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Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening un podcast.

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Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,

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Speaker 1: stay longer. UM. All right, So right now we're sitting

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Speaker 1: in uh in what do you call this place? We're

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Speaker 1: in Albuquerque Regional Headquarters. Yeah, this is the Southwestern Regional Office,

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Speaker 1: the Southwestern Regional Office of the US for US Service.

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Speaker 1: Do you guys mind going around and saying like what

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Speaker 1: you do and what like what your job titles are.

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Speaker 1: So I'm Jerry Monzingo. UM, I'm Wildlife Fishing and rare

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Speaker 1: plant program manager on the Healand National Forest which is

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Speaker 1: in southwest New Mexico. And you grew up doing a

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Speaker 1: little fur trapping. I did? I did? Yeah? Um. When

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Speaker 1: growing up, I lived along the HeLa River, which is

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Speaker 1: headwaters are in the HeLa Wilderness. And my grandpa started

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Speaker 1: me out, um probably when I was ten eleven years old.

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Speaker 1: UM gave me three old number two Victor long springs

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Speaker 1: that were the springs were just about warring out um,

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Speaker 1: and that and that started me. I walked to the

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Speaker 1: river from the house, set out a few traps um.

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Speaker 1: And then of course for what muskrats, no coons, raccoons,

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Speaker 1: gray fox, the occasional bobcat, lots of skunks. Um. Occasionally

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Speaker 1: you're saying ring ring tales. Yeah, what was like, what

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Speaker 1: what's the market like for those bads? You know, that

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Speaker 1: was back when fur prices were good. Fur prices were

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Speaker 1: good then, Um, you know ring tales were twelve bucks

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Speaker 1: a little gray fox was worth Yeah. I started trappling

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Speaker 1: right at the tail end of the super good fur prices.

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Speaker 1: And it was the same single spring number one, single spring,

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Speaker 1: single long spring victors that that launched me into the biz.

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Speaker 1: But then you also came out like, ah, you came

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Speaker 1: out of a mining family. I did. Yeah. Um, my

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Speaker 1: dad worked at the local copper mine. Um, all my life,

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Speaker 1: that's you know, that's all he knew was the copper mine.

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Speaker 1: I think he ended up when he retired. It was

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Speaker 1: thirty six years at the copper mine. I spent a

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Speaker 1: three and a half year stint at the copper mine.

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Speaker 1: In about a year into that, I figured that wasn't

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Speaker 1: for me. Um, it was shift work. I had grown

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Speaker 1: up with that my whole life, and a graveyard shift

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Speaker 1: around my house me and my sister is always left

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Speaker 1: because you know, when somebody's trying to sleep during the

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Speaker 1: middle of the day and a bunch of kids running

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Speaker 1: around the house. Um, and even if it even if

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Speaker 1: it wasn't us that woke him up, um, we got blamed.

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Speaker 1: So we just it away from the house. I stayed

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Speaker 1: at the river, fishing, trapping, whatever, just to be clear

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Speaker 1: of home, just to be clear of home. And then

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Speaker 1: you didn't you mind for you did mining for three years.

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Speaker 1: I did three and a half years UM and then

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Speaker 1: when up going from that into school and came up

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Speaker 1: through wildlife mild right. Yeah, when I got out of

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Speaker 1: UM high school, what I wanted to do was get

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Speaker 1: a degree in wildlife management for sua a career with

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Speaker 1: a state agency. At that time, about the time when

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Speaker 1: I graduated, the mind shut down. My family was always

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Speaker 1: very serious about not being in debt, so really the

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Speaker 1: only place that they could afford for me to go

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Speaker 1: to school was the local university, which was thirty miles away.

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Speaker 1: That university didn't offer a degree in wildlife management, nothing

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Speaker 1: really even close. So it is a typical seventeen year

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Speaker 1: old that thinks they know best. Um, I decided I

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Speaker 1: wasn't going to go to college, and my mom decided

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Speaker 1: for me that I was. So I went to the

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Speaker 1: local college got a associate's degree in welding technology. And

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Speaker 1: prior to that, during high school, um the summers and

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Speaker 1: during and during the college, I had worked for a

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Speaker 1: local ranch um in hayfields, working cattle. I got out

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Speaker 1: of college with that degree, I went back to the

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Speaker 1: ranch for two two years, a little over two years,

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Speaker 1: making twenty five bucks a day, fourteen sixteen hour days,

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Speaker 1: sometimes seven days a week, like around what time, what

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Speaker 1: year was at oh eighty. I worked at the ranch

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Speaker 1: in the summers from about eighty one until eighty four

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Speaker 1: when I graduated, and then I went back to work

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Speaker 1: for a little over two years solid about eighty five

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Speaker 1: eighty six. So now when you like, as a as

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Speaker 1: a biology is now working, how far from where you

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Speaker 1: grew up are you now that you work for the

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Speaker 1: Forest Service? Like how close and what proximity to all

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Speaker 1: where you were trapping and growing up and and mining

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Speaker 1: is your work now? Like right there? Yeah, it's right there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I grew up in a Do you work now

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Speaker 1: in places you were familiar with as a kid? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I didn't do a whole lot of hunting

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Speaker 1: and all on the National Forest growing up, um, and

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Speaker 1: we gathered fuelwood there to heat our house. I grew

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Speaker 1: up hunting with my my grandfather, um on my mom's side,

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Speaker 1: because my dad just my dad wasn't an outdoorsman, and

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Speaker 1: my grandfather's family had settled in the cliff La Valley,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the late eighteen hundreds, um, along the river,

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Speaker 1: and so he he knew all the local folks that

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Speaker 1: had been there a long time. He you know, it

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Speaker 1: was friends with the large land owners, the ranchers. So

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Speaker 1: my early time was hunting private property. I mean I

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Speaker 1: fished some on the National Forest, um, because it was

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Speaker 1: you know, an hour's drive and hike basically into the

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Speaker 1: heel of wilderness from my house where I grew up. UM.

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Speaker 1: So I did spend a lot of time along the

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Speaker 1: river in the forest, but most of my early hunt

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Speaker 1: and all was done um on private land. Yeah. How

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Speaker 1: long you've been with the Forest Service now? Twenty two years?

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Speaker 1: I was twenty two years. Yeah, long time and on

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Speaker 1: the same forest for twenty two years, which is very

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Speaker 1: you don't see that very often people stay in that long.

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Speaker 1: But it's I love the country, I love my job, um,

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Speaker 1: and I really have no desires to go somewhere else.

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Speaker 1: If you're doing good work, I leave. Yeah, now, Beyord,

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Speaker 1: you're from far off. Yeah, I grew up in Seattle. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Where How did you come to be here and do

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Speaker 1: what you're doing? I was a long, long journey. I

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Speaker 1: you know, I grew up playing on public lands in

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Speaker 1: the Northwest. You know, my dad was before he had

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Speaker 1: me and my my brother and sister, was an alpine climber.

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Speaker 1: Climbed all over the world. Yeah, so a guy. I

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Speaker 1: think he was like on the on the cusp of

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Speaker 1: doing some pretty big things. And you know, as as

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Speaker 1: things go in the mountains, never never quite pulled off

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Speaker 1: some of these big climbs. But so he instill in

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Speaker 1: that's really early, this kind of ethic of or passion

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Speaker 1: for the outdoors, and was dragging us all over the

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Speaker 1: Cascades growing up. And so have many a fond memory

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Speaker 1: of camping trips and backpacking all over the place growing up.

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Speaker 1: And so left Seattle when I was eighteen after after

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Speaker 1: get out of high school, went to school on the

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Speaker 1: East Coast. Um had an interest in environmental issues due

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Speaker 1: to that upbringing and and you know, growing up in

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Speaker 1: Seattle and just hearing a lot about Yeah, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of interest that part of the world, as I'm

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Speaker 1: sure you know about environmental issues and sustainability and it's

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Speaker 1: kind of a weird, like I'm not a climber, but

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Speaker 1: it's it's a real next is for the climbing world.

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Speaker 1: It is, it is. I mean there's some some really

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Speaker 1: famous folks who uh yeah, who who grew up there,

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Speaker 1: um lived there today in the in the climbing world,

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Speaker 1: alpine climbing in particular. You think you talked about rock

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Speaker 1: it's them down in Yosemite. And he spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time down there too. But yeah, well international, yeah,

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Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So Um anyway, went to school, studied, uh

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Speaker 1: studied environmental studies as an undergrad had a kind of

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Speaker 1: interest in international applications of that that sort of feel

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Speaker 1: to study. And so along the way, I spent about

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Speaker 1: a year in China. I went to grad school and

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Speaker 1: and uh did an environmental science degree, And based on

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Speaker 1: my experience in China, wanted to get some other exposure

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Speaker 1: in India being another huge kind of developing country. You

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Speaker 1: know that's going to be um amazingly significant on the

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Speaker 1: world stage and in the context of environmental issues. And UM,

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Speaker 1: during my time abroad, you know, what I really missed

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Speaker 1: was was the outdoors, you know, in our public lands.

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Speaker 1: And and so I did a lot of reflecting. I

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Speaker 1: missed my family and friends too, of course, and I

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Speaker 1: was meeting experts who had spent their whole lives abroad,

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Speaker 1: their whole adult lives anyway, and UM, it just kind

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Speaker 1: of concluded, this is not the lifestyle that I want

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Speaker 1: to live. And UM, I think, you know, there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of good, important work that we can be doing

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Speaker 1: at home. So I kind of did this mental ship

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Speaker 1: in terms of where I thought I was going to

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Speaker 1: be taking my career. Came back and had an opportunity

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Speaker 1: to to start up with the Forest Service in Washington

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Speaker 1: d C. I was joked, that's like a backwards career path. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, looks like Jerry started in the field on

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Speaker 1: a national forest and UM, you know those who aspire, um,

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Speaker 1: worked their way up to d C towards the end

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Speaker 1: of their careers and had the chance to start out

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Speaker 1: there and fascinating experience. Met a lot of really great

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Speaker 1: people who had rich careers and turned around after two

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Speaker 1: years there and went um did a brieft in eastern

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Speaker 1: Washington on the Calville National Forest, and then went down

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Speaker 1: to the Cleveland National Force in southern California for about

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Speaker 1: four or five years before coming out to Albuquerque. And

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Speaker 1: part of your deal like just say caves, caves. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So I'm I'm the regional program manager for a wilderness,

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Speaker 1: wild sink, rivers and caves and and it's kind of

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Speaker 1: an odd, odd grouping of programs at face value, but

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Speaker 1: the rationale behind it is that we have um federal

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Speaker 1: law that protects each of these resources. And so I'm,

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Speaker 1: in essence the specialist um protect our special places within

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Speaker 1: the region. That's that's my job. In a nutshell, what

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Speaker 1: does the law that protects caves? Like, I know, like

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Speaker 1: when you say, when you say wilderness, so as we're

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Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna as we're gonna be discussing it today

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Speaker 1: when we say wilderness, like we're talking about wilderns of

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Speaker 1: the Capital w like federally designated wilderness. We'll get into

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Speaker 1: what that is. But and wild and scenic rivers that's

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Speaker 1: its own piece of legislation. Right when we when we

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Speaker 1: designate generally a stretch of river, right, explain it and

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Speaker 1: explain the cave thing, and how like what kind of

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Speaker 1: administration occurs around caves. I I had no idea there

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Speaker 1: was anything like that. Yeah. So so, yeah, wilderness is

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Speaker 1: actually kind of the odd odd one out in that bunch,

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Speaker 1: in the sense that it's just a broader landscape that's

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Speaker 1: gets protected where you have rivers and caves that are

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Speaker 1: discrete resources. And so wild Rivers um So that Wild

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Speaker 1: Rivers Act passed in nine, basically allows Congress to designate

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Speaker 1: stretches of free flowing so you know, rivers that are

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Speaker 1: free of dams and other impoundments and diversions, rivers that

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Speaker 1: have um hy degree of water quality, and what we

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Speaker 1: call outstandingly remarkable values. Um So, these really, when you

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Speaker 1: look at a regional or national context, these really special values.

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Speaker 1: They might be fisher widlife species, that might be a recreation,

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Speaker 1: They might be scenery or geologic resources. And so there's

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Speaker 1: got to be something about that free flowing river that

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Speaker 1: has really kind of really specially unique qualities. And so

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Speaker 1: we placed that protection over it. Wild sc Rivers Act

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Speaker 1: really in a in a nutshell, um it prohibits damn

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Speaker 1: building is the biggest, most direct thing any kind of

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Speaker 1: any kind of firk hydroelectric type of project is outright prohibited.

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Speaker 1: And then we have this mandate as managers to protect

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Speaker 1: that free flowing condition, to protect water quality and protect

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Speaker 1: those outstandingly remarkable values. That was next. So that was

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Speaker 1: kind of they're both in that era of really significant

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Speaker 1: major environmental legislation being passed in this country, and you

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Speaker 1: get into the seventies and you have you know, the

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Speaker 1: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act,

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Speaker 1: and so I was really the heyday of these big

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Speaker 1: and Nixon that's right, yeah, SA, of course, yep, yep.

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Speaker 1: And then right down the caves, you because I didn't

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Speaker 1: know there's any kind of special there's like a there's

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Speaker 1: like a protective designation for caves, that's right. So there's

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Speaker 1: a Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, kind of like the

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Speaker 1: Wild Stink Rivers Act, and it basically says that or

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Speaker 1: Congress has the ability. Actually actually in this case, Congress

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Speaker 1: doesn't have the ability. They differ. They delegate that to

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Speaker 1: the agency to to identify and protect significant caves. And

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Speaker 1: so it's similar to wild sink rivers. It's these caves

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Speaker 1: that have some special unique value to them again recreation, wildlife, um,

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Speaker 1: scientific values. And so that law, once we designate as

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Speaker 1: an agency these caves is significant. We have to protect.

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Speaker 1: We're required by a lot of protective special values. Got you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: how many stretches of river have our wild scenic rivers

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Speaker 1: because that's all over the country. Yeah, Like I used

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Speaker 1: to fish small mouth on one a stretch of the

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Speaker 1: Delaware River, Yeah, which is like very you know, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's houses, cottages, right, So it's not like wilderness

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Speaker 1: is so wilderness designations Like a criticism is that they're

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Speaker 1: all high country in the not a criticism, but like

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Speaker 1: when someone looks at the scope and it feels like

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Speaker 1: a very Western issue because they're in these like very

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Speaker 1: remote areas in the mountains generally at higher altitude. But

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Speaker 1: in the wild scenic rivers, man, I mean they're all

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Speaker 1: over the plaster or the east, you know. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: shake with wilderness. It's like the rock and ice, you know,

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Speaker 1: back in the day where there were no other you know,

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Speaker 1: really immediately accessible economic values, and so they were remote, undeveloped,

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Speaker 1: and it's a lot of the early wilderness where these

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Speaker 1: kind of rock and ice type of places, and there

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Speaker 1: are people doing good work to try to diversify the system.

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Speaker 1: So we have representative set of ecosystems that you know,

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Speaker 1: are are protected as wilderness. And like you said, rivers

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Speaker 1: um a little different all over the country. Off the

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Speaker 1: top of my head, you know, because it's spent all

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Speaker 1: my time thinking about the southwest UM. I don't know

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Speaker 1: the number of rivers designated UM, you know, but it's

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Speaker 1: not even it's not whole rivers, so it's segments. So

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Speaker 1: we have one here in New Mexico and the Rio

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Speaker 1: Chama that designate wild Stink River and it's right between

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Speaker 1: two dams. Yeah. But but again in that stretch, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are no effects to the free flow, so the

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Speaker 1: river is free to do its thing, meander across the landscape.

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Speaker 1: You know, you go through those channel formation processes and

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Speaker 1: UM has a whole slew of outstanding they remarkable values.

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Speaker 1: And so that's kind of a unique thing people always

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Speaker 1: talk about, like that's kind of weird. It's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a river that's damn controlled, but you call it

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Speaker 1: free flowing and it's not about UM. You're looking at

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Speaker 1: the entirety of the river. Itself. I mean, there are

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Speaker 1: very few rivers in the West that would be free

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Speaker 1: flowing for their full duration, the HeLa maybe being one

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Speaker 1: of them. Is there a river that is protected from

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Speaker 1: its headwaters all the way down to the mouth or confluence,

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Speaker 1: not in the Southwest? Um? I would? I would? I

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Speaker 1: would say, I mean, I can let me typ step

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Speaker 1: back in The reason the Wild Sink Rivers Act passed

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Speaker 1: was really a response to this this heyday of damn

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Speaker 1: building and kind of the early and middle part of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century, the exactly the Floyd Domini area. And

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Speaker 1: so there have been a lot of damns built by

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Speaker 1: the time the Act passed. And so I again, that's

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Speaker 1: a question. I I you know, stuff I should probably know,

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Speaker 1: but I would. I would hazard a guess that we

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Speaker 1: might have something in Alaska, But I'm not aware of

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Speaker 1: anything in the lower forty eight because there was so

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Speaker 1: much river development. And that's not to say it doesn't exist,

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Speaker 1: just not off the top of my head. But we

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Speaker 1: went through so much river development before we got to

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Speaker 1: that point in sixty eight when Congress passed that act that, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, it was about protecting some of these really

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Speaker 1: high value segments that we had left at that we're

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Speaker 1: not yet developed. Yeah, I want to get into I

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Speaker 1: want to move on and introduce Carl, but reintroduced Carl.

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Speaker 1: But I want to get into like what was going

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Speaker 1: on why so much of this stuff came out of

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Speaker 1: the sixties. Yeah, and like what was happening culturally at

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Speaker 1: the time. But Carl. Yeah, Now, Carl joined us before.

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Speaker 1: He's been on the show a couple of times and

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Speaker 1: then joined us before and told the fascinating story of

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Speaker 1: the Wisconsin supersow. That's right? Is that what it's called?

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Speaker 1: Wisconsin super Soo, Wisconsin super sow and um, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: just revive people's memories on what what your story is. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I work here in the Southwestern Regional Office. I'm the

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Speaker 1: regional wildlife Ecologist. Um. The cliff Notes version of my

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Speaker 1: journey to this agency is growing up in northwest Lower Peninsula, Michigan,

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Speaker 1: for getting a little fur trapping, a little bit, getting

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Speaker 1: really good at doing chores for private landowners. Um. And

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Speaker 1: I had a a platte book that I pasted pages

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Speaker 1: of on the wall and took a highlighter and drew

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Speaker 1: outlines around the properties where I had obtained permission to

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Speaker 1: hunt fish camp trap and really didn't have easy access

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Speaker 1: to public land. So I was bailing hay, doing chores,

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Speaker 1: um splitting wood, and over time I accumulated what in

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Speaker 1: hindsight now looks a lot to me like a map

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Speaker 1: of a national forest where have little in holdings where

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Speaker 1: you don't have access, especially those eastern nationally crazy on

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Speaker 1: maps right. Um. And then I went to college for

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Speaker 1: natural resources program. I too spent some time working overseas

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Speaker 1: in China as I was working on my PhD, and

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Speaker 1: through that experience realized that we are way luckier here

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Speaker 1: in this country than I had acknowledged growing up. And

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Speaker 1: as I was finishing up grad school and considering different

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Speaker 1: career tracks, UM, I became increasingly interested in getting involved

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Speaker 1: with our public land system. So once I wrapped up

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Speaker 1: my my degree at the University of Wisconsin and Madison,

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Speaker 1: UM I looked west of the Mississippi, really zeroed in

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Speaker 1: on states that had a very high ratio of public

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Speaker 1: land to population. And uh, my wife, who also grew

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Speaker 1: up in Michigan, was interested in states where the winners

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Speaker 1: weren't quite as long and gray and rugged. And so

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Speaker 1: those two key criteria helped us really zero in on

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Speaker 1: the Southwest and on New Mexico in particular. So we

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Speaker 1: moved down here in late and started working for the U.

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Speaker 1: S d A. Forest Service on the Lincoln National Forest.

