get down to it. It's just
Speaker 1: a lot of different opportunities and jobs, but it's all
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. It's working with people to manage
Speaker 1: their resources to provide what they want while having that
Speaker 1: foundation in our mission statement, which is preserved, protect, perpetuate,
Speaker 1: and manage for the benefit of the people. That resource
Speaker 1: can only be used when it's preserved, protected, and perpetuated.
Speaker 1: And when it is used, it's primary use is hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: and trapping. That is in the code that formed our agency,
Speaker 1: that was given to us in by the people of
Speaker 1: the state. It was approved by the people in the
Speaker 1: state in um. A lot of people said, well that's dated,
Speaker 1: you know that was that was eighty some odd years
Speaker 1: I guess it was eighty years ago and it's no
Speaker 1: longer valid. Well, in two thousand twelve, we had an
Speaker 1: initiative in this or we had a constitutional amendment the
Speaker 1: right to hunt fishing trap, and in that amendment it
Speaker 1: had the right to hunt fishing trap is held uh
Speaker 1: to be a right for the people as a whole,
Speaker 1: not individuals as much, and that the primary method of
Speaker 1: managing wildlife in the state of Idaho is hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: and trapping. So if you're gonna manage wildlife population should
Speaker 1: do it with hunting, fishing and trapping. That got approved
Speaker 1: by seventy public right they want the public to do it.
Speaker 1: That was approved by seventy of the people in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Now if that is at an endorsement of
Speaker 1: the night and their should have moved it forward. So
Speaker 1: what we in Idaho have is the benefit of knowing
Speaker 1: from a participation in an in an election what it
Speaker 1: is the really big goals are. And that makes my
Speaker 1: job easy. If you flip the card over I gave you.
Speaker 1: On the back, there is our mission statement that's in code.
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing written out there, and it's three
Speaker 1: sentences long on the back of everybody's card. Now it's
Speaker 1: on the back of mine. But that's that's something I
Speaker 1: do so that I can because whenever I doubt what's
Speaker 1: going on, I just flip that over and read through
Speaker 1: it again. It's like, Okay, everything I need to know
Speaker 1: is right there. So in Idaho, Uh, I'm switching gears
Speaker 1: here a little bit um in Idaho. When you get
Speaker 1: when you get an email in the subject in the
Speaker 1: subject line is steel ahead or the subject line is
Speaker 1: grizzly bears? Which one are you more like? Oh no,
Speaker 1: because this is like you spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: certainly um endangered species as a whole, and um, those
Speaker 1: two add in stage grounds and uh yeah, that's occupied
Speaker 1: a fair amount of our time. Um, I will take
Speaker 1: the steel head one any day of the week over
Speaker 1: grizzly bear because you have a lot of person I
Speaker 1: have some of that, and we have more biological we have. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's less value laden relative to managing fish. You know,
Speaker 1: a wild steelhead is a phenomenal creature. I mean they
Speaker 1: are there's nothing nothing like them on the end of
Speaker 1: a fly rod and any kind of tackle, they're just awesome.
Speaker 1: They'd be cruising around out the ocean and uh on
Speaker 1: the hatchery steelhead isn't far below that. But that certainly
Speaker 1: to have have that creature in your hand. But they're
Speaker 1: still generally not thought of as individuals. They thought of
Speaker 1: as a population, as a run, as a school, you
Speaker 1: know that type. That's a good point and and consequently
Speaker 1: the emotional attachment to them doesn't go to the individual level.
Speaker 1: With megafauna, both big animals you know, bears, wolves, uh, cougars, um,
Speaker 1: you name it, deer and elk um. It's lesser degree
Speaker 1: than the other ones. Your name, Well, I guess you're
Speaker 1: doing it in order. Yeah, we call them charismatic megafauna,
Speaker 1: you know, big charismatic critters, and and they come with
Speaker 1: a whole different set of values where people try to
Speaker 1: humanize those animals and their behavior, and consequently having a
Speaker 1: discussion about biology with folks who have that becomes way
Speaker 1: more difficult. Can you sketch out um and go back
Speaker 1: as far as you want. You can go all the
Speaker 1: way back to vour whatever to help was, or you
Speaker 1: can go back the last two or three years. But
Speaker 1: sketch out where Idaho sits and where things stand right now,
Speaker 1: and do the grizzly one. And you can personalize that.
Speaker 1: You can editorialize it however you want to do. But
Speaker 1: it's like tell a little narrative. We should be celebrating
Speaker 1: the recovery grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. We should
Speaker 1: be ready to celebrate the delisting of grizzly bears here
Speaker 1: in the Northern Rockies in the Northern Continental Divide, just
Speaker 1: north of where we're at here in Missoulu right now. Um,
Speaker 1: but I know in the in the Tri state area there, uh,
Speaker 1: we have an excellent grizzly bear population that's properly managed.
Speaker 1: We've got exceeded the management goals. We've answered every scientific
Speaker 1: question in a legal arena, and to still have those
Speaker 1: bears on the list because of legal issues, judicial issues,
Speaker 1: to me, undermines the whole benefit of the Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 1: We the agency that's in charge of like the agency
Speaker 1: that oversees the population. Right now, they're saying it should
Speaker 1: be delisted. Correct, Fish and Wildlife Service themselves believes it
Speaker 1: should be delisted. They're the ruins who delisted it. They've
Speaker 1: been told to relist them until such time as they
Speaker 1: answer these legal questions. Now we will get them delisted, Okay,
Speaker 1: whether it was last year, whether it's next year or
Speaker 1: three years out, because the population is secure, nothing about
Speaker 1: answering these legal questions. But this isn't about whether the
Speaker 1: population is secure or not. It is about the fact
Speaker 1: that folks do not believe that the management tool of choice,
Speaker 1: again going back to our constitutional amendment is hunting. So
Speaker 1: when we have more bears or problem bears, our choice
Speaker 1: is to have a hunter go out and take care
Speaker 1: of that, versus having our staff go out and trap
Speaker 1: the bear and get rid of it. Now we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to do a combination, But I would much prefer
Speaker 1: to use a hunter who buys a license and a
Speaker 1: tag to go out on his own time to take
Speaker 1: that animal and keep the population and check for the
Speaker 1: social needs of the communities around there, then send one
Speaker 1: of my staff out there to trap the bear and
Speaker 1: then euthanize it unceremoniously. I believe that we have a
Speaker 1: lot more respect for that wildlife we interact with in
Speaker 1: that manner than we do with wildlife that we just
Speaker 1: euthanize in a in a manner to kind of take
Speaker 1: care of that nuisance. UM. Do you right now feel
Speaker 1: as though do you feel that as though the fight
Speaker 1: around grizzly bear delisting will want of being worse than
Speaker 1: what happened around wolves, or do you feel like it
Speaker 1: will follow that same pattern off you had like some
Speaker 1: stops and starts, you had some lawsuities, but he eventually
Speaker 1: wound up at least and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. You wound
Speaker 1: up with delisted will wolves and regulated hunting UM or
Speaker 1: do you think this is fundamentally different it will play
Speaker 1: out in a different way. It's I think it's fundamentally
Speaker 1: the same, uh, And I do think it will play
Speaker 1: out in a similar manner, But the anti hunting aspects
Speaker 1: of it is even larger with grizzly bears than it
Speaker 1: is with wolves, although it's very large with with wolves. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's um. It's a very strong community of people out
Speaker 1: there who believe in their values. And at the same
Speaker 1: time it's it's part of where the frustration is. Because
Speaker 1: delisted wildlife normal wildlife are under the sovereign trust responsibilities
Speaker 1: of each individual state. There are a lot of people
Speaker 1: that don't believe they're being heard and their needs are
Speaker 1: being addressed by our commission. And I can tell you
Speaker 1: they're being hurt. What you mean, like, what? What? What?
Speaker 1: Groups of people? Give you an example. One of the
Speaker 1: things that we were told they wanted was a buffer
Speaker 1: around Yellowstone Park so we wouldn't have a celebrity bear
Speaker 1: going outside of the boundary and getting shot and then
Speaker 1: running back into the park. And and so I get,
Speaker 1: I get that big enough already needs to become bigger,
Speaker 1: and so the park we But they're saying, well, you
Speaker 1: ignored us when we asked for that. No, we didn't
Speaker 1: ignore it. We took it into serious consideration and looked
Speaker 1: at it and said it was unmanageable to do because
Speaker 1: grizzly bears can roam as much as sixteen to twenty
Speaker 1: five miles outside of the park, and a wounded animal
Speaker 1: could go right back in, whether it is a hundred
Speaker 1: yards from the border at the border or five miles out,
Speaker 1: you know, And it just wasn't a tenable thing for
Speaker 1: us to address relative to that. But they were hurt.
Speaker 1: It was discussed, but the vision didn't go the way
Speaker 1: they wanted it. So they want to federalize management of
Speaker 1: these species. And under the Endangered Species Act, that's a
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service or its National Marine Fishery Service
Speaker 1: for fishing and pinnipeds, for seals and sea lions and
Speaker 1: um they wanted to to. They want to federalize as
Speaker 1: many species as possible so the state doesn't have the
Speaker 1: final say. And I believe at core that's a lot
Speaker 1: of what's going on here. When when the delisting happened
Speaker 1: in bears where what now has proved to be temporarily delisted,
Speaker 1: you had three states that we're looking at assuming management. Okay,
Speaker 1: you had Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and you want up
Speaker 1: having like three what appeared to me to be three
Speaker 1: very different responses to this in the hunting question, okay,
Speaker 1: where Montana was fixing to sort of sit out the
Speaker 1: hunting season, and I felt that that was kind of
Speaker 1: a lame move. This is just me personally talking on
Speaker 1: there's not Virgil. I'm not speaking for Virgil in their
Speaker 1: the Idle Fishing Game or anyone. Just personally, I thought
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a lame move because they're
Speaker 1: sort of be like, I don't want the black eye.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be caught in the controversy. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna see how it plays out with Idaho and whelming Now,
Speaker 1: Wyoming has kind of hosts more of that little subset
Speaker 1: of the population of bears. They host more anyone else.
Speaker 1: They were pretty aggressive. They were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: harvest and killing two grizzly bears. Idaho, in a curious way,
Speaker 1: came in where they were going to issue a tag.
Speaker 1: That's symbolic, right, It's symbolic, But that was our allocation.
Speaker 1: So the tri state plan that we all three of
Speaker 1: agreed to allocates the available mortality to the states based
Speaker 1: on the size of the geography. I don't only have
Speaker 1: six of that grizzly bear range, and so we get
Speaker 1: a smaller portion of that available mortality to utilize. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a symbolic no. No. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: we want to do it, but we don't really want
Speaker 1: to do it, so we do on our allocation was
Speaker 1: like one point four one point five bears, okay, and yeah,
Speaker 1: had I would have liked to borrowed a half a
Speaker 1: bear from Montana or Wyoming, so that Tana's allocation was
Speaker 1: I don't it was like seven or eight I think
Speaker 1: I I. It may have been in the teens. I
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but it's intermediate to Wyoming being the largest,
Speaker 1: Montana the next, and Idahoe the smallest. How much you
Speaker 1: talked to those guys a lot? Oh yeah, we we
Speaker 1: We really don't. I I will tell you that the
Speaker 1: tri state UH working relations between Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho
Speaker 1: are top notch. We formed that during the wolf delisting things,
Speaker 1: and we continually have constant and routine interactions. But the
Speaker 1: other thing you have to understand is what states is.
