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Speaker 1: dot com. F I R S T l I t
Speaker 1: e dot com. Joined today by US Senator Tim Sheehe
Speaker 1: represents the state of Montana.
Speaker 3: UH.
Speaker 1: Senator she He joined the US Special or no not
Speaker 1: US Special Forces, former Navy seal, came out of the
Speaker 1: service and went into wild land firefighting from with an
Speaker 1: aviation from an aviation angle as hills plane. Came out
Speaker 1: of that business and was just elected to the US Senate.
Speaker 1: You got they call you guys freshmen. Yeah, freshman senator
Speaker 1: from Montana. We're going to talk about background, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about wildfires, we're gonna talk about public lands, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a couple of other things that come
Speaker 1: up along the way. But uh, for starters, you from Minnesota.
Speaker 1: One of our colleagues, Maggie said, you're from her hometown
Speaker 1: of Minnesota. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Greright up across the street there that there was this
Speaker 2: old army base that used to build It was a
Speaker 2: main fifty caliber ammunition plant there and that closed down
Speaker 2: like after Vietnam. So we grew up on a five
Speaker 2: acre plot around a lot of other folks, and then
Speaker 2: right across the street was the barber or fence, this
Speaker 2: old army base that was thousands of acres of basically
Speaker 2: just like abandoned land. And uh, yeah, it was pretty
Speaker 2: cool place to grow up because could you go running
Speaker 2: around in there. Well we weren't supposed to, but of course,
Speaker 2: you know, of course you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit. The kids can do it.
Speaker 1: They that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they'd see us sometimes and come, you know,
Speaker 2: yell at some like you know, it's an abandoned basis
Speaker 2: and I think, see what going on there? It's and
Speaker 2: we go in the old factories. It's huge. One building
Speaker 2: was fourteen acres on the inside. And when they like
Speaker 2: shut the doors and left, I mean it's like, I
Speaker 2: mean everything was there. You go to the filing cabinets,
Speaker 2: all the orders were there, really, the keys, the bathroom
Speaker 2: had toilet I mean that this play's been banned for
Speaker 2: thirty years and they had toilet paper rolls. I mean
Speaker 2: they literally shut the gates and walked away. And for
Speaker 2: you know, of course that thing's like asbesos everywhere and
Speaker 2: there's like you know, holes in the ceiling. So it
Speaker 2: was not a safe OCEHA approved environment for kids to
Speaker 2: be playing. But that's what we did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but at that age, if somebody comes and yells
Speaker 3: at you, it just becomes a game, not an actual toilet.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's hilarious about that, with the age
Speaker 1: at which you can just go around and not get
Speaker 1: in big trouble, and then you hit another age and
Speaker 1: you can't. There's this hill. I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to say to me, I don't want to like call
Speaker 1: out a neighbor, but there's a hill by our house,
Speaker 1: and our little kids sled there all the time, never
Speaker 1: a word. But our fourteen year old, his body's go
Speaker 1: over there, sled immediately he has to leave exactly totally.
Speaker 1: But our ten year old could slid there all day
Speaker 1: and no one says anything to them. You know, he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There was the age when they're gonna
Speaker 1: do something dumb.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there's there's that. There's that phase where like,
Speaker 2: you know, self awareness is assumed to be present, you know,
Speaker 2: like you know you were aware enough of yourself that
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be doing this. Then there's that age wonder
Speaker 2: it's like whatever, we don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that kid probably knows, yes, he's not actually
Speaker 1: supposed to be on this.
Speaker 2: Hill, right, but yeah, we go in there. And then
Speaker 2: once I was in the military, I came home one
Speaker 2: time on leave and went in. I was like, I
Speaker 2: went to the base at this point, hey can I go?
Speaker 2: Like they're like sure, Like hand me the keys, and
Speaker 2: I walked around like ten, I said, this is boring,
Speaker 2: Like it was so much more fun when like we
Speaker 2: knew we weren't supposed to be there. Then it was
Speaker 2: like we spent hours running around playing games, and now
Speaker 2: I could be there. I was like, there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of abandoned buildings and I'm leaving. That's great.
Speaker 1: What was your uh, how did you decide to join military?
Speaker 1: Like and not only that, but not only joined the military,
Speaker 1: but going into the into the Navy seals, Like, uh,
Speaker 1: what was that process for you?
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's as you guys probably know, I mean,
Speaker 2: And it's like I just turned thirty nine a few
Speaker 2: months ago, and it's like, and I was telling someone
Speaker 2: the other day. I was talking to a young man
Speaker 2: at wanting to go to the Nail Academy, and and
Speaker 2: you know, he had his whole life planned out. He's
Speaker 2: nineteen years old and knows, you know, I gotta do
Speaker 2: this and then that and that. I said, listen, you
Speaker 2: know if you'd asked me when I was sixteen, twenty four,
Speaker 2: twenty eight, thirty six where I was going to be
Speaker 2: in five years, I would have been wrong every single time,
Speaker 2: like every single time. So you know, I knew I
Speaker 2: wanted to be in the military. I just did. I
Speaker 2: have no idea why. My Mom's like, yeah, from the
Speaker 2: time you could like run, you had a stick in
Speaker 2: your hand and run around the woods, you know, shooting
Speaker 2: things pretending you were you know, whatever.
Speaker 1: What war did you guys do?
Speaker 2: We did?
Speaker 1: We did World War.
Speaker 2: Two always, yeah, of course, I mean all them war
Speaker 2: movies as kids, you know, and cowboys and yeah we did.
Speaker 1: Like Americans and the Germans, yes.
Speaker 2: And never the jet Japanese like it was never the
Speaker 2: Pacific things we did.
Speaker 1: We didn't fight the jet. It was always European.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, you know. I grew up Dirty dozen Kelly's
Speaker 2: heroes all that stuff. So yeah, I was always running
Speaker 2: around the woods, yeah, pretending, you know, Normandy whatever. So anyways,
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to go on the military. And
Speaker 2: my neighbor growing up was a Korean War Navy pilot.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have really much relations on my grandparents.
Speaker 2: My mother's side that they died off when I was
Speaker 2: really young, or one before I was born, the one
Speaker 2: when I was young, and then my dad's side just
Speaker 2: we didn't have much relationship there. There was some you know,
Speaker 2: just old school familial strife. So he kind of became
Speaker 2: my grandfather figure. And he is Harry Tebow's name, and
Speaker 2: his son Steve Tebow and their whole family great folks.
Speaker 2: So he I knew I was interested in the military,
Speaker 2: and he took me up flying in his cub when
Speaker 2: I was like eight or nine years old, and right
Speaker 2: away I was like, I love aviation, Like this is amazing.
Speaker 2: And as soon as I could reach the rudder pedals
Speaker 2: my feet when I was like eleven, he started teaching
Speaker 2: me how to fly.
Speaker 1: So really.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So at that point I decided I was going to
Speaker 2: go on the military and be as we were just
Speaker 2: talking before he started about Top Gun. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: a child of the eighties. Of course we all watched
Speaker 2: Top Gun on VHS, so you know, we watched so
Speaker 2: many times. The tape was wearing out, you know, and
Speaker 2: of course the dog fighting scenes were wined and watched
Speaker 2: so many times, you know, like you could see the
Speaker 2: tape had been uh, you know, degraded over time. But
Speaker 2: so I was like, I'm gonna go naval cando be
Speaker 2: a fire pile. And so I was flying planes for
Speaker 2: as drabbing cars, got my soul at the plane before
Speaker 2: I had my driver's license, got my pile's license in
Speaker 2: high school, no kid, and then yeah, I went to
Speaker 2: the academy to be be a fighter pile. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and then got there and you know, I was in
Speaker 2: high school on nine to eleven. Happened as probably all
Speaker 2: we were seeming all rough of the same age, so
Speaker 2: you know, it was was was that that was a
Speaker 2: defining factor of all of our young lives. And then
Speaker 2: I got a huge jump on you. I was in
Speaker 2: graduate school. Yeah really, well your age, well you look great,
Speaker 2: you know, fine one, you know, but yes, but I was,
Speaker 2: uh so got to the academy. This is fall of four,
Speaker 2: summer of four, and you know, I I you know,
Speaker 2: there's always perception of organization from the outside. You perceive
Speaker 2: something from the outside, and when you're inside, you know,
Speaker 2: your perceptions normally clash with the reality and things changed.
Speaker 2: So I knew I wanted to be a fighter pilot
Speaker 2: and going in and when I got there, you know,
Speaker 2: I was immersed in the military for the first time really,
Speaker 2: and you know, we had Iraq was going full swing,
Speaker 2: Afghanistan was going full swinging for the first time, and
Speaker 2: you know, forty years America was seeing couch that these
Speaker 2: come home. And we were you know that we had
Speaker 2: our first academy grad killed in action in a long time.
Speaker 2: So being at the Naval Academy was very you know,
Speaker 2: it was a wartime feel. And I think something's unique
Speaker 2: about the Gwatt Glo War and terror, of course, was
Speaker 2: people in the military, like the two percent of people
Speaker 2: in America that served, like we were all at war
Speaker 2: for twenty years. You know. Yeah, like my wife, she
Speaker 2: was a marine. We met the academy, like her brother
Speaker 2: served like everyone we knew, all of our best friends,
Speaker 2: all of our families were living the war. Yet most
Speaker 2: of America wasn't. They just went on with life as normal.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like World War Two, where everybody was pitching
Speaker 2: in and rationing food and rationing rubber, and everyone had
Speaker 2: a brother or a son deployed for us. It was
Speaker 2: like a super small sector of America deployed again and
Speaker 2: again and again and again and again, felt the pain
Speaker 2: and carried the load. So anyways, where I'm going with
Speaker 2: that is I get to the Academy and pretty quickly
Speaker 2: realized that, you know, this is a ground war. I
Speaker 2: wanted to fly planes, but you know the war is
Speaker 2: being fought door to door, you know, in Solder City
Speaker 2: and you know, rock the rock in the valleys of
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and flying up above ahead. I mean, you were
Speaker 2: a supporting act, like the real action was on the ground.
Speaker 2: So I actually quit the academy. My my fall my
Speaker 2: freshman year. I was like, hey, I got to go
Speaker 2: fight the war, Like I've got to go typical eighteen
Speaker 2: nae gienal Kid Filipiss and Vigor. I'm like, I've got
Speaker 2: to go fight because the war will be over by
Speaker 2: the time I graduated, I got to do my part.
Speaker 2: So I went to resign from the academy, and you know,
Speaker 2: I was I was at the top of my class
Speaker 2: at that point, very highly ranked that that that at
Speaker 2: that point in time, and they were like, hey, why
Speaker 2: are you like the top guy? What are you leaving?
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, I got to go fight, you know,
Speaker 2: like I can't sit here and take calculus while there's
Speaker 2: guys on the ground fighting. So I got to do
Speaker 2: my part. And my commanding officer from my company was like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, you know, bind you do what you
Speaker 2: want to do, but you got to talk to guy
Speaker 2: before you leave. Here's a name. He's going to meet
Speaker 2: you down at the at the kind of restaurant on
Speaker 2: campus tonight, which we weren't allowed in as pleeb So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like, well, I'm not allowed to go,
Speaker 2: and there's like, no, you can go tonight. I'll give
Speaker 2: you permission.
Speaker 3: Is it kind of like this is going to help
Speaker 3: you or hurt you?
Speaker 2: No context at all, no context like hey, cool, all right,
Speaker 2: you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you,
Speaker 2: but you need to talk to this guy. But you know,
Speaker 2: that's why I have a conversation with this guy. So
Speaker 2: I'm a plebe, you know, which is the lowest possible.