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Speaker 1: And during my relatively short tenure with the organization, I've

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Speaker 1: had a chance to work at our Washington office headquarters,

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Speaker 1: um work at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and now

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Speaker 1: I'm based here out of the regional office. And the

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Speaker 1: position covers eleven National forests between Arizona and New Mexico,

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Speaker 1: and then there are also four National Grasslands administered by

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Speaker 1: the CIBOLA, and those also fall under the purview of

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Speaker 1: the position. I have. So anything related to wildlife monitoring

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Speaker 1: on a scale that expands beyond a single forest would

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Speaker 1: be something I would work on. As an example. And

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Speaker 1: you drew a bull moose tag in Idaho, man, I

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Speaker 1: got I gotta say so. One of the things, aside

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Speaker 1: from a lot of public land, one of the things

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Speaker 1: that drew me to New Mexico was the ability to

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Speaker 1: hunt elk, mule, deer, and pronghorn. Growing up in Michigan

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Speaker 1: all about white tails. I love white sales. White tail

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Speaker 1: hunting is amazing, don't get me wrong, But you know,

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Speaker 1: reading all the Western hunting magazines growing up, I was like, God,

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Speaker 1: I would love to be able to chase this diversity

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Speaker 1: of big game. So I moved to New Mexico. And

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Speaker 1: my strategy with applying for big game tags here. You know,

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Speaker 1: you get three choices in New Mexico. I put choices

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Speaker 1: that are great for first and second, and then my

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Speaker 1: third choice is always just please give me a tag.

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Speaker 1: So my third choice elk tag is the tag I've

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Speaker 1: drawn every year. I've had an archery elk hunt every

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Speaker 1: year I've been here. And then this year I failed

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Speaker 1: to draw an elk hunt, and I was so sour.

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Speaker 1: You know, It's like I moved west to hunt elk

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Speaker 1: and now I do not have an elk tag. And

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Speaker 1: it turns out there is no better cure for not

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Speaker 1: drawing an elk tag than to draw moose tag. You know. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just quick thing I'll add man here about like the

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Speaker 1: Platt books. When I was a kid, I worked like

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Speaker 1: I I hunted a trap Mosqueton County, Ottawa County, nue

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Speaker 1: Ego County, and and there they have township um and

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Speaker 1: townships or six miles by six miles, And Plat books

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Speaker 1: would come in township plat books or no, you get

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Speaker 1: a county, but to be broken down. And I remember

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Speaker 1: going around like I would identify. I would go through

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Speaker 1: plat books, identify every place I wanted to where I

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Speaker 1: wanted my trap lines, and I would make a list

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Speaker 1: on a legal pad. And my old man would, you know,

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Speaker 1: late summer every year, just as a favor, would get

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Speaker 1: on the phone and he grew up doing sales, you know,

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Speaker 1: because he was an insurance salesman. He would get on

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Speaker 1: the phone and just work that list. And I mean

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Speaker 1: he would score, Like if I put a name down,

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Speaker 1: he would get on the phone and right away would

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Speaker 1: be like some he'd find some connection to church whatever,

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Speaker 1: fraternal organizations ain't something, you'd find some connection. He would

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Speaker 1: just check them off. And I had yeah, and I

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Speaker 1: would put that up in my little trapper area, had

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Speaker 1: all those plat maps, all my property circle, and it

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Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you'd build out a thing. And that

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Speaker 1: One of the things that drew me to public land

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Speaker 1: was the amount of sort of administrative duties surrounding maintaining

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Speaker 1: like a network of properties. And then when you would

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Speaker 1: look at these states that had like a bunch of

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Speaker 1: public landing realized, Oh my god, what a shortcut did

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Speaker 1: you just have? Like this? This? Uh, you know this

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Speaker 1: is right to go out there and be out there,

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Speaker 1: and that's it. No one, no one can tell you know,

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Speaker 1: as long as you're a law abiding person, no one

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Speaker 1: can tell you no. Um. But yeah, So back to

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Speaker 1: have a quick question, Carl. Have you stepped foot on

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Speaker 1: all those forests and grasslands that you oversee? Now, No,

401
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:43,320
Speaker 1: I have not nearly all of them, um, But I

402
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Speaker 1: have not yet visited the Black Kettle National Grassland, which

403
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Speaker 1: is the farthest east most of our grasslands. But I'm

404
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Speaker 1: tempted because reports are the Bob White numbers are like

405
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Speaker 1: through the over there. Um. Yeah. And in phenomenal turkey

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Speaker 1: hunting too. So if you look at the you know,

407
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Speaker 1: the expanse of country um that include Southwestern regional administrative units,

408
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Speaker 1: it's a ton of land, um and the diversity is incredible.

409
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Speaker 1: But you know, we haven't worked out of this office

410
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Speaker 1: for a few years. It's still a pretty good feat

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Speaker 1: that I've been to each of the forests. And then

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Speaker 1: remember within each of those forests, you have another level

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Speaker 1: of administrative unit, the district, and I'm nowhere near having

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Speaker 1: visited every district. So, for example, on the Lincoln National Forest,

415
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Speaker 1: there are three different districts, and I've I've been involved

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Speaker 1: with projects on each of those districts. But um, how

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Speaker 1: many districts on the HeLa six districts, And I've visited

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Speaker 1: a couple of the districts on the HeLa, mostly the

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Speaker 1: Wilderness Ranger District because that's one of my favorite chunks

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Speaker 1: of ground in the whole region. Yeah, was it that

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Speaker 1: the first? Like that is it the carl you can

422
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:54,880
Speaker 1: tell a story? Is it the first wilderness? The first

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Speaker 1: thing we now recognize is federally designated willness was an

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Speaker 1: idea put forward by Aldo Leopold. Yeah, is that true?

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Speaker 1: It is true? And you know these he wasn't calling

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00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 1: it that then. Well, so there was an essay that

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00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 1: he published with the title A Plea for Wilderness Hunting Grounds.

428
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:17,520
Speaker 1: And Leopold was in this mode of authorship where he

429
00:23:17,600 --> 00:23:19,919
Speaker 1: was pleaing for a lot of different things. During this

430
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: kind of he was he was like throwing that word around.

431
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: He had a number of them. Another one was there's

432
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 1: a place in northern New Mexico, if I remember right,

433
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:31,800
Speaker 1: called Stinking Lake, And he had a plea for a

434
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:34,720
Speaker 1: special designation of this stinking lake as a as a

435
00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:40,400
Speaker 1: wildlife refuge for waterfowl. But this plea for wilderness hunting grounds. Um,

436
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 1: would you guys agree? That's kind of seen as one

437
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:46,479
Speaker 1: of the key kernels that ultimately grew into the Heila.

438
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: So you read that, um, And that was he wrote

439
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: that night for outdoor Life. Actually that that's right of here. Yeah. Yeah.

440
00:23:58,760 --> 00:24:02,719
Speaker 1: And and what's funny though it actually, at least by

441
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:07,920
Speaker 1: what I've found out, it wasn't published until after four

442
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:11,720
Speaker 1: when administratively the HeLa Wilderness had already been set aside,

443
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,880
Speaker 1: So it wasn't designated yet, but all those early wildernesses

444
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: were administratively set aside by the agency. UM. And you

445
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:24,160
Speaker 1: know in there he compares, you know, he lists all

446
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: of these areas that in the Southwest that he thinks

447
00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: should be wilderness, and he talks about losing them, and

448
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: he compares that to the city block in town somewhere,

449
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 1: and there's five city blocks left and they start building

450
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: and those blocks are disappearing, and he talks about, shouldn't

451
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: we have one left that has nothing on it that

452
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: the kids can go play in and the weeds can

453
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: grow on UM, so that that's what he's laici Pality's

454
00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:04,720
Speaker 1: all called green space now, spent a ton of time

455
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: talking about it and trying to hang on to it

456
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: in that plea. That's what he's That's what he's comparing

457
00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 1: it to um and in the Southwest. You know, I

458
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: don't know at the time, there was five or six

459
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: areas that he was talking about and they were just

460
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: getting chewed up. Um Rhodes pushed him too. Him and

461
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 1: here's a guy coming out of he was born in

462
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:25,919
Speaker 1: what state? Karl doesn't like when I point out that

463
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,520
Speaker 1: he married his cousin, but he was born in what state? No,

464
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,919
Speaker 1: First of all, you don't have that right. That is

465
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: that is not a fact. Let me let me let

466
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: me correct a little history for you. He actually married

467
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: a New Mexican woman, and that's a really kind of

468
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:45,959
Speaker 1: unique twist on this story. His parents were, that's what

469
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,119
Speaker 1: it was. So you don't like when I point that

470
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 1: out because it's not correct. I don't like him. You

471
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:54,159
Speaker 1: point to false facts for sure. So yeah, he was

472
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,399
Speaker 1: he was born in Burlington, Iowa or in Iowa. Midwestern

473
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:01,159
Speaker 1: He's claimed by He's claimed by three plays. He's probably

474
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: claimed he's claimed by by more than three plays claimed

475
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:05,439
Speaker 1: by New Mexico because it was kind of he like

476
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:08,200
Speaker 1: came of age here, he had he had an epiphany here.

477
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,959
Speaker 1: He had a number of epiphanies here for sure, and

478
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:16,919
Speaker 1: then later went to Wisconsin where he wrote much of

479
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: wrote about the epiphanies he had in New Mexico. Um

480
00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: in Arizona, and he came out to New Mexico in

481
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: Arizona before the even states yep. His first position was

482
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:29,280
Speaker 1: on the Apache National kind of settled into being in

483
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:34,679
Speaker 1: the old man in a public intellectual in Wisconsin and

484
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: had his property where he much of Sand County Almanac,

485
00:26:38,600 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: which is sort of his seminal work, San Countie Almanac

486
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: he wrote there, and that was collected and published after

487
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 1: his death. Yeah. Yeah, his his son had a big

488
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:54,400
Speaker 1: stake in helping to see that through to publication. Um.

489
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of back and forth with

490
00:26:55,840 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: various publishers leading up to his his death at a

491
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 1: fairly young age fighting a wildfire there and there is

492
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: no Sand County. Um the county fighting a wildfire on

493
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: his own property, neighbor's property, yep, and uh. The county

494
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 1: is called Sauk County, and the shack is in auh

495
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:17,919
Speaker 1: It's it's close to a little town called Baraboo, right

496
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 1: on the banks the Wisconsin River. Um. And if you

497
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 1: spend any time in that country, you can see where

498
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 1: this poetic name of Sand County comes from, because it

499
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: is really sandy, poor soil. And he obtained that farm

500
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: in a state of very poor ecological health. It had

501
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: been essentially pillaged by the previous owners turned back over

502
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:44,240
Speaker 1: the bank um, the prior owner forfeited it um and

503
00:27:44,240 --> 00:27:46,880
Speaker 1: then Leopold and his family. You know, an important point

504
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: about Leopold's legacy is that his children, I think, in

505
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,200
Speaker 1: large part due to their experiences on that piece of ground,

506
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: all have been very involved conservationists in their own right

507
00:27:57,080 --> 00:28:01,199
Speaker 1: and contributed very importantly UM to various fields of of

508
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:05,160
Speaker 1: study related to ecology. His son became a hydrologist. Yeah,

509
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: Luna has a quote. You probably know the quote better mean,

510
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: but I think that he said, um, rivers are the

511
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: gutters through which run the ruins of continents. Yeah, or

512
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: something longer there. The poetry that that family have collectively

513
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: been responsible for is amazing. You talked about the words smithing,

514
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 1: and another one of his children in the wildlife Arena

515
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 1: um Starker Leopold was one of his sons, and he

516
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: was a phenomenal biologist um in his own right as well.

517
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: So the family, you know, you could go on Nina.

518
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 1: Leopold practiced a certain poetics with his children's names. Yeah,

519
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: oh absolutely, Yeah, that's because he named his kids things

520
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 1: you'd expect someone like if you met someone in Hollywood. Well,

521
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: there's there's reason for it. So let's talk about Luna.

522
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:00,720
Speaker 1: And my Spanish is not gray. But when I first

523
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: moved here, just south Albuquerque, there's a town called Los Lunas. Okay,

524
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 1: when I looked at Los Lunas, I thought to myself,

525
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: isn't that bad Spanish? Because Lunas is a feminine word,

526
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 1: so shouldn't it be Lost Lunas. And this is the

527
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 1: town that Leopold's wife, she had, she had deep roots

528
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 1: in that town. And the reason it's masculine as opposed

529
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: to feminine is they're referring to the family the Lunas

530
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:31,240
Speaker 1: as opposed to the feminine moon in Spanish. So yeah,

531
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 1: he certainly put some thought into naming his kids. But um,

532
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:41,080
Speaker 1: he has claimed absolutely by the Southwest, absolutely, by Wisconsin,

533
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: absolutely by Iowa, and then a number of lesser known

534
00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: uh points along the way that he visited. He's on

535
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: a lum of the Yale School of Forestry. Yeah, the

536
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: first School of Forestry. Yeah, so he's claimed by them. Um,

537
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: you've spent some time in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as a

538
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: boy growing up, Leopold spent a lot of time in

539
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 1: the Latianou Islands eastern up around Cedarville Um, catching perch

540
00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: and um. If you're really interested in the history of

541
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold Um, there's a writer by the name of

542
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: Kurt Mine who did like the in disputed Ultimate Leopold Biography.

543
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:23,960
Speaker 1: So check out Kurt Mine's book if you really want

544
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: to know the ins and out. I believe it's all

545
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: the Leopold, his life and work something along those lines. Yeah,

546
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: but don't read that he read San Connie all oh no,

547
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: no, no no no. I mean Mine's treatment is phenomenal as

548
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:39,719
Speaker 1: a biography. Leopold's work in a Sand County Almanac is

549
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 1: poetry and poetry with an ecological twist that every hunter

550
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:51,080
Speaker 1: angular conservationist can resonate with. And so he I want

551
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: to get back like when he first comes up this

552
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: idea of wild rose because he was trying to sell

553
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,040
Speaker 1: it and you guys pre mos better. He was selling

554
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:03,760
Speaker 1: it being like, up, hey, listen, this the piece of

555
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:07,720
Speaker 1: ground I'm talking about here. The best value it could

556
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:12,719
Speaker 1: bring us is as itself. And so now we talk

557
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 1: about like wilderness, like when we have federally protected wilderness

558
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 1: or federally designated wilderness, it's like everybody's like rock and ice.

559
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:21,840
Speaker 1: But I think that he kind of knew that that

560
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: was how it was going to have to work. Where

561
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 1: he couldn't take some area that had been identified as

562
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: being rich and easily extractable natural resources or premier gate

563
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:35,800
Speaker 1: grazing land and be like, hey, I got an idea,

564
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: how about we designate this as wilderness. Like he had

565
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 1: to go and find something where he could say it

566
00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: just isn't a value for anything, but being wilderness, like

567
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: that's its most apparent, readily available worth. Is it just

568
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: as it is? And I think that want to be

569
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: like like a a good strategic move probably if you

570
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,840
Speaker 1: look at what is long term goal was. Yeah, And

571
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 1: this discussion about the various uses of a piece of

572
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: ground I think played a lot into the lead up

573
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: to the passage of the Wilderness Act in nineteen sixty four,

574
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 1: and Boring would be a phenomenal person to speak to

575
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: the the kind of wrangling that went into finally getting

576
00:32:17,360 --> 00:32:19,960
Speaker 1: that law passed, and also what some of the trade

577
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: offs were in terms of the language that ultimately was

578
00:32:22,720 --> 00:32:25,120
Speaker 1: encapsulated in the Wilderness Act. Yeah. And when we talk

579
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:27,200
Speaker 1: about that, talk about whether people were annoyed by this

580
00:32:27,280 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 1: at the time. Oh yeah, I mean originally there was

581
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: pretty strong push back to the idea. And and so

582
00:32:33,200 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 1: I mean, just for a context, that Act was passed

583
00:32:35,520 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: in sixty four, but Congress had been debating it for

584
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: eight years by that point, so since the mid fifties,

585
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 1: and they wrote sixty six drafts. Literally, Yeah, what would

586
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: be an equivalent of that today? Man, I know, the

587
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: like I'll defer to you, I I you know, in

588
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: the context of my my job right now, I'm I'm

589
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: reluctant to hazard a guess at that. But um, you know,

590
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: I mean just self like I'm trying to think of

591
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: selfing that like, because even like like the Affordable Care Act,

592
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: which was criticized about how slowly it moved, that'll that

593
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: went through in a year? In a year, yeah, exactly.

594
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:08,440
Speaker 1: So they kicked it around for eight years. Yeah, and

595
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: so what happened is the first draft, Um, you know,

596
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: look at you look at the main part of the

597
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: Act and it talks about you know, wilderness is untrammeled

598
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,080
Speaker 1: and which is a you know word for free willed

599
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 1: um um, you know, free of restraint from from mankind

600
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 1: or humankind. Um. It's natural. So it has these functioning,

601
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: intact ecosystems in the full suite of indigenous biota. It's undeveloped.

602
00:33:30,040 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 1: And so these sort of developments of of humankind are

603
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: are few and far between president all their outstanding opportunities

604
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 1: for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. And then lastly

605
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 1: there are these other features of values at times. And

606
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: so that was basically it in the original act. Um.

607
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:48,840
Speaker 1: It was this very purist sort of sense of wilderness.

608
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: And again, just given the political landscape at that time, um,

609
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:54,000
Speaker 1: you know, you have you know, again, the context in

610
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: the middle part of the twentieth century was we were

611
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: chewing up natural resources at a pretty alarming and efficient rate,

612
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: and public lands were really seen as a source of

613
00:34:02,880 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: natural resources. So we're we're mining, we're cutting. Timber grazing

614
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: was a big deal. We're developing water resources all over

615
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 1: the place. And so in order to get support from

616
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 1: all of these, um, these extractive industries and and the

617
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: broader public and and you know Congress the congressman at

618
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,280
Speaker 1: the time, UM, they had to put in some pretty

619
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: significant compromised compromises by this sixty six draft that ultimately passed.

620
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 1: And so you have this list of of what are

621
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 1: called special provisions in the Act, and those include grazing

622
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: where it was pre established, can continue. Um it included. Um.

623
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: So so back up with that one. So someone holds

624
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:43,320
Speaker 1: so if someone held a grazing lease, the grazing permit,

625
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,720
Speaker 1: it would be it would be grandfather exactly exactly. UM.