Speaker 1: We don't all manage exactly the same to get the
Speaker 1: same output. The way I structure are hunting seasons under
Speaker 1: the ability may be different than the way Wyoming or
Speaker 1: Montana does it, but it is still under the same
Speaker 1: state sovereignty, trying to provide for the needs of the
Speaker 1: people that they have and as long as it is
Speaker 1: above the bounds of conservation, there's really nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: It's the way Utah does trophy. There's nothing wrong with
Speaker 1: what Utah is doing with their trophy muletare managed. That's
Speaker 1: what they chose to do. There's nothing wrong with Idaho
Speaker 1: doing our management as opportunity. That's what we chose to do.
Speaker 1: The differences are actually great to have because each state
Speaker 1: is an experiment and wildlife management above that conservation threshold
Speaker 1: that we can learn from each other. You have to
Speaker 1: share information. We share information all the time. We have
Speaker 1: a group we call the Western Association Official Wildlife Agents.
Speaker 1: These and that group we come together twice a year
Speaker 1: and interact with each other a lot. When I have
Speaker 1: a meeting coming up in early January, and that's where
Speaker 1: I'll meet with Montana Unwyolming again to discuss grizzly beary
Speaker 1: issues and how to move forward. Were you guys on
Speaker 1: the grizzly bear thing? Did you did you issue the tag?
Speaker 1: We did issue the tag. Did you keep the person anonymous? Um? Yes,
Speaker 1: we well with the name is available about any other
Speaker 1: information about them is not by state law that they
Speaker 1: had to call him up, and I guess so the
Speaker 1: Commission took action at the last Commission meeting to brain
Speaker 1: check that um opportunity to that individual for next year
Speaker 1: because it was suspended by the U. S. Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service. Once they were relisted, they can't have directed
Speaker 1: sport mortality under yes, A does I don't have salvage
Speaker 1: requirements for black bearths meet salvage requirements not me. The
Speaker 1: Commission changed the meat retrieval portion of that one decade
Speaker 1: or so ago. Yeah, And as I was guessing, they
Speaker 1: weren't going to do a meat salvage requirement on grizzly bears. No,
Speaker 1: that is not part of the requirement. And again that's
Speaker 1: some of the variation you get from among states. Someone
Speaker 1: told me how they were in a meeting and it
Speaker 1: was like a it was a public comment period, and
Speaker 1: some hunters were saying, well, you know, we should do
Speaker 1: a you know, we're we're proposing this idea of a
Speaker 1: meat salvage requirement, and some of the people who were
Speaker 1: opposing the hunt we're sort of saying, like, uh, what's
Speaker 1: the term I'm looking for when you say don't like
Speaker 1: not infantilize, what does the word indulge. No, that's not it.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm looking for. I don't know they're saying, like,
Speaker 1: don't you know, don't do it man Kelly. It was
Speaker 1: telling me the story and I can't remember the word
Speaker 1: they use for it, but they're kind of like, don't
Speaker 1: do this phony symbolic thing to greenwash this. But that
Speaker 1: came to the word that he said that was used.
Speaker 1: But they were sort of like rather than rather than
Speaker 1: the opposition figures saying like, yes, I opposed the hunt,
Speaker 1: but there is gonna be one. I agree that there
Speaker 1: should be a meat salvage requirement. They wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure it looked as bad as possible, agreed. I. No, No,
Speaker 1: that's gonna confuse things too much. I'd rather there wasn't
Speaker 1: because it's easier for us to bash it. Right. You. Certainly,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we know as wildlife managers
Speaker 1: for you and as hunters on your behalf, is that
Speaker 1: support for hunting, that is, for traditional consumptive purposes in
Speaker 1: the United States is very high. A recent survey that
Speaker 1: I saw presented that was presented this last spring showed
Speaker 1: that over the American public is supportive of traditional regulated
Speaker 1: hunting activities. Were consumption is part of it, depending then on,
Speaker 1: and that's been pretty stable. We don't have to win
Speaker 1: support as hunters, We just have to keep it. Part
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about, Steve, is how do we
Speaker 1: regulate our own behavior so we maintain that support for
Speaker 1: that traditional hunting based activity that we so value. I
Speaker 1: believe that the use of a red squirrel where you
Speaker 1: described the meal you got off of it, is in
Speaker 1: keeping with that traditional activity that we know gives us
Speaker 1: a lot of support whether people hunt or not. We
Speaker 1: do know from other surveys that when you label this
Speaker 1: trophy hunting, when all you're out there for is the
Speaker 1: trophy without the consuming, it is a very conservative. But
Speaker 1: support from the public surveyed across the United States drops
Speaker 1: into the mid twenties. And so the anti hunters are
Speaker 1: trying to portray grizzly bear hunting as a trophy activity,
Speaker 1: not a population management activity, not anything else, and successfully
Speaker 1: then they turn the tables. We have to as hunters
Speaker 1: take a look at how we interact with the wild life.
Speaker 1: That we take the almost spiritual aspect of both taking
Speaker 1: that life as well as the consumption, whether it's the
Speaker 1: use of the fur or the meat or the bone
Speaker 1: in whatever manner, we've got to take and keep that
Speaker 1: front and center as we propose changes in hunting seasons
Speaker 1: and how we interact with our wildlife and fish for
Speaker 1: that matter. So, just to wrap up on grizzlies, if
Speaker 1: you look at a crystal ball and be dead, honest, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't tell me what you want to be dead? Honest,
Speaker 1: where is it gonna wind up? They'll be delisted. It
Speaker 1: will take another year or two to work through the
Speaker 1: legal system. Will persist on that, Uh, simply because the
Speaker 1: population itself is so strong, I mean, all the habitats occupied,
Speaker 1: it's actually plateaued out and uh and as long as
Speaker 1: we're able to delist it based on that distinct population
Speaker 1: segment that it was listed under for that Yellowstone ecosystem.
Speaker 1: The same will be true for the Northern Continental Divide.
Speaker 1: It takes in Glacier National Park. That will get delisted
Speaker 1: at some point, as well. Other populations that we've got
Speaker 1: like in the selkirks Um, these little populations that are
Speaker 1: reliant on Canada. We don't believe we'll ever achieve the
Speaker 1: populations that are called for in the recovery plans because
Speaker 1: they're so small and ISO it's hard to picture the
Speaker 1: Northern Cascades, which might might or might not have one
Speaker 1: in it like at this very second good example of that.
Speaker 1: And so uh, I think the greater Yellowstone in Northern
Speaker 1: Continental divide, where you have like maybe maybe a thousand
Speaker 1: in the other world. Yeah, I mean, um, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's in the Northern Continental Divide, but I think
Speaker 1: the fashionable And so the answer is yeah, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to be gained by not d listing though, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be gained by doing that. It's
Speaker 1: a success of the es A. All of financial and
Speaker 1: human resources going into the e s A process go
Speaker 1: away and we can put our efforts on something else
Speaker 1: that's more important and uh and get on with it.
Speaker 1: And that's been my My complaint about how e s
Speaker 1: A has been used is it's it's being used two
Speaker 1: achieve other needs. It's just like this lawsuit over our
Speaker 1: steel head permit. They're not suing us for conservation purposes
Speaker 1: on steelhead, they're suing us to get other things that
Speaker 1: they haven't don't feel they've been heard on and um,
Speaker 1: and and that's a misuse of of the endangered species.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that saddens me about seeing how the
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act is uses it. It's oftentimes in these
Speaker 1: big public battles, becomes about something very different than what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be talking about. Like the conversations we're
Speaker 1: having around grizzlies right now. We're not having a conversation
Speaker 1: about whether the populations were covered. It's just that like,
Speaker 1: I know what I want. You know that people can
Speaker 1: look at it. I know what I want. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: not really interested in the main question that governs that,
Speaker 1: like population stability, but I'm gonna use components of the
Speaker 1: essay as a tool to get what I want. And
Speaker 1: what I want is I damn sure don't want some
Speaker 1: redneck shooting a grizzly bear. Certainly like their perspective on it.
Speaker 1: I understand that, and that we've seen that social angst
Speaker 1: over large predatory wildlife goes down tremendously when they have
Speaker 1: a ticket in their pocket, permit to kill that because
Speaker 1: the control shifted from the Fishing Wildlife Service to the
Speaker 1: hunter himself or herself, as the case maybe we saw
Speaker 1: it with wolves. Oh my gosh. They angst over wolves
Speaker 1: and the predation they were having on both livestock as
Speaker 1: well as wildlife was huge. The number of letters we
Speaker 1: got from sportsmen was unbelievable. As soon as we opened
Speaker 1: a season and people could buy or permit, that went
Speaker 1: way down. Yeah right, no, now, not even close. I
Speaker 1: mean we dropped their numbers by a few hundred, were
Speaker 1: cropping them off, but it did change their behavior. But
Speaker 1: we have reduced live livestock depredations. Uh, and we've we've
Speaker 1: shifted their behavior around. They now understand what humans are
Speaker 1: and tend to stay away. We still have hotspot problems
Speaker 1: with wolf predation, but most of it's on on our
Speaker 1: uncular it's on our dear and elk. Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: as much on livestock. We we've really used hunting as
Speaker 1: well as directed kill by our agency and its staff
Speaker 1: and the US Wildlife Services to reduce that tremendously. And um,
Speaker 1: we're making some inroads on elk management as well. We're
Speaker 1: killing enough of them that elk populations have jumped back
Speaker 1: up in some areas it did and it still has
Speaker 1: some holes. I mean, we've got twenty seven elk elk
Speaker 1: zones in the state, and of that, seven of them
Speaker 1: aren't meeting objectives. Five of those are almost certainly the
Speaker 1: result of predation UH. Two of them a combination of
Speaker 1: that and other factors. UM. So we've we've changed that.
Speaker 1: Originally we were at I think eleven zones weren't meeting objectives,
Speaker 1: and so we've pushed that back down UH to a
Speaker 1: lower number. UH. And those mostly backcountry units, we can't
Speaker 1: we're not get enough hunters in there. We don't have
Speaker 1: livestock in there, so we don't have wildlife services in
Speaker 1: there directly killing animals that are our request. We're trying
Speaker 1: that in the Lolo zone just over the hill here,
Speaker 1: where we sent wildlife services in there as an experiment
Speaker 1: to kill wolves to try to reduce their numbers to
Speaker 1: a point we can see populations come back like that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have it doesn't have to be egg does no. No.
Speaker 1: We we use them UM. In fact, I prefer to
Speaker 1: use them. They're they're cheaper and better at it than
Speaker 1: our staff are because they got the right equipment and
Speaker 1: training to get in and get that taken care of
Speaker 1: to handle that. And we have found that we can
Speaker 1: remove enough wolves to get a response, but it's a
Speaker 1: garden weeding operation. I mean, they were very productive. They
Speaker 1: come back, so you've got to go back in there.
Speaker 1: And what we need is to get enough hunters and
Speaker 1: trappers in there once we get the numbers down, to
Speaker 1: keep the numbers down so we don't have to keep
Speaker 1: paying a third entity for our own staff to go
Speaker 1: in there and do that. And whether we can get
Speaker 1: there in a place like the Low Lo or the
Speaker 1: middle Fork of the Salmon or the Cellway and some
Speaker 1: of these really thick backcountry panhandle units is yet to
Speaker 1: be seen. We're working with the trappers in the state
Speaker 1: UH to try to enhance their ability to get in
Speaker 1: there by changing some seasoned structures, bag limits, trap check
Speaker 1: limits and stuff like that, working very closely to adjust
Speaker 1: those to try to get to a better place with
Speaker 1: being able to use sport trapping as a means of
Speaker 1: control as well. And UH, I'm pretty excited about that.