Speaker 1: You know, you're what's that stand for?
Speaker 2: So plebe is is what you call it. That's what
Speaker 2: your freshman. It's not an acronym no, like ancient Rome
Speaker 2: plebeans like T L E B E. Yah. So plebe like,
Speaker 2: which basically means the most common commoner. Like it's like
Speaker 2: a like a pawn in the game of chess. So
Speaker 2: you are the lowest ranking person in the military basically
Speaker 2: is a pleap. So instead of freshmen, we call them
Speaker 2: plebes at the service academy. So anyways, I go down
Speaker 2: to meet with this guy and it's a full bird
Speaker 2: Army colonel special Forces guy, which for a pleave is
Speaker 2: basically like, you know, get any higher than that. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh wow, Like I sir, He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you must be timp I'm like yeah, So I hear
Speaker 2: you're gonna quit and leave the academy. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I gotta go fight the war. I can't
Speaker 2: sit here and go to school while the war's going on.
Speaker 2: And he said, well, I just got back from my
Speaker 2: third deployment during the war, and I can tell you
Speaker 2: you're not going to miss it. We're going to be
Speaker 2: fighting this war for another twenty years. And what I
Speaker 2: need is smart young leaders and officers.
Speaker 1: Oh, he should have taken that message to the Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had to take that message to DC.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyways, that he convinced me to stick around and
Speaker 2: stay and finish my education of the process. You know,
Speaker 2: he long other stories for the front of the time,
Speaker 2: but I got to go in this exchange program where
Speaker 2: starting that next year, I went through Army Range of Training,
Speaker 2: Range of Regiment Exchange, Special Forces Group, Airborne Recoon School,
Speaker 2: so kind of the I went to the Army Commando
Speaker 2: Special Ops Training Pipeline, which was a great experience, met
Speaker 2: some amazing folks, learned a ton and because really our
Speaker 2: Special Operations Command jay sox so com, it's really an
Speaker 2: Army organization. I mean, the vast majority of our special
Speaker 2: ops organization in America is Army, like eighty five percent
Speaker 2: of it. And you know then you got basically Air Force,
Speaker 2: Marines and Navy makeup very small percentages. So the Seals
Speaker 2: are a very small part of our of our global
Speaker 2: special operations footprint. So it's important to understand how the
Speaker 2: Army works and that that was the reasoning there. So
Speaker 2: kind of by accident ended up going to the seal teams.
Speaker 2: And you know, once you're at the academy, you know,
Speaker 2: you start to figure out what culturally you fit best
Speaker 2: in and pilot naval aviation is is the best avay
Speaker 2: screen in the military. But at the same time, my
Speaker 2: personality fit pretty quickly I realized, you know, was with
Speaker 2: the with the seal teams, and you.
Speaker 1: Still have to do all the cold water stuff just
Speaker 1: like the seals. The but you still had to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you did, if you did.
Speaker 2: The validation and seal training, and so yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: thing man, Like, yeah, the the my specialty is walking,
Speaker 2: like I could do like I could do an elimination.
Speaker 1: Worse about walking, but sitting in cold water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just yeah, well that's that's one of one
Speaker 2: of the great attriting factors. And training is just the suck,
Speaker 2: you know. So you know everyone wants the videos and
Speaker 2: thinks it's, oh, this really tough physical evolution. You got
Speaker 2: to jump, you got to do this crazy obstacle course,
Speaker 2: you got to do this insanely you know, whatever, what
Speaker 2: gets guys isn't isn't the test gates, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: assembling weapons, jumping on the planes. What gets guys just
Speaker 2: the suck, just the continued suck of like not just
Speaker 2: that it sucks, but then the knowledge that it's going
Speaker 2: to continue to suck for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's not like a hunt.
Speaker 2: It's like, all right, well, you know we'll be out
Speaker 2: of here today or tomorrow, the next day, we're to
Speaker 2: get the truck running, like this is going to go
Speaker 2: on for and then you don't know, it's not like
Speaker 2: all right, it's sixty two more days to go, or
Speaker 2: it's like this will just continue to suck until it doesn't.
Speaker 2: And then that that unknown is what causes people to quit.
Speaker 2: That's really it's the unknown of how bad the pain
Speaker 2: will be and how long it will go for. When
Speaker 2: folks decide, all right, this isn't for me.
Speaker 1: When you got deployed, what kind of like where did
Speaker 1: you go and what were you working on? How did
Speaker 1: they spend your time?
Speaker 2: It was a crazy period of time. I mean a
Speaker 2: lot of times in life, you know, when you're in
Speaker 2: when you're in the soccer, when you're in that those
Speaker 2: Kadok periods of life. You know, they don't feel katok,
Speaker 2: You're just you're just doing it. And as you're normally
Speaker 2: years later, you look back, whether you have a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of kids close together, you know, whether it was
Speaker 2: a crazy time in your business, you know, or whether
Speaker 2: it was like during the war years. At the time,
Speaker 2: you just feel like you're doing your job and then
Speaker 2: kind of years later you look back, like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: like that was a crazy time. How much we were
Speaker 2: doing so, like I mean during my time and my wife,
Speaker 2: she had just commissioned into a Marine Corps officer, so
Speaker 2: we were a married couple that was doing you know,
Speaker 2: we were both deploying to the war zone separately. You
Speaker 2: don't like deploy together.
Speaker 1: It's not even not based out of the same area.
Speaker 2: No, no, like you know, like it's not a couple's
Speaker 2: golf trip, like I mean the Marine center where they
Speaker 2: need to go, and the Seals sent me where they
Speaker 2: need me to go. So like we're not like we
Speaker 2: got married to the mail like I'm a mail order
Speaker 2: husband literally. So she was in Afghanistan deployed. I was
Speaker 2: deployed somewhere else, and we kept trying to actually constantly
Speaker 2: get the marriage done, and we were like, we're not
Speaker 2: going to be together for like two and a half years.
Speaker 2: When are we actually going to be physically co located.
Speaker 4: Were you guys even able to communicate with each other
Speaker 4: in regularly?
Speaker 2: You know, it was just a pre skype and FaceTime
Speaker 2: and all that. So yes, but not like it is now,
Speaker 2: not when it's like open a tablet and like have
Speaker 2: a meeting. It was like everything was landline phone still
Speaker 2: at the bases, and snail mail and email when you
Speaker 2: could get access to an internet connection, and at most
Speaker 2: times in the you know, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, like
Speaker 2: it was still landline phones and landline internet. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean we'd communicate when we could, but it's not
Speaker 2: at all. It's vastly improved today. Our service members today
Speaker 2: as they should have a far better you know, you
Speaker 2: can connect to a Wi Fi connection and still see
Speaker 2: your family.
Speaker 1: So in Montana you can get married by proxy.
Speaker 3: That's what we did.
Speaker 2: We were married via double proxy and Montana double bridze,
Speaker 2: so neither neither of us were there.
Speaker 1: We're the only.
Speaker 2: State's legal where you can get married via double proxy.
Speaker 2: So Carmen figured that out out. She was in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: She's like, hey, I figured how we can get married.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, how send it? It's like we
Speaker 2: can get married through the mail. I'm like, really, I
Speaker 2: didn't know that was legal. She's like, well, it's only
Speaker 2: legal in one state, Montana. Like wow, she's like, yeah.
Speaker 2: We notarize a form and mail it in and basically
Speaker 2: they take it to the courthouse and Calispell and two
Speaker 2: people we have I still have no idea who they
Speaker 2: are stand in and you pay them the proxy fee
Speaker 2: and they get married for you. And then you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks later, we get our forums mailed
Speaker 2: back to us like, oh we were married. We were
Speaker 2: married on February eleventh. Cool, happy anniversary. Yeah. So so
Speaker 2: so that's how we did it. It's cool law, though,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's got to be for the military. No, no, actually,
Speaker 2: well I mean it is now now their whole business
Speaker 2: models they target military couples, say exactly the situation my
Speaker 2: wife and I dealing with it. But where the law
Speaker 2: came from is the homestead days. So you know, only
Speaker 2: like half a homestead claims were actually awarded. You know,
Speaker 2: the whole perception, you know, from what was that stupid
Speaker 2: Tom Cruise movie where terrible Irish accent, you know where
Speaker 2: they're front there.
Speaker 3: But also the fighting scenes were away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like Jesus left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so you know, like run out there and
Speaker 2: jam their stake on the ground of boom, here's your land,
Speaker 2: like actually surprising. The process is more formal and death,
Speaker 2: and the government didn't want random speculators grabbing homestead claims.
Speaker 2: Obviously that happened, but that's not what they wanted. They
Speaker 2: wanted families to settle on the land, build a home,
Speaker 2: build a ranch, harvest crops. So homestead claims one of
Speaker 2: the first criteria that they would award them was based
Speaker 2: on if you were married with a family and living
Speaker 2: on the land. And during those territory days before states
Speaker 2: were states, they were kind of competing for people because
Speaker 2: the sooner you had more people and land homesteaded, the
Speaker 2: sooner you're going to get statehood. I mean that wasn't
Speaker 2: like a technical threshold, but that was basically once you
Speaker 2: had more people and more constituency of state, you had
Speaker 2: a better chance of being or in your territory, you
Speaker 2: had better chance of being a state. So anyways, want
Speaker 2: male to female threshold that was set up, so it
Speaker 2: was like ninety six.
Speaker 1: It was crazy.
Speaker 2: So Montana Territory Rifle is like, hey, we can make
Speaker 2: it legal to basically come out here and then mail
Speaker 2: order a wife, show your piece of paper. Look, I'm married.
Speaker 2: This is my homestead. I go out here and helped
Speaker 2: helped the process, homestack claims. So anyway, it's kind of
Speaker 2: an interesting sure. Yeah, so you were in and out
Speaker 2: of I have to imagine Afghanistan. How many times did
Speaker 2: you get so, I mean all the times, you know,
Speaker 2: every time I was ever sent. I mean basically mine,
Speaker 2: I really did four deployments, you know, but ultimately, you know,
Speaker 2: I was I was sent overseas, you know, several times,
Speaker 2: you know, more than that, but ultimately in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: a couple of times, UH to South America for counter
Speaker 2: narcotics and and host nation partnership there, and then a
Speaker 2: couple other trips around you know, different type of different
Speaker 2: types of missions. So yeah, I had a great, you know,
Speaker 2: great experience all over the world, and you know, loved leading, leading,
Speaker 2: leading our teams everywhere. It's a huge honor when when
Speaker 2: you look at the responsibility. Again, you look back at
Speaker 2: the responsibility you're given. I mean a twenty five, twenty
Speaker 2: six year old guy. You know, one point between the
Speaker 2: Afghan Army troops, I had my seals, my army assignment
Speaker 2: that i'd get get an army platoon assigned to me,
Speaker 2: and you know, I had like two hundred people under
Speaker 2: my command and daily combat operations, you know, you know, gunfights,
Speaker 2: every day, air strikes, and it's like I was the commander,
Speaker 2: like I was in charge. You think about that in
Speaker 2: the business world, you know, that amount of responsibilit given
Speaker 2: to a twenty five, twenty six year old, and now
Speaker 2: that's true across the military. I mean, you take twenty
Speaker 2: five year old pilot in the Air Force. He's flying
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars aircraft. I mean, so the responsibility
Speaker 2: and then he goes home and his dad won't let
Speaker 2: them use that's run exactly. It's a total it's where
Speaker 2: you come home. And that's that's part of the reason
Speaker 2: the veteran transition. You know, I've spoke at a veteran's
Speaker 2: banquet last night here in town, and I actually worked
Speaker 2: out with our Air Force with our RTC kids. So
Speaker 2: I got this patch of my jacket here. You know,
Speaker 2: we worked out with their art see kids yesterday at
Speaker 2: MSU and kind of impart of that upon them. Like
Speaker 2: you know, you get home, it's a totally different. You'll
Speaker 2: work at a small business while you know you can't
Speaker 2: you can't drive the forklift yet you don't have the
Speaker 2: OSHA approval. It's like, dude, I just I used to, like,
Speaker 2: you know, drive helicopters. You know, I used to drive tanks.