626
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: Mining was another thing. I mean, mining's kind of interesting because, um,

627
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:52,720
Speaker 1: there's a provision in the Act that says any valid

628
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: existing right and that's a term for in essence of

629
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,800
Speaker 1: property right. So someone who has an established mining claim

630
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:00,799
Speaker 1: is that's basically a property right. And so though that

631
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: can still be grandfathered in with new designations. But the

632
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:09,600
Speaker 1: Willerness Act allowed until December four, so full twenty years,

633
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: you know, a few months after its passage, new mining

634
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: claims to be established in wilderness as another compromise. UM,

635
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: motor boats where that use existed, and that's mainly in

636
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: the boundary waters up in northern Minnesota, was allowed to

637
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 1: that kind of use was allowed to continue. But but

638
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 1: let me stop in sixty four. Yeah, when they're getting

639
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 1: ready to do it, were they actually throwing around specifics

640
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: about what places they're thinking about? It was that part

641
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 1: of the bill. It was just like allowing them these

642
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: uses where they existed prior to you know, the passage

643
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:44,240
Speaker 1: of the Act or subsequent designations. But did the Act

644
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:49,840
Speaker 1: carry with it, um, spots that would become wilderness? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

645
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: absolutely so. Um it was it was fifty some instant

646
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: I think it's fifty four instant wildernesses, all managed by

647
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: the Fourth Service. So it wasn't just like giving the

648
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: right to create eight them, but was also saying, and

649
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: here's a list. We had this initial list, and then

650
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: the Act directed it was kind of it's actually an

651
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: interesting history. It directed the agencies um and at that

652
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: time it was for service. All the instant wellnesses were

653
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: National Force System lands, but also directed the Department of

654
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: the Interior for the National Park Service and fisher Wildlife

655
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,680
Speaker 1: Service for service as well. To to basically go out

656
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:25,760
Speaker 1: inventory and recommend additional designations to Congress within the next

657
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: five years. And so they that Congress intended at that

658
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: time that this would be a very agency driven process

659
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: and and within i mean it was less than ten

660
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:35,839
Speaker 1: years where really the public took over in this very

661
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:38,960
Speaker 1: democratic sense and worked outside the channels of the federal

662
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: government to advocate for additional designations. And that's really the

663
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:46,240
Speaker 1: way that it works today is these UM grassroots movements

664
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 1: and and kind of on the ground collaboration among interest

665
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 1: groups to hash out UM you know, support for designations

666
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,399
Speaker 1: and other other uses of UM specific federal lands for

667
00:36:56,400 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: for designation. But it slowed greatly right in the last

668
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 1: few years. Yeah, I mean, i'd say, you know, in

669
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 1: the last in the last ten years or so, it's

670
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: it's dramatically slowed. And we had the first Congress UM

671
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: a handful of years ago that did not pass a

672
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 1: single wilderness bill UM, you know, the two year Congress,

673
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 1: and so that was, yeah, testament to things really slowing

674
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:20,279
Speaker 1: down recently. As far as new designation. New designations were

675
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: the boundary waters in the initial round, they were what

676
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:29,720
Speaker 1: were some like when the bill went through, Yeah, what

677
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: are there some examples of places that they identified as

678
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: being like like the type sites of wilderness where they

679
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 1: were saying, like, here is a thing that would be

680
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 1: a great one to start with. They like the places

681
00:37:43,640 --> 00:37:47,319
Speaker 1: that were like early like early on identified as eligible

682
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 1: for federal wilderness designation. And most of these had already

683
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,320
Speaker 1: been identified by the Forest Service, you know as these

684
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 1: you know, like the HeLa wilderness with a little w

685
00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: in the sense that it was administratively designated and the

686
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 1: foresters had gone on after. And so that was put

687
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: in place in full forty years before the Wilderness Act

688
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: passed by the agency, and then they went on to

689
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: develop these series of regulations that prompted the agency to

690
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: identify other administrative wilderness designations and primitive areas. And so

691
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:20,240
Speaker 1: it was all these um agency identified wildernesses and primitive

692
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:23,279
Speaker 1: areas that that were designated in sixty four by the

693
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:25,879
Speaker 1: Act as the instant wildernesses. So the Helo is one

694
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,960
Speaker 1: UM we have. It's it's really these big, large, iconic

695
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 1: wildernesses that we have today. So like in Arizona, the

696
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: masts Hals were another um you know that the acts

697
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: as wilderness should typically be five thousand acres or greater um.

698
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: There are a lot of exceptions to that, but when

699
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:44,320
Speaker 1: we look at those original willernesses, it's these big vast

700
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: landscapes um that we're protected. Ye, does it. I almost

701
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 1: hesitate to bring this stuff because it's so like, it's

702
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 1: so kind of out there when yeah, yeah, as you

703
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: bring it up, tell them what we have a friend.

704
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: I'm not going to name them, tell them what our

705
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: friend thinks, because I'd like to talk about like tell

706
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 1: them like sort of the whisperings around the campfire about

707
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:11,799
Speaker 1: what wilderness is, what will happen the wilderness, and I'd

708
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 1: like to speak to the legality of this occurring. Yeah,

709
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:19,719
Speaker 1: his he has uh I don't know if it's conspiracy

710
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: or now, but he has a worry. And I believe

711
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: it's not just him obviously, Like he's Steve said, there's

712
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,240
Speaker 1: like these whisperings, and there's people that have this idea

713
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 1: that whether it's just the people that manage the wilderness

714
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: or the people that promoted uh, private organizations that you know,

715
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:42,360
Speaker 1: promote wilderness, that there is this hidden agenda that in

716
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: the end, way down the line, that what they're really

717
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 1: driving for yes, is going to be a place where

718
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: humans are not allowed either, that we will just have

719
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: these landscapes just for the landscape and the animals that

720
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:00,160
Speaker 1: live there. So I would debunk that right at way

721
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 1: in the sense that Congress explicitly said in the original Act,

722
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:07,839
Speaker 1: one of the core values of wilderness is a human use.

723
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: It's opportunity for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreations. So

724
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: to get out of modern society for our you know,

725
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: for for the public in the United States, to get

726
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,719
Speaker 1: away from modern society, get away from the masses, and

727
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: engage in these kind of primitive activities, primitive travel, hunting,

728
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:27,160
Speaker 1: and angling, have freedom from all the rules and constraints

729
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 1: of society. So I mean, that's a core value in

730
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: the Act. And um, you know, as managers were beholden

731
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: to the direction that Congress precisely, precisely. And then I

732
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 1: can say from a personal level, I my job, um

733
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:44,320
Speaker 1: is managing I don't manage wilderness on the ground. We

734
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 1: have folks, wonderful, wonderful people who do that. But you know,

735
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: I provide program leadership in the region. And I can

736
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: speak for myself and everybody I've ever known, literally a

737
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: hundred percent of folks I've known who work on wilderness management,

738
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: and we all love wilderness us in large part because

739
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: of our personal experiences in wilderness. Um. You know, there's

740
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:06,919
Speaker 1: certainly a whole host of other values that it brings

741
00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: to the table. But um and I I it's it's

742
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:14,720
Speaker 1: pretty um, pretty out there kind of thinking in my view.

743
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: Has anybody sitting here at this table ever heard this ever,

744
00:41:19,600 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 1: ever even heard of a group of like even even

745
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:25,000
Speaker 1: organized group that somebody's even out there thinking that way? Well,

746
00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: and actually, I would say so, we're in the midst

747
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 1: of our forest planning process right now in the Southwest,

748
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: and that's an exercise I'm you know, per another law

749
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: plan directs us develop these land management plans um and

750
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,120
Speaker 1: we need to update them every so often because the

751
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 1: world changes are are are understanding the science changes, we

752
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:42,080
Speaker 1: have other pressures, like you know, we have a changing

753
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,239
Speaker 1: climate right now, so we update these plans periodically, and

754
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: part of the legal framework and directing us to do

755
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: that says we should be looking at identifying in essence

756
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,400
Speaker 1: lands that are suitable for wilderness designation to recommend to Congress.

757
00:41:55,760 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: And there's all this uh going around owned in the

758
00:42:00,440 --> 00:42:03,799
Speaker 1: context of these discussions these planning processes, which are very

759
00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: rooted in public process. You know, we want a lot

760
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 1: of collaboration in public involvement. But people are going around

761
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 1: saying you're trying to close the forest to all human use,

762
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: you're locking it up, and that's fundamentally I'm not true.

763
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 1: And so so it's a little bit illegal. Uh yeah,

764
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 1: it would be. I would say, um, you know, we

765
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: have provisions that allow us to implement discrete kind of closures,

766
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:26,320
Speaker 1: but you had to close you know, all of wilderness

767
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:28,720
Speaker 1: would be counter to that act absolutely. Like an example

768
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 1: of a closure would be when like fire hazard. Yeah,

769
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: and that's even Yeah, so that's an example that occurs

770
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: around here. You know, when I was in southern California,

771
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:38,239
Speaker 1: we put a closure in place because we had a

772
00:42:38,280 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 1: super fund site due to um unmanaged target shooting for

773
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:43,799
Speaker 1: decades and decades, and so people were shooting up appliances

774
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 1: and using you know, lead ammunition for long term and

775
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: a concentrated place, and so we ended up with heavy

776
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:53,280
Speaker 1: metal uh levels and in the soil that we're dangerous.

777
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:55,359
Speaker 1: You know, you could kick up dust and breathing all

778
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 1: kinds of gnarly stuff, and so we put a closure

779
00:42:57,840 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: in place, um, so that we could get in there

780
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:01,160
Speaker 1: and clean it up and get the public back in

781
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:03,040
Speaker 1: there in the future. So, I mean those are the

782
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:05,240
Speaker 1: kind it's like these. Usually it's public health and safety.

783
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's to protective very unique sensitive resource. But I

784
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 1: mean it's been happening a lot lately that people are

785
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: freaked out about it. I know personally people that have

786
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 1: had gates put across road they used to use for access,

787
00:43:18,760 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: they used to drive on, and because of limited budgets,

788
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:25,400
Speaker 1: that road hasn't been able to have been you know,

789
00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 1: kept up, and so now there's huge gully washers going

790
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: right down through the middle of it. I'm guessing that

791
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 1: they they're closing that access because the roads become dangerous.

792
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:36,319
Speaker 1: But that's not even a wilderness issue that no, no,

793
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: it's not not at all, but as that feeds that

794
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, the closing of the forest. Yeah, I

795
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:45,360
Speaker 1: mean part I mean, that's a that's a a fairly

796
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: complicated question in the sense that some of it is

797
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: um just inability to maintain our our massive, massive road system.

798
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 1: You know, you think about most of our roads were

799
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: built in the timber heyday, and we had receipts coming

800
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: in from timber sales as an agency big time. So

801
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 1: we had re sources UM coming from our timber program

802
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 1: that have with the industry changing just due to global

803
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:10,040
Speaker 1: economic forces, are not available and so we not only

804
00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,520
Speaker 1: can't continue building roads like we used to to to

805
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: provide access to these timber stands that were being harvested,

806
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: but to maintain these roads for public safety and also

807
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:22,439
Speaker 1: natural resource protection in terms of you know, erosion into

808
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 1: salmon streams in the Northwest, for example, and so that's

809
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 1: that's been a part of that UM is really just

810
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:32,320
Speaker 1: a change in in economics with regards to natural resources

811
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 1: in this country which has driven a change in the

812
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:37,319
Speaker 1: kinds of resources that we have available to us as

813
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: an agency, and that has uh that has affected our

814
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: ability to maintain our road systems and places. And then

815
00:44:44,719 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: again you think about these systems being put into place

816
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: for timber harvest, we're managing the land for a much

817
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 1: broader suite of values in many cases these days, UM

818
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: for ecosystem health being a big driver. We're doing a

819
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: lot of restoration work as an agency, and so sometimes

820
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: it's determined that you know the presence of these you know,

821
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 1: i'd call legacy UM timber era roads on the landscape.

822
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: Our counter to some of these efforts to provide for restoration,

823
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 1: to say, we want to defragment wildlife habitat for example.

824
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:14,560
Speaker 1: So there's there's that side of the story to you,

825
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: I think, and then you get into the whole there's

826
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 1: a whole private landowner access thing. You know, in the

827
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:23,360
Speaker 1: in the Bowsman areaf I'm not mistaken, their whole sections

828
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 1: of the Gallatin that are really not even accessible to

829
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: the public because they're surrounded by private lands. And that's

830
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: another you know, as populations grow, we get more and

831
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,800
Speaker 1: more people interested in the outdoors. Landowners in some cases

832
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,759
Speaker 1: who used to sort of allow public access have have

833
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: closed off access. And that's the agency. You know, we

834
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,239
Speaker 1: all I can say, I mean with a you know,

835
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:46,320
Speaker 1: a strong degree of confidence, value and love public access

836
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 1: on public lands. I mean, we work for the public,

837
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,359
Speaker 1: the American public, and we manage these lands on their

838
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: behalf for you know, whole slew of benefits that they provide.

839
00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: And so when we get um access being closed and

840
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 1: I see that differently as our closed roads. At times

841
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: we're still providing access to the national forest. When we

842
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: entirely lose access to the public landowner decisions where we

843
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,760
Speaker 1: have really no you know, no right of way for example.

844
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:12,120
Speaker 1: We we hate to see that as much as the

845
00:46:12,120 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 1: rest of the public not being said, you know, that's

846
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,839
Speaker 1: a private property owner sort of right and decision to make.

847
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:19,520
Speaker 1: You know, the thing I said when I'm having this

848
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:21,879
Speaker 1: conversation with people about road closures, the thing I often

849
00:46:21,920 --> 00:46:23,800
Speaker 1: bring up is that even if you look at private

850
00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: timber companies or large like Native corporation lands in Alaska,

851
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:34,480
Speaker 1: they'll build roads for timber extractions. So they're cutting a

852
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 1: road for a very specific purpose, like to let out

853
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: a sale, a timber sale, and the road is its

854
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:46,200
Speaker 1: course and purpose are designed for timber extraction. The timber

855
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:50,920
Speaker 1: extraction happens, it takes how many ever, decades sometimes you're

856
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,320
Speaker 1: talking almost in terms of close to a century before

857
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: you're going to go in and do before it's viable

858
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: for another harvest. And so the road was there for

859
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: that purpose, and it's closed because it's not serving the

860
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: purpose that was built for. And there's no sense in

861
00:47:06,200 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: maintaining that road during this passage of many decades that

862
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 1: would occur before you cut it again. And private timber

863
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,080
Speaker 1: companies and tribal corporations do the same exact thing with

864
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:19,960
Speaker 1: their roads, but you oftentimes don't hear the criticisms there

865
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 1: there are people just take it as like a matter

866
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 1: of course that that's not the thing. But I have

867
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: this conversation all the time with people who feel that

868
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 1: when a road gets closed on national forests, it's like

869
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 1: met as a personal affront to them or somehow is

870
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:35,399
Speaker 1: position in their mind as like a condemnation of their activities,

871
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,239
Speaker 1: rather than looking at like what like a like a

872
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 1: very broad category of reasons for why this might be

873
00:47:43,160 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 1: closed at this moment. Yeah, I mean, I can appreciate

874
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:47,440
Speaker 1: that in the sense that I mean, I think we

875
00:47:47,440 --> 00:47:49,120
Speaker 1: can all around this table agree that we've had some

876
00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: really um formative experiences in our lives on public lands

877
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: that we treasure, we hold dear to our hearts, and

878
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: folks out there, you know, they may have they're special

879
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: place that they really hold near and dear to them.

880
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 1: UM closed to motorized travel UM for these reasons that

881
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:08,480
Speaker 1: we've talked about before and again in a nutshell, the

882
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: agency is just trying to balance UM the amount of

883
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:14,320
Speaker 1: resources has available to maintain roads and these other purposes

884
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 1: in terms of natural resource management or restoration. Um and

885
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: make these decisions, UM you. Of course I'm not thinking

886
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: about uh any particular person or place, but I can

887
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: see how folks feel that it's uh it you know,

888
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:32,759
Speaker 1: hurts at a personal level because they may be not

889
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:34,840
Speaker 1: able to drive to where they used to the places.

890
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: I love, you know, I have a follow up to

891
00:48:37,400 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: just the restrictions around wilderness and people thinking that it

892
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 1: could become more restricted than it is now. Right, I

893
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:50,280
Speaker 1: mean it's it's no bikes, horses, foot travel, a couple

894
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:52,480
Speaker 1: of air strips that you can land on. Steve you

895
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: said eighteen church again you talked about like grandfathering in

896
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: so when like the boundary waters motorized boat traffic where

897
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:09,880
Speaker 1: it was like some I'm sure argued like imperative to

898
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,080
Speaker 1: travel in the area, right, and it got Grandfather didn't. Yeah,

899
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:16,799
Speaker 1: I think it was just uh, I've I've traveled pretty

900
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 1: far in the boundary wires in a canoe. I guess

901
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:19,960
Speaker 1: what I would say is that there was a stakeholder

902
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: group of people who had a really high value on

903
00:49:23,760 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 1: the motorized recreation or travel they were doing. And that's

904
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 1: probably more why I got Grandfather that they held it

905
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 1: really to be very important to that that group of

906
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: folks as opposed to necessarily be an imperative. Yeah, and

907
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 1: so they made there was like flexibility within the Act

908
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 1: to do that right and in the and in the

909
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:44,320
Speaker 1: Frank Church, they when it became a wilderness, they honored

910
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: flights in eighteen airstrips. And that's the same I was

911
00:49:49,200 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: talking about that list of exceptions that we call special

912
00:49:52,120 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 1: provisions in the Act, and airstrips are one of them

913
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:59,760
Speaker 1: where aircraft landing predated wilderness designation. It could be allowed

914
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 1: to can in you when again that's you look at

915
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 1: the first part of the Act defines wilderness. You know,

916
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 1: these activities that are really antithetical to wilderness, you know,

917
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 1: from the pure standpoint of the way Congress defines it. Again,

918
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,840
Speaker 1: we have this list of exceptions, which was what it

919
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:16,239
Speaker 1: took to pass it. And I actually want to add

920
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:19,360
Speaker 1: what was really cool In six or four the Senate

921
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:23,040
Speaker 1: was unanimous voting for the Act. The House had one

922
00:50:23,080 --> 00:50:26,280
Speaker 1: dissenting vote. And the rumor is, I mean, I haven't confirmed.

923
00:50:26,360 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: That's like voting in to go to World War two. Yeah, yeah,

924
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: it's amazing. The rumor is the one dissenting vote was

925
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: represented about of Texas and he felt that it it

926
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: wasn't strong enough in terms of protection of the land.

927
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:45,160
Speaker 1: That's the rumor. So it's pretty amazing. You think about

928
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: unanimous support in the Senate. Yeah, it's amazing bipartisanship work

929
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:51,719
Speaker 1: to get this legislation passed. Who are the people that

930
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 1: stuck with it through the eight years, like Lee Metcalf

931
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:00,040
Speaker 1: was involved in it. The man at the center of it.

932
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: You want to jump on this, Jerry Well, I you

933
00:51:03,480 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: know the answer for sure? Who's that? Howard zon Eiser?

934
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:11,439
Speaker 1: He was. He was not in this in the Senator house.

935
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:14,879
Speaker 1: I mean he was. He was the primary advocate. He's

936
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,399
Speaker 1: the one really well we can credit for making it happen. Though,

937
00:51:17,400 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: I know you heard of this guy, so you need

938
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:21,280
Speaker 1: to check him out. One of the stories about Zion Eiser?

939
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: Who where? Who was he? Whoere? Did he work? He

940
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:26,600
Speaker 1: Wilderness Society? He was that point. I mean at that

941
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:28,239
Speaker 1: point early in his career he worked for what is

942
00:51:28,280 --> 00:51:32,120
Speaker 1: now the Fishing Wildlife Service UM, but he he ended

943
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:35,000
Speaker 1: up being the kind of primary advocate for the act.

944
00:51:35,080 --> 00:51:38,280
Speaker 1: He wrote it, UM. He was the one rewriting and rewriting,

945
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: and rewrote it and rewrote it, and rewrote it. It

946
00:51:41,200 --> 00:51:44,719
Speaker 1: wasn't it okay? But wasn't it um the writer the

947
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: gay wrote hard rock cany like big rock, Candy Mountain

948
00:51:48,840 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 1: um Man, now I know you're talking about now. It

949
00:51:54,480 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: was it was this this um, this guy Howard zon Eiser,

950
00:51:57,560 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: and so he you know, he had experience in the

951
00:51:59,760 --> 00:52:01,799
Speaker 1: federal government. He knew the way the system worked. And

952
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: then he just was this um unstoppable passionate advocate. And

953
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,360
Speaker 1: unfortunately he passed away months before. Yeah, oh you know,

954
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of his uh, Wallace Stegner. I mean he

955
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 1: was an a like Stegner was an advocate, and there

956
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: were town of people advocating. I mean, of course, I mean,

957
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: you know Leopold, I mean, there's a whole whole long

958
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 1: list of folks. I mean, Bob Marshall, another, Frank Church,

959
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 1: Edward Abbey, I mean, and then uh and then uh,

960
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:28,200
Speaker 1: because a lot of these guys wind up with four

961
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 1: like these guys want up with wilderness areas named after him,

962
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 1: Frank Church, Bob Marshall, Lee Metcalf, although Leopold all the

963
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:37,360
Speaker 1: label yeah so so, but the main I don't I

964
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: never heard of this guy. Yeah, I know, he was,

965
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: and he didn't live to see its passage. Unfortunately he

966
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:43,400
Speaker 1: did not. But I don't get how how could it

967
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 1: be written sixty four times and take eight years to

968
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 1: get through and then get your get through with the

969
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 1: unanimous vote. It reached like some level of perfection. I

970
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:53,359
Speaker 1: think it was all those compromises, you know, I talked

971
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,680
Speaker 1: about like that early. They've done so much yep. So

972
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,839
Speaker 1: they're like, we need to get the grazing industry on board,

973
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: we need to get the mining industry on board, we

974
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:02,879
Speaker 1: need to get the sort of recreational you know, um

975
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: aircraft community on board. And so that's what you know,

976
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 1: like I said early on it someone had to be pissed.