Speaker 1: But we've only been at this now for I guess
Speaker 1: eight nine years, and we've only been out from underneath
Speaker 1: the umbrella of Fishing Wildlife Service. We had a five
Speaker 1: year probationary period where we couldn't do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: We've really only been at this about three years with
Speaker 1: trans new stuff, and you're gonna see us continue to
Speaker 1: do that. What do you think will end up happening
Speaker 1: in the northern Great Lakes? And this is like we're
Speaker 1: getting like way outside of your purview. But do you
Speaker 1: think that that there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: There is a bill in Congress to delist wolves nationwide
Speaker 1: across the board. They're just done. Whether that stands a
Speaker 1: chance of getting through in this it's a little too
Speaker 1: you like, um, a little too elastic. Yeah, I all
Speaker 1: I know is in them in in that particular area,
Speaker 1: that's probably their best chance for delisting because of the
Speaker 1: way the judicial order is on them. Up there. It's
Speaker 1: a little different, um, but it's it's gonna be they're out.
Speaker 1: They don't have a population problem there. It's it's again
Speaker 1: they're tied up in this legal mess that they can't
Speaker 1: get out. And there it's around the question of just populations.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get us like terribly into the weeds,
Speaker 1: but there it winds up being again like nitpick that
Speaker 1: it's like nitpicking little legal things and they're not arguing
Speaker 1: about the main question, right the main question being like
Speaker 1: are there enough wolves? There's questions within that geography. There's
Speaker 1: no there's no benefit being derived of e s A.
Speaker 1: That's where I think the question. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: nuances of the Endangered Species Act and somebody arguing over
Speaker 1: the definition of a distinct population segment or some other
Speaker 1: aspect of the s A. That many attorneys are very
Speaker 1: good at arguing in a court of law, and it's
Speaker 1: not a great benefit of their pocket what probably given
Speaker 1: them given the way they're reimbursed. There's there's a number
Speaker 1: of scholarly articles on on the reimbursement of of the
Speaker 1: legal people that are taking these suits. It's a cottage industry.
Speaker 1: I can I can image me to essay lawyer. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it is their right to take
Speaker 1: those legal actions and that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: And until Congress decides to change something on that, it's
Speaker 1: it's what we have to deal with. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to blow that. I don't want to be mistaken
Speaker 1: for someone who wants to blow the whole system up.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to all end. I wanted to all
Speaker 1: end the way I wanted to end, but not I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not adversarial to the process. I'm like like
Speaker 1: a sports fan, right, you appreciate the rules, but you're
Speaker 1: just rooting for your own teeth. So I just like
Speaker 1: to see it end up in a way that I
Speaker 1: wanted to end up. But I want jump in another one.
Speaker 1: Until the other day when someone they they officially verify
Speaker 1: that a Mountain Cariboo came down to Montana. Right, I
Speaker 1: missed that. I'm still back with the grizzly that was
Speaker 1: on the golf course and Stevensville. If you heard about
Speaker 1: that too, Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think they verified it. I think some guys had pound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found some flirting with the board, and I think
Speaker 1: they might have it, might be lured him over, It
Speaker 1: might be verified and step foot into Montana, which would
Speaker 1: be the first time since the twenties or something. But Idaho,
Speaker 1: right had the except for that. And I don't know
Speaker 1: enough about that to know how freakish that is if
Speaker 1: it's one that just packed up and straight a hundred miles.
Speaker 1: But Idaho has been the the state of the lower
Speaker 1: in the Lower Fort the idol has been the state
Speaker 1: where we have had or the last decades we've had
Speaker 1: some number of caribou flirting with the border. And if
Speaker 1: you were gonna have a cariboo in the US, it
Speaker 1: was presumably, I mean, it was gonna be one in Idaho.
Speaker 1: And that population is soffe. Do you see what's your
Speaker 1: take on it? Is this like a a big meaningful
Speaker 1: thing or is it wind up being that it was
Speaker 1: such kind of of a little bit of a fluke
Speaker 1: and you can't read too much into it that they're
Speaker 1: now not there, Like, give me the mile high perspective
Speaker 1: on it. From my standpoint, this was almost preordained. I'm
Speaker 1: giving limitations of the habitat at given the small, low
Speaker 1: productivity of the of the herd and the fact that
Speaker 1: it was reliant predominantly on Canada with a few animals
Speaker 1: coming in. The critical mass we needed of thirty to
Speaker 1: sixty animals we achieved I think the mid thirties and
Speaker 1: number of years ago, and then we've been on a
Speaker 1: downhill slide since. So they having a population of three
Speaker 1: or four. In fact, Canada's kind of come in and
Speaker 1: take those animals and removal to put them in protective
Speaker 1: custody to try to preserve the genetics and use those
Speaker 1: animals to breed some more in in uh captive rearing,
Speaker 1: and then reintroduce them at some other point to bolster
Speaker 1: the remaining population. Part of the problem was predation with
Speaker 1: the establishment of wolves in that area in addition to
Speaker 1: the already existing cougar population that was there, it tipped
Speaker 1: them over. It was that combination of factors. And at
Speaker 1: one point we had actually given permission to Canada to
Speaker 1: hire people to come in and kill wolves in northern Idaho,
Speaker 1: uh and they did that, but that wasn't enough because
Speaker 1: it's not just wolves. It was a combination of wolves
Speaker 1: and probably black bears on on on the young ones
Speaker 1: as well as cougar in there, and because their habitat
Speaker 1: is so small, it was easy for the predators to
Speaker 1: pick on them uh there and so this was preordained
Speaker 1: from my standpoint, Steve, it's also an appropriate action. One
Speaker 1: of the things just basically saying we're done, we can't
Speaker 1: do anymore, We're going to triage this out. And this
Speaker 1: is a situation where we did not know how to
Speaker 1: overcome the limitations to that population. We took those animals
Speaker 1: and put them into a captive rearing situation. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. But we we've decided that the use
Speaker 1: of resources for those few animals that were declining their
Speaker 1: extinction was not a good use of resources. Let's go
Speaker 1: into the captive rearing game. Let's try to see if
Speaker 1: we can understand this in the future as we work more,
Speaker 1: get better at managing other factors, habitat, predation, what have you,
Speaker 1: and then we can put the resources to managing something
Speaker 1: we know how to fix for some other species. And
Speaker 1: that that idea of conservation triage under ESA as controversial
Speaker 1: as the dickens. There's folks like myself to think it's
Speaker 1: the way you go. We do it medically on something.
Speaker 1: There are yeah, some of them. You just say, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do, and no amount of money
Speaker 1: poured on it is going to make any difference because
Speaker 1: we don't know what to do. Because what a reasonable
Speaker 1: number of population be in that I can't tell you
Speaker 1: what the recovery plan was. Thank for the Idahoe portion,
Speaker 1: it was just around a hundred animals. They're flirting around
Speaker 1: a dozen, seven to a dozen, right, and then it
Speaker 1: just it went down to single digits and you know,
Speaker 1: and it was a time where they were either going
Speaker 1: to go away on their own, or we take a
Speaker 1: few and you didn't see a way to buy your
Speaker 1: way out of it. No, not with There wasn't any
Speaker 1: way and to do it effectively. And so the Canadians
Speaker 1: chose to offer this opportunity and boom they're out. So
Speaker 1: that's that idea that there are. Did we give up
Speaker 1: on them, not totally, but we recognized there was nothing
Speaker 1: more to be done right at this moment in time
Speaker 1: with that species. We damn near got there with Saki salmon.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was on the original Saky recovery team
Speaker 1: when we got down to one male, lonesome Larry came back.
Speaker 1: One year, we had four fish come back. The next year,
Speaker 1: we had zero another year and then seven. I mean
Speaker 1: that was a four years fan and that's a complete
Speaker 1: generation zero, four and seven for the returning populations Sakai
Speaker 1: salmon coming back to Red Fish Lake in Idaho. We
Speaker 1: took all of those fish out of their natural habitat,
Speaker 1: put them in a hatchery and Eagle Idaho, and expanded
Speaker 1: their genetics such that we did not go into what's
Speaker 1: called in breeding depression. We used every trick in the book,
Speaker 1: and there were some really amazing tricks that our staff used.
Speaker 1: Now we're stocking millions of fish in there to try
Speaker 1: to build that population back up while we expand. The
Speaker 1: population came from those from that, from those yeah, from
Speaker 1: those thirteen fish that we had dinner ad right, that's
Speaker 1: four or five seven, yeah, twelve fish um that we
Speaker 1: had to work with. We now have a full blown
Speaker 1: hatchery operating that we built with BPA mitigation money. And
Speaker 1: it was expensive, but we didn't waste our time trying
Speaker 1: to douce them in on site because the numbers were
Speaker 1: too small and numerically we couldn't get over the hurdle. Well,
Speaker 1: fish are different because you can't go pull a hundred
Speaker 1: eggs out of caribou. That's true, you know. Now we
Speaker 1: can get four thousand eggs out of a saki and
Speaker 1: consequently it is a different game from that standpoint. But
Speaker 1: my my point being is we have to make some
Speaker 1: of these hard decisions at some point in time not
Speaker 1: to spend money certain ways or human resources as the
Speaker 1: case maybe and um and move forward. That's conservation triosh
Speaker 1: where we make those decisions versus everything is important. We've
Speaker 1: got to pour all the resources into it, but there's
Speaker 1: not enough to take care of it when you, uh,
Speaker 1: you've been at this game a long time in this business,
Speaker 1: right and now you're in kind of a pinnacle position.
Speaker 1: When you look at like these tough decisions, do you
Speaker 1: do you imagine that there are some that will that
Speaker 1: will haunt you or that you'll have a sort of
Speaker 1: I guess he is the guy who What do you
Speaker 1: think about that? Where do you feel like you're so
Speaker 1: sort of part of a process, right and if if
Speaker 1: it wasn't, you would be someone else and that person
Speaker 1: would probably end up doing the same thing. Or do
Speaker 1: you feel like you're putting like the personal like Virgil
Speaker 1: More stamp on things that are going to affect future
Speaker 1: generations and they'll look back and be like, that was
Speaker 1: the guy certainly messed it all up, or or conversely
Speaker 1: the guy that made it perfect. Well, I'll take responsibilities
Speaker 1: for the screw ups because that's the way it works.
