Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't
Speaker 1: predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you
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Speaker 1: first light dot com. F I R S T l
Speaker 1: I t E dot com. Joined today by Scott Fitzwilliams.
Speaker 1: Scott is here for very important sorry, a very important
Speaker 1: that port and a very important discussion about our public lands,
Speaker 1: our US National Forest System. Scott got on our radar,
Speaker 1: Yes it was well. Here, I'll tell you the exact date.
Speaker 1: Scott got at our radar in late February twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five when in our community, in our circle, there was
Speaker 1: circulated a headline White River Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams resigns
Speaker 1: amid slashing of agency workforce. Then the follow up sentence.
Speaker 1: Fitzwilliams guided the two point three million acre forests for
Speaker 1: fifteen years, helping manage soaring visitation and an annual one
Speaker 1: point six billion dollar impact in Colorado. The most trafficked
Speaker 1: forest in the country. Spanning two point three million acres,
Speaker 1: the White River National Forest has eleven major ski areas,
Speaker 1: eight wilderness areas, four reservoirs. Regularly hosts more than seventeen
Speaker 1: million visitors a year. The forest supports more than twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand jobs with forest dependent workers in its communities,
Speaker 1: including Aspen, Breckenridge, Carbondale, Eagle, Glenwood Springs, Meeker, Rifle, and Veil,
Speaker 1: earning nine hundred and sixty million years. According to the
Speaker 1: Forest Service economic analysis of its top one hundred and
Speaker 1: eleven properties, the term I'm not hip on but properties.
Speaker 1: The Forest's annual impact of one point six billion dollars
Speaker 1: of financial activity in its communities ranks as the highest
Speaker 1: in the agency. And the gentleman we have here joining
Speaker 1: us today was prompted to leave that post at the
Speaker 1: age of sixty based on some of the things that
Speaker 1: are going on right now with attack on federal land
Speaker 1: management agencies. So we're going to talk about that story.
Speaker 1: But first, welcome Scott.
Speaker 2: Good to be here. Uh.
Speaker 1: First, cal wanted to say something.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, you know, it's customary on this this here
Speaker 3: podcast and we talk about other things and rarely do
Speaker 3: we even introduce our guests or acknowledge their existence during
Speaker 3: that time, so ahead of schedule on that, But on
Speaker 3: the other things topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Newsy part, the people write in like, hey,
Speaker 1: when you do the Newsy thing up front, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, that's a great name for this,
Speaker 1: the Newsy part. Yeah, No, they're I'm not afraid to
Speaker 1: write with that. This this, this is what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: matters a lot to me because this is like a
Speaker 1: in many states, this is a thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of hunters and anglers rely on. And I'll I'll leave
Speaker 1: off a version of it, not leave off, but I'll
Speaker 1: mention too, a version of it is in some states
Speaker 1: all water trappers. Yeah, Like it's how they conduct their
Speaker 1: It's how they conduct their business.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is I mean there's a version of this that
Speaker 3: is that is like class warfare almost right. So, I
Speaker 3: mean this is one of the most accessible ways to
Speaker 3: get out and recreate for the vast majority of US.
Speaker 3: North Carolina Senate Bill two twenty, I think it got
Speaker 3: heard yesterday. But there's always you always have a dog
Speaker 3: in the fight. So North Carolina Senate Bill to twenty,
Speaker 3: Section four, specifically if it were to pass, it would
Speaker 3: become illegal to launch a vessel and this is primarily kayaks, canoes,
Speaker 3: small vessels off of the public road right of ways,
Speaker 3: meaning that certainly in a lot of states, your your
Speaker 3: public roads have an easemnt. It's like shoulder to shoulder
Speaker 3: where you can park, and if public ground abuts that shoulder,
Speaker 3: it's it's legal access to that public ground or in
Speaker 3: this case, public water. So you would you would be
Speaker 3: charged with I think a class four misdemeanor in the
Speaker 3: state of North Carolina if this were where to go through.
Speaker 3: As Steve pointed out, if you are a trapper, this
Speaker 3: is very important, but if you're even a large water angler,
Speaker 3: this would eliminate a lot of access to water, and
Speaker 3: it would in a lot of places become prohibitive to
Speaker 3: go go fishing unless you have access to a larger,
Speaker 3: larger boat.
Speaker 1: So let's be frank, it's a it's a war on
Speaker 1: high schoolers and college kids. How else they supposed to
Speaker 1: get in the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, So all those.
Speaker 1: Beage access in this area. You go like cruising out
Speaker 1: north of town, west of town, north northwest of town,
Speaker 1: every bridge absolutely in the summer, you can't go to
Speaker 1: any bridge without some college kid climbing in the water,
Speaker 1: and I well, I mean, I know it's a different state,
Speaker 1: but this is like a fight that gets fought. This
Speaker 1: is a fight that gets fought like access, stream access.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's, uh, the same plot. Now what
Speaker 1: am I trying to say here? I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: an analogy the same issue. It just gets fought in
Speaker 1: like little different micro waves.
Speaker 4: So this isn't just stream access. This could be a
Speaker 4: lake upon like.
Speaker 1: Any yeah, yeah, but I mean like it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know the particulars here, but it's usually coming like this.
Speaker 1: It's it's people have there's some dude in Neon's riverfront
Speaker 1: property or he owns lakefront property, and there's nothing that
Speaker 1: burns his ass more than looking out the window and
Speaker 1: here comes some dirt bag floating by yep, cash and fish,
Speaker 1: and he's like, how in the world could it be?
Speaker 1: How could it possibly be that I own this? In
Speaker 1: some cases, I own both sides, and I got to
Speaker 1: wake up to some dirt bag fishing yep, I mean
Speaker 1: like fish how And then they get on the phone
Speaker 1: and whatever.
Speaker 4: Every other day there's like a video that shows up
Speaker 4: some landowners screaming at someone for being in the water
Speaker 4: that they're legally able to be in, you know.
Speaker 1: Every day. Yeah, so it's always that. It's like this
Speaker 1: is like a public they're putting it as a public
Speaker 1: safety issue. It's not. This is someone talking about there,
Speaker 1: they're they're talking about something that's not what they're talking about.
Speaker 4: Does the person that proposed this bill own some some land,
Speaker 4: some waterfront land.
Speaker 1: Someone someone has his ear.
Speaker 3: Whoever introduced this bill may be friendly with some of
Speaker 3: those folks.
Speaker 1: You can picture the phone call. He's like, they're all
Speaker 1: in the I can't figure it out. When I bought
Speaker 1: this place, I thought, but there's all these kids floating by,
Speaker 1: they're parked up and down the road. Hell, someone's going
Speaker 1: to get hit.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So this is in fact, yes.
Speaker 1: Someone's gonna get hit. That's the problem.
Speaker 3: You know, this is such an established form of access
Speaker 3: in use in in North Carolina. There's guide books and
Speaker 3: maps of where it is, you know, good places to launch,
Speaker 3: safe places to park, et cetera. So this is not
Speaker 3: like a brand new thing. All of a sudden, people
Speaker 3: started showing up to you know, that dirt baggy spot
Speaker 3: that I have to drive past in order to get
Speaker 3: to my pay to play boat launch for my big boat.
Speaker 2: And that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's exactly what it is. So people need
Speaker 3: to be aware. This North Carolina Senate Bill two twenty,
Speaker 3: specifically section four, would turn you in to a misdemeanor.
Speaker 4: Does this thing contrast with like an existing access law
Speaker 4: in North Carolina, like a high water mark? Yeah, public
Speaker 4: domain kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, oddly enough, it wouldn't touch the
Speaker 3: water access in the state of North Carolina, their water
Speaker 3: access law, but it would just say as long as
Speaker 3: you try to do it from here to here, it's
Speaker 3: illegal now and you're you're going to get a misdemeanor.
Speaker 3: One of the folks who wrote in on this sums
Speaker 3: it up pretty well, says North Carolina has had a
Speaker 3: long history of excellent water access and has a constitutional
Speaker 3: right to use traditional methods to hunt fish and trap game.
Speaker 3: This bill seems to be in violation of that. So amen, yep,
Speaker 3: that's one of the good ones.
Speaker 1: It's a war on college kids.
Speaker 3: It is for fishing.
Speaker 1: You know. I was like, I try not to do this,
Speaker 1: but now and then I'll catch myself just like looking
Speaker 1: through like stuff on social media, you know, like never
Speaker 1: leaves me where I want to be mentally, No, But
Speaker 1: this guy's got a video. It's so funny. It's like,
Speaker 1: there's this dude fishing. He's like, you tell, he's in
Speaker 1: a kayak or something and he's got he's got one
Speaker 1: of those like fishing go pro. So it's not aiming.
Speaker 1: It's aiming at him fishing, but it's not aiming at
Speaker 1: what's going what's going on around him. But you can
Speaker 1: see that he's like at a bridge and he says,
Speaker 1: he goes, hey buddy, you tell he's like addressing someone.
Speaker 1: Hey buddy, I'm not trying to come after you on this,
Speaker 1: but just like, let me give you a little life advice.
Speaker 1: If someone's fishing a hole, you don't want to come
Speaker 1: in and start fishing it. And often the distance your.