977
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:13,520
Speaker 1: I guess they were. They were were they were, Yeah,

978
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:18,760
Speaker 1: they were rallying together, you know, pretty nearly unanimously across

979
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,800
Speaker 1: the board. So knowing that it would designate fifty some

980
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: wilderness areas, right, and it was at nine point one

981
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: million acres nationally at that time. So, but Willards only

982
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 1: Willards is less than two percent of the country. That's

983
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: not true. Um, so it's five percent about for the

984
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: full country including Alaska, it's about two point seven percent

985
00:53:38,880 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 1: of the lower And I can speak on behalf of

986
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:43,200
Speaker 1: the four Service you know, I'm not I don't know

987
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:46,200
Speaker 1: the stats for the other three federal agencies that managed wilderness,

988
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:50,479
Speaker 1: but it's a it's about just about ninetent of National

989
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:53,120
Speaker 1: Force System lands our designated wilderness. So you know, uh,

990
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,560
Speaker 1: it's a small proportion of the country. You know, when

991
00:53:56,560 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 1: you look at the actual um land mass, you know

992
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:03,360
Speaker 1: that that the four Service manages, it's a it's a

993
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: decent chunk, you know, just shy thirty six thirty six million. Yeah,

994
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,239
Speaker 1: so total in in the nation, there's seven d sixty

995
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 1: five wilderness areas. Nineteen sixty four, you had nine point

996
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 1: one million acres designated. Since nineteen sixty four, it's gone

997
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: from nine point one million to a hundred nine million,

998
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: So a hundred million of the hundred and nine million

999
00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:33,960
Speaker 1: have come through subsequent legislation, and uh, fairly recently, our

1000
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: home state of Michigan gained one Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes

1001
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:40,919
Speaker 1: designation coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Wilderness

1002
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: Act in Yeah, sever sand that's my backyard, that's where

1003
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: I grew up, thirty two thousand, five hundred fifty six acres,

1004
00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: So that wasen and you talk about the slowdown since then,

1005
00:54:53,800 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: UM there were three designated together in Idaho and twenty

1006
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 1: and nothing since then. New Mexico UM gained a wilderness.

1007
00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:05,560
Speaker 1: And you know, it's interesting the legal wrangling now that

1008
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:09,120
Speaker 1: goes into designations. So the most recent addition for our

1009
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:15,280
Speaker 1: region came through basically a rider in the National Defense

1010
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 1: Authorization Act that designated Columbine Honda Well. And actually in

1011
00:55:20,080 --> 00:55:22,640
Speaker 1: addition to that, it modified the boundary of Wheeler Peak,

1012
00:55:23,120 --> 00:55:25,120
Speaker 1: which was one of the original sixty four willderness is

1013
00:55:25,200 --> 00:55:28,120
Speaker 1: because the mountain biking community placed such a high value

1014
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: on this trail opportunity in Wheeler Peaked out. Part of

1015
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: the compromise and getting calum Mine Hondo pushed through was

1016
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: to make this minor boundary modification so they could could ride.

1017
00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:41,760
Speaker 1: They had this loop ride opportunity. So that's what Carlson,

1018
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,439
Speaker 1: this kind of like this this wrangling and high level

1019
00:55:45,520 --> 00:55:50,239
Speaker 1: of compromise and we're working through a whole host issues. Yeah,

1020
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 1: I definitely appreciate the flexibility and being able to look

1021
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: at individual places. But if you guys, like when you

1022
00:55:55,760 --> 00:56:00,719
Speaker 1: guys think, now, what are the biggest challenges in UM

1023
00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:08,280
Speaker 1: sort of the biggest social challenges in managing wilderness. Talking

1024
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: about wilderness my fundamental belief, and I want to hear

1025
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 1: from Jerry and Carl, but it's really just a lack

1026
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: of public awareness about about what it is and the

1027
00:56:17,239 --> 00:56:20,360
Speaker 1: value that it holds for for people, for all Americans

1028
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: and for you know, whether it be you know, through

1029
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:26,960
Speaker 1: personal experience visiting wilderness or providing wildlife habitat, fish habitat,

1030
00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: clean air, clean water, um. And and so it's just

1031
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:34,200
Speaker 1: a lack of awareness and understanding of how how really

1032
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,760
Speaker 1: essential it is UM to our well being as a nation.

1033
00:56:38,200 --> 00:56:39,400
Speaker 1: And really, if you look at the deep history, I

1034
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 1: don't want to spend a lot of time on this

1035
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 1: necessarily and unless you guys want to talk about it.

1036
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:46,320
Speaker 1: But as we were as we were, as you know,

1037
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: kind of the European Americans that that came came over

1038
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 1: and started spreading across North America, developing and taming the frontier. UM,

1039
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 1: people started to look around and say like, hey, we've

1040
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:58,080
Speaker 1: been pretty effective. And this notion of wilderness and wild

1041
00:56:58,120 --> 00:57:01,600
Speaker 1: places UM is really unique. You know when we we

1042
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,280
Speaker 1: we all came from Europe. UM. Is that this European

1043
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: American community, UM, this doesn't exist in Europe. This is

1044
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:11,840
Speaker 1: something that's unique. It's gritty, frontier kind of wild places

1045
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:15,800
Speaker 1: is unique to the American identity and um so I

1046
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: think that's something part of our national history that we

1047
00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:20,720
Speaker 1: don't talk about as much anymore. And again you look

1048
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 1: at the contemporary social and ecological values wilderness, people don't

1049
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:27,680
Speaker 1: perceive that as as as well as I personally wish

1050
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 1: they would, you know, just because there's a lot of

1051
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:32,040
Speaker 1: demands on our attention and it's something that slips under

1052
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: the radar a little bit. So I think that's our

1053
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:37,360
Speaker 1: biggest challenge long term personally. It's funny, like the patriotism

1054
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 1: element of wilderness is something that I think it's lost.

1055
00:57:40,600 --> 00:57:47,600
Speaker 1: But if you go back to the US Census um

1056
00:57:48,240 --> 00:57:51,160
Speaker 1: after they conducted the U s Census, they realized that

1057
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 1: there was no frontier left. Like before that they've always

1058
00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:57,320
Speaker 1: looked at population levels and they had a sort of

1059
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 1: a line and they looked at population. Of course, we

1060
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: settled in the east and settled the west coast and

1061
00:58:03,880 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: still had a chunker ground in the middle that didn't

1062
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 1: meet the basic threshold to pull it out of the frontier.

1063
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:15,920
Speaker 1: In the census turned up that there was no discernible

1064
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 1: line of settlement in the country anymore, and a prominent

1065
00:58:21,960 --> 00:58:26,440
Speaker 1: historian at the time, Frederick Jackson Turner, came out with

1066
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:31,160
Speaker 1: this this influential paper and and speech he gave, which

1067
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 1: was about a thing that quickly became known as frontier anxiety,

1068
00:58:36,360 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: where he had argued that the American culture and American spirit,

1069
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 1: and American institutions, we're all built around the idea of

1070
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:53,360
Speaker 1: of a frontier of of conflict with an engagement with wilderness,

1071
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 1: right that we'd come out of that that, like frontier spirit,

1072
00:58:57,720 --> 00:58:59,800
Speaker 1: was integral and like shaping who we are. And he

1073
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:05,040
Speaker 1: pointed out that it made us different than the genteel Europeans,

1074
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 1: where there was no availability of land and resources for people.

1075
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 1: And he pointed out that our sense of rugged individualism

1076
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 1: was built around our interactions with wilderness, and like at

1077
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: that moment, we were in this interesting spot because we

1078
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:26,480
Speaker 1: were at that moment where we had within our grasp

1079
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: to completely destroy all vestiges of wilderness, like it was

1080
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:37,400
Speaker 1: wilderness existed at first in spite of our best efforts

1081
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:39,440
Speaker 1: to get rid of it, and then we had to

1082
00:59:39,560 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: very quickly transition into this idea that we're gonna have

1083
00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:46,080
Speaker 1: to have it because of our best efforts to preserve it,

1084
00:59:46,440 --> 00:59:48,439
Speaker 1: and that would have been like a really important moment,

1085
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: and figures like like early figures like Theodore Roosevelt were

1086
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 1: impacted in a dramatic way by that that shift in

1087
00:59:57,400 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 1: American history there. And at the time, it was like

1088
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 1: it was described as sort of a thing you would

1089
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:07,320
Speaker 1: like to preserve wilderness, to have a forest system was

1090
01:00:07,400 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: the thing you were doing to preserve like American integrity.

1091
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:15,160
Speaker 1: I think since then there's some some element of that

1092
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:17,960
Speaker 1: history has been lost to people where they look at

1093
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 1: it now that we've come to see it different than

1094
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:25,080
Speaker 1: this thing that we're gonna do to salvage our you know,

1095
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 1: to save our somewhat feral wild some some aspect of

1096
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:32,000
Speaker 1: what made us feral and wild and American in the

1097
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:35,360
Speaker 1: first place, where now people look at it some people

1098
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: are guilty of somehow having kind of lost sight of

1099
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: the factors that went into our decisions to have federally

1100
01:00:45,560 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: managed public lands. Yeah, and I mean that's a a

1101
01:00:50,240 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 1: very complex problem, but I think it goes back. A

1102
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: big part of that is lack of exposure. And so

1103
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 1: there are a couple of films out there UM. One

1104
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 1: is it's I think it's called American Values American Wilderness

1105
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: and it's this film put together that just talks to

1106
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 1: ordinary citizens about they get them out in wilderness and

1107
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:07,800
Speaker 1: what what does it mean to you? What's it's importance

1108
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:10,080
Speaker 1: to you? And UM a second one called Untrammeled that

1109
01:01:10,160 --> 01:01:13,240
Speaker 1: are northern region about a Missoula put together a few

1110
01:01:13,280 --> 01:01:15,800
Speaker 1: years ago for the fiftieth anniversary where they took a

1111
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:18,560
Speaker 1: group of kids UM out into I think it was

1112
01:01:18,640 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: the Bob um Or or one of the big Montana

1113
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,280
Speaker 1: wildernesses for the first time ever. And in both films,

1114
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:27,520
Speaker 1: these people who are being exposed to a wilderness, uh

1115
01:01:27,720 --> 01:01:29,840
Speaker 1: for the first time are just they're astounded. It like

1116
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 1: the vastness of the places and the fact that they're

1117
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:35,560
Speaker 1: set aside uh for you know, to to to have

1118
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:38,800
Speaker 1: ecological systems run their course free of human intervention. And

1119
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: it's pretty moving. Um. But it just it really resonated

1120
01:01:41,960 --> 01:01:45,160
Speaker 1: with me in the sense that it's like these folks,

1121
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:48,000
Speaker 1: you know, and again, you know, just a small handful

1122
01:01:48,200 --> 01:01:50,440
Speaker 1: in these films. You know, it's not necessarily representative of

1123
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: all of the United States, but first time visitors and

1124
01:01:53,520 --> 01:01:57,360
Speaker 1: and and just have these amazing emotional reactions, um about

1125
01:01:57,400 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: how special these places are. And so it says to

1126
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:02,480
Speaker 1: me that I think, uh again, as a broader community

1127
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: of people who are interested in conservation in public lands

1128
01:02:05,320 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 1: at working to provide access and exposure, is it? Is

1129
01:02:09,480 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 1: it really important priority? In my opinion? What about cultural engagement,

1130
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:20,360
Speaker 1: um with with people who don't realize sort of what

1131
01:02:20,480 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: we have. The other thing you guys worry about. Do

1132
01:02:22,840 --> 01:02:26,320
Speaker 1: you have people in the East who live away from

1133
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:29,240
Speaker 1: large tracts of federally managed public land who might not

1134
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:33,400
Speaker 1: view it as pertinent to their lives. Yeah, and I

1135
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:36,800
Speaker 1: you know, I I think public land in the East

1136
01:02:36,960 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: is is people look at it as at least hunters

1137
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:43,440
Speaker 1: as a scourge because that's where all the you know,

1138
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:48,680
Speaker 1: you can't fight your way through the people. Um. And

1139
01:02:48,960 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't think they realized that you

1140
01:02:52,320 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: come west and and that public land is in such

1141
01:02:56,440 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: big swaths that that is that isn't an issue. Um.

1142
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:06,160
Speaker 1: You know. I I think the whole wilderness concept and

1143
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:12,040
Speaker 1: where we're seeing people not realizing what's out there is

1144
01:03:12,520 --> 01:03:14,880
Speaker 1: I think it started a long time ago. And if

1145
01:03:14,960 --> 01:03:17,160
Speaker 1: you look at the late eighteen hundreds and all when

1146
01:03:17,200 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 1: all these folks that were fighting for it early nineteen hundreds. Um.

1147
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 1: But if you look at the settling of the west

1148
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:29,880
Speaker 1: and when that line disappeared, there is no more frontier. Um.

1149
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:35,680
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after that that the demographics change of

1150
01:03:35,760 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: where people were living. People moved to the city. They

1151
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:42,280
Speaker 1: weren't in the wilderness anymore. Um. And I think it

1152
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: started way back there with people losing that touch with

1153
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:51,480
Speaker 1: the land um. And and it's just grown from there,

1154
01:03:53,080 --> 01:03:57,680
Speaker 1: a lack of engagement. I sometimes feel that that that's

1155
01:03:57,760 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 1: like one of the more that's one of the bigger

1156
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:03,880
Speaker 1: things is is getting people to realize that they sort

1157
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: of have a steak and this and they have an ownership.

1158
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:08,919
Speaker 1: Because I think that even even you hear people say

1159
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:11,480
Speaker 1: like you always hee like federally owned, right, and other

1160
01:04:11,520 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 1: people would be like, well, no, like federally managed. It's

1161
01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: owned by the US people. And I feel like people

1162
01:04:16,160 --> 01:04:18,240
Speaker 1: don't have that steak. And it's hard because it's like

1163
01:04:18,240 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 1: a learned activity. When I was growing up, I grew

1164
01:04:20,720 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 1: up near the Manastee National it was now the Manastee

1165
01:04:22,880 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 1: here on National Forest. We had no comprehension of how

1166
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:29,680
Speaker 1: it came to be you know, I told people before,

1167
01:04:29,720 --> 01:04:31,400
Speaker 1: we just viewed it like it fell from the sky.

1168
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: There was no idea that it was like a thing

1169
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:38,440
Speaker 1: there because people fought to have it be there, So

1170
01:04:38,560 --> 01:04:40,720
Speaker 1: there was no like you you, We used it all

1171
01:04:40,800 --> 01:04:42,960
Speaker 1: the time, we were always out there, but never put

1172
01:04:43,440 --> 01:04:46,240
Speaker 1: never made this connection in your head, that that that

1173
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:49,480
Speaker 1: public lands were sort of a system that we worked

1174
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:52,480
Speaker 1: for and there's people who have dedicated their their lives

1175
01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 1: and careers to maintaining and that it was like a

1176
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 1: thing that required some public involvement, in public awareness, because

1177
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 1: until someone goes to take something away from you, you

1178
01:05:02,240 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: just don't realize. And so I hear from all kinds

1179
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:08,040
Speaker 1: of people all the time. I have friends who are

1180
01:05:08,080 --> 01:05:12,400
Speaker 1: always like expressing some skepticism about public lands management, but

1181
01:05:12,560 --> 01:05:15,160
Speaker 1: all of their activities occur on public land. They're not

1182
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:19,720
Speaker 1: even making the connection within their own lives, you know. Um,

1183
01:05:20,280 --> 01:05:21,840
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that's most alarming to

1184
01:05:21,880 --> 01:05:26,080
Speaker 1: me about That's just like ongoing conversation wherese engaged in

1185
01:05:26,120 --> 01:05:32,360
Speaker 1: about the validity of federal land management. Is his like uh,

1186
01:05:32,960 --> 01:05:38,400
Speaker 1: historic amnesia and then also certain like personal hypocrisy about

1187
01:05:38,560 --> 01:05:42,160
Speaker 1: utilizing things without having any sort of sense of maintaining

1188
01:05:42,200 --> 01:05:49,400
Speaker 1: their well being, Carl, So we think about all of this,

1189
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:51,080
Speaker 1: I want to go back to that question you post

1190
01:05:51,120 --> 01:05:54,120
Speaker 1: about the the challenges that we face in terms of

1191
01:05:54,120 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: wilderness stewardship, and I agree wholeheartedly these cultural issues and

1192
01:05:58,680 --> 01:06:02,120
Speaker 1: the lack of awareness about wilderness, and I think furthermore

1193
01:06:02,120 --> 01:06:05,320
Speaker 1: it applies to public lands in general, as you've described,

1194
01:06:05,440 --> 01:06:07,920
Speaker 1: is really relevant. But a couple of things more specific

1195
01:06:07,960 --> 01:06:11,880
Speaker 1: to wilderness stewardship that I view as really pressing challenges

1196
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:15,480
Speaker 1: right now are the trade offs between these different elements

1197
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:17,920
Speaker 1: of wilderness character. I'll give you a couple of specifics.

1198
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 1: So one of them is the trade off between providing

1199
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:28,960
Speaker 1: for an opportunity for people to experience solitude versus people

1200
01:06:29,040 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 1: having an opportunity to experience freedom from regulation or unconfined recreation.

1201
01:06:34,840 --> 01:06:36,840
Speaker 1: So we've talked about the boundary waters a little bit already.

1202
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:40,320
Speaker 1: Is that as freedom from regulation articulated anywhere? Yeah, so

1203
01:06:40,440 --> 01:06:42,360
Speaker 1: one of the one of the elements of wilderness character.

1204
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: And help me out if I'm wrong here, but it's

1205
01:06:44,920 --> 01:06:49,240
Speaker 1: outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type

1206
01:06:49,240 --> 01:06:53,480
Speaker 1: of recreation. And by primitive and un like you're building

1207
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:58,600
Speaker 1: your only almost purposefully creating your contradiction. Well, in some

1208
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:02,120
Speaker 1: cases you are so. For example, in the Boundary Waters,

1209
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:03,680
Speaker 1: you have if you want to go on a trip

1210
01:07:03,720 --> 01:07:05,680
Speaker 1: in the Boundary Waters, they have a permit process. The

1211
01:07:05,720 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 1: fact you have to apply for a permit and get

1212
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:11,240
Speaker 1: approval to go in there. That dampens your ability to

1213
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:14,400
Speaker 1: experience unconfined recreation because they have this whole system to

1214
01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:16,760
Speaker 1: get a permit. If you look out the window over here,

1215
01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:20,040
Speaker 1: we've got the Sandy A Mountains and it's adjacent to

1216
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:24,160
Speaker 1: an urban center, Albuquerque, and there are trails here. If

1217
01:07:24,200 --> 01:07:26,680
Speaker 1: you were to hike up, for example, the Lalos Trail

1218
01:07:26,800 --> 01:07:29,840
Speaker 1: right now, especially on a weekend, you might pass literally

1219
01:07:30,280 --> 01:07:33,640
Speaker 1: a hundred or more other hikers on that trail in wilderness.