Speaker 1: But the successes are never a single person um, they're
Speaker 1: they're always a group. But the successes that I've been
Speaker 1: part of them that I'm most proud of are forming
Speaker 1: strong collaboratives among all of the users out there that
Speaker 1: can agree on how to move forward. And that's that's
Speaker 1: a challenge given the di visitness in society today. But
Speaker 1: the closer you get people to the resource on the ground,
Speaker 1: the easier it is for them to all focus on
Speaker 1: what they love. So if we're talking about trying to
Speaker 1: manage Yellowstone cutthroat across its entire range, gosh, that's a
Speaker 1: big area across several states. But if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about managing Yellowstone cutthroat in the South Fork of
Speaker 1: the Snake, I can bring those users together. We can
Speaker 1: sit down and form up a collaborative. We've done it
Speaker 1: on the clear Water, We've done it in the oy He's,
Speaker 1: We've done it on the Koutney River, We've done it
Speaker 1: in in Montana with the Blackfoot Initiative. The ones that
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with, and that is the challenge, is to
Speaker 1: find the right sizing of bringing people together that care
Speaker 1: about that place, that land, and the geographical geographic size
Speaker 1: that people can embrace. Some of them are massive, like
Speaker 1: the oy He's. It's a big geography, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a resource people can race and get their mind around
Speaker 1: as they try to come up with solutions to maintaining
Speaker 1: lifestyle and wildlife resources and plant resources down there and
Speaker 1: they initiative was a huge success and still is. And
Speaker 1: we've got ranchers working with conservation groups, working with other
Speaker 1: NGOs to to keep a lifestyle on the ground because
Speaker 1: everybody cares about that sage brush community down there. We
Speaker 1: see it in the clear Water basin. People care about
Speaker 1: that resource there in the lifestyle it has. It's hard,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of work. That's when I'm most
Speaker 1: proud of every collaborative that I've ever been associated with
Speaker 1: that has been successful is because everybody came together with
Speaker 1: that common value and and it's really satisfying things and
Speaker 1: that isn't dependent on an individual. Then if that person leaves,
Speaker 1: it has momentum of its own. Uh So I feel
Speaker 1: some problems. Look, if you look at the Cutthroat in general,
Speaker 1: it's just too like it has the approached on the
Speaker 1: micro level. I think the management schemes for that level
Speaker 1: need to be uh The issues associated with the south
Speaker 1: Fork of the Snake and maintaining the spawning tributaries there
Speaker 1: and dealing with the rainbow trout intergression are unique to
Speaker 1: that area and require localized work. Uh. Public bient. The
Speaker 1: way Wyoming is doing it as different because their geography
Speaker 1: is different. The way Yellowstone Park is doing it is different,
Speaker 1: um and it's its own community up there with Yellowstone Cutthroat.
Speaker 1: Montana has a slightly different approach on it, but it's
Speaker 1: all getting at the same thing, and it's it's reliant
Speaker 1: on that. Now. We have a tri state agreement on
Speaker 1: Yellowstone Cutthroat that we put in place in the eighties
Speaker 1: and said, here's the things we all agree on are
Speaker 1: going to be common death missions and common management concepts.
Speaker 1: We're going to manage for purity of cutthroat, and that
Speaker 1: purity is defined this way, you know, by what proportion
Speaker 1: of integration is there and how we use those fish
Speaker 1: and transport them around. We agreed on those basic concepts,
Speaker 1: but then we went out and built these management things
Speaker 1: on a localized basis. I'm curious about, if I can
Speaker 1: interrupt just uh something you said about the those collaborative efforts.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had to pinpoint something that made
Speaker 1: them work, because I've been part of plenty collaborations that
Speaker 1: didn't work, what would what would it be? It's usually
Speaker 1: some big controversy, the one that I'm no, I'm serious,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we're right at the middle of it. And
Speaker 1: that's where I take responsibility for being at fault. And
Speaker 1: I'll do this on behalf of my agency more than anything.
Speaker 1: But years ago in the Henry's Fork drainage, we've got
Speaker 1: on on Park Reservoir. On Park Reservoir gets uh utah
Speaker 1: chubs in them. That ties up the biomass and our
Speaker 1: ability to grow hatchery fish in there for sport fishing.
Speaker 1: You gotta back up on that one. People are gonna
Speaker 1: your tom about okay, I mean some people who know
Speaker 1: about this, Okay, Well, anyway, we get competition between fish
Speaker 1: species and non game species like a utah chub, which
Speaker 1: is an exotic. Uh. We're in there eating all of
Speaker 1: the zooplankton and and food and tying it up in
Speaker 1: their bodies biomass. I'm sorry, I did get carried just
Speaker 1: like what the Utah shub was, and it was sub
Speaker 1: is a mental. It's a great big mental. They got
Speaker 1: in there, and they got in there. We can have
Speaker 1: a way through bait puckets and what have you, but
Speaker 1: the bottom line is we have periodically gone in there
Speaker 1: and poisoned that system with a poison called ropano. It's
Speaker 1: an extract out of a root from South America and
Speaker 1: it it blocks the oxygen I take at the cellular
Speaker 1: level in the brain and they just die. And you've
Speaker 1: done some South American fish poisoning. That's where we learned
Speaker 1: it from the natives down there. Uh well, I haven't
Speaker 1: done that. I'd like to go sometime. And anyway, in
Speaker 1: the process of doing the one that I the last
Speaker 1: one of these, we drew Island Park Reservoir way down
Speaker 1: and we do that to limit the amount of poison
Speaker 1: that has to be put in the system and then
Speaker 1: detoxed as it flows out of there. And we usually
Speaker 1: close the damn drought down, dump the toxin in, do
Speaker 1: all the tributary strait, try to kill the chubs, close
Speaker 1: the gates on the dam, and fill it back up well.
Speaker 1: In the process of trying to get the minimum pool
Speaker 1: possible to save money, they drew the pool down so
Speaker 1: low it cut through the sediment that had built up
Speaker 1: in the reservoir, and all that sediment flushed into the
Speaker 1: Henry's Fork at Harriman Ranch, the fly fish mecca down there,
Speaker 1: and it accumulated terribly habitat and it did it created
Speaker 1: some problems that created such a public outcry about the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Reclamation and Fishing Game mismanaging this reservoir and
Speaker 1: having effects on the wild trout fishery in the Henry's
Speaker 1: Fork Below that the Henry's Fork UH Coalition formed up
Speaker 1: under guidance of the Henry's Fork Foundation as well as
Speaker 1: the local irrigators there that were upset, and they formed
Speaker 1: one of the most successful collaboratives we have today and
Speaker 1: included everybody in it. But it was an incident that
Speaker 1: created that, and if you look around you'll find often
Speaker 1: there was an incident or an activity or a legal
Speaker 1: action that caused something. They finally brought people together because
Speaker 1: they know we got to fix this so this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again. And that's just one example of the Henry's
Speaker 1: Fork Watershed Council forming up. That was thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: The had and put from irrigators too. Yeah they're a
Speaker 1: big I want water, and you boys figure out the
Speaker 1: fishing situation, and so fast forward, the dam was rebuilt,
Speaker 1: a hydro project was put on it a few years later,
Speaker 1: and because of that collaborative, the needs of the fish
Speaker 1: and the irrigators were worked out among the collaborative and
Speaker 1: fed to the agencies so we could implement them as
Speaker 1: trust managers uh for them, and that's the way it
Speaker 1: should be. Too often we get put in a position
Speaker 1: of why did you make that decision instead of implementing
Speaker 1: things that the community as a whole comes up with.
Speaker 1: I see our agency and our staff as catalyst, if
Speaker 1: at all possible, for catalyzing that kind of community interaction,
Speaker 1: so we can come up with these Certainly, ultimately the
Speaker 1: Commission made me making some of these decisions, but trying
Speaker 1: to get people to come together instead of us standing
Speaker 1: in the middle of the circle getting shot at by
Speaker 1: all sides because they're dissatisfied with what we're proposing to
Speaker 1: try to balance everything out. We're better if we're part
Speaker 1: of the circle and everybody comes up with an idea
Speaker 1: that's implementable in consensus or as much as you can now.
Speaker 1: That works until somebody doesn't consent, and then you get
Speaker 1: these tangents out there. But it is by and large
Speaker 1: working very well. It's where the focus is right now
Speaker 1: and natural resource management of our public lands, especially in
Speaker 1: the resources on those public lands. Do you find areas
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of public apathy? It surprises you
Speaker 1: buy the lack of input. Yes, I'm always amazed on
Speaker 1: certain issues that you think are just gonna blow things up.
Speaker 1: We'll put a proposal or an idea out there, we
Speaker 1: have nothing, We'll have a public meeting or a workshop.
Speaker 1: Three people will show up. I think what we're doing
Speaker 1: right here though, with a podcast, what we can do
Speaker 1: with social media to try to get this information out
Speaker 1: on a broader sense. Because I'm old enough, I still
Speaker 1: like to sit down and have a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: and read my paper. Okay, but I'm realizing now that
Speaker 1: my paper is only three pages long, and if I'm
Speaker 1: going to really get any information, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: sit down at least with my tablet and my cup
Speaker 1: of coffee and and read through that. And if I've
Speaker 1: got a tablet, then I can hot link in to
Speaker 1: the to the next level of information if I desire,
Speaker 1: and that might lead me then to some of these
Speaker 1: other discussion groups and information from folks like yourself that
Speaker 1: are going to help us hopefully engage people in a
Speaker 1: different manner of community as we work forward with these things.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason these folks are here, the two staff,
Speaker 1: are to help us with that in terms of how
Speaker 1: do we get how do we do that. How do
Speaker 1: we communicate better? I came up during an era where
Speaker 1: we did a mag scene and we had a TV show.
Speaker 1: No one does magazines that in newspaper articles. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was all print or media driven under an analog system. Uh,
Speaker 1: we need to and our transgressing, you know, getting into
Speaker 1: the digital stuff. I think the building we're in here
Speaker 1: right now is an example of that digital technology. We're
Speaker 1: at quite the ONEX World headquarters because it just moved
Speaker 1: next door. Okay while we're at their annex A one
Speaker 1: thing I was going to throw in there. Um, you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned the apathy. I've been to some of
Speaker 1: those meetings where two or three people in fact this summer,
Speaker 1: I think I talked to you about this stuff that
Speaker 1: d e Q is doing on the Upper clerk Fork
Speaker 1: and um, you know, if you go down to the bar,
Speaker 1: you go down to Charlie B's, everyone will talk about it. Everybody,
Speaker 1: every fishing guy's got an opinion about it. But I
Speaker 1: think some of that apathy is derived from the fact
Speaker 1: that no one knows who's really accountable for stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: you tell the story about the res are getting drawn
Speaker 1: down and this massive sediment coming out. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I would imagine I don't know that this for a fact,
Speaker 1: but that that fishing community down there was probably going,
Speaker 1: who's accountable for this? Who's who's making up for you know,
Speaker 1: this money that we're losing, etcetera, etcetera. And I think
Speaker 1: some of that apathy comes out of the fact that
Speaker 1: people figura, well, no matter what they yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: find I I think that that's true because you hear
Speaker 1: so many of these issues, some of the ones we've
Speaker 1: touched on today. You hear people talk about them and
Speaker 1: they're very passionate about it, but the minute they open
Speaker 1: the mouth, I'm like, you know what, you're not equipped
Speaker 1: to talk about this, bro right, just by a handful
Speaker 1: of things you just said, like you're behind, you're not
Speaker 1: caught up. Yeah, And I mean, Virgil, you articulated that
Speaker 1: those collaborations so well, and it sounds like when those
Speaker 1: people come together there has to be some level of
Speaker 1: compromise and those different entities or collaborative management by its
Speaker 1: nature is give and take. I mean, it's but it
Speaker 1: also builds on relationships and understanding a core understanding that
Speaker 1: my need and value really isn't that much different. Example
Speaker 1: being the rancher who has a piece of property but
Speaker 1: relies on the public sagebrush grasses to have his um lifestyle,
Speaker 1: his ranching lifestyle. He's got a ranche, but he needs
Speaker 1: the grays Catalan and and he values that environment because
Speaker 1: it's home. He knows it as well as anybody because
Speaker 1: he's lived there for maybe three or four generations, uh,
Speaker 1: in his family. And we can't exclude their needs and
Speaker 1: be successful. Example being sage grouse. Sage grouse need water
Speaker 1: for an important part of their brood rearing. Even in
Speaker 1: Idaho with all the public lands we have, which is
Speaker 1: federal another five percent of state, I mean, it's huge,
Speaker 1: almost all the waters on private land that's what was homesteaded.