Speaker 2: Like a little kid.
Speaker 1: So that uh, oh, well, you know what. I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna do this. But now since we're on legislation.
Speaker 5: No wonder they're worrying against those college kids. Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: rude bastards. No, this was a little kid's voice.
Speaker 1: Uh. One more piece of legislation. Peace years ago. I
Speaker 1: can't remember what the hell year it was California made,
Speaker 1: in my view, an enormous mistake when they banned mountain
Speaker 1: lion hunting. They banned lion hunting with dogs, they banned
Speaker 1: mountain lion hunting. Now in California, thanks to this wisdom,
Speaker 1: they now Yeah, one of the one of the funniest
Speaker 1: things about the lion banning in California. I might I
Speaker 1: might be fudging my numbers a little bit, but they're
Speaker 1: basically this. It was like hunters used to kill about
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty mountain lions a year in California.
Speaker 1: Take a wild stab at about how many mountain lions
Speaker 1: get killed every year now by animal damage control specialists
Speaker 1: more a. Yeah, it was like they were like, okay,
Speaker 1: dudes by licenses and they hunt lions. That's get rid
Speaker 1: of that. And then we'll start paying people to kill
Speaker 1: those lines and put them in the dumpster.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's created where there's a problem now where And
Speaker 1: like I don't want to necessarily call it, I want
Speaker 1: to choose my words carefully. It has been observed in
Speaker 1: California that that man, I hate to say this because
Speaker 1: I don't want to like feed into I don't want
Speaker 1: to you know, I don't want to do that thing
Speaker 1: where you're trying to get people to agree with you,
Speaker 1: and so you create like a false narrative. It has
Speaker 1: been observed by some people who are like pretty good
Speaker 1: on mountain lions and and pretty good on human wildlife interactions.
Speaker 1: It has been observed that in the decades since then,
Speaker 1: there has been less pressure on lions to avoid the
Speaker 1: kind of human lion interface. Really good biologists, really good
Speaker 1: line experts, dudes that we know, uh Bart George, No,
Speaker 1: Bruce Bart, Yeah, Bruce's hunt these bruces in Idahoa, Washington State.
Speaker 1: Bruces in Washington State. Yeah, Okay, whole career and chase
Speaker 1: the moulines. And he has observed that over the years
Speaker 1: in these states where they've put like heavy restrictions or
Speaker 1: band lion hunting, you see an increase in human lion
Speaker 1: conflicts because they just don't the lions just don't have
Speaker 1: a perception of like trouble. They don't associate humans with trouble.
Speaker 1: We've had on a researcher Bart George is even working
Speaker 1: on a project where they'll go out and they'll get
Speaker 1: a they'll get a collar on a mountain lion that's
Speaker 1: causing trouble like killing pets, killing livestock, whatever. They'll get
Speaker 1: a collar on it and they'll see, can we train
Speaker 1: this lion to avoid people by Because it's wearing a collar,
Speaker 1: we know right where it is. So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and play the sound of human voices. When he was
Speaker 1: doing this project, he would use this podcast. He would
Speaker 1: play this podcast to the lions and monitor how close
Speaker 1: can I get to the lion before the lion will move,
Speaker 1: And at times he would get fifteen feet thirty feet
Speaker 1: from the lion playing human voices before the lion moves.
Speaker 1: Then they put dogs on it and treat the lion
Speaker 1: and mess with it. That's not the word he uses,
Speaker 1: but they mess with it. They hair assed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we did a whole episode on it, Living with lions.
Speaker 1: Living with lions. They worry it, that's what they say.
Speaker 1: In Europe. They would worry the lion with dogs. And
Speaker 1: then you let some time go by, and then you
Speaker 1: come and play human voices to the lion, and the
Speaker 1: lion like, ah shit, these guys comes again. These people
Speaker 1: are trouble and he wants to leave.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Bart had found some positive reinforcement that some level of
Speaker 1: human pressure some level of inconvenience around humans, and the
Speaker 1: use of dogs pushes lions away and makes them kind
Speaker 1: of like less inclined to come to you human voices.
Speaker 1: We had on some guys on the show. We had
Speaker 1: Wyatt Brooks on the show, and Wyatt Brooks was hunting
Speaker 1: shed hunting hunting shed Antler's with his brother Taylor, and
Speaker 1: his brother Taylor was killed by a mountain lion in
Speaker 1: el Dorado County, California, and those guys came on the show.
Speaker 1: Or sorry, Taylor who's passed away obviously did not, but
Speaker 1: Wyatt came on the show to talk about Taylor's death.
Speaker 1: In response to this, Senator Marie Alvarado Gill has introduced
Speaker 1: a bill SB eighteen, which she views would enhance public
Speaker 1: safety and reduced loss of livestock by establishing a five
Speaker 1: year pilot program in Eldorado County, during which permitted houndsman
Speaker 1: with trained hounds may Hayes' problem mountain lions away from
Speaker 1: areas where they posed a threat to public safety, livestock
Speaker 1: or pets. I like that's great, I applauded. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to trivialize it.
Speaker 2: I just.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a step in the right direction, I
Speaker 1: would be so much happier. And I don't I know
Speaker 1: it would take like an act of God, meaning an
Speaker 1: act of Congress to undo the mountain lion hunting band,
Speaker 1: but I think that that's what needs to happen in California.
Speaker 4: The thing is that that I find with that might
Speaker 4: happen with this is the anti hunting folks, the animal
Speaker 4: rights activists would probably look at this as a negative,
Speaker 4: like it's bad to go hace those lions, and they
Speaker 4: should be looking at it, you know, like, don't go
Speaker 4: bother those lions, just don't harass them with dogs, and
Speaker 4: they should be all for it because it's probably gonna
Speaker 4: save some lions lives.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, my view on it and reluctance to dig
Speaker 1: into it too much, not reluctant to dig into but
Speaker 1: like choosing my words carefully is I like, I don't
Speaker 1: think of mountain lions like as a negative, right, But
Speaker 1: if I saw a mountainlin and I'd be like cool.
Speaker 1: When we have bears coming in, I like encourage my
Speaker 1: neighbors to not tattletale on them because I'm like, if
Speaker 1: you tattletale on that bear, it's dead. They're not going
Speaker 1: to spend a bunch of money and have some guys
Speaker 1: spend two days moving that bear two hundred miles away
Speaker 1: so we can walk back here.
Speaker 3: I believe I told your wife one time. I'm like, Katie, Uh,
Speaker 3: you didn't pull the trigger, but you loaded the gun.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I'm always like, can't don't tattletale on bears, because if, like,
Speaker 1: if one person tattletales, they kind of like, we'll keep
Speaker 1: an eye on it. When ten people tattletale a bears
Speaker 1: dead bear.
Speaker 4: When I lived in Eagle, Colorado, we're part of you know,
Speaker 4: near the White River National Forest. Occasionally we would get
Speaker 4: reverse nine one one calls saying there's.
Speaker 1: A mountain lion in your neighborhood.
Speaker 4: No way, and usually in like late winter, and so
Speaker 4: like you know that lion's on the hit list, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in my choose my words carefully, thing is
Speaker 1: I look at it like I like, like I look
Speaker 1: at it as a regulated mountain lion hunting under quota
Speaker 1: systems and bag limits and seasons is in no way
Speaker 1: detrimental to having a healthy population of lions.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it was wrong. It was ill advised to
Speaker 1: ban lion hunting, and I look at this as a
Speaker 1: positive because it's like a step in the right direction hopefully,
Speaker 1: But I just can't act like I'm glad about it
Speaker 1: because I'm super scared allions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Steve's trying not to like use the the
Speaker 3: fear argument. There's I don't know if there's there's been
Speaker 3: a study that like definitively proves hunting reduces wildlife conflict.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, it's like, well, areas that
Speaker 3: don't have black bears don't have black bear conflict, that
Speaker 3: don't have lands, don't have land conflict.
Speaker 4: I was doing some research for project Steve and I
Speaker 4: are working on, and it was regarding the black bear
Speaker 4: situation in New Jersey when what was his name, Bill Murphy?
Speaker 4: Murphy Murphy outlawed essentially, like first it was he outlauded
Speaker 4: on state and then he let the management plan expire,
Speaker 4: so bear hunting became completely illegal in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: For com and then they called it be a miakopa.
Speaker 4: Yeah he got he listened to people who were real
Speaker 4: pissed off.
Speaker 2: Is that what you mean?
Speaker 1: No, he said, I was wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But anyway, they did a study during that time
Speaker 4: frame of human bear conflicts.
Speaker 2: And and you.
Speaker 4: Said, there's no like study that's been done on increased conflict.
Speaker 4: But it was something like two and thirty seven percent
Speaker 4: increase and bears killing pets, bears breaking in the cars,
Speaker 4: you know, all the thing. So it was like the
Speaker 4: outlawed hunting and that stuff shot through the roof.
Speaker 2: So you know what you will.
Speaker 1: But yeah, sure anybody could set up their own little experiment,
Speaker 1: have a garden, and then have a bunch of rabbits
Speaker 1: eat in the garden, and then do a couple of
Speaker 1: high profile killings of some of those rabbits, and you
Speaker 1: will see the other rabbits are like, jeez, I'm going
Speaker 1: to the middle of the night now, not doing that
Speaker 1: in the morning anymore.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just it's all right, Scott. Tell me about your career, man,
Speaker 1: how'd you wind up? Like, how'd you wind up there?