1220
01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:38,400
Speaker 1: So this, you know, the I don't want to overstate

1221
01:07:38,760 --> 01:07:44,600
Speaker 1: the disconnect between people are culture and wilderness areas because

1222
01:07:44,640 --> 01:07:46,640
Speaker 1: the fact is we have a number of wilderness areas

1223
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 1: that are essentially getting loved to death, and that trade

1224
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:53,240
Speaker 1: off between outstanding opportunities for solitude and this primitive and

1225
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:56,600
Speaker 1: unconfined recreation. That's one big challenge, especially for wildernesses that

1226
01:07:56,680 --> 01:08:00,040
Speaker 1: are adjacent to major metropolitan areas. So that's one and

1227
01:08:00,480 --> 01:08:01,760
Speaker 1: the other one that I think is a little bit

1228
01:08:01,800 --> 01:08:04,400
Speaker 1: more interesting and where I have a lot of mixed

1229
01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:07,640
Speaker 1: emotions personally as somebody who values wild places but also

1230
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:12,040
Speaker 1: really values the indigenous biota of the landscape. Is this

1231
01:08:12,240 --> 01:08:18,080
Speaker 1: notion that you have a tradeoff between the untrammeled element

1232
01:08:18,320 --> 01:08:21,280
Speaker 1: of wilderness character how free the landscape is from active

1233
01:08:21,360 --> 01:08:25,000
Speaker 1: management and and natural nous. Okay, So one of the

1234
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:29,320
Speaker 1: things that Jerry can speak really well too, are the

1235
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:33,840
Speaker 1: tradeoffs associate with trying to conserve native species in wilderness

1236
01:08:34,080 --> 01:08:37,680
Speaker 1: through active management, and you're conserving those native species in

1237
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:41,559
Speaker 1: the interest of protecting the naturalness of the landscape. He's

1238
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:43,160
Speaker 1: done a lot of great work with HeLa Trout as

1239
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:47,479
Speaker 1: an example. But by simply engaging in the mettling of

1240
01:08:47,560 --> 01:08:55,160
Speaker 1: the system, you are by default, ah impinging on the

1241
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:59,880
Speaker 1: untrammeled character. So some examples of this, you know, I'll

1242
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:04,400
Speaker 1: Royal up in Lake Superior, right that had that that

1243
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:08,559
Speaker 1: island is virtually all wilderness, and historically there have been

1244
01:09:08,600 --> 01:09:11,240
Speaker 1: predator prey dynamics between the wolf pack there and the

1245
01:09:11,280 --> 01:09:14,920
Speaker 1: moose population on the island. Had had wolf had wolf

1246
01:09:15,000 --> 01:09:17,519
Speaker 1: moose for a long time, and then during a severe winter,

1247
01:09:18,160 --> 01:09:21,400
Speaker 1: wolves were able to cross a large expanse of ice

1248
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:27,040
Speaker 1: on Lake Superior not only once, and landed in paradise. Right, Yeah,

1249
01:09:27,120 --> 01:09:30,320
Speaker 1: there was food galore um. But not only did that

1250
01:09:30,400 --> 01:09:34,000
Speaker 1: happen once, it happened fairly often, to the point where

1251
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:39,439
Speaker 1: the wolf pack was sustained by this regular infusion of

1252
01:09:39,600 --> 01:09:43,840
Speaker 1: genetic diversity from the mainland. So there's been much debate,

1253
01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:48,880
Speaker 1: including people like like Howard zon Eiser's relatives have weighed in,

1254
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:51,320
Speaker 1: like descendants of Howard zon Isiser, on what the right

1255
01:09:51,320 --> 01:09:54,000
Speaker 1: answer is. And if you ask different people who share

1256
01:09:54,000 --> 01:09:56,320
Speaker 1: a lot of our values, you'll get different perspectives on this.

1257
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:00,559
Speaker 1: But the question has arisen in light of the fact

1258
01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:03,800
Speaker 1: that Lake Superior has not frozen to the banks of

1259
01:10:03,920 --> 01:10:08,200
Speaker 1: Ile Royal in however many years, should we be taking

1260
01:10:08,280 --> 01:10:14,120
Speaker 1: wolves from the mainland and releasing them. Two support the

1261
01:10:14,200 --> 01:10:16,920
Speaker 1: genetic diversity of the wolf pack, which is suffering as

1262
01:10:16,960 --> 01:10:21,760
Speaker 1: a result of low genetic diversity. So in nineteen sixty four,

1263
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 1: when this Act was passed, and during the decades leading

1264
01:10:24,080 --> 01:10:26,519
Speaker 1: up to it, there was this mindset that you could

1265
01:10:26,600 --> 01:10:29,640
Speaker 1: draw a line around a chunk of ground set it

1266
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:34,680
Speaker 1: aside and have it be preserved and free from human manipulation.

1267
01:10:35,640 --> 01:10:38,360
Speaker 1: Over the course of the last fifty years, we have

1268
01:10:38,479 --> 01:10:41,000
Speaker 1: come to understand that there's no place on the face

1269
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,720
Speaker 1: of this planet that has not been altered as a

1270
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:47,080
Speaker 1: result of human activity. Even the very most remote place

1271
01:10:47,160 --> 01:10:50,320
Speaker 1: and the most remote wilderness up in Alaska has experienced

1272
01:10:50,479 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: change as a result of human beings existing on the

1273
01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:56,040
Speaker 1: face of the earth. I mean the last fifteen thousand

1274
01:10:56,160 --> 01:10:59,000
Speaker 1: years of human history on the landscape. Yeah, and I

1275
01:10:59,040 --> 01:11:02,799
Speaker 1: mean particularly last couple hundred years as we're burning fossil fuels.

1276
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:07,759
Speaker 1: So if you think about the fact that every every

1277
01:11:07,880 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: square inch of the planet is somehow affected by human activity,

1278
01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: this notion that you can draw a polygon on the

1279
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:19,000
Speaker 1: map and then protect it as free from human influence

1280
01:11:20,120 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 1: is a fundamental fallacy. So the question is what's the

1281
01:11:24,120 --> 01:11:27,000
Speaker 1: appropriate amount of meddling in the system we should do

1282
01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:33,320
Speaker 1: to respond to exogenous outside factors that are human induced.

1283
01:11:33,760 --> 01:11:35,880
Speaker 1: What should we be doing, for example, to protect cold

1284
01:11:35,920 --> 01:11:39,519
Speaker 1: water bowl trout fisheries in the High Country in the

1285
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:45,200
Speaker 1: face of global change. So that conundrum, that trade off

1286
01:11:45,720 --> 01:11:48,439
Speaker 1: is a really fascinating question, and there's a lot of

1287
01:11:48,479 --> 01:11:51,960
Speaker 1: active debate right now in the wilderness community around that

1288
01:11:52,080 --> 01:11:54,479
Speaker 1: question without weight, I'm gonna ask you to weigh in

1289
01:11:54,640 --> 01:11:58,640
Speaker 1: on it, But can you explain as well, um some

1290
01:11:58,840 --> 01:12:02,400
Speaker 1: issues about some some issues that come up surrounding the

1291
01:12:02,520 --> 01:12:12,240
Speaker 1: use of aircraft UM by state agencies doing management duties,

1292
01:12:14,080 --> 01:12:19,320
Speaker 1: and how even those cases bring people up against the intent. Yeah,

1293
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:21,799
Speaker 1: that's that's a perfect content and lettering of the wildern.

1294
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:24,559
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly what exactly what I'm getting at here.

1295
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:29,720
Speaker 1: So let's take, for example, helicopter used to manage bighorn sheep.

1296
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:36,760
Speaker 1: Okay state agencies oftentimes want to take management activities to

1297
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:39,240
Speaker 1: move big horns around on the landscape. Helicopters are the

1298
01:12:39,320 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: easiest way to do that in ru good remote country.

1299
01:12:42,160 --> 01:12:47,840
Speaker 1: And back up on that, because we're still um like,

1300
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:50,240
Speaker 1: if you look at a map of historic Bighorn Range

1301
01:12:50,439 --> 01:12:54,120
Speaker 1: in current Bighorn Range, we haven't really scratched the surface

1302
01:12:54,560 --> 01:12:59,559
Speaker 1: on bighorn restoration, and I think probably we never will

1303
01:13:00,439 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 1: scratch the surface very deeply because frankly, a lot of

1304
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:06,160
Speaker 1: the historic Bighorn Range has been so altered and compromised

1305
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:09,720
Speaker 1: that will never support bighorns again. So I'm I'm very

1306
01:13:09,800 --> 01:13:12,519
Speaker 1: much in favor, and I think everybody here is very

1307
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:15,959
Speaker 1: much in favor of doing everything we can to restore

1308
01:13:17,400 --> 01:13:22,000
Speaker 1: native bighorn populations on the landscape where they existed historically

1309
01:13:22,000 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 1: and where they've been extirpated as a result of human activity. Um.

1310
01:13:26,600 --> 01:13:28,720
Speaker 1: But this this issue hits at the heart of the

1311
01:13:28,760 --> 01:13:32,320
Speaker 1: trade offs between managing for naturalness with bighorns being a

1312
01:13:32,439 --> 01:13:35,880
Speaker 1: key element of the indigenous biota of a particular landscape,

1313
01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:39,519
Speaker 1: and a couple of the qualities of wilderness character, one

1314
01:13:39,640 --> 01:13:43,280
Speaker 1: certainly being untrammeled because you're taking a management action, and

1315
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:46,280
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what the management action is. If you're

1316
01:13:47,320 --> 01:13:51,320
Speaker 1: manipulating the system, you're degrading the untrammeled character, even if

1317
01:13:51,360 --> 01:13:54,040
Speaker 1: it's for the betterment of the naturalness of the landscape.

1318
01:13:54,760 --> 01:13:57,599
Speaker 1: And then also the undeveloped character, because when you start

1319
01:13:57,680 --> 01:14:03,320
Speaker 1: landing aircraft in a wilderness area, that degrades the undeveloped

1320
01:14:03,720 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 1: character of the wilderness. And so in order to justify

1321
01:14:09,040 --> 01:14:12,559
Speaker 1: UH an activity like that, you go through a process

1322
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:16,400
Speaker 1: of analyzing these trade offs, and we use a minimum

1323
01:14:16,439 --> 01:14:19,439
Speaker 1: requirements analysis. And where that those words minimum requirement come

1324
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:22,920
Speaker 1: from as the word of the act it talks about

1325
01:14:23,640 --> 01:14:29,000
Speaker 1: a variety of uses being expressly prohibited in wilderness unless

1326
01:14:29,040 --> 01:14:32,800
Speaker 1: they meet the minimum require, the minimum requirement for the

1327
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:36,880
Speaker 1: administration of the area's wilderness, the minimum necessary. My brother

1328
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:41,160
Speaker 1: is a he's an ecologist in Alaska and UH a

1329
01:14:41,200 --> 01:14:43,040
Speaker 1: long time ago, we were having a conversation about the

1330
01:14:43,120 --> 01:14:47,560
Speaker 1: nature of doing recovery and he was describing like he's

1331
01:14:47,600 --> 01:14:50,480
Speaker 1: like describing his job out there, and he's saying, Alaska

1332
01:14:50,520 --> 01:14:56,800
Speaker 1: is still relatively so pristine that we're not really engaged. Um,

1333
01:14:57,280 --> 01:15:01,240
Speaker 1: we're not really engaged in recovery work in Alaska. He

1334
01:15:01,400 --> 01:15:03,360
Speaker 1: described its like in places we're still just trying to

1335
01:15:03,520 --> 01:15:08,360
Speaker 1: describe what's there, and so you're you're afforded the luxury

1336
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:11,120
Speaker 1: of of a much more hands off approach because you're

1337
01:15:11,160 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: not in the restorative phase yet you're still in the

1338
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:17,040
Speaker 1: phase of like, what's here, what steps do we need

1339
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:20,000
Speaker 1: to take to maintain it? And so natural systems can

1340
01:15:20,040 --> 01:15:22,800
Speaker 1: play out more. But in the lower forty eight we're

1341
01:15:22,840 --> 01:15:28,719
Speaker 1: really engaged in um saving things that are on the brink.

1342
01:15:29,160 --> 01:15:31,599
Speaker 1: And during recovery work, which has to be so much

1343
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:35,160
Speaker 1: more complicated than just sitting back and trying to still

1344
01:15:35,240 --> 01:15:38,160
Speaker 1: get your arms around what we have, you know, they're

1345
01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:42,800
Speaker 1: still describing fisheries in Alaska. They're still describing and trying

1346
01:15:42,840 --> 01:15:48,920
Speaker 1: to quantify salmon runs in Alaska that are bigger than

1347
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:50,640
Speaker 1: any runs that we have in the lower forty eight.

1348
01:15:51,560 --> 01:15:53,840
Speaker 1: And so it's like, you really like the borders here,

1349
01:15:53,920 --> 01:15:55,759
Speaker 1: like to what to what Carl was saying, you realize

1350
01:15:55,800 --> 01:15:58,519
Speaker 1: that you can pick these little spots like this little

1351
01:15:58,600 --> 01:16:01,519
Speaker 1: island and say it's wilderness and and sort of dream

1352
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:04,839
Speaker 1: up this scenario where it's like protected from outside forces,

1353
01:16:04,920 --> 01:16:07,719
Speaker 1: but it has to be the borders are so porous

1354
01:16:09,000 --> 01:16:11,080
Speaker 1: just from factors that are way outside of your control,

1355
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:14,879
Speaker 1: like the fact that we haven't maintained some of our fisheries.

1356
01:16:14,920 --> 01:16:18,040
Speaker 1: And now it turns up that like maybe an unintended

1357
01:16:18,120 --> 01:16:20,320
Speaker 1: concoct I guess it would be an intended consequence of

1358
01:16:20,360 --> 01:16:24,360
Speaker 1: wilderness designation is that you sort of created a place

1359
01:16:24,479 --> 01:16:27,920
Speaker 1: where this fish species can exist. And maybe at the

1360
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:30,640
Speaker 1: time when we were articulating the benefits of wilderness, we

1361
01:16:30,720 --> 01:16:33,280
Speaker 1: didn't think that like include that, but it winds up

1362
01:16:33,320 --> 01:16:38,280
Speaker 1: being that, like not quite accidentally, but we saved something

1363
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:41,320
Speaker 1: that would otherwise probably be gone. So an important point

1364
01:16:41,360 --> 01:16:45,120
Speaker 1: along those lines, Steve, You're you're spot on about the

1365
01:16:45,240 --> 01:16:50,120
Speaker 1: species benefits, uh, but it's important to recognize that human

1366
01:16:50,200 --> 01:16:52,600
Speaker 1: beings are on that list too. And the reason we

1367
01:16:52,760 --> 01:16:55,760
Speaker 1: have Helo trout in the Helo Wilderness is because it's

1368
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:59,519
Speaker 1: these headwater cold water systems. And if you look at

1369
01:16:59,560 --> 01:17:02,720
Speaker 1: where our nation's water supply comes from, especially in the

1370
01:17:02,760 --> 01:17:06,720
Speaker 1: relatively dry western side of our country, a lot of

1371
01:17:06,760 --> 01:17:13,360
Speaker 1: our most our most important treasured drinking water supplies have

1372
01:17:13,680 --> 01:17:18,400
Speaker 1: their source in the high country. And I think one

1373
01:17:18,439 --> 01:17:21,719
Speaker 1: of the reasons that we still have some really great, clean,

1374
01:17:22,240 --> 01:17:24,920
Speaker 1: healthy water resources is the fact that we have these

1375
01:17:25,000 --> 01:17:31,439
Speaker 1: big chunks of uncompromised high country where that cold, clean

1376
01:17:31,520 --> 01:17:36,200
Speaker 1: waters bubbling forth and melting off every spring, and so

1377
01:17:36,400 --> 01:17:39,400
Speaker 1: you have cold water fisheries certainly benefiting, you have a

1378
01:17:39,400 --> 01:17:43,680
Speaker 1: whole host of of other fish and wildlife species protected.

1379
01:17:44,680 --> 01:17:46,800
Speaker 1: And this is where the conversation about the relevance of

1380
01:17:46,840 --> 01:17:50,559
Speaker 1: wilderness broadly to the American people, I think really gains

1381
01:17:50,560 --> 01:17:52,519
Speaker 1: a lot of traction to is the fact that there

1382
01:17:52,560 --> 01:17:55,439
Speaker 1: are direct benefits to people who will never go to

1383
01:17:55,479 --> 01:17:58,800
Speaker 1: the wilderness. There are direct benefits that people are experiencing

1384
01:17:58,920 --> 01:18:02,920
Speaker 1: right now, and they're completely ignorant of the fact that

1385
01:18:03,040 --> 01:18:07,000
Speaker 1: they have this linkage oftentimes through water, through clean air,

1386
01:18:07,200 --> 01:18:14,720
Speaker 1: these benefits of big chunks of of ecologically intact land. Yeah,

1387
01:18:14,760 --> 01:18:17,360
Speaker 1: that's the thing that troubled me is when people and

1388
01:18:17,640 --> 01:18:20,080
Speaker 1: people on my side of the argument do it too,

1389
01:18:20,360 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 1: is people try to draw to apply dollar figures to things.

1390
01:18:24,960 --> 01:18:27,000
Speaker 1: That's something go ahead well as Actually that's something I

1391
01:18:27,040 --> 01:18:29,040
Speaker 1: wanted to interject about to talk about because we haven't

1392
01:18:29,080 --> 01:18:31,479
Speaker 1: really spent any time talking about why would we forego

1393
01:18:31,560 --> 01:18:34,479
Speaker 1: the most efficient tool in wilderness, like a helicopter um

1394
01:18:34,560 --> 01:18:36,559
Speaker 1: in which we can authorize as Jerry was talking about,

1395
01:18:36,600 --> 01:18:39,280
Speaker 1: and we we did use helicopters, determined it was the

1396
01:18:39,280 --> 01:18:42,080
Speaker 1: minimum necessary to do that HeLa trout salvage following the fire,

1397
01:18:42,120 --> 01:18:45,240
Speaker 1: and we've done some follow up helicopter work to reintroduce

1398
01:18:45,320 --> 01:18:50,320
Speaker 1: them as conditions have improved. But the the reason um

1399
01:18:50,760 --> 01:18:53,320
Speaker 1: for we we we use these primitive skills. We emphasize

1400
01:18:53,320 --> 01:18:55,639
Speaker 1: these primitive skills. That's one thing in this untrammeled quality

1401
01:18:55,680 --> 01:18:58,080
Speaker 1: where we're trying to be hands off and let nature

1402
01:18:58,120 --> 01:19:00,920
Speaker 1: run its course. Or that's a pretty unique um approach

1403
01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:04,120
Speaker 1: for a federal land management agency to say, let the

1404
01:19:04,200 --> 01:19:07,519
Speaker 1: ecosystem manage itself ideally and and the reason I can.

1405
01:19:07,600 --> 01:19:09,200
Speaker 1: Can we talk about why that is? I mean, I

1406
01:19:09,240 --> 01:19:12,840
Speaker 1: think that's an important important context here, um to to

1407
01:19:13,240 --> 01:19:15,920
Speaker 1: to for the public who kind of wonders what we're

1408
01:19:15,920 --> 01:19:19,000
Speaker 1: doing with wilderness or thinks it's hands off. So that

1409
01:19:19,120 --> 01:19:22,719
Speaker 1: untraveled quality came about through these series of lessons where

1410
01:19:23,439 --> 01:19:26,600
Speaker 1: we as managers had the best of intentions. Um, I

1411
01:19:26,680 --> 01:19:28,479
Speaker 1: thought we were doing the right thing using the most

1412
01:19:28,760 --> 01:19:31,400
Speaker 1: up to date science we had available the time, and

1413
01:19:31,520 --> 01:19:34,840
Speaker 1: we we proved to ourselves later that we we really

1414
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:37,680
Speaker 1: didn't know much about the system and in fact, our

1415
01:19:37,760 --> 01:19:40,400
Speaker 1: our work in the best of intentions was actually hugely

1416
01:19:40,439 --> 01:19:44,040
Speaker 1: detrimental to the ecosystem. So an early example that in

1417
01:19:44,160 --> 01:19:47,880
Speaker 1: Leopold's era is these efforts by the federal government, uh,

1418
01:19:48,000 --> 01:19:51,200
Speaker 1: in predator control, you know, to enhance game species and

1419
01:19:51,320 --> 01:19:54,960
Speaker 1: in provide for you know, improved grazing resources. And you know,

1420
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:56,960
Speaker 1: we all know the stories. I mean, um, you know

1421
01:19:57,080 --> 01:20:00,839
Speaker 1: Leopold rights about in the Southwest, this extirpation of predators

1422
01:20:00,960 --> 01:20:04,519
Speaker 1: leading to booming deer populations and you know, vegetation being

1423
01:20:04,560 --> 01:20:07,920
Speaker 1: denuded and uh starvation events. Yeah, that was one of

1424
01:20:08,000 --> 01:20:10,400
Speaker 1: his tasks exactly. Yeah, yeah, he was, I mean he

1425
01:20:10,600 --> 01:20:12,880
Speaker 1: he has the story about the wolf with the green

1426
01:20:12,960 --> 01:20:16,080
Speaker 1: firing er eyes that occurred on the Apache Secrets National Forest.

1427
01:20:16,600 --> 01:20:18,120
Speaker 1: UM and it was a kind of a yeah, an

1428
01:20:18,120 --> 01:20:21,160
Speaker 1: aha moment for him and in his growing ecological awareness.

1429
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:23,600
Speaker 1: And so again back in the day, we thought this

1430
01:20:23,720 --> 01:20:25,560
Speaker 1: was the right thing to be doing. UM and and

1431
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:27,760
Speaker 1: and we and we had some pretty that was a

1432
01:20:27,800 --> 01:20:30,320
Speaker 1: case where we had some pretty rapid evident consequences from

1433
01:20:30,400 --> 01:20:33,120
Speaker 1: that that line of work where we had um, you know,

1434
01:20:33,520 --> 01:20:36,960
Speaker 1: a game animal game species UM starving. We've seen and

1435
01:20:37,120 --> 01:20:39,439
Speaker 1: follow up you know, as our our our our understanding

1436
01:20:39,439 --> 01:20:42,360
Speaker 1: of actually ecological systems as continue to improve, like with

1437
01:20:42,439 --> 01:20:46,519
Speaker 1: the reintroductional wolves and Yellowstone totally changed predator prey dynamics,

1438
01:20:46,840 --> 01:20:48,519
Speaker 1: you know, where he had an absence at this Keystone

1439
01:20:48,560 --> 01:20:51,920
Speaker 1: predator um and changed ecological conditions as a result as

1440
01:20:51,960 --> 01:20:55,559
Speaker 1: the wolves got re established. So so that's an example of, um,

1441
01:20:55,960 --> 01:20:58,280
Speaker 1: why we have this untrammeled quality of willness. You know

1442
01:20:58,320 --> 01:21:01,360
Speaker 1: why zeen Heiser and other thinkers, you know, Leopold's land

1443
01:21:01,400 --> 01:21:03,920
Speaker 1: ethic contributed to that. The intelligence or the sign of

1444
01:21:03,920 --> 01:21:06,599
Speaker 1: an intelligent tinker is to not throw away all the pieces. Right,

1445
01:21:07,800 --> 01:21:10,560
Speaker 1: So we you know, we we may not ever know

1446
01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:12,800
Speaker 1: at all, given the complexity these ecosystems, and so the

1447
01:21:12,880 --> 01:21:15,080
Speaker 1: untrembled quality, you know, I describe it as an essence

1448
01:21:15,240 --> 01:21:19,000
Speaker 1: a small insurance policy to have some of these landscapes left,

1449
01:21:19,360 --> 01:21:21,200
Speaker 1: you know, in North America, or at least United States,

1450
01:21:21,600 --> 01:21:25,760
Speaker 1: five of the United States, where we're trying to let

1451
01:21:25,880 --> 01:21:29,920
Speaker 1: nature run its course because we may not know at all. Right.

1452
01:21:30,200 --> 01:21:32,559
Speaker 1: Another good example here in the Southwest, as we're looking

1453
01:21:32,600 --> 01:21:34,439
Speaker 1: out the window at some smoke right now, too, is

1454
01:21:34,439 --> 01:21:37,640
Speaker 1: a hundred year history of suppressing wildfire from the landscape

1455
01:21:38,080 --> 01:21:39,479
Speaker 1: and thinking that that was the best thing we could

1456
01:21:39,479 --> 01:21:42,040
Speaker 1: be doing for the national forests, you know, from their inception,

1457
01:21:42,439 --> 01:21:44,200
Speaker 1: keeping fire off the ground. And now we're doing everything

1458
01:21:44,280 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 1: we can, like Jerry mentioned, to encourage these naturally ignited

1459
01:21:47,439 --> 01:21:53,200
Speaker 1: wildfires to burn. And we acknowledge the fact that fire

1460
01:21:53,320 --> 01:21:55,360
Speaker 1: is a key element of these systems. Some of our

1461
01:21:55,400 --> 01:21:59,080
Speaker 1: forest types here in the Southwest evolved in the face

1462
01:21:59,240 --> 01:22:01,639
Speaker 1: of fires that burned somewhere in the neighborhood of every

1463
01:22:01,720 --> 01:22:04,719
Speaker 1: five to thirty years or so. And we've got chunks

1464
01:22:04,800 --> 01:22:07,080
Speaker 1: of ground here, including that mountain out the window, that

1465
01:22:07,400 --> 01:22:10,439
Speaker 1: haven't burned for over a hundred years. So and when

1466
01:22:10,520 --> 01:22:13,280
Speaker 1: those places go, they tend to go in a catastrophic well,

1467
01:22:13,439 --> 01:22:16,840
Speaker 1: so you go from high high frequency fires that burn

1468
01:22:16,920 --> 01:22:19,760
Speaker 1: at a low severity, So fires that burn often but

1469
01:22:19,920 --> 01:22:24,760
Speaker 1: consume a lot of leaf litter um fine fuels, they

1470
01:22:24,880 --> 01:22:28,760
Speaker 1: burn across the surface of the forest um. In the

1471
01:22:28,880 --> 01:22:30,800
Speaker 1: absence of those fires, you get a lot of fuel

1472
01:22:30,840 --> 01:22:33,519
Speaker 1: building up, so that when there is a fire, it

1473
01:22:33,600 --> 01:22:35,360
Speaker 1: could be on the order of hundreds of thousands of

1474
01:22:35,400 --> 01:22:39,360
Speaker 1: acres burning at very high severity, where even mature trees

1475
01:22:39,680 --> 01:22:44,080
Speaker 1: are eliminated. So during is making a really important point

1476
01:22:44,160 --> 01:22:47,640
Speaker 1: here that you know, as an ecologist, I often contemplate

1477
01:22:48,479 --> 01:22:50,519
Speaker 1: what is it a hundred years from now that they're

1478
01:22:50,520 --> 01:22:52,439
Speaker 1: going to be looking back at our generation and going

1479
01:22:52,600 --> 01:22:57,360
Speaker 1: you idiots, Like what were you thinking? Because hindsight so like,

1480
01:22:57,520 --> 01:23:00,719
Speaker 1: what will be the putting cigarettes and people's see rations

1481
01:23:01,320 --> 01:23:05,479
Speaker 1: exactly of the future. Yeah, it's a it's a it's

1482
01:23:05,479 --> 01:23:07,439
Speaker 1: a good question. What do you think it will be

1483
01:23:08,479 --> 01:23:10,320
Speaker 1: fire suppression? I think we already kind of know that.

1484
01:23:10,479 --> 01:23:15,240
Speaker 1: One man. You don't have to answer. I got some ideas,

1485
01:23:16,160 --> 01:23:18,320
Speaker 1: you got some ideas of what we might later realize

1486
01:23:18,360 --> 01:23:20,960
Speaker 1: we're big mistakes. You don't have to give them to me.

1487
01:23:21,560 --> 01:23:23,160
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go think about it and gonna go back

1488
01:23:23,200 --> 01:23:24,800
Speaker 1: into the thing on top of the dollar, the dollar,

1489
01:23:26,160 --> 01:23:32,040
Speaker 1: is that I find that people often want landscapes to

1490
01:23:32,280 --> 01:23:39,400
Speaker 1: justify themselves, um constantly financially, to be where people look

1491
01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:42,479
Speaker 1: at something like, well, what value is it bringing us

1492
01:23:42,960 --> 01:23:49,080
Speaker 1: or me right now? And that's inspired some some thinkers

1493
01:23:49,160 --> 01:23:53,679
Speaker 1: and some wilderness advocates to be like, Okay, um, let's

1494
01:23:53,680 --> 01:23:57,320
Speaker 1: play this game, and let's start as signing dollar values

1495
01:23:57,439 --> 01:24:01,080
Speaker 1: to clean air and clean water. Oh. It's an interesting

1496
01:24:01,120 --> 01:24:03,160
Speaker 1: concept and one thing that it makes me uneasy because

1497
01:24:03,160 --> 01:24:05,479
Speaker 1: I'm like, but I don't think everything in the world

1498
01:24:05,560 --> 01:24:08,120
Speaker 1: needs to justify itself financially all the time. Like when

1499
01:24:08,120 --> 01:24:10,880
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning and and and my

1500
01:24:11,040 --> 01:24:13,160
Speaker 1: kids are my three kids are waking up and they

1501
01:24:13,240 --> 01:24:15,720
Speaker 1: climb into bed with me and my wife, I don't

1502
01:24:15,760 --> 01:24:18,679
Speaker 1: look at them and be like, how are you gonna

1503
01:24:18,920 --> 01:24:23,280
Speaker 1: justify your existence today financially to me? Right? Because like,

1504
01:24:23,400 --> 01:24:26,080
Speaker 1: some things are like bigger and better and more important

1505
01:24:26,360 --> 01:24:28,720
Speaker 1: than that. And so I do struggle a little bit

1506
01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:31,360
Speaker 1: with people feeling that it's necessary. But it is a

1507
01:24:31,479 --> 01:24:35,040
Speaker 1: really interesting idea that we would start looking in the

1508
01:24:35,120 --> 01:24:40,479
Speaker 1: West or across the country. At what dollar value is

1509
01:24:40,960 --> 01:24:45,680
Speaker 1: there to place on sources of clean air and clean water? Um.

1510
01:24:45,960 --> 01:24:48,799
Speaker 1: And I don't even think people have really even probably

1511
01:24:48,840 --> 01:24:51,479
Speaker 1: haven't made much progress. And it's it's such a huge

1512
01:24:51,560 --> 01:24:54,320
Speaker 1: idea and difficult to quantify. But I wonder if that

1513
01:24:54,560 --> 01:24:57,680
Speaker 1: in the end will some will in some way be

1514
01:24:57,920 --> 01:25:01,720
Speaker 1: something that helps people realize the hornets of wild landscapes

1515
01:25:01,720 --> 01:25:05,000
Speaker 1: in this country when we do have that more when

1516
01:25:05,000 --> 01:25:09,200
Speaker 1: we do take a more holistic approach looking at natural systems. Yeah,

1517
01:25:09,400 --> 01:25:12,240
Speaker 1: the whole ecosystem services conversation. I mean a quick example.

1518
01:25:12,320 --> 01:25:14,360
Speaker 1: You know, I was in southern California before coming out here,

1519
01:25:14,439 --> 01:25:19,080
Speaker 1: and um, growing population, changing climate stress on aquifers, so

1520
01:25:19,720 --> 01:25:23,240
Speaker 1: less water available in San Diego County is building a

1521
01:25:23,520 --> 01:25:25,960
Speaker 1: new deesel plan and you talk about the billions and

1522
01:25:26,040 --> 01:25:28,880
Speaker 1: billions of dollars um it's gonna take to build that

1523
01:25:29,000 --> 01:25:30,720
Speaker 1: thing and then operate it in the long term so

1524
01:25:30,800 --> 01:25:33,479
Speaker 1: that we can have fresh clean water, you know, out

1525
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:37,240
Speaker 1: of the ocean. Um, were we to invest in uh,

1526
01:25:37,400 --> 01:25:39,400
Speaker 1: you know, protecting our lands or where we still have

1527
01:25:39,560 --> 01:25:42,760
Speaker 1: intact ecosystems that provide clean water. I mean, that's a

1528
01:25:42,960 --> 01:25:45,120
Speaker 1: that's a huge Um, you know, we're avoiding a huge

1529
01:25:45,160 --> 01:25:47,200
Speaker 1: economic cost. And so I think it's a I think

1530
01:25:47,200 --> 01:25:49,519
Speaker 1: it's a hugely relevant conversation, you know, And I get

1531
01:25:49,560 --> 01:25:51,880
Speaker 1: you that it's a you know, we're at a place

1532
01:25:51,920 --> 01:25:54,479
Speaker 1: where we've had to we've had to really craft these

1533
01:25:54,720 --> 01:25:58,200
Speaker 1: you know, complex uh analyses and arguments about the dollar

1534
01:25:58,320 --> 01:26:01,800
Speaker 1: worth of these these ecosystems serve is. But that's just

1535
01:26:01,840 --> 01:26:04,040
Speaker 1: where we're at, you know. But it wasn't part of

1536
01:26:04,040 --> 01:26:08,920
Speaker 1: the language in absolutely not, No, what did what did

1537
01:26:08,960 --> 01:26:11,680
Speaker 1: a hundred senators in nineteen s four? What we're a

1538
01:26:11,760 --> 01:26:16,800
Speaker 1: hundred senators voting from an emotional standpoint in some way?

1539
01:26:16,800 --> 01:26:18,280
Speaker 1: It had it been it couldn't have been a matter

1540
01:26:18,360 --> 01:26:22,000
Speaker 1: of like practicality, you don't know. Yeah, No, I mean,

1541
01:26:22,040 --> 01:26:24,280
Speaker 1: I I'm not I'm not able to get into their heads.

1542
01:26:24,320 --> 01:26:26,760
Speaker 1: I mean I think again, you know, folks saw the

1543
01:26:26,960 --> 01:26:31,000
Speaker 1: value and we were again look at the historical context, right,

1544
01:26:31,080 --> 01:26:35,559
Speaker 1: I mean we our natural resource economy and extraction was booming. Um,

1545
01:26:35,640 --> 01:26:37,959
Speaker 1: we had this also kind of parallel boom and tourism

1546
01:26:38,040 --> 01:26:40,400
Speaker 1: and an outdoor recreation. You look at the National Parks

1547
01:26:40,439 --> 01:26:42,600
Speaker 1: were building lodges and roads, and the Fourth Service was

1548
01:26:42,760 --> 01:26:44,800
Speaker 1: trying to you know, um, keep up with them in

1549
01:26:44,960 --> 01:26:48,000
Speaker 1: terms of you know, post World War two, people want

1550
01:26:48,000 --> 01:26:49,600
Speaker 1: to get out and enjoy their public lands, and so

1551
01:26:49,760 --> 01:26:54,840
Speaker 1: we're we're we were massively developing resources and lands a

1552
01:26:54,920 --> 01:26:57,960
Speaker 1: parallel from from the extract extraction of natural resources to

1553
01:26:57,960 --> 01:27:00,320
Speaker 1: grow our economy. And then they get people out of doors,

1554
01:27:00,479 --> 01:27:02,040
Speaker 1: and so I think again you get to this thinking

1555
01:27:02,080 --> 01:27:05,280
Speaker 1: about you know, this, this this the role of the

1556
01:27:05,360 --> 01:27:08,479
Speaker 1: frontier and taming the frontier in American history and as

1557
01:27:08,520 --> 01:27:11,360
Speaker 1: an American identity, I think, I mean, it's just this

1558
01:27:11,560 --> 01:27:14,680
Speaker 1: pace of um, all of a sudden booming pace of

1559
01:27:15,000 --> 01:27:18,200
Speaker 1: natural resource development I think was pretty alarming to folks.

1560
01:27:18,280 --> 01:27:21,439
Speaker 1: And that's what you know, really, I think galvanized by

1561
01:27:21,720 --> 01:27:24,920
Speaker 1: the middle of the twentieth century, galvanized the public, and

1562
01:27:24,960 --> 01:27:28,600
Speaker 1: they're elected representatives to do something about it. Where you

1563
01:27:28,640 --> 01:27:31,160
Speaker 1: can look at the time and be like, we're gonna

1564
01:27:31,360 --> 01:27:34,479
Speaker 1: we're rolling, We're gonna keep rolling, but let's sort of

1565
01:27:34,720 --> 01:27:37,760
Speaker 1: put a built in cap on how far this might go. Yeah,

1566
01:27:37,880 --> 01:27:40,840
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. I think It's worth noting, though, that the

1567
01:27:40,920 --> 01:27:44,120
Speaker 1: economic arguments have been there all along, getting back to

1568
01:27:44,520 --> 01:27:47,160
Speaker 1: leopold stance that these were the landscapes that had very

1569
01:27:47,240 --> 01:27:50,800
Speaker 1: little value otherwise. And here's a Leopold quote that kind

1570
01:27:50,800 --> 01:27:53,080
Speaker 1: of agrees with you and kind of disagrees with you. Say, Man,

1571
01:27:53,080 --> 01:27:55,760
Speaker 1: I'm open to that our remnants of wilderness will yield

1572
01:27:55,840 --> 01:27:59,120
Speaker 1: bigger values to the nation's character and health than they

1573
01:27:59,200 --> 01:28:02,559
Speaker 1: will to its pocket book, and to destroy them will

1574
01:28:02,600 --> 01:28:05,160
Speaker 1: be to admit that the latter are the only values

1575
01:28:05,240 --> 01:28:09,320
Speaker 1: that interest us. So we're saying, these these landscapes aren't

1576
01:28:09,320 --> 01:28:13,760
Speaker 1: really that valuable financially anyway, and if we treat them

1577
01:28:13,840 --> 01:28:18,400
Speaker 1: as if they do, UH will be negating these other

1578
01:28:18,479 --> 01:28:22,280
Speaker 1: inherent intrinsic values. So the economics have been there all along.

1579
01:28:22,479 --> 01:28:26,120
Speaker 1: But I think there is utility, and I like the

1580
01:28:27,280 --> 01:28:30,360
Speaker 1: comparison to the kids greeting you in the morning. In

1581
01:28:30,520 --> 01:28:33,280
Speaker 1: terms of trying to weigh everything in dollars and cents,

1582
01:28:34,160 --> 01:28:39,519
Speaker 1: there's there's danger and attempting that, um, But I don't

1583
01:28:39,520 --> 01:28:41,479
Speaker 1: mean to say that. I mean there's danger in thinking

1584
01:28:41,600 --> 01:28:46,040
Speaker 1: that that. Just as a life philosophy, I think there's

1585
01:28:46,160 --> 01:28:49,680
Speaker 1: danger in thinking that every aspect of our lives and

1586
01:28:49,840 --> 01:28:53,799
Speaker 1: society and humanity is a dollar figure. To the contrary,

1587
01:28:53,880 --> 01:28:57,200
Speaker 1: I would submit to you that the things of the

1588
01:28:57,320 --> 01:29:01,320
Speaker 1: greatest value you cannot affect the dollar figure two, and

1589
01:29:01,400 --> 01:29:07,479
Speaker 1: I would include our nation's wildlife and public lands on

1590
01:29:07,640 --> 01:29:12,120
Speaker 1: that list, along with my family, along with my relationships

1591
01:29:12,200 --> 01:29:14,240
Speaker 1: with friends. I mean, you can't put dollar figures on

1592
01:29:14,320 --> 01:29:18,840
Speaker 1: that stuff, the stuff that we hold most dearly ish

1593
01:29:19,000 --> 01:29:22,479
Speaker 1: indescribable in terms of dollars and cents. And yet when

1594
01:29:22,560 --> 01:29:26,280
Speaker 1: we have to have conversations about the value of these places,

1595
01:29:26,320 --> 01:29:28,639
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ways to argue in terms

1596
01:29:28,680 --> 01:29:30,600
Speaker 1: of dollars and cents. So you feel like bringing on,

1597
01:29:31,479 --> 01:29:35,120
Speaker 1: I'll talk about So, yeah, the outdoor recreation. Let's chat

1598
01:29:35,160 --> 01:29:39,320
Speaker 1: about that for a second. Eighty seven billion dollars a year,

1599
01:29:39,800 --> 01:29:45,080
Speaker 1: seven point six million jobs in the USA from outdoor recreation. Um,

1600
01:29:45,560 --> 01:29:47,920
Speaker 1: you take away public lands. What does that mean in

1601
01:29:48,040 --> 01:29:51,880
Speaker 1: terms of jobs and in terms of the economic engine. Um,

1602
01:29:52,000 --> 01:29:55,320
Speaker 1: there's a powerful one. Think about the ecosystem services, clean air,

1603
01:29:55,360 --> 01:29:57,040
Speaker 1: clean water. Hard to put a dollar figure on, but

1604
01:29:57,040 --> 01:30:00,160
Speaker 1: there are people, there are professors who make six figures dollar.