Speaker 2: You know, twenty a nineteen year old kid'll be at
Speaker 2: the helm of a of a three billion dollar summer
Speaker 2: and you know driving those things.
Speaker 1: So it's a yeah.
Speaker 2: And then so that's sometimes hard for bets to come
Speaker 2: home and have like that reduction and scope all of
Speaker 2: a sudden. It's like, you know, I used to have
Speaker 2: have to.
Speaker 3: Prove yourself again, right yeah, Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a tough transition for everybody.
Speaker 1: So, uh, when you came out of that, how did
Speaker 1: you decide to get into wild land? Yeah, it's wild
Speaker 1: wild land firefighting, like like we ended up in the seals.
Speaker 1: I mean, I make no bones about it.
Speaker 2: I never like almost everything I've done, if to include politics,
Speaker 2: which I true, we'll talk about was an accident, like,
Speaker 2: it was never a plan. So I basically I didn't
Speaker 2: plan to get out steal teams. When I did, you know,
Speaker 2: I got injured and for the time being, it was like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know you have to go off the duty rolls
Speaker 2: of the teams. You can't be an active sealing anymore.
Speaker 2: We got to do meta evaluation. I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: if I can't be a seal, I can't lead a team,
Speaker 2: Like why don't I do push paper? And basically like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's okay, you push paper for a while, and
Speaker 2: I was like, listen that that's not like if I
Speaker 2: can't leave my guys on missions and you're gonna send
Speaker 2: me in a headquarters for two or three years, like
Speaker 2: you know, all move on with life.
Speaker 1: So so did you not get your twenty year retirement then?
Speaker 2: No, no, I got out. You know, i'd only been
Speaker 2: in all in eleven years between active and reserve time
Speaker 2: when I when I when I was done, so oh no, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have to you have to be in for twenty
Speaker 2: years active duty to retire at twenty. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: basically we got out and I decided at that point
Speaker 2: there was a technology we used in the Special Operations community.
Speaker 2: We were we were really the innovators behind the tact
Speaker 2: limits put the implementation of this and that is airborne surveillance.
Speaker 2: So basically, you know, if you ever watched these Special
Speaker 2: Ops Seal CIA movies, you'll always see, you know, the
Speaker 2: aircraft overhead with an INFRED sensor, with an electro optics sensor,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, basically watching the whole mission take place
Speaker 2: and providing a really critical array of situational awareness for
Speaker 2: us on the ground. You know, we could see where
Speaker 2: enemy fire was coming from, we could locate enemy positions,
Speaker 2: We could know where our own people were. So if
Speaker 2: we're calling in an air strike, we make sure we
Speaker 2: knew where all the friendly forces were before we started
Speaker 2: dropping bombs, which has been a any You guys know
Speaker 2: what the largest killer of US troops in the First
Speaker 2: Golf War was not aviation, friendly fire. Yeah, our own people. Now,
Speaker 2: if we had good data, which we don't, but I
Speaker 2: promise you, if you had good data, you'd see the
Speaker 2: same in Vietnam, Korea, probably World War two. You think
Speaker 2: so absolutely. I mean, it's just a reality of conflict.
Speaker 2: Is friendly fire is sometimes just as if not more
Speaker 2: dangerous than any fire. I mean, the fog of war
Speaker 2: is real. I mean, you watch these movies and you know,
Speaker 2: every time you see a gunfight, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the one guy's looking the other guy in the eye
Speaker 2: and like the cun comes out and he's like you
Speaker 2: know they all you know, this isn't mel Gibson a
Speaker 2: leath of weapon. As much as you know, like bolts
Speaker 2: are flying a lot of you know, you don't know
Speaker 2: where the hell they're coming from. You don't even know
Speaker 2: who's shooting at you, especially in places like Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: an urban warfare in Iraq. It's like sometimes the biggest
Speaker 2: challenge is figure out where you getting shot at from.
Speaker 2: And then once you figure that out, all right, now
Speaker 2: we can deal with it. But a lot of times,
Speaker 2: you know you're taking fire inbound, you don't know where
Speaker 2: it's coming from. Uh, And that's something the movies never
Speaker 2: really capture. It's like, you know, someone gets shot all
Speaker 2: of a sudden that like they see the guy in
Speaker 2: the bell tower a mile away. There it is, you know,
Speaker 2: blow it up. It's like it could be minutes, hours
Speaker 2: while you're taking fire before you figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: So when we're little kids. We don't. Like I'd asked
Speaker 1: my dad, like, how many people did you shoot? You know,
Speaker 1: he'd be like, you can't tell what's going.
Speaker 2: On exactly one hundred percent, right, I mean, you know
Speaker 2: one hundred percent right.
Speaker 1: Is it's like, you know, you just don't just shooting
Speaker 1: in the way you would say, you're shooting in the windows.
Speaker 2: Love, Yeah, that the fog of war is an absolutely
Speaker 2: real thing, one hundred percent. And and but anyways, so
Speaker 2: it was we had a capability that we exploited UH
Speaker 2: very effectively throughout the warriors, which was that airborne surveillance.
Speaker 2: And it came in many ways. You know, you had
Speaker 2: light area and hyperspective, we had electroptic infrared, you had
Speaker 2: uh communications detectors to identify walky doggs and cell phones.
Speaker 2: And really that became a huge, usually important advantage for us.
Speaker 2: And about the time so I'd seen that technology, said, man,
Speaker 2: if we could take that, give them my pilot background,
Speaker 2: if they could take that and apply it to public
Speaker 2: safety tasks in America, law enforcement, border security, fire like,
Speaker 2: you know, we could probably save a lot of lives
Speaker 2: and do a lot of good here. And right about
Speaker 2: the time I was getting out that the debris for
Speaker 2: a terrible tragedy kind of became public as they finished
Speaker 2: the investigation. I was the Arnel Mountain fire down on Arizona,
Speaker 2: and if you're not familiar with that, that was they
Speaker 2: made a movie about it called Only the Brave. Happened
Speaker 2: to twenty thirteen and the ground I remember, Yeah, So
Speaker 2: the Grand Mountain hotshots were heading up on this fire
Speaker 2: and it was one of those dangerous, real dangerous desert
Speaker 2: sage brush fires because when those you know, zephyr winds,
Speaker 2: when those winds hit down there and the high deserts
Speaker 2: in the southwest like that, those fires rip. I mean
Speaker 2: they'll move eighty ninety miles an hour, and I mean
Speaker 2: they could be deadly like. And it's not the timber
Speaker 2: fires up here in northwest Montana, which are their own
Speaker 2: set of challenges, which is a really thick, heavy fuel.
Speaker 2: It's hard to put out, but they don't move as
Speaker 2: fast as these ones. So as the team got up
Speaker 2: there on the ridge line pretty quickly realized this thing's ripping.
Speaker 2: We can't fight this thing. We got it. We got
Speaker 2: to break contact. Let's get out of here. And the
Speaker 2: team leader made the right decision to take his team
Speaker 2: out of the way. Unfortunately, he made the right decision
Speaker 2: with the wrong information, and you know, the fire he
Speaker 2: didn't understand the fire had shifted directions and burned his
Speaker 2: whole team alive, killed online. He didn't right there on
Speaker 2: the side of the mountain.
Speaker 1: You know what I remember about that is when they
Speaker 1: finally started releasing details, I remember looking down that list
Speaker 1: and it was like the kids, Yep, he's got a
Speaker 1: two year old, four year old, six year old, next guy,
Speaker 1: one year old, two year old, next guy.
Speaker 2: It's like yeah, because they're all like in that yep.
Speaker 1: Kind of like not all of them, but I just
Speaker 1: remember being overwhelmed by how many were in that like
Speaker 1: early stage, little kids, and they were at that they
Speaker 1: were at that age you know whatever the hell.
Speaker 2: Like yeap, mid yeah or whatever, where I was like, damn, man,
Speaker 2: and that's that And that's why so I felt I
Speaker 2: felt myself in the shoes of that team leader. You know,
Speaker 2: I'd been on the side of a desert mounta, into
Speaker 2: the middle of gun fights with guys blown legs blown off,
Speaker 2: guys bleeding out, making those tough decisions, and I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: you know, his whole team got wiped out, and then
Speaker 2: the seals we'd had a few of those incidents helicopters
Speaker 2: go down exactly what you said. It's like, we're all
Speaker 2: in that age range where I mean one of my
Speaker 2: seal potones. We had nine seals, all have babies within
Speaker 2: on the same team within two months, you know, all
Speaker 2: the wives were like breaking at the same time. And
Speaker 2: so to your point, it's like, man, I'm like that
Speaker 2: hit home for me. I felt that like that, that
Speaker 2: that was an event that definitely I was like wow.
Speaker 2: And what I realized was I felt myself in that
Speaker 2: guy's boots. You know, I'd been there. I've been on
Speaker 2: the side of a desert mountain, one hundred plus degree heat,
Speaker 2: full gear, sweating, chaos happening, worried about bringing my guys
Speaker 2: home alive. And I realized if he'd had the same
Speaker 2: tools I'd had in Afghanistan, his team probably would have
Speaker 2: been alive. So that led to me starting Bridge Aerospace
Speaker 2: and we ended up you know, several other companies spun
Speaker 2: out of that as well along the way. But the
Speaker 2: point was to bring that airborne intelligence capability that's that
Speaker 2: supported ground guys to industry and to public safety tasks.
Speaker 2: Other than the military.
Speaker 4: Why did you come to Montana though?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, we.
Speaker 2: We'd come here to train before we go to Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: so our seal teams would come out here. Actually, Butte
Speaker 2: was our home base. Gun named Rod Allen out there,
Speaker 2: and Butte has a group called the Peak and he's
Speaker 2: a former Air Force Special Ops guy, so he would
Speaker 2: host high out to do training events for UH teams
Speaker 2: getting ready to go to Afghanistan. So you know, everything
Speaker 2: from heil to do pair of shooting tilt to high
Speaker 2: angle shooting. You know, most shooting ranges are level. The
Speaker 2: raality is in Afghanistan you're never shooting level. You're always
Speaker 2: shooting down and most of the time you're shooting up,
Speaker 2: you know, and those people are shooting down. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know the peaks over there are twenty two, twenty
Speaker 2: three thousand feet high. You know, these aren't eight thousand
Speaker 2: foot peaks. I mean, you're you're fighting in the foothills
Speaker 2: of the Himalayas. The Hindu kush is the most rugged
Speaker 2: basically training in the world. So you're not just shooting
Speaker 2: up a few hundred feet, you're shooting up. So, you know,
Speaker 2: horseback riding, packing in high angele rope rescue health through medicine. Basically,
Speaker 2: we go out there and he assembled these fantastic training
Speaker 2: modules for us, and we bring seals out here and train.
Speaker 2: So during a couple of those trips, Carmen to come
Speaker 2: out and visited, and we kind of decided, hey, this
Speaker 2: is this is a great spot, and you think, well,
Speaker 2: if we ever get out of the military, if that ever,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe we'll come here and raise our family.
Speaker 2: And you know, Lord works in mysterious ways. You know,
Speaker 2: things happened. I got hurt, you know, timing lined up,
Speaker 2: so we decided to start a company here. So me
Speaker 2: and my co founder, who was also a military officer,
Speaker 2: started our company, and you know, we hoped maybe one
Speaker 2: day we'd have like eight or ten employees, but had
Speaker 2: no idea. You know, we scaled through Ascent Vision Technology
Speaker 2: was spun out of Bridge, which is another great success story,
Speaker 2: and a couple of other companies. You know, about five
Speaker 2: hundred jobs worldwide we created. We had bases in Australia
Speaker 2: and Spain and Italy and elsewhere. So we kind of
Speaker 2: created an international company and all based right here.
Speaker 1: So maybe I misunderstood it. Yeah, as I've become familiar
Speaker 1: with you through the race, the Senate race. But you
Speaker 1: guys have a heavy focus on wildfire totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, So Bridger Aerospace basically, you know, seventy percent
Speaker 2: of that company is all aero wildland firefighting. You know,
Speaker 2: we got a base in Spain.
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of the other applications.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that sensor technology I had mentioned, we spun
Speaker 2: into a separate product based company called Ascent Vision. So
Speaker 2: basically Bridger Aerospace was our aerial firefighting arm and basically
Speaker 2: the mission there was to bring military style closer support
Speaker 2: from our lessons from the war, cut paste that bring
Speaker 2: those lessons to wildland fire. And as we've seen in
Speaker 2: recent months and as most people live out West, c
Speaker 2: like these fires are nasty, and like we have not
Speaker 2: been winning the battle. You know, we've just lost America's
Speaker 2: biggest city just got you know, burned over by this.
Speaker 2: You know, Lahaina a couple of years ago, you know,
Speaker 2: in almost every Western stake in point to just a
Speaker 2: massive disaster that's happened, and it's like, you know, we
Speaker 2: can do better than we're doing.
Speaker 1: How would you sorry, how would you.
Speaker 4: How would Bridge your Aerospace get involved with a specific fire,
Speaker 4: like would you get a call from the government and
Speaker 4: they're like, hey, we need you guys, or how Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean all of aircraft not in at all.
Speaker 2: Ninety nine percent of aircraft flying over wildfires in America
Speaker 2: come from a private company. So basically, the government decided
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties, we're not going to operate firefighting
Speaker 2: planes for a while, the government did it themselves kind
Speaker 2: of in the actually wrote a book about this called Mudslingers,
Speaker 2: about the history of aero firefighting, and all the profits
Speaker 2: go to benefit fall and wildline firefighters, but it was
Speaker 2: more of a history you wrote the book, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so it was something I was interesting because as I
Speaker 2: was learning about aero firefighting because I got into thedustry
Speaker 2: really by accident, knew nothing about it. And then as
Speaker 2: I'm sitting at firebases as a pilot, because I flew
Speaker 2: all our planes, I'd be sitting at the firebase. It's
Speaker 2: like being a fireman, except your fire engine flies instead
Speaker 2: of drive. So you're hanging out the firebase shooting the shit,
Speaker 2: talking to folks all day, and you start talking to
Speaker 2: somebody's old timers and they're telling you old stories from
Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies, and you start to figure out, Man,
Speaker 2: the history of this is amazing, flying in, flying through smoke,
Speaker 2: dropping slowry, dropping water on wild Like a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys were like World War two heroes Vietnam. I mean,
Speaker 2: they'd already flowing the toughest stuff in the world and
Speaker 2: the toughest conditions and they can basically needed that adrenaline
Speaker 2: fixed still and now they start flying wildfire as you
Speaker 2: start to see the history of that. But basically most
Speaker 2: almost every single aircraft that flies a wildfire is contract
Speaker 2: owned and to operated because the government pretty much decided
Speaker 2: in the sixties, you know what, We're not going to
Speaker 2: own an operator on aircraft. It's too expensive as too
Speaker 2: technically complex for us to just manage the way our
Speaker 2: budget cycle works. We're going to just hire contractors to
Speaker 2: fight fire from the air. We'll do it on the ground.
Speaker 4: So I fire breaks out, you guys are just waiting
Speaker 4: for the phone to ring.
Speaker 2: Basically, so we'll get pre staged around and again we
Speaker 2: could talk for hours and it's actually the Shahn Ryan podcast,
Speaker 2: you know, a couple months ago and basically spent three
Speaker 2: hours talking just about wildfire. But yeah, we talked about
Speaker 2: how that all works, and again I could talk for
Speaker 2: hours about it. But basically, you know, we are prepositioned
Speaker 2: as aircrews and basically they will call something to what
Speaker 2: fire to go to? Basically go to this fire today,
Speaker 2: and sometimes mid area gets sent to a different fire.
Speaker 2: So you could take off. I've taken off sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: late morning, and I'll fight three or four different fires,
Speaker 2: you know, go water bomb one, boom, shift to this one,
Speaker 2: shift to that one, and you'll fight multiple fires on
Speaker 2: the same tank of fuel in the air and then
Speaker 2: come back and recharge.
Speaker 1: God, your insurance premium has got to be a bit
Speaker 1: in that business man it is, so you know, and actually,
Speaker 1: so what are you gonna do again?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, and it's not how expensive is the plane? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well you bring that up because I
Speaker 2: mean that's really I mean, after LA, you know, those
Speaker 2: of us who lived in Western states, you know, we
Speaker 2: all know wildfire is an issue, We're all familiar with it.
Speaker 2: But you know, the average New Yorker, average person in Chicago,
Speaker 2: average person that lands like wildfire Like the hell.
Speaker 1: I grew up Michigan, we never talked about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just not doesn't does My.
Speaker 1: Neighbor one time had his leaf fire get out of
Speaker 1: control for a minute, you know, but it made into
Speaker 1: the edge of his yard, sat up.
Speaker 3: The neighborhood for a few minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But these million acre fires where it's like a whole
Speaker 2: like you have thousands of guys in the ground, water
Speaker 2: bombers come in, that's just doesn't For most of America,
Speaker 2: that doesn't really they don't get it. But after LA
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh wow, like this is this is a thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, but the big impact the word
Speaker 2: you says, insurance. So the the LA wildfire is the
Speaker 2: most expensive disaster in American history ever period, quarter of
Speaker 2: a trillion dollars, more than any hurricane, any earthquake.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Huge, massive, and where And that's just the cost to recover.
Speaker 2: That doesn't even start to discuss what that does to
Speaker 2: insurance premiums. Because when the insurance agency and I'm sorry
Speaker 2: of the insurance industry absorbs the impacts of the LA
Speaker 2: wildfires on a comprehensive manner, like when all these underwriters
Speaker 2: and the reinsurance because insurance all flows down to a
Speaker 2: pool of very consolidated reinsurance companies, I don't care whether
Speaker 2: you're talking about iPhone insurance, whether you're talking about car insurance,
Speaker 2: but especially homeowners insurance or airplane insurance. All that flows
Speaker 2: back down to a handful of reinsurers and the amount
Speaker 2: of which insurance affects people's lives. I don't think they
Speaker 2: really appreciate, Like, for instance, you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to go on too much of a tangent, but this
Speaker 2: is just a good example of how insurance can affect
Speaker 2: something that appears to be totally unaffiliated. So Ukraine was
Speaker 2: the biggest impact in the history of aviation insurance. The
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine, there massive amounts of aircraft destroyed on
Speaker 2: the ground, like whole airlines repossessed. Like that shook the
Speaker 2: aviation insurance industry to its core. And then when Israel,
Speaker 2: the attack on Israel happened, you know, there's still isn't
Speaker 2: like common, There still isn't full airline service back in
Speaker 2: Israel now, like basically Hamas has been obliterated, like the
Speaker 2: active daily threat. Yes, so we'll always be there, but like,
Speaker 2: but very few airlines have resumed service into Israel because
Speaker 2: insurance and a lot of airlines, a lot of airlines
Speaker 2: getting attacked at LG know, why aren't you flying your
Speaker 2: You're discriminating against the Jews, and they're like no, Like
Speaker 2: our insurance companies will not underwrite an aircraft flying into
Speaker 2: a war zone because that changes.
Speaker 1: As well, because like the Ukraine War, I mean they've
Speaker 1: they've shot down I think right two passenger.
Speaker 2: Planes in relation to the combatants, and thousands of other
Speaker 2: aircraft beens right on the ground. So basically insurance won't
Speaker 2: underwrite an air airliner flying into Tel Aviv. So therefore
Speaker 2: the airlines like, we can't fly in without insurance, like
Speaker 2: that's not legal. So when that insurance impact is absorbed
Speaker 2: by the housing industry, I mean right now, some people's
Speaker 2: homeowner's insurance is more than their mortgage if you can
Speaker 2: get it. I mean they've seen nine hundred one thousand,
Speaker 2: two thousand percent increases in wildfire premiums for people's homeowns
Speaker 2: insurance if they can get insurance. A lot of people
Speaker 2: can't get insurance at all. And it's not even a
Speaker 2: wildfare prone areas. It's sometimes it's flood prone or hurricane prone.
Speaker 2: Because this fire specifically really was like the straw that
Speaker 2: broke the camel's back. For home WOS insurance. Now, if
Speaker 2: you can't get insurance on your home, what else can't
Speaker 2: you get for that home?
Speaker 1: A mortgage?
Speaker 2: Exactly yeah, exactly right. And imagine if ten to twenty
Speaker 2: percent of American homes become illiquid as a result of
Speaker 2: unaveal ability of homeown insurance. I mean, how many people
Speaker 2: need a mortgage of refive their home. They use that
Speaker 2: money to invest in a business. How many people depend
Speaker 2: on a second home, you know, that's their investment, rental income,
Speaker 2: they have attached dwelling it, the airbnb whatever. I mean,
Speaker 2: how many people depend on the liquidity of their home
Speaker 2: to live? I mean most most Americas have at moorage.
Speaker 2: And then that home becomes liquid. You can't sell it
Speaker 2: because then the buyer pool goes from anybody who needs
Speaker 2: a mortgage. If they find out they can't ensure the home,
Speaker 2: they can't get a mortage for it. Your home is unsellable.
Speaker 2: So you think about that when that starts to affect,
Speaker 2: which it will now here it's only been three months.
Speaker 2: Is that is digested into the homeowner's market and everyone
Speaker 2: comes up for renewals. I mean, it could be a
Speaker 2: bigger impact on the homeowner's market than like the Owait
Speaker 2: financial crisis. So like this wildfire thing is not just
Speaker 2: a boutique Western issue. It's not a boutique forest management thing.
Speaker 2: Don't log this log that it really is like an
Speaker 2: existential economic one, because I mean, how do you put
Speaker 2: it value on human life? But like the impact directly
Speaker 2: of LA is a quarter of a trillion dollars, So
Speaker 2: printing a quarter of a trillion dollars right now is
Speaker 2: inflationary like that that's just on its own, But that
Speaker 2: doesn't even talk about the impact it's going to have
Speaker 2: when that whole episode is absorbed by the insurance market.
Speaker 1: Do you think that wildfires like me not the cost
Speaker 1: associated with them because the insurance industry, or the costs
Speaker 1: associated with them because of housing or whatever, but do
Speaker 1: you think they're actually worse now? I mean, like our
Speaker 1: fires are there like higher intensity, less predictable fires now
Speaker 1: than there were twenty years ago. I mean that's the
Speaker 1: impression you get, But I mean does it really felt
Speaker 1: that way by people involved in that industry?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think ultimately short answer is yes.
Speaker 2: With the caveat that are our sample set is very thin.
Speaker 2: And also the whether the fires themselves are worse. They
Speaker 2: are exacerbated by the fact that our wildland urban interface
Speaker 2: is exponentially bigger than it's ever been before.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, a great example is the Marshall Fire in Colorado,
Speaker 2: like three years ago, now maybe four years ago. It
Speaker 2: burned the Denver suburb orn like a thousand homes down.
Speaker 2: Had that exact same fire happened in the exact same
Speaker 2: spot like five years prior, no one would have known
Speaker 2: or cared because it was basically a cow pastor, I
Speaker 2: got you. So, but when the fire starts burning down
Speaker 2: thousands of homes like so, this fire that happened in
Speaker 2: La in January, terrible tragedy. Obviously, that almost exact same
Speaker 2: fire happened in nineteen sixty one called the Ballet Bell
Speaker 2: Air Fire, and it was bad. But you know, it's
Speaker 2: not talked about much because we didn't have the massive
Speaker 2: sprawl in La yet.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And take a big sky for example. You know, people
Speaker 2: can go back and forth as the terrible that big
Speaker 2: sky grew, as big sky good, is big sky bad? Okay, whatever,
Speaker 2: But it's there all right, whether you like it's there.
Speaker 2: We now have thousands of people living there, massive economic
Speaker 2: investment around it fifty years ago before chet Hunt rode
Speaker 2: his horse up there. I mean, if that area had burned,
Speaker 2: probably nobody would have noticed. I mean maybe the local
Speaker 2: paper would have written a aricle about it, but honestly,
Speaker 2: it would have been Okay, Mountain Valley burns, a couple
Speaker 2: of cabins, a couple of ranches, and.
Speaker 3: A bunch of people being like, and the hunting's going
Speaker 3: to be great up there today.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've got billions of dollars of investment out
Speaker 2: there that area burns. Not only a thou we got
Speaker 2: one road in, one road out, Not only are thousand
Speaker 2: people are going to die because they can't get out
Speaker 2: of there in time. There's going to be massive economic
Speaker 2: impact and lost it there.
Speaker 3: So to go back to that insurance footprints right exactly so.
Speaker 2: And couple that with we are coming off really a
Speaker 2: forty year period of a huge shift in our forest
Speaker 2: management mindset where you know, again it's I don't want
Speaker 2: to be political about this because it's just not a
Speaker 2: political issue. This affects people. It will burn down your house,
Speaker 2: whether it's red or blue, doesn't matter. But it's just
Speaker 2: a fact our forest management policies have have radically changed
Speaker 2: in the past thirty years. And the impact is you
Speaker 2: you guys know better than not. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll be up on our Force Service ly cav right
Speaker 2: now at the ranch. I'll be up there today. But
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, you walk off the trail and
Speaker 2: Forest Service land basically you've got dead beetle killed dead
Speaker 2: falls six feet high like you basically have a very
Speaker 2: hard time getting off a trail now. And you know,
Speaker 2: forest treatment logging projects have basically been injuncted to the
Speaker 2: point where they almost don't happen anymore. So I think
Speaker 2: a combination of factors of are a change in mindset
Speaker 2: of forestry are wildland airban interface has grown massively. I
Speaker 2: mean tens of millions of people have moved into wildfire
Speaker 2: prone areas that didn't used to live there. Sure, therefore,
Speaker 2: people cause fires, tire chains, cigarette butts, fireworks, gender reveal parties,
Speaker 2: whatever the hell you want to know. People cause fires,
Speaker 2: and then when fires happen near people, the the the
Speaker 2: impetus to fight them and put it out. As far more,
Speaker 2: when you have a thousand homes instead of just one
Speaker 2: thousand acres of sage brush and cheat grass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which means less stuff getting burnt into a mosaic
Speaker 1: pattern and you create more areas that are ready for
Speaker 1: massive Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I don't I don't want to make you crystal
Speaker 3: ball this, but I mean we've the on the political level,
Speaker 3: like we've been talking about like active management, active forest
Speaker 3: management for you know, very publicly for close to a
Speaker 3: decade now, right and talking about you know, the southeast
Speaker 3: burns so much and look how healthy there for uts
Speaker 3: are and getting that mindset like re established back out
Speaker 3: here in the West, like like what's the next chapter?
Speaker 2: Yep. So we're basically writing it right now. I think
Speaker 2: you know, LA was a terrible disaster, a lot of
Speaker 2: people killed, you know, economic fourteen thousand structures, well, I
Speaker 2: mean fourteenth. I mean that's basically all of the number. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like all of the Gallatin Valley. So we're writing
Speaker 2: that book right now, and it's all by Parceling. I'm
Speaker 2: on my fourteenth bill right now. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: my life. So I showed up and I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: co chair of the wild Fireclock US in the Senate,
Speaker 2: cool Alex Padia from California's CoA chair. And we are
Speaker 2: moving at breakneck pace because this woke people up, people
Speaker 2: that typically wouldn't have cared about wildfire. Andy came from
Speaker 2: New Jersey, great example, he's a New Jersey senator. Our
Speaker 2: first like two weeks after we did our orientation, New
Speaker 2: Jersey's burning and he calls me because he knows my
Speaker 2: Background's like, Tim, like, how come there's nobody. There's no helicop,
Speaker 2: there's no planes putting this fire out, Like what's going on?
Speaker 2: Like all right, well, let's let me give you a
Speaker 2: quick lesson how this works. Like, not only is it
Speaker 2: nobody fighting your fire from the air, but there's nobody
Speaker 2: going to be coming to fight your fire from the air.
Speaker 2: He's like, how is that the case? Like if I
Speaker 2: doll a lam on one, a fire engine shows up
Speaker 2: in my house right away. I had to explain to
Speaker 2: him that wildfire and structure fire are treated completely differently
Speaker 2: in America. They just are structure fire red fire engines.
Speaker 2: I mean, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,
Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty five days year. That fire in
Speaker 2: that firehouse just over there is manned, and there's bright
Speaker 2: red fire trucks and trained firefighters in there ready to
Speaker 2: go all the time, and every American knows that accepts
Speaker 2: that and expects that we deal on one right now
Speaker 2: and say there's a fire going on, within five minutes
Speaker 2: and twenty seconds, a big red fire engine will show
Speaker 2: up here and they'll start fighting that fire. And that's
Speaker 2: national code, the NFPA four nine seventy ten, National Fire
Speaker 2: Protection Association.
Speaker 3: And it's a big line item on your mortgage application.
Speaker 3: Yeah fire away, are you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right, And all of Americans have the expectation
Speaker 2: that that's what's going to happen. And NFPA didn't just
Speaker 2: happen like National Fire Protects Association, these standards didn't just occur.
Speaker 2: They were forged out of the nineteenth century when basically
Speaker 2: like every city had their Great Fire, the Great Boston Fire,
Speaker 2: Great Chicago Fire, Kansas City, every city essentially burned to
Speaker 2: the ground in the eighteen hundreds, and it's because they
Speaker 2: were all built out of wood. There was no zoning,
Speaker 2: there was no building codes, and basically a fire would start,
Speaker 2: they had no way to fight it because there was
Speaker 2: no fire department. They didn't have fire hydrants, so they'd
Speaker 2: run out with buckets of sand and basically what they
Speaker 2: would do is they would they would fight fire with fire.
Speaker 2: They'd like start a backfire to burn down a line
Speaker 2: of buildings to stop the fire from spreading to the
Speaker 2: whole city. And it was pretty common. Actually they'd use
Speaker 2: beer to fight fires because they didn't have pressurized water.
Speaker 2: But they go to a brewery and get a keg
Speaker 2: of beer and it would foam just like firefighting foam
Speaker 2: like fire, and they spread on the fires. So in
Speaker 2: the wake of all these fires, finally, in like eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, a lot of folks came to us said,
Speaker 2: this is crazy, like our cities literally keep burning to
Speaker 2: the ground, Like this is ridiculous. We need to figure
Speaker 2: out how to make And actually, at the time it
Speaker 2: was the electrical contracting companies gene Electric, Edison Westinghouse came
Speaker 2: together and said, we're the only organizations that really are
Speaker 2: cross cutting across America, like we're in every city running
Speaker 2: electricity to the communities. Let's figure out a way to
Speaker 2: stop these fires. So they formed the National Fire Protection Association,
Speaker 2: and they started creating standards that said, listen, every block,
Speaker 2: there'll be a fire hydrant, and every city will have
Speaker 2: a fire brigade. And they would standardize and of course
Speaker 2: these lessons weren't all learned right away, then happened one
Speaker 2: at a time. So then they standardized fire brigades, and
Speaker 2: then the fire brigades realized, well, our hoses have to
Speaker 2: match because if Manhattan calls a Brooklyn fire department over
Speaker 2: and they show up to help and they have different
Speaker 2: size hoses, which this happened many times, our hoses don't
Speaker 2: plug into your hoses. Your fire horns don't fit our hoses.
Speaker 2: We're basically useless now. So they started, Okay, we'll standardize
Speaker 2: fire hoses, these sprinklers inside, you know, fire sprinklers, how
Speaker 2: we put our eclectrical outlets sixteen inches off the ground,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. These standards became embedded across our country.
Speaker 2: And one of those standards of standards of cover in
Speaker 2: response time where every city, the way especially Dan Serbans
Speaker 2: lay it out, is every address is covered by at
Speaker 2: least two, sometimes three different fire stations. That way, when
Speaker 2: you down nine one one, dispatch immediately dispatches assets from
Speaker 2: three of those stations. That way, if there's a traffic jam,
Speaker 2: or a bridge is out, or a tree gets blown
Speaker 2: over by a storm blocks the road, someone's going to
Speaker 2: get to your house time in just a few minutes.
Speaker 2: And the whole idea is get a fire while it's small.
Speaker 2: You know, when the fire starts in your kitchen. You know,
Speaker 2: when you call a fire department say I got a
Speaker 2: house fire, they don't say, okay, where is in your house?
Speaker 2: In the kitchen? Okay, Well, you know, call us back
Speaker 2: when it's in the living room and then maybe we'll
Speaker 2: come or could sometimes even worse. All right, well cool,
Speaker 2: we just get out of your house, and just if
Speaker 2: it spreads to your neighbor's house, then call us and
Speaker 2: maybe will come help out. You're like really like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're just not going to fight that one, okay. And
Speaker 2: or imagine, you know, if the mayor said, you know what,
Speaker 2: our current policy for this city block is to let
Speaker 2: it burn. We're just going to let this block burn,
Speaker 2: and if it spreads to the next block, then maybe
Speaker 2: we'll fight it. And I think you know, that mindset
Speaker 2: has largely been you know, bifurcated between structure fire and
Speaker 2: wildland fire for good reason, because fire is a part
Speaker 2: of our natural landscape, no question, like we want fires
Speaker 2: to burn, we need fire is extremely healthy for the landscape.
Speaker 2: It has to happen. But we also have to recognize
Speaker 2: that we now have a lot of people values infrastructure
Speaker 2: interspersed with our forest, with our urban wildland interface.
Speaker 3: I just say houses in stupid places. But that's not
Speaker 3: putting words in your mind.
Speaker 2: Nope, that's that's any any which way you want to
Speaker 2: say it. You know, houses, stupid place, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: But they're there.
Speaker 1: And that looks like that stings, you know, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could call whatever you can't get he's finding the insurance
Speaker 1: problem right now. He's bought his own fire truck.
Speaker 2: Do but you know, but then you know, so stupid.
Speaker 2: But but also like, so take the Smokehous Creek fire
Speaker 2: last year in Texas. So it's about almost exactly or
Speaker 2: goes March last year. That fire burned one point six
Speaker 2: million acres, that burned Panhandle, that burned like heart of
Speaker 2: ranch country. That those are the houses to places there,
Speaker 2: that those are ranchers, tens of thousands of head of
Speaker 2: cattle burn. I mean structural impact on the cattle industry
Speaker 2: because you know, they couldn't get air support on the
Speaker 2: fire quick enough. And that fire, when it was spreading
Speaker 2: at peak speed, was burning two football fields a second
Speaker 2: I think how fast that is. I mean just in
Speaker 2: the binklemin and I and uh, you know about a
Speaker 2: month ago the Hampton's Long Island was burning a wildfire
Speaker 2: starta there and was burning. You know. Actually in the
Speaker 2: worst was about a month ago, about three weeks ago.
Speaker 2: The same communities in Appalachia that got wiped out by that,
Speaker 2: they were burning in a wildfire. So you know, it's
Speaker 2: the point is not just a national forest western lands issue.
Speaker 2: I mean, it really is a fifty state issue. You know, Lahina, Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Let's not forget about that. The deadliest fire in recent
Speaker 2: history was in Hawaii, you know, Lahina. That fire started
Speaker 2: on the mountain side. When pushed it through it literally
Speaker 2: wiped that city off the map, killed one hundred people,
Speaker 2: and it happened.
Speaker 1: Fast, burned to the shoreline, exactly right. And so like
Speaker 1: I get I like, I get the point, yeah about
Speaker 1: houses in stupid places. But at the same time, like
Speaker 1: you said, like it or don't like it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone builds a house, yeah, people are gonna be out.
Speaker 1: There's there's going to wind up being the obligation to Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you can't draw a line, you know and be
Speaker 1: like these are the ones we put out, and these
Speaker 1: are the ones that don't put out.
Speaker 2: It's like driving down the interstate saying, hey, you know
Speaker 2: you're driving a nine to ninety between you know, Bozeman
Speaker 2: and Butte, and you roll your car and pipestone pass. Well,
Speaker 2: I every s built an estate there. Now it was
Speaker 2: a stupid spot forre in near estate.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, my car rolled over, I'm pinned underneath.
Speaker 2: I would appreciate if the highway patrol rescued me, like, well,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be there, you know. So I think at
Speaker 2: a point totally taken. But you know, the American people
Speaker 2: are there, and when you look at how other countries
Speaker 2: deal with it, you know, no one's perfect, but they
Speaker 2: do take more of that structural firefighting mindset, which is
Speaker 2: our first and primary obligation is public safety. So yes,
Speaker 2: nature management, Yes, there's a time for the force to burn,
Speaker 2: prescribe burns, all that, but like our first party needs
Speaker 2: to be protecting the lives and homes of people like
Speaker 2: number one. And I think that's why the LA fire
Speaker 2: really cracked open a lot of frustration bipartisan and again
Speaker 2: all add every single bill. I was the first Senator
Speaker 2: excuse me, a freshman to pass a bill this this Congress,
Speaker 2: and it was around wildfire. And again it was all
Speaker 2: by Parson. I mean, every single wildfire bill is not
Speaker 2: one party the other. We're all saying we owe the
Speaker 2: American people better, like we just owe them a better
Speaker 2: solution than they're getting. What's the theme, Like, what's the
Speaker 2: theme of what you're driving towards for wildfires? So the
Speaker 2: challenge is the reason why there's so many different bills.
Speaker 2: And you hit the nail on the head when you said,
Speaker 2: I've been hearing about this forestry crap for years, nothing's changing,
Speaker 2: and you're out exactly right, it's largely you have such
Speaker 2: a complicated interconnection of issues, organizations, and interests. So you
Speaker 2: guys know better than I do about our public lands
Speaker 2: and how many different organizations have a hand in that pot.
Speaker 2: You know, you got the Forest Service, which you know,
Speaker 2: we can talk about USDA, which owns the Forest Service.
Speaker 2: A lot of people assume the Forest Services and Department
Speaker 2: of Materier and it's not. That's just or they think
Speaker 2: it's its own agency. The Forest Service is part of
Speaker 2: the Department of Agriculture. That's very important. We can talk
Speaker 2: about that later. But the policies of USDA and how
Speaker 2: they operate dictate the Forest Service. Then you have a
Speaker 2: Department of Materior. Within that, of course, you have National
Speaker 2: Park Service, you got Bureau of Land Management, You've got
Speaker 2: Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is also a massive landowner.
Speaker 2: Then you've got Fish Wildlife Service. Then you've got state organizations.
Speaker 2: Of course state land, which as we know, especially in Montana,
Speaker 2: checker boarded in you'll have state land shoved in there.
Speaker 2: Then you might have county land or city land of course,
Speaker 2: private land, and then not so much in our city.
Speaker 2: Go out of the states, you can have a lot
Speaker 2: of land that's Department of Energy or DoD.
Speaker 1: So you have a big one you see is Corp
Speaker 1: of Engineers, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And all those.
Speaker 2: Organizations have completely different policies around acquisition, land management, funding.
Speaker 2: And some of them are considering themselves just passive land owners.
Speaker 2: They don't want to manage the land, they just don't
Speaker 2: even look at it. Some of them consider themselves conservationists,
Speaker 2: like our job is not to manage the land, is
Speaker 2: to conserve the land. Some of them view themselves as stewards.
Speaker 2: Each agency has a completely different mindset over and then
Speaker 2: of course that's the agency. Then you get to the
Speaker 2: local level. You know, the state forester in one state
Speaker 2: may have a completely different outlook on logging the state
Speaker 2: forester in the next state, or the director of the
Speaker 2: BAA in that state or BLM may have a completely
Speaker 2: different outlook than the neighboring state. And then when you
Speaker 2: put especially when you go depending on who's in charge
Speaker 2: in the presidency at the time, if it's a red
Speaker 2: or blue white house compared to a red or blue state,
Speaker 2: those policies. When you have state land, which is you know,
Speaker 2: is very common, butted up against BLM or Forest Service land,
Speaker 2: now you have different policies, you know, around that. So
Speaker 2: the reason it's so hard to solve this problem is
Speaker 2: because you have so many different stakeholders with completely different
Speaker 2: policies and sometimes different world views coming at the issue.
Speaker 2: And that's just talking about landowners. That doesn't even begin
Speaker 2: to scratch the service of environmental advocacy groups, legal advacy
Speaker 2: groups who are quite frankly, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: people that make a living off of suing the government
Speaker 2: over land issues. I mean, that's just that's how they
Speaker 2: make their money. So they want lawsuits to happen.
Speaker 3: But even if you just took three right like federal, State, Private,
Speaker 3: very realistic that all three of those overlap in an area,
Speaker 3: and they all have different land management plans in place
Speaker 3: for their own objectives.
Speaker 2: And that's why this legislation again LA was a terrible event.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, usually it takes a terrible event to cause
Speaker 2: structural change to bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: So you got a little momentum.
Speaker 2: As I've told folks, you know, the greatest force in
Speaker 2: government and history. Government, it's not good or bad, it's
Speaker 2: not love or hate. It's inertia. It's just the inertia
Speaker 2: of a massive bureaucracy. To make it change direction is
Speaker 2: incredibly hard, incredibly hard, and unfortunately it takes a big,
Speaker 2: terrible event to cause it change in direction. To take
Speaker 2: the Navy totally on affiliate from this, but a great
Speaker 2: example of the Navy. Prior to World War Two, the
Speaker 2: Navy believed battleships were the capital ship. Battleships were big
Speaker 2: ships with big, giant guns on them, and the concept
Speaker 2: of a capital ship was We're going to line up
Speaker 2: ships and they're going to shoot at each other with
Speaker 2: cannons till they sink. That's how navies thought, and a
Speaker 2: number of guys in the thirties said, hey, you know
Speaker 2: what these things called airplanes, Actually you are pretty effective,
Speaker 2: and an airplane can sink a ship, So why don't
Speaker 2: we invest in these things called aircraft carriers where we
Speaker 2: basically cut the top off the ship, put a piece
Speaker 2: of pavement down, and we fly planes and we killed
Speaker 2: the other ship before their guns can hit us. The
Speaker 2: Navy said, that's a stupid idea, that's idiotic, and the
Speaker 2: guy that thought of it, they had him kicked out
Speaker 2: of the military, had him kicked out, literally discharge gone.
Speaker 2: And guess what happened Pearl Pearl Harbor. All the battleships
Speaker 2: got sunk. I used to live when I was stationed
Speaker 2: in Hawaii. I looked out my front window and for me,
Speaker 2: I could throw a baseball and hit the wreck of
Speaker 2: the USS Utah that was still sunk, the hulls still
Speaker 2: sitting there in Pearl Harbor, and all the battleships basically
Speaker 2: were wiped out. So the Navy had no choice. And
Speaker 2: guess what did all that damage? Airplanes? The Navy quickly
Speaker 2: all right, not only are our battleship's gone, we need
Speaker 2: aircraft carriers. But also we just saw what a bunch
Speaker 2: of cheap airplanes can do to a bunch of expensive ships.
Speaker 2: So you know, I hate to say it, but I
Speaker 2: think LA may be our Pearl Harbor moment for fire
Speaker 2: where we realize it's time for a fundamental reset of
Speaker 2: how we're dealing with this, and it's giving us the
Speaker 2: momentum bipartisan to go across these agencies and say, listen,
Speaker 2: for service, you want to have a forest treatment plan
Speaker 2: that's X and partner here, you want to do that. Great,
Speaker 2: But guess what if we can identify an area as
Speaker 2: a critical fire shed, all that other crap goes away.
Speaker 2: We are going to cut through the bureaucracy, the red tape,
Speaker 2: and all the litigation, and we're going to prioritize public
Speaker 2: safety and we're going to identify critical fire sheds all
Speaker 2: throughout the US and say if you're within a fire shed.
Speaker 2: We're going to cut through all these different environmental impact
Speaker 2: of views, all these different lawsuits, all these different acts,
Speaker 2: and we're something going to say the priority for this
Speaker 2: valley is we're going to do force treatment. We're going
Speaker 2: to build roads where we have to to get firefighters there,
Speaker 2: and we're going to we're going to bolster the fire
Speaker 2: fighting capability here in an inner agency cross cutting manner.
Speaker 4: This is a critical fire shed. Want a place where
Speaker 4: that has like a certain density of human population.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, So that's so the fixed our Forest Acts
Speaker 2: was that was we just introduced last week. Yeah, so Westerman, Curtis, Padilla,
Speaker 2: Hick and Looper, we all came together based all Western
Speaker 2: states guys saying, hey, you know, we need to find
Speaker 2: we need to fix our forests and and and one
Speaker 2: of the key aspects of that is identify fire sheds.
Speaker 2: And you know, part of the problem too is here
Speaker 2: of course, you know, we're in a very political, polarized
Speaker 2: political environment, and everyone wants to grab every issue and
Speaker 2: just you know, crank up the volume and get everyone
Speaker 2: pissed at each other. And unfortunately that makes it hard
Speaker 2: to have a common sense conversation. Sometimes nobody's talking about
Speaker 2: clear cutting forests like we did in the late eighteen hours.
Speaker 2: No one's talking about going in and like you know,
Speaker 2: lorax here and just like wiping off the whole. What
Speaker 2: we're talking about is forest thinning and prescribe burns. And
Speaker 2: you know, no one seems to have a problem. Some
Speaker 2: of these environmental letting the forest burn to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yet they don't want us to use that timber to
Speaker 2: create jobs and economic activity in towns that Franklin. You know,
Speaker 2: they could go to Libby, go to Columbia Falls, some
Speaker 2: of these towns. You know, pelt grants payment lieu of
Speaker 2: taxes have replaced timber revenue. And the Force Service used
Speaker 2: to be the most profitable agency in the United States government.
Speaker 2: It made money every single year, literally contributed to the
Speaker 2: National Treasury. And now like every other agency, it's a
Speaker 2: cost center because they no longer the East harvest in
Speaker 2: the eighties thirteen million board fitt a year. Now it's
Speaker 2: they struggle to hit three. So we've got to figure
Speaker 2: out how to bring that common sense in a narraor
Speaker 2: when we had it. We've had a housing boom and
Speaker 2: houding shortage. You'd think we'd want more timber. Instead, we're
Speaker 2: buying timber from Canada when we should be getting it
Speaker 2: from here in America. So that that critical fire shed
Speaker 2: will be basically a negotiating processing around say all right,
Speaker 2: this area that this this as you know, a fireshed
Speaker 2: normally follows a drainage. It's like, all right, this drainage
Speaker 2: here is a critical fire shed for this town. You know,
Speaker 2: we're going to identify this as a fire critical area.
Speaker 1: Only ask on that is that you let me come
Speaker 1: in and double check the work, because what I would
Speaker 1: be afraid of here is that people would take that
Speaker 1: ability and manipulate it and wind up being that they're
Speaker 1: they're pursuing other objectives when they draw those lines. I mean,
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope that follows like that it really
Speaker 1: is a critical fire shed and not where someone says,
Speaker 1: can we extend it way over that way too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, listen, I mean that that's where So that's
Speaker 2: where local control comes into the picture. And you know,
Speaker 2: for me and I think most people feel like they
Speaker 2: want more of a local voice and how the lands
Speaker 2: around them are managed. And it's funny the public lands issue,
Speaker 2: obviously Montana, it's a very unique issue where in Montana
Speaker 2: public lands, you know, public lands and public hands is
Speaker 2: the motto, as it should be, public belongs to the public.
Speaker 2: But then it's the the public lands belong to the
Speaker 2: public though, and what's happened a lot is the public
Speaker 2: lands now belong to the government. That's different. You know,
Speaker 2: the public lands belong to the people, and I think
Speaker 2: there is a separate and distinct definition between the government
Speaker 2: owning the land and the people owning the land.
Speaker 1: The steward of the land. Right like wildlife belongs to
Speaker 1: the people, but people don't do vigilanting enforcement of wildlife laws.
Speaker 2: The state does exactly. But the state, whether it's a county,
Speaker 2: whether it's a state, or it's a federal agency, has
Speaker 2: to have the trust of the people who live around
Speaker 2: it to say, you know, your input matters. You know,
Speaker 2: whether it's in danser grizzies, whether it's sage grouse habitat,
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, grazing rights. You know, every state
Speaker 2: is different. Some states are more about grazing. Some states,
Speaker 2: you know that sage browse habitat has been used to
Speaker 2: conserve massive tracts of land. To say you can't graze
Speaker 2: us anymore, it's sage gross habitat. It's like, oh wow, well, like,
Speaker 2: our family depends on that land has for one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Now you're just going to take it away and we
Speaker 2: can't use it anymore. So I think that there's been
Speaker 2: a big disconnect, especially you know in the Western States
Speaker 2: between mean how locals feel about how the federal governments
Speaker 2: managing land and also saying, well we want to say
Speaker 2: in that okay, like we want to say and what's
Speaker 2: going to happen here? Because you know, I share a
Speaker 2: fence line with this forest service and I see the
Speaker 2: fuel load in that forest and if a fire comes
Speaker 2: through there, like it's going to barrow through like a
Speaker 2: freight train. And they're like, yeah, well, you know, we're
Speaker 2: on a ten year forest management plan and currently you
Speaker 2: know it's being injuncted by a judge who says we
Speaker 2: can't cut a tree down, so you know, we'll get
Speaker 2: back to it in a few years. Like okay, well
Speaker 2: if here is great, but what happens when the fire
Speaker 2: comes through next fall?
Speaker 1: I understand that frustration.
Speaker 2: Well, like when the Gold family and a golf family,
Speaker 2: you know, ranks up near us. You know, we're in
Speaker 2: Martins Deel Road with hill there in White Over Springs,
Speaker 2: and you know they were that they were you know,
Speaker 2: indicted for fighting a fire that was on their fence line.
Speaker 2: On their leaks, it was on federal land. But they're like,
Speaker 2: we have to protect our ranch as our livelihood, and
Speaker 2: that they were basically government took them to the court saying,
Speaker 2: you know, you are not allowed to do that destruction
Speaker 2: of government property. And you know, obviously we've seen a
Speaker 2: lot of these Western lands issues come to heads, you know,
Speaker 2: between a ranch between local Like there's that sheriff that
Speaker 2: arrested the fire manager from the Forest Service a couple
Speaker 2: years ago out in Washington State who they were doing
Speaker 2: a prescribe burned that got out of control and was
Speaker 2: burning private property. And the sheriff showed up and said, listen,
Speaker 2: like you had a prescribe it. You can burn your
Speaker 2: federal and all you want, but now you're burning private land.
Speaker 2: And there had been years of tensions building here, and
Speaker 2: the sheriff arrested them, said you're a force of employe.
Speaker 2: I don't care that it does not give you the
Speaker 2: right to burn down private property, you know, and put
Speaker 2: them out of rest. Obviously that that case is still
Speaker 2: working its way through the system, but so you know,
Speaker 2: and then you look in California and obviously the impacts
Speaker 2: of that were folks said, you know, decades of public
Speaker 2: lands management decisions impact the fire resilience of a community,
Speaker 2: and the folks saying, well, you know, if I had
Speaker 2: known that what you were doing was going to create
Speaker 2: my was going to create a less safe fire environment
Speaker 2: for my community, I never would have let you do it.
Speaker 2: So I think, I think what we're seeing is a
Speaker 2: recon de pendulum always swings. You know, we had a
Speaker 2: huge conservation push in the back half of the twenty century,
Speaker 2: especially his last forty, which is obviously a good thing
Speaker 2: in many respects. But as you know, in any movement,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes we make mistakes on the way. And
Speaker 2: you know, I would I would submit that the Endangered
Speaker 2: Species Act has been has been greatly abused, and the
Speaker 2: Clean Waters Act Waters the United States Act, has been
Speaker 2: taken by a lot of advocacy groups and they've said,
Speaker 2: you know what, this is a way to shut down
Speaker 2: development here. This is a way to shut down ranchers
Speaker 2: using this irrigation water because it connects. I mean that
Speaker 2: case in Idaho where the irrigation ditch was fourteen miles
Speaker 2: from Priest Lake, yet they called it a navigable body
Speaker 2: of water. Yeah, I understand, right, So I think, you know,
Speaker 2: both sides have to come to the table and say, listen,
Speaker 2: the land belongs to the people, not to the government,
Speaker 2: and we need to make sure that people who live
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you talk to folks in Libby,
Speaker 2: they come out like, we have been desperate to get
Speaker 2: these timber projects going for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and
Speaker 2: all we get is lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, and
Speaker 2: we want our town back, We want our timber industry
Speaker 2: back in our town. And you know, we have lawyers
Speaker 2: from five states away, parachute in and well healed lawyers
Speaker 2: with millions of dollars of funding from who knows where
Speaker 2: it comes from, and they pop in and every time
Speaker 2: we're about to get our timb release, boom, it's no
Speaker 2: they judge shop, they sue it. They stop in the
Speaker 2: town's like, this is our forest, we live here. How
Speaker 2: do these people come in from where they're coming from
Speaker 2: and tell us we can't have an economy in our town.
Speaker 2: You know, go to Blackbeart Copper Company and White Sulfur.
Speaker 2: That town wants that mine. It's on private land, and
Speaker 2: yet you know they get they get, you know, and
Speaker 2: junked it. Every time they're about to stick a shovel
Speaker 2: on the ground, the mine gets shut down. So I
Speaker 2: think you know that there's some common sense application that
Speaker 2: needs to happen, and I think this fire in LA
Speaker 2: is wagging people up to the fact that we have
Speaker 2: an obligation to be good stewards of our land. We
Speaker 2: have an obligation to be good stewards for clean air,
Speaker 2: clean water, and to take care of whether the species
Speaker 2: are endangered or not. We have an obligation there. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, we also have an obligation to
Speaker 2: protect our communities. And two things can be true. We
Speaker 2: can care about the environment and want clean water and
Speaker 2: healthy for us, and we can also say we can
Speaker 2: do that and protect our communities in a common sense
Speaker 2: way from wildfire.
Speaker 3: In the fix our for I haven't read it since
Speaker 3: last session, but I know there was like financial provisions
Speaker 3: for non marketable timber, which is you know there's the
Speaker 3: slash that you talk about off trail right, It's like
Speaker 3: you got to pay to take that stuff out of there.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have the secondary tertiary markets for wood,
Speaker 3: pellets and stuff nearby to be profitable, et cetera. Is
Speaker 3: do you see that happening, Like are we going to
Speaker 3: see some funding to do that type of management? You know,
Speaker 3: like the not dimensional board foot lumber side of things.
Speaker 2: So short answer is yes. And I think this also
Speaker 2: takes into account where I think we have to have
Speaker 2: a little more of an organic relationship between small business
Speaker 2: and local communities and those for treatment projects, where you
Speaker 2: can say, we're going to give this section of forest
Speaker 2: the lease to a company to come in and they're
Speaker 2: going to have the timber lease, but at the same
Speaker 2: time their obligation is to deal with the non dimensional timber,
Speaker 2: to deal with the off take, and create this kind
Speaker 2: of it's more of a symbiotic relationship between industry, the
Speaker 2: forest products industry, and the public landowner. To say again
Speaker 2: whether and there are examples of this working very well.
Speaker 2: Go to Washington State, not exactly a bastion of conservatism,
Speaker 2: but Washington State really undertook their public lands commissioner, lady
Speaker 2: named Hillary France, who's a great lady, super sharp thought
Speaker 2: leader in this regard many many years ago. I think
Speaker 2: starting twenty sixteen, she started taking a pretty aggressive approach
Speaker 2: to active forest management of the state and really leveraged
Speaker 2: the very vibrant forest products industry in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 2: to say, listen, I want to fireproof for our communities
Speaker 2: and I also want to reinvigorate especially a lot of
Speaker 2: these tribal communities that are on Colville, who you know,
Speaker 2: are always struggling for good economic growth, and they used
Speaker 2: kind of this forestry model around both traditional timber products
Speaker 2: but also non standard uh forestry products. And you know,
Speaker 2: the free mark is a beautiful thing. The free market
Speaker 2: will adapt, you know, with amazing speed. And if you
Speaker 2: give them an economic outlet for any product, whether even
Speaker 2: if it's just slash, they'll find a way to use
Speaker 2: it and they'll find a way to make it processable
Speaker 2: into something useful. And if not, then they'll bake into
Speaker 2: their proposal to do a broader forest treatment project. You
Speaker 2: know what it's going to take to get that out
Speaker 2: of So so I think the paradigm of worgun the
Speaker 2: government's going to write a check and say you here, boom,
Speaker 2: here's cash. We're going to pay you to go clean
Speaker 2: up that forest. H That's that's not the way we're
Speaker 2: generally going to try to approach.
Speaker 1: It comes as a chore list tied to a cut, right,
Speaker 1: a financial cut. Yeah, so you uh, I know we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose you because you have other obligations. So I
Speaker 1: try to move quick on a couple of things. You
Speaker 1: campaigned really hard on public lands and public hands. Yep,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna, like, how can you as an
Speaker 1: incoming Republican senator like maybe buck a trend that's coming
Speaker 1: from your broader party about divestiture from public lands or
Speaker 1: allowed to talk about getting rid of public lands access
Speaker 1: public lands. What kind of position does that put you in?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, so there was a bill that
Speaker 2: came out a couple weeks ago that both Dane Senator
Speaker 2: Danes and I voted, voted in favor of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you you the only two in your party,
Speaker 1: but a huge thank you man. Yeah, true, no question,
Speaker 1: I'd like to give you credit for that because I
Speaker 1: was pleased to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. So there's no question in our minds
Speaker 2: public lands, blowing public hands. Again, that's not just a slogan,
Speaker 2: it's the fact that's a way of life. But there's
Speaker 2: a butt and I'm not gonna we'll say government assets,
Speaker 2: government owned assets. What happens when you have a defunct
Speaker 2: military base in a that's been abandoned, that's shut down,
Speaker 2: that's inside those are your personal playground. Yeah, a semi
Speaker 2: urban area, you know, El Tora Airbase in La Is
Speaker 2: a great example like el as La grew Eltro air
Speaker 2: bases in like the middle of the growth of La yep.
Speaker 2: That was public land, right and the decision was, we're
Speaker 2: going to transfer that to the city of La and
Speaker 2: they will do with it what they deem best. Because
Speaker 2: this no longer makes sense based the entire San Francisco base,
Speaker 2: same thing, bunch of military bases, publicly owned lands that
Speaker 2: were transferred in a common sense way to say, mainly
Speaker 2: pushed by Democrats that hey, we want these to be
Speaker 2: pushed in the private market. You will get no resistance
Speaker 2: from me on these issues. True. So, but where I'm
Speaker 2: going is, unfortunately it's the same legal framework. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, politics of politics, everyone's got to you know,
Speaker 2: run their game. I get it. But you know, in
Speaker 2: Montana specifically, there's been this effective narrative created that you know,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party wants to sell off Yelosto a national
Speaker 2: park and I want to you know, turn Glacier. And
Speaker 2: I heard that, but I mean I could picture someone
Speaker 2: saying that, Oh, I literally that people in my office
Speaker 2: like I heard you're going to sell a Yellowstone, Like
Speaker 2: I'm like, what are you talking about? But that same framework,
Speaker 2: though extends. So take Nevada, and it's interesting how public
Speaker 2: the mindseter on public lands changes on where you're at. Like,
Speaker 2: there are people in Nevada that view the federal government
Speaker 2: owning land. It's almost the inverse of heory. It's like occupation.
Speaker 2: Ninety seven percent of Nevada's owned by the federal government,
Speaker 2: and a lot of Nevadas resent that deeply. They're like,
Speaker 2: because the government owns our whole state, we can't develop it.
Speaker 2: We can't you know, have economic A lot of the
Speaker 2: Native tribes in Hawaii hate the fact that the US
Speaker 2: federal government owns so much land in Hawaii. They view
Speaker 2: that it's foreign occupation. So in Alaska, people in Alaska
Speaker 2: are very supportive of saying we want energy development on
Speaker 2: our public lands. In some cases that may mean leasing
Speaker 2: or selling chunks, because we want jobs, we want economic growth.
Speaker 2: So it's it's not selling national parks, not selling BLM,
Speaker 2: not selling forest service, of course, but it is to say,
Speaker 2: if we have a military base in the middle of
Speaker 2: a city thousands of acres, is that just going to
Speaker 2: stay fenced off and empty forever? And I think when
Speaker 2: you hear Doug Bergham talking about we need to use
Speaker 2: our public lands more efficiently, and he starts talking about
Speaker 2: we're going to consider affordable housing projects on public lands.
Speaker 2: He's not going to build an apartment building, you know
Speaker 2: next to you, old Faithful. What he's saying is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of Department of Interior own land, or Department
Speaker 2: of Energy own land or DoD owned land that is
Speaker 2: owned by the public that most people would say this
Speaker 2: could be used better than it is.
Speaker 1: Okay, But if they come in and say, if Burgham
Speaker 1: or anybody comes in and says, we're limiting this to
Speaker 1: pre developed properties, We're limiting this to things that are
Speaker 1: that are not you know, I know these are fudgy
Speaker 1: words or fuzzy words. We're limiting these actions to things
Speaker 1: that are not undeveloped. Yeah, wildlife habitat. I think you'd
Speaker 1: have a huge segment of the conservation community in hunters
Speaker 1: and angers be like, well, doesn't it not like my fight? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, and that's exactly Frankly, that's exactly where it's going. Obviously, again,
Speaker 2: we have to remember we're in a politics of politics,
Speaker 2: and of course, you know I've been dealing with it
Speaker 2: with them everything I'm doing at fire is bipartisan. Yet
Speaker 2: there's people pulling out people who don't like my agenda,
Speaker 2: are pulling out snippets of bills are working on saying oh,
Speaker 2: look he's trying to do this with fire, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but put in the full context of what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: And then when you look at the full document, oh,
Speaker 2: that makes total sense. But when you pull out of context,
Speaker 2: it doesn't. So you know, some folks are using this
Speaker 2: to attack. You're probably Gonann saying, oh, they're talking about
Speaker 2: selling government owned land. Yeah, like military bases that haven't
Speaker 2: been used in fifty years, you know, Or you know
Speaker 2: there's an old warehouse in downtown Gary, Indiana, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: why does the federal government still own that piece of
Speaker 2: land for the Defense Logistics Agency DLA doesn't need that
Speaker 2: land anymore. The factory that used to make those ships
Speaker 2: there has been shut down for seventy years. Why don't
Speaker 2: we sell that and pay down the debt? So to
Speaker 2: your point, I think, you know, we have to, and
Speaker 2: that's on us too. We got a message better, but
Speaker 2: also the opposition messaging. You know, I never once in
Speaker 2: my life said anything closest. Let's sell our public lands
Speaker 2: yet that became an issue in my campaign because you know,
Speaker 2: it was an issue that could easily be be created
Speaker 2: by my political opposition, and both sides do it.
Speaker 1: I would never in a million years sit here and
Speaker 1: ask you questions about like like attack ads that came
Speaker 1: at you during a campaign.
Speaker 2: No, I get it.
Speaker 1: But but I guess I'm I just go, I'm interested
Speaker 1: in what you do and I and I want to
Speaker 1: hear what you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, but I guess where I'm going is the
Speaker 2: narrative that's been developed kind of nationally is that, you know,
Speaker 2: the Republicans are trying to sell off our public lands.
Speaker 2: And I just that's not an accurate narrative, but there
Speaker 2: is it. I will definitely say there is a divergence
Speaker 2: where some people are more interested in saying, all right,
Speaker 2: can we can we have a you know, uh, can
Speaker 2: we sell off a piece of BLM land? Uh to
Speaker 2: you know a mining company? For me, I'm like, no, Like,
Speaker 2: it's public land.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: We could arrange a lease deal, of course, we did
Speaker 2: all the time with coal leases and mine of course,
Speaker 2: But like, I don't want to see the land sold
Speaker 2: because I think one of the greatest inventions in the
Speaker 2: history of our nation was the constant to public land,
Speaker 2: and that's that's something so special to America. They don't
Speaker 2: have in Europe. Sure, I mean, you know that land
Speaker 2: was was, you know, private, thousands of years ago. They don't.
Speaker 2: Canada has crown land that's literally owned by the crown.
Speaker 2: But like, we're the only country in the world really
Speaker 2: to ever have the concept of the people will own
Speaker 2: massive tracts of land, and that's just so special. We
Speaker 2: can never you know, we can't chip away at that,
Speaker 2: and if we do, it's a dangerous precedent. We start
Speaker 2: so and especially here in Montana, in our western states,
Speaker 2: and we know what a magical thing it is to
Speaker 2: have that, and you know, we just have to fight
Speaker 2: to protect it. That's a red line for all of us.
Speaker 2: I know our whole Montane delegation is aligned on that.
Speaker 2: That you know, that's just that's a non starter.
Speaker 3: I get a little nervous, honestly when I hear national
Speaker 3: parks brought up, because like all we do every single
Speaker 3: day is interact with people from all across the country
Speaker 3: who love public lands and they own dogs that they
Speaker 3: want to have off leash, and they own guns. National
Speaker 3: parks are not the place to have dogs off own guns. Right,
Speaker 3: So when we say public land, it's like the example
Speaker 3: of a national park is pretty far down the list.
Speaker 3: But man, when you're paying attention to this, it's like
Speaker 3: that is the example that's being used over and wait
Speaker 3: wait wait, wait wait. I always be represented.
Speaker 2: I always have to explain that to people like like
Speaker 2: as like for Native Montana, like people live in Montana.
Speaker 2: Like parks are actually like almost partially for the tourists.
Speaker 2: We're worried about our for service, land, about our b
Speaker 2: Do we really like.
Speaker 3: Having them for that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to spill over a mechanism.
Speaker 2: Let's match it.
Speaker 1: You got to run. I don't want to keep you late.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: In all honesty, I would love to have you come
Speaker 1: back sometime. I don't know if we ever get done it,
Speaker 1: so we don't get much free time. I would love
Speaker 1: to have you come back for a couple hours. Uh.
Speaker 1: I wanted our listeners to meet you. You know, most
Speaker 1: like you know, most of our listeners are not in Montana.
Speaker 1: I wanted them to meet you. We got some background covered,
Speaker 1: which I think is important. I respect the service you did.
Speaker 1: I think that you know doing what you did with
Speaker 1: such a high risk of injury cost your family like
Speaker 1: earns you a seat at the table, right, deserves respect.
Speaker 1: We got that out of the way. I would love
Speaker 1: it to come back and talk more about fires and
Speaker 1: more about public lands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, And as the fire legislation moves,
Speaker 2: you know, I think, you know, probably the summer I'll
Speaker 2: swing back around because in the next few months, obviously
Speaker 2: it's already late April, you know, some of these bills
Speaker 2: will be in place, and I think we'll see a
Speaker 2: lot of that, the bipartisan action on the fire like
Speaker 2: taking place. So i'd love to come back as sp
Speaker 2: been two hours of summer, and especially in the fire
Speaker 2: season when probably a lot of people are going to
Speaker 2: be what's going on, we can talk through it and
Speaker 2: just talk through some of the tactics and what's going on. Why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my brain has been trained in two hour. We
Speaker 1: do a two hour show's trained in. I can't get
Speaker 1: there in an hour at apologies, but I know you
Speaker 1: got to run.
Speaker 3: Love to have you back, man, I mean big thank
Speaker 3: you too for for standing up for public lands. They're
Speaker 3: both on the reconciliation bill on that or the Amendment there,
Speaker 3: and then Zinkey's Public Lands and Public Hands Bill that's huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely proud to do it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me going back and I appreciate it.