Speaker 1: And so if you put a rancher out of business
Speaker 1: because you're saying you can't graze up here because of
Speaker 1: endangered species, and they pull their whole operation into their
Speaker 1: little piece of land that has all the water, and
Speaker 1: they began to feed there and utilize all the habitat
Speaker 1: up the sage grounds suffer in the long run because
Speaker 1: it's disconnected. We need the community. Now they get that
Speaker 1: what's good for the herd is good for the bird.
Speaker 1: Is the catchphrase that we use now right, and and
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. We want these operational ranches out there
Speaker 1: that are part of the landscape and can be managed
Speaker 1: in conjunction with other resources we value. They've seen it
Speaker 1: in the past. They know what can be done. We've
Speaker 1: seen it, and so now it's just a at or
Speaker 1: a bank. Sure, we don't restrict any of our activities
Speaker 1: to the point that everybody just gives up and goes home.
Speaker 1: And that's that's collaboration. That's the thing I warned about
Speaker 1: all the time, or think about. One thing about wildlife
Speaker 1: issues is what happens when you create the damage that's
Speaker 1: done when you create a spotted owl where the spot
Speaker 1: at out a conversation around the spot at all, the
Speaker 1: spot at all like ceased to be a bird and
Speaker 1: it became like this, this symbol of something, and it
Speaker 1: became like a thing of animosity, and it became a
Speaker 1: symbol of divisiveness. And when you allow some of these
Speaker 1: conflicts to go to fester and don't strive for some
Speaker 1: compromise and like people are coming to a mutual understanding
Speaker 1: of what they need to go, you end up having
Speaker 1: these like these like wildlife fatalities in terms of like
Speaker 1: what the species stands for. And it's painful to watch
Speaker 1: it happen, Like if you've heard the howl of a wolf, right,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, but it's painful to watch it happen where
Speaker 1: people Like when I hear that noise, I think about
Speaker 1: like my needs not being listened to, man, and that's
Speaker 1: the only thing I'm here ring right there, And it
Speaker 1: sucks to see that happened to to wildlife. And I
Speaker 1: think the way they had that off is to usually
Speaker 1: you know, these ways like finding out like what you need,
Speaker 1: but also giving room to other people to also live
Speaker 1: their lives and have their needs be met. And it's
Speaker 1: like it's hard to do. I used to not look
Speaker 1: at these issues that way. When I was younger. I
Speaker 1: looked at him in a very rigid way, where like
Speaker 1: I was right, you were wrong, and you were stupid
Speaker 1: and I was really smart. Know, then do it? You know?
Speaker 1: And then the more you round and watch successes and
Speaker 1: failures around some of the stuff, do you more you realize, Man,
Speaker 1: you're never gonna get there with that attitude. That's correct.
Speaker 1: We never got to the question, what are some like
Speaker 1: big fit, what are the fishing game grapes, fish game.
Speaker 1: Don't know what they're talking about. They killed all the Uh,
Speaker 1: we want more big fish. You know, that would be
Speaker 1: there's no big fish simplistically, but certainly if the legitimate complaint.
Speaker 1: You ask what thegitimate complaint is, and it would be
Speaker 1: that we don't know everything about the spot you hunt.
Speaker 1: When you come to me and you say, do you
Speaker 1: know how many deer or what the buck doo ratio
Speaker 1: is in you know, Timber Creek of unit five, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go no, but I can tell you what the
Speaker 1: buck doo ratio is in units three, four, and five
Speaker 1: overall from the combined survey work we've done. But no,
Speaker 1: we don't know that. And it is a legitimate complaint
Speaker 1: that we have set management goals based on larger survey units.
Speaker 1: And this person complaint is you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about relative to Temper Creek. Because I sat the
Speaker 1: same blind for twenty five years and I always see
Speaker 1: acts of this year. I saw why, and it's legitimate
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of what they see. We talked about
Speaker 1: that earlier, and what we're trying to do now is
Speaker 1: look at different ways of censusing wildlife to understanding what's
Speaker 1: out there. Going from the traditional UH site based survey
Speaker 1: work where we have to see them, count them, UH,
Speaker 1: kill them, assess them, whatever the case may be, to
Speaker 1: something that provides a different level of that. I mean
Speaker 1: remote cameras. It's still kind of seeing, but we can
Speaker 1: get a lot more of them out there. I mean
Speaker 1: I just saw him bringing a truckload to remote cameras
Speaker 1: into our office that we boxed up and sent out
Speaker 1: to all the regions. I mean hundreds of these things
Speaker 1: that we're putting out and in matrix to try to
Speaker 1: get better understanding of what's in Timber Creek as an example,
Speaker 1: versus just the larger units based on aerial flights. UM.
Speaker 1: We're using UH hair snags and scatter analysis pulling DNA
Speaker 1: out of these animals so that we contract families. We
Speaker 1: can tell you by looking at UM d N A
Speaker 1: from wolf scats whether or not that represents a family
Speaker 1: unit and whether or not they were successful with getting
Speaker 1: a pair of getting a brood off just by getting
Speaker 1: proper sampling of pieces and parts because we can type
Speaker 1: those our ability today with advanced computer analysis and the
Speaker 1: speed at which we can do things from when I
Speaker 1: started my career uh is, I can't even fathom it.
Speaker 1: I mean, DNA analysis is a good example. We have
Speaker 1: the DNA makeup of every hatchery fish we stalk out
Speaker 1: and and and it's it's amazing that we have parental
Speaker 1: based stock analysis. You take a fish in the ocean,
Speaker 1: I can take a fin clipper a swab off of
Speaker 1: that fish, can run an analysis and I can tell
Speaker 1: you which hatchery it came out of, and which female
Speaker 1: produced it and and that, and I can do it
Speaker 1: darn near in a couple of days. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would have taken you months to pull something like that
Speaker 1: off before, and not with that specificity. But I got
Speaker 1: a lab full of people that are cranking this stuff out,
Speaker 1: and it's going on all over the place, and and
Speaker 1: we're advancing and trying to push the limit. That's the science,
Speaker 1: that's the science fiction almost of wildlife management. As we
Speaker 1: move forward, it doesn't eliminate the hands on stuff, the
Speaker 1: trapping of animals to put collars on them so we
Speaker 1: can go in and assess how they died, whether it
Speaker 1: was predation, natural whatever. Get better at that, um we
Speaker 1: still have a lot of that, the fun stuff jumping
Speaker 1: out of a helicopter on a on a calf elk
Speaker 1: and wrestling it to the ground. Uh. Catching fish in
Speaker 1: a trap and putting tags on them. That's fun. Handling
Speaker 1: wildlife is really a kick. It's what got me into
Speaker 1: this business. Uh, and learning from that. But we're we're
Speaker 1: trying to get better at this. And you know, drone
Speaker 1: technology and infrared technology isn't quite there yet. But I
Speaker 1: mean these satellite collars we put on elk now beam
Speaker 1: up to satellite back down to the computer. They're instantly
Speaker 1: on a map, and we can program them to do
Speaker 1: it every five minutes, every hour, every ten hours, depending
Speaker 1: on what we want. And we're able to use that
Speaker 1: to help landowners understand where an elker it is relative
Speaker 1: to depredation on their haystack. And and that's real time
Speaker 1: management while we track some stuff around. So you're working
Speaker 1: towards being able to tell that guy what's going on
Speaker 1: in front of his blood. That's the legitimate complaint. We've
Speaker 1: heard it. We're working on it, using technology and trying
Speaker 1: to put more resources into it. Uh. Fortunately in Idaho,
Speaker 1: our finances are secure for the time being. We went
Speaker 1: through a low like everybody else when the economy tanked.
Speaker 1: Are revenues dropped by uh, real quick. Why are you
Speaker 1: tied to the economy, because people, that's good question, Steve.
Speaker 1: We're tied to the economy because half of our licensed
Speaker 1: revenue comes from non residents, but there are only ten
Speaker 1: of our hunters. And in the past say that again.
Speaker 1: I want people to hear this. Half of our revenue,
Speaker 1: our licensed revenue, which is around forty four million dollars
Speaker 1: a year, half of that, a little over half of
Speaker 1: it comes from non resident hunters. Now, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of non resident fishermen, but they don't generate nearly
Speaker 1: the same money because they're buying one day. It's it's
Speaker 1: a high volume, low cost problem. The economy goes south,
Speaker 1: people are like, I can't, I can't go to idle hunting.
Speaker 1: This year. We did not realize how sensitive it was.
Speaker 1: We'd never seen it before. But when the economy tanked
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. We have a quota on non
Speaker 1: resident hunting permits in Idaho. Um it's thirteen thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred elk tags fifteen thousand, five hundred deer tags. When
Speaker 1: those are gone for general hunting, they're gone. We've never
Speaker 1: sold We've never not sold those out up until two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, No kid, no kidding, we always sold them out,
Speaker 1: so half of our revenue was guaranteed. And and we
Speaker 1: we did three things. We raised the price of non
Speaker 1: resident fees so we didn't have to raise them on resident.
Speaker 1: Our elk herds tanked because of predation and other habitat
Speaker 1: related issues, and the economy tanked. All three of those
Speaker 1: things combined over a four year period to drive our
Speaker 1: revenues UH down by nine million dollars UH. It was huge,
Speaker 1: It was huge. And what we found is non residents
Speaker 1: are elastic in their coming here and further analysis, that
Speaker 1: was partially the perception that our elk herds had collapsed
Speaker 1: and it wasn't worth it. The other part was a
Speaker 1: big portion of those people who stayed away were skilled
Speaker 1: trades folks construction. Construction got hit hardest, and those guys
Speaker 1: were selling their trucks to feed the family they were
Speaker 1: they were not working because the housing market collapsed. Then
Speaker 1: as soon as the economy started coming up about a
Speaker 1: year behind that, and then people got over the price increases. Man,
Speaker 1: we we discounted nonresident products we marketed to them. But
Speaker 1: the last two years we sold all of our nonresident
Speaker 1: product out again, does this state keep trying? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they do, but um, I know, the Montana
Speaker 1: Guides and Outfitters Association just put out a reported said
Speaker 1: the outdoor recreation industry in Montana brings in like seven
Speaker 1: point one billion annually. We have those numbers for hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing in Idaho. I believe the direct economic benefit
Speaker 1: is one point four billion. Okay, I know who has
Speaker 1: an economy of about sixties six billion, So that gives
Speaker 1: you some sense of where it fits. It's a pretty
Speaker 1: sizeable number. And and then wildlife viewing adds about another
Speaker 1: six million to that. So we're about a two billion
Speaker 1: dollar uh economic activity in the state on a wildlife
Speaker 1: based economic activity, all outdoor based recreation is I think
Speaker 1: it's a six billion Okay, it's it's it's at that
Speaker 1: six billion dollars figures. So you know, just under ten
Speaker 1: percent of the economy of the state is outdoor based
Speaker 1: and a third of that is based on wildlife. So
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's important, and we can drill that down.
Speaker 1: We've been the surveys. If you want to know how
Speaker 1: much people what the economic benefits are of somebody fishing,
Speaker 1: Um Uh, Henry's like, I can go to the file
Speaker 1: and pulling information up and today I mean fish they caught,
Speaker 1: how much money they spent, how they much money spent
Speaker 1: on groceries and housing. We've got that information from surveys
Speaker 1: and we can give it to county commissioners who can
Speaker 1: live at the local working group. And it's big. It's big.
Speaker 1: So tell me a classification of grape that you feel
Speaker 1: is illegitimate, Like, what's the thing you guys in your
Speaker 1: business people are like, oh, fishing game and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: that just isn't fair. There's probably two One is you
Speaker 1: never listen. You never listen to us, You never do
Speaker 1: what I want done, and and I get it, but
Speaker 1: it's not a legitimate complaint given the amount of public
Speaker 1: input that our agency seeks. The requirements for public input
Speaker 1: of a state agency are minimal. I mean it's like
Speaker 1: one public meeting before the commission makes decision. Gosh, we
Speaker 1: have dozens, if not hundreds of public meetings over a
Speaker 1: year in advance of regulations, setting opportunities for input electronically
Speaker 1: in other ways. So I don't consider those to be
Speaker 1: legitimate complaints because there's so many opportunities What that might
Speaker 1: mean is I told him my opinion and it wasn't
Speaker 1: reflected and what ultimately happened. So the other one is
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're talking about. In other words,
Speaker 1: will do a survey, whether it's a social survey that
Speaker 1: asked for uh, Steve, you get a survey from us
Speaker 1: and it says, uh, you know, are you satisfied with
Speaker 1: deer hunting? Um? Would you be satisfied with? Uh? Fewer
Speaker 1: large bucks but more hunting opportunity? A bunch of social
Speaker 1: science questions that we worked with the university design and
Speaker 1: they go back and they go, we don't believe any
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, it doesn't conform with my opinion, so
Speaker 1: we don't believe it. And so and we see the
Speaker 1: same thing from deer and elk population surveys. They go
Speaker 1: because they didn't see it, We don't believe that. You
Speaker 1: do not know what you're talking about. That is not
Speaker 1: a legitimate complaint. Okay. We are a science based organization,
Speaker 1: whether it's social science, whether it's biological science. I'll stand
Speaker 1: on our science. And I can tell you, having been
Speaker 1: a in a leadership role in a state agency for
Speaker 1: over a decade and working nationally among my peers and
Speaker 1: other state agencies. I can tell you that in the
Speaker 1: Inner Mountain West, we have some of the finest fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife scientists in the world. And in Idaho we
Speaker 1: know more about predation management and ungulent management than just
Speaker 1: about anybody in the world. I mean, we're we're on
Speaker 1: top of the game and and I'm proud of that. Now,
Speaker 1: do we have things we don't know. Absolutely. Do we
Speaker 1: have more to learn and more to do, absolutely, But
Speaker 1: don't say we don't know what we're doing. Just understand
Speaker 1: we don't know everything and we're still trying to get that.
Speaker 1: So that would be what I would consider. The other
Speaker 1: thing that really bothers me that I consider is when
Speaker 1: people personalize their interaction with department staff. I don't like Steve,
Speaker 1: Steve didn't approach me properly. Um that very well could be.
Speaker 1: And every complaint I get of a negative interaction with
Speaker 1: staff is fully investigated and responded to, and so I
Speaker 1: end up knowing that most of these are not legitimate.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's it's very seldom that I find one
Speaker 1: in the time that I've spent investigating these over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years, that you find a complaint it's usually
Speaker 1: because the individual didn't get the outcome, whether it was
Speaker 1: he got a citation where he got information he didn't want,
Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be. And ultimately, when you
Speaker 1: go back through and and find the facts, it's it's
Speaker 1: not there. And that doesn't mean that the person didn't
Speaker 1: feel that way, but that didn't actually happen that way.
Speaker 1: That's one of the advantages of tape recorders and video cams. Uh.
Speaker 1: It pretty much takes care of we I've actually seen
Speaker 1: people look at those and go, oh, I had no
Speaker 1: idea I did that. You know, they don't remember that
Speaker 1: part of it. You know, that's it's we have selective
Speaker 1: memory as humans, and it's just the way it happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: Has it been, um what we miss say? Any of
Speaker 1: you were dying to get into that we can get in? Well,
Speaker 1: I I will say one of the other things that
Speaker 1: I think is important and important to all of you
Speaker 1: guys around the table is public access. Certainly, in a
Speaker 1: public lands state, we tend to think of and take
Speaker 1: our Public Act access, but we also have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of private land. And in Idaho we had an
Speaker 1: out of state person from Texas come in and buy
Speaker 1: up UM a hundred thousand plus acres of timber land
Speaker 1: and immediately fenced and closed at all the public access
Speaker 1: where the UH Corporate Timber Company had allowed public access
Speaker 1: on it before. UH. It was a huge eye opener
Speaker 1: UH to sportsman and us to suddenly have lost a
Speaker 1: big chunk of a hunting unit that was very important
Speaker 1: to folks, and it caused us to really start thinking
Speaker 1: about how do we enhance our ability to protect these
Speaker 1: large corporate lands from being closed so that the public
Speaker 1: can continue to enjoy the wildlife that they own that
Speaker 1: we manage for them on those private lands as well.
Speaker 1: So two years ago the legislature gave us some additional
Speaker 1: funds with a fee increase we asked for. UH. Part
Speaker 1: of it went to pay for depredation damage, to increase
Speaker 1: in the license increase, license fee increations, like what you're
Speaker 1: doing with that money and what we're doing, and a
Speaker 1: part of it was to enhance what we call access. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a program we've had for a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of years, but it was bubbling along with three
Speaker 1: or four hundred thousand dollars, most of it coming in
Speaker 1: from our lottery big game tag super Hunt. People would
Speaker 1: buy those chances, and that was funding our accesses program.
Speaker 1: Now you pay money on every license sold, whether it's hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: it's a five dollar fee. A portion of that five dollars,
Speaker 1: about half of it goes into the access account. And
Speaker 1: now we're we've added about one point four million UH
Speaker 1: to that account. Uh, so effectively tripling what we've got
Speaker 1: available for access yes. Uh and that money goes towards
Speaker 1: me can privately and be the corporator just private deeded properties.
Speaker 1: It's to direct public access to that there to that
Speaker 1: land to hunt and fish, or through that land to
Speaker 1: get to public lands. Either way, we can do it
Speaker 1: either way. We've had real success for upland bird hunting
Speaker 1: and some stuff like that around the Boise area and
Speaker 1: some of the southern part of the state. We've not
Speaker 1: had a lot of success in the large corporate lands
Speaker 1: in the center in northern part of the state. UM.
Speaker 1: We also had a threat to state lands. Our state
Speaker 1: lands are about four million or about two point four
Speaker 1: million acres and they were under threat of lease for
Speaker 1: exclusive use. We've had some people saying, I want to
Speaker 1: lease this state section that's next to my private land
Speaker 1: for exclusive use for hunting. And fishing. So far we've
Speaker 1: been able to sidestep that, but state law requires the
Speaker 1: Department of Lands to generate maximum revenue for schools for
Speaker 1: the School Trust Fund. Some guys willing to pay more
Speaker 1: than what the public we don't have any choice. So
Speaker 1: we just signed an agreement with Department of Lands, approved
Speaker 1: by the Landboard and our Commission, that we use a
Speaker 1: portion of that access sus money. We're paying departmental Lands
Speaker 1: for all access to their lands, um every bit of
Speaker 1: it for hunting, fishing, and wildlife based recreation. So we've
Speaker 1: preserved the opportunity now and diminish the likelihood of an
Speaker 1: adverse um exclusive use agreement on those lands. That's that's
Speaker 1: gonna cost us about dollars a year. Do you feel
Speaker 1: all in all, you guys are right now every year
Speaker 1: adding to accessible acre do you think I had a
Speaker 1: net loss when when all things are considered. UM, I
Speaker 1: hope to announce shortly that we have an agreement on
Speaker 1: private timber land that will secure access to another million
Speaker 1: acres of of land in the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and with that agreement we will have a net game.
Speaker 1: So we're using that additional money, and we went out
Speaker 1: for proposals for what we call large corporate landholders. What
Speaker 1: would you propose to us for a fee that we
Speaker 1: could pay you to gain access for handing and fishing
Speaker 1: to your large corporate lands. We have those proposals, were
Speaker 1: evaluating those proposals, were very close to agreeing to some
Speaker 1: of those proposals at this point in time. That will
Speaker 1: add in excess of a million acres. Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of that and the staff work that went
Speaker 1: into it. My hats off to our legislature for allowing
Speaker 1: that increase to be dedicated to that purpose as well.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a biggie and I see that as
Speaker 1: giving us the annual financial resources uh needed to secure
Speaker 1: this into the future. So um, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: get that in there, Steve that that of all the
Speaker 1: things we hear from sportsman, even in a public state,
Speaker 1: is access. They want more access or I lost my access.
Speaker 1: What you said, it's and uh somebody shut it down.
Speaker 1: A private entity bought that forty acres or twenty or
Speaker 1: three sixty or whatever it is, and it's now posted. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's important that we're actually meeting here at the
Speaker 1: on X place because this idea of where are you
Speaker 1: at and trespass is very important and private landowners are
Speaker 1: very sensitive to trespass. But how do you know? There's
Speaker 1: some posting requirements, but it's still in a big open
Speaker 1: state like this where you wander up one side of
Speaker 1: the mountain down the other and you come in on
Speaker 1: the backside and you walk up to a fence it's
Speaker 1: next to the road and it's posted, and you didn't
Speaker 1: see anything when you came down the other side. Where
Speaker 1: is it your responsibility to know where you're at versus
Speaker 1: the landowner's responsibility to post? And we're moving responsibility to know?
Speaker 1: I agree, and Idaho there is some posting responsibilities of
Speaker 1: the private landowner on non agricultural land basically timber and
Speaker 1: range land. But I think we're very quickly moving to
Speaker 1: the point where you've got to know where you're at
Speaker 1: all the time near it's your responsibility, not the landowners
Speaker 1: to know it. It is. But again, does everybody carry,
Speaker 1: you know, a smartphone or a GPS around with them? No? Uh,
Speaker 1: most of us do that are avid, but not everybody
Speaker 1: else does. And so part of it is getting the mapping,
Speaker 1: getting the information out there, and again the technology to
Speaker 1: do that, and uh, certainly talking about it, letting people
Speaker 1: know that in Idaho, you can go on our website
Speaker 1: and we have a hunt planner. You say, I want
Speaker 1: to go hunt white tailed deer and I want to
Speaker 1: hunt it in Timber Creek and game I use my
Speaker 1: example again. It'll pull up the maps to show you
Speaker 1: it is an excellent spot, right, that's better. Uh, And
Speaker 1: and it'll tell you the land ownership, it'll tell you
Speaker 1: the regulations, It'll tell you everything about that piece of land.
Speaker 1: However you want to scale it to look at what
Speaker 1: you can do in that area. And couple that with
Speaker 1: these machines and and uh some other third party software,
Speaker 1: so you know where you're at all the time, you're
Speaker 1: good to go. And and I've still got I would
Speaker 1: have to say dozens. That's probably hundreds of quad maps
Speaker 1: that are folded up in in the under. The came
Speaker 1: to the seat of my truck and I pull those
Speaker 1: things out and jam them in my backpack. I still
Speaker 1: carry a real compass with me because these things aren't reliable.
Speaker 1: The batteries go dead, you don't have access. I forgot
Speaker 1: to download that so it was on residence. I still
Speaker 1: still value paper maps. I think they still have a role.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think it's something that uh we
Speaker 1: as mentors hunters should be teaching them. UH. And if
Speaker 1: there's a last thing I want to say about Idaho
Speaker 1: being the opportunity state and the need for us as
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers to mentor people in to teach them
Speaker 1: the ethics and the responsible interaction with wildlife, the respect
Speaker 1: for that wildlife, live or dead, that needs to be
Speaker 1: there as we utilize it, consume it, enjoy it, uh,
Speaker 1: reveling the experiences around the campfire, which we all do. Uh,
Speaker 1: those are important. I'm proud to say that in Idaho
Speaker 1: we have a thing called the passport. If you're a
Speaker 1: hunter and you know somebody that's never hunted, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any difference whether they're a kid or an adult.
Speaker 1: Somebody moves into town and sees that you're a hunter,
Speaker 1: I would really like to go up, but they don't
Speaker 1: have hunter head or anything else. You can go down
Speaker 1: to the to the license vendor and as a hunter,
Speaker 1: you can sponsor that person and get a passport. That
Speaker 1: is what's the cost of it, three seventy dollar seventy five.
Speaker 1: Then you can if you want to take them deer hunt,
Speaker 1: You buy a deer tag to go with it, go
Speaker 1: out and shoot birds for how long that year and
Speaker 1: then that then that person has to get it together
Speaker 1: and go take It's one time opportunity to mantor somebody.
Speaker 1: But it's great it it gets this obstacle. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to go with you, but I don't
Speaker 1: have for sure I can get that for you. You're
Speaker 1: ready to go up again. We came up against that
Speaker 1: over Thanksgiving weekend because um, we're all kind of half
Speaker 1: doing Thanksgiving family stuff, we're all kind of half hunting,
Speaker 1: and me ran out of deer tags. We started looking
Speaker 1: at people didn't have a tag and be like, we
Speaker 1: get this person licensed stuff. And this is the way
Speaker 1: you can do it. If you had a movie that
Speaker 1: it never hunted before, just take them down and get it.
Speaker 1: And they've got to be accompanied by a license hunter.
Speaker 1: But it's neat. And you can take kids as young
Speaker 1: as eight that haven't had a chance to do hunter ed.
Speaker 1: If you're a parent or a guardian or whatever is
Speaker 1: that word is an idhole, kid can hunt, hunt deer
Speaker 1: or whatever. Eight years of age, they can hunt uh,
Speaker 1: small game and birds they can't hunt there until they're
Speaker 1: ten break off. That's what That's what I thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know you just broke your silence, But what
Speaker 1: else is on your mind? Man? Kind of on the
Speaker 1: opportunity um theme, Idaho does trophy species where you can
Speaker 1: only apply for one of the there's three, right you
Speaker 1: guys to go sheep and moves. Were you around when
Speaker 1: that was put the place? That system? And then just
Speaker 1: what are your general thoughts on it? Because that we
Speaker 1: really like it. I mean, I like the way that
Speaker 1: it's set up that you guys don't do the bonus
Speaker 1: points and their preference points and all that to deal
Speaker 1: with that big mess um. And then they put the
Speaker 1: ones in lifetime back and the ones in lifetime that's correct.
Speaker 1: We no longer call them trophy species. There once in
Speaker 1: a lifetime species again, getting at that perception, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can really never draw it again, not not for
Speaker 1: a once in a lifetime. So example of that and
Speaker 1: the answer is, yeah, I was around, and our commission
Speaker 1: has the authority to do bonus points. They they look
Speaker 1: at it about every five to six years. It comes
Speaker 1: back up, uh, and every time we provide them the
Speaker 1: information about what it means they always have backed away
Speaker 1: from it in Idaho. But you make a lot of
Speaker 1: money doing both points. From a financial standpoint, I will
Speaker 1: tell you the last time this came up about seven
Speaker 1: years ago, when we were tanking financially. It was looking
Speaker 1: pretty darn good to me as a director trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to keep from getting deeper into the whole.
Speaker 1: But it is a pyramid scheme from a sportsman standpoint,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you, depending on which method is,
Speaker 1: there's so many different ways to do it. But if
Speaker 1: you keep getting the opportunity to use your points, if
Speaker 1: it goes up sequentially every year because more people are
Speaker 1: getting into it, you've created a pyramid scheme that those
Speaker 1: who get in first or near the bottom are okay,
Speaker 1: But those who come into the bottom may have four
Speaker 1: or five six years before they even get to that point.
Speaker 1: And depending on how many jam into it, it may
Speaker 1: not get there for some species. And that's what we
Speaker 1: looked at is for very hard to draw species big
Speaker 1: horn sheep, mountain goat, uh, you may not get there
Speaker 1: even with bonus points, for you know, many bonus points.
Speaker 1: I'm going into the montet, the big horn sheep, draw
Speaker 1: this year because they square him here. Not enough. I'm
Speaker 1: going in with three pints and so lifetimes where the
Speaker 1: bonus points that still run into sub chance drawn. This heck,
Speaker 1: and that's what you get into, is the squaring thing.
Speaker 1: The other methods of trying to make sure everybody in
Speaker 1: there eventually gets one UM. But the commission has chosen
Speaker 1: our commission, and this has gone back as far as
Speaker 1: years ago when it first came up. I remember I
Speaker 1: was a fisheries guy at the time when I heard
Speaker 1: the first discussion, and we've continue to give that presentation
Speaker 1: over the years to new commissions as they come on.
Speaker 1: And that presentation is, by the way, online on our website,
Speaker 1: so every want to look at it. It has some
Speaker 1: gaming stuff in there that helps you understand how the
Speaker 1: various techniques work and what the end result is. It
Speaker 1: does work okay for moderate level UH controlled hunts, ones
Speaker 1: that have under twenty to one odds UM and if
Speaker 1: it's less than five to one odds, you don't need
Speaker 1: it anyway, you're gonna get one in a couple of
Speaker 1: years without that. But in that intermediate range it works
Speaker 1: really good to guarantee if you'll stay in there for
Speaker 1: three to five years, you'll get tech on the higher
Speaker 1: than twenty two one, it falls apart, and that's part
Speaker 1: of the problem is where do you use it and
Speaker 1: how do you apply it relative to that. So our
Speaker 1: commission has just chosen to stay away from it, but
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee they'll stay like that whatsoever. That could
Speaker 1: change overall or the constituents, it's a split. We have
Speaker 1: what I would consider a mobile group of hunters that
Speaker 1: moves around multiple states and hunts. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of our majority of our hunters just hunting Idaho. The
Speaker 1: folks who move around to other states like points because
Speaker 1: they can pile them up in all the different states,
Speaker 1: and they spend a lot of money accumulating that, buying
Speaker 1: tags and what have you, so they can accumulate that.
Speaker 1: They seem to like that because they've covered their board. Uh,
Speaker 1: the residents don't necessarily, they're they're more place oriented with
Speaker 1: the way they do things, and they just want to know,
Speaker 1: oh that they've got an equal chance with everybody else,
Speaker 1: and that's their kid or grandkid has that equal chance
Speaker 1: like everybody else. So yeah, and then back to the
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime, I just killed a moose last
Speaker 1: year my a nice bowl on the south fork of
Speaker 1: the Snake. I a tag after seven years. No, it
Speaker 1: took me seven years retirement. Yeah right, it doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way, unfortunately. But the seven years and you drew.
Speaker 1: I drew one killed a nice bowl last year. I'm done.
Speaker 1: Now I can put in for a cow tag if
Speaker 1: we've got a population and is growing too fast and
Speaker 1: I want to take some cows out. That's not limited,
Speaker 1: but I'm done on moose in Idaho. We just had
Speaker 1: a friend who drew. I supposed to be what Friday,
Speaker 1: thirties right, yeah, i'd say early and to be done.
Speaker 1: You're just done. Yeah. So bighorn sheep, we have two species,
Speaker 1: so you can get one for each, the desert Big
Speaker 1: Horn and the rocky mountainto Big Horn, so you can
Speaker 1: have two opportunities there, but mountain goat one and you're done.
Speaker 1: You know, it's pretty terrible in this state. They made
Speaker 1: it that you can uh, you can buy bonus points,
Speaker 1: not whether you're in the drawer or not. So even
Speaker 1: though my kids aren't old enough to actually hunt, I
Speaker 1: can get I got them a little, I got them
Speaker 1: all numbers. They can start buying. They can take their
Speaker 1: allowance or their dad is do it for him and
Speaker 1: buy them bonus points someone they're like twenty, my little
Speaker 1: kid could have seventeen bonus points. That's horrible. I'm taking
Speaker 1: advantage of it because it's there, but it's horrible. It's
Speaker 1: so guilty doing it. It's what just games the system
Speaker 1: and blows it up because they shouldn't let they shouldn't
Speaker 1: let people let me do stuff like that. And you
Speaker 1: know you're part of the problem. You're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and do it anyway, you know, in this state, like
Speaker 1: they assigned so when you get a L that there's
Speaker 1: like a customer none and your customer number is your
Speaker 1: birthday and then the number after this is how many
Speaker 1: people with your birthday have it? So meaning like when
Speaker 1: they when the LS system came in, my LS numbers
Speaker 1: number three. I mean I was the third guy with
Speaker 1: my birthday to get to apply for a number. Now
Speaker 1: they're as signing numbers that are up in the hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: But when my little kids who are three, five and eight,
Speaker 1: I went down to get them a l S numbers
Speaker 1: and they're all number one, Like no one with those.
Speaker 1: I know I'm ahead of the game because no one
Speaker 1: with that birthday has gone and done it yet, so
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill it. I just can't decide how far
Speaker 1: I'm gonna run with this because I do feel guilty
Speaker 1: about it. I almost might not even not do it.
Speaker 1: Came aside, well, you'll get like me at some saying
Speaker 1: you'll have to do that with your grandchildren. Get expensive. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a multiplication one on the follow up question when
Speaker 1: you're um, when the economy tank and you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to get some more money. Did
Speaker 1: dedicated sales set ever come up? Because there's some couple
Speaker 1: of stays have done very well with that. We've looked
Speaker 1: at it. UM oh gosh. Five years ago, we did
Speaker 1: a thing called the Wildlife Summit, and it was trying
Speaker 1: to bring all folks together to talk about wildlife on
Speaker 1: a statewide basis. And UM an outcome of that was
Speaker 1: trying to build understanding of the needs of all wildlife
Speaker 1: and that we weren't able to generate enough revenue UH
Speaker 1: to take care of the needs of the of non
Speaker 1: game and other wildlife that was out there. UM a
Speaker 1: what I call a loose coffee clatch of conservation groups.
Speaker 1: After that was done, we did a survey of Idaho
Speaker 1: ones to see whether or not they would support an
Speaker 1: initiative that would either dedicate a portion of the sales
Speaker 1: tax or support an increase. The the increase was less
Speaker 1: than people just weren't willing to do that. It was
Speaker 1: slightly over of the folks were willing to support a
Speaker 1: dedicated portion of the existing sales tax. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: folks that know the politics of initiatives and everything said
Speaker 1: that given where we were at in the political cycle
Speaker 1: with elections and everything else, that that was not Probably
Speaker 1: they could get the signatures to get it on the ballot,
Speaker 1: but they weren't sure whether it would make it. And
Speaker 1: it depends on whether or not you have an entity
Speaker 1: that's well funded that will oppose it. If you don't
Speaker 1: have any well funded opposition, you can run these things through.
Speaker 1: But because we're getting at sales tax, whether it's an
Speaker 1: increase or a piece of the existing, opposition was going
Speaker 1: to be huge, and so that particular loose coffee clatch
Speaker 1: of folks backed away from that at this point in
Speaker 1: time for the state of Idaho. The beautiful people in
Speaker 1: Missouri pulled it off. They did, and being a Missourian
Speaker 1: I was in college during the time that that stuff
Speaker 1: was going forward, and it took them twelve years of
Speaker 1: trying different ways. They tell right, because when it passed,
Speaker 1: it passed with I mean not quite unanimous, but but
Speaker 1: it was a high support and and it did it.
Speaker 1: They went with a pop tax and a beer tax
Speaker 1: and failed on that. They tried all kinds of things
Speaker 1: before they came up with the one eighth of one
Speaker 1: sales tax increase, which has been the gold standard. UM
Speaker 1: Florida does a real estate transfer tax. Every time a
Speaker 1: piece of real estate sells. There's a piece of that fee.
Speaker 1: You know, all those fees you pay when you buy
Speaker 1: a piece of property. Well there's a little piece of
Speaker 1: that in there now that goes to the Wildlife Fund,
Speaker 1: and that's working for them down there. It went down
Speaker 1: when things tanked, but it went back up. UM Arkansas
Speaker 1: and Iowa went with a similar sales tax system as
Speaker 1: Missouri and uh. Arkansas got there through. Iolway got there through,
Speaker 1: but they didn't fund it. So you know, the mechanisms
Speaker 1: are but they didn't initiate it. Sins most everybody that dips,
Speaker 1: like the hunting fish, they just have a dip tip.
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that. So there is a solution,
Speaker 1: though I don't want to leave this before I speak
Speaker 1: to a solution that's live in Congress right now, and
Speaker 1: it's called restoring America's Wildlife fact and it's following it
Speaker 1: would it would take the royalties from oil and gas
Speaker 1: and mining on shore offshore. It's all of that royalties,
Speaker 1: and and that royalty package is around twelve fourteen billion
Speaker 1: a year right now. UM. It would dedicate one point
Speaker 1: three billion of that into the Pittman Robertson Fund, a
Speaker 1: subset of it which double the food. It would double
Speaker 1: the fund, and it would then that money would come
Speaker 1: back to the states based on the size of the
Speaker 1: state and the population, very similar to the way we
Speaker 1: do pr for hunting, which is a number of hunting
Speaker 1: licenses and the size of the state comes back to
Speaker 1: the state to manage a very familiar mechanism for the
Speaker 1: states to get financial resources to manage all wildlife. That's
Speaker 1: a re allocation. Isn't that a new tax. This is
Speaker 1: a re allocation of of a fund. It is the
Speaker 1: fund that the Land of Water Conservation Fund taps into
Speaker 1: right now. Uh. And so there is legislation our own
Speaker 1: Senator Rish in the state of Idaho is sponsoring it
Speaker 1: on the Senate side. It's got over a hundred co
Speaker 1: sponsors on the House side right now support it does.
Speaker 1: The House support is in a hundred and five and
Speaker 1: it's split almost equally down the middle. The co sponsorship
Speaker 1: on the Senate, it I'm not as sure of, but
Speaker 1: the co sponsors before I'm familiar with or bipartisan, so
Speaker 1: and the Senate works different than the House on that
Speaker 1: stuff anyway. UM, So we're hoping that they'll get to
Speaker 1: get a major hearing on this. We've had some smaller hearings,
Speaker 1: but it's moving forward, you know. It's it was classified
Speaker 1: as a moon shot to get it through this Congress
Speaker 1: with between now and the time they adjourn in December,
Speaker 1: but it's still live and Senator Rish was trying to
Speaker 1: get a hearing going on it. Um. This would be huge,
Speaker 1: UH for a state like Idaho. If we got our allocation,
Speaker 1: it would be on the order of fifteen to seventeen
Speaker 1: million dollars annually. So you know, take that our total
Speaker 1: t d j p R allocation is about that much.
Speaker 1: So it puts the the UH Wildlife Diversity Non Game
Speaker 1: Program on the same footing and allows us to have
Speaker 1: the resources to manage all wildlife populations. The fear A
Speaker 1: lot of hunters and anglers fear loss of control of
Speaker 1: their commissions and departments through this, and and it's not
Speaker 1: an illegitimate fear. But I go back to my home
Speaker 1: state of Missouri and see what happened there. I mean,
Speaker 1: they pumped a hundred and ten million dollars a year
Speaker 1: into their budget. It's the majority of their budget. They
Speaker 1: got about another sixty million I think in license sales
Speaker 1: and then other money in there. There about twice as
Speaker 1: big budget wise as the state of Idaho with with
Speaker 1: what they've got back there. But hunting and fishing is
Speaker 1: better and stronger there now as a result of having
Speaker 1: that collaborative of all users getting things done. And so
Speaker 1: when you look at the case histories of state that
Speaker 1: have had this additional money, Florida being the other example,
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing there is actually booming with those additional resources.
Speaker 1: It will mean some changes in in how we go
Speaker 1: about interacting with the public on allocation of budget. But
Speaker 1: certainly I don't think it's to be feared, it's to
Speaker 1: be managed. Yeah, that that'd be my perspective on it.
Speaker 1: I understand how I understand the viewpoint of people being
Speaker 1: leary about new voices sitting around the table, new voices
Speaker 1: at the table. Um, I get that. I still think that. Uh.
Speaker 1: I still think it's better to go with the money
Speaker 1: and and you know, play the game however you need
Speaker 1: to play it, but put to go with the extra
Speaker 1: funding and and then sort the rest out after the
Speaker 1: factor at least go into it with the right kind
Speaker 1: of mind frame and well our track record where we
Speaker 1: have financial resources and focus. If there's a sensitive species
Speaker 1: out there, I can keep them off the list or
Speaker 1: I can get him off the list again with that
Speaker 1: kind of financial resources. I know we can do it
Speaker 1: because we've done it and um, and I'm I would
Speaker 1: be anxious to to see that pulled off. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: see again. It's a moon shot, but it's live and
Speaker 1: it's moving forward. We've been two years moving this forward.
Speaker 1: The group that put it together was a group called
Speaker 1: the Blue Ribbon Panel, and uh, Johnny Morris from bass
Speaker 1: Pro now Cabella's Too, UM was the co chair along
Speaker 1: with governor a former governor of Freeden Fall from Wyoming,
Speaker 1: and most everybody on that panel were NGOs and private business.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a bunch of government folks. They're the ones
Speaker 1: that looked at this and said yeah, and then that
Speaker 1: their first recommendation was this one point three billion. That's
Speaker 1: where we focused. The second one is increasing our relevancy
Speaker 1: to all people about wildlife management. Money goes a long
Speaker 1: ways to helping that, but certainly, how do we as
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers show the use of hunting, fishing, and
Speaker 1: trapping for wildlife management is relevant to everybody? And I
Speaker 1: think that's a big part of of the challenge that
Speaker 1: we have in the future as hunters and anglers is
Speaker 1: to maintain relevancy. We've got the support. We've got that
Speaker 1: mid seventies support for traditional hunting, even higher for fishing.
Speaker 1: We just got to hang onto it, and we do
Speaker 1: it by doing what we know as hunters and anglers
Speaker 1: we are, and that's conservationists first, and we lead the
Speaker 1: way with our own actions and activities to get this
Speaker 1: stuff done. Good Your final thoughts, Chris Man, No virgils
Speaker 1: just schooling me. All the fantastic Virgil for Department of
Speaker 1: Interior or something right that means d C. It's I've
Speaker 1: I've learned a ton of one of the last thing
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask you maybe was done so your
Speaker 1: access yes program. Yes, is Idaho Fishing Game the only
Speaker 1: state entity in charge of procuring more public access. We
Speaker 1: have the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation that has
Speaker 1: responsibility for trail access for both motorized and foot travel,
Speaker 1: and we work very closely with them. Uh. They also
Speaker 1: have responsibility for some voating access. We have our own
Speaker 1: voting access program, they have their's counties have some responsibility
Speaker 1: because they get a piece of the DJ Daniel Johnson funds.
Speaker 1: But as far as um land based hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: and trapping were it, Uh. The others are directed at
Speaker 1: more generalized recreation or motorized or powerboat recreation in that
Speaker 1: particular case, and compared to what we're putting on the
Speaker 1: table financially, it's a very small piece of that. It
Speaker 1: seems like in Idaho and Montana as well. The public
Speaker 1: the economy benefits so much from our public land that
Speaker 1: you know, more entities should be putting chips on the
Speaker 1: table to procure it. I think some of the NGOs
Speaker 1: are huge players there, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Uh. They
Speaker 1: do and and they they've been very uh cooperative, collaborative.
Speaker 1: They've got money to bring to the table that they'll
Speaker 1: match with anything you've got. And the Mule Dealer Foundation
Speaker 1: to a lesser degree is part of that. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: are the two primary players. Trout Unlimited does some for
Speaker 1: stream access, for flying, for fishing um, and we've got
Speaker 1: some some other players in there. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to dismiss some of those n g O s that
Speaker 1: have been very uh focused and effective, particularly Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: Elk with their initiative to get access through private land
Speaker 1: to public land. They've been able to really do some
Speaker 1: good things. Sir. Awesome, thank you, thank you man. We
Speaker 1: did We did a deep dive. Man, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I uh uh enjoy this stuff. To Dingle Johnson, yep,
Speaker 1: you got it all. Give me some more time. We'll
Speaker 1: give you more. Well, you know, I want to have
Speaker 1: you back how long you're you're retiring, right, I am,
Speaker 1: I'll be retiring in January for a big ship talking session.
Speaker 1: Better yet, I'll have you come over. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if this stuff works on the back of a
Speaker 1: jetboat while we're trolling for steelhead um, we can we
Speaker 1: can plug it all into an inverter and will make
Speaker 1: this stuff work, and and we can do a live
Speaker 1: fish and she did a live ice fishing show one time.
Speaker 1: I can do that too. I've got a place on
Speaker 1: Cascade Reservoir and we can scoot right out on the
Speaker 1: ice and uh catch some of those trophy perch that
Speaker 1: we've got there, ye yellow perch yea. Well we're pushing
Speaker 1: eighteen inches eighteen yeah, and uh it's it's still got
Speaker 1: to three year classes in there that are grown into that.
Speaker 1: So it's a fish you know, fish story. I gotta
Speaker 1: get this right. But no, they are like Wally, these
Speaker 1: things are huge. I mean fourteen and sixteen inch perch
Speaker 1: our routine up there. Yeah, you catch three of those
Speaker 1: and you've got dinner. That's great. Yeah, it is. It
Speaker 1: is great. So stay tuned and thank you good all right,
Speaker 1: thank you two