1605
01:30:00,240 --> 01:30:01,600
Speaker 1: He is thinking about how to do that. So you

1606
01:30:01,640 --> 01:30:04,759
Speaker 1: can make those arguments. But I agree with the fundamental

1607
01:30:04,840 --> 01:30:07,680
Speaker 1: notion that there are some things of such great importance

1608
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:11,160
Speaker 1: to us as individuals that they defy economics but bring

1609
01:30:11,240 --> 01:30:13,640
Speaker 1: it on if you want to chat in that language. No,

1610
01:30:13,760 --> 01:30:16,840
Speaker 1: I do notice that in that you see a high

1611
01:30:16,960 --> 01:30:20,600
Speaker 1: level of engagement with some businesses that are involved in

1612
01:30:20,640 --> 01:30:24,200
Speaker 1: the outdoor economy, where they hear some of the murmurings

1613
01:30:24,280 --> 01:30:26,519
Speaker 1: that we're dealing with politically and they're like, hey, man,

1614
01:30:26,680 --> 01:30:32,479
Speaker 1: you are fixing to be like infringing on my business here,

1615
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:34,960
Speaker 1: because I am in the outdoor business. And if we're

1616
01:30:35,000 --> 01:30:38,960
Speaker 1: gonna talk about business friendly to me, that means public

1617
01:30:39,040 --> 01:30:44,160
Speaker 1: access on land because that's my client base. So it

1618
01:30:44,280 --> 01:30:47,479
Speaker 1: is I do like, man, I welcome the input. Yeah.

1619
01:30:48,400 --> 01:30:50,439
Speaker 1: So there's one arena that we haven't touched on about

1620
01:30:50,479 --> 01:30:53,880
Speaker 1: wilderness that I think would be a particular interest to

1621
01:30:54,040 --> 01:30:59,559
Speaker 1: a man of your reading tendencies and and uh general

1622
01:31:00,040 --> 01:31:04,720
Speaker 1: conversation points, and that is the cast of characters that

1623
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:08,160
Speaker 1: we have stemming from the southwestern wild country at the

1624
01:31:08,200 --> 01:31:10,599
Speaker 1: turn of the last century, some of the mountain men

1625
01:31:10,840 --> 01:31:15,040
Speaker 1: who came into their own in landscapes on the HeLa

1626
01:31:15,800 --> 01:31:20,679
Speaker 1: and there's some stories around the last few grizzly bears

1627
01:31:20,800 --> 01:31:23,880
Speaker 1: in the Southwest, and some of these mountain men of

1628
01:31:24,000 --> 01:31:26,799
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds in the landscapes

1629
01:31:26,840 --> 01:31:30,280
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, particularly around the HeLa that you

1630
01:31:30,400 --> 01:31:34,320
Speaker 1: need to add to your reading list. Characters like Ben Lily.

1631
01:31:35,120 --> 01:31:39,559
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of Nat Straw? Hear that guy? How

1632
01:31:39,560 --> 01:31:43,960
Speaker 1: about Bear More? Another dude, You gotta check out Ben Lily.

1633
01:31:44,240 --> 01:31:47,240
Speaker 1: This guy from the age of fifty five to seventy,

1634
01:31:47,800 --> 01:31:52,080
Speaker 1: so a fifteen year period. Ben Lily is claimed to

1635
01:31:52,200 --> 01:31:56,719
Speaker 1: have hunted every single day except for Sundays, for fifteen years.

1636
01:31:57,400 --> 01:32:00,200
Speaker 1: It's estimated that down in the HeLa Country he was

1637
01:32:00,240 --> 01:32:03,080
Speaker 1: responsible for killing somewhere between six hundred and a thousand

1638
01:32:03,120 --> 01:32:06,840
Speaker 1: mountain lions really with however, his lifetime with hounds and

1639
01:32:06,920 --> 01:32:10,080
Speaker 1: along the hounds front, there was a one one particular

1640
01:32:10,160 --> 01:32:13,800
Speaker 1: hound he had named Crook. And on the box in

1641
01:32:13,880 --> 01:32:18,040
Speaker 1: which Ben Lily buried his his treasured dog Crook, he wrote,

1642
01:32:18,320 --> 01:32:21,280
Speaker 1: here lies Crook, a bear and lion dog that helped

1643
01:32:21,360 --> 01:32:24,280
Speaker 1: kill two hundred ten bear and four d twenty six

1644
01:32:24,360 --> 01:32:28,479
Speaker 1: lion since nineteen fourteen, period of eleven years owned by

1645
01:32:28,600 --> 01:32:32,840
Speaker 1: b Van Lily. And that that bear, that that dog's

1646
01:32:32,840 --> 01:32:35,920
Speaker 1: buried somewhere in near Cupio Creek, down in Jerry's Neck

1647
01:32:35,960 --> 01:32:37,960
Speaker 1: of the woods in the HeLa Country. So this guy

1648
01:32:39,160 --> 01:32:44,000
Speaker 1: he literally lived outdoors and um man, some destructive fellows,

1649
01:32:44,200 --> 01:32:45,880
Speaker 1: So that that's it. Yeah, you could get away with

1650
01:32:46,240 --> 01:32:49,400
Speaker 1: That's That's exactly the point. It's like, in some ways,

1651
01:32:49,479 --> 01:32:53,160
Speaker 1: you can look back at at the woodcraft and the

1652
01:32:53,560 --> 01:32:55,800
Speaker 1: you know, you talk about having like the hunting bug

1653
01:32:56,400 --> 01:32:57,839
Speaker 1: to the point that it gets to be a disease

1654
01:32:57,880 --> 01:32:59,960
Speaker 1: that you're hunting, like, you know, six days out of

1655
01:33:00,000 --> 01:33:02,920
Speaker 1: the week for fifteen years. That's that's the hunting bug there.

1656
01:33:03,520 --> 01:33:06,160
Speaker 1: Like when you're talking about the figures that extra pated

1657
01:33:06,240 --> 01:33:09,800
Speaker 1: wildlife during the unregulated years. On one hand, like I

1658
01:33:09,800 --> 01:33:11,880
Speaker 1: always look at him in two ways. On one hand,

1659
01:33:11,880 --> 01:33:16,479
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, sort of a like even at

1660
01:33:16,520 --> 01:33:18,400
Speaker 1: the time, would have been regarded by many people as

1661
01:33:18,439 --> 01:33:21,320
Speaker 1: a morally grotesque figure. But they also, I thought, is

1662
01:33:21,360 --> 01:33:24,760
Speaker 1: account for Like it's not easy to find that stuffy

1663
01:33:25,840 --> 01:33:29,479
Speaker 1: and the level of woodsmanship. Yeah, in the age years

1664
01:33:29,640 --> 01:33:33,720
Speaker 1: killed thirteen bears before he ate breakfast one day, you know,

1665
01:33:33,920 --> 01:33:38,519
Speaker 1: and it's like that's no easy feat for anyone, right, Yeah,

1666
01:33:38,680 --> 01:33:42,160
Speaker 1: And it is. It is tempting to you know, like

1667
01:33:42,320 --> 01:33:46,160
Speaker 1: venerate the woodcraft that it takes to accomplish something like that.

1668
01:33:46,920 --> 01:33:49,200
Speaker 1: But if you start looking into the folks who are

1669
01:33:49,320 --> 01:33:54,920
Speaker 1: actively pursuing predators in southwest New Mexico eastern Arizona during

1670
01:33:54,960 --> 01:33:58,719
Speaker 1: that time frame that these species were extirpated by these species.

1671
01:33:58,760 --> 01:34:01,400
Speaker 1: I'm talking you know, the the last grizzlies being killed,

1672
01:34:01,520 --> 01:34:05,880
Speaker 1: Mexican wolves being eliminated. Um, you could probably narrow the

1673
01:34:06,000 --> 01:34:10,759
Speaker 1: bulk of that mortality down to like a handful of folks.

1674
01:34:10,960 --> 01:34:16,720
Speaker 1: And they approached their work with almost like a biblical

1675
01:34:18,320 --> 01:34:22,080
Speaker 1: uh fever in terms of how they hunted these species,

1676
01:34:22,120 --> 01:34:24,280
Speaker 1: and if you read some of their journals, you know

1677
01:34:24,400 --> 01:34:27,000
Speaker 1: they were it was very much like a good versus

1678
01:34:27,160 --> 01:34:30,960
Speaker 1: evil mindset that they were in to cleanse the landscape

1679
01:34:31,120 --> 01:34:36,519
Speaker 1: of these predators. UM. And thinking about grizzlies, one of

1680
01:34:36,560 --> 01:34:40,120
Speaker 1: the one of the quotes that I loved UM was

1681
01:34:40,200 --> 01:34:43,920
Speaker 1: along the lines of you'll hear people say that bears

1682
01:34:44,400 --> 01:34:48,200
Speaker 1: and men are inherently good and not looking to get

1683
01:34:48,240 --> 01:34:50,760
Speaker 1: in trouble. But you don't have to go far to

1684
01:34:50,840 --> 01:34:54,760
Speaker 1: find exceptions. When when did the when when of the

1685
01:34:54,840 --> 01:34:58,080
Speaker 1: last grizzly vantage out of New Mexico. I'm not shot

1686
01:34:58,160 --> 01:35:00,479
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, out of Arizona. So like this kind

1687
01:35:00,520 --> 01:35:03,400
Speaker 1: of chunk of wild country on the border of Arizona,

1688
01:35:03,439 --> 01:35:06,160
Speaker 1: New Mexico. The last one was on Escadia Mountain. And

1689
01:35:06,240 --> 01:35:08,639
Speaker 1: there's an essay in the Sand County Almanac by Leopold

1690
01:35:08,720 --> 01:35:12,280
Speaker 1: titled Escodia, And that was in the mid nineteen thirties

1691
01:35:12,360 --> 01:35:16,800
Speaker 1: that that bear was killed. Um, and that essay it's uh,

1692
01:35:17,160 --> 01:35:19,760
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful testament to the bear and one of

1693
01:35:19,800 --> 01:35:22,840
Speaker 1: the and to the mountain and one of the one

1694
01:35:22,880 --> 01:35:25,439
Speaker 1: of my favorite quotes. I'm grabbing my copy here right

1695
01:35:25,479 --> 01:35:29,360
Speaker 1: now because Leopold took issue with the fact that this

1696
01:35:29,520 --> 01:35:32,760
Speaker 1: bear was killed in June, right, and here here's what

1697
01:35:32,840 --> 01:35:36,560
Speaker 1: he said. Uh. The trapper had packed his mule and

1698
01:35:36,640 --> 01:35:39,240
Speaker 1: headed for Escodilla. In a month, he was back his meal,

1699
01:35:39,320 --> 01:35:42,400
Speaker 1: staggering under a heavy hide. There was only one barn

1700
01:35:42,479 --> 01:35:44,760
Speaker 1: in town big enough to dry it on. He had

1701
01:35:44,800 --> 01:35:48,400
Speaker 1: tried traps, poison and all his usual whiles to no avail.

1702
01:35:49,000 --> 01:35:51,160
Speaker 1: Then he had erected a set gun in a defile

1703
01:35:51,280 --> 01:35:54,400
Speaker 1: through which only the bear could pass, and waited. The

1704
01:35:54,560 --> 01:35:58,280
Speaker 1: last grizzly walked into the string and shot himself. It

1705
01:35:58,439 --> 01:36:02,479
Speaker 1: was June. The pelt was foul, patchy, and worthless. It

1706
01:36:02,600 --> 01:36:05,320
Speaker 1: seemed to us rather an insult to deny the last

1707
01:36:05,400 --> 01:36:07,920
Speaker 1: grizzly the chance to leave a good pelt as a

1708
01:36:08,120 --> 01:36:11,120
Speaker 1: memorial to his race. All he left was a skull

1709
01:36:11,200 --> 01:36:14,760
Speaker 1: in the National Museum and a quarrel among scientists over

1710
01:36:14,840 --> 01:36:20,160
Speaker 1: the Latin name of the skull. Really, man, you guys

1711
01:36:20,200 --> 01:36:27,120
Speaker 1: got any last thoughts besides that? I had to ask,

1712
01:36:27,240 --> 01:36:29,479
Speaker 1: is still I have last thought questions still about the

1713
01:36:29,520 --> 01:36:32,080
Speaker 1: wilderness thing? Just so that are are we can appease

1714
01:36:32,400 --> 01:36:36,240
Speaker 1: all my friends worries you you dig that you're gonna

1715
01:36:36,240 --> 01:36:39,800
Speaker 1: dig into the conspiracy theories again? Yeah, because the other

1716
01:36:40,280 --> 01:36:43,120
Speaker 1: question that comes up is that if it's all primitive

1717
01:36:43,320 --> 01:36:47,200
Speaker 1: and and uh, at what point are they're gonna say

1718
01:36:47,200 --> 01:36:51,080
Speaker 1: you can't use modern firearms anymore in the wilderness. I

1719
01:36:51,160 --> 01:36:54,080
Speaker 1: think that's maybe not even really like the question that

1720
01:36:54,080 --> 01:36:55,920
Speaker 1: needs to be answered, but just answered to me. You

1721
01:36:55,960 --> 01:36:57,519
Speaker 1: already said it that it would take an act of

1722
01:36:57,600 --> 01:37:01,719
Speaker 1: Congress like make any But what change? Right? That's ridiculous

1723
01:37:01,720 --> 01:37:05,400
Speaker 1: because the nineteen sixty four you're not it's not seventeen

1724
01:37:05,439 --> 01:37:10,360
Speaker 1: sixty four barrels shooting two seventies. No, I know, but

1725
01:37:10,439 --> 01:37:13,320
Speaker 1: it's like it's a mechanized piece of equipment. Right, let

1726
01:37:13,400 --> 01:37:17,320
Speaker 1: me go back, It's not motorized motorizing, wheeled conveyances. Yeah,

1727
01:37:17,400 --> 01:37:19,519
Speaker 1: so I mean that's the Acting. This listing of prohibity

1728
01:37:19,600 --> 01:37:23,479
Speaker 1: uses talks about you know, landing of aircraft, motor vehicles,

1729
01:37:23,520 --> 01:37:28,400
Speaker 1: motorized equipment, and mechanized transportation. Mechanized transport, so these wheeled vehicles,

1730
01:37:29,240 --> 01:37:32,400
Speaker 1: um or you know, sailboats, anything that allows one to

1731
01:37:32,560 --> 01:37:37,120
Speaker 1: travel or to carry goods via mechanical advantage. So um,

1732
01:37:37,320 --> 01:37:40,760
Speaker 1: a firearm doesn't fall within any of those categories. So

1733
01:37:41,360 --> 01:37:43,280
Speaker 1: again you read, you go back to the the Act,

1734
01:37:43,360 --> 01:37:46,879
Speaker 1: and that's our guidance, as are the four Wilderness Managing Agencies,

1735
01:37:46,920 --> 01:37:49,280
Speaker 1: and and we have no legal basis to ever even

1736
01:37:49,400 --> 01:37:53,040
Speaker 1: entertain something like that. Excellent, That's exactly what I needed

1737
01:37:53,080 --> 01:37:55,040
Speaker 1: to hear your email with somebody right now about this.

1738
01:37:55,200 --> 01:37:57,960
Speaker 1: No no, no, no no. This is from a recent

1739
01:37:58,040 --> 01:38:00,920
Speaker 1: conversation I had, but that tooks actly what needed to

1740
01:38:00,960 --> 01:38:05,200
Speaker 1: be stated, like it's awesome, thank you. You know. In

1741
01:38:05,439 --> 01:38:10,360
Speaker 1: um and Joan Didion's book, uh, she wrote to two

1742
01:38:10,400 --> 01:38:12,800
Speaker 1: books about the sixties, almost called the White Album, and

1743
01:38:12,920 --> 01:38:16,040
Speaker 1: one was called Slouching towards Bethlehem. And I think it

1744
01:38:16,200 --> 01:38:22,120
Speaker 1: wasn't Slouching towards Bethlehem, Uh, which was written in the

1745
01:38:22,200 --> 01:38:24,800
Speaker 1: pre Internet age. Okay, so the Internet wasn't even here yet.

1746
01:38:25,520 --> 01:38:27,920
Speaker 1: But in Slouching towards Bethlehem, she talked, she's talking about

1747
01:38:27,960 --> 01:38:31,080
Speaker 1: people who who live in a in a in an

1748
01:38:31,160 --> 01:38:34,840
Speaker 1: intellectual fantasy land, and she describes it like that that

1749
01:38:36,400 --> 01:38:38,559
Speaker 1: we have so much and she again pre internet, which

1750
01:38:38,560 --> 01:38:41,320
Speaker 1: is something we have. There's so much information out there,

1751
01:38:41,800 --> 01:38:44,720
Speaker 1: and there's so much like factual information out there that

1752
01:38:44,840 --> 01:38:49,840
Speaker 1: people get overwhelmed by the duties that they would have

1753
01:38:50,120 --> 01:38:54,960
Speaker 1: to inform themselves about certain issues. And it's such an overwhelming,

1754
01:38:55,120 --> 01:38:59,880
Speaker 1: daunting task to really go out and find out the

1755
01:39:00,120 --> 01:39:03,519
Speaker 1: truth of a matter that you just kind of get

1756
01:39:03,560 --> 01:39:06,479
Speaker 1: to a place where you're like, screw it. It's a

1757
01:39:06,560 --> 01:39:08,680
Speaker 1: lot easier just to listen to what my buddy at

1758
01:39:08,720 --> 01:39:12,160
Speaker 1: the bar said, because that saves me. That gives me

1759
01:39:12,280 --> 01:39:14,479
Speaker 1: this thing where I feel like I know the real

1760
01:39:15,800 --> 01:39:18,320
Speaker 1: story without having to do any of the work of

1761
01:39:18,479 --> 01:39:22,240
Speaker 1: finding out like what actually is going on. And I

1762
01:39:22,360 --> 01:39:26,080
Speaker 1: think that that is only it's like only become worse

1763
01:39:26,760 --> 01:39:31,600
Speaker 1: as the amount of information has increased. People's tendency to

1764
01:39:31,720 --> 01:39:36,360
Speaker 1: retreat from information as increased because it's hard to go

1765
01:39:36,560 --> 01:39:40,479
Speaker 1: find out, like to get a nuanced perspective on things.

1766
01:39:40,840 --> 01:39:43,240
Speaker 1: It's just so much easy to be like, yeah, well

1767
01:39:43,400 --> 01:39:48,400
Speaker 1: what Bob told me that any what Bob said you

1768
01:39:49,040 --> 01:39:50,559
Speaker 1: so kind of along those lines that you guys are

1769
01:39:50,880 --> 01:39:52,800
Speaker 1: I mean still in the mode of closing thoughts. I mean,

1770
01:39:52,840 --> 01:39:55,479
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share that we dragged the closers on.

1771
01:39:55,640 --> 01:39:57,840
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Yeah, that's cool. I mean, you know, so

1772
01:39:58,520 --> 01:40:01,920
Speaker 1: I name everyone around this tape values, you know, fish, wildlife,

1773
01:40:02,240 --> 01:40:04,560
Speaker 1: wilderness and other wild lands and these experiences that you

1774
01:40:04,600 --> 01:40:09,680
Speaker 1: can have. UM. And you know, I feel like I'm

1775
01:40:09,720 --> 01:40:12,360
Speaker 1: a new hunter. We didn't talk about that. UM started

1776
01:40:12,439 --> 01:40:15,120
Speaker 1: last year in earnest UM grew up in Seattle, Like

1777
01:40:15,120 --> 01:40:16,920
Speaker 1: I said, run around public lands. I joke around that

1778
01:40:16,960 --> 01:40:18,519
Speaker 1: I'm like the long haired you know, for you guys

1779
01:40:18,560 --> 01:40:20,599
Speaker 1: can't see me on the podcast, I'm like a long

1780
01:40:20,640 --> 01:40:26,320
Speaker 1: haired granola eating you know, seattleleite wilderness guy. UM. But recently,

1781
01:40:26,439 --> 01:40:29,519
Speaker 1: I mean through my upbringing in in that context and

1782
01:40:29,680 --> 01:40:32,680
Speaker 1: value on local food where you know where it comes from,

1783
01:40:32,800 --> 01:40:35,120
Speaker 1: and you know, you have ethics about the well being

1784
01:40:35,280 --> 01:40:37,200
Speaker 1: of you know, any any kind of animal products that

1785
01:40:37,240 --> 01:40:40,000
Speaker 1: you eat, Hunting was a natural fit for me, and

1786
01:40:40,080 --> 01:40:41,840
Speaker 1: so I make friends with guys like Jerry and Carl,

1787
01:40:41,880 --> 01:40:45,080
Speaker 1: who I know value they span these kind of traditional

1788
01:40:45,320 --> 01:40:48,439
Speaker 1: communities like the hunters and anglers and the wilderness people.