Speaker 1: How'd you wind up as the White River Forest Supervisor?
Speaker 1: What was your path?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a long path, you know. I grew up
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin and uh ended up in Colorado for graduate
Speaker 2: school and tripped into an internship with a place called
Speaker 2: the fore Service. I knew nothing about I knew. The
Speaker 2: difference was you couldn't hunt in parks and you could
Speaker 2: hunt on the forest. That's what I knew the difference.
Speaker 2: And so, uh started my career and bounced all over
Speaker 2: the country. I think I worked in seven states. I
Speaker 2: was in Cody, Wyoming, Jackson, Wyoming, Dickinson, North Dakota. I
Speaker 2: was on the National Grasslands out there. And then I
Speaker 2: went to Sitka, Alaska for five.
Speaker 1: Years really yeah, for the Forest Service, and that was
Speaker 1: on Tongos, Yeah, working on tongas on the Tongus.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was Jim Bachell's boss. Really, you know you
Speaker 2: guys had man, Yeah, yeah, And uh, then I went
Speaker 2: to Oregon for a few years and Eugene and then
Speaker 2: ended up in back in Glenwood Springs on the White River.
Speaker 2: So I started as an intern in Colorado and ended
Speaker 2: up finishing my career.
Speaker 4: And what kind of work we were you doing like
Speaker 4: throughout those you.
Speaker 2: Know I started really my originally I started kind of
Speaker 2: the public affairs and legislative affairs world for a few years,
Speaker 2: and then uh then I became a line off district
Speaker 2: ranger and then I was a Recreation Wilderness Minerals land
Speaker 2: staff on the Tonguus. That's what I worked on that.
Speaker 2: That's why Jim worked for me. And then uh, because
Speaker 2: he's a geology's jelogist. Yeah and so and then I
Speaker 2: was I've been a line officer, you know, either a
Speaker 2: district granger, deputy for supervisor, for supervisor. So it's been great.
Speaker 2: I mean to work in so many incredible places, is
Speaker 2: you know, I'm so grateful for this career. It's been unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Can you explain for folks what is the scope of
Speaker 1: a force supervisor? And then if you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how that could get more and more
Speaker 1: complex as you enter into a forest like the White
Speaker 1: River forest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the way the agencies set up we we
Speaker 2: they give line officer or delegated authority for a chunk
Speaker 2: of land and in case of a forest, a forest
Speaker 2: depends where it is, you know, and on the Tongus
Speaker 2: it's seventeen million acres or the White Rivers two and
Speaker 2: a half, and you know in the east there smaller force.
Speaker 2: And basically you have all responsibilities for that piece of ground.
Speaker 2: I always told people it's toilets, the targets and everything
Speaker 2: in between. You you're responsible for everything, and so uh,
Speaker 2: you know, you're responsible for the money, you know, the budget,
Speaker 2: the targets, the accomplishments, the people and and but these
Speaker 2: jobs now, you know, in these line officer jobs, they're
Speaker 2: they're really evolved into you know, part of a community.
Speaker 2: You've got to be the the you know, you're the name,
Speaker 2: you know, the face of the agency in that community.
Speaker 2: And so you know, and as we collaborate and we
Speaker 2: work together, it's so you know, it can get complex
Speaker 2: because you're the one that signs the decision for that
Speaker 2: timber sale or that new trail or you know, closing
Speaker 2: that trail and and your name's on it, and so.
Speaker 3: Or you may have had like an up on the
Speaker 3: tongs Oil and gas or well the gre industry.
Speaker 2: Greene Creek Mine and the Kensington Mine opink do you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are huge mines, and so you know, and I
Speaker 2: think like we all know, I mean, everyone loves this
Speaker 2: public land and wants to see it manage a certain way,
Speaker 2: and so it gets a little harder and harder as
Speaker 2: people just you know, a certain way.
Speaker 3: My way I want it done for hunting and fishing specifically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know Gifford Pitcher who started the Force
Speaker 2: over Sea and Teddy Roosevelt back in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: and I still believe in this, and I hope as
Speaker 2: the restructuring that has taking place, this doesn't go away.
Speaker 2: They purposely set it up where it was very decentralized.
Speaker 2: We want the decision making where the communities are. We
Speaker 2: want the decision making where the you know, where it
Speaker 2: affects you know how, where it affects people. And that
Speaker 2: has been That's why I love the job. Is I
Speaker 2: rarely in all the years got told you need to
Speaker 2: do this on this project from a boss or from above.
Speaker 2: And that's the way Pincho and Roosevelt wanted it and
Speaker 2: wanted it decentralized on the ground.
Speaker 4: Disregarding what's happened in the last couple of months, Was
Speaker 4: that consistent from like that ability to be decentralized? Was
Speaker 4: that consistent from like one administration to the next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean ebbs and flows in different emphasis. That's
Speaker 2: always been the case. And but we've kind of always
Speaker 2: navigated through that and and save a few, there's always
Speaker 2: been a few things where it's been top down. Some
Speaker 2: of the I don't know how many revisions of the
Speaker 2: Tonguess Forest plant.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes that became extremely politicized, and Washington kind of ran
Speaker 2: that towards some undersecretary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in that case, it fell into like a administrations
Speaker 1: one administration would a major plan into a fact in
Speaker 1: another administration and call it into question, right, and you
Speaker 1: just probably got to roll with.
Speaker 2: That, right absolutely. And you know our laws National Force
Speaker 2: Management Act and on the on the BLM side, FLIPMA,
Speaker 2: they're set up to put a ten fifteen twenty year
Speaker 2: plans together, a force plan that's supposed to take some
Speaker 2: of that level some of that. It's like, Okay, here's
Speaker 2: how we're going to do it for the next fifteen years.
Speaker 2: And it's worked well, and I still have hopes it's
Speaker 2: going to work well, but certainly under you know what
Speaker 2: current restructuring, I'm not sure. I just hope we maintain
Speaker 2: that decentralized management and decision making because I think Pincher
Speaker 2: and Roosevelt had it right two in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 2: and I think it still applies today. It's just harder
Speaker 2: because of more people.
Speaker 1: As a forest supervisor, you got to wake up every day,
Speaker 1: someone has to be pissed at you pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you lay out a little bit and you can
Speaker 1: keep it. You can keep it true to Colorado and
Speaker 1: we can leave tongus in the rearview mirror for a minute.
Speaker 1: But can you can you explain a little bit like
Speaker 1: the push and pull? Yeah, I mean, it's got to
Speaker 1: be like you got just to give you a sense
Speaker 1: of what I'm picturing. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gotta be like a lot of fire conversation,
Speaker 1: cattle conversation, logging conversation, access kind of preservation conversations, huge
Speaker 1: conversations around wildlife, dealing with state Game agency, like like
Speaker 1: who is trying to get a hold of you, you know,
Speaker 1: throughout the year right to tell you how you ought
Speaker 1: to be doing things.
Speaker 2: All of the above, Steve, it's it ebbs and flows,
Speaker 2: a little bit, vegetation management, you know, timber harvest, fuels
Speaker 2: projects are all can always be a pinch point for people,
Speaker 2: you know people, and certainly in Montana it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's Montana in this region is one of the most
Speaker 2: litigated regions as far as fuels projects and timber sales
Speaker 2: and stuff. You know, it's it's the contrast of leave
Speaker 2: it alone, preservation first, conservation use you know, that's whatever
Speaker 2: it is it doesn't matter if it's cattle, if it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if it's you know, logging mining. People just
Speaker 2: have visions of what their national force should look like
Speaker 2: and don't want to change. It's getting harder because so
Speaker 2: many people are moving from places that they think it's
Speaker 2: a national park. Yeah, I mean we've had what are
Speaker 2: you doing cutting trees? Well, we've been doing it since
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five. I mean it's part of our mission.
Speaker 2: It's in legislation requiring us to do that. And the
Speaker 2: toughest ones these days, especially in places like Vale and
Speaker 2: Aspen and Summit County and is individual landowners with the
Speaker 2: easement or a lands issue or need something. They're tough
Speaker 2: because they're generally rich.
Speaker 1: And you mean you're.
Speaker 4: Talking like second homeowners that butt up against exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot that's that's been really challenging over
Speaker 2: the years. But it's all challenging, but it's all about, like, help.
Speaker 1: Help people understand what you're talking about. I have a
Speaker 1: sense of what you're talking about, but say people that
Speaker 1: aren't really that don't follow the politics.
Speaker 2: Of Yeah, as as more and more people move into
Speaker 2: the urban interface, you know, the forested lands, a lot
Speaker 2: of it. They have to get an easement from the
Speaker 2: for service to put a driveway in, or to put
Speaker 2: a power lion in, or to or they have a
Speaker 2: crappy survey and they ended up building part of their house,
Speaker 2: which happens all the time on National Force System lands.
Speaker 2: And then and then we say, hey, you got to
Speaker 2: move your house. Or there's this thing called the Small
Speaker 2: Tracks Act that can purchase the land if if if
Speaker 2: it was proven it was done accidentally, you know, bad
Speaker 2: survey or something. So so as more and more people
Speaker 2: coming into these areas are building these homes in the
Speaker 2: forest and up in the hills, you know, they require
Speaker 2: all these easements and right aways and permits and things
Speaker 2: like that. It's one or two people that consume a
Speaker 2: tremendous amount of time and and they just don't understand.
Speaker 1: Because they're lawyered up, totally lawyered up.
Speaker 2: Ah and and they you know, and they know people, Well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call so and so so that that's how
Speaker 2: that that bugs me because it's not a you know,
Speaker 2: collective society wide discussion of how we should manage a
Speaker 2: landscape or forest. It's just one dude with a house.
Speaker 2: And yet my staff is spending you know, three days
Speaker 2: a week working on that you know project, So got it.
Speaker 4: How was it dealing with the big ski industry corporations
Speaker 4: because like you're, you're you're in a posi, you are
Speaker 4: in a position where a lot of national forest managers
Speaker 4: aren't you know, dealing with so much of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's they're big companies and and and but most
Speaker 2: of the ski areas have been permitted. I think it
Speaker 2: would have been harder when they were permitting new ski ariers.
Speaker 2: You know. Now it was more about can they do
Speaker 2: this expansion, can they replace this lift or build this
Speaker 2: new restaurant. It's still tough. I mean those numbers you
Speaker 2: talked about at the beginning, the twenty two thousand employees,
Speaker 2: and you know, one point six billion dollar contribution to GDP.
Speaker 2: Most of it's from that industry. I mean they employ
Speaker 2: a lot of people and pour a lot of money.
Speaker 2: But it's challenging because you look around the West and
Speaker 2: where we have these resort communities, it's completely changed. I mean,
Speaker 2: nobody could afford to live there. You know, it's crowded,
Speaker 2: it's expensive, it's you know, seventy percent of the homes
Speaker 2: for example, in Summit County where Breckenridge and a Basin
Speaker 2: and Keystone are seventy percent of the homes are second
Speaker 2: home owners.
Speaker 5: Seventy seven right, Well.
Speaker 2: So no one can afford to live there, and so
Speaker 2: then you struggle with like all these mountain top I'm
Speaker 2: dealing with with affordable housing and.
Speaker 3: Those ski areas too, Like they'll tell you that they
Speaker 3: can't exist without a summer program as well. So it's
Speaker 3: not just in the winter when there's a ton of
Speaker 3: snow and the animals aren't visible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we permitted the first at on Veil Mountain, the
Speaker 2: first summer uses. The Congress passed legislation to allow them
Speaker 2: to do things like ziplines and you know, alpine coasters
Speaker 2: and things like that, and we were the first force
Speaker 2: to do that. The part about our force is the
Speaker 2: White Rivers, all the big resorts are there, and so
Speaker 2: we're always first in experimenting with whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: But you know, they're a good partner and they there.
Speaker 2: You know, I like working with innovative creative industries, and
Speaker 2: they're one. You know, they're always looking at the next
Speaker 2: best thing. And but you know, I think we have
Speaker 2: to step back and realize Okay, the impacts are real.
Speaker 2: It's only four thousand acres of permitted land that they
Speaker 2: have a you know, their permits on that.
Speaker 1: They actually all total.
Speaker 2: Well, let no, on the White River, it's only forty
Speaker 2: thousand so so of toll. I'm sorry, But say one resort,
Speaker 2: say a resort like Snow Mass, I think it's about
Speaker 2: four thousand acres under permit. Forty thousand acres of of
Speaker 2: land is under permit and skiers on the White River
Speaker 2: not out of two point three and a half million.
Speaker 2: That's not a huge amount. But the impact is way
Speaker 2: past that, you know, because it just brings people and
Speaker 2: lots of them. And so I think we've got I
Speaker 2: think that's something when in the future we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to really start to recognize as these resort towns and
Speaker 2: these you know, kind of high end tourism places, we're
Speaker 2: going to have to manage that in some way that
Speaker 2: at least realize that the effects are way beyond the
Speaker 2: resort or whatever.
Speaker 3: Oh, just the you know, all these towns like that
Speaker 3: is the industry there. It's support the ski areas over
Speaker 3: anything else. And when I used to go to meetings
Speaker 3: and the ski town that I lived in. It was
Speaker 3: just amazing, Like the the piddly stuff that the community
Speaker 3: would get involved in, like horseshit on mountain bike trails
Speaker 3: that were actually just game trails that uh people started
Speaker 3: riding mountain bikes on, and the like amount of noise
Speaker 3: pollution the mountain would put off during non ski season
Speaker 3: times of year, right that. I mean, if you got
Speaker 3: up at elevation where they were doing the work, you
Speaker 3: could hear almost conversations a lot of the times from
Speaker 3: miles away. The trash associated any same too, you know,
Speaker 3: that's you know, you goes hike the ski lift lines
Speaker 3: you know during non ski season and the amount of
Speaker 3: shit underneath the chairlifts. It's just great. And you know
Speaker 3: they do like cleanups and stuff, but I mean there's
Speaker 3: so much stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: How much does it cost for a ski area to permit,
Speaker 5: say four thousand acres? Like is it an annual thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really complicated formula that I can't explain.
Speaker 2: But it's based on the revenue you derive from activities
Speaker 2: on national force. So the lift is on national forests,
Speaker 2: restaurants on National force obviously a permit you know, the pass,
Speaker 2: so it's you know on our forest, which was by
Speaker 2: far the most. It was seventy sixty five percent of
Speaker 2: the entire nation's fees collection. We collected about twenty eight
Speaker 2: million dollars from the eleven resorts. Wow. Yeah, is a
Speaker 2: nation it like a profit shared?
Speaker 1: Does it not work as a profit share. It's like
Speaker 1: a revenue share.
Speaker 2: No, it's just like a permit. I mean, just like
Speaker 2: a grazing permit.
Speaker 1: They pay No, but you said that they pay relative revenue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's just really their relative tanks. If their visitation tanks.
Speaker 2: They'll pay us less money. Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly, there's
Speaker 2: a minimum obviously, but their businesses aren't tanking of late anyway.
Speaker 2: So nationwide we collect about thirty five million dollars off
Speaker 2: of ski areas in the country. Here's the little catch
Speaker 2: is not one penny of that comes back to the
Speaker 2: to the forest that it was. It is the only
Speaker 2: thing we permit that no money comes back to the
Speaker 2: local forest. And uh hmm. There's been a act in
Speaker 2: Congress called the Shred Act that has that has uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I forget how what an X ski area, but anyway.
Speaker 1: That was whatever it stood for, it was an afterthought.
Speaker 2: Absolutely they figure out, but it would it would return
Speaker 2: a good portion of the money back to where it
Speaker 2: came from, which I've been advocating for because they there's
Speaker 2: a lot of work not just associated with the resorts
Speaker 2: but all the people that come with it.
Speaker 1: Well, how the hell did that get pulled out of
Speaker 1: How did that get pulled out of the general system?
Speaker 1: If you do like like timber harvest cattle leases, you
Speaker 1: get some of the revenue. But how did skiing sit
Speaker 1: in a different landscape when back.
Speaker 2: In the nineties when it used to be outfittering god
Speaker 2: fees used to go to the US Treasury. Okay, campgoground
Speaker 2: fees went to the US Treasury.
Speaker 1: It all went to So there was example, then there.
Speaker 2: Was what was called the feed Demo program where we
Speaker 2: got to keep all those fees. Now we get to
Speaker 2: keep all the outfitter fees and all the campground fees
Speaker 2: and all everything. And then they looked at skiers and
Speaker 2: they specifically looked at the White River Forest and said,
Speaker 2: we're not given that one forest twenty eight million dollars.
Speaker 2: So that's basically how it got got it. It's just
Speaker 2: too much jingle, too much jingle in one place, and
Speaker 2: so now there's a way they can spread it out.
Speaker 2: But now because of the budget. It there's a term
Speaker 2: in the in Congress, the Legislative Congress and the budget bills,
Speaker 2: is called scoring. And it's like golf. And I know
Speaker 2: how much you like golf too, Steve, you don't want
Speaker 2: to score. It's the Office of Management Budget gives a
Speaker 2: piece of legislation a score, and it's a financial score,
Speaker 2: and the more you score, the less chances has So
Speaker 2: in that case, I'm sorry, I'm not following. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's a it's a budget's score and they would look
Speaker 2: at it and say, okay, that's forty five million dollars
Speaker 2: that's normally going to the US treasury the ten years
Speaker 2: scores four hundred and fifty million dollars. You don't want
Speaker 2: to score four hundred and fifty million dollars because they say,
Speaker 2: you got to find that money somewhere else, because we're
Speaker 2: not going to, you know, lose that four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars over ten years to their treasury. So
Speaker 2: it's the problem is it scores. OMB gives it a
Speaker 2: score of four hundred and fifty million for a ten year,
Speaker 2: so we haven't it hasn't been passed bipartisan bill that
Speaker 2: has significant support on both sides of the aisle. But
Speaker 2: just what it is right now, it's a bummer because
Speaker 2: it's the only only fee we collect.
Speaker 1: When you run a forest. How do they present to
Speaker 1: you or or do they present to you some version
Speaker 1: of a P and L like like what are the
Speaker 1: expectations of a forest?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're each forest is allocated a budget. Now they've
Speaker 2: changed a few things and centritized more and more of
Speaker 2: the budget. But for most of my career, and you'd
Speaker 2: wrestle for you know, make your point and say you
Speaker 2: get this much money, and you're going to get this
Speaker 2: much in recreation, this much in timber, this much and grazing,
Speaker 2: and with that money, we expect you to achieve these
Speaker 2: targets I'm gonna give you, you know, the regional office
Speaker 2: will give me x amount and timber. We want you
Speaker 2: to produce twenty five thousand cubic feet of timber or a
Speaker 2: million board feed or whatever. It is same with grazing.
Speaker 2: If you get this much grazing, you got to, you know,
Speaker 2: administer this many grazing permits. And recreation is a little
Speaker 2: more obtuse but miles of trail. We used to get
Speaker 2: trail maintenance dollars and you get a certain amount of trails,
Speaker 2: we expect you to clear this many miles of trails.
Speaker 2: And then, I mean throughout my career, I mean it
Speaker 2: was a you didn't spend overspend that. If you did,
Speaker 2: you better had another buddy that could cover you another
Speaker 2: forest that because budgets are spun up at the regional level.
Speaker 2: So the accountability was there, we weren't. You know, it's
Speaker 2: called the Anti Deficiency Act. If an agency spends more
Speaker 2: that it's appropriated, and I've never seen it happen because
Speaker 2: it's a big no, no god.
Speaker 1: It is there ever, an expectation articulated to for a
Speaker 1: supervisor about how much economic activity your force should facilitate,
Speaker 1: Like is that part of your mandate or is that
Speaker 1: just something that happens out of it happens by chance?
Speaker 2: No, Uh, it's not. They don't say we want this
Speaker 2: much economic activity, but they say we're going we want
Speaker 2: you to be able to produce this much board feet
Speaker 2: of timber, or we need you you're getting this mineral's money.
Speaker 2: We need you to get that mind approved or get
Speaker 2: the eis done and same thing with recreation. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that's a it's always been a driver in the
Speaker 2: national force system. Is the economics and not not to
Speaker 2: the You know, that doesn't mean we don't get to
Speaker 2: balance it, but it's important for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like fiscal responsibility.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that doesn't mean there's not areas
Speaker 2: to improve.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, what what is an area to improve?
Speaker 3: I want to get to the areas of improvement. I'd
Speaker 3: love to get like, how, how is like the permitting
Speaker 3: for a mine work? Is it on the same because
Speaker 3: I always get wrapped up with the mining acts and
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, mines don't make us any money. But
Speaker 3: based off of how you explained the permitting for a
Speaker 3: ski area, now I'm like, okay, well, obviously the mine
Speaker 3: has to have some sort of a revenue share there
Speaker 3: as well, or percentage of revenue.
Speaker 2: Well, they the eighteenth you know, we're still operating under
Speaker 2: the eighteen seventy two mining law and it's been amended
Speaker 2: and there's been tweaks to it. But where where there's
Speaker 2: not a revenue sharing of hard rock minerals, oil and gas,
Speaker 2: you know, leasing, you know, look at what we call
Speaker 2: get leaseable minerals. It's twenty five percent. You know, everything
Speaker 2: that comes off of a federal mineral twenty five percent
Speaker 2: comes back to the government.
Speaker 3: Not mineral oil and gas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty mineral estate. I'm sorry. And what about coal?
Speaker 1: Is that under mining or is that under oil and gas?
Speaker 2: Coal's undermine, so it's under the eighteen seventy two so
Speaker 2: it's considered locatable. So coal, gold, silver, Okay, precious metals.
Speaker 2: So they have to pay a land use fee, you know,
Speaker 2: for occupying that piece of national force. But they don't pay,
Speaker 2: you know, if they they don't pay for the loot
Speaker 2: the stuff, not like they do oil and gas, and
Speaker 2: not like you do with timber. Nope. No.
Speaker 3: But if you read, like if I were to pop
Speaker 3: up the eighteen seventy two Mining Act right now, which.
Speaker 1: I got, I got my pocket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean this is I can't believe you
Speaker 3: because it is referenced all over and depending on what
Speaker 3: historical source like you read about when it was enacted,
Speaker 3: it was like, oh, this is really how it's going
Speaker 3: to be. It was kind of a joke when we
Speaker 3: wrote it, as was like the diamond clause too. So
Speaker 3: depending on what worse it was.
Speaker 1: Like, you mean it was written by the it was
Speaker 1: written by the extractor.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it was, but it was also written and
Speaker 3: I like, well, this will never go anywhere, ha ha
Speaker 3: ha type of way. But it's five dollars an acre
Speaker 3: a surface acre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that they pay a fee.
Speaker 3: Is that still the Is that still the thing?
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I don't have a lot of my eye.
Speaker 2: Haven't dealt with minds. Yeah, it's cheap, it's it's ridiculous,
Speaker 2: But the law hasn't been changed, and so hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Locatables are hard, you know, because those are just I
Speaker 2: like dealing with oil and gas leasing. It's a nice
Speaker 2: organized process. It's clear. Locatables are really complicated.
Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not a big minerals guy. Can
Speaker 1: can you help me understand? Like how is oil not
Speaker 1: a locatable? Like what the hell is locatable mean? The
Speaker 1: terminology I mean.
Speaker 2: Covered under the eighteen seventy two mining law, and so
Speaker 2: those are what we normally think of mining gold, silver leads, inc.
Speaker 2: Where you dig something on the ground. When oil and
Speaker 2: gas came into play, we evolved a little bit and said, wait,
Speaker 2: we'll lease these lands so they'll be leasable minerals, and
Speaker 2: so we just use the term locatable and leasable because
Speaker 2: two different completely processes manage those and regulatory structure.
Speaker 1: And for the forest, for the taxpayer, for the American taxpayer,
Speaker 1: they're doing the American taxpayer is doing better on a
Speaker 1: timber harvest, they're doing better on a ski lease. They're
Speaker 1: doing better on oil and gas then they're doing on
Speaker 1: mineral extraction.
Speaker 2: If you're looking dressed at what direct payments go with
Speaker 2: the treasury or to the agency, Yeah, okay, for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, Uh you brought up there things that could
Speaker 1: be done better. But I feel like we're a little
Speaker 1: bit burying the lead. So I don't I'm I don't
Speaker 1: want to. Let's let's jump ahead. I'm trying to sort
Speaker 1: all this out in my head.
Speaker 3: If I were to go back and say, here's our guest,
Speaker 3: got fits William, please let's start. We're going to talk
Speaker 3: about government waste on national forests, and we're gonna learn
Speaker 3: how national forests work and how we're pissing away all
Speaker 3: this money.
Speaker 1: That's how you'd have kicked it off.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was going to come in like that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was going to come in like Scott resigned over
Speaker 1: certain actions that are taking place coming down from Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Decisions that are being forced, things that are
Speaker 1: being stripped away from a level of local control and
Speaker 1: and local expertise. And then he said, hey, listen, man,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of ways to clean up, but this is
Speaker 1: ditching the baby with the bath water. I don't know
Speaker 1: that's nice.
Speaker 3: But let's play the Spencer New Hearts game, which one
Speaker 3: is going to get more clicks.
Speaker 1: What you approach is more appealing to you.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about, you know, people listening to the show
Speaker 2: and stuff, you know, context of what's been going on.
Speaker 2: And it's been pretty wild since the inauguration. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, first thing has happened is we all got
Speaker 2: this email that said fork in the road yep, and
Speaker 2: we all deleted it because we go to training that
Speaker 2: says when you get spam email, delete it. Because it
Speaker 2: came from a source we'd never seen before. It was bizarre. Hey,
Speaker 2: you can retire right now and get paid till October
Speaker 2: and so, but it turned out to be real. So
Speaker 2: that was what they called the deferred resignation program, which
Speaker 2: I took. Oh you did, okay, Yeah, because I was
Speaker 2: going to retire in the next year and a half. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they offered to pay me till October. I'm good,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm eligible to retire, so it wouldn't affect my retirement.
Speaker 2: And then then it was the next thing that happened
Speaker 2: was what we called the Valentine's Day massacre, where we
Speaker 2: we just got a letter and said you need to
Speaker 2: fire all these people. And that was rough. We had
Speaker 2: sixteen on our forest, but I know the forest here,
Speaker 2: the Gallot and the Custer Galloton. It was in the forties,
Speaker 2: and it was we had to give them this, We
Speaker 2: had to call them up, give them this letter that
Speaker 2: said you're fire based on your performance, which was a
Speaker 2: complete lie, a complete utter lie. Their performance was fine.
Speaker 2: Some of it just had their performance rating. So that
Speaker 2: wasn't fun. And it was. And on our forests, fifteen
Speaker 2: to sixteen were field level people. They worked what we
Speaker 2: were employee called a permanent part time. They're a permanent
Speaker 2: government employee, but they only work half the year the
Speaker 2: field season. They started about now, finish after hunting season,
Speaker 2: and then they go work in the ski resorts or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at what salary. They're like TS five. So the cost
Speaker 2: to the half of the year they're paying for us
Speaker 2: is eighteen thousand bucks, so annual salary of about forty
Speaker 2: forty two thousand dollars eighteen nineteen thousand. But they get
Speaker 2: healthcare and things like that, and most of those were
Speaker 2: paid with fee money, so it wasn't taxpayer moneys. The
Speaker 2: fees we collected at room bells and campgrounds and outfit
Speaker 2: and guides and stuff, and they clean toilets, clear trails,
Speaker 2: to fire patrol that didn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: That was out of fee money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, feed money. And I had to fire six people
Speaker 2: who were paid for by the counties. We have pretty
Speaker 2: well off counties, you know, Picking County and Eagle County
Speaker 2: and Summit County, and for years and years they've been
Speaker 2: actually giving us the Feds money because they wanted more
Speaker 2: people on the ground during the busy season. Because we
Speaker 2: just didn't have enough money to have patrols and people
Speaker 2: clear and trails and clean up human waste and all
Speaker 2: that stuff. So we had to fire people who were
Speaker 2: paid for by counties. That didn't save any money.
Speaker 4: That's what was How common is that in other Is
Speaker 4: there other forests that have similar systems.
Speaker 2: Where they're Yeah, lots of forest have. The other big
Speaker 2: fee we get is we get grants and most I
Speaker 2: don't know how much in Montana, but certainly Wyoming. You
Speaker 2: get grants from what we call the sticker fund, where
Speaker 2: you your ATV stickers and your snow mill stickers. Sure,
Speaker 2: the state gives us money to hire people to you know,
Speaker 2: have ATV crew and so we had to let people
Speaker 2: go that were paid for by the state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because your off road vehicle stamp, your OHV stamp
Speaker 3: that you can, like in Montana, you can buy it
Speaker 3: online with your hunting license, that is that specifically earmarked
Speaker 3: for trails and possibly campground.
Speaker 2: Too, Yeah, and trailheads. And I'm more familiar in Colorado.
Speaker 2: But it's a great source of money. I mean. And
Speaker 2: we had whole crews that were paid for by the state,
Speaker 2: some of which because they were in this probationary period
Speaker 2: we had to fire. Didn't make sense. That's when I
Speaker 2: started to think this, this is not a restructuring.
Speaker 1: Why did it need to come as that it was
Speaker 1: a performance issue. That's just like a legal Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: they're anticipating litigation.
Speaker 2: Right, which they ended up losing. And some of these
Speaker 2: people were judges ordered in some states, in some districts
Speaker 2: that are now back to work. I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: is efficient about. We paid them the whole time that
Speaker 2: they were fired because the judge ordered back pay, and
Speaker 2: so there's nothing effishient about that.
Speaker 4: Did you feel obligated, Oh, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: can answer this, but did you feel obligated like you
Speaker 4: had to have the official like you're fired based on
Speaker 4: performance conversation? Did you feel obligated to have another conversation
Speaker 4: with them and be like, look my hand like I can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, and I'm sure I would have gotten
Speaker 2: in trouble for it, but I just told them this
Speaker 2: is not true, and you know it's not true. So
Speaker 2: that was just hard, and that's when it really started
Speaker 2: to hit me like that. The next thing they offered
Speaker 2: was a voluntary early retirement program, So tons of people
Speaker 2: are taking retirement, so you're losing you know, we've hired
Speaker 2: all our new employees and now people like me and
Speaker 2: many of my colleagues are failing, so we're losing the
Speaker 2: you know, institutional knowledge. And then they just offered fork
Speaker 2: in the road too because they didn't get as many
Speaker 2: as they wanted, so and then we expect reduction firings.
Speaker 2: You know, you didn't take any of that. You're gone
Speaker 2: coming in the next couple of months. And so I
Speaker 2: just h I've never ran away from a challenge. Fact
Speaker 2: that I love to fight all kinds of fights. But
Speaker 2: maybe I'm just too old, and I was like, I
Speaker 2: can't be part of the dismantling of this organization. And
Speaker 2: then that's how I see it right now. It's you know,
Speaker 2: we're just there. Just doesn't seem to be a plan,
Speaker 2: like Okay, let's sit down together and figure out or
Speaker 2: give us a number, say for service we need, you
Speaker 2: need to cut twenty percent and let us figure out. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's what we don't need. It was just this random,
Speaker 2: bizarre you know, go fire these people. Okay, Yeah, that
Speaker 2: didn't make sense to me, and I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be part of that because I can't support it. I can't.
Speaker 3: But would you say your forest was like without waste,
Speaker 3: without frauds?
Speaker 2: And I tell you, in thirty five years work for
Speaker 2: the government, I've seen inefficiency, saw some waste. I didn't
Speaker 2: see fraud and abuse I can't recall like an actual
Speaker 2: fraudulent activity. I've seen contractors try to defraud the government,
Speaker 2: you know, where they we paid the contractor to do
Speaker 2: something and then they didn't do it, or fudged it,
Speaker 2: or walked out on it, or defraud it in some way.
Speaker 2: But I haven't seen like people defraud it. Does it
Speaker 2: go on? I think in the context of natural resources,
Speaker 2: the fix, the fixes I would have was hoping for,
Speaker 2: was one. And I don't know if I bettioned my
Speaker 2: colleagues in the parksers and BLM with similar we've gotten.
Speaker 2: We got really top heavy as far as too many
Speaker 2: people in Washington and regional office at the expense of
Speaker 2: what we're supposed to be doing that's on the ground,
Speaker 2: doing the groundwork. That's what the public wants. They want clear,
Speaker 2: trails clear and they want fuels reduced, and they want
Speaker 2: the Kyle's taken care of. They want garbage picked up,
Speaker 2: and we were I would have made that adjustment. And
Speaker 2: you know, the other thing I think we've really got
Speaker 2: to come to grips with, and you guys talk a
Speaker 2: lot about this stuff, is the redundancy and regulations like
Speaker 2: Endangered Species Act or you know, the Archaeological Projection Act
Speaker 2: A Section one oh six. So you know, when we
Speaker 2: do a project we have really good biologists who work
Speaker 2: on that piece of ground and then and maybe there's
Speaker 2: a chrissy barrel wolf for whatever the listed species is,
Speaker 2: and they design mitigation. You know, we're going to do
Speaker 2: this fuels project or cut the streets. But the biologist
Speaker 2: comes in. But the way the process works in Dager
Speaker 2: Species Act, then we send that biological evaluation to a
Speaker 2: biologist in an office in Montana would be in Helena,
Speaker 2: who has never seen that piece of ground ever, and
Speaker 2: then they make an evaluation of what we should be doing.
Speaker 2: So you have two agencies making redundancy. I think we've
Speaker 2: got to really step back on that. It's the people
Speaker 2: on the ground. Know we have biologists that know how
Speaker 2: to protect these species. Maybe there can be just a concurrence.
Speaker 2: But with the Fish mode Ie Service, you know, when
Speaker 2: we have archaeological protection, we have to go through what's
Speaker 2: called Section one oh six consultation. So we have an archaeologist,
Speaker 2: they find a site or some resource. Then they have
Speaker 2: to write up a big fat report, send it to
Speaker 2: the State Shipo Office, State Historic Preservation Office, and they
Speaker 2: either agree or don't agree with us. And if we
Speaker 2: don't agree, then there's a group of national archaeologists who
Speaker 2: can seems like a lot of archaeologists looking at the
Speaker 2: same piece of ground and only one of them is
Speaker 2: looking at the ground. The other people don't see that
Speaker 2: they're in an office somewhere. And I've always thought that.
Speaker 2: And when I worked in Wyoming, we had such great
Speaker 2: bare biologists and working with the state, and then we'd
Speaker 2: send our you know, biological evaguations to Cheyenne where they
Speaker 2: had never been on that piece of ground. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think we got to look at things like that, and
Speaker 2: just the redundancy in government, I think is something that
Speaker 2: I think needs to change. Governments were set up to
Speaker 2: be a little inefficient and slow, and I think that's
Speaker 2: by design to protect the public, to protect the taxpayers money.
Speaker 2: But I think there's a lot we can do, and
Speaker 2: I just don't think getting rid of the person that
Speaker 2: makes eighteen thousand dollars a year that clears trails is
Speaker 2: going to fix any of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I've looked at the when I've looked at
Speaker 1: the costs that have come to the federal land management agencies,
Speaker 1: and I'm singling them out because it's of interest to
Speaker 1: me and because I know some stuff about it. I've wondered,
Speaker 1: allowed why there wasn't a why there wasn't an approach
Speaker 1: like this, like a layout that you would get your
Speaker 1: cabinet in place, you'd get your administrators in place, and
Speaker 1: you would come to them and say, you have ninety days,
Speaker 1: you have one hundred and twenty days. It seems always
Speaker 1: works like that, right, ninety that's like the magic numbers.
Speaker 1: You have ninety days, you have one hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 1: It's like doing twelve reps and your exercise. Just the
Speaker 1: number of people, why not seven to come to me
Speaker 1: and present to me, how are you going to cut
Speaker 1: your budget by thirty percent? And then you have the
Speaker 1: professionals in these spaces propose make a proposal in your mind,
Speaker 1: like why was that not the approach to use? Look,
Speaker 1: if you had to get in the head of it,
Speaker 1: like why why not use that approach which seems like
Speaker 1: like and how like and how in business that would
Speaker 1: be a thing that would happen.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think there was just a more
Speaker 2: urgency than I've ever seen. Trying to think how many
Speaker 2: administrations I've been through. So the first change I was
Speaker 2: through was when Clinton got an office. So someone add
Speaker 2: up all those presidents since I've been working. But the
Speaker 2: urgency in this one just seemed we got to do
Speaker 2: it now. And that's why, you know, we just sent
Speaker 2: out and fired people and things like that, as opposed
Speaker 2: to you need to give me a twenty five percent cut.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't care how you do it, or you could say,
Speaker 2: you know, I still want to emphasize these things, but
Speaker 2: you got to cut twenty five percent. I don't know.
Speaker 2: That would have seemed to make more sense. And then
Speaker 2: why why let people like myself or others like there
Speaker 2: was no rhyme or reason to who we let take
Speaker 2: this early resignation program deferred resignation program some people we want,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't offered it to them. They're going to I mean,
Speaker 2: they're going to replace me. So what what good did
Speaker 2: it do to pay me to do nothing for six months?
Speaker 2: I don't understand that. I don't know. They could have
Speaker 2: just said, no, you're not eligible for this. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I you know, there's a it's it's big change, you know,
Speaker 2: I think Cali, I told you this that I don't
Speaker 2: know how beneficial it is in today's well, but the
Speaker 2: four service is about the only agency. I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe in all of them, but certainly in all the
Speaker 2: agencies we all talk about fishing, moll A, servers, Park Service, BLM.
Speaker 2: That we've our head, our chief has always been a
Speaker 2: career person. We've never had a political point and tell now, first,
Speaker 2: Tom Schultz is the new chief from my herd's a
Speaker 2: good guy. But that's the first time in our history
Speaker 2: we've ever had a non you know, career employee become chief.
Speaker 2: So it changes on the way, which is fine. I
Speaker 2: don't know how what's the difference anymore in today's world,
Speaker 2: But anyway, I don't know what's you know, the future holds.
Speaker 2: I'm worried about a couple of things, and the one
Speaker 2: is do we dismantle the agency the point where we've
Speaker 2: become ineffective, where they actually can prove you guys can't
Speaker 2: do shit. Okay, we're at it that way. I mean,
Speaker 2: based on what I'm seeing. By that time I left,
Speaker 2: we had lost twenty seven people between firings and people
Speaker 2: just saying I'm going somewhere else. Twenty some people in
Speaker 2: thirty days, fifty people in a calendar year. Who's going
Speaker 2: to be left do the work? And then when people
Speaker 2: get pissed and say, see the Force servers can't do it,
Speaker 2: maybe we ought to let the States handle that.
Speaker 3: Can I interject?
Speaker 5: It seems like that's always been a You've probably seen
Speaker 5: this col Brody to work. Some of the outfitters that
Speaker 5: we've worked with over the years, some have good relationships
Speaker 5: with the Forest Service, and I've often heard outfitters refer
Speaker 5: to you as the forest disservice, right. And then now
Speaker 5: on the Instagram when you can see sort of some
Speaker 5: people sort of the ones that are on board with
Speaker 5: what's going on now, they're like, listen, I've been cutting
Speaker 5: this trail out myself way before any Forest Service trail
Speaker 5: crew comes in here and does this. We haven't relied
Speaker 5: on them anyways, because we've been in here doing it
Speaker 5: because this is our business.
Speaker 3: Right right.
Speaker 5: That's like a common thing that's always been a theme,
Speaker 5: right where.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's also been true. I mean when I
Speaker 2: was guiding in Wyoming, I Force has never cut out
Speaker 2: the trail there were system trails. No, we don't cut
Speaker 2: out trails that are not system trails. They're just the
Speaker 2: outfitters trails when they're not supposed to be cutting them
Speaker 2: out or whatever.
Speaker 1: But one time asked about that. I was trying to
Speaker 1: see what it requires to make your own trail with
Speaker 1: a chainsaw, and I was dissuaded.
Speaker 2: Bad idea it was going to trail.
Speaker 3: One of the first meetings I went to here in
Speaker 3: Bozeman when I first moved to town, I listened to
Speaker 3: a fellow who happens to be in the conservation world.
Speaker 3: Just brate the Forest Service for not maintaining the illegally
Speaker 3: built mountain bike trails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mountain bikers over the last decade are the worst.
Speaker 2: The bastards will build a trail anywhere, and that they
Speaker 2: have this theory. It's like, well, we have three thousand miles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I've been on those mountain bikers oh yeah, absolute across.
Speaker 5: Hard working suckers man trails.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, I mean, oh yeah, I can tell you
Speaker 6: I've been up drainages. We're like, yeah, like I was
Speaker 6: here a month ago and there was no side and
Speaker 6: now there's it's not like it's a trail. There's jumps
Speaker 6: in ramps and banks and yeah, and.
Speaker 4: Sometimes in wilderness there is oh yeah.
Speaker 7: Supposed to add to my list of people I don't like,
Speaker 7: but it's a good example of some of the conflicts
Speaker 7: Today's Well, like, literally, I've had these mom mikes say
Speaker 7: to me, well we've already you know, people have already
Speaker 7: done all those trails.
Speaker 2: Well that's an unsustainable mom because sooner or later you
Speaker 2: will use them all and we'll just keep building more.
Speaker 1: And that's good. I like, I like to engage with
Speaker 1: them on the logic of it. Right, Well, you're using it,
Speaker 1: makes it that it's not good anymore, so then you
Speaker 1: need to make a new one. That would end with
Speaker 1: all things being.
Speaker 2: A mountain bike trail.
Speaker 1: So you should just sell your bike now because you're
Speaker 1: headed to the same place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, back to your question, I think there's some truth
Speaker 2: to it, and and uh I got it.
Speaker 1: I can't sit idly by. This has been the thing
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about for a long time. Well, you
Speaker 1: go ahead, then I'll go tell them the truth in it.
Speaker 2: Uh h.
Speaker 3: What for service plans are kind of co op right,
Speaker 3: Like you there's always going to be a user, even
Speaker 3: in a user pay system, right Like, if you're an outfitter,
Speaker 3: you're you're operating under a permit that you pay for.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna sit there and wait for the Forest
Speaker 3: Service to clear those trails, you gotta do, get things prepped.
Speaker 3: You're gonna You're gonna do it.
Speaker 2: And if you're on of those outfitters are using the
Speaker 2: trails that not a lot of people use. So you
Speaker 2: take your what little money you have or the staff
Speaker 2: you have, and okay, I got to send mine to
Speaker 2: the folks, you know, the places around Eagle and Aspen,
Speaker 2: because there's eight thousand people a day on those trails
Speaker 2: and only seven outfitters a week on the other ones.
Speaker 2: And so I could see they're frustration, especially when you
Speaker 2: have flowdowns and stuff. And I think we were we
Speaker 2: got I said a little bit. We we kind of
Speaker 2: lost our way a little bit too much overhead and
Speaker 2: not really focusing on what we really needed. And man
Speaker 2: if I was in charge of reforming, I would have
Speaker 2: flipped everything upside down and said we were going to
Speaker 2: fund the ground first and then fund what's left. You know,
Speaker 2: we're going to fund the overhead last.
Speaker 4: But like I've been places like where we us Turkey Hunt,
Speaker 4: you know, with your buddy in Nebraska, where they like
Speaker 4: that National Forest is like it's like a symbol, right,
Speaker 4: there's like this anti federal government sentiment and that land
Speaker 4: is just like they look at it and they just
Speaker 4: they get mad because they can't do whatever they want
Speaker 4: on it. Right, So there's an aspect of that involved too,
Speaker 4: And so I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 1: With the White Rooms.
Speaker 2: But they love the places like there's places you know,
Speaker 2: Idaho and parts of Montana in Utah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're public land like stands in the way
Speaker 1: of your ambitions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or whatever it might be. And it stands for
Speaker 2: the federal government, which we don't like.
Speaker 3: I was also I get seen as an apologist sometimes.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's like nature does not follow your
Speaker 3: your multi use plan either. So if you have budget
Speaker 3: for one thousand miles of trail clearing and you're in
Speaker 3: you know, that burned over pecker Pole zone and you
Speaker 3: have a windy summer, you can legitimately clear a thousand
Speaker 3: miles of the same trail, yeah, and never get to
Speaker 3: the other trails because it's just like and I'd like,
Speaker 3: we have a lot of trails historically, you know, where
Speaker 3: we'd leave the first couple of hundred yards down and
Speaker 3: nasty and stuff, and then we'd clear the rest of it. Right,
Speaker 3: we'd have our own kind of personal trail for the
Speaker 3: rest what I want to make and.
Speaker 1: One you'd never know was there, but man, you had
Speaker 1: to go through hell. And also, like what you're on
Speaker 1: the trail, You could.
Speaker 3: Go in there and do like a full seventy two
Speaker 3: hours of busting your ass, cutting, cutting it, cutting trail,
Speaker 3: and even make a nice little stack of firewood for
Speaker 3: yourself when you come in there later and the next
Speaker 3: weekend you go in there and you're.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, trail's gone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, trail's gone, as if nobody had ever been in here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I want to speak the thing that you
Speaker 1: alluded to. And do you remember how earlier were talking
Speaker 1: about mountain lions. Yeah, And I'm like, my end goal
Speaker 1: is to restore mountain lion hunting in places where it's
Speaker 1: been lost in the service of myself as a hunter hunters.
Speaker 1: To get to that end goal, I wind up feeling
Speaker 1: guilty if I were to play the card that mountain
Speaker 1: lions are these terrible, dangerous creatures, like the ends in
Speaker 1: that case, like the end wouldn't justify the means, right.
Speaker 1: My end goal is that I want lion hunting, but
Speaker 1: I can't get there through a disingenuous path of sowing
Speaker 1: fear of mountain lions right, which is a tempting way
Speaker 1: to go. It's effective. Yeah, the minute you tell anybody
Speaker 1: this mountains are gonna kill your kids, we don't hunt them.
Speaker 5: Predator control.
Speaker 1: It's a way to get where you want to get.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm a public lands user, I'm a public lands defender,
Speaker 1: but there's a just out of moral honesty. I think
Speaker 1: that it's a little conspiratorial. Maybe you disagree. I think
Speaker 1: it's conspiratorial to suggest that lawmakers are saying the pathway
Speaker 1: to being able to sell off all the public lands
Speaker 1: is to emasculate land management agencies to the point where
Speaker 1: they do a terrible job, at which point we'll be
Speaker 1: able to go to the public and say, look what
Speaker 1: a mess, let's sell it all right, because it's like
Speaker 1: a little it feels out there to me.
Speaker 2: Well, it also to acquire a lot of connections and
Speaker 2: a lot of people involved with the same conspiracy. So
Speaker 2: when I say I'm worried about the dismantling, I'm worried
Speaker 2: about the disman Like, what if we the basic maintenance
Speaker 2: of them, the basic stewardship of the land, being able
Speaker 2: to respond to the public. I think that's what I
Speaker 2: don't think we're there's I don't think people are smart
Speaker 2: enough to pull that off. I really don't in any
Speaker 2: part of government to even Congress to like, Okay, we've
Speaker 2: got that, because that would take time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like a fifty year plan.
Speaker 2: Right. However, I based on what I'm seeing and talking
Speaker 2: to people at the highest levels who are working with
Speaker 2: these people in Washington, there is a general disregard for
Speaker 2: maintaining the management and stewardship of public lands. It's like,
Speaker 2: they're fine, so they're also producing. Let's produce more timber
Speaker 2: and mining and stuff and partake to the cause. But
Speaker 2: the rest of that stuff, we don't have to worry
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 4: The end result of the but and the inefficiencies that
Speaker 4: would result from that could also ultimately result and let's
Speaker 4: just get rid of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that. I I think that's a long
Speaker 2: stretch that would. I hear that a lot. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we do hear it a lot.
Speaker 1: And you hear the mountain lions are going to kill
Speaker 1: all your.
Speaker 2: Kids kids exactly. Boy, don't you guys think people on
Speaker 2: both sides I would lose their mind if we really
Speaker 2: start to sell off public lands or even transfer them
Speaker 2: to the state.
Speaker 1: That has been in twenty fifteen, it sure looked like that,
Speaker 1: but your people lost their minds in twenty fifteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's been a fundamental shift, because
Speaker 1: there's been a I think it's a little harder right
Speaker 1: now to it's a little harder right now to pick
Speaker 1: and choose policy, and there's more pressure to get aligned
Speaker 1: on a wholesale across the board fashion within ideology, and
Speaker 1: it's harder to it's harder to go like, yeah, oh
Speaker 1: that's great, but this thing no way right. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like that you need to there's a temptation to
Speaker 1: endorse an entire initiative for fear of cracking the coalition.
Speaker 1: But where I say that, and I was starting, I
Speaker 1: was feeling that. But in looking at it's been interesting
Speaker 1: to look at conversations around tariffs. Now, when you get
Speaker 1: into people's money, you find there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: going like no, no, no, didn't like this, don't like this.
Speaker 1: Now what I signed up for. I didn't sign up
Speaker 1: for losing millions of dollars overnight. So there you see
Speaker 1: people that are aligned with an ideology saying like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I'm into all this, but this part not into So
Speaker 1: you're seeing that around the tariff discussion where allies or
Speaker 1: are starting to pick apart what they don't like. So
Speaker 1: we'll see cal and I messaged about this over the
Speaker 1: weekend where Senator Heinrich, who's a Democrat from New Mexico,
Speaker 1: Avid Hunter, he put forward a piece of legislation saying, hey,
Speaker 1: let's leave selling public lands, selling federal public lands out
Speaker 1: of the budget reconciliation process. It didn't pass. What I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting is our state. We have two
Speaker 1: Republican senators, Senator Danes and Senator She supported it all.
Speaker 2: That Zinki too, right, Yeah, he verbally support it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in this state, Okay, in Montana, you can't win.
Speaker 2: You could lose elections over public land.
Speaker 1: You have to you cannot win, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to be pro public land. Yeah, in this state.
Speaker 1: And they were outliers in their party, right. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this thing that Hunter did, didn't didn't paden that night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one one Democrat did not vote, and yeah she
Speaker 3: and and Danes were the only Republicans to so for it.
Speaker 1: In that case, when you say, like people, Democrats, Republicans whatever,
Speaker 1: would lose their minds. I don't know, Like I'm not
Speaker 1: like a DC insider. I don't know all the conversations
Speaker 1: that went in, but I think that it was clear
Speaker 1: that like Montanas would lose their minds. But I don't.
Speaker 1: Montana's a small state.
Speaker 3: But even so, I've been digging into like land.
Speaker 1: Use, small small population.
Speaker 3: Sorry Nevada. You know, Nevada successfully lobbied for largeer land
Speaker 3: sales on on the BLM side for affordable housing. Right
Speaker 3: so far they've sold eighteen thousand acres in the name
Speaker 3: of affordable housing, eighteen eighteen thousand acres of BLM ground
Speaker 3: since nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: I think, how affordable is the housing.
Speaker 5: Nobody else?
Speaker 1: But I laugh when I think about the affordable housing aspect.
Speaker 3: It's really there isn't any They didn't Yeah, unfortunately, I
Speaker 3: mean there's there's people on both sides of the aisle
Speaker 3: who are like, oh, yeah, we do need affordable housing.
Speaker 3: If this is the way we can do it, we
Speaker 3: can do it. But the math provided by Bloomberg Law
Speaker 3: yesterday was thirty acres out of that eighteen thousand have
Speaker 3: actually gone towards affordable housing, and thirty acres out of eighteen.
Speaker 1: Thousand tiny houses, Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Well, and that's the thing.
Speaker 2: That the food restricted houses and things like that.
Speaker 3: And you know, a huge pushback, right is you have
Speaker 3: landowners who strategically purchased on the edge of BLM being like, well,
Speaker 3: that stuff's always going to be open. So my property
Speaker 3: value is based off of access to Bureau of Land
Speaker 3: Management and the fact that, like, my view is never
Speaker 3: going to be blocked by another house or housing development. Right.
Speaker 3: So our state government, who a lot of people argue
Speaker 3: on behalf of is like, well, the states can do
Speaker 3: it better. Well, right now, the states aren't doing anything.
Speaker 2: With state trust lands.
Speaker 3: Well, they're not mandate any sort of restrictions on second
Speaker 3: or third homes, deed restricted housing. They're not doing the work,
Speaker 3: but they're asking for more land. Interesting, and this is
Speaker 3: an extremely unpopular opinion, especially for years. Yeah, who goes
Speaker 3: up to Helena and talks to these folks. They don't
Speaker 3: want to hear it. They just want more land. So
Speaker 3: I think there's a giant disconnect between the federal government
Speaker 3: and the people on the ground because the Feds are like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, easy button, sell four hundred thousand acres of
Speaker 3: BLM ground. Which is under flip my right now. Right
Speaker 3: it's already gone through the nep of process and flip my.
Speaker 3: They've been earmarked for a long time four hundred thousand
Speaker 3: acres of BLM ground. But there's also a lot of
Speaker 3: conversations around an additional five hundred thousand acres of US
Speaker 3: Forest Service ground, which hasn't been done before, and that's
Speaker 3: going to take some serious effort. Again, you have all
Speaker 3: these people who are like, oh, yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 3: public land sales on behalf of this to address affordable housing,
Speaker 3: but nobody's actually doing the work to address affordable housing.
Speaker 3: They're just saying if we give this over, people are
Speaker 3: gonna be like, oh, see, the government's doing something about this,
Speaker 3: but it's not. There's no follow through.
Speaker 2: No and living in places that you guys are familiar
Speaker 2: with where there's very little affordable housing. It's the biggest issue.
Speaker 2: I've spent more time in the last six years of
Speaker 2: my career dealing with housing and affordable housing. We actually
Speaker 2: have a program. We got the legislation passed and we're
Speaker 2: