Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast, coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening hunt podcast.
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Speaker 1: Everybody joined today in the Turkey Woods, very near the
Speaker 1: Turkey Woods with with Fosburg, President CEO of the Theatore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. We're actually here on part of our
Speaker 1: fundraising mission. We are where we have the Turkey Hunt Giveaway.
Speaker 1: We just hunted with the Turkey Hunt Giveaway people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you guys are very generous and you know, basically
Speaker 1: allowing us to sweep stakes you off and two lucky
Speaker 1: winners came out here and hunted with you, Steve and
Speaker 1: Yanni and uh, not fully successful, but I think everyone
Speaker 1: had a great time. And yeah, spectacular woods around here,
Speaker 1: Matt Cook's farm, great place. We're still running success rate.
Speaker 1: And just to give you an idea that you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of what it did for us, I mean
Speaker 1: we had we raised on this one eighty plus thousand
Speaker 1: dollars last year. It was over a hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: So we're making real money for conservation, and uh we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta find some way to sup it up
Speaker 1: and get the numbers back up. Well, I think remember
Speaker 1: we did it last year. It was October and then
Speaker 1: now it's May, so we had a much more truncated season,
Speaker 1: and people who had just entered, we're asking to enter again.
Speaker 1: So I think as we moved back out to an
Speaker 1: annual May cycle, the excess when our dinner is we
Speaker 1: had to move it because of COVID, I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna see those numbers get back up. Plus, you know,
Speaker 1: to extent that the guys like we're here at this
Speaker 1: time who had a great time, you know, they get
Speaker 1: the word out and it's pretty cool. I mean, we
Speaker 1: had three thousand plus people enter last time and these
Speaker 1: you know, these two one and uh you know, super
Speaker 1: good guys Western New York from Buffalo. We've talked. Me
Speaker 1: and Ni were talking about switching it to uh um
Speaker 1: doing a raffle for an elk hunt. Wondering if that
Speaker 1: would make a huge difference or if it would make
Speaker 1: any difference. Yeah, I mean I don't know. I think,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean we could certainly try it and
Speaker 1: see it. Elkhart elk hunt, as you guys know, as
Speaker 1: much harder to put on in general. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: and this one, you know, is pretty darn easy and
Speaker 1: it's a high success rate and very fun. And it's
Speaker 1: you know, honestly sitting in a ground blind with you
Speaker 1: or Yanni, or sneaking through the woods. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: gonna learn more on this about hunting and about you
Speaker 1: guys than they would probably in a lot of the
Speaker 1: elk hunting situations. They learned that, like take me a
Speaker 1: little midday naw yep. Uh, tell everybody how you got
Speaker 1: run over by a car. It's a good story. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I've been bike commuting for twenty years to my
Speaker 1: office down to our home, and I lived just outside
Speaker 1: the d C line in Maryland, and I've never really
Speaker 1: had a close call. But d C has been doing
Speaker 1: a really good job of revamping the spike lanes and
Speaker 1: it's become a very good bike city. But you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the passenger cars are not quite used
Speaker 1: to it yet. And so they moved a bike lane
Speaker 1: over near the watergate on Virginia Avenue so that the
Speaker 1: water gate, so that both lanes are on the south
Speaker 1: side of the road, and so I'm literally I'm heading
Speaker 1: home and it's dark and it's it's about eight miles
Speaker 1: nine miles, but so it was dark and rainy and
Speaker 1: I'm heading into traffic and uh, a woman was running
Speaker 1: late for a performance at the Kennedy Center and just
Speaker 1: turned straight into me, and my bike goes under the car.
Speaker 1: I go over the car and uh, you have three
Speaker 1: broken ribs, broken clavical, broken finger, separated shoulder. But hey
Speaker 1: have fly fish last weekend, so everything's good. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: how long ago did this happen? Uh? February, same day
Speaker 1: as a Ukraine invasion. Wow, I would have never known
Speaker 1: that you're beat up just a couple of months ago. Well,
Speaker 1: part of the reason I haven't turkey on it this
Speaker 1: year because I didn't feel like putting a twelve gage.
Speaker 1: I guess my broken clavical and pulling a trigger was
Speaker 1: a good idea to shoot left hand with the red dot. Well,
Speaker 1: I could try that. I am very right handed. I
Speaker 1: thought of you there today because you know, in the
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City Airport they have this by the f Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Salta City Airport, by the entrance to the f
Speaker 1: and G gates. They have this very large panoramic screen
Speaker 1: and it's all advertising like Utah so slise, like gorgeous
Speaker 1: scenics and people skiing and mountain climbing, and then they
Speaker 1: got a five fisherman, the worst cast I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Everything's perfect with that. They didn't cast. They didn't They
Speaker 1: just did a horrible job casting the cast. And they
Speaker 1: should have had you come in there and paste one
Speaker 1: out for their little video. The honest cast on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's when a rambic screen. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that made River Run Through It successful is they didn't
Speaker 1: have I mean, I guess Brad Pitt learned how to
Speaker 1: fly fish. But for the really beautiful fly fishing scenes,
Speaker 1: they brought into this guy from Wisconsin. Yeah, what was
Speaker 1: his name, border, I'm forgetting his first name. His dad
Speaker 1: was a legend too, but who was just a world class,
Speaker 1: you know, fly caster, and so all the sort of
Speaker 1: scenic fly casting shots you see are with one of
Speaker 1: the best fly casters in the world, and which makes
Speaker 1: a big difference. Yea, No, they should definitely head you.
Speaker 1: Uh kay. Couple things here. Here's the funny one. Someone
Speaker 1: sent us to tax exchange and it was someone saying, uh, oh,
Speaker 1: it's they were named Katie. I thought it was from
Speaker 1: your wife. No different Katie. But you know what a
Speaker 1: lot like when I was a little kid, everybody named
Speaker 1: everybody Steve and Jenny, and then five years later they
Speaker 1: named him all Katie. How many like? I got more
Speaker 1: Katies in my lefe to know what to do with this.
Speaker 1: Here's another Katie. She's talking about how uh her husband
Speaker 1: was reading my new book Outdoor Kids in an Inside
Speaker 1: World while she wasn't labor. He was getting out ahead
Speaker 1: of it, playing ahead. When my wife was in labor
Speaker 1: my first kid, I passed out and had to have
Speaker 1: a nurse come re suscitate me. They got out that
Speaker 1: big gass. Uh. Do you ever see an epidural needle? Listen? Man,
Speaker 1: Seeing that made you pass out? Yeah, Because here's the
Speaker 1: deal too, Like my wife did all the like all
Speaker 1: the garbage to have be like the all natural, you know,
Speaker 1: all these classes and all this practicing and ship and
Speaker 1: they get there and they like do the they put
Speaker 1: the little heart monitor on the baby and they're like
Speaker 1: that ain't happening. Pulled out, so she's all upset. But
Speaker 1: then they pulled off this big. Yeah, the biggest needle
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. Looked like something you'd based a turkey
Speaker 1: with like an injector. And I just passed right out
Speaker 1: and woke up out in the hallway with my head
Speaker 1: in the nurse's lap. Yeah. Wow, I could cut your
Speaker 1: arm off and eat it your honest he wentn't pass out,
Speaker 1: but that needle going into my wife's spine maybe pass out? Wow?
Speaker 1: Has that ever happened to you before you went? I
Speaker 1: like to think I was overtired. I got really close.
Speaker 1: I mean because but we were in like our forty
Speaker 1: or something of labor and had not maybe had some
Speaker 1: cat naps, but not really and it's getting very intense.
Speaker 1: But I'm also like just feeling my body shutting our Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we went all natural the whole way and it
Speaker 1: went long mega longez. Yeah. But that includes like, you know,
Speaker 1: the beginnings, like where do you where do where does
Speaker 1: the timer start? You know what I mean of labor.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, I remember just being on my knees
Speaker 1: kind of next to the bed with my arms on
Speaker 1: the bed and just like looking at the midwife being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just I'm thinking I'm just gonna lay down. I
Speaker 1: have to lay down just for a little bit, just
Speaker 1: for a little bit. And I was like literally tapping out,
Speaker 1: but then uh da came out, and then we both
Speaker 1: might took it out. I think you should count it
Speaker 1: from when the water breaks m but I'm not. You know,
Speaker 1: what do you call him maternity nurse or something like that?
Speaker 1: Guy wrote in this is interesting. This is the thing
Speaker 1: to add to our list of things that make a
Speaker 1: turkey gobble, which we were heavy duty into for a
Speaker 1: long time but kind of got away from it. A
Speaker 1: Chinook helicopter flying hundred feet off the ground as the
Speaker 1: propellers split the air. You know that sound, says, got
Speaker 1: every turkey in the woods goblin. That's good. But you
Speaker 1: know they can adjust the pitch on those and make
Speaker 1: it louder and quieter more if you can set them
Speaker 1: to like ultrashot gobble setting. Well, no, I was. I
Speaker 1: happened to when we went to hunt a region in Montana.
Speaker 1: I was talking a wild life biologist. He says, well,
Speaker 1: I won't be able to hook up with you because
Speaker 1: every morning even I'll be flying doing deer counts. I said, well,
Speaker 1: if you're flying over where, I'm gonna be do a
Speaker 1: couple of low passes and make that chopper really sound
Speaker 1: up and give me a couple of free shot gobbles. Um,
Speaker 1: I saw the schopper, but not didn't get here off
Speaker 1: the even following this the corner crossing whileman corner crossing case, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, not professionally as much as just as a citizen.
Speaker 1: As a citizens, I'm guessing have we updated this yet?
Speaker 1: So we've been working on I don't want to. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get out ahead of myself. A lot
Speaker 1: more to come out on this subject, but just an update.
Speaker 1: The four This is a while ago now, the four
Speaker 1: Missouri hunters who were being tried for trespassing over having
Speaker 1: corner crossed in Wyoming. We're all found not guilty. However,
Speaker 1: three of the four hunters acquitted, So they were found
Speaker 1: not guilty and criminal trespassing. Okay, but they had done
Speaker 1: the same thing at the same ranch. Oh, so they
Speaker 1: had done the same thing near there. So rather than yeah,
Speaker 1: we did talk about this, I remember making the parallel.
Speaker 1: Remember how the juice wasn't in trouble for killing his
Speaker 1: wife in the waiter criminally, but then got in trouble
Speaker 1: for killing his wife and the waiter Ronah Perlman. Is
Speaker 1: that his name? Is his name? Gold Just look up
Speaker 1: real quickly, you kill ron Pearlman. You don't follow this
Speaker 1: with no I can tell you where else sitting when
Speaker 1: he was driving down the road trying to get away
Speaker 1: from the car. You're bad. You're talking o J. Now
Speaker 1: do you think I saw? Yeah? I was sitting in
Speaker 1: bone Nicky's Bar in Moskin County, Michigan, watching o J
Speaker 1: drive around on that Bronco. That truck could be worth
Speaker 1: a lot of money right now? Uh, Goldman, I think
Speaker 1: it was his name wasn't. Come on? Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: easiest web search in the world. It's not. Are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? When you type in o J Nicole Brown Simpson, Ron,
Speaker 1: I hope Phil plays like a ticking clock. I would
Speaker 1: have solved this ten times Ronald Lyle Goldman. The uh
Speaker 1: why was I talking about o J? Meaning? O J
Speaker 1: was not in trouble criminally, but he was in trouble civilly.
Speaker 1: So the several of these guys are now facing a
Speaker 1: civil suit from a landowner from actions taken in I
Speaker 1: got a feeling that won't go anywhere. Uh. We often
Speaker 1: RecA report on really how wildlife issues are so egregiously
Speaker 1: misreported in the news, and Krin, who's not here right now.
Speaker 1: I felt that for us to be fair and and
Speaker 1: morally consistent, we would have to point out uh our
Speaker 1: own egregious abuse of language and reporting wildlife news. If
Speaker 1: you go to the meeting, we changed it. But if
Speaker 1: you go to the meater dot com, we had coverage
Speaker 1: of a fox that snuck into a zoo and killed
Speaker 1: How many did he kill? A lot? Like a fox
Speaker 1: snuck into the Smithsonian National Zoo and killed twenty five flamingos.
Speaker 1: There's a term for that. It's called what's it called
Speaker 1: when they do like overkill thing? Oh right, when they
Speaker 1: just sort of plus surplus killing genocide. No, like when
Speaker 1: a mountain No. No, like when a mountain lion gets
Speaker 1: into it like a penful allamas right, you just can't
Speaker 1: help him. Yeah, they get excited. Yeah, like it kills
Speaker 1: way more and he can eat surplus surplus killing. The
Speaker 1: fox got in there and somehow managed to kill twenty
Speaker 1: five flamingos. Our headline, which we changed, I had we
Speaker 1: had an uproar. I had an uproar was wild animal
Speaker 1: massacres flamingo flock at Famous American Zoo, which now we'll
Speaker 1: read if you go look wild Animal kills Flamingo flock
Speaker 1: at Famous American Zoo. Applying the same level of maturity
Speaker 1: to our own reporting as we do the reporting of others.
Speaker 1: She has a crime scene in red Down there too?
Speaker 1: Did she not like the use of crime scene for
Speaker 1: that that? I was informed by Spencer that was meant
Speaker 1: to be tongue in cheek. Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I could read the text exchange I had with Spencer,
Speaker 1: like Spencer always does, Spencer um is disinclined to admit wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Yeah, he's not gonna give
Speaker 1: me my uh my, my answer from that last trivia around.
Speaker 1: Oh here's another uh here, here's another example of saving lives.
Speaker 1: A woman wrote in from British Columbia. Oh, hike in
Speaker 1: uh with her twelve year old. They got a moose
Speaker 1: kind of trying to attack them. And the twelve year
Speaker 1: old had read our Wilderness Skills book and I knew
Speaker 1: what to do from having read the book and it worked.
Speaker 1: Scared of the moose off. Did we have a part
Speaker 1: in there about how to scare a moose off? We did.
Speaker 1: That's more common than probably a bear charge. You know,
Speaker 1: this is the one that has enormous implications for me
Speaker 1: and everyone that likes to hunt morrel's. It's it appears
Speaker 1: after like over the years, many people have liked to
Speaker 1: come forward and claim to have dialed in morele production,
Speaker 1: and it often winds up being not true or exaggerated.
Speaker 1: It seems like some Danish biologists, judging by the photos,
Speaker 1: some Danish biologists have now tamed the last true piece
Speaker 1: of wildlife in America. The one thing that man couldn't
Speaker 1: conquer has been conquered. The morrel in a in a.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at they gotta ship. What about the huckleberry?
Speaker 1: Huckleberrys is souped up? Huckleberry is a diminutive blueberry, right,
Speaker 1: but I thought they couldn't grow them. Listen, if you
Speaker 1: talk you ever talked to your wife's a botanist. Does
Speaker 1: your wife really buy into like huckleberries being like it's
Speaker 1: it's a little blueberry. That's true the same way like
Speaker 1: if you take a wild small and more flavorfuls, right,
Speaker 1: but strawberries have absolutely been domesticated, that's true. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if a huckleberry just a blueberry. Then yeah, we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a lot of blueberries right now. And
Speaker 1: the one thing that's that was the main reason that
Speaker 1: not my view like Morrel's taste good, but the main
Speaker 1: thing I liked about him was that they were they
Speaker 1: couldn't be conquered. They were unconquerable. And the Danes, who
Speaker 1: make a hell of a good movie, have figured out
Speaker 1: cultivating Morrell mushrooms indoors year round. The Danish Morrel Project,
Speaker 1: forty years of research collaboration with the Royal Veterinarian Agricultural
Speaker 1: University in the University of Copenhagen. The growing method of
Speaker 1: their black morals in the climate control environment over a
Speaker 1: twenty two weeks cycle produces twenty pounds of mushroom per
Speaker 1: square yard per year. So depressing because like when you
Speaker 1: see a Morell, you're like someone went out and it
Speaker 1: wasn't picked that son of a bit, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Found it. Now it'll be like white tails.
Speaker 1: Morrells have got the same problem that white tails have.
Speaker 1: Like when you go into a house and see a
Speaker 1: giant white tail, I'm as like, who knows, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, who knows? Who really knows? Is
Speaker 1: it a white tailor is it not? Like? Is it
Speaker 1: a fake white tail? No? Depressing. The reason it was
Speaker 1: tough to cultivate wild morales is because of an extra step.
Speaker 1: And they're like, I'm reading here in their life cycle
Speaker 1: called the sclerodium. The word I had never heard sounds
Speaker 1: vaguely sexual. Sclerodium to germinate and spring. The sclerodium can
Speaker 1: either form new my celium, the root light network of
Speaker 1: underground filaments, or they can form a fruiting body, which
Speaker 1: is the above ground mushroom. The people, remember, we had
Speaker 1: a big fight about this word before. I was calling
Speaker 1: it a mackerel fructation, but it is a mackerel fructification.
Speaker 1: Is the the fruit like if you imagine the part
Speaker 1: that makes him moral is like a whole there's a
Speaker 1: whole apple tree underground, but now and then it sticks
Speaker 1: an apple up above the dirt. The my celium is
Speaker 1: the apple tree living underground. Um. Instead of it producing
Speaker 1: fruit a k and apple, it produces a mackerel fructification,
Speaker 1: which is the part you cut off with your knife,
Speaker 1: and three's supposed to come off with a knife and
Speaker 1: not yank them out of the ground, and so you
Speaker 1: don't damage the my celium, which I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's I've never heard if that's actually true or not.
Speaker 1: So the death of one more cool thing. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? With? Uh? You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: a mushroom hunter, so I would love to be, but
Speaker 1: I don't. I want never anybody to teach me. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that you just don't go blind
Speaker 1: into it. I can teach you right now, well we're sitting, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you cut it. Yeah, yeah, no, but that's
Speaker 1: that's maybe your morale, but there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other ones out there, so you don't know about Yeah.
Speaker 1: My my recommendation to budding my uh mycologists Michael Mica
Speaker 1: opheliax is um Michael Phelia, Right, that means you love mushrooms,
Speaker 1: um is. Let's stick to the There's like the fool
Speaker 1: proof for the fail safe four, the fail safe five,
Speaker 1: fool proof five, depending on who you ask. It's like
Speaker 1: different ones, but there's certain just dead nuts. Right. Puff
Speaker 1: Balls don't taste good. Really, people act like they do,
Speaker 1: but they don't are always edible like all the puff balls.
Speaker 1: The white puff balls are all edible. Morrel's Shantrells are
Speaker 1: hard to mess up. Oysters are very hard to mess up.
Speaker 1: Just stick with those you don't need to beating like
Speaker 1: the crazy ones. I can't remember when maybe Criminal put
Speaker 1: in the show notes we had an episode of podcast
Speaker 1: episode called I believe it was called farewell red Wolf,
Speaker 1: I think, and we had a red wolf expert um
Speaker 1: talking about red wolves, red wolf or cravery. For the
Speaker 1: first time in four years, a litter of red wolf
Speaker 1: pups was born in the wild. Six pops in total,
Speaker 1: four females and two males, found last month in the
Speaker 1: Alligated River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina. To
Speaker 1: give you a sense of the decline, forty seven red
Speaker 1: wolves are born in the wild in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: down to only four pups ten years later. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, US Fish and Wild the IF reported not
Speaker 1: a single red wolf birth in the past three years
Speaker 1: one until now. There are an estimated fifteen to seventeen
Speaker 1: red wolves in the wild today, with another two one
Speaker 1: in captivity. Do you think people get fired up about
Speaker 1: wolves in in the Rocky Mountains? They get real fired
Speaker 1: up down there about wolves like that it's illegit that
Speaker 1: it's not an actual species. That it's like it's like
Speaker 1: a hidio hybrid. The FEDS are sticking it down their throat,
Speaker 1: that it's conservation dependent. It's all a bunch of bullpockey. No, no,
Speaker 1: no no. If you're interesting that whole debate, check out
Speaker 1: the episode of Farewell Red Wolf and you will learn
Speaker 1: more than you can remember about it. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to get into this recovered? Y uh? What's going on
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C? Like what's the I mean, I
Speaker 1: know what's going on in Washington, d C. But what's
Speaker 1: going on like in the bowels of Washington, d C?
Speaker 1: When you get outside of Supreme Court leaks and the
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine and inflamed partisanship in the January six committee.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna start over on the administrative side because
Speaker 1: the big thing right now is implementation of the bipartisan
Speaker 1: Infantry US for law that passed in the fall, which
Speaker 1: is one point to trillion dollars for roads and bridges,
Speaker 1: traditional infrastructure, but also billions for natural infrastructure. And you
Speaker 1: know that can range from migration crossings over highways to
Speaker 1: you know, investing in seed sources for restoration to everglades restoration.
Speaker 1: How do how do they wedge that, like, I'm glad,
Speaker 1: I'm supportive. How do they wedge that in there? Because
Speaker 1: we're always annoyed when stuff gets wedged in that we
Speaker 1: don't want, But there was stuff gets wedged in that
Speaker 1: you do want. You're glad about it, but you don't complain.