1789
01:40:48,920 --> 01:40:51,040
Speaker 1: Um so I'm I'm pleased, and I know the two

1790
01:40:51,040 --> 01:40:54,320
Speaker 1: of you are the same pleased to have a company

1791
01:40:54,400 --> 01:40:56,560
Speaker 1: like that. But you know, there's still a ton of

1792
01:40:56,640 --> 01:40:58,720
Speaker 1: work to be done, you know where we share. I mean,

1793
01:40:59,000 --> 01:41:02,280
Speaker 1: you know, I look at my friends who are are

1794
01:41:02,400 --> 01:41:04,400
Speaker 1: you know, maybe who don't know as much as about wilderness,

1795
01:41:04,400 --> 01:41:06,800
Speaker 1: who who value hunting, my wilderness friends who are not

1796
01:41:06,920 --> 01:41:09,639
Speaker 1: hunters and anglers, and you look at their value systems

1797
01:41:09,880 --> 01:41:13,599
Speaker 1: and there's far more overlap in common value than difference.

1798
01:41:13,640 --> 01:41:15,640
Speaker 1: You know, they're gonna be some minor differences. And so

1799
01:41:15,760 --> 01:41:18,479
Speaker 1: my closing thought as a person who cares deeply about

1800
01:41:19,280 --> 01:41:23,479
Speaker 1: you know, wilderness, wild places, ecosystems, and biodiversity, is for

1801
01:41:23,600 --> 01:41:25,960
Speaker 1: folks to get out of their comfort zones, get out

1802
01:41:25,960 --> 01:41:28,720
Speaker 1: of their communities and where they don't have these established relationships,

1803
01:41:29,640 --> 01:41:32,679
Speaker 1: you know with the quote other side, you know, build

1804
01:41:32,720 --> 01:41:35,040
Speaker 1: those relationships, or get out and give back to your

1805
01:41:35,080 --> 01:41:38,000
Speaker 1: public lands, Volunteer for one of your your national forests,

1806
01:41:38,080 --> 01:41:41,000
Speaker 1: and in some kind of stewardship activity, get involved with

1807
01:41:41,320 --> 01:41:42,960
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna speak on on behalf of the

1808
01:41:42,960 --> 01:41:46,040
Speaker 1: wilderness community. You know, we have organizations like the New

1809
01:41:46,080 --> 01:41:49,840
Speaker 1: Mexico Wilderness Alliance, who do they do advocacy, which we

1810
01:41:49,880 --> 01:41:51,840
Speaker 1: don't do in the government, but they also have a

1811
01:41:51,840 --> 01:41:54,519
Speaker 1: stewardship program. They're helping us take care of these wild places,

1812
01:41:54,640 --> 01:41:59,160
Speaker 1: keeping them natural, keeping them wild, get engaged, and they've

1813
01:41:59,160 --> 01:42:01,240
Speaker 1: actually done a great job. I'm in working with the

1814
01:42:01,280 --> 01:42:04,280
Speaker 1: back country hunters and anglers and New Mexican Wildlife Federation

1815
01:42:04,360 --> 01:42:08,400
Speaker 1: to to find and sort of, you know, act upon

1816
01:42:08,520 --> 01:42:11,120
Speaker 1: that common value system. But I think there's a lot

1817
01:42:11,360 --> 01:42:13,760
Speaker 1: more really fruitful work to be done on behalf of

1818
01:42:13,800 --> 01:42:16,120
Speaker 1: public lands and acknowledging we all have a lot of

1819
01:42:16,400 --> 01:42:20,320
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in common to continue building those relationships,

1820
01:42:20,680 --> 01:42:23,160
Speaker 1: you know, kind of outside of our traditional communities. So

1821
01:42:23,800 --> 01:42:25,760
Speaker 1: that's something that I you know, it strikes me as

1822
01:42:25,800 --> 01:42:27,840
Speaker 1: sort of a again a long term sort of a

1823
01:42:28,560 --> 01:42:30,840
Speaker 1: part of the willerness community that's newer to the hunting

1824
01:42:30,840 --> 01:42:35,480
Speaker 1: and angland community. Yeah, my allegiance, like my lifelong allegiance

1825
01:42:35,600 --> 01:42:42,840
Speaker 1: to hunting and fishing is what delivered me into wilderness advocacy.

1826
01:42:43,439 --> 01:42:46,920
Speaker 1: It wasn't the other way. Around. It was like my

1827
01:42:47,479 --> 01:42:51,080
Speaker 1: question all the time is like when faced with an issue,

1828
01:42:51,360 --> 01:42:57,160
Speaker 1: as you asked myself, um, what's best for hunters and

1829
01:42:57,240 --> 01:43:01,599
Speaker 1: fishermen and wildlife? You know, that's like my guiding principle

1830
01:43:01,640 --> 01:43:05,080
Speaker 1: on things that pertained to that space. And it was

1831
01:43:05,280 --> 01:43:08,640
Speaker 1: in asking myself that question all the time that I

1832
01:43:08,760 --> 01:43:14,640
Speaker 1: came to be a proponent and an advocate for wilderness.

1833
01:43:15,160 --> 01:43:16,640
Speaker 1: I would flip it around there and say, you know,

1834
01:43:16,720 --> 01:43:19,639
Speaker 1: what's best for a wilderness? And there are certainly multiple things,

1835
01:43:19,720 --> 01:43:22,760
Speaker 1: but hunters and english you know, people who get out

1836
01:43:23,200 --> 01:43:26,559
Speaker 1: enjoy take advantage of these these wild places, and we'll

1837
01:43:26,600 --> 01:43:30,160
Speaker 1: turn around and and advocate for their stewardship, you know.

1838
01:43:30,240 --> 01:43:32,639
Speaker 1: And so I'd say, I'd say it's a two way street. Yeah,

1839
01:43:34,840 --> 01:43:39,120
Speaker 1: anyone else. I got a couple of thoughts at you. So,

1840
01:43:39,280 --> 01:43:43,080
Speaker 1: first of all, I think, you know, these two guys,

1841
01:43:43,160 --> 01:43:47,320
Speaker 1: Born and Jerry are a really interesting kind of pair

1842
01:43:47,600 --> 01:43:50,559
Speaker 1: the direction that took them into this line of work.

1843
01:43:50,600 --> 01:43:54,439
Speaker 1: If you if you compare the process by which Jerry

1844
01:43:54,479 --> 01:43:57,320
Speaker 1: came aboard with Federal Land Management Agency to that a Born,

1845
01:43:57,400 --> 01:44:01,400
Speaker 1: you've got a rural guy an urban guy, but both

1846
01:44:01,439 --> 01:44:05,120
Speaker 1: of them very passionate about the public lands system and

1847
01:44:05,680 --> 01:44:08,959
Speaker 1: our agency and the folks who work for other agencies

1848
01:44:09,040 --> 01:44:13,240
Speaker 1: at the state level, other federal land management agencies, we

1849
01:44:14,800 --> 01:44:19,200
Speaker 1: all tend to have a very strong relationship to the

1850
01:44:19,240 --> 01:44:23,479
Speaker 1: resources that we manage. And I think there's a tendency

1851
01:44:23,680 --> 01:44:25,719
Speaker 1: when you're talking about a big organization like the Forest

1852
01:44:25,760 --> 01:44:29,519
Speaker 1: Service has more than thirty thousand employees, it becomes kind

1853
01:44:29,560 --> 01:44:36,640
Speaker 1: of faceless. It's just this big, mysterious organization. But I

1854
01:44:36,680 --> 01:44:40,680
Speaker 1: think it's important for people to realize that a lot

1855
01:44:40,720 --> 01:44:43,360
Speaker 1: of the folks working in this outfit and others again

1856
01:44:43,439 --> 01:44:46,519
Speaker 1: at the state and federal level, are coming into these

1857
01:44:46,600 --> 01:44:50,360
Speaker 1: jobs from a place of deep passion and reverence over

1858
01:44:50,400 --> 01:44:53,280
Speaker 1: the resources that we're managing on behalf of the public

1859
01:44:54,040 --> 01:44:56,479
Speaker 1: and we share a lot of the same motivations and passions,

1860
01:44:56,520 --> 01:44:58,200
Speaker 1: even though we come from a lot of different directions.

1861
01:44:58,360 --> 01:45:02,720
Speaker 1: Like Pyrn and Jerry and then the parting shot I'll

1862
01:45:02,800 --> 01:45:05,080
Speaker 1: take it gets back to this question you asked about

1863
01:45:05,120 --> 01:45:08,080
Speaker 1: the biggest the biggest threats that we face like in

1864
01:45:08,160 --> 01:45:11,560
Speaker 1: the in the long run here um and I'm just

1865
01:45:11,600 --> 01:45:15,479
Speaker 1: going to speak about this country because I think there's

1866
01:45:15,520 --> 01:45:17,760
Speaker 1: some challenges we face as a global community that are

1867
01:45:17,840 --> 01:45:19,800
Speaker 1: very pressing as well before Yeah, I want I want

1868
01:45:19,800 --> 01:45:21,639
Speaker 1: to back up, just clarify, because you can't. You're saying

1869
01:45:21,680 --> 01:45:23,200
Speaker 1: something that's kind of blowing my mind. Are you saying

1870
01:45:23,240 --> 01:45:25,519
Speaker 1: you guys didn't come to work for the force service

1871
01:45:25,600 --> 01:45:29,799
Speaker 1: for the money. Well, so let me let me respond

1872
01:45:29,840 --> 01:45:32,040
Speaker 1: to that. I will say I think a lot. You know,

1873
01:45:32,080 --> 01:45:34,680
Speaker 1: people who go into natural resource management UM tend to

1874
01:45:34,720 --> 01:45:39,679
Speaker 1: be motivated by motivated primarily by things other than making

1875
01:45:39,720 --> 01:45:42,000
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. Yeah, it's not like it's not like

1876
01:45:42,080 --> 01:45:45,479
Speaker 1: going to word for Goldman. That being set for folks

1877
01:45:45,560 --> 01:45:49,040
Speaker 1: out there listening who are contemplating career tracks in natural

1878
01:45:49,040 --> 01:45:52,639
Speaker 1: resources management, for the the young men and women who

1879
01:45:52,680 --> 01:45:55,639
Speaker 1: are in high school right now listening to this, there

1880
01:45:55,760 --> 01:46:00,920
Speaker 1: are jobs, there are career tracks available in these agencies

1881
01:46:01,040 --> 01:46:03,920
Speaker 1: where your quality of life can be phenomenal. And when

1882
01:46:03,960 --> 01:46:06,240
Speaker 1: you get up and go to work and you're doing

1883
01:46:06,360 --> 01:46:09,200
Speaker 1: a job that feels like important work and it resonates

1884
01:46:09,240 --> 01:46:11,559
Speaker 1: with you on a personal level, you have a form

1885
01:46:11,640 --> 01:46:14,479
Speaker 1: of wealth that few people on the face of this

1886
01:46:14,600 --> 01:46:17,360
Speaker 1: planet can lay claim to. To feel like the work

1887
01:46:17,439 --> 01:46:22,240
Speaker 1: that you're doing is important, and uh, you get up

1888
01:46:22,360 --> 01:46:25,800
Speaker 1: wanting to go in and contribute it's something very few

1889
01:46:25,840 --> 01:46:28,080
Speaker 1: people experience. So if you think that something you might

1890
01:46:28,120 --> 01:46:29,960
Speaker 1: want to do, not mean that as I did not

1891
01:46:30,080 --> 01:46:32,200
Speaker 1: mean that as a hack. I just meant that, And

1892
01:46:32,400 --> 01:46:34,960
Speaker 1: I'm talking about relatives of mine and my dearest friends.

1893
01:46:35,320 --> 01:46:40,680
Speaker 1: It's like like adventure, right, a sense of adventure, a

1894
01:46:40,760 --> 01:46:43,200
Speaker 1: sense of wine to see new things, a sense of

1895
01:46:43,280 --> 01:46:45,920
Speaker 1: wanting to do public service, a sense of wine to

1896
01:46:46,000 --> 01:46:49,720
Speaker 1: find a way to have a life that that has

1897
01:46:49,960 --> 01:46:55,519
Speaker 1: a strong outdoor element. These, more than other factors, seem

1898
01:46:55,600 --> 01:46:59,759
Speaker 1: to bring people to public service in land management agencies.

1899
01:46:59,800 --> 01:47:02,200
Speaker 1: I was not I don't mean you're not the wrong way.

1900
01:47:02,240 --> 01:47:04,560
Speaker 1: I just want people to know, like we we you

1901
01:47:04,600 --> 01:47:08,599
Speaker 1: know these agencies, state agencies, federal agencies. We need people

1902
01:47:09,160 --> 01:47:14,559
Speaker 1: coming into our doors, into public service careers who embody

1903
01:47:14,640 --> 01:47:17,280
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, that passion for the resource. And

1904
01:47:17,920 --> 01:47:21,599
Speaker 1: that being said, you know, the salaries are very competitive

1905
01:47:21,640 --> 01:47:23,639
Speaker 1: if you're in this line of work. I feel very

1906
01:47:23,720 --> 01:47:26,720
Speaker 1: thankful for every aspect of the job I'm in and

1907
01:47:26,840 --> 01:47:32,160
Speaker 1: have a comfortable lifestyle, very comfortable lifestyle. So along these lines,

1908
01:47:32,200 --> 01:47:34,960
Speaker 1: I've got a tr quote for you, Steve, far and away,

1909
01:47:35,280 --> 01:47:38,920
Speaker 1: the best prize that life has to offer is working hard.

1910
01:47:39,080 --> 01:47:43,280
Speaker 1: At work worth doing the best prize that life has

1911
01:47:43,320 --> 01:47:45,840
Speaker 1: to offer. And I feel like the work that Jerry

1912
01:47:46,000 --> 01:47:49,360
Speaker 1: bjorn I and thirties some thousand other people in this

1913
01:47:49,520 --> 01:47:52,920
Speaker 1: outfit are doing, we're working hard at work worth doing,

1914
01:47:53,000 --> 01:47:54,920
Speaker 1: and we're doing it for the public. And that's a

1915
01:47:54,960 --> 01:47:58,519
Speaker 1: really sweet thing to be doing as a professional. And

1916
01:47:58,600 --> 01:48:01,439
Speaker 1: then getting back to your question about the biggest challenges,

1917
01:48:01,520 --> 01:48:05,080
Speaker 1: like what what do I see as kind of existential

1918
01:48:05,400 --> 01:48:09,240
Speaker 1: threats to our culture and how it relates to wilderness.

1919
01:48:10,240 --> 01:48:15,360
Speaker 1: We talked a lot about the rugged individualism in this

1920
01:48:15,760 --> 01:48:19,439
Speaker 1: notion of self reliance and how wilderness has played into

1921
01:48:19,479 --> 01:48:23,360
Speaker 1: our history and our ethos as an American culture. And

1922
01:48:23,680 --> 01:48:26,880
Speaker 1: I I'm speaking personally right now, but I feel like

1923
01:48:27,080 --> 01:48:35,000
Speaker 1: our are increasingly tame existence as a species is inherently

1924
01:48:35,479 --> 01:48:37,760
Speaker 1: a threat to our well being. And I mean in

1925
01:48:37,920 --> 01:48:43,000
Speaker 1: terms of our our mental and physical well being, and

1926
01:48:43,080 --> 01:48:46,240
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of our ecological awareness and literacy.

1927
01:48:47,400 --> 01:48:50,879
Speaker 1: So if we have places where people can immerse themselves

1928
01:48:50,920 --> 01:48:54,599
Speaker 1: in a natural setting and become acutely attuned to our

1929
01:48:54,680 --> 01:48:59,960
Speaker 1: relationship with and dependence upon the natural world, that translates

1930
01:49:00,040 --> 01:49:03,000
Speaker 1: into a whole host of behaviors that I think are

1931
01:49:03,120 --> 01:49:10,360
Speaker 1: imperative for our persistence on a healthy planet. Yeah, just relevancy,

1932
01:49:10,720 --> 01:49:16,880
Speaker 1: an engagement. Yeah, so the big threat to summarize our

1933
01:49:16,960 --> 01:49:22,120
Speaker 1: lifestyles are becoming to tame wilderness in contrast to the

1934
01:49:22,240 --> 01:49:27,000
Speaker 1: normal routine of an Americans life now in this era,

1935
01:49:27,960 --> 01:49:32,160
Speaker 1: is an opportunity to escape that tameness, to be humbled,

1936
01:49:32,720 --> 01:49:38,959
Speaker 1: to experience humility, to be really uncomfortable sometimes, to be challenged.

1937
01:49:39,760 --> 01:49:43,280
Speaker 1: And you know, all the opportunities for recreation, hunting, fishing,

1938
01:49:43,479 --> 01:49:46,400
Speaker 1: et cetera feed right into that. But the key, the

1939
01:49:46,520 --> 01:49:52,080
Speaker 1: key ingredient is having those places on the map where

1940
01:49:53,479 --> 01:49:57,920
Speaker 1: you have an escape. And most countries around the world

1941
01:49:57,960 --> 01:50:00,200
Speaker 1: do not have that at their ready disposal way that

1942
01:50:00,240 --> 01:50:03,160
Speaker 1: we do. Yeah. I once heard wilderness described as the

1943
01:50:03,280 --> 01:50:08,120
Speaker 1: nation's proving grounds, and uh that that resonated with me

1944
01:50:08,439 --> 01:50:11,160
Speaker 1: because at the time that I discovered it, it served

1945
01:50:11,200 --> 01:50:14,639
Speaker 1: that purpose. I mean, it gave shape to my life

1946
01:50:17,160 --> 01:50:19,800
Speaker 1: that it. Honey, I was just gonna say out nice

1947
01:50:19,840 --> 01:50:22,639
Speaker 1: closing thought, but yeah, that willness is a set place

1948
01:50:22,760 --> 01:50:25,679
Speaker 1: where you can go and uh, you can really feel

1949
01:50:25,720 --> 01:50:28,200
Speaker 1: how small you are in the universe. You know, when

1950
01:50:28,240 --> 01:50:31,240
Speaker 1: you go there and you're humbled and you just realize

1951
01:50:31,280 --> 01:50:34,920
Speaker 1: that environment doesn't really care about you. And um that

1952
01:50:35,080 --> 01:50:36,720
Speaker 1: my brother always talked about how much he likes it

1953
01:50:36,720 --> 01:50:39,120
Speaker 1: because he likes how scared it makes him feel all

1954
01:50:39,160 --> 01:50:42,120
Speaker 1: the time. Here is an important emotion that I experienced

1955
01:50:42,120 --> 01:50:44,000
Speaker 1: for sure that I would add it to Carl's list.

1956
01:50:44,160 --> 01:50:48,240
Speaker 1: What's the what's the Leopold quote? Man? Um, poor is

1957
01:50:48,360 --> 01:50:53,040
Speaker 1: the life that achieves freedom from fear? Right? Yeah? Yeah, man,

1958
01:50:53,160 --> 01:50:55,519
Speaker 1: laying in bed at night, just waiting for that old

1959
01:50:55,560 --> 01:50:58,519
Speaker 1: bear to get you. That's good for you. I'm glad.

1960
01:50:58,520 --> 01:51:00,640
Speaker 1: I shall never be young without while places to be

1961
01:51:00,760 --> 01:51:04,160
Speaker 1: young in. Yeah, go on all day, all right, thank you,