Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underware. Listening past, you
Speaker 1: can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
Speaker 1: I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds,
Speaker 1: no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer,
Speaker 1: no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at
Speaker 1: first light dot com. That's f I R S T
Speaker 1: l I t E dot com. We're joined today by
Speaker 1: Benji Backer of Nature Is Nonpartisan, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about can it be? You're just saying it is?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 1: You just that's the title.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna will it to existence, and we're gonna.
Speaker 1: Say, is it how? How can can it be? How
Speaker 1: does it become? How does nature become nonpartisan? Meaning wildlife conservation,
Speaker 1: wildlands conservation? Can it? Can it rise above.
Speaker 2: The vitriol, the culture wars.
Speaker 1: In the in the cycles, Yeah, I mean and off again.
Speaker 2: It has to. Uh, That's why I created Nature's non parson.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you just you're saying it is.
Speaker 2: It is because people, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: We got to get out of our algorithms here and
Speaker 3: realize that it actually once was non partisan. Right, you
Speaker 3: look at history, the biggest environmental achievements, conservation achievements throughout
Speaker 3: history were immensely by partisan non parson. I've spent the
Speaker 3: last ten years of my career. I'm twenty seven. So
Speaker 3: I started when I was a freshman in college. I
Speaker 3: started a nonprofit by freshman year of college, like a
Speaker 3: normal freshman does, and went around the country and saw
Speaker 3: that people actually wanted a lot.
Speaker 2: Of the same things.
Speaker 3: They want clean air, they want clean water, they want
Speaker 3: wildlife habitat to be concerned. They want to be able
Speaker 3: to hunt and fish. They also want to be able
Speaker 3: to hike and ski. They just want to be able
Speaker 3: to spend time outdoors. And you could be the trumpiest
Speaker 3: voter in the world, or you could be an AOC
Speaker 3: lover and anything in between, and you want those same things.
Speaker 3: And yet that's not reflected in our politics today. So
Speaker 3: we have to get this right. So by saying I
Speaker 3: could say nature should be nonpartisan, that's a less compelling organization.
Speaker 3: There's four four words there instead of three uh ought
Speaker 3: to be ought to be.
Speaker 4: Un could be The NSBN is not a really compelling acronym.
Speaker 2: It's just ESPN two similar too. Similar.
Speaker 3: Uh, but yeah, I mean we we feel like it
Speaker 3: should be, and so we're going to make sure that
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: That's the whole goal.
Speaker 1: When we get into this, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: some of my favorite little facts that uh the e
Speaker 1: p A all the stuff that came in under Nixon, dude.
Speaker 1: And not only that, this guy, yeah yeah, and not
Speaker 1: only that, my other little favorite thing. Cal might remember
Speaker 1: the numbers on it when they passed the Wilderness Act.
Speaker 1: Wasn't like ninety nine to one in the Senate or
Speaker 1: like it was like not that so much. She looked
Speaker 1: that up, Phil, Yeah, I mean it, Phil, that's not something.
Speaker 1: Phil's trying to memorize. His line.
Speaker 5: I'm also switching cameras, making you look good taking notes.
Speaker 1: I can look this up. He's back there a farw.
Speaker 5: Thing thrilled when Steve learns another form of English currency.
Speaker 1: Phil, you ever hear of a fella named Bob scratch it? Nope,
Speaker 1: Bob cratch it yep. I like that.
Speaker 6: You didn't play along there.
Speaker 1: You showed up in town at the wrong time. If
Speaker 1: you just showed up in town months from now, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, go see Phil and Christmas, Carol. Oh is
Speaker 1: he in it doing Little Dickens. Yeah, right now is it?
Speaker 1: He's playing do.
Speaker 2: A couple of the halftime you know what? What what?
Speaker 1: Like this this is my name.
Speaker 7: It's not technically a one man show, but he makes
Speaker 7: it seem as if it is.
Speaker 2: That's he plays all the roles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like in movies, there's like a big line that
Speaker 1: the actor is excited about, Like when you think of
Speaker 1: Bob cratch in your role, what line are you like?
Speaker 1: What line are you most excited to?
Speaker 5: Just he's got a very emphatic yeah here when when
Speaker 5: When when Fred is trying to convince convince Scrooge of
Speaker 5: the joys of Christmas, I'll be watching for that.
Speaker 7: And the only reason I bring it up is because
Speaker 7: that's the only line I have memorized so far.
Speaker 1: When I went to film some time a couple months
Speaker 1: when I went to fill more of a sound effect
Speaker 1: than a line.
Speaker 6: But go ahead, and Phil's last play.
Speaker 4: He I didn't really know what his role was, and
Speaker 4: I was reading the bill, you know, and and he's
Speaker 4: like all the way at the end of the bill,
Speaker 4: and then as the play goes on, I'm like, God,
Speaker 4: he's got all the lines, Like he's got all the
Speaker 4: laughs he's.
Speaker 1: The main kid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm like, I was like growing as I
Speaker 4: realized how central his role was. I was growing more
Speaker 4: and more offended at Phil's placement in the bill. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't until two days later and I told him
Speaker 4: this and they said it was alphabetized.
Speaker 1: Filled the engineer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so he was under tea. But I thought
Speaker 4: it was like this Grave Injustice. Uh yeah, I'm excited
Speaker 4: for this one.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'll tell you what. It's watched this segu
Speaker 1: you know what, you know what? It ain't gonna be
Speaker 1: as good ass film, let's hear it. Mm. The Christmas Tour,
Speaker 1: Ah should have guessed.
Speaker 2: You like that?
Speaker 1: That was good. I don't know they gonna be as
Speaker 1: good as the Christmas Tour.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Me Eater Live the Christmas Tour coming to the American South.
Speaker 1: I wish I had all the cities in front.
Speaker 6: Of Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville.
Speaker 1: I want to do the dates and everything. Got you
Speaker 1: how do I find that chack chatting?
Speaker 6: You go to the meat eater dot com slash tour.
Speaker 1: No, you can see all the day tight tang tight
Speaker 1: here it is. We're coming out. We're coming on the road. Uh.
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves will be there. He's in for the full tour.
Speaker 1: Clay nukeomb there, Doctor Randall will be there. Yanni Full
Speaker 1: Tour Special guests at every stop. December seventeenth, They're going
Speaker 1: to be in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Lyric. At that event,
Speaker 1: I will tell my story about taking a a very
Speaker 1: paranoid two days I spent where I took a shotgun apart.
Speaker 1: And I was going from on a Greyhound bus from Missoula, Montana,
Speaker 1: to Auburn, Alabama to duck Hunt, very nervous about if
Speaker 1: they found out I had that gun mhm. And we
Speaker 1: went into and I'll tell my story about Birmingham. People
Speaker 1: are gonna think they found the gun. They never found it.
Speaker 7: Wait and see, wait and see.
Speaker 1: But the drama is but yeah, it's just worth it.
Speaker 1: At the Lyric December seventeenth, Birmingham, Alabama. At the Lyric
Speaker 1: December eighteenth, Nashville, Tennessee Marathon Music Works, December nineteenth. You'll
Speaker 1: know if these all are just these are all this
Speaker 1: every night fills up here, Scrooge and we're down in
Speaker 1: these places. What's that line? Here here here, here, you
Speaker 1: got it? December nineteenth. Did I do that yet. Eighteenth, Nashville,
Speaker 1: Tennessee at Marathon Music Works. December nineteenth, Memphis, Tennessee, Minglewood Hall.
Speaker 1: I've been texting with Will Primos. I believe that Will
Speaker 1: Primos is gonna be He's gonna come to the the
Speaker 1: show and he's going to give life advice that's delightful.
Speaker 1: That will be the top pieces of life advice from
Speaker 1: a man that has earned a position of giving that advice. December.
Speaker 1: We've been kicking around a couple of things, like Clay
Speaker 1: wants Brent Reeves to hold a fish fry on stage
Speaker 1: every night, but the minute you tell the venue then
Speaker 1: they then they're gonna have to be like, well, now
Speaker 1: we gotta get a fire marshal. That's hard. You know,
Speaker 1: we do the casting contest. We kind of want to
Speaker 1: do a blowgun contest, but not tell the venue, yeah,
Speaker 1: because then they'll have to get a cop or you know,
Speaker 1: you just said it right now so they might get it.
Speaker 1: There'll be a fire marshal and the cop.
Speaker 7: Wait, we should just find out if the beauty of
Speaker 7: our show is there's like zero percent of stage hands
Speaker 7: that listen to it, so except.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one from the venue Oh yeah, Phil's friends.
Speaker 1: Do your friends listen just to catch you on the show?
Speaker 7: Phil, definitely not No.
Speaker 1: December twenty Fayetteville, Arkansas at Ozark Music Hall, which I
Speaker 1: believe is sold out. December twenty one, Dallas, Texas, Texas
Speaker 1: Theater December twenty two, and I believe we've got Jesse
Speaker 1: Griffis coming out. Hang out with this one too, December
Speaker 1: twenty two, Austin, Texas at the Paramount. Tickets are all
Speaker 1: in sale.
Speaker 2: Now that's a good week night, dude.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're gonna need to have some Christmas after that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go see my mam.
Speaker 2: Where's she at?
Speaker 1: Michigan?
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm a Midwestern by myself. What state Wisconsin?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll part of two of the three best Midwest
Speaker 3: states covered well Partiscani Ohio.
Speaker 1: It's also at the table.
Speaker 7: Builds kind of similar to Chester. When we said Wisconsin,
Speaker 7: I was like, huh.
Speaker 1: Do look like Chester?
Speaker 2: Little Chester?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Big ches, big Chess I met little Chester.
Speaker 2: You look like a big Chester, like if.
Speaker 1: Chess had had better eate his wheaties and better like
Speaker 1: pre natal. I don't know, yeah exactly, I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: because we had that guy on the Monteeth about deers Mom's.
Speaker 6: Full expression, the full expression of his jeans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna take this as a comment. I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure yet, but.
Speaker 1: Like everybody here, Love Bodies on Montana say, I look
Speaker 1: like a big gesture and I don't know.
Speaker 2: What that means.
Speaker 1: Uh, near Green Bay es great? Okay, So we're just
Speaker 1: we're just like right across the lake. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: have shot. I could have shot over and we used
Speaker 1: to cross and we'd land over at exactly God, God
Speaker 1: knows his great lakes. Steve.
Speaker 5: The Wilderness Act passed seventy three to twelve in the Senate.
Speaker 1: But then that's why I like to say ninety nine
Speaker 1: to one.
Speaker 5: Well sounds it passed the House three seventy four to one.
Speaker 2: See that's what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: That seems I was combining them. Yeah, it was combining
Speaker 1: the legislative bodies in the one and finding a sort
Speaker 1: of average.
Speaker 5: The only name being Joe Pool from Texas. And I
Speaker 5: can't figure out why I've been looking up, but.
Speaker 1: I feel that it might be this is Lower. I
Speaker 1: feel that he didn't feel it went far enough.
Speaker 7: Of the spiel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Lower. Yeah, I've talked about this a
Speaker 1: handful of times. I don't know if I have on
Speaker 1: the show or not. This is fitting because me and
Speaker 1: Randall been working on our The Hide Hunters, Our Meat
Speaker 1: Eaters audio original or sorry, Meeter's American History The Hide Hunters,
Speaker 1: which tells the story of the begin Okay, let me
Speaker 1: back up. Meeter's American History. The Hide Hunters tells the
Speaker 1: story of the Buffalo hide Hunters. It covers from eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, so the year the Civil War ended. We
Speaker 1: explained why that's of significance up to eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: and it tells about the men, the motivations, the skills,
Speaker 1: the justifications, the dangers, the dangers, the bloodshed, the untimely
Speaker 1: deaths involved in the men who killed the last fifteen
Speaker 1: million buffalo off the American Great planes ran that number
Speaker 1: from fifteen million down to less than a thousand. In
Speaker 1: the US today we have about there's about a half
Speaker 1: million in existence. Ninety four percent are privately owned. That
Speaker 1: really needs to change. Maybe we'll touch on that that's
Speaker 1: a non that should be a non part is an issue,
Speaker 1: but even that is partisan.
Speaker 2: Buffalo covering buffalo buffalo and non partisan.
Speaker 1: The should be but Recovering Buffalo organization. Recovering the buffalo
Speaker 1: is a part is an issue, and it's not fair
Speaker 1: because it's one of the few conservation achievements we could
Speaker 1: have by not It's like, it's not by doing something,
Speaker 1: it's by not doing something getting out of the way.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of times you're like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of work, but with this, it's like it's kind
Speaker 1: of like not doing something would help the animals. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: it's a long winded way of saying, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about this. So we have a new jerky out. We
Speaker 1: take our own jerky. So if you guys bought our cookbooks,
Speaker 1: we always have jerky recipes in our cookbooks, and we
Speaker 1: have a new jerky out. Here's a package right here
Speaker 1: where we take our own recipes from our cookbooks and
Speaker 1: use them on American buffalo So bison jerky. You can
Speaker 1: get it. You can go to you can get it
Speaker 1: right now. There's been a lot of fun working on it.
Speaker 1: You can get it. You can you can order your
Speaker 1: own at meat Eatersnacks dot com. One hundred percent buffalo
Speaker 1: fuel in the country for a long time, and then
Speaker 1: you can go read about do.
Speaker 2: You taste tests on set here.
Speaker 1: Well, do you want some we do mega taste tests
Speaker 1: on set. You want classic pepper?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think pepper, classic pepper, Yeah, classic, sorry, class.
Speaker 1: That new fangled pepper. Try it out.
Speaker 2: It's not normal pepper.
Speaker 1: But you know, when you start you on jerky, then
Speaker 1: you got to talk gets hard.
Speaker 7: Just do it right into the microphone.
Speaker 1: You enjoy them, You enjoy them. It's a good morning jerky.
Speaker 1: You regret taking that. It's a good early morning.
Speaker 3: I just want this part to be clipped and that's it.
Speaker 3: You guys can end it now. Yeah, that's actually really
Speaker 3: good though, No, it is good.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: That is solid.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's fantastic. It turned out really well.
Speaker 2: Really really good.
Speaker 3: That's not that's not regular pepper. Right there, that is
Speaker 3: classic pepper right there.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of back and forth. We finally
Speaker 1: got one that we love. One last little thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Whitetail Week is here right now. September twenty nine through
Speaker 1: October fifth, First Lights run their white tail sale up
Speaker 1: to forty off all kinds of gear. Oh look at this,
Speaker 1: here's a kicker. If you pick up a new white
Speaker 1: tail jacket and bibbs. First Light. We'll throw in a
Speaker 1: Moultrie trail camera for free shopping out first light dot com.
Speaker 1: How could you say no to that?
Speaker 7: So, yeah, it's not just a Moultie trail camera, it's
Speaker 7: the first Light cameo multie trail camera.
Speaker 1: That's what I got. I got one cheeping an eye
Speaker 1: on my fish shack right now.
Speaker 7: That that's an interesting thing, is like the Moultie folks
Speaker 7: really just want you talking about hunting, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: the hunting stuff I don't worry about nearly as much
Speaker 7: as people, uh breaking into stuff. Yeah, and that's a great,
Speaker 7: great use of those trail cameras.
Speaker 1: Doug has a sign coming into the buckshack the farmhouse.
Speaker 1: It reminds it's like a sign telling you that if
Speaker 1: you're breaking in, he already has your picture on his phone.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he's got in typical Doug form. There's some cutesiness
Speaker 7: about it too, like like there's nothing in here worth
Speaker 7: the trouble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing in here worth the trouble you're gonna have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd argue that because he's got this. He's
Speaker 1: got this twelve pound uh sledge hammer head no handling
Speaker 1: it that he uses to hold the bathroom door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I kind of want that sledgehammer head. How much
Speaker 1: trouble do you get in for taking something like that?
Speaker 1: It can't be like a lot.
Speaker 4: So when you enter a window, is it to the
Speaker 4: left or right? As long as they're putting this out there,
Speaker 4: go in, go in and.
Speaker 1: Go like go in? Is it just like like just
Speaker 1: to the right? Gotcha's a bathroom door. There's a twelve
Speaker 1: pound sledgehammer head there propping the door. That is just
Speaker 1: a waste of a beautiful sledgehammer head antique. I would
Speaker 1: tell people, dog's gonna have your picture. Yeah, don't start
Speaker 1: in the kitchen.
Speaker 8: The kitchens like the table bypass the kitchen, and it
Speaker 8: is so chocked fully junk from you know, decades of
Speaker 8: people thinking, oh, you could use an extra sauce pan,
Speaker 8: but there's already nine different saucepans jammed in the back
Speaker 8: of this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Anytime you go to put something away, there's just like
Speaker 7: this cascade of old aluminum and nonstick pans and tin and.
Speaker 1: People are like they're holding it over their garbage can
Speaker 1: and they're like, dah, I'll brand the ducks.
Speaker 7: Exactly. Oh, it's infuriating.
Speaker 1: Uh, here's here's the interesting little fight, bruin. We're only
Speaker 1: gonna do like one or two. I think we got
Speaker 1: one newsy thing we're gonna do. One's just funny. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do the funny one first. So, oh, did you
Speaker 1: guys see damn it the Mississippi Black Panther. Yeah, that's funny,
Speaker 1: And then you can get into it. A news story
Speaker 1: broke out in Maryland. I only caught it after it happened.
Speaker 1: But a woman got approached by a bear in Maryland. Okay,
Speaker 1: she from the bear and fell and got hurt. The
Speaker 1: bear never touched her, but she fell and got hurt.