Speaker 1: So I mean a lot of this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's use Everglades as an example. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: help as infrastructure. So what we did back in its
Speaker 1: wisdom and the midnineteen is the core of engineers channelized
Speaker 1: central Florida to have the wa to go east and
Speaker 1: west as opposed to flow south through the Evergladies to
Speaker 1: Florida Bay. That had done naturally, and that's where you
Speaker 1: have things like the River of Grass and those iconic
Speaker 1: images of yesteryear. So the impacts of that. Can we
Speaker 1: dive into that story for a second. I just want
Speaker 1: people to make sure we we had a podcast about
Speaker 1: this long long time ago, But um, I don't think
Speaker 1: people could People that haven't spent time and they can
Speaker 1: fully grasp what that was like. Yeah, so you have
Speaker 1: an incredibly flat terrain that runs essentially across from mid
Speaker 1: to southern all the way down to Florida Bay that
Speaker 1: was one giant wetland. It's the gradient is crazy. I
Speaker 1: forget what it is we talked about in that podcast,
Speaker 1: but it's like an inch over like a mile or
Speaker 1: a foot over a mile or something like that. So
Speaker 1: many it's like a many many miles wide river, yes,
Speaker 1: and shallow and ecologically incredibly rich. But what it would
Speaker 1: do is to take polluted water historically from developed areas
Speaker 1: northern Florida, and by the time it reached Florida Bay,
Speaker 1: it would be cleaned up naturally. And Florida Debay was
Speaker 1: one of the best fisheries in the world. And then
Speaker 1: what happened after they channelized that in the center river
Speaker 1: water east and west is you've had one. Florida Bay
Speaker 1: was starved of fresh water, as was a bunch of
Speaker 1: the Everglades. I like to point out to people just
Speaker 1: so they know, um in top about the Everglades, a
Speaker 1: lot of times in history we skipped like what like,
Speaker 1: for instance, now we're dealing with all the dams on
Speaker 1: the Columbia system, right, and someone's like, you could you
Speaker 1: could be you could have the idea that someone built
Speaker 1: those damns just to screw salmon, right, But it was
Speaker 1: their generating electricity, and some people point to the fact
Speaker 1: that we did one of the you know, and people
Speaker 1: like to define like how we won World War two.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we could smell aluminum and
Speaker 1: make and produce aircraft faster than anybody because we had
Speaker 1: all that electricity. So at a time, it was like
Speaker 1: a there's a deliberate thing, and then you move on
Speaker 1: and you deal with mistakes you made. But they had
Speaker 1: that in the Everglades, they had that flood. I don't
Speaker 1: want to kill thousands of thousands of people, but it
Speaker 1: was even more than that. It wasn't so much the
Speaker 1: impacts of people on flooding. It was you know, largely mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, just how to get the water
Speaker 1: out of there faster in general to quote reclaim it right,
Speaker 1: so you could then, do you know, more sustainable at
Speaker 1: your more reliable agriculture in those areas, you could have
Speaker 1: housing developments that didn't flood every other year. And so
Speaker 1: that was It wasn't someone being like I got an
Speaker 1: idea to really mess things up, right, But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, at that time, you know, the core of
Speaker 1: engineers across the country channelized rivers, you know, basically made
Speaker 1: them move faster, you know, got rid of wetlands, and
Speaker 1: we're owned for time. We'd recognize the you know, the
Speaker 1: fallacy of that whole model, which was we needed those wetlands,
Speaker 1: We needed the curves in the river which slowed down
Speaker 1: the velocities to mitigate the floods, and but we didn't
Speaker 1: really understand that at the time we were doing all this.
Speaker 1: We could do it because we could and it seemed
Speaker 1: like a good idea at the time. I always wish
Speaker 1: I could go back, and I'm sure you could, if
Speaker 1: you know, a good historian could go back. Is who
Speaker 1: were the at the time there. I'm sure they were
Speaker 1: labeled as lunatics and alarmist. Who were the people that
Speaker 1: were saying, you know what, man, if you do that right,
Speaker 1: those voices are lost, not lost to history probably, but
Speaker 1: lost the popular history, right. Yeah, but they look pretty
Speaker 1: prescient now. Like the guy, the guy on the Columbia
Speaker 1: River that was being like, you know, if you do this,
Speaker 1: my feeling is that you will doom all of those
Speaker 1: salmon species to extinction. And people were probably like, ah,
Speaker 1: you tree hugger. Well, and at that time you could
Speaker 1: even say, well, would just build a hatchery, which is
Speaker 1: what they did. And yeah, so that was why they
Speaker 1: dealt with it there. But in Florida, Yeah, we've seen
Speaker 1: the impacts because now you have the huge dead zones
Speaker 1: and you know, red tides and allergae ballooms coming off
Speaker 1: east and west side for all this water, polluted water
Speaker 1: being shunted out and you know, so that's having huge
Speaker 1: economic impacts. You know, in addition to the decline of
Speaker 1: Florida Bay in the Everglades and you know the various species.
Speaker 1: So we're in the process of restoring that to make
Speaker 1: it work way you know, nature was supposed to make
Speaker 1: it work. So is the is the infrastructure logic? And
Speaker 1: again I support the decision. I'm just trying to I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to get to the lot. Is the infrastructure
Speaker 1: logic that it was like a corp of Engineers infrastructure
Speaker 1: project that created an issue, meaning it was it was
Speaker 1: like earth moving construction, dam building, putting roads on tops
Speaker 1: of dams, and it's not gonna get fixed naturally. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to go back and re engineered that system.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're doing in South Florida. Does
Speaker 1: that become a core project, core of engineers, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: money is running through their budget, but also a bunch
Speaker 1: of other budgets. And but that's just a classic example
Speaker 1: of natural infrastructure. Another would be you know, in the
Speaker 1: South Louisiana, you know, reconnecting you know, the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: with this delta because we've basically put up huge levees
Speaker 1: and move all that water and all the sediment that's
Speaker 1: coming down the Mississippi out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1: And so you have this huge land loss in Louisiana
Speaker 1: where literally South Louisiana is sinking. Help people understand why
Speaker 1: why the land is vanishing, because historically the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: would brey it out as soon as it got down
Speaker 1: past New Orleans that area, and you know, all that
Speaker 1: sediment would then settle and maintain you know, this vast
Speaker 1: area of wetlands and that verse area wetlands. In addition
Speaker 1: to being good ecologically, is what protected you know, places
Speaker 1: like New Orleans from hurricanes and you know, tidal surges
Speaker 1: that would come in. And as we lose that, we
Speaker 1: expose you know, the people, you know it too far
Speaker 1: greater risk. And we saw that obviously with the Katrina
Speaker 1: and other events. So we're trying to do an is
Speaker 1: to actually break some of those levees along the lower
Speaker 1: Mississippi River to allow the river to spread back out,
Speaker 1: to allow that sediment to dump where it's supposed to be,
Speaker 1: to you know, keep you know, trying to end the
Speaker 1: subsidence that's happening right now, and then also create a
Speaker 1: natural system that will protect flood surge. Uh. That's easy
Speaker 1: to see on infrastructure because it was one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons you channelize the river was to make it
Speaker 1: predictable for navigation. Like if you go back and read
Speaker 1: um Mark Twain, uh, his book about the river captains. Um,
Speaker 1: you had to have like a guy that knew how
Speaker 1: to navigate that river back in those days, which was
Speaker 1: constantly changing. Um, you couldn't run deep, you couldn't run
Speaker 1: deep vessels. You had to have very detailed, constantly of
Speaker 1: volving knowledge of how to get boats up the Mississippi
Speaker 1: Channel because it changed all the time, and they just
Speaker 1: made it a straight shot right for shipping. So that's
Speaker 1: easy to see on infrastructure. I mean, nobody's really talking
Speaker 1: about that main shipping channel, you know, changing that that
Speaker 1: is what it is. But as you get down past
Speaker 1: the New Orleans. Yeah, that is where we need to
Speaker 1: recreate those wetlands. Now another example of things like you know,
Speaker 1: the crossings over highways. Oh, I got one more question
Speaker 1: about the Mississippi. Is is the primary energy the political
Speaker 1: energy to start rehabilitating the delta um, Is the primary
Speaker 1: energy coming from a public safety regarding hurricanes? Or is
Speaker 1: the primary energy coming from the conservation community? All of
Speaker 1: the above. And I think that largely this is being
Speaker 1: funded through you know, basically BP oil spill dollars. So
Speaker 1: there's still some of that has there's still some of
Speaker 1: that that's going to be spent for several more years.
Speaker 1: That's going to be you know obviously you know, kicked
Speaker 1: up through the infrastructure spending. But now it's you know,
Speaker 1: I think they've recognized that as you know, a critical
Speaker 1: to basically you know, protect New Orleans and the people
Speaker 1: that live along there. There's also recognition that we're destroying
Speaker 1: that ecosystem, which is phenomenal, you know, fishery, waterfowl, habitat,
Speaker 1: you name it. So I think everybody has come together
Speaker 1: and this is one of those things like it's Mom
Speaker 1: and apple Pie in Louisiana. By and large, that everybody
Speaker 1: agrees this is the right thing to do. But that's
Speaker 1: been a sea change in people's attitudes, you know, where
Speaker 1: we have a long history of controlling nature and now
Speaker 1: we're trying to get nature and actually play a role
Speaker 1: in protecting us. Just another example of infrastructure would be that,
Speaker 1: you know the part there's a pilot program in the
Speaker 1: bill that was passed in November of million dollars for
Speaker 1: expanding highway overpasses and underpasses for wildlife. And you see
Speaker 1: that in places like you know down in you Trapper's
Speaker 1: Point and why Coming and where. They've done that already
Speaker 1: and they're incredibly successful. The animals use them. They reduce
Speaker 1: accidents with people and death and uh, you know so
Speaker 1: And it's just you know, as we think about a
Speaker 1: change in climate and animals needing to move, I mean,
Speaker 1: having those basically intact migration quarters is more important than ever.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna see a big influx of that. And
Speaker 1: it's not just you know, for mule deer and elk
Speaker 1: and you know, prawing horn and wyoming. You know, this
Speaker 1: is gonna be for reptiles and amphibians in New Jersey
Speaker 1: getting under roads as they move and their spring migrations too,
Speaker 1: So it's a difference. A pilot program and it's going
Speaker 1: to be around the country and it's a chance to
Speaker 1: show that really works and to expand that. But this
Speaker 1: is just a different way of thinking about traditional roads
Speaker 1: and bridges. And we have so much better data today
Speaker 1: about you know, how animals move than we did even
Speaker 1: a decade ago. You can be much more targeted, much
Speaker 1: more targeted, and you know where to put that overpass,
Speaker 1: and you know it's going to be used, and you
Speaker 1: it's got to be combined with some fencing to push
Speaker 1: them into there. But you know that is you know,
Speaker 1: that is a solution to a lot of problems because
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at a lot of migration maps,
Speaker 1: they end write it, you know I five or whatever
Speaker 1: it is in Wyoming, and that's not the way it's
Speaker 1: supposed to work. Walk me through on those three examples
Speaker 1: unless you're ready to move away from the infrastructre like
Speaker 1: before the infrastructure. So before we leave infrastructure, here's the challenge.
Speaker 1: So we have you know, the billion billions of dollars
Speaker 1: for conservation in that infrastructure package, and we have agencies
Speaker 1: that are not equipped to handle that level of money
Speaker 1: and getting it on the ground is going to be challenge. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we've had years of basically bashing the
Speaker 1: federal government and talking about we need to downsize federal government.
Speaker 1: We've had attrition from all the national resource agencies over
Speaker 1: the years. So you need to have an infrastructure in place,
Speaker 1: you know, to apply these funds, make sure they get
Speaker 1: on the ground, you know, in a reasonable way, because
Speaker 1: nobody wants this money to be wasted. Nobody wants to
Speaker 1: just to sit in an agency's bank account and not
Speaker 1: get spent. So part of the challenge here, and we
Speaker 1: have a working group of our various partner organizations that
Speaker 1: is working on this is identify you know, places where
Speaker 1: this money can get put to get it on the
Speaker 1: ground quickly. For example, a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Speaker 1: you know, which is handling a lot of the BP
Speaker 1: oil settlement funds is done, has a thirty plus year
Speaker 1: track record of doing great conservation work and knows how
Speaker 1: to get money on the ground quickly with very low overhead.
Speaker 1: You have super size the programs there to get that
Speaker 1: money on the ground. After a Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: they created a coastal Resiliency Fund managed a lot of
Speaker 1: the Department of Commerce funds that came into that to
Speaker 1: basically rebuild you know, wetland habitats, barrier islands, all the
Speaker 1: rest and incredibly successful, matched by private dollars, matched by
Speaker 1: state dollars. Use that same sort of model here, you know,
Speaker 1: to get the money out of the agency's to to
Speaker 1: an organization that knows how to do grants, that knows
Speaker 1: how to monitor, knows how to avoid ait, and knows
Speaker 1: how to get that money out quickly. And that's what's
Speaker 1: happening right now. So they just did an announcement for
Speaker 1: a while ago, a billion dollars going to National fisher
Speaker 1: Wildlife Foundation for a host of different projects, terrestrial, marine,
Speaker 1: you name it. And those are RFPs around the street
Speaker 1: right now. So I think that's the big challenge is
Speaker 1: how do we make sure that all this money has
Speaker 1: been appropriated it actually gets two good projects. And if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you can see a change administration that comming
Speaker 1: and saying we have all this unused money, We're going
Speaker 1: to rescind it and pull it back out, and nobody
Speaker 1: wants that to happen. So I think that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the challenge right now, Uh, explain to me how
Speaker 1: if you look at the role of t RCP and
Speaker 1: other players when they're when when they're shaping what the
Speaker 1: infrastructure package will look like. Okay, and they're they're building,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're creating legislation, and they have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that has that be passable, right, So it's
Speaker 1: not just like a wish list, it's it has been
Speaker 1: somewhat pragmatic to get the votes and has be signed
Speaker 1: by the president. Um at what point does the conservation
Speaker 1: community insert themselves into the dialogue to say, if we're
Speaker 1: gonna be spending money on infrastructure, we need to be
Speaker 1: like spending it in these ways and how do you
Speaker 1: keep it in the end from all the work to evaporating.
Speaker 1: So it was very clear early on that infrastructure was
Speaker 1: one of those few areas that Democrats Republicans could agree on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Trump talked about it, you know, Obama talked about it,
Speaker 1: Biden talked about it on the campaign trail. So back
Speaker 1: during the middle of the Trump administration, we started gearing
Speaker 1: up a campaign with our partner organizations. The way we're organized,
Speaker 1: we have sixty one different groups under our broad umbrella
Speaker 1: and then they mobilized into working groups on particular issues
Speaker 1: like infrastructure, as we may have you know, twenty different
Speaker 1: group on this particular issue. And so we created a
Speaker 1: website years ago called Conservation Works for America that talked
Speaker 1: about putting people back to work through conservation projects and
Speaker 1: the benefits that would do for infrastructure, for natural habitats,
Speaker 1: for hunting and fishing. And based on that platform, then
Speaker 1: that basically gave us a seat at the table early
Speaker 1: on as it started again negotiated, and so then as
Speaker 1: you know, became more real under when Biden came in.
Speaker 1: You know, then we were prepared the whole series of
Speaker 1: different road programs and we thought needed investment, and you know,
Speaker 1: and they were happy to have our support on this.
Speaker 1: And because they were trying to make it bipartisan, the
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing community tes to lean Republican and so
Speaker 1: I think they valued our input and participation. And plus
Speaker 1: it was the right thing to do. It met their
Speaker 1: climate objectives, met their jobs objectives, and met their infrastructure objectives,
Speaker 1: and you know, was something that you know, was frankly
Speaker 1: pretty easy to get at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: So at some point someone comes in there like I
Speaker 1: got an idea for you, huh. And plus they think
Speaker 1: about the groups that are underneath the partnership. When you
Speaker 1: have Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, Pheasants, Forever Association, Official Wildlife Agencies.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys have been doing on the ground
Speaker 1: projects for decades and they know what works and no
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. They know the implicant you know, some
Speaker 1: of the you know, basically impediments to getting money on
Speaker 1: the ground, be it NIPA analysis, be it matching, fun requirements,
Speaker 1: things like that that all need to be tweaked if
Speaker 1: you're going to get this stuff out and get it
Speaker 1: on the ground quickly. So there's a tremendous amount expertise
Speaker 1: there and this is you know, this is right in
Speaker 1: those groups wheelhouse. And what we do is, you know,
Speaker 1: we take advice from them and then we coalesce, coalesce
Speaker 1: around the lobby and communication strategy and try to push
Speaker 1: that through inside the beltway. And then if we're successful
Speaker 1: like we were this time, there's a buttload of money
Speaker 1: that goes back out to these groups to actually put
Speaker 1: projects on the ground. If you go back to UM,
Speaker 1: if you go back to the Greater Working Outdoors, how like,
Speaker 1: what does implication implementation looking like? There you have some
Speaker 1: of the same challenges. Uh. You know, So just to
Speaker 1: remind your listeners, you have the Great American atdoor ZEKET
Speaker 1: had two big components. One was permanent and full funding
Speaker 1: for the Land of Water Conservation Fund nine million dollars
Speaker 1: a year for projects that conserve sensitive habitats that expand access.
Speaker 1: You know that they could be you know, fee acquisition,
Speaker 1: it could be conservation easements. It runs the gamut. That
Speaker 1: is the only one time in the history of the
Speaker 1: program it was pasted in I think have we had
Speaker 1: full funding of nine million dollars. So again we have
Speaker 1: some of the same challenges with the agencies. The appraisal
Speaker 1: process is a real problem here because the way that
Speaker 1: the federal appraisal process works is they'll look at a
Speaker 1: like a kick ass you know, elk or mule deer
Speaker 1: property in a place like Montana, but they appraised it
Speaker 1: on its ability to grow corner so i beans, and
Speaker 1: so you have these ridiculously low valuations that don't meet
Speaker 1: with today's I mean you look at a Hall and
Speaker 1: Hall brochure or something like that, and these amenity ranches
Speaker 1: that have great habitat are going for insane amounts of money.
Speaker 1: They have nothing to do with how much corn and
Speaker 1: soybean they can produce. Yeah, I've I've heard frustrations from
Speaker 1: agency people about that that. You know, people should be
Speaker 1: clear that that it makes sense and it seems like
Speaker 1: a good thing, um that the government can't just buy
Speaker 1: and like insanely priced pieces of property, like there has
Speaker 1: been some sort of objective understanding of its value in law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to keep to keep tax prayers from getting screwed by
Speaker 1: someone making like horrible financial decisions, right, like paying a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars for something that's worth ten million bucks.
Speaker 1: You just screwed taxpayers over So, so it's supposed to
Speaker 1: have some discipline, but it has it doesn't keep up
Speaker 1: to speed where someone explaining they're still looking at like
Speaker 1: like stocking rates of cows and calves on places that
Speaker 1: are absolutely gonna sell as recreational wildlife habitat. They're gonna
Speaker 1: sells recreational properties. The values have changed since the nineteen
Speaker 1: and you're not you can't you're not competing, and you're
Speaker 1: not competing in the modern era because it's not a
Speaker 1: thing where you're looking at contemporary comps, and you have
Speaker 1: a landoorder that wants to do the right thing, like
Speaker 1: make this public, you know, and but it's really hard
Speaker 1: for them to do if they're getting off of you know,
Speaker 1: what they would get on the open market, because they're
Speaker 1: just not gonna do it. Yeah, Landard might be like,
Speaker 1: it's got miles of trout stream, hundreds of elk antelope,
Speaker 1: we see black bears and the feathers are sitting there
Speaker 1: like it'll it's got thirteen acres of irrigated LFLFA and
Speaker 1: support three cow calf pairs per you and it you
Speaker 1: know or whatever, and some some texting comes and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'll take it right. So we're having to deal with
Speaker 1: that is shoes is. So that's in the process being
Speaker 1: changed as we speak, and hopefully that gets done pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But then you also have a sort of a different
Speaker 1: when you look at that it's being changed, but how
Speaker 1: is it being Like what specifically are they changing? I
Speaker 1: think the federal the methodologies. I don't think this has
Speaker 1: to go through Congress. I think this administrative Act. And
Speaker 1: again I've got people on our staff that know far
Speaker 1: more about this than I do. But what they basically
Speaker 1: need to do is you know, publish a new appraisal system,
Speaker 1: you know, that reflects modern values, and that goes through
Speaker 1: a rulemaking process. It takes a little bit of a time,
Speaker 1: and so that whole process is underway right now. In fact,
Speaker 1: we had Tommy Boudreau, who's number two at the part
Speaker 1: of the Interior, talked to our collective groups last week
Speaker 1: about his personal frustration with this, but the fact that
Speaker 1: it is moving forward and as fast as they can
Speaker 1: make it go, and just Washington doesn't do things quickly.
Speaker 1: I've heard other stories of landowners families that want to
Speaker 1: try to move ranch land into public access and just
Speaker 1: grew to be very fastated by the time I can't like,
Speaker 1: I can't do this for three years. No, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: It's a very legitimate concern. Yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there's economic uncertainty. Who knows that the market's going to
Speaker 1: be like, I can't wait for you guys. But also
Speaker 1: the other thing about the Great American at Doors Act
Speaker 1: and Land and Water Conservation Fund, part of that is
Speaker 1: it really also has a little bit different orientation. I mean,
Speaker 1: we got a provision in that requires at least three
Speaker 1: percent of the funds or upwards of twenty five million
Speaker 1: annually be used for projects to expand public access. So
Speaker 1: instead of on that merit, Yeah, so instead of a
Speaker 1: acre plum creek holding someplace that you maybe by under
Speaker 1: land and water conservation function may still be a great project.
Speaker 1: This also encourages the agency to look at maybe that
Speaker 1: half section in someplace you know that may not be
Speaker 1: worth a whole lot by itself, but it opens up
Speaker 1: ten thousand makers of national force behind it, and so
Speaker 1: you know there's a different way of thinking even within
Speaker 1: the agencies that they look at this money and how
Speaker 1: it's going to get spent. Because it's not just big
Speaker 1: landscape level acquisitions. I mean, it's conservation easements, is access easements,
Speaker 1: it's small fee purchases. But it's hard to picture getting
Speaker 1: someone getting a team of people with who can be nimble,
Speaker 1: make quick assessments, quick intelligent assessments, and be nimble enough
Speaker 1: to participate in the market right now. So that's why
Speaker 1: you have the NGO components. So you have groups like
Speaker 1: Nature Conserving Trust for Public Land Conservation Fund that have
Speaker 1: done a lot of the early legwork and putting together
Speaker 1: the deals and making the public justification and getting the
Speaker 1: landowner trust. And then they're the ones that are private
Speaker 1: being the primary interface with the federal government saying lining
Speaker 1: this up, saying this is cute up, it's ready to go.
Speaker 1: And so the Rocky mountainol Foundation does some stuff. Foundations
Speaker 1: perfect example, like they'll work deals. We're ranchers who may
Speaker 1: even be members of r M e F come to
Speaker 1: r M e F and be like, we'd love to
Speaker 1: get our place protected, but yeah, and then that they
Speaker 1: become the interface with the federal agency or the state
Speaker 1: agency or whatever might be that is, you know, would
Speaker 1: take ownership or hold the conservation easement. There are other
Speaker 1: times for these groups will actually buy the area in fee,
Speaker 1: just because the landowner is facing you know, a real
Speaker 1: crunch from cash and this can't wait. With the understanding
Speaker 1: that then they'll flip it to the federal agency. But
Speaker 1: you know, that puts a big burden on the nonprofit
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden they're out however many million
Speaker 1: dollars that they're having to sit there and wait for
Speaker 1: the federal government to get in its active there's probably
Speaker 1: always some apprehension that they'll change their mind. Sure, I man,
Speaker 1: And that's the risk of the game. But the groups
Speaker 1: like Conservation Fund, Trust republic Land, I mean, these are pros.
Speaker 1: They've been doing this for years. I think they have
Speaker 1: a pretty good sense about, yeah, this is gonna happen
Speaker 1: or not. And now that you have a guaranteed stream
Speaker 1: of federal funding through land and water conservation, one is
Speaker 1: far more certain that's going to happen at some point.
Speaker 1: The old day is a real concern was Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: go ahead and buy this. But let's say Congress instead
Speaker 1: of giving nine million dollars only decides to give it
Speaker 1: a hundred million, and that's competing with projects all around
Speaker 1: the country. Then you can really be screwed. Are they
Speaker 1: having uh? Are they having a hard time finding projects
Speaker 1: on the right timeline? Plenty of projects out there is
Speaker 1: a backlog of projects that are ready to go. The
Speaker 1: issue is more on the just the administrative side, getting
Speaker 1: the appraisal process fixed, getting the people within the agencies
Speaker 1: to deal with, and three times as much volume of
Speaker 1: transactions as they've been doing historically, which means staffing up
Speaker 1: to a certain degree. So those are the bigger challenges. Now.
Speaker 1: You also have in the Great American Outdoors Act and
Speaker 1: nine and a half billion dollar trust fund to address
Speaker 1: the maintenance backlog on public lands, national parks, national forests
Speaker 1: that could be campgrounds, could be visit of centers, could
Speaker 1: be roads, could be trails. So you know that they're
Speaker 1: facing a lot of the same problems there too about
Speaker 1: capacity because if you have an agency whereas you know,
Speaker 1: you have a lot less people than you had a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and all of a sudden you have
Speaker 1: this money to go do all this stuff, it's hard.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you get that money on the ground. Now you're
Speaker 1: not going to go out there and build that businitess
Speaker 1: and you're gonna contract with somebody else. But you've got
Speaker 1: to do that due deal. Just on the front hand.
Speaker 1: You gotta go put out a bid. You gotta go
Speaker 1: through the RFP process and make sure you're again not
Speaker 1: getting screwed because this taxpayer money that you're using. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: explain the map Act. So map Land is an act
Speaker 1: that just passed. So it's it's m A P L
Speaker 1: A N D map Land, which is making our public
Speaker 1: Lands Accessible Act. It's I'm probably it's an acronym, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a nice acronym. Map Land. So this is
Speaker 1: the just passed the House in the Senate, signed by
Speaker 1: Biden two weeks ago. Uh, unanimous vote out of the Senate.
Speaker 1: And what this does is unanimous. Yeah, so I knew
Speaker 1: it passed overwhelming you, but I don't know it's unanimus.
Speaker 1: It was overwhelming in the House. I think we had
Speaker 1: like nine people that voted against it, and then you
Speaker 1: then listened the Senate. You know, you haven't explained it
Speaker 1: to people yet. I'm just curious. Now. The nine that
Speaker 1: didn't like it, what the what then they like about it?
Speaker 1: Anti just anti federal government. Um, you know, it's going
Speaker 1: to cost some dollars. They could sort of fall in
Speaker 1: on the taxpayer concern. It's basically people that don't like
Speaker 1: conservation and out of the spending money. Out of the
Speaker 1: almost four people hanging around the house, yeah, nine didn't
Speaker 1: like it exactly, and then every senator liked it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, what it does This goes back to the
Speaker 1: projects we did with on X that identified landlocked public lands.
Speaker 1: And you know, in that process we went through a
Speaker 1: multi year and a series of different reports and anybody
Speaker 1: can read them on our website, but identify all these
Speaker 1: lands of the public owners the public can't get access
Speaker 1: to because there's no legal acts us right. Well, in
Speaker 1: the process of doing that, we discovered that there are
Speaker 1: a whole lot more legal access rights that we know about.
Speaker 1: And Joel Webster, who runs our Western Lands or Western
Speaker 1: conservation programs, you know, he and the folks and on X,
Speaker 1: that dude is one of the sharpest minds when it
Speaker 1: comes to I mean I land designations, land access and
Speaker 1: he is like, I think it like our little mad
Speaker 1: scientist in the back room concocting new schemes to protect
Speaker 1: public land to expand access, and comes on him was like,
Speaker 1: that's how in the world does he know all that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so distracted by wondering how he like he lives. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, hardcore public land hunter. He'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you see like a railroad crossing
Speaker 1: and it says something or another around the map, but
Speaker 1: then next to that it says something or not about
Speaker 1: d O T whatever. He'll be like, oh, that's because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like no ship really so but tooking back to
Speaker 1: the map land, I mean, part of this process with
Speaker 1: on X, they discovered that the agencies and this is
Speaker 1: really Forest Service in BLM, you know, had you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere around fifty thousand negotiated access easements, of which somewhere
Speaker 1: around five thousand actually been digitized, so you you knew
Speaker 1: about them through a public process, so if you're using
Speaker 1: your on X or something like that, it would show up.
Speaker 1: The rest of them are in boxes in the basements
Speaker 1: of ranger districts someplace. And we asked the forest like,
Speaker 1: do you mean literally literally? Do you mean that if
Speaker 1: the building burnt down? Yes, well, as it is right now.
Speaker 1: Nobody the people that are there. These may have been
Speaker 1: negotiated fifty years ago. People there now have no idea
Speaker 1: about them. At Lander may have put up a gate
Speaker 1: someplace a long time ago, nobody really noticed. Everyone assumed
Speaker 1: it's been awful mists forever and he sold it three times.
Speaker 1: So we asked the Forest Service, and this is Forest
Speaker 1: Service is probably the worst. I mean, they've got thirty
Speaker 1: five thousand, you know, access easements, of which far less
Speaker 1: than five thousand have been actually digitized. So we asked
Speaker 1: them how long it would take you guys to get
Speaker 1: this stuff basically into a only first century format. And
Speaker 1: they're like, well, our current levels of funding probably between
Speaker 1: ten and twenty years, And so what we did was
Speaker 1: you know, Joel and his team drafted up this bill
Speaker 1: that would give the agencies the money they need, give
Speaker 1: them a two year window to get this all done,
Speaker 1: tell them to get together to come up with a
Speaker 1: common data set because of course the agencies also have
Speaker 1: their own process in their own data standards, and get
Speaker 1: it done. And so you know, that's what passed Congress.
Speaker 1: And I think this is gonna be a real game
Speaker 1: changer for a lot of the public land access because
Speaker 1: then if you have your handheld GPS, you're on X
Speaker 1: or whatever your format might be, you're gonna see you
Speaker 1: know what it where we have legal access rights, then
Speaker 1: they're gonna be a bunch of stuff showing up that
Speaker 1: we had no idea was there. We have a mutual acquaintance, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: his name is Carl. Yes, he recently had a very
Speaker 1: interesting I'd to have him explained as himself in long form.
Speaker 1: I'm not even I'm not gonna talk about where it is.
Speaker 1: We said, a very interesting discovery in the Midwest where
Speaker 1: he's looking at maps and sees that there's this block
Speaker 1: of state land and there is a hundreds of yard long,
Speaker 1: hundreds of yard long strand on the map marked of
Speaker 1: like what appears to be state land that's literally feet wide.
Speaker 1: He's a lands expert, so he noticed something that maybe
Speaker 1: peopleuldn't have noticed. He goes over to have a look
Speaker 1: and it is the wind row, the wind row between
Speaker 1: two crop fields, which is piled up with rock as
Speaker 1: the over the years farmers kick up rock, throwing the
Speaker 1: wind row. It's rock and briar, but it's a wind row.
Speaker 1: And he goes and does some research and it turns
Speaker 1: out this is owned by the state. He goes and
Speaker 1: has a chat with one of the neighboring landowners who
Speaker 1: assures him that it's been closed. Right ah. He goes
Speaker 1: to the state office. They're like, that hasn't been closed. Um,
Speaker 1: you can definitely use it. There hasn't been a trail there,
Speaker 1: but it was meant to be. And in fact, we
Speaker 1: don't I don't know what happened. That guy has asked
Speaker 1: us to close it. We don't really know what that means.
Speaker 1: And he walks down that stumb bitch gets down there
Speaker 1: and guess what he finds all kinds of This is
Speaker 1: a place you can't bait, all kinds of bait piles. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's been and then he parked and he can legally
Speaker 1: park on the right away, and he does this trudge.
Speaker 1: He says, it takes about an hour and a half
Speaker 1: to go down this thing to get to this lake
Speaker 1: that's otherwise inaccessible. And the guy leaves, um notes, I'm
Speaker 1: calling the sheriff. He goes and says, let's call the
Speaker 1: sheriff together. Well, I'm not calling him right now, but
Speaker 1: it's a crazy story. I don't think that's it's not
Speaker 1: federal but a state right, It's not. It's not isolated.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna find as we do this process
Speaker 1: and get this implemented, you're gonna find those all over
Speaker 1: the place. And as you you talked about, corner crossing
Speaker 1: is a little bit. I mean, this all sort of
Speaker 1: plays into you know, one way to deal with overcrowding
Speaker 1: on a bunch of our public lands is to expand
Speaker 1: access to the public lands that nobody has access to
Speaker 1: right now. And map land is one tool to help
Speaker 1: us do that. And it's not infringing on private property
Speaker 1: rights because we own these and you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: new landowner doesn't know that, but this is gonna help
Speaker 1: I think a long term with reduced conflicts with private
Speaker 1: landowners because you know, this is the way it is.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be digitized. Everyone knows where it is, and
Speaker 1: everyone knows where it isn't. That's the thing I think
Speaker 1: people need to um not need to this. The thing
Speaker 1: I'd like people to recognize is it's instead of the
Speaker 1: public take like, instead of the public going to sort
Speaker 1: of like taking something from a private landowner, it's that
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna say it's in effect, the private landowner
Speaker 1: has taken something from the public, the private landowners utilizing
Speaker 1: as their own something that isn't. There's so if you
Speaker 1: if you believe in this whole like you know, this
Speaker 1: whole idea of a property rights and stuff, we're just
Speaker 1: we're simply the public is simply asserting it's property rights.
Speaker 1: And if it's saying we the republic have access to
Speaker 1: certain things, we'd like to clarify what it is and
Speaker 1: utilize it. And there may be no malice on the
Speaker 1: landowner's part. May have you changed hands two or three
Speaker 1: times since this was negotiating, he had probably had no
Speaker 1: idea here or she And it's got to be a
Speaker 1: rude it's a rude awakening. You can like I can
Speaker 1: easily get in the head of someone who has been
Speaker 1: on some chunk of ground for you know, twenty years,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden someone says, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I hate to break it to you, but it turns
Speaker 1: out your driveway is a road. Yeah, of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna of course yours. No one's gonna be like, oh well,
Speaker 1: in that case, welcome, But it is what it is.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of other stuff we're working on right now.
Speaker 1: There's a bill that's pending in the Senate called Recovering
Speaker 1: America's Wildlife Act, And that's a slam, don't right, Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is a you know, I mean, it's We've got
Speaker 1: sixteen Democrats, sixteen Republicans on it, and this is in
Speaker 1: the Senate, so I mean, it's got good bipartisans support.
Speaker 1: But it's gonna cost, you know, one point four billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year, and any time that you have something
Speaker 1: that's that expensive, there's gonna be opposition to it. We
Speaker 1: know that. And it's not gonna be something that sales
Speaker 1: through a hundred or nothing. But you know the rationale
Speaker 1: behind this bill. But you have a split number of
Speaker 1: Democrats and Republicans supporting it. Yeah, but that's you know,
Speaker 1: still thirty or thirty two out of a hundred and
Speaker 1: not heard about it yet. Oh they may have heard
Speaker 1: about it, they just haven't signed on as co sponsors.
Speaker 1: When they signed US co sponsors, we know we got
Speaker 1: their vote, and we're we've been very deliberate of making
Speaker 1: sure that for every Democrat we take get we're going
Speaker 1: to get a Republican to keep this bipartisan going the
Speaker 1: way through. And you got how many thirty two right
Speaker 1: now and how many even have you talked too, We've
Speaker 1: talked all of that. Well, you only got eighteen to
Speaker 1: go in your halfway and you're at the You also
Speaker 1: have the filibuster in the Senate, which means you have
Speaker 1: to get above sixty and uh, you know so. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think we can get it done. But it's not
Speaker 1: slam dunk by enemies. But what this bill would do
Speaker 1: is invest this money one point four billion a year
Speaker 1: two states to work on essentially non game wildlife issues
Speaker 1: and with the goal of keeping species off the Endangerous
Speaker 1: PECS Act list. And you think about you know, the
Speaker 1: state agencies which have primary jurisdiction for managing wildlife, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere in that plus of their annual budgets come from sportsmen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: through you know, the excise taxes that go back out
Speaker 1: to the states for yeah, fishing, tackle, ammunition, guns, archery equipment,
Speaker 1: motor boat fuel, all the rest, and the licenses that
Speaker 1: we all pay and the tags we buy and all that.
Speaker 1: So sportsman is basically paying for wildlife management for years
Speaker 1: and some of that is understand. The agencies used to
Speaker 1: deal with things butterflies, bats, you know, whatever the non
Speaker 1: game species might be, but it's not a sustainable model.
Speaker 1: And several years ago the states developed what they call
Speaker 1: their Wildlife Action Plans, which is what they would need
Speaker 1: to deal with all these species that are in decline
Speaker 1: that will probably eventually get listed and you know, cost
Speaker 1: a ton of money to recover. So how do we
Speaker 1: get ahead of that? And they added up you've added
Speaker 1: up the fifty states and the territories and it came
Speaker 1: out to one point four billion a year, which is
Speaker 1: why we came up that number. So in this you know,
Speaker 1: it's a penny wise, you know, this is a good
Speaker 1: investment to save a lot of money down the road,
Speaker 1: because you know, if as we say, if it's species
Speaker 1: gets down to a red wolf status and we're spending, however,
Speaker 1: many tens of millions of dollars you had to try
Speaker 1: to recover that species, it would have made a whole
Speaker 1: lot more sense before it got to that level, and
Speaker 1: red wolf maybe a bad example to spend. Yeah, end
Speaker 1: that money in advance to make sure that these species
Speaker 1: aren't you collapsing. And plus we're really talking about habitat management,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about you know projects, if you think
Speaker 1: about something like the sage brush step, you know, sage
Speaker 1: grouse is obviously iconic species there, but we also have
Speaker 1: three and fifty other species that are not really game
Speaker 1: species that occupy that exact same ecosystem. So honestly, the
Speaker 1: reason we've been pushing this as much as one we
Speaker 1: think that we need that investment, but to this is
Speaker 1: going to help game species as well, because we're really
Speaker 1: going to be investing in habitats and not just single
Speaker 1: species management. So we think it makes a ton of sense. Um,
Speaker 1: we hope we're gonna be able to get it done
Speaker 1: this year, but you know it's again, I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a fairly heavy lift. There's companies that want
Speaker 1: to touch on UM. I don't want to back up
Speaker 1: a little bit. We talked about Great American Outdoor z
Speaker 1: Act in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of people sitting there being like, where
Speaker 1: is all this money coming from? At one point we
Speaker 1: didn't cover this. But in the case of the Great
Speaker 1: American Outdoors Act, which is funding l w CF Land
Speaker 1: and Water Conservation Fund funding, UM, that was a deal
Speaker 1: struck when in nine it was that when when an
Speaker 1: oil company is leasing from the American people offshore oil
Speaker 1: field land. So it's like you get out how many
Speaker 1: miles you've gotta get off the coast where you're out
Speaker 1: of state water? Okay, So if you if you let's
Speaker 1: say you live in California and you get in your
Speaker 1: boat and start heading west, you are in California water
Speaker 1: for a few miles, and then you enter United States
Speaker 1: water and that goes I don't know, quite a way.
Speaker 1: So that's land on by the American people. Someone's gonna
Speaker 1: go drill for oil. The for profit venture is going
Speaker 1: to go drill for oil. Well, there's ranking a deal
Speaker 1: with the American people saying like we would like to
Speaker 1: lease this oil site from the American people to drill
Speaker 1: oil to sell oil. That is where this revenue comes from.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a percentage of the lease fee. So
Speaker 1: we're saying as Americans, you know, like our representatives saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay us acts to use our land to
Speaker 1: draw oil from and we're gonna say that a percent
Speaker 1: of how many of that? Do you remember what it is?
Speaker 1: I can't remember it was, you know, as the percentage
Speaker 1: would have changed by now because it was a set
Speaker 1: dollar figure. So they're saying, of that money, this amount,
Speaker 1: like of the money you're paying to US America, we're
Speaker 1: pledging to spend this amount on access conservation projects. So
Speaker 1: this isn't like money that is just getting pulled out
Speaker 1: of thin air. This was a deal that was struck
Speaker 1: back then that allowed the Outer Continental Shelf to be
Speaker 1: opened up for oil and gas development, and then the
Speaker 1: oil industry and return agreed to pay into this fund
Speaker 1: to pay for conservation on yeh. And it was a
Speaker 1: a great model and it's worked well. The exception that
Speaker 1: the legislation was written in a fashion that didn't make
Speaker 1: that funding until the Great American ADOR's Act passed mandatory.
Speaker 1: So every year our Congress will see that nine hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars inside, well, let's not appropriate, maybe nine hundre
Speaker 1: millions to four hundred million, even though we were supposed
Speaker 1: to or but it wasn't protected from that. So Congress
Speaker 1: a raid it for all sorts of other purposes, and
Speaker 1: that was what got fixed in the Great American Doors Act. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously nine million dollars today is not worth the same
Speaker 1: as it was. It's still a lot of money, but
Speaker 1: it's a fraction of what it was originally intended to be.
Speaker 1: It would have been better if it was a percentage
Speaker 1: it would have been. But you know, listen, I'm happy
Speaker 1: we get nine hundred million dedicated for this because there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot better than what we were getting in
Speaker 1: the case of uh, let's let's take this recovering America's
Speaker 1: Wildlife Act situation. So here's the thing that it's helpful
Speaker 1: to consider. I remember I was talking with a policy guy.
Speaker 1: It worked on grizzly bear policy, and in the lower
Speaker 1: forty eight grizzly bears are um listed as threatened under
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act. And someone was telling me that
Speaker 1: the state of Idaho, Okay, the state of Idaho, through
Speaker 1: the Fish and Game Agency, which is funded by hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers. They spend half as much on every annually.
Speaker 1: They spend half as much on every grizzly bear that
Speaker 1: lives in Idaho as they do on every kid enrolled
Speaker 1: in public school. I would be a skeptical of that number.
Speaker 1: But okay, does it come No, Listen, I got it
Speaker 1: through the New York Times fact checker. They don't know
Speaker 1: anything through, but run it, run it again. The state
Speaker 1: of Idaho was spending what what they are spending. Nine
Speaker 1: They they cost them like nine thousand bucks per year
Speaker 1: per kid for public school. If that was I don't
Speaker 1: remember the exactly, nor something like that. The State Idaho
Speaker 1: is spending four thousand five dollars on every grizzly baronet stage. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're not talking accumulative total. No, I'm saying they spend
Speaker 1: half as much per bear as they do per kid
Speaker 1: to put them in public school. To put into context
Speaker 1: like what it costs what managing like what it costs
Speaker 1: to manage imperiled species. It's expensive to mandage imperiled species. Um.
Speaker 1: So when you get into this question of is there
Speaker 1: a better funding mechanism than than having a state which
Speaker 1: is get all of it's funding through hunter angler participation
Speaker 1: or excise taxes on sporting goods. To to have this
Speaker 1: like chunk of money spread so thin, as like you're saying,
Speaker 1: as we have increasing numbers and sure to have more
Speaker 1: species make the endangered Species list, it's at a point
Speaker 1: you're gonna be like week at a state level, we
Speaker 1: can't do it anymore. I know there's fun, there's like
Speaker 1: federal mechanisms too, but at a point you're going to
Speaker 1: be that we're trying to and I know that state
Speaker 1: fish and game agencies are encouraged not to think this
Speaker 1: way anymore. Where they look at like that they have
Speaker 1: a clientele, their clientele being like hunters and anglers, and
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers want to see lots of oh, lots
Speaker 1: of turkeys, well managed resources, and so they're like, I
Speaker 1: want my money, Like I'm paying the money because I
Speaker 1: want I like to hunt. I want you to take
Speaker 1: my money and make sure that these things that have
Speaker 1: all this public support are viable. And you don't have
Speaker 1: people buying butterfly stamps stamps, so there's a there's a
Speaker 1: whole huge hole. And and how we look at this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I just think that, you know, triage is not
Speaker 1: where we want to get. We want to protect the
Speaker 1: ecosystems that maintain these species that are on the decline,
Speaker 1: you know, so they never get to that trio situation
Speaker 1: where it costs so much money. And that's what those
Speaker 1: whole backs about. Yeah, And even if you're not a
Speaker 1: butterfly lover, I can just about guarantee you that if
Speaker 1: it's good for the butterflies, is probably gonna be good
Speaker 1: for your turkeys and deer too. Oh. Indeed, there aren't many, Um,
Speaker 1: there aren't many habitat moves that turn out being bad
Speaker 1: for something cases where you go help one thing and
Speaker 1: it turns out being bad for something else. That's right.
Speaker 1: A couple other things is worth noting. Um, we just
Speaker 1: had a big milestone on Striped Mass on the East,
Speaker 1: which is the number one marine recreational fish in America.
Speaker 1: And they know that is that in terms of in
Speaker 1: terms of angler ours, angler, our economic impact, um. And
Speaker 1: it's huge. I mean it goes all North Carolina, all
Speaker 1: the way I pet through Maine. I've never even caught
Speaker 1: one awesome fish and eat and it's it's really you know,
Speaker 1: unlike something like a bone fish or a tarp and
Speaker 1: it was it's an every man's fish catching from the beach.
Speaker 1: It's blue, blue collar. I mean you can catch them
Speaker 1: from the beach. You don't have to have a fancy boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can catch them on a fly. You can walk
Speaker 1: down Rhode Island, walk them down the beach. So I
Speaker 1: saw a bunch of them, and you catch out there
Speaker 1: and you actually catch a whole bunch of blue fish.
Speaker 1: But now and then, yep, there is so anyway the
Speaker 1: stripe bass. You may remember, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: full moratorium back in the nineties, there was so overfl
Speaker 1: like it got bad, they got really bad, so over fishing.
Speaker 1: I mean there was some some habitat stuff too, but
Speaker 1: it was recreation. It was recreational and commercial. I mean
Speaker 1: recreational is the bigger part of the problem today. Like
Speaker 1: recreational anglers actually put a hurt on that fish. I
Speaker 1: mean commercial did too. But you know today s the
Speaker 1: you know, the fish that are caught are caught by
Speaker 1: are killed or killed by recreational language. Really and that's
Speaker 1: how popular are the fishes. I always run around telling
Speaker 1: people that like regulated recreational fishing is negligible. I mean
Speaker 1: regulated is the key word there. And we just didn't
Speaker 1: do what we need to do at that time to
Speaker 1: regulate it properly and until it was too late, and
Speaker 1: we had a full last moratorium on commercial and recreational
Speaker 1: harvest for years. And was it because people are killing
Speaker 1: big females? That was certainly part of the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have a big female, forty female can lay
Speaker 1: I forget million eggs or something. I mean, they are
Speaker 1: incredibly fakun and uh, but we were, you know, starting
Speaker 1: to lose them. And also you're you're killing you know,
Speaker 1: they're just killing too many fish period and even catching release.
Speaker 1: You know, we are far better today at you know,
Speaker 1: surviving you know, knowing how to do that properly without
Speaker 1: huge you know, impacts me. If you're if you're using
Speaker 1: live bait with trouble hooks, you know, and you're letting
Speaker 1: the fish swallow it, You're not going to release that fish,
Speaker 1: even if it's below the slot limit or you want to.
Speaker 1: You've already caught your limit for the day. That fish
Speaker 1: is going to die. Yeah. So you know they've there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of advancements and you know, they
Speaker 1: see more reducing mortality. But the species has still been
Speaker 1: in basically steady decline for the past twenty years still now.
Speaker 1: And the last management action that was taken was taken
Speaker 1: in two thousand three or two thousand four, and that
Speaker 1: was what they call Amendment six to the Strip Bass
Speaker 1: Plan and that's been intact until today and BASY has
Speaker 1: been in place as we've been watching this steady decline
Speaker 1: and so finally this year in fact, just this decline
Speaker 1: in total numbers is the decline in like numbers of
Speaker 1: large sexony mature fish total numbers at this point. So
Speaker 1: but they're different management trigger as they look at to determine,
Speaker 1: you know, how whether over fishing is occurring. You know,
Speaker 1: they do stock assessments, they do younger the year in
Speaker 1: disease in the key spawning areas, you know, so overall
Speaker 1: they will look at those and that's determines whether you know,
Speaker 1: the stock is okay or whether it's you know, being
Speaker 1: over fished. And right now we've been a constant state overfishing.
Speaker 1: So the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is the
Speaker 1: basically the body made up of all the states on
Speaker 1: the Atlantic coast, you know, finally adopted last month something
Speaker 1: called amendiment seven, which dramatically changes how we're gonna be
Speaker 1: managing stripe best. It makes it much better for conservation. Now,
Speaker 1: rubbers gonna hit the road in October when we have
Speaker 1: the stock assessment this year. We didn't get stock assessments
Speaker 1: during the pandemic because they were not doing it, and
Speaker 1: so we will actually sort of see how bad it
Speaker 1: is come October, and if it's really bad, you're going
Speaker 1: to see a whole bunch of triggers put in place
Speaker 1: to reduce mortality. Give me a preview. Well, we've already
Speaker 1: had certain things done last year, like requiring circle hooks
Speaker 1: on live bait because the again that trouble hook is
Speaker 1: not good for catching release. Um, but you know what
Speaker 1: it could be is yeah, I mean it's it gets
Speaker 1: pretty walky pretty fast. And you can go on our
Speaker 1: website and read all about this. But for example, there
Speaker 1: is something called conservation equivalency, which means that in a
Speaker 1: place like the chess Peake Bay, which doesn't have a
Speaker 1: big fish much of the year, they allow you to
Speaker 1: catch fish that are much smaller and keep some because
Speaker 1: there simply aren't that the slot isn't in there. You
Speaker 1: know when people are fishing in the summertime, and that's
Speaker 1: been abused over the years. So they're finally gonna if
Speaker 1: you're if it continued over fishing is occurring, that goes away.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure I'm getting this right. They
Speaker 1: have a slot limit and then guys are like, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not catching one that I can keep. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're in the chest back bay, I mean those fish
Speaker 1: they're in the slot have moved out in the summer,
Speaker 1: and they're based on based on angler feedback. They're doing
Speaker 1: an adjustment. Like it's like the never mind the slot.
Speaker 1: You guys get to have a different you know, management
Speaker 1: regime down here to allow people to fish, and we're
Speaker 1: us killing way too many fish. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if we if it's decided that over fishing is still
Speaker 1: occurring come October in the stock assessment, then you know
Speaker 1: that is going to go away. So yeah, tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: we just can't kill small fish. Can I share with
Speaker 1: you three quick stripe bass go for things? Uh? I
Speaker 1: spent several months in San Jose, California. One time when
Speaker 1: I was working on a book and I had a
Speaker 1: I would call him my fake uncle down because he
Speaker 1: was like not even he was sort of a relative,
Speaker 1: like a step seemed like uncle, but he wasn't even
Speaker 1: kind of close to my uncle. Anyways. He would take
Speaker 1: me out trolling in San Francisco Bay for stripe bass,
Speaker 1: and he would troll so close to the San Quentin.
Speaker 1: You know who was in there at that time? Was
Speaker 1: that Mamber that guy that took his wife out. Says
Speaker 1: he took her out sturge and fishing, killed her and
Speaker 1: sunk her down at the bottom of the bay. Vaguely, Well,
Speaker 1: he was in there, Lord knows who else. We would
Speaker 1: troll so close to the guard tower at San Quentin
Speaker 1: that we'd wave to the guards and catch them good.
Speaker 1: And in the Upper Delaware, I used to go fish
Speaker 1: the Upper Delaware, uh way up where it's like Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: and New York Hancock to the West Branch come together.
Speaker 1: You're catching trout right like it was like rainbows and browns.
Speaker 1: And that's where I was fly fishing two weeks ago. Well,
Speaker 1: sometimes you've probably seen this happen. I'd be in my canoe,
Speaker 1: you know, you're catching like rainbows, small moss, whatever, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like you looked down in some
Speaker 1: hole and just stripers as long as your leg, And
Speaker 1: I like, I didn't know because that was new to
Speaker 1: the area. I didn't know that was the thing. And
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, normal, you see something like that,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, it must be a carp right, like
Speaker 1: something like that big. But they're fast, And I was like,
Speaker 1: what the I thought I discovered a new species. Someone's like, no, dude,
Speaker 1: stripe basket will come all the way out of the
Speaker 1: ocean and come up here. So the Delaware is the
Speaker 1: look like a stream. It's the longest stretch of undamned
Speaker 1: river in the eastern United States, so all the way
Speaker 1: from south of Philadelphia up to upstate New York. I
Speaker 1: thought I was hallucinating until I figured un till someone
Speaker 1: explained what I was looking at. Yep, were they ever
Speaker 1: hitting that kind of stuff? I can't even imagine. I've
Speaker 1: got friends of target them. Yeah, I can't imagine there
Speaker 1: that many that stay up there, but the ones to
Speaker 1: get up there and often, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: not go back out of the ocean because all these
Speaker 1: tastes a little trout in here. Oh, just incredible, man.
Speaker 1: My final one is this dude, my brother Danny used
Speaker 1: to work with was in Connecticut, and he took me
Speaker 1: out one night and uh, what the hell river it was. Um,
Speaker 1: we wait out on the river like the darkest night imaginable,
Speaker 1: and you can't you can't, I can't tell anything that's
Speaker 1: going on. And you just see the house lights and
Speaker 1: we're staying in the river like you know, up to
Speaker 1: your crotch and some river I can't see. We got
Speaker 1: there in the dark, no idea what's going on. And
Speaker 1: he's like just cast out there, you know, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is the stupidest thing in the look, this will
Speaker 1: never worked. Oh yeah, one of those things hits in
Speaker 1: the dark, dude. It was amazing, man. And that's the
Speaker 1: time to fish fish because you know the Long Island
Speaker 1: Sound around there is there's a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: you go during the day there are people everywhere, and
Speaker 1: you got it there at night and these little coastal
Speaker 1: rivers or flats were right in the mouth of the river. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have, first of all, there's nobody around,
Speaker 1: and you know the fit the fish come in and
Speaker 1: this they fish, they've hit better at night than they
Speaker 1: do in the daytime. Anyway. Yeah, it's so dark when
Speaker 1: you cast, like cast that plug you could, like the
Speaker 1: plug just sort of vanished into the darkness, like every
Speaker 1: idea like where you cast. Now, I did that for
Speaker 1: years and I'd love that. Oh he was I thought
Speaker 1: it was a riot. But you know, you get that
Speaker 1: feeling like I don't know what you're going out, but
Speaker 1: there's no way this, Like you can't catch fish like this,
Speaker 1: that doesn't work like this. So anyway, I think that
Speaker 1: the future is finally looking a little bit brighter for
Speaker 1: striped bass and hopefully we can stem this decline and
Speaker 1: start a recovery. Now, there are other things that are
Speaker 1: working against it, you know, from you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: Chest Peak Bay isn't as productive as it used to be,
Speaker 1: a climate get a little warmer. How much how much
Speaker 1: pushback do they anticipate from fisherman Very little? So right now,
Speaker 1: I mean all that and this is one of the
Speaker 1: cool things about this process. Basically entire recreational community, you know,
Speaker 1: it was on board with you know, taking very strong
Speaker 1: steps for conservation. Yeah, which is a change. And I
Speaker 1: mean listen, well, I'll take a little credit for that
Speaker 1: because you know, we helped assemble the coalition of as
Speaker 1: American support Fishing Association, Coastal Conservation Association, Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation,
Speaker 1: National Marine Manufacturers, others, to make sure that we were
Speaker 1: all on the same page because you know there are
Speaker 1: other groups you've you know, going to be good on this.
Speaker 1: But you know, our community, especially like the industry, you know,
Speaker 1: it just hates the thought of you know, fewer people
Speaker 1: on the water and you know, less economic activity. But
Speaker 1: I think everybody finally recognized that if we don't take
Speaker 1: some steps now, it's going to give you we're looking
Speaker 1: at another moratorium down the road. And that helps nobody.
Speaker 1: You know, that's in people's memory. Ye oh yeah, Vivid
Speaker 1: got you. How do they do these accounts? So you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how they do the stock assessments. They
Speaker 1: do young of the year in disease in the Chesspeake
Speaker 1: Bay and the Hudson River, which are the two mains
Speaker 1: spawning areas for stripe bass, and they have certain areas
Speaker 1: they go to all the time, and you know they
Speaker 1: see you basically, you know, this time of year they'll
Speaker 1: go in and do surveys a little bit later about
Speaker 1: the young because they'll come up there, you know, the
Speaker 1: stripe bass like in d C. We'll swim all the
Speaker 1: way up the Potomac past d See and spawn and
Speaker 1: they come up there in that you know, February March,
Speaker 1: you know time frame, and then spawn the little guys
Speaker 1: come out. And there are certain areas where the little
Speaker 1: ones tend to congregate where you can go and do
Speaker 1: a little sane surveys and you use the same methodology
Speaker 1: year to year. You come up with some pretty good
Speaker 1: trend lines over time, and they've been bad trend lines
Speaker 1: of late. And we also have things like, you know,
Speaker 1: blue catfish are now in the Chess Peak, which tend
Speaker 1: to love to eat little stripers, and that's an invasive species.
Speaker 1: It was never there before. So and people in the
Speaker 1: Chesty Bay aren't you used to whacking them even though
Speaker 1: they're great eating and you know, good game fish. But
Speaker 1: so they're out there and they're relatively unmolested, except they're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of molesting of straight bass. M So
Speaker 1: people gotta start keeping blues. Hit hit them hard. That's
Speaker 1: so good eating fish too. People like to look down
Speaker 1: on the old catfish, but delicious, yeah, cleaning it up right,
Speaker 1: and fish right especially has been eating straight bass and
Speaker 1: hanging out the sewer system outfall. Another question for you
Speaker 1: for the recovering America's wildlife? Are there there are there
Speaker 1: non hunting, non sportsman groups that are like chipping in,
Speaker 1: helping out, pushing for it. Oh, absolutely, like the butterfly
Speaker 1: Lover group. The environmental community is strongly behind it. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is another one where there is really no separation
Speaker 1: between our Yeah, what we want, what the environmental community want,
Speaker 1: what's the yeah, So everybody who cares about wildlife wants
Speaker 1: this to happen. When you're in a meeting, um, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different wildlife interests in the room,
Speaker 1: including a lot of people who are probably like instinctively
Speaker 1: adversarial to the hunt and fishing community. Um, are you
Speaker 1: guys just all business? Oh? Yeah? And honestly, there aren't
Speaker 1: that many groups. I mean Pete Human Society, they don't
Speaker 1: deal in federal policy. They don't know they they're much
Speaker 1: more comfortable, you know, throwing fake blood on somebody were
Speaker 1: in a fur or something like that. So I mean
Speaker 1: they're not involved in these negotiations. And you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: groups like Sierra Club supports hunting and they don't make
Speaker 1: it big. But but like a group like a group
Speaker 1: like Peter doesn't. I never thought about that. They don't
Speaker 1: get there, not a federal policy group. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: they do in some places, but no, we've never bumped
Speaker 1: into um. But you know, so we work really close
Speaker 1: to a groups like Audubon. Yeah, yeah, which they're probably
Speaker 1: like pretty agnostic to it. Actually they're they're fine with hunting.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're just about good management. And you know,
Speaker 1: so we've worked with him a ton on sage grouse,
Speaker 1: on infrastructure, on variety of other things. And they've got
Speaker 1: great staff, they have you know, long proud tradition, they
Speaker 1: have good chapters, and you know, some members of Congress
Speaker 1: are rather here from Audubon. Some would rather hear from
Speaker 1: the Boone and Crockett Club. Got you, uh, do you
Speaker 1: feel that the recovering America's wildlife fact if if we
Speaker 1: if it doesn't get done before mid terms, it's just
Speaker 1: all the hubbub of mid terms going to kind of
Speaker 1: just yeah, I mean, well just so you know, so
Speaker 1: basically we have a working period between now and I
Speaker 1: would gets August recess. After the August recess, nothing's going
Speaker 1: to happen basically until after the election. After the election,
Speaker 1: after the mid term, after the mid term, and then
Speaker 1: it'll be like another little bit of activity, could be
Speaker 1: a lame duck session, but that all depends on, you know,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the election. So it's time to the
Speaker 1: time to do this is now, I think so Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, we've got the wind at our back
Speaker 1: right now. We've you know, we've got had Great American
Speaker 1: Outdoors Act, we've just got map Land, We've had you know,
Speaker 1: the America's Conservation Enhancement Act. We have a variety of
Speaker 1: other things that are pushing through that we've managed to
Speaker 1: get done. And I really feel that, you know, momentums
Speaker 1: on our side. We got to use that, uh to
Speaker 1: close out explain to people, and you've explained it before,
Speaker 1: explained to people, um, the unexpected goodness of of times
Speaker 1: of inflamed part partisanship. Yeah, you know, it's I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: it's not. DC in general is not a fun place
Speaker 1: to be in these days, especially if you're a member
Speaker 1: of Congress and you want to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: But in this very broken system we're in, it turns
Speaker 1: out that our issues tend to be ones that you know,
Speaker 1: folks can come together. Gone you have right, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives,
Speaker 1: and you know so and most members of Congress, maybe
Speaker 1: a little pollyannic on this, are there for the right reasons.
Speaker 1: They want to do public policy, they want to make
Speaker 1: a difference, they want to do us right, and we're
Speaker 1: giving them things that you know, Republicans Democrats can support.
Speaker 1: They're good on the ground. Yeah, they can be proud
Speaker 1: of for multiple reasons, from hunting and fishing to climate
Speaker 1: to access and you know, we've you know, we're just
Speaker 1: in a sweet spot right now. Like if they want
Speaker 1: to have some wine, they can often turn to conservation.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to win and uh, you know, and these
Speaker 1: are ones that and honestly, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: you know, our community is a perfect messenger on this
Speaker 1: stuff because yeah, okay, the community tends to lean conservative,
Speaker 1: lean Republican, but at the end of the day, they're
Speaker 1: pragmatists and you know, they care about, you know, conservation,
Speaker 1: They care about maintaining basically the best conservation system in
Speaker 1: the world that we have in this country. And you
Speaker 1: know that requires you know, Democrats, Republicans, and what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do is conservation. It is durable that does
Speaker 1: not depend on having a Democrat a Republican the White
Speaker 1: House or in the House of Representatives or in the Senate.
Speaker 1: These things make sense regardless of what parties in power.
Speaker 1: And if we maintain that were true to that, then
Speaker 1: I mean you were at our dinner of umced our
Speaker 1: dinner last week, and we always honor one Republican, one Democrat,
Speaker 1: some of even the private sector. And you know that's
Speaker 1: the whole theme that there's plenty of quite often that
Speaker 1: private sector individual is is is an industry, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhe from Yeah, this year it was Ben Special, the
Speaker 1: head of you know, Yamaha Marin and Yama has done
Speaker 1: unbelievable things. From someone from the beer industry yep, New
Speaker 1: Belgium the year before that. And I mean it runs
Speaker 1: a gamut, but you know, the hope of some like
Speaker 1: like someone from the corporate world who's running a great business,
Speaker 1: running a profitable business. But keeping in mind, yeah, we
Speaker 1: we were got with corporate America, and but we try
Speaker 1: to identify the leaders in each of the sectors and
Speaker 1: not just you know, Padagon in r I. But you know,
Speaker 1: we work a lot with Shell Oil because I think
Speaker 1: they're by far the most conservation minded, progressive of the
Speaker 1: big oil companies. And listen, oil and gas is gonna
Speaker 1: be here for a long time in the future, even
Speaker 1: if we get to a much more carbon free society.
Speaker 1: And my trucks is only two years old. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be driving for a long time, I hope.
Speaker 1: And but we want to work with companies that really
Speaker 1: have a commitment to doing the right thing. And you
Speaker 1: know that's sometimes harder than other times. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: Ben specially Yamaha, that's an easy one. I mean, they
Speaker 1: have walked the walk for a long time now. But
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I mean, there's plenty of disagree
Speaker 1: about in d C, but these issues hunting, fishing, conservation
Speaker 1: should not be one of them. All right, Everyone with
Speaker 1: Fosberg from TRCP. If you like uh withs approach dot org. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you like withs approach and you like the kind
Speaker 1: of projects t RCP works on, tell them how to
Speaker 1: go find more. Yeah, just go to our website. This
Speaker 1: is pretty wonky, but we try to boil it down
Speaker 1: so it's understandable for the late person. And uh, you know,
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Speaker 1: get those updates weekly if what's happening in d C,
Speaker 1: and you'll have plenty of opportunities to weigh in yourself
Speaker 1: and uh TRCP dot org. Yeah, all right, thanks everybody,