Speaker 1: So there was like a bear and an injury. So the
Speaker 1: news cycle, I guess very quickly was like attack and
Speaker 1: then it was well self inflicted she here's a self
Speaker 1: inflicted bear injury related So you could go and find
Speaker 1: if you felt like you can go and kind of
Speaker 1: track the sort of evolution.
Speaker 6: Of of like what exell phone game?
Speaker 2: But what exactly went down that phantom bear attack?
Speaker 1: Here's one it's more interesting. I'm bringing the sucks. We've
Speaker 1: covered this bunch over the years, and our very own
Speaker 1: Jordan Sillers just wrote a piece about it. Florida is
Speaker 1: my favorite story in the in the world. Years ago,
Speaker 1: Florida ran a bear hunt. Florida had many bears. If
Speaker 1: you go back historically, they over hunted them, they over
Speaker 1: poisoned them, they over predator controlled them to the point
Speaker 1: where they had very few bears. Bears have really recovered
Speaker 1: in Florida, I think now, like you know, over fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the state has good bear populations. Years ago
Speaker 1: they ran a bear hunt, and they ran a bear
Speaker 1: hunt in Florida. You might pulling up what year that
Speaker 1: was Randall's I was bragging bot how fast he is
Speaker 1: that researching? Well, I turned my WiFi. Years ago they
Speaker 1: opened a bear hunt and they did the management strategy
Speaker 1: of using a quota. And when you use a quota hunt,
Speaker 1: what it is is you'd go and say, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do the best way to the simplest way to
Speaker 1: put this. You say to your you say to the
Speaker 1: people in your state. You're like, hey, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a bear hunt. And the quota is one hundred bears,
Speaker 1: so everybody could go the whole state. You all go hunting.
Speaker 1: As soon as you get one, call our hotline. And
Speaker 1: then when we get to like ninety eight, we're gonna
Speaker 1: turn it off, okay, And that's a quote. That's how
Speaker 1: a quota said some functions. So everybody goes and you
Speaker 1: just count, count, count, count, count, and then bank. Many
Speaker 1: things are managed by quota. There's caribou herds in Alaska
Speaker 1: that are quota hunts where they like, you hit two
Speaker 1: hundred in the region closes in the state. I'm in
Speaker 1: Montana right now. Montana runs quota's on mountain lions. They
Speaker 1: run quota sheet bighorn sheep where anyone, anybody that wants
Speaker 1: can participate. It turns off when you hit the quota,
Speaker 1: and there's a little bit of a there's a lag.
Speaker 1: There's a little art and science to it, like you
Speaker 1: sort of watch your quota. It's speed and then and
Speaker 1: then you usually have a little bit of a buffer
Speaker 1: to turn it off. Meaning if some guy is like
Speaker 1: drawn back on a on a big horn sheep and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden his phone dings and the quota
Speaker 1: is full, right, but he doesn't look at his phone
Speaker 1: and shoots the big orn sheep, he's not trouble because
Speaker 1: they give a forty eight hour buffer. So they go
Speaker 1: like they the numbers climb and you're sort of watching
Speaker 1: the trajectory and you're watching your quota cap and you
Speaker 1: call it and you're like, okay, it's full. So in
Speaker 1: forty eight hours, season's over. When Florida years ago tried
Speaker 1: this bear hunt twenty fifteen, twenty fifteen, they tried a
Speaker 1: bear hunt, and they in some of their areas they
Speaker 1: shot past the quota very very fast, blew everybody away.
Speaker 1: How fast a quota like, they had some units where
Speaker 1: they blew past the quota, And.
Speaker 7: I just bring the speed up because I do think
Speaker 7: that's like a factor in the general reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think they had any idea.
Speaker 4: In two days the state wide quota because this doesn't
Speaker 4: really this distorts like what actually happened. But the state
Speaker 4: wide quota was three twenty and in two days they'd
Speaker 4: killed three hundred. But because of the regional distribution of that,
Speaker 4: like some areas were way shot past.
Speaker 1: And then you call it. And then I think that
Speaker 1: what happened in some of those areas is they called it,
Speaker 1: but there's a twenty four hour window, and then during
Speaker 1: the twenty four hours over the they shot over the quota,
Speaker 1: not enough to be of like biological significance, but plenty
Speaker 1: enough to be of social significance because it was a
Speaker 1: very contentious issue. It like, if you look at if
Speaker 1: there's a theme in wildlife management, it would be that
Speaker 1: when you have a species that becomes imperiled and you
Speaker 1: stop hunting for that species because it comes imperiled, and
Speaker 1: then over time you recover it, you will naturally like
Speaker 1: you're gonna have friction when you want to reinstate a
Speaker 1: hunt because people in their minds, for as far as
Speaker 1: they can remember, back the bears there are not around, Like,
Speaker 1: how can we be hunting? I thought bears are imperiled
Speaker 1: and like they're not recovered. And also now you're telling
Speaker 1: me we're gonna hunt them. I've known my whole life
Speaker 1: that that you can't hunt them because right so you're
Speaker 1: gonna have friction, And that created a lot of friction,
Speaker 1: so much so that they just it was the agency
Speaker 1: was beat up on the whole thing. Again, biologically insigt significant,
Speaker 1: but it was socially very significant that in some areas
Speaker 1: they went over the quota and then Florida just said, okay,
Speaker 1: we're done with bear hunting. They're trying again now, which
Speaker 1: I fully support. They're trying again, and this time they're
Speaker 1: using the other way you do this. The other way
Speaker 1: you do this is you say you say, Okay, everybody
Speaker 1: can't go. We're not going to do that. Everybody goes thing,
Speaker 1: and the quota we're going to do where only some
Speaker 1: of you get to go. And I think they're probably
Speaker 1: doing a quota too right on top of that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have it. They have a mount they want. They're
Speaker 1: issuing one hundred and eighty seven bear permits, So now
Speaker 1: they know how many people are going to be a field.
Speaker 1: They're going to issue one hundred and eighty seven bear permits.
Speaker 1: And what are they look at that? I know they
Speaker 1: have some quotas in place. I can't find it here.
Speaker 7: It's right, So what is it provide like tons of
Speaker 7: opportunity for with the expectation that there's it's theoretical opportunity,
Speaker 7: the expectation of actual opportunity is much much lower. In
Speaker 7: that twenty fifteen hunt, the state didn't properly estimate the
Speaker 7: actual opportunity in the field, meaning that a lot more
Speaker 7: people who in theory wouldn't be successful were in a
Speaker 7: very short amount of time. And it's a great fundraising mechanism, right,
Speaker 7: because you get to sell a ton of permets. And
Speaker 7: this is just exactly how like wolf tags in the
Speaker 7: state of Montana function. Everybody buys a wolf tag, very
Speaker 7: very very few people put in any actual effort to
Speaker 7: target wolves. Specifically. It's like a animal of opportunity versus
Speaker 7: strict pursuit.
Speaker 1: I buy them sons of bitches every year and never
Speaker 1: do anything different.
Speaker 7: Exactly, yeah, exactly, yes.
Speaker 1: This will this will impact my behavior zero.
Speaker 7: But then there's that other group of people who are
Speaker 7: like I am specifically dedicating time in the pursuit of wolves.
Speaker 7: Corey Calvin's right, yep, he's happy either way.
Speaker 1: He knows what you mean. So they're they're saying to
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty seven people, hey, instead of letting
Speaker 1: everybody go, you one hundred and eighty seven going, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be easier to monitor this whole thing. And they
Speaker 1: have a thing. So you buy a They're doing it
Speaker 1: through a lottery democratic allocation five dollars lottery ticket. You
Speaker 1: buy as many chances as you want five bucks. If
Speaker 1: you draw, though, then you got to buy the permit.
Speaker 1: So if you're so like you win, well, then to
Speaker 1: actually get your permit, then you got to come up
Speaker 1: with more money. So it's five bucks to get in.
Speaker 1: And if you draw, if you're a resident, your permit
Speaker 1: is one hundred bucks. Your non resident, your permit is
Speaker 1: three hundred bucks. Great deal. Now here's where it gets
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets saucy. The uh uh Sierra Club
Speaker 1: is pushing its members, Hey, save a bear. Buy all
Speaker 1: these lottery tickets and then don't use them if you win, Okay,
Speaker 1: And they're like, that's how we're gonna save bears. Florida's
Speaker 1: attitude about this is you guys can buy all the
Speaker 1: tickets you want. That's great for you're generating all this thing.
Speaker 2: So they are a conservation organization again.
Speaker 1: And if we don't hit the quota, then we know
Speaker 1: next year we're just gonna release a lot more.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's like, you know, okay, this is the
Speaker 1: thing that's been tried before. Like I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember Wyoming Grizzlies. Yeah, and the catch there, you're
Speaker 1: ago when they moved to dlist grizzly bears in Wyoming,
Speaker 1: they were gonna do you remember twenty four They were
Speaker 1: gonna issue twenty four permits.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was an Idaho resident at the time, so
Speaker 7: I actually was in the drawing.
Speaker 1: Oh, you were in the draw for the one tag,
Speaker 1: for the one tag. Yeah. And then in Wyoming some
Speaker 1: guys went out and there was a big push to
Speaker 1: get none hunters to try to get the permit, but
Speaker 1: they never did the draw, so you never could wind
Speaker 1: up seeing. Uh, it'll be it'll be interesting to it'll
Speaker 1: be interesting to see. I could picture that what they
Speaker 1: might do. Like if I was in Florida fishing games
Speaker 1: shoes the agency shoes for Florida Wildlife Commission. I guess
Speaker 1: is who approved the bear hunt rule. I would be
Speaker 1: wondering should we should we make it a greater hurdle
Speaker 1: to enter, meaning you got to go and let's say
Speaker 1: you gotta be licensed, fully licensed, you got to go
Speaker 1: and take an online bear identification class so you learn
Speaker 1: how to tell a female with cubs, or like what
Speaker 1: I like money, Would I make it more of a.
Speaker 2: Pain in the ass to filter out the preservationists.
Speaker 1: To filter out anti hunters, or would I just really
Speaker 1: be like, no, I want all those five dollars.
Speaker 4: So they've sold they've sold more than one hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty thousand chances have they Yeah, Florida for one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty seven tags.
Speaker 2: Good for them, good for conservation.
Speaker 1: Someone could tell me a lot of times five dollars is.
Speaker 2: It's about a million?
Speaker 7: I would you can grow anything in Florida. Literally, if
Speaker 7: I was one of those bear tag holders, That's what
Speaker 7: I would be concentrated. I'd be like, what mix of
Speaker 7: food do I want in the black Bear? I'm going
Speaker 7: to target apple region right like where? Yeah, that'd be exciting, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah to have.
Speaker 7: Or even have to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My favorite word lately is it's a it's a situation
Speaker 1: that's gotten frothy. I heard that in the market, like
Speaker 1: in the markets listening to markets about the new frothy
Speaker 1: like a lot of M and a a lot of
Speaker 1: M and a activity out there. He'd be like, it's
Speaker 1: a frothy.
Speaker 2: Can you snacks? You should have be a frothy something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, frothy classic, Yeah, I would say, yeah.
Speaker 1: What a final point on this, it's like a little
Speaker 1: bit sticky. I feel for Sierra Club. It's like, how
Speaker 1: is it cool for like is it cool for Sierra
Speaker 1: Club to be? Is it cool for Sierra Club to be?
Speaker 1: Like not only do we not support the State agency, right,
Speaker 1: the state biologists and the State Agency is doing this.
Speaker 1: Not only do we not support their mission, we're we're
Speaker 1: promoting the idea that you try to like thwart right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the effort, which seems to me like that's a that's
Speaker 1: an aggressive play.
Speaker 2: They're always aggressive.
Speaker 1: That's an aggressive play.
Speaker 3: Their whole thing is being aggressive. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: they only raise money off of being aggressive. They're almost
Speaker 3: a billion dollar annual organization every year because they raise
Speaker 3: money off of being anti whatever the other groups are for.
Speaker 3: That's they actually want sort of this this coverage even
Speaker 3: because the conflict.
Speaker 1: This fill the conflict.
Speaker 3: They love that Donald Trump's president because they can raise
Speaker 3: all the money in the world of being against everything
Speaker 3: that he does. And when things are good and you're
Speaker 3: solving problems, it's harder to rile people up. They love
Speaker 3: riling people up. They're the problem in my opinion.
Speaker 1: It's funny bring it up because Randall and I were
Speaker 1: talking you have today about I don't even want to
Speaker 1: kind of get into this, but we were talking about
Speaker 1: please I'm glad that I'm just gonna be real quick
Speaker 1: about it. We're talking about tail and all ah.
Speaker 6: As one does on.
Speaker 1: A Wednesday, trying to explain and Randall is trying to capture.
Speaker 1: If I go on to social media and I want
Speaker 1: to find out what people how people feel about Tailano,
Speaker 1: I will come away with a different impression of what
Speaker 1: people feel about Tylanh the thing I would if I
Speaker 1: was just going about my existence in life.
Speaker 4: If you hold up a newspaper and start eavesdropping, there
Speaker 4: are people pounding the table about Thailand.
Speaker 3: I mean, at this point we should start creating like
Speaker 3: pro tail and all anti thailandolf swag.
Speaker 1: I feel that a lot of people are actually out
Speaker 1: there thinking like, huh, that was kind of weird.
Speaker 2: What side are you on your pick?
Speaker 7: Fighter Ye when.
Speaker 1: He takes the national temperature, he feels the national temperature
Speaker 1: in spite of what was happening in the news. The
Speaker 1: national temperature was huh.
Speaker 6: I guess I'll go to work today.
Speaker 3: Well, our leaders are fighting about what silent Yeah, I
Speaker 3: followed it autism, and I.
Speaker 7: Will point out the tag buying strategy I know back
Speaker 7: to the bears, the buddy of mine drew the Upper
Speaker 7: Rock Creek big Horned Sheep tag when it was still good,
Speaker 7: and the jackasses who locked out all the public access
Speaker 7: and Upper Rock Creek weren't there. The UH ran into
Speaker 7: two guys, father's son who had drawn the Lower Rock
Speaker 7: Creek a couple of the U tags.
Speaker 1: And this is back in the days. They're just standing
Speaker 1: along the road.
Speaker 7: Yes exactly, ye, And we're chatting with them and they're like, oh,
Speaker 7: we're non hunters, we just bought we apply for tags,
Speaker 7: and then we come out like wildlife Watch and this
Speaker 7: is how we save animals. And that was back in
Speaker 7: probably I bet like four five.
Speaker 1: They were pioneers, early adopters.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so, I mean it was, it has been a
Speaker 7: strategy in the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes I mean it seems like you could
Speaker 1: take everyone on the planet and have them all forget everything,
Speaker 1: and then have new people come and I think those
Speaker 1: new people would quickly oh hit on the idea that
Speaker 1: this could be a thing one could do.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, uh huh.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean we were just talking about this.
Speaker 7: I missed the big party last night because I was
Speaker 7: at the public land water access.
Speaker 1: I was able to track your movements through a way
Speaker 1: that you would never anticipate. Oh, your next door, my
Speaker 1: neighbor is on the board. Yeah, so I knew where
Speaker 1: you were before you knew where you were.
Speaker 7: That was great. Yeah, we chatted for a little bit,
Speaker 7: but you could. I brought up in my talk last night.
Speaker 7: I'm like, you know this public Lands fight. You know,
Speaker 7: these people fought this in the thirties, forties, fifties, and
Speaker 7: people were like where I thought, we just won that, right.
Speaker 2: Like this does happened before? Thought, Yeah, it will happen
Speaker 2: again sooner than we'd like.
Speaker 1: Kel it sound ten year cycle, I think, thanks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's tens like snow hairs plus three years.
Speaker 2: And it's going to happen sooner again.
Speaker 7: Oh I know.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, first off, man, give us some background. You're
Speaker 1: from Green Bay, yep, go pack Yeah is it Benjamin?
Speaker 1: Benjamin Packer Benjamin? But so will you shortened? Most guys
Speaker 1: go all the way down to bed then?
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody.
Speaker 3: I wanted to kept some Yeah, yeah, I had kept
Speaker 3: a little extra little tail there called Benji.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I second grade woke up and said I don't want
Speaker 3: to have been Benjamin's too long, So Benji it is.
Speaker 2: But thanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Green Bay and I watched John
Speaker 3: McCain and Barack Obama debate in two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: and said, I want to be part of that for.
Speaker 2: The whole ten.
Speaker 1: You were like, I want to be a detective, right,
Speaker 1: or a.
Speaker 3: Sports announcer or an NFL player. I'm five nine, There's
Speaker 3: no way I'm becoming an NFL player. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: was like, I really want to be part of the
Speaker 3: civic process, and so I started. I asked my parents,
Speaker 3: who were not political at all, can we go? Can
Speaker 3: I go door knocking for John McCain? And they were like,
Speaker 3: that is the weirdest thing that you could ask us
Speaker 3: to do. And my parents were not political at all,
Speaker 3: and they did not want to have signs in their
Speaker 3: yard or bumper stickers in their cars or any of
Speaker 3: that stuff. And I just was like allured by the process.
Speaker 3: And so I became super active in high school in
Speaker 3: conservative politics and spoke at Seapack. My freshman year of
Speaker 3: high school was on Fox News for the first time.
Speaker 3: My freshman year of high school, I had a really
Speaker 3: good biber haircut. My Wisconsin accent was really intense, and
Speaker 3: I knew nothing about what I was doing, obviously, but
Speaker 3: I cared a lot about America was really what it
Speaker 3: came down to and like I wanted to be a
Speaker 3: part of solving complex problems. But I have since grown
Speaker 3: more and more disillusioned with politics and I hate the
Speaker 3: two party system. I hate the political system that we're
Speaker 3: working within, and I hate how it's impacted the environment
Speaker 3: and conservation. Because at the same time that I was
Speaker 3: strangely volunteering for John McCay and Meant Romney, I also
Speaker 3: was an avid hiker avid skier, was fishing every weekend
Speaker 3: in the summer with my grandpa. My parents were vegan,
Speaker 3: so oh yeah, So I was the only meat eater
Speaker 3: in my family. So I'm like the as I didn't
Speaker 3: meat eater in my family, so it's nice to be another.
Speaker 3: My parents were just, I think, like most people were
Speaker 3: just like whoever has the best ideas they're going to
Speaker 3: vote for. Like they they're conservatives, practical fiscal conservatives. They
Speaker 3: voted for McCain and Romney, but like they were definitely
Speaker 3: like independent voters. And my sisters are liberal. And I
Speaker 3: grew up in a very like politically diverse family, but
Speaker 3: we all got along and we all loved each other,
Speaker 3: and so I was frustrated politics. I loved the environment,
Speaker 3: and I also realized that people could actually get along
Speaker 3: and that the country that I was seeing crumble politically
Speaker 3: and it's still getting worse, was not representative of the
Speaker 3: people itself. Like the people themselves don't want that to happen,
Speaker 3: and they're not as polarized, they're not putting each other
Speaker 3: in such boxes. And so that's kind of how I
Speaker 3: got to being more of, you know, trying to bridge
Speaker 3: the divide on conservation in the environment, because if there's
Speaker 3: one issue that should transcend party lines that should get
Speaker 3: action regardless of who wins, it should be conservation in
Speaker 3: the environment like it used to. So I transitioned to
Speaker 3: that my freshman year of college, tweeted out that I
Speaker 3: was going to start a nonprofit to get this going.
Speaker 1: As a freshman in college. Yeah, yeah, I knew. I
Speaker 1: knew when you did it that you were young, but
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about the fact that you're like, like
Speaker 1: also being in college eighteen. Yeah, because normally it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a freshman college and I have to drink a lot,
Speaker 1: and then that's kind of my schedule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, girls, drinking time.
Speaker 1: To hang out, standard smoking weed. I have a hard
Speaker 1: time finding a hangout time.
Speaker 3: I was starting environmental policy nonprofits instead, Well, where were
Speaker 3: you at school?
Speaker 2: University of Washington.
Speaker 3: So I searched the best business school, best business schools
Speaker 3: in America and went down the list to the first
Speaker 3: one that was in a place that I could hike
Speaker 3: and ski on the weekends. And the University of Washington
Speaker 3: was like probably like fortieth on the list of best
Speaker 3: business schools, but it was the closest to where I
Speaker 3: wanted to recreate. So the Cascades obviously beautiful national parks
Speaker 3: out there, and that's really why I went there. So
Speaker 3: then I started it out there, and I started, you know.
Speaker 1: And like registered a nonprofit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I first started a pack because I had know
Speaker 3: what I was doing and I.
Speaker 2: Was all done that, just me eighteen looking up.
Speaker 3: So what's the quickest way to start a nonprofit? Well,
Speaker 3: a pack gets approved right away.
Speaker 6: Classic freshman you're a mistake.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, you look wake up and you look at
Speaker 7: all the texts that you sent out that you don't remember,
Speaker 7: and then you're like, oh my god, one.
Speaker 1: Of those I was you.
Speaker 3: I highly recommend because there's basically zero barriers of entry.
Speaker 1: I know this, I mean, I know I know what
Speaker 1: it is, but I didn't know that is it designed
Speaker 1: to be fast?
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be.
Speaker 3: But like if you want to start, if you want
Speaker 3: an eighteen year old accidentally starts a pack and then
Speaker 3: suddenly is the owner of a pack, and then there's
Speaker 3: no like the I R. S checks five to one
Speaker 3: C three's traditional nonprofits. It takes like a year to
Speaker 3: approve that a packets approved literally overnight.
Speaker 1: To help people. I mostly know what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but just help people understand, like what you mean. So
Speaker 1: there's different designations, political actual committee.
Speaker 2: There's diferent designations.
Speaker 1: They're ephemeral, right, because you can they're very responsive to
Speaker 1: I mean, like like a race heats up, you get
Speaker 1: a nominee, and then all of a sudden, there's all
Speaker 1: these packs, right, and some of them are meant to dissolve.
Speaker 2: That's because there's a lot of eighteen year olds starting packs.
Speaker 7: The most visibility right for the normal person is that
Speaker 7: fine print that says paid for by right Concerned Citizens
Speaker 7: for Montana.
Speaker 6: Factory twenty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one knows who it is.
Speaker 3: In this case, it was me, but you know it's
Speaker 3: it's basically a political action committee. There's a super pack
Speaker 3: in a pack, but it's it's a government designation of
Speaker 3: what you can do with the money when someone donates it.
Speaker 3: And so, uh, like a five to one C three,
Speaker 3: which is like the Red Cross, and like all the
Speaker 3: big nonprofits they you're aware of that's tax deductible to
Speaker 3: a donor, they can't do any political activity at all.
Speaker 3: A pack you do not get a tax deduction when
Speaker 3: you donate, and it strictly is going to be to
Speaker 3: support candidates, like you're supporting political candidates. There's no educational
Speaker 3: part of it. It's it's it's a political organization. And
Speaker 3: so I was like, wait a second, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: like bridge the divide on the environment. I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to like donate to candidates. So then I quickly shuddered
Speaker 3: the weekend mistake.
Speaker 7: But a pack is it would be is a five
Speaker 7: to one C four, right, So.
Speaker 2: That's very complicated.
Speaker 3: But no, because if I on C four, this is like,
Speaker 3: this is like zero point one hundred of the things
Speaker 3: that you don't wish you new at age twenty seven
Speaker 3: the difference between the C four and the pack. But
Speaker 3: a C four is a non tax deductible organization that
Speaker 3: can lobby, but they don't really donate. You can donate
Speaker 3: to candidates, but it's like a certain percentage. A pack
Speaker 3: is strictly to get people elected, and.
Speaker 2: That was not my goal.
Speaker 6: It's a money funnel.
Speaker 3: It's a money funnel, and it's basically so people can't
Speaker 3: trace the money to dark money. It is honestly dark money,
Speaker 3: and it's like anyone can donate and then it's not
Speaker 3: traced back to them and no one knows where the
Speaker 3: money came from. So the whole nonprofit space is very complicated,
Speaker 3: and I think it probably designed partially that way. The
Speaker 3: money in politics thing is its own really big issue.
Speaker 1: But what was your pack?
Speaker 3: Conservatives for Environmental Reform? And basically my original goal was
Speaker 3: to get conservatives back to the table on the environment
Speaker 3: because I watched Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate, and
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton had a radical plan for the environment that
Speaker 3: I didn't agree with that was like shut down industry,
Speaker 3: very preservationist. Wasn't about hunting or fishing or anything with
Speaker 3: the outdoors. It was largely just climate, climate, climate, but
Speaker 3: on the extreme end. And then Donald Trump was like,
Speaker 3: none of these problems exist and we shouldn't do anything
Speaker 3: about them, and he had no plan. I was like,
Speaker 3: what the hell am I supposed to do? And I
Speaker 3: leaned right, So I was like, I got to get
Speaker 3: conservatives back to the table. So that's kind of the
Speaker 3: origin story of what became the American Conservation Coalition, which
Speaker 3: I still started my freshman year just after.
Speaker 6: The pack mistake second semester.
Speaker 1: You always.
Speaker 3: Turn it to the five to one C three, and
Speaker 3: that organization now is one hundred thousand members across the country,
Speaker 3: has big staff, does a lot of work in DC.
Speaker 3: It is strictly focused on getting conservatives active on the environment.
Speaker 3: But to me, that wasn't far enough because to me,
Speaker 3: it's not about the labels. Like the rational majority of
Speaker 3: Americans across the political spectrum, as I opened saying, want
Speaker 3: the same things, and I don't care if it's Martin
Speaker 3: Heinrich or Tim Sheehey or Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: We got to figure out how to get shit done
Speaker 3: no matter who's in office and what the political wins
Speaker 3: are in that moment, and we have to show politicians
Speaker 3: that Americans want this, not just conservatives and not just liberals.
Speaker 3: We need to show them that Americans across the spectrum
Speaker 3: want action. So I thought getting conservative to the table
Speaker 3: was helpful. But there's no organization in this country right
Speaker 3: now that hasn't impact no matter who wins. The Sierra Club,
Speaker 3: even the Nature Conservancy, any of these traditional environmental groups,
Speaker 3: They're only relevant when democrats win. And the organization I
Speaker 3: started in college is only relevant when Republicans win. What
Speaker 3: about an organization that's just trying to move consistent conservation
Speaker 3: through no matter what, and no matter who you are politically,
Speaker 3: you want to be a part of that movement. And
Speaker 3: that's the vision of nature as nonpartisans. So it kind
Speaker 3: of went from a pack mistake to a conservative group
Speaker 3: to now building upon that to try to build a
Speaker 3: nonpartisan movement in America.
Speaker 1: Again, let's start with the let's start with the polar opposite.
Speaker 1: So what year was it, twenty sixteen? I guess twenty fifteen. Yep.
Speaker 2: That was my senior high school freshman year of Colusus.
Speaker 1: Where you had two visions yep. One one being a
Speaker 1: vision of denial, YEP one being a vision of offering
Speaker 1: a fix that isn't going to get wide spread buy in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could picture that if you were like a picture
Speaker 1: that if you were a staunch Democrat, because of all
Speaker 1: their other planks in their platform that you might say, Man,
Speaker 1: I need to go get my party to start getting more.
Speaker 7: In line.
Speaker 1: With Middle America so that we can win and I
Speaker 1: can get my other policy pieces in that play right,
Speaker 1: Like we're losing on the same way you might say
Speaker 1: in twenty in the last election cycle, like if you were,
Speaker 1: if you were, if you're sitting there thinking, man, the
Speaker 1: tax structure in America is whacked. Corporations should be paying
Speaker 1: way more taxes, the poor should be paying way less taxes.
Speaker 1: But that's never going to happen because our party is
Speaker 1: going to continue to get slammed on DEI issues. I
Speaker 1: need them to stop it about that so we can
Speaker 1: stick to the things that most of the country like.
Speaker 1: That's our Achilles heel right, right, Like I can picture that,
Speaker 1: But what's hard for me to picture is the process
Speaker 1: of saying that, like to be like, I'm a conservative,
Speaker 1: I want bigger environmental presence within my party. I want
Speaker 1: them to come around in my way of thinking. I
Speaker 1: feel that that would be like very private.
Speaker 2: For the politicians.
Speaker 1: For you, oh for me, I feel like that's you
Speaker 1: having meetings with politicians, Yeah, because you can't burn them
Speaker 1: you feel that you like, you can't publicly burn them. Well. Now,
Speaker 1: the same way, if I was doing my whole thing,
Speaker 1: I might go and say, hey, listen, tone it down,
Speaker 1: tone it down. I'm like athletes, like who plays on
Speaker 1: what team?
Speaker 3: But I could do I could do that. I could
Speaker 3: do that, but that's not morally right to me. I
Speaker 3: could be in the Trump administration right now, or have
Speaker 3: some really high position if I just played the game.
Speaker 3: I don't care about playing the game. I want to
Speaker 3: get conservation outcomes. And so I'm willing to be bolder
Speaker 3: because of that, and I'm willing to take on both
Speaker 3: sides because a spotlight like, hey, you guys are freaking
Speaker 3: weak here, and you're losing people. And by the way,
Speaker 3: I'm not afraid to say, you should lose people because
Speaker 3: you don't have an environmental plan. You should lose people
Speaker 3: because you don't care about conservation. You should lose people
Speaker 3: because you don't have any plan for clean air clean water.
Speaker 3: But yet you use those terms in your speeches, right Like,
Speaker 3: you say you want clean air and clean water, but
Speaker 3: yet you're rolling back some of the most important regulations
Speaker 3: and policies in American history. I'm not afraid to say
Speaker 3: that because I don't care about who. I actually don't
Speaker 3: care about who wins. In high school, I might have
Speaker 3: cared I expose a seatback and stuff, but I do
Speaker 3: not care who wins. I'm an environmentalist, conservationist, nature lover
Speaker 3: person who wants to protect wild places and allow people
Speaker 3: to go hunt, fish recreate in them so that we
Speaker 3: can also have a healthy livelihood more than I care
Speaker 3: about any political identity. And I think most people when
Speaker 3: they think about this issue, do you think about it
Speaker 3: that way? So people think I mean. In the last
Speaker 3: couple of weeks, I've this famous EPA transition guy for
Speaker 3: Trump just wrote a big hit piece on me that
Speaker 3: I was like this trojan horse at Climate Week, just
Speaker 3: trying to promote the Green New Deal, and I get
Speaker 3: told that I'm all the time some like maga guy.
Speaker 2: It's because I don't really care.
Speaker 1: Like we're quite familiar with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys definitely get that.
Speaker 1: We're quite clear that you're like everyone.
Speaker 2: Like you get in the box, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to be in the box.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so don't you say anything. Just get in the box.
Speaker 2: And just say what we want you to say.
Speaker 3: But that would work I mean, so I've been starting
Speaker 3: to talk about this a little bit more because of
Speaker 3: the light of recent events. I co founded, and I've
Speaker 3: never said this in a podcast for but I've I
Speaker 3: co founded Turning Point us say, with Charlie kirk Oh
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve. I was fourteen years old, so just
Speaker 3: it was a lot long time ago. The organization was
Speaker 3: supposed to be about young people standing up to the
Speaker 3: government to prevent the national debt from getting worse.
Speaker 1: That was the turning point.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was the founding origin of Turning Point.
Speaker 1: Like, you guys are gonna really stick it to You're
Speaker 1: really sticking it to us, right our generation. Yeah, later,
Speaker 1: Like at some point we're gonna have to tackle this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at some point, you're creating a real headache for us.
Speaker 1: So please make my future not so tenuous exactly.
Speaker 3: So Charlie and I had this vision for that. Charlie,
Speaker 3: that was a very tragic event, and it was a
Speaker 3: very perfect opportunity to see how divided our country is becoming,
Speaker 3: which is a huge problem. But what Charlie saw was
Speaker 3: that there was an opportunity in playing into the political
Speaker 3: culture war. Right, if I wanted to be a part
Speaker 3: of the culture War. For the sake of telling people
Speaker 3: how to win voters or or how to get people
Speaker 3: a part of our team or box, I'd be doing
Speaker 3: things so much differently than I am. And again I
Speaker 3: could have many times. But it is ruining our country
Speaker 3: and it's ruining conservation as well. And so for me,
Speaker 3: when I wake up every morning, I think of how
Speaker 3: much progress can I make given the political shit that
Speaker 3: we're in, Because for the first time in a long time,
Speaker 3: our environment is getting worse in America. Again, we actually
Speaker 3: solved a lot of big problems for a very long time.
Speaker 3: We funded public lands, We had the Clean Air Act
Speaker 3: and Clean Water Act take care of really bad problems
Speaker 3: in our cities and in our rivers. We had the
Speaker 3: Endangered Species Act, which was effective for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: There is sorely in effective. Wildfires are getting worse, public
Speaker 3: lands are getting worse, the management of our ecosystems is
Speaker 3: getting so much worse. Our water quality is getting worse.
Speaker 3: And you know what the byproduct of all that is is,
Speaker 3: because it is the byproduct of the division that we're saying.
Speaker 3: Because no one actually has an incentive to solve problems.
Speaker 3: They have an incentive to feed the culture wars. And
Speaker 3: until we change that incentive, at least on this I
Speaker 3: can't promise that we can change it on every issue.
Speaker 3: But until we create a movement that just says we
Speaker 3: expect you to get shit done and we're not going
Speaker 3: to vote for you if you don't prioritize conservation, that's
Speaker 3: actually the part that we should be saying out loud.
Speaker 3: That's the part that we should be saying out loud,
Speaker 3: because it's not just about killing animals for recreation and
Speaker 3: hiking and skiing and all the things.
Speaker 2: That we all love, right It's not just about that.
Speaker 3: The health of our environment is about the health of
Speaker 3: us too, and right now we are failing miserably, and
Speaker 3: the left doesn't care, and the right doesn't care. They
Speaker 3: care about winning the next election, and that is where
Speaker 3: the root of our environmental problems comes from. And so
Speaker 3: I say that to say, I could go down this
Speaker 3: path of playing into the culture wars, but I wouldn't
Speaker 3: be sitting at this table right now, and I absolutely
Speaker 3: wouldn't be fighting for our environment because it's way easier
Speaker 3: to make a name for yourself and get power and
Speaker 3: get you know, influence right now off of doing things
Speaker 3: completely differently. But at some point, at some point, Americans
Speaker 3: are going to wake up and realize that the system
Speaker 3: right now is screwing us all and it's also screwing
Speaker 3: up our environment. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm backup common on the thing you brought
Speaker 1: up with, just how hot like how he did the
Speaker 1: how he did the online I always want to point
Speaker 1: this out, how he did the online experiences right, Oh, totally.
Speaker 1: Now for Charlie Kirk, Yeah, it wasn't an online experience. No,
Speaker 1: that was a way that online like became a bullet
Speaker 1: in real life. Yeah, and like killed a man. Right,
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying. I have this thing,
Speaker 1: and I've brought it up. I brought up to ten
Speaker 1: guests talking about various things. I think I was most
Speaker 1: recently talking about with Sebastian Younger, where I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: what I under stand to be true about the climate
Speaker 1: in America from social media, the news, and then there's
Speaker 1: what I understand to be true about America from being
Speaker 1: an American, Yes, from going about my business and I
Speaker 1: had I met someone for breakfast this morning. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: conversations we had on the street with people, the interactions
Speaker 1: we had with the people that were working there, like
Speaker 1: the whole picture. I would never come out of my
Speaker 1: morning being like, good lord, everyone's the country's falling apart.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, this seems like a wonderful country. This
Speaker 1: is this America. This is awesome being an American. But
Speaker 1: then I go and look about what it is and
Speaker 1: it's red hot, and and and with with Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: like I was like, man, and many other examples, this
Speaker 1: is this was because it's fresh. With Charlie Kirk was like, Man,
Speaker 1: they collide, they are they collide.
Speaker 3: And then we're manifesting it to become It used to
Speaker 3: just be an online thing I used to get. I
Speaker 3: got death threats in high school for what I was
Speaker 3: doing politically, I had.
Speaker 1: Because people don't like because it's it's too unexpected, right,
Speaker 1: it's too unexpected to see a woman that killed a
Speaker 1: lion in Afta that.
Speaker 3: That's gonna go viral off more than more than making
Speaker 3: phone calls. And my voice hadn't even changed yet. Okay,
Speaker 3: I was just a little boy, But yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: that they're the chronically online world, which is so disconnected
Speaker 3: from reality. I mean, I had breakfast with Van Jones
Speaker 3: yesterday in New York City, the big social justice liberal
Speaker 3: commentator see an guy I don't recognize that name, CNN host. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he's black social justice guy.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 3: He's one of my best friends. I don't talk to
Speaker 3: him about politics. I just love him as a human,
Speaker 3: you know. Like, and my mom's like, oh, what, you know,
Speaker 3: what what issues did you guys talk about? I'm like,
Speaker 3: we literally didn't. He just give me advice and how
Speaker 3: to be a better leader. And we were just talking
Speaker 3: about life and his girl, his fiance and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: That is how most of America actually operates on a
Speaker 3: day to day basis. But then you look online and
Speaker 3: you see what But we're becoming a chronically online nation.
Speaker 3: I mean, you look at the average screen time in
Speaker 3: this country, and it's not people looking at candy crush, right,
Speaker 3: it's people looking at Twitter and Instagram and feeding themselves
Speaker 3: the worst information. And we are convincing ourselves that everyone
Speaker 3: else is actually evil, like Hitler level evil for both
Speaker 3: sides to think about the other side. So it is
Speaker 3: colliding now. For a while, it was just like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: just turn off the social media. It's just it's not
Speaker 3: that bad in real life. Well, it's becoming that bat
Speaker 3: in real life because we're manifesting.
Speaker 1: You, because it's some dude on a roof of the gun, right,
Speaker 1: and people takes one.
Speaker 6: It only takes one to.
Speaker 1: Bring it out of the yeah right, and man it
Speaker 1: has a yeah. It's like it's been I look. I
Speaker 1: brought that up as a preamble to say I got
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old. The insanity that he comes home
Speaker 1: and he's you know, he comes home and it's just.
Speaker 7: Like and then it was like, Dad, here's some solid facts.
Speaker 1: I know. It's not even that, it's more like a
Speaker 1: what do you He kind of comes home with like
Speaker 1: what do I make of this? Right? And just the
Speaker 1: insane things, the insane things that are being spun out
Speaker 1: of that it's just this A long preamble led me
Speaker 1: to like I hit a point a week like some
Speaker 1: time ago. A week ago, I hit a point where
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, I am like, I was like, I
Speaker 1: am ready at my age, I'm ready to just I'm
Speaker 1: going to step away from discourse. I mean I'm not,
Speaker 1: but for a minute, I for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, I was like, I just don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to anybody. Anymore. Like I don't want to participate
Speaker 1: in the discourse anymore. I just want to be the
Speaker 1: guy that only knows about who he runs into at
Speaker 1: the hardware store. It's like, I'll go to the Harvard
Speaker 1: store because that's going to be cool.
Speaker 2: We have to bring that back.
Speaker 1: I'll go wherever. I'll go to my buddies party because
Speaker 1: that's going to be cool. But I can't do anything.
Speaker 1: It didn't last and it's not for real. But I
Speaker 1: just had a point where I'm like, I'm just done. Man,
Speaker 1: Like I'm done because that style of that style of
Speaker 1: uh debating or that style of like exploring ideas is
Speaker 1: like it's rational conversation. Hey, like I understand what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but I don't agree. Is pass a?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's absolutely not the norm anymore. And I feel,
Speaker 3: so do you give up?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: I think we got to play the game.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the game?
Speaker 2: The game is, let's let's talk about the environment.
Speaker 1: How do you play the game?
Speaker 3: We have to create a similar movement around culture shifting
Speaker 3: for conservation that that is in people's social media networks,
Speaker 3: it's it's in their communities, it's around them, because we
Speaker 3: are not going to beat the algorithm. We're not going
Speaker 3: to change people's tendencies to log on to social media
Speaker 3: whenever there's a break in their day, at least not
Speaker 3: anytime soon and see the worst news imaginable. We have
Speaker 3: to figure out how to meet people where they're at
Speaker 3: and help people understand that there's something they can advocate
Speaker 3: for right instead of just being like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I hate this person, I hate this person, I hate
Speaker 3: this person.
Speaker 2: As a song, you have a little tune to that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, you know what, I guarantee, I guarantee he goes
Speaker 1: in and takes that out of the show.
Speaker 5: Just to prove you it's not going to happen. I'm
Speaker 5: not disturb but my one person I left through is
Speaker 5: my wife, and.
Speaker 1: So just breaks the whole flow during the show.
Speaker 7: Yeah, kind of piggyback a little bit off of what
Speaker 7: Steve said, but also just the the there isn't a
Speaker 7: need I see, Well, it's going to be complicated. I
Speaker 7: push back on the fact that like established conservation groups
Speaker 7: aren't making stuff happen under every administration. I mean they are,
Speaker 7: maybe like the is the win that we're getting not
Speaker 7: an actual win. A lot of times I believe that
Speaker 7: for sure. Like I think if we are looking in
Speaker 7: terms of like, oh my gosh, the Democrats did this,
Speaker 7: that's such a win, that's not a win. If we're
Speaker 7: looking in terms of like, Okay, the Republicans did this,
Speaker 7: that's a win, that's not a win. Agree. The win
Speaker 7: is when it's there's certain things like the health of
Speaker 7: are an natural resources are just this non starter for
Speaker 7: every political party, Like it's assumed that these things have
Speaker 7: got to have a certain level of health and management
Speaker 7: because it does tie into national defense, the health of
Speaker 7: individuals within our country, mental and physical, and our food
Speaker 7: production and all the things like it does.
Speaker 3: But I would say the groups that are currently out there,
Speaker 3: there are so many good organizations, many of whom we
Speaker 3: both work with, but it's not getting the job done.
Speaker 3: And what I mean by that is there is no
Speaker 3: cultural movement in America that's telling politicians they should take
Speaker 3: the environment seriously as America, like as Americans, like the
Speaker 3: Human Rights Campaign, for example, you might disagree with gay
Speaker 3: marriage or you might love gay marriage. They showed politicians
Speaker 3: they had a national campaign. Their bumper stickers are still
Speaker 3: on people's cars all over the country that it was
Speaker 3: an expectation for almost all Americans that equality was important.
Speaker 3: That's how they got it done. And obviously this is
Speaker 3: a different issue because it's not just like one landmark
Speaker 3: thing that we need to get accomplished. We need continuous
Speaker 3: But there was a national unified expectation of conservation thirty
Speaker 3: years ago that does not exist right now. So and
Speaker 3: that is not the failure of these organizations, but it's
Speaker 3: not working. The current movement is not working. And the
Speaker 3: vast majority of people who do reach out for conservation
Speaker 3: in the environment are left of center people, whether we
Speaker 3: want to admit that or not. And until we make
Speaker 3: it left center and right, until we show no matter
Speaker 3: if you're a Republican or a Democrat, this was an
Speaker 3: expectation of Americans that we're going to continue going down
Speaker 3: this trajectory where we don't get the policies that we need,
Speaker 3: and actually, even worse, we get the policies that none
Speaker 3: of us want, which is what we've been getting over
Speaker 3: the last year. And it's because there's not an expectation
Speaker 3: of pushback. The only time that I've seen it since
Speaker 3: I became active in this space where it's actually worked
Speaker 3: is this public land selloff where you had people from
Speaker 3: across the political spectrum saying, no, over my dead body,
Speaker 3: you're going to sell this land. Right, But we haven't
Speaker 3: had a unified front like that on the environment for decades.
Speaker 3: And we can try to push behind the scenes. And
Speaker 3: you know, like I love TRCP and t you and
Speaker 3: I know you know Chris and Joel and all these
Speaker 3: are great people running great organizations, but there's no national
Speaker 3: movement that represents what they believe is your.
Speaker 6: As far as like what you're doing.
Speaker 4: That's not that groups like TIERSCP aren't aren't doing currently,
Speaker 4: You're talking about a coalition that expands beyond the Hunter
Speaker 4: because I think the Hunter angler space has is unique
Speaker 4: in that it's it has that bipartisan.
Speaker 1: Angle.
Speaker 6: It's expanding that if I think beyond the hook and
Speaker 6: bullet I am.
Speaker 4: I am having a hard time thinking beyond the hook
Speaker 4: and at groups what like environmental policy groups have that
Speaker 4: same bipartisan influence because.
Speaker 7: Like I'll give you an example, right, Like I believe
Speaker 7: very strongly in the work that Pheasants Forever Quail Forever does,
Speaker 7: right and and it's like not super sexy working on
Speaker 7: the farm bill right.
Speaker 3: Right, those groups are already there right, and they do
Speaker 3: great stuff, but the culture in America is not there.
Speaker 7: And and here's the example, right, is like, uh, it's
Speaker 7: getting late in the election cycle, yea, all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: it's announced all over media that both parties need hunters.
Speaker 7: Hunters are underrepresented in their demographics, their research, we need
Speaker 7: hunters at the polls. And here's this push from the
Speaker 7: Biden campaign at that point. It was it was the
Speaker 7: Biden campaign at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and then.
Speaker 7: So it was like Byden Harris for hunters, and then
Speaker 7: and then the Trump campaign was pushing out hunter specific
Speaker 7: language as well.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 7: There's the annual Governor's hunt ye in Minnesota that pheasants
Speaker 7: forever is always a part of, doesn't matter what uh
Speaker 7: political affiliation the standing governor or current governor has, And
Speaker 7: that got kind of turned into like a Biden Harris
Speaker 7: hunter moment that had nothing to do with pheasants forever,
Speaker 7: and they just got absolutely shellact. They still are and
Speaker 7: still are, yeah, and they're they're made to like swallow
Speaker 7: this right rhetoric in order to quote unquote be in
Speaker 7: the room when it's like our history, our track record
Speaker 7: says we will work with anybody in order to fulfill
Speaker 7: the mission, and the mission benefits everybody by the way, yep.
Speaker 7: And the pushbacks on the organization that has this established
Speaker 7: track record of nonpartisanship, the pushbacks not on the politicians
Speaker 7: that manifested all this bs.
Speaker 3: Right, that's true, But the political tenor of the conversation
Speaker 3: hitching your wagon to anybody politically right now is risky, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, Pheasans forever saw that, and they shouldn't have
Speaker 3: been taken, you know, to the to the court for that.
Speaker 3: They should have had Tim Waltz there. And that's not
Speaker 3: a big deal, like it shouldn't be seen that way.
Speaker 3: But I go back to the fact that like this
Speaker 3: public land sell off was almost a godsend in terms
Speaker 3: of giving an example of what I'm trying to build,
Speaker 3: which is, you had millions of people for the first
Speaker 3: time in years, like you did win there's smog in
Speaker 3: the cities across the country, like we did when there
Speaker 3: were rivers on fire in Ohio. Right, you had millions
Speaker 3: of people saying I don't give a shit with my
Speaker 3: political belief is, and honestly I don't. I voted for you,
Speaker 3: Mike Lee, but I'm not for this. That's the cultural
Speaker 3: movement that we need, and so I don't know how
Speaker 3: to change that peasants forever situation, because that's very unfortunate
Speaker 3: and they don't deserve that.
Speaker 7: I guess succinctly, right, I'm like the the issues with
Speaker 7: the politicians.
Speaker 2: Right, the issue is with the politicians, but there's also are.
Speaker 7: The ones who are hitting the clickbait button.
Speaker 3: We're also falling for that right as a populace. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's part of the problem too, And so how them, Well,
Speaker 3: the issue is like tim the environment right now, if
Speaker 3: you ask the average person on the street who owns
Speaker 3: the environmental issue, almost everyone would say Democrats. Oh yeah, everyone,
Speaker 3: So we like that, right, but even conservation people associate
Speaker 3: We've done pulling and focus grouping. People associate these words conservation, environmentalist,
Speaker 3: environment wordship, anything related to the environment as liberal coded
Speaker 3: as Democrat coded words.
Speaker 1: And so yes, some more than others, right, I completely agree.
Speaker 3: But we've got to change that because like all these
Speaker 3: words are being weaponized intentionally and unintentionally for people's gains,
Speaker 3: whether that be clickbait or for campaigning. And you know,
Speaker 3: in the same way that like stand up for cancer
Speaker 3: or stand up to cancer or the Human Rights Campaign
Speaker 3: or the gott Milk Campaign, Like, we need to show
Speaker 3: politicians that there is a cultural movement to help create
Speaker 3: space for the Pheasants Forever and the ducks and limiteds
Speaker 3: and the trcps and the great organizations that are out
Speaker 3: there to do the work that they need to do
Speaker 3: because right now it's basically Republicans are fearful of associating
Speaker 3: with any conservation group as they are scared of being
Speaker 3: seen as liberal, and the left is scared of the
Speaker 3: far left coming at them for not going far enough
Speaker 3: on like climate stuff. And so again, it's creating the
Speaker 3: cultural space. And we and there's so many great local
Speaker 3: organizations out there already there. They're already there. There's so
Speaker 3: many great topical based organizations out there, they're already there.
Speaker 3: But in the way that like the Sierra Club or
Speaker 3: NRDC or these groups could have been like the face
Speaker 3: of America's environmental movement, conservation movement, rally people together for
Speaker 3: common sense conservation.
Speaker 2: But didn't we need to create that.
Speaker 3: And and I would say, I don't have every way
Speaker 3: of getting there yet, but someone's got to try because
Speaker 3: the current environmental culture is not working for us, and
Speaker 3: there's no space for politicians to see that they have
Speaker 3: to get something done except for the public. Land sell
Speaker 3: off as like literally the first example in like a decade.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I see, and I see this within the environmental space,
Speaker 7: within the nonprofit space of a real disconnect with the
Speaker 7: end consumer h just as I see it in the
Speaker 7: political realm.
Speaker 1: The week of.
Speaker 7: Land selloff language going in the house, right We're up
Speaker 7: on Capitol Hill talking with everybody we could super back schedule,
Speaker 7: and it was like, hey, don't worry, it's not going
Speaker 7: to happen. But you heard over and over again the
Speaker 7: exact same lines from everybody. And by the way, we're
Speaker 7: not going to sell national parks. Don't worry, right, thank god?
Speaker 1: As just as just in it as I've ever heard that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about national parks. Didn't trust me. I
Speaker 1: didn't think you were.
Speaker 2: Confirmed what I already knew.
Speaker 7: And the you know, it's frustrating but eye opening too,
Speaker 7: where you're like, Okay, something is going on, right because
Speaker 7: everybody seems to have the exact same talking points and
Speaker 7: they have no knowledge of the fact that the people
Speaker 7: that are starting to push back right now have no
Speaker 7: interest in the national parks or very little interest. Uh
Speaker 7: not because they don't care. But the assumption is parks
Speaker 7: are going to be safe.
Speaker 3: I mean I had senior official in the total gistration
Speaker 3: tell me, hey, like Americans won't get upset about this
Speaker 3: because Americans just care about national parks and national park health.
Speaker 2: And I was like, do you realize have you like
Speaker 2: a quick chat ebte? Quick? You know you're gonna research
Speaker 2: it sounds like very quickly you're gonna help. You could
Speaker 2: help them with this.
Speaker 3: You know, there's more recreationists than US four service land
Speaker 3: and b L m N than there are national parks
Speaker 3: every year. So they were missing the boat. But there
Speaker 3: is again a real disconnect between the politics and the
Speaker 3: public on conservation right now. I mean it was but
Speaker 3: it was really uplifting to see like far right militia
Speaker 3: leaders and far left climate activists literally stand together and
Speaker 3: but the.
Speaker 2: With either one of those groups that's replicable.
Speaker 3: That is replicable though, because it's not just about public
Speaker 3: lands and hunting and fishing. It's also about clean water
Speaker 3: and more efficient agriculture and forest health and wildlife conservation
Speaker 3: and like clean air, Like we could rally people in
Speaker 3: a similar diverse coalition and that's what I'm saying hasn't
Speaker 3: existed in a while.
Speaker 2: And so there's it would create, it create.
Speaker 3: It created space to kill the bill or that part
Speaker 3: of the bill and it, but it also could create
Speaker 3: space to do the right thing too.
Speaker 2: And that's the vision that I have.
Speaker 1: Let me hit you with one.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: I had three questions pop up my head, but I'm
Speaker 1: forgetting them as fast as I'm thinking. This was the
Speaker 1: first one that I wanted to ask you about. If
Speaker 1: what is the let's say you what you're you're talking
Speaker 1: to a neighbor. Okay, yep, you're taught new neighbor. And
Speaker 1: you know that you have your taught new neighbor who
Speaker 1: is my parents. Fiscally you're taught to do a fiscally
Speaker 1: conservative neighbor. Sure, okay, single issue voter maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit like likes the fiscally conservative economy efficiency not like
Speaker 1: an idea logue, right, And he says to you, Benji,
Speaker 1: why should I give a shit about any of the
Speaker 1: stuff you're talking about? Like, sell me on it.
Speaker 3: There is no country that we love without the resources
Speaker 3: and the beauty that we have, right, like the resources
Speaker 3: that we develop largely on public land in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways. The resources that we develop, the water that
Speaker 3: we have, the agricultural industry that we have. Our entire
Speaker 3: country relies on the environment to survive. So we could
Speaker 3: extract everything over the next five or ten years and
Speaker 3: probably break in a lot of money, but then we'd
Speaker 3: be destroyed after that. And you can't take care of
Speaker 3: the economy if you don't take care of the environment.
Speaker 3: You can't take care of the country without taking care
Speaker 3: of conservation. And it is not only an economic driver
Speaker 3: to take care of our country. I mean recreation statistics.
Speaker 3: We have the most recreationists in American history, generating you know, billion,
Speaker 3: tens of billions of dollars of revenue for the government.
Speaker 3: It not only generates an economic value, but it also
Speaker 3: generates the value that our communities depend on to survive.
Speaker 3: And I'd argue, what is a more important issue? Like
Speaker 3: I live in Arizona right now, So if we're talking
Speaker 3: to a neighbor in Arizona, what issue is more important
Speaker 3: than water quality in Arizona? I mean in water, in
Speaker 3: water availability, like, I can't think of one because we
Speaker 3: have no water. We don't have a city, right like,
Speaker 3: So this is this is all interconnected with people's lives
Speaker 3: in a way that we've kind of forgotten about because
Speaker 3: we've just developed so many resources and we're so technologically
Speaker 3: driven that we kind of forget about the natural world.
Speaker 1: But but we have to.
Speaker 3: We have a symbiotic relationship with the natural world that
Speaker 3: we've completely forgotten about. And we're one of the last
Speaker 3: frontiers in the world that's actually taking care of our
Speaker 3: land by and large, Like, yes we've got issues, and yes,
Speaker 3: this like public land self was a huge threat, but
Speaker 3: if you look around the world, Africa is getting destroyed
Speaker 3: by the Chinese government and other countries going in and
Speaker 3: saying we're gonna just mine everything and destroy with slave labor.
Speaker 3: South America is getting deforested continually at a crazy rate,
Speaker 3: and its wildlife habitats continually being encroached upon. We are
Speaker 3: one of the last places in the world, Canada, a
Speaker 3: couple of other places where we actually are investing in
Speaker 3: this and it's one of the best values and assets
Speaker 3: that our country has is our environment. So if we
Speaker 3: aren't thinking about that from a national perspective, then we're
Speaker 3: completely missing one of the most important parts of our country.
Speaker 1: Okay, I buy that.
Speaker 2: I would hope you do.
Speaker 3: Well my neighbor by it, I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 3: I think the we have become so digitized that we've
Speaker 3: kind of forgotten about the natural world around us. And yes,
Speaker 3: that's like, it's not the I heard a quote the
Speaker 3: other day that was like so simple, but it's so true.
Speaker 3: Like the environment isn't ours to, you know, extract resources
Speaker 3: from the environment. Is ours to care for and develop
Speaker 3: and work with and conserve so that future generations can
Speaker 3: also exist. So yes, we need to develop resources, and
Speaker 3: yes we need to you know, manage these places, but
Speaker 3: we also have to care for them because we're not
Speaker 3: the only people that are going to inherit this. And
Speaker 3: I think we've just become such a selfish society that
Speaker 3: that neighbor who's worried about fiscal policy isn't they're not
Speaker 3: seeing the forest through the trees literally, right, They're just
Speaker 3: literally thinking about their own vanguard account and the national debt, which.
Speaker 2: Of course is important.
Speaker 3: Both are important, but we've also got to think about,
Speaker 3: you know, our children and grandchildren. And you know, I'm
Speaker 3: twenty seven, I've got you know, I was working with
Speaker 3: Charlie on the National debt when I was twelve right,
Speaker 3: But I still got hopefully seventy more years on this planet,
Speaker 3: and then I'm gonna have kids someday, and then I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have grandkids someday, and I need to have a
Speaker 3: world that's worth bringing them into, right, And it's not
Speaker 3: about like kumbaya, like protect nature because we just care
Speaker 3: about the wildlife. It's like it's so much bigger than that, right,
Speaker 3: It's literally about us, And that's lost in a lot
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 1: If you look at there's there's a couple of movements
Speaker 1: that I'm that I'm always stunned by how effective they were.
Speaker 1: And so we're gonna look at the push for the
Speaker 1: legalization of gay marriage and then the legalization of weed. Okay,
Speaker 1: now those are long running Those are long running disputes,
Speaker 1: but something happened, But something happened, and they hit like
Speaker 1: a they hit like a moment, and just like they
Speaker 1: hit a moment where it became kind of bipartisan.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's what I'm hoping for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but here's the rup. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: those movements for a little bit. Then I want to
Speaker 1: tell you why I think that what you're engaging is
Speaker 1: more complicated because these were these were like fairly simple asks. Right, Okay.
Speaker 1: The way the way gay marriage got over the threshold
Speaker 1: was it wasn't like, this isn't about special privilege, right,
Speaker 1: This isn't about this isn't like part of some zero
Speaker 1: something we're going to take away something from someone to
Speaker 1: give it to somebody else. This isn't like we're not
Speaker 1: really asking the government to bend over backward on too
Speaker 1: much here. It's just there's a thing. It's like this
Speaker 1: symbolic gesture that we feel should be kind of applied
Speaker 1: to all Americans and like and then to the right
Speaker 1: on the right, you'd say, and really, remember, what business
Speaker 1: is it of yours? What business is it of the government?
Speaker 1: Who I decide to marry? Like? Do you really think
Speaker 1: the government should tell you who to marry? And eventually
Speaker 1: got where you had. You had this kind of leftist idea,
Speaker 1: and the right merged onto it. They had an easy
Speaker 1: way to merge on because it was like if you'd
Speaker 1: gone back, my dad was very conservative, got back, asked
Speaker 1: my dad, he would have said, but it's none of
Speaker 1: my business, right, what you know, what what that guy's
Speaker 1: going to do in his house nothing to do with me, Right,
Speaker 1: I don't have to love it. It's not my business
Speaker 1: that that became a thing, and like, and that's when
Speaker 1: that went legal. Weed a long running left issue and
Speaker 1: it eventually became it's kind of even hard to get
Speaker 1: to it, but it kind of became like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a it's a plant that goes out of
Speaker 1: the ground. I mean, can you really have a bunch
Speaker 1: of rules about a plant that grows into your garden? Right?
Speaker 1: And A, Hey, what that guy's doing is you know
Speaker 1: what he's doing in his own house? Is it really
Speaker 1: my business? And no one can really demonstrate to me
Speaker 1: that it's more destructive than alcohol. It seems like when
Speaker 1: you look at the stats like domestic disputes, vehicle crashes,
Speaker 1: like booze ain't the best thing in the world, now,
Speaker 1: is it really like there's less that goes into making
Speaker 1: weed than booze?
Speaker 3: There's also a safety argument, right, like wouldn't you rather
Speaker 3: have it be monitored by the government not have it
Speaker 3: be e leg coming in? I mean, I had a
Speaker 3: friend in high school who had like fentanyl in the
Speaker 3: weed because it was illegal, and he died. So that
Speaker 3: that you know, that's the argument that people make too.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's plenty of arguments to more of people
Speaker 3: together there.
Speaker 1: But these things, these things that I've marveled at, like
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, yep, in the end, were real clean
Speaker 1: and they were like an issue. Public lands becomes like
Speaker 1: a clean issue. But to call for a sort of
Speaker 1: expansive kind of umbrella of environmental concern is bigger because
Speaker 1: people would say like, well, what's the ask, and you'd
Speaker 1: be like, it's a lot of asks all the time.
Speaker 3: That's a great way of putting in it, you know,
Speaker 3: And it's harder, It is way harder, but I think
Speaker 3: it's worth it because you're gonna have different stakeholders engaging
Speaker 3: in different parts of it, like the water stakeholders might
Speaker 3: be different than the forest stakeholders, but but very similar
Speaker 3: to those issues. There is an easy on ramp for
Speaker 3: every political identity to care, whether that be for national
Speaker 3: security or for jobs, or for moral high ground, or
Speaker 3: for just carry about your local community, or for carrying
Speaker 3: about nationals. You know, our national identity and legacy and heritage,
Speaker 3: like protecting, conserving, taking care of our environment intersects with
Speaker 3: everyone's political views in a very similar way to those issues.
Speaker 3: Because that's not actually true on immigration as easily. It's
Speaker 3: not as easy it on guns, right, Like those are
Speaker 3: core parts and what on ramp are you going to
Speaker 3: create between those issues from both sides. I don't know
Speaker 3: how we solve those, right, But the environment might have
Speaker 3: more variables to it, because it's not just one policy
Speaker 3: that you're trying to get to legalize it.
Speaker 2: Legalize it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's not like you can go like, okay, we
Speaker 1: did it in that state, that we're going to do
Speaker 1: it in that state, right, and eventually it'll be that
Speaker 1: we got like forty nine states.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: This is not a one trick pony movement that we're
Speaker 3: trying to create. And you look, this approach needs to
Speaker 3: be applied to situations. Applied to the public land sell off,
Speaker 3: and we were three months old and obviously so many
Speaker 3: great organizations worked on that. We showed that it was
Speaker 3: at least possible on that applied to that. But if
Speaker 3: you apply that same group of people to restore in
Speaker 3: Utah or restoring the Great Salt Lake, I think we
Speaker 3: do a lot better of a job at restoring the
Speaker 3: Great Salt Lake. But right now there's no knowledge, but
Speaker 3: everyone in Salt Lake Vicinity wants to restore the Great
Speaker 3: Salt Lake. Yet nothing is really being done about it
Speaker 3: because everyone's focused on other political culture war issues and
Speaker 3: there's no mobilized cultural movement across the party lines to
Speaker 3: get something done. So you apply it to that, or
Speaker 3: you apply it to Oh my god, wildfires are getting
Speaker 3: worse and worse, mega fires are getting worse every summer,
Speaker 3: not only in the United States but around the world.
Speaker 3: Apply that to that issue, and so some stakeholders might
Speaker 3: drop off, some might come on. But it's the same
Speaker 3: on ramp where people have different whys, different reasons for caring,
Speaker 3: but they care about the same end goal and they
Speaker 3: have the exact same end goal, less wildfires. Who wants
Speaker 3: to create a policy that creates more wildfires in this country,
Speaker 3: I don't know anybody. So in the way of getting there,
Speaker 3: the vast majority of people actually would agree on if
Speaker 3: we actually had the chance to debate it, but right
Speaker 3: now we're not. So I agree it's way harder, but
Speaker 3: it's worth it, and I think it's worth it to
Speaker 3: pursue that rather than having a disjointed movement where the
Speaker 3: pendulum swings back and forth every four years on a
Speaker 3: subject like Biden puts in all these massive conservation preservation
Speaker 3: restrictions and public land deals and all this stuff, and
Speaker 3: then Trump undoes it. People are like, oh, it's just
Speaker 3: a Trump problem. No, we need durable, durable conservation solutions
Speaker 3: in five years and ten years and fifteen years. No
Speaker 3: matter where the country heads.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 3: It could be advance, it could be a new sum,
Speaker 3: it could be nobody that we've even been talking about. Right,
Speaker 3: but at some point we have to have some consistency
Speaker 3: because the lack of consistency is killing our environment, and
Speaker 3: it's and it's refusing, it's we are deferring any policy
Speaker 3: from getting done because of that disconnect.
Speaker 2: So it is harder, but I think it's worth it.
Speaker 3: And I don't have all the answers today, but hopefully
Speaker 3: in ten years we'll have this conversation.
Speaker 2: We'll have made a lot of progress there.
Speaker 7: Let me.
Speaker 1: Offer a.
Speaker 6: Probably a poor analogy, and you can tell me how
Speaker 6: accurate it is.
Speaker 1: Can I raid it too? Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Five stars?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Like when you're talking about building cultural momentum and
Speaker 4: having something where people on both sides can approach it
Speaker 4: from their own angle, I'm wondering if you're and I
Speaker 4: don't this might sound stupid and maybe dismissive, but you're
Speaker 4: trying to like you're essentially saying, I want to make
Speaker 4: caring for the environment, like support the troops.
Speaker 2: Yes, Like no, that is not dismissive.
Speaker 4: That is exactly because like five stars, there's because every
Speaker 4: every politician is going to say that they support the troops,
Speaker 4: and they're going to lean into it as as sort
Speaker 4: of part of their mantle of legitimacy. Democrat who supports
Speaker 4: the troops might vote for mental health counseling for veterans
Speaker 4: and and research on on you know, like PTSD things
Speaker 4: like that. Maybe they are pushing for greater equality in
Speaker 4: different like you know, combat roles whatever. A Republican who
Speaker 4: supports the troops might vote for funding for extra you know,
Speaker 4: like like make sure the troops have what they need
Speaker 4: to fight the wars.
Speaker 1: We send them to armored doors on their humbes, armored
Speaker 1: doors on their humbes, right, And like.
Speaker 4: Obviously, I mean I feel like there's part of there's
Speaker 4: part of me that when I hear someone say I
Speaker 4: support the troops, I'm kind of like, well, that's brave
Speaker 4: of you, you know, like, but it's good politics.
Speaker 2: And space where both sides are to support them.
Speaker 4: Because Nixon, I mean, Nixon has all this huge environmental legacy,
Speaker 4: and and you could read it one way and say, like, god,
Speaker 4: I didn't know he cared so much about the environment.
Speaker 4: But really Nixon didn't give He didn't he didn't care
Speaker 4: about the environment. He just was like, boy, this is
Speaker 4: a powerful horse to hitch to my wagon.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So that's that's that's sort of the analogy that occurred
Speaker 4: to me as you're talking. It's it's making this sort
Speaker 4: of a cultural plank of America that everybody's got to
Speaker 4: have that feather in their hat if they want to
Speaker 4: throw their throw said hat into the arena.
Speaker 6: To make this a really messy metaphor.
Speaker 2: Five star.
Speaker 1: No, I like the metaphor, but I think that and
Speaker 1: I get the point supporting the troops. You could say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I support the troops. We should bring them home, right,
Speaker 1: and some guys like, oh no, no, I support the troops.
Speaker 1: We should send them. Got to give them with they
Speaker 1: need to send them advanced munitions. Yeah, right, Like you
Speaker 1: both get the carried around.
Speaker 2: But I agree with that.
Speaker 3: But the troops are one of the few topics where
Speaker 3: both sides actually sit down and have a conversation now though,
Speaker 3: even though it's not pretty and they don't always agree,
Speaker 3: and I'm not expecting that this is not some kumbai
Speaker 3: a shit, but eighty percent of the time there's actually
Speaker 3: a lot of agreement. So, but that's not being facilitated.
Speaker 3: If there's agreement on troops in our military, they're at
Speaker 3: least having that conversation because they feel like it's part
Speaker 3: of the American national identity. And of course there's extraneous
Speaker 3: times where they totally see differently, right, and that's going
Speaker 3: to happen, and that did happen when Richard Nixon was president.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There are people who thought Richard Nixon didn't go far enough,
Speaker 3: and there are people who thought he'd went too far.
Speaker 2: Sure, but stuff got done, and that was.
Speaker 7: Farmers feed America. It would be the platform that I
Speaker 7: think is the most applicable, is like everybody loves farmers
Speaker 7: and that is the thing that feeds us and large
Speaker 7: part secures our country. We don't have to import stuff
Speaker 7: from all these other countries if we really focused on
Speaker 7: farmers feeding America. But those ecosystems are the most rapidly
Speaker 7: disappearing ecosystems on the planet, let alone in the United States.
Speaker 7: Here in Montana, we lost a million acres of farm
Speaker 7: and ranch ground over the last year, sorry, over the
Speaker 7: last three years. And like, if you take a chunk
Speaker 7: of grazing ground in Oklahoma and look at the interests
Speaker 7: that want that grazing ground, yep, despite the fact that
Speaker 7: every fricking politician is like, farmers feed America, God bless
Speaker 7: the farmers. Right, it's like the last week in uh Foot.
Speaker 6: Let me but let me rush back on that.
Speaker 4: There's there's probably elected officials from urban burrows in New
Speaker 4: York that don't get questions about farmers.
Speaker 2: Totally, like yet they're eating their food right.
Speaker 4: Like like it's that's something where people would be like, oh, sure,
Speaker 4: but that's not really what my constituents set me here for.
Speaker 4: There's nobody who's like, do you support the troops, and
Speaker 4: they're like, it's not.
Speaker 7: Really name one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just not involved in that, you know, Like
Speaker 4: everybody's like, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Right, name one troop.
Speaker 4: Like like that that's an issue I feel like where
Speaker 4: no one can, no politician can sort of step out
Speaker 4: of line and no one can ignore it or say
Speaker 4: like it's I'm focused on this.
Speaker 6: I'm focused on this and they're like, no one.
Speaker 4: Would respond to do you support the troops and be like, well, really,
Speaker 4: I'm focused on transportation an infrastructure.
Speaker 3: You can pivot easier with that. But I think it's
Speaker 3: like if you're AOC as an extreme example, there are
Speaker 3: serious environmental issues in New York City and with the
Speaker 3: Hudson River. You know, if you're Wisconsin Senator, the water
Speaker 3: you know, aquifers sinking and having the Mississippi get destroyed
Speaker 3: by runoff is an issue, but that doesn't really matter
Speaker 3: to New York. But like it's I think that's where
Speaker 3: we've lost it is. It's like the environmental movement in
Speaker 3: general has also hurt the hunting and angling community because
Speaker 3: it's always been about for the last twenty years, polar bears,
Speaker 3: climate change, energy, like things that don't really impact the
Speaker 3: local community. That every local community has really their own
Speaker 3: environmental issue and they truly don't care too much. Like
Speaker 3: in Arizona. In Scottsdale, where I live, they truly could
Speaker 3: not care less about farmers. Should they care, probably, but
Speaker 3: like they don't. They care about water quality and access,
Speaker 3: and they care about the smog that's getting worse. So
Speaker 3: as but as a country, we shit, we share a
Speaker 3: different reason for caring, but we all share the caring
Speaker 3: part because we know we rely on it. So I
Speaker 3: agree that like tagging farmers in is part of it,
Speaker 3: but it needs to be a part of like local
Speaker 3: community ownership. And people feel like there's no way to
Speaker 3: get involved because it's like this issue is too big,
Speaker 3: climate change, polar bears, that's not like my thing. What
Speaker 3: if everyone was able to activate and advocate for the
Speaker 3: issues that they cared about in their own local community
Speaker 3: in a better way that felt more tangible, that felt
Speaker 3: more realistic. And the vision that I have is for
Speaker 3: if you live in the Great Salt Lake area, you
Speaker 3: can advocate for that across party lines and actually get
Speaker 3: something done for that, because that's what's affecting you. If
Speaker 3: you're a big part of the country that has agriculture
Speaker 3: and farming and you're worried about water quality and the
Speaker 3: lack of crops that you can get now because the
Speaker 3: substance in the soil is so bad, like then you
Speaker 3: can advocate for that, But right now there's nothing kind
Speaker 3: of that holistic view like there would be on troops,
Speaker 3: Like troops is very complex too, actually, right there's so
Speaker 3: many different variables there, but there's a culture around it
Speaker 3: that kind of forces people to face You're some sort
Speaker 3: of solution out and that's that's kind of the vision.
Speaker 1: A difference between you and me is that you thought
Speaker 1: about something and then did it and and and I
Speaker 1: thought about this and never did it. But I'll share
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: I eat another piece of at.
Speaker 1: A point, please. At a point, I realized that there's
Speaker 1: like a way I think about the environment that isn't
Speaker 1: shared by the environmental movement. And I realized that this
Speaker 1: way I think about it is actually shared by a
Speaker 1: lot of friends of mine. Is that I have a
Speaker 1: sort of there's there's a bit of a like a
Speaker 1: nationalism and a patriotism yes to a view on the
Speaker 1: American landscape. You know, Like a friend of mine was like, whatever,
Speaker 1: he's going fishing with his kid. He's like, you think
Speaker 1: they're doing this with Tyran, you know, just joking. Perhaps
Speaker 1: they are, but just joking meaning he like it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: he kind of views it like America the beautiful Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you follow me?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 1: And there was there was times I think it was
Speaker 1: like maybe like the last election cycle or whatever. There
Speaker 1: was times I was like, man, I should find some
Speaker 1: better way of articulating this thing that I think is
Speaker 1: kind of widely held where people have a sense of
Speaker 1: American pride about the American environment.
Speaker 3: That is exactly you know, and you look at like
Speaker 3: Yellowstone the show, Right, People didn't watch that because this
Speaker 3: show is just good. It was because it evoked an
Speaker 3: emotional connection to Americana in a way where it's like,
Speaker 3: I'm proud of the fact that we have places that
Speaker 3: look that beautiful. And every if you go into a
Speaker 3: Member of Congress's office, no matter if it's Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 3: Green or AOC, the first pictures on the walls are
Speaker 3: of their natural beauty in their districts, right, Like, there
Speaker 3: is an immense pride that Americans have in our environment.
Speaker 3: This fall, we're going to launch a campaign called United
Speaker 3: by Nature? United by Nature?
Speaker 1: Can you call it? Don't ship Up America.
Speaker 3: That'll be our secondary That'll be the secondary slogan, and
Speaker 3: we let people use which one they like more. But
Speaker 3: we have America's two and fifty anniversary next year. I
Speaker 3: would argue that America, in our conservation legacy is the
Speaker 3: best in the world. I would also argue that it's
Speaker 3: incredibly at risk right now for the first time at
Speaker 3: least to this severity in a very long time.
Speaker 1: Can you, when you get a minute, can you touch
Speaker 1: on a couple of those points about.
Speaker 2: What I'm worried about.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Americans are so proud of the natural environment. We
Speaker 3: have to tap into that. So what I'm worried about.
Speaker 3: National parks are in massive maintenance debt. We're having conversations
Speaker 3: constantly about selling off public lands for development, which doesn't
Speaker 3: solve affordability at all. And the people who are perpetuating
Speaker 3: that know that wildlife issues are becoming worse. Chronic wasting, disease,
Speaker 3: in ages species like these things are not getting better necessarily,
Speaker 3: especially invasive species. I mean, water quality is going down.
Speaker 3: Microplastics are a ninety four percent of tested water that
Speaker 3: we drink, and the water quality in our rivers is
Speaker 3: getting infinitely worse every single year. Megafires are on the
Speaker 3: rise in this country, and things like the Great Salt Lake,
Speaker 3: the watersheds, the aquifers below the farms, these are all
Speaker 3: problems that are getting infinitely worse too. And at some
Speaker 3: point we're already starting to see the impacts of this.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Air quality issues in the summer with the fires, farmers
Speaker 3: having tons of issues, flooding getting worse, not just because
Speaker 3: of quote Unico climate change, but also because of the
Speaker 3: fact that the ecosystems that help prevent a lot of
Speaker 3: hurricanes and stuff the damage from the hurricane have now
Speaker 3: been destroyed, so there's not these natural barriers. So we
Speaker 3: have massive problems. And yet the government, the Biden administration
Speaker 3: didn't focus on this at all. They focused on them
Speaker 3: like climate and energy and infrastructure and evs, but until
Speaker 3: kind of the final hour, they didn't even really talk
Speaker 3: about this conservation or preservation or anything with the natural landscape. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Trump's whole approaches. I will to undo everything because
Speaker 3: it's gone too far and it's wrong and whatever, but
Speaker 3: we're not going to replace it with anything. I never
Speaker 3: liked that guy, because I never liked that guy. But
Speaker 3: he's not just doing stuff that Biden did. He's not
Speaker 3: just undoing some Biden did. He's undoing stuff that Nixon
Speaker 3: did and George W. Bush did and Clinton did.
Speaker 7: What I point out to people often, right is I'm like,
Speaker 7: there's always the other side right, participating in this, right,
Speaker 7: Like even when there's a supermajority. Yeah, pick your supermajority. Right,
Speaker 7: but there's right now, there's Democrats in the room. They're
Speaker 7: not going home. They're not like, okay, well we'll see
Speaker 7: you in four years.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: There's always that non partisan aspect in there. One side's
Speaker 7: ultimately going to have like a final say.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's like people are trying and on.
Speaker 7: The public lands issue too, it's like, well, thanks for calling,
Speaker 7: but we defer to the eleven Western states, right. You know,
Speaker 7: they're be a Democrat or Republican, they're the ones that
Speaker 7: have the knowledge, and so we're going to listen to them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: And that's just like something that people need to be
Speaker 7: reminded of, right, because it all gets shackled onto, you know,
Speaker 7: kind of who's in power at that time.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I think on a quick diversion, I just
Speaker 3: want to say thank you to you guys, because first
Speaker 3: of all, I think between you and me and a
Speaker 3: couple of others in the non elected space, we are
Speaker 3: blamed for killing that horrible idea to sell off the
Speaker 3: three million acres. It didn't matter that Patagonia took a
Speaker 3: stance against the public lands at all. The sell off
Speaker 3: didn't matter that Sierra Club did that didn't move the
Speaker 3: needle at all. In fact, it probably hurt that they
Speaker 3: weren't engaged. It mattered because center left, center and center
Speaker 3: right voters who were largely in your communities Joe Rogan's
Speaker 3: community campaign's community and in our community were saying no,
Speaker 3: hands off. Because that's the broad coal that's the power
Speaker 3: of a broad coalition, because no matter what the moment is,
Speaker 3: you're meeting it. Then, right, you're meeting the moment because
Speaker 3: you have the broad coalition. And it's nice that the
Speaker 3: people in California were saying things, and it's nice that
Speaker 3: the people in Washington didn't like they should. But that
Speaker 3: didn't move the needle on that one. But maybe it'll
Speaker 3: move the needle on a different one.
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe if I tell my family something and my
Speaker 1: kids get real mad, and then also my wife's mad,
Speaker 1: she's mad.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly, And so I want to thank you for
Speaker 3: that in the areas where you know, quote unquote didn't
Speaker 3: make an impact, right, like the.
Speaker 7: Rosy picture of the idea, right is it's building equity, yes, right,
Speaker 7: and there's going to be this like alarm bells went off?
Speaker 1: Right, why is that?
Speaker 7: What's the deal with this issue?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: And it's all very important.
Speaker 7: I already said I support the troops. Right, people are
Speaker 7: still looking at me weird what's going on.
Speaker 3: But that's that's the power of this broad coalition. So
Speaker 3: I just say that to say also, that's how like
Speaker 3: in the future, it will be different states that are
Speaker 3: relevant for different environmental initiatives and will need those people
Speaker 3: there too. So but you know, there's some really good
Speaker 3: people there like Martin Heinrich and Tim Sheehy and you
Speaker 3: know Crapo and Danes and who care about conservation and
Speaker 3: there's overlap with this idea, but they also don't have
Speaker 3: a lot of space to work within, like they they
Speaker 3: they all actually, whether they want to publicly acknowledge this
Speaker 3: or not, they really were happy about the pushback because
Speaker 3: it gave them the ability to do what they actually
Speaker 3: wanted to do, right like, especially for a Republican A
Speaker 3: lot of Republicans. I know for a fact that there
Speaker 3: were about sixteen other Republican senators who wanted to stand
Speaker 3: up against the public man sell Off, but they didn't
Speaker 3: feel like it was politically helpful to do so. And
Speaker 3: until they feel like there's that space to step out
Speaker 3: and say, actually, this is not only what I don't want,
Speaker 3: but it's also what my voters don't want. They're going
Speaker 3: to be more gun shy. And you look at the
Speaker 3: senators who spoke out. We all knew that they didn't
Speaker 3: want this to happen from the get go, but because
Speaker 3: there were so many voters saying they didn't want it too,
Speaker 3: then they're like, well, now I can justify speaking out.
Speaker 3: That's kind of American democracy at work in a time
Speaker 3: when people are just don't really speaking out about things
Speaker 3: other than the radical extremes. So that's where like the
Speaker 3: rational middle standing together to say, oh, we support the troops,
Speaker 3: Oh we support the environment and conservation. It gives space
Speaker 3: for not just the Heinrix and the ones who are
Speaker 3: always going to be willing to put their like Martin Heinrich,
Speaker 3: who we all love.
Speaker 2: I think maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I love him. No, I like him. I like him personally, Yes,
Speaker 1: he's a rare I like him personally, Yes. And I
Speaker 1: appreciate his constant advocacy on behalf of public lands. Yes.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate that he of many things I appreciate.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that he is willing to be like a
Speaker 1: very outspoken hunter right, and a yeah in a in
Speaker 1: a in a a in a political party where that's
Speaker 1: not always the most uh, it's not always the most
Speaker 1: welcome identity to have.
Speaker 3: And Tim Sheehy, when I've had conversations with him, will
Speaker 3: be like Montana cares more about conservation and the outdoors
Speaker 3: than you know any other place, you know, arguably, and
Speaker 3: so I I have to lead on this, but I
Speaker 3: also want to both of those two gentlemen go against
Speaker 3: the grain in a lot of ways of what they're
Speaker 3: quote unquote supposed to do.
Speaker 2: There's very few leaders like that in d C.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, that's the world that I'm you know, really
Speaker 3: unfortunately familiar with, and we need to give space not
Speaker 3: just for those guys who are always going to try
Speaker 3: to stick their neck out as much as possible, but
Speaker 3: also the kind of the cowards. To be honest, they're
Speaker 3: always going to be cowards and the Senate in the
Speaker 3: House who actually do want to do the right thing though,
Speaker 3: and they just don't feel like they have a space
Speaker 3: to do it. And that's the power of the movement
Speaker 3: that I think we could build, because there's an underbelly there.
Speaker 3: If you talk to those sixteen Republican senators who wanted
Speaker 3: to speak out about it. I guarantee you if I
Speaker 3: said there's gonna be a million people in your state
Speaker 3: right and left, we're speaking out about this in your favor,
Speaker 3: they would have been like, Okay, than I can too,
Speaker 3: and that's the power we.
Speaker 2: Need to build.
Speaker 1: Let's change subject of teeny bit or change focus at
Speaker 1: teeny bit. If you're sitting there as a guy that
Speaker 1: grew up and you had conservative principles, right, and you
Speaker 1: felt that like the party I kind of instinctively want
Speaker 1: to align myself with, Like they just are not representing
Speaker 1: my environmental concerns, right, I need them to. I want
Speaker 1: to change that position from your perspective, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you have to say if you had a private audience?
Speaker 1: So you have a private this is a private audience, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so the houses, the Democrats in the House and Senate,
Speaker 1: they come to you and say what can we be
Speaker 1: what could we be doing different? What can we be
Speaker 1: doing different? What to them? Because it can't be that
Speaker 1: like they got it just right now, and you just
Speaker 1: want you just want the Republicans have adopt their approach,
Speaker 1: like where are they missing? Where are they losing people?
Speaker 1: Where are they missing? Where could they be more effective?
Speaker 1: When I say, I mean like a big day like
Speaker 1: the Democrats on average, Ye, like the Party of the Democrats.
Speaker 1: Where do they miss?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I'll reiterate, I think both sides are
Speaker 3: failing almost pretty equally on this issue. And the way
Speaker 3: that the Left has failed is it has been so
Speaker 3: much about climate and kind of this hysteria around Like
Speaker 3: I believe in climate change, and I you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not afraid to say that, but like when you're just
Speaker 3: talking about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like, climate change
Speaker 3: doesn't matter if we destroy all the wild places that
Speaker 3: we have left, right, Like it's like a distant priority.
Speaker 3: If you destroy the Amazon and you destroy all the
Speaker 3: wild places that we all love to recreate in, then
Speaker 3: we might as well just keep eating up the climate
Speaker 3: because we're all screwed. So they've kind of forgotten to
Speaker 3: work on conservation because they've been so focused on this other.
Speaker 1: Issue technical solutions.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Green New Deal, you.
Speaker 3: Know, is an oversimplified way to give the analogy, but
Speaker 3: it's basically, you know, that was their whole environmental platform,
Speaker 3: and you were like, well, if you look at the
Speaker 3: Green New Deal, it had nothing to do with public lands,
Speaker 3: private land conservation, sustainable ag forestry, water quality. It just
Speaker 3: only had to do with energy and EVS and technical infrastructure.
Speaker 3: So that's where they've really failed. And it's also been
Speaker 3: a race to the left. What's the most that you
Speaker 3: can do to be as radical as you can out
Speaker 3: to say you care more than the other person. But
Speaker 3: it's all about grand standing and it's all about like
Speaker 3: these pledges and these goals, but there's nothing behind them.
Speaker 3: Like I went to cop the UN Climate Conference for
Speaker 3: three years in a row, and it was the most
Speaker 3: abysmal time of my life because it was just like, well,
Speaker 3: if we have this pledge to be one hundred percent
Speaker 3: renewable by twenty thirty, that would be better than this
Speaker 3: company's pledge, or this country's pledge, or you know whoever
Speaker 3: the stakeholder was.
Speaker 2: And it was like, what are you actually gonna do?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 3: Like there there's no it's all about the messaging and
Speaker 3: it's not about the details. And the last thing that
Speaker 3: I think that they failed that is it has been
Speaker 3: you know this age old conservation versus preservation is like
Speaker 3: the debate, right, it's been going on for centuries and
Speaker 3: in America specifically in the last century, they've been hinging
Speaker 3: very closely to just working on preservation rather than conservation
Speaker 3: and restricting access for hunting and angling and getting outdoors
Speaker 3: and like people are so scared of like resource development
Speaker 3: and using public lands for other and then just like
Speaker 3: the Zero Clubs saying they want to watch the bears
Speaker 3: or the wolves and not hunt, you know, hunt them,
Speaker 3: Like that's kind of been the mindset has been the
Speaker 3: Zero Club mindset. And so in a similar way that
Speaker 3: the right has completely failed and is failing right now
Speaker 3: and we're seeing it. It's their turn to fail. The
Speaker 3: left has been failing too, and at some point one
Speaker 3: of the parties will get it right, or hopefully ideally
Speaker 3: both of them get it right, but right now that
Speaker 3: neither one of them is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the use ray like we're both in New York City. Yeah,
Speaker 7: And man, the riot that would ensue if somebody was like, yeah,
Speaker 7: we're just gonna make Central Park off limits, right, just
Speaker 7: I was up with this Upper West Side array.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 6: We don't want we you know, we don't want people
Speaker 6: to interfere with the squirrel movement, right.
Speaker 2: The squirrel movements, squirrel migration.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a couple of like quick anecdotes for rip over
Speaker 7: their brutal travel and get on the island of Manhattan.
Speaker 7: As soon as he get into Manhattan, there's this guy
Speaker 7: who does not look like me, probably has very different
Speaker 7: ideas about a lot of things, on an electric scooter,
Speaker 7: flying through traffic, and he's got two fishing rods strapped
Speaker 7: to his back coming off the Hudson. And I was
Speaker 7: just like, Okay, this guy and I like, we can
Speaker 7: have a conversation, I guarantee you. I thought that was
Speaker 7: just super awesome to see. And then yeah, the conversations
Speaker 7: that I had about like the parks, because I was
Speaker 7: blown away by how many dogs are on the Upper
Speaker 7: West Side and people like they do whatever it takes
Speaker 7: to maintain a dog friendly lifestyle. And I thought that
Speaker 7: and it, you know, it obviously like connects to these
Speaker 7: park systems, right. And I thought that was just a
Speaker 7: good example of like, here's this very this this group
Speaker 7: of people that I would put in a very nature
Speaker 7: disconnected category who have totally changed their lives in order
Speaker 7: to have that connection with that version of nature. Right.
Speaker 7: And they were like bird watchers, Holy, now.
Speaker 2: So many birdwatchers in New York.
Speaker 7: I was amazed. I was pretty pretty amazed with that.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 7: But kind of to go back to the like the
Speaker 7: farm ranch community and where a lot of environmental groups
Speaker 7: have just like again lost connection with the end consumers.
Speaker 7: Another example, man, the majority of farmer rancher folks that
Speaker 7: I know address climate change every single day. It is
Speaker 7: part of their business as part as their their business plan.
Speaker 7: And they are so aware of the changes and the
Speaker 7: effects of climate change. Uh, the only way that they're
Speaker 7: going to be viable is.
Speaker 2: By adapting, mitigating all the above.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and they are doing it.
Speaker 1: And they do not.
Speaker 7: Want to be associated with the climate change crowd, no, right,
Speaker 7: but they're doing it every single day and they.
Speaker 2: Are the climate change ground.
Speaker 1: They don't want anybody to think they're a weirdo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, a liberal hit. Yeah. And it was like
Speaker 1: when my calves hit the ground, when I plant this,
Speaker 1: when I picked that, What I'm gonna do about water?
Speaker 7: How am I going to change what I plant?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 7: You know, what is worth it now versus was worth
Speaker 7: it ten years ago. As far as like field cultivation
Speaker 7: or non field cultivation, bringing what crops to market, the
Speaker 7: whole the whole thing. Water use, right, fertilizer, use all
Speaker 7: of it. And if you're not doing these things like
Speaker 7: you're you're not going to be around, you're not out
Speaker 7: of business.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And and then they hate they get the lecture
Speaker 3: to them, the environmentalist lecture to them, even though they're
Speaker 3: the ones doing in a lot.
Speaker 7: And some hook and bullet organizations too, like they use
Speaker 7: what I would call at this point like boiler plate
Speaker 7: conservation speak, right, and it's ian. It's the same version
Speaker 7: slightly tweaked for the last twenty years, right, that's going
Speaker 7: out to everybody, and they're like, well, this resonates. I'm like, well,
Speaker 7: it doesn't resonate with people with the dirt under their
Speaker 7: fingernails doing it.
Speaker 2: But the problem is philanthropy, so that there's money type,
Speaker 2: there's so much money tied to it.
Speaker 3: And that's that's where I that's another world that I
Speaker 3: have to work in, is the philanthropic world where you know,
Speaker 3: and probably shouldn't even be talking about this because they
Speaker 3: probably don't like that i'd be saying this, but it's
Speaker 3: like they are so out of touch, but they have
Speaker 3: so much money and they're funding these campaigns, they're funding
Speaker 3: the zero clubs of the world. When they're doing this
Speaker 3: anti bear thing, for sure, they're also funding these very preachy,
Speaker 3: condescens Rural people are screwed up and dumb and like
Speaker 3: are doing the wrong thing all the time, and we
Speaker 3: need to take it back because farming an egg and industry,
Speaker 3: they are the bane of our existence and we have
Speaker 3: to basically ban them from society if we're gonna keep going.
Speaker 7: And it's it's like, and don't even get into the
Speaker 7: nuance of like the definition of rural if you're standing
Speaker 7: in Manhattan, the definition of rural if you're standing in
Speaker 7: cold Foot, Alaska.
Speaker 3: The philanthropists are only the philanthropists would not survive a
Speaker 3: literally ten minutes there. They live in San Francisco, they
Speaker 3: live in New York, and they live in Chicago. Those
Speaker 3: are kind of the and a little bit of la
Speaker 3: Those are the four places they don't leave there and
Speaker 3: they are in the biggest bubble if you think, like DC,
Speaker 3: the swamp is a bubble which people want to drain.
Speaker 2: Philanthropy needs to be drained.
Speaker 3: Like it's it's crazy what I have to put up
Speaker 3: with with philanthropists and how disconnected they are, and they
Speaker 3: actually don't understand what's going on in America at all,
Speaker 3: and yet they are funding tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 3: of nonprofits to dominate the narrative. And so that's also
Speaker 3: part of my plan right, is to represent in an
Speaker 3: environmental movement America. Actually, because the environmentalist groups can't do that.
Speaker 3: They literally can't. That's why I have such an advantage here.
Speaker 3: They can't even they can't they can't even try to
Speaker 3: do what we're doing because they're funded to not do that,
Speaker 3: and they are in philanthropy is so screwed up because
Speaker 3: a nonprofit only exists if they get the money, and
Speaker 3: you only raise money if there are problems, And so
Speaker 3: what's the Is there an incentive to solve the problem.
Speaker 3: Then no, because if you solve the problem, you lose
Speaker 3: your job. So there's there's there's you know, that's where
Speaker 3: the disconnected messaging comes from because the people who are
Speaker 3: dominating that from a financial perspective, who are donating to
Speaker 3: these groups, have no idea how real America lives.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a very weird, petty example
Speaker 1: of what you're talking about. I remember, uh when I
Speaker 1: remember watching Just in the News, when when Michael Bloomberg, No,
Speaker 1: not Bloomberg. Who's the guy the tall guy kind of
Speaker 1: left in a little bit of a scandal. Mayor of
Speaker 1: New York City Blasio. I remember right away when de
Speaker 1: Blasio got elected, I haven't thought about and scamd.
Speaker 7: I was like, still.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg shor.
Speaker 6: He pulled that up on the screen.
Speaker 2: Can you put up all the Michaels.
Speaker 1: I remember when he when he came in, like a
Speaker 1: thing he did very early was this like thing about
Speaker 1: we laughed about it on the show, but he came
Speaker 1: in and very early had this thing about the rules
Speaker 1: about the horses.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I remember being like, if that is not an example
Speaker 1: of someone giving that guy money and saying listen, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's like, okay, got it. I'll try to remember,
Speaker 1: like you give me a bunch of money and some
Speaker 1: about the horses. Got it? Like it was so transactional,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and that like I imagine, but why not
Speaker 1: that magic? I've seen it, Like you know, I've had
Speaker 1: exposure to the nonprofit space where I see where donors
Speaker 1: philanthropy can come in and manipulate a nonprofit agenda with
Speaker 1: a big carrot.
Speaker 2: That's that's really how this all works and they're.
Speaker 4: Like advocate here though there because there's also ways in
Speaker 4: which like a group the people as part of an
Speaker 4: NGO have issues that they care about, Like they want
Speaker 4: to work on wildlife, they want to work on public lands,
Speaker 4: they want to do this.
Speaker 1: And and they see.
Speaker 4: Grants available and they sort of go, oh, we can
Speaker 4: tie this to that by framing it this way. They're
Speaker 4: still trying to solve that problem, you know, like like
Speaker 4: I don't I don't believe that people at BHA, uh
Speaker 4: don't want I don't believe that people at BHA want
Speaker 4: the public lands issue to still to just be a
Speaker 4: constant football because they actually care about it.
Speaker 1: No, that's true. They yeah, they're not. They're not like
Speaker 1: they're definitely not thinking, well, we want to win, not
Speaker 1: all the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then like when they look at a I mean,
Speaker 4: the philanthropy thing is complicated, and I think that I
Speaker 4: think it exists on sort of like a spectrum er.
Speaker 1: It's like a tug of war.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, we could get into this pot of
Speaker 4: money if we sort of frame our work in this way,
Speaker 4: and we can use that money to do what we
Speaker 4: really want to do. And sometimes you can get too
Speaker 4: tugged too far outside of your core issues. But there's
Speaker 4: also a lot of ways in which they're using that
Speaker 4: money strategically to get to sort of pour more gas
Speaker 4: on the fire and what they really want to work.
Speaker 3: I agree, but I think I think a lot of
Speaker 3: it's subconsciously going in the wrong direction. So what I
Speaker 3: mean by this is during the public lands sell off,
Speaker 3: the Senator Mike Lee, if you remember on Twitter, was
Speaker 3: going after me largely because of what I was saying
Speaker 3: on social media, and his whole conspiracy is that I
Speaker 3: was funded to go against him. I will be transparent.
Speaker 3: I raised fifty thousand dollars after it happened, fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I know that there are so many massive environmental NGOs
Speaker 3: who took this massive public stand, again not moving the
Speaker 3: needle at all, but they were like, you know, screw you,
Speaker 3: President Trump, screw you, Mike Lee, screw you whatever. They
Speaker 3: raised tens of millions of dollars off of that because
Speaker 3: they tried to make a name for themselves in a
Speaker 3: time where they weren't actually doing anything.
Speaker 1: Probably were not impactful because they weren't talking to anybody.
Speaker 3: Knew, right, So Mike Lee had actually in a strange
Speaker 3: way the right thought process there, which is like Benjie's
Speaker 3: probably using this to raise a ton of money, and
Speaker 3: I didn't because I didn't even plan and get involved
Speaker 3: in that, because I didn't know it was coming down
Speaker 3: the pike. Like there was like you couldn't even plan for, right.
Speaker 3: We all found out pretty last minute, and we all
Speaker 3: just did what we needed to do, so there wasn't
Speaker 3: some coordinated effort. But these groups are incentivized to make
Speaker 3: it seem like they are doing more than they actually
Speaker 3: are and to take harder stances than what actually would
Speaker 3: move the needle because they know that that's where philanthropy is, like,
Speaker 3: oh thank god, you know this group is taking such
Speaker 3: a hard stand, but there's not actually like an outcome
Speaker 3: thought of it. And so I think that you're right.
Speaker 3: But a lot of groups raise money when they don't
Speaker 3: actually do anything with it. And I'm not saying BHA specifically,
Speaker 3: I don't know enough about that, but well, i'll give you.
Speaker 7: An example to your point. So roadless rule, Right, I'm
Speaker 7: working with a bunch of different groups and talking about
Speaker 7: roadless rule, and this kind of ties in a couple
Speaker 7: of points I've been made today is right, Like, we're
Speaker 7: not even at the actual conversation about roadless rule because
Speaker 7: it's not about timber, it's not about public access to
Speaker 7: these areas. It's not, in my opinion, actually about wildfire mitigation.
Speaker 7: So just tell me what the reason is. Yeah, that
Speaker 7: you want to roll back protections on forty four million acres,
Speaker 7: that that would be like the chunk that is actually
Speaker 7: going to get affected.
Speaker 1: You're not you mean, you're not buying that. It's just general, no,
Speaker 1: a thing.
Speaker 7: Like, just tell me the thing so we can talk
Speaker 7: about the thing.
Speaker 1: Right Earlier we talk about the debate, like the buffalo thing,
Speaker 1: and there's all these red herrings, brucellosis whatever. In the
Speaker 1: end you're like, oh, I get it. This is about
Speaker 1: who's what animals eat? What grass? It's about grass, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And with the with the
Speaker 1: l it was about like, this is about increasing new
Speaker 1: lands for developers to develop.
Speaker 3: Right, and decreasing the federal state and trying to achieve
Speaker 3: for their goal of reducing the federal budget deficit.
Speaker 1: That thread hearing it might it might be one thing
Speaker 1: one thing.
Speaker 3: Well, either way, it's definitely out in affordable housing. We
Speaker 3: can agree in that for housing.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're worry about the debt. There's a
Speaker 1: lot better ways to figure out the debt totally.
Speaker 7: But on this road list deal, I've you know, I
Speaker 7: have a good, good idea. Come upper.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 7: And I was like, well, why don't we all these
Speaker 7: groups that have resources, why don't we spend some time
Speaker 7: get the list of the green groups that sue the
Speaker 7: most on some of these mitigation efforts that are that
Speaker 7: are technically included in the wording of the roadless rule, right,
Speaker 7: and we at least get them to a table where
Speaker 7: we can have a discussion on what they're going to
Speaker 7: sue on and what they're not.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: And then we're going to have this letter and this
Speaker 7: coalition that says, hey, all these including these ones that
Speaker 7: are screwing everything up for everybody because they just sue
Speaker 7: all the time. They just try to grind things to
Speaker 7: a halt. Say this is our line. If you guys
Speaker 7: outline where you need the work done, we will not
Speaker 7: sue on this. And if they don't, we'll just make
Speaker 7: this big, huge coalition out here say there is no
Speaker 7: working with these groups, and we'll make it as public
Speaker 7: as possible. We'll make them prize and that that'll be
Speaker 7: the tactic here, right, And the response is like, man,
Speaker 7: it's a great idea, ideas.
Speaker 2: We can't do it.
Speaker 7: And they're like are you I mean, are you going
Speaker 7: to go to these law firms and be like, uh,
Speaker 7: your business is going to be And they're gonna be like, Hey,
Speaker 7: that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: Go to those law firms, be like youre familiar with
Speaker 1: the whole like doge complex, that's what you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to apply something different because work's drying up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not going to say yes to that.
Speaker 1: Right. When did Nature is non Partisan get founded? April
Speaker 1: twenty five? April twenty twenty five, layout for me, like,
Speaker 1: how do you think? How do you approach things? Do
Speaker 1: you approach things like quarters in your mind? Years in
Speaker 1: your mind, ten years in your mind?
Speaker 2: Quarters? Because the world changes every quarter?
Speaker 1: Right, a couple of quarters? What's come? Like? What? Like?
Speaker 3: We're going to launch a national narrative shifting campaign with
Speaker 3: a lot of the coalition partners that we've been working with,
Speaker 3: including a lot of the groups that you work with,
Speaker 3: you know, the trcps of the world. We're gonna include
Speaker 3: everybody who's in this broad coalition in a campaign called
Speaker 3: United by Nature. We're gonna have concerts, We're gonna have
Speaker 3: community events, We're gonna have calls to action, We're gonna
Speaker 3: have national ad campaigns. We're going to try to make
Speaker 3: this United by Nature the calling card for support the troops. Right,
Speaker 3: we are united by nature, whether that nature is your
Speaker 3: salt lake or it's your you know, Everglades, or it's
Speaker 3: your you know, beartooth mountains.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So it's it's trying to create that national identity. We're
Speaker 3: going to launch it in the in the next quarter.
Speaker 3: We're also going to launch it bipartisan caucus in the
Speaker 3: Senate focused on conservation and try to create the space
Speaker 3: for that to get done.
Speaker 1: Is it gonna be called the level Headed Caucus?
Speaker 2: The level Headed cauca? What was the notion?
Speaker 3: What was your secondary slogan for you don't show up
Speaker 3: America Caucus?
Speaker 2: I'll ask.
Speaker 3: That's great, and then you know, we're really going to
Speaker 3: focus on tell people to Caucus caucus is like a
Speaker 3: little little family of senators that want to do the
Speaker 3: same action on the same topic. And so there are
Speaker 3: there's like the Congressional Sportsman's Caucus, which is a great
Speaker 3: group focus on you know, sportsmen's issues and trying to
Speaker 3: build support in the Senate just on those issues.
Speaker 7: So we saw the public Lands Caucus in the House.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and so it'll be very complimentary to that
Speaker 3: in the Senate, but on more than just public lands.
Speaker 3: It'll be about private land, wildlife, water, and a little
Speaker 3: bit of a wider.
Speaker 1: Sweet And you imagine pulling in you imagine this pulling
Speaker 1: in centrists from both parties.
Speaker 3: Or we actually want pretty hardcore Republicans and hardcore Democrats.
Speaker 3: But it's gonna be one for one membership. So for
Speaker 3: every Republican, we get a Democrat.
Speaker 1: Is that normal for a caucus?
Speaker 2: No, there are a few that are modeled that way,
Speaker 2: but very rare.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because yeah, obviously.
Speaker 3: And our organization is structured part yeah, yeah, our organization
Speaker 3: is structured that way too. We have half our staff
Speaker 3: is liberal, half its conservative. Half our boards liberal half
Speaker 3: half its conservative. And we're intentional for everybody that we add,
Speaker 3: we are making do you have non binary everyone's got
Speaker 3: a leaning somewhere like put me down for both.
Speaker 6: We do.
Speaker 2: Actually, if you look at it from the box, you
Speaker 2: have to figure it out. No, we we we have
Speaker 2: out our board.
Speaker 3: We have got a few people who I actually have
Speaker 3: no idea, but if there's a pretty active conservative person,
Speaker 3: we're definitely gonna have an active understood so that that's
Speaker 3: the vision that we see, because when you have it
Speaker 3: structured that way, and this is why, you know a
Speaker 3: lot of environmental organizations their staff is one hundred percent
Speaker 3: liberal or you know other boards one hundredercent liberal, and
Speaker 3: of course they're going to lean that way, just like
Speaker 3: if it was the other way. So so we're gonna
Speaker 3: launch this caucus. We're gonna launch the National Narrative Shifting Campaign,
Speaker 3: United by Nature. We're probably gonna do a big event
Speaker 3: at Yellowstone here in the spring to rally people around
Speaker 3: public lands and bring in like an A list celebrity,
Speaker 3: a list music. So we're trying to make this a
Speaker 3: culturally relevant thing. And can you speak, no, just bring
Speaker 3: my kids want to hang out? What if they want
Speaker 3: to watch their dad on stage, they won't.
Speaker 2: What if your wife wants to Yeah, we wanted to go, dad,
Speaker 2: but we're actually gonna stay home this week.
Speaker 7: We heard this speech at dinner, part of it.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, that's kind of what the next few
Speaker 3: months look like. And you know, we're we're really excited
Speaker 3: because we're seeing, especially in the wake of just like
Speaker 3: the political division, people are wanting something positive in politics
Speaker 3: right now. And if there's one issue that could help
Speaker 3: democracy kind of move forward and also bring our priorities
Speaker 3: to the table, the environment's probably the best one in
Speaker 3: my opinion. So we're seeing a lot of natural support,
Speaker 3: and you know, people from across the spectrum. I mean,
Speaker 3: we have drag queens and militant you know, militant activists
Speaker 3: who are all believing in this same model. And it's
Speaker 3: it's it's really kind of incredible what people are looking
Speaker 3: for on this right now.
Speaker 1: How will you decide going forward? How will you decide
Speaker 1: Like where with the public land sell off, there's like
Speaker 1: a specific thing. Yeah, there's a known party that's pushing it.
Speaker 1: There's a no, not not even party, there's a known
Speaker 1: individual who's pushing it, yep, Right, and so you got
Speaker 1: to like create friction, Yeah, like you're going to You're like,
Speaker 1: whatever you do, however positive you keep it, you will
Speaker 1: create friction. Right. How how are you deciding on what
Speaker 1: issues where you're like, I'm going to create friction on
Speaker 1: this one. I'm going to create friction on this one.
Speaker 1: I mean specific bills, right, specific measures do I mean like,
Speaker 1: is it just your moral compass? Like, like what goes
Speaker 1: into going like this is going to get ugly?
Speaker 3: I think it's when we know that the vast majority
Speaker 3: that there's a winning coalition that's willing to be like
Speaker 3: active on something. Because we mostly want to be four things.
Speaker 3: So what I mean by that is like, we don't
Speaker 3: want to always be the group that's standing against whatever
Speaker 3: is bad. That's what a lot of environmental groups do.
Speaker 3: We want to show that there is a political constituency
Speaker 3: to put forward funding for national parks, to put forward
Speaker 3: funding for wildlife conservation, right, like, like show that there's
Speaker 3: an appetite for that in a positive way. Because I'm
Speaker 3: so sick of like politicians only being afraid of people
Speaker 3: instead of like being like, oh, I'm doing this because
Speaker 3: people actually want me to do it. So but when
Speaker 3: there's this example, like the public land sell off, where
Speaker 3: we have to take a stance against it, we are
Speaker 3: going to be very intentional about picking and choosing. I've
Speaker 3: already gotten so much shit for not taking a stance
Speaker 3: against absolutely everything that's been happening over the last eight months.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I can't die on every hill, right,
Speaker 3: and our organization can't die on every hill, and no
Speaker 3: organization can die on every hill. But if there's an
Speaker 3: overwhelming winning coalition of Americans where the politicians are so
Speaker 3: out of touch with America like they were on the
Speaker 3: public land sell off, we're going to show them that
Speaker 3: they're out of touch. And so it will depend on really,
Speaker 3: where's the American populace at, where's the winning coalition at?
Speaker 3: And can we actually mobilize them, because if we can't,
Speaker 3: then we're trying to stick a square peg into a
Speaker 3: round hole, and a lot of times that's what happens
Speaker 3: and it doesn't actually do anything. So if we're going
Speaker 3: to really lean in and be against something, we better
Speaker 3: be damn sure that it's going to be impactful before
Speaker 3: we do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's I like that appro Yeah, I'm at
Speaker 1: a loss for words. I love that approach. I like
Speaker 1: that approach because I think another way that groups would
Speaker 1: look and they'll say this is we're gonna lose bad,
Speaker 1: but this is gonna be good for fundraisings, and this
Speaker 1: is gonna be good for press. If Peta says, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have it be that you don't say a
Speaker 1: whole hog anymore. You know, they're like, we're probably gonna lose.
Speaker 1: People are still gonna say a whole hog, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna get a lot of media, exactly. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna win this one.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean what I'm at the point where it's like,
Speaker 3: I care about the outcomes and if that, if that
Speaker 3: comes at the cost of fund fundraising, I'm willing to
Speaker 3: take that. If it comes at the cost of media,
Speaker 3: that's fine. If it comes at the cost of people
Speaker 3: thinking that I have some ulterior motive because I'm not
Speaker 3: taking a stance on everything because I think that I'm
Speaker 3: like trying to shy away from every issue, then that's
Speaker 3: fine too. But I think people have gotten so used
Speaker 3: to like, oh, you're not taking a stance on absolutely
Speaker 3: everything that's bad, therefore you must have some ulterior motive.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, it's actually the opposite, right, Like I
Speaker 3: could raise so much money opposing everything that Donald Trump does.
Speaker 3: I could raise so much money off of that, and
Speaker 3: if I wanted to, I would do it. Or if
Speaker 3: I wanted to defend everything he was doing, I could
Speaker 3: also raise a lot of money off of that. But
Speaker 3: I think over time people's demand is going to be
Speaker 3: for trying to actually create good outcomes. At least that's
Speaker 3: my optimistic view of the world, that people will actually
Speaker 3: want that, and over time people will see, man, this
Speaker 3: is if you want to take a legitimate stance on
Speaker 3: something that will actually move the needle, this is the
Speaker 3: organization to work with.
Speaker 2: That's the goal.
Speaker 1: You know what good analogy could be for you, Like,
Speaker 1: think about how the military would look at battles. They're
Speaker 1: not like, all the guys are gonna diem, but think
Speaker 1: about what this is gonna mean from a publicity stamp,
Speaker 1: right right. They're kind of like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: think we should go on Wednesday night because we're gonna
Speaker 1: win on Wednesday night, are you guys? Just you guys
Speaker 1: have we're gonna go.
Speaker 7: We're gonna go on too much time together, Steve. Steve
Speaker 7: and I were playing phone tag all day and I
Speaker 7: happened to be on a Gettysburg tour and we finally connected.
Speaker 7: While I'm sitting there looking at at Pickett's charge from
Speaker 7: the viewpoint of the Union lines and seems like, well,
Speaker 7: what do you think I'm like, this is so stupid.
Speaker 7: I'm like, you cannot tell me, you cannot, Like, I'm
Speaker 7: at odds with our historical tour guide right now because
Speaker 7: I'm like, yeah, I'm not buying this.
Speaker 1: This is ego driven something being like can I get
Speaker 1: a quick word? Just kind of looking down, looking around here?
Speaker 3: And that is the perfect analogy, though, That is the
Speaker 3: perfect analogy. Yeah, and I think the conservation movement could
Speaker 3: really use that. But also, like there to your point earlier,
Speaker 3: there are so many incredible groups out there in the
Speaker 3: hunting you know, in the hook and bult crowd, but
Speaker 3: also in the conservation crowd, but they're not trying to
Speaker 3: do what I'm trying to do, and so we can
Speaker 3: work really well together to get things done because they
Speaker 3: they do they do have science behind them, and they
Speaker 3: do have resources, they do have research, they do have
Speaker 3: some grassroots right, and they have a brand, and they
Speaker 3: have really good ideas. But we need to facilitate the
Speaker 3: space for those ideas and create the national identity around
Speaker 3: those ideas. And so you know, I think for most
Speaker 3: of America, like we hope to be the national movement,
Speaker 3: but then we want to help accelerate the priorities of
Speaker 3: all these other great groups that are out there that
Speaker 3: just haven't had the space. Like TRCP has so many
Speaker 3: great policy ideas. All these groups have so many great
Speaker 3: policy ideas, but if the political space isn't there to
Speaker 3: move them, then they're just ideas right and the roadless
Speaker 3: rule or anything that we're against, you know, being rescinded,
Speaker 3: Like we might be right about that, but if they
Speaker 3: still decide to go forward with it because Americans didn't
Speaker 3: speak up enough about it, then then it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Matter how right we were.
Speaker 1: So that I'm a big TRCP supporter. Cal does allow
Speaker 1: to work with BHA, but I think that I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are people that fall into a trap of being competitive. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I would say, like speaking for the people at
Speaker 1: this table, I would say, like we'll take the wins.
Speaker 1: We can get them, yep, and we just need wins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I love to see the groups I
Speaker 1: love and the people I love thrive and do well.
Speaker 1: But I'm not I'd rather see environmental wins than organization wins.
Speaker 2: I agree with that.
Speaker 3: No, And honestly, I mean, if nature is not God speed,
Speaker 3: thank you God. And you know, it really doesn't matter
Speaker 3: who gets the credit. We just need good conservation wins.
Speaker 3: Like people ask me all the time, why am I
Speaker 3: doing this? And I think you'll find out in twenty
Speaker 3: years as we look back, forty years, as we look back,
Speaker 3: I just care about conservation wins. And if Nature's non
Speaker 3: partisans isn't needed, then that's then that's great. But if
Speaker 3: it's also the most important culturally relevant organization, that's great too.
Speaker 3: But like there is no motive other than getting wins
Speaker 3: on the board. So but I like that approach because
Speaker 3: it also means that we are being so collaborative with
Speaker 3: all these other groups that largely have seen each other
Speaker 3: as like competitive enemies in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 3: they could be moving together.
Speaker 2: And I do believe that it's more powerful if they do.
Speaker 3: And I know that's kind of breaking the mold of
Speaker 3: like the nonprofit model, it's breaking the mold of like
Speaker 3: the political model. People want to be against each other
Speaker 3: to find competition. But like, this to me, is bigger
Speaker 3: than that. It's bigger than politics. It's bigger than who
Speaker 3: has the money. It's bigger than who gets the money.
Speaker 3: It's bigger than who gets the win. It's who and
Speaker 3: how did we get the best outcomes for conservation because
Speaker 3: we need like a twenty first century infusion of conservation
Speaker 3: progress like Teddy Roosevelt created. We need to have that
Speaker 3: legacy recreated in this country, and we're not going to
Speaker 3: do it with the typical political bullshit that we've been
Speaker 3: dealing with over the last few years.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it taking so much time to talk.
Speaker 3: Man, this is really fun. I even got to eat
Speaker 3: jerky on air. Get to look my chops a little
Speaker 3: bit frothee.
Speaker 2: Should we all do that and.
Speaker 1: Just go, oh, Phil, there's some jerky where you feel
Speaker 1: like they should have put one of those old flossers
Speaker 1: in the bag with it. But that doesn't give any problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, like threads when we when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: when we made we made jerky, my dad would just
Speaker 1: like take the shank and slice it thin, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember, like every piece of jerk you ate, you'd
Speaker 1: have like a cut. You'd have a cut, and after
Speaker 1: an hour jerky eat and you take this white ball
Speaker 1: it's like a piece of chewing gum sinow and you'd
Speaker 1: eventually take that and flick it.
Speaker 2: It's full of little jerky pieces.
Speaker 1: You just be like like, yeah, it's probably and you
Speaker 1: open the window and off into the side of the road.
Speaker 2: This does not that I don't need that, no connective.
Speaker 1: Tissue, there's no cut, there's no cut to choose, but.
Speaker 3: I do want to again, you guys have a lot
Speaker 3: of incredible influence and pact that you've made, both of you,
Speaker 3: specifically on getting people rallied around these ideas across party lines.
Speaker 3: So you're living the Nature's non partisan mantra every single day.
Speaker 3: And I look up to you guys a lot, and
Speaker 3: and just the way that you've LED's.
Speaker 1: Cal's tenacious man. You are.
Speaker 7: Well, it helps when you're right, that's the good thing.
Speaker 1: In the morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, when it's when it's authentic, you fight harder, right,
Speaker 3: and and you can tell that you mean it, and
Speaker 3: you can tell you mean it, and hopefully you can
Speaker 3: tell that I mean it, And that just makes it
Speaker 3: easier because you wake up every day and you actually
Speaker 3: want to do it and you're not trying to put
Speaker 3: someone in a box. Because the thing is the thing
Speaker 3: that we have against these these screw ups in politics
Speaker 3: today is that they are putting themselves in boxes that
Speaker 3: they don't even think are authentically real. And at some point,
Speaker 3: this authenticity of fighting for what we actually believe in
Speaker 3: will win because we actually have the passion and we
Speaker 3: actually care, and that will win.
Speaker 7: I keep reminding people, I'm like, we are right. And
Speaker 7: if you don't think you are, bring this, bring your
Speaker 7: viewpoint of public lands and the value of them to
Speaker 7: somebody who doesn't have that viewpoint. And you can just
Speaker 7: watch the mental gymnastics happen exactly and how they have
Speaker 7: to like try to re center themselves on their argument.
Speaker 1: They're like, well have you.
Speaker 7: It's like, yeah, yeah, we got it.
Speaker 1: But I feel like you're not feeling.
Speaker 2: That that's not an authentic view you have, right, right,
Speaker 2: They're like, well, I've never been but right, that's true.
Speaker 3: I think some of those guys we could really they
Speaker 3: look like they've never been in the outdoors before, and
Speaker 3: they look like, you know, maybe we could help them.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's something we should think about at some point.
Speaker 3: Little sun, a little little mountain, little tree, little dirt,
Speaker 3: little dirt.
Speaker 6: Not to sidetrack it, but summer.
Speaker 1: I was going to wrap up.
Speaker 2: An allergy.
Speaker 4: Summer and yellowstone. You see all these people pouring through livingstone.
Speaker 4: They look like they've never spent a day outdoor in
Speaker 4: their lives, and there's a lot of eye rolling about it.
Speaker 4: But when I see that, I actually think it's really
Speaker 4: cool that somebody who lives in Florida or or New
Speaker 4: York or wherever is like, you know what.
Speaker 6: We need to do this year? We need to go
Speaker 6: see Montana and Wyoming because you're a big hearted person.
Speaker 4: No, I mean the traffic gets old. I don't like
Speaker 4: waiting for tables at restaurants, but like it's I don't.
Speaker 7: Want to peel the curtain back too much. But Randall
Speaker 7: and his wife have both told me that if they
Speaker 7: ever went on a murder spree, it would it would
Speaker 7: be to target people who do illegal things in national parks.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's but that's a different argument.
Speaker 6: Again, all of my darkest secrets are coming out.
Speaker 2: No, but those are those are not contradictory, Like, yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's I think it's so cool that people
Speaker 4: are like that. The people in this country are like
Speaker 4: I have to see this.
Speaker 2: This is part of my Americans.
Speaker 4: This is part of being an adult as an American.
Speaker 4: Is like sharing this with my kids, even if they
Speaker 4: never come back like another day, or they don't hunt,
Speaker 4: or they don't fish. They're like, you know what, We're
Speaker 4: gonna load up the station wagon and go look at
Speaker 4: rocks and water.
Speaker 1: No, that's true, Phil. You should take that clip and
Speaker 1: send that to Venmo and if they'll let Randall back on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm on it.
Speaker 7: This guy come on, such a bad guy him.
Speaker 1: Let him transact, let him buy what he needs to buy,
Speaker 1: Let him buy what he needs to buy from the
Speaker 1: state sales.
Speaker 2: This episode sponsored by then.
Speaker 1: Mountain man Benji Backer. Nature is nonpartisan. Thanks man, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me.
Speaker 2: This is a lot of fun. And come back to
Speaker 2: come back.
Speaker 1: No, I'd love to have you back on.
Speaker 2: And let's get out there together at some point too.
Speaker 2: Would That's why I'd rather.
Speaker 1: Be hit us up in a year. That's kind of
Speaker 1: a year later we allowed. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: people to come back.
Speaker 2: I'll put her well, hopefully we made a lot of progress.
Speaker 2: I'll put it on my calendar one year.
Speaker 1: One year unless things change a whole bunch and that's
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you win all the environmental battles,
Speaker 1: then come back on.
Speaker 2: Is that that's the incentive right there?
Speaker 1: All right, you do an update, we won them all.
Speaker 2: I'll see in a year that's no way, that's happening.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks man, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: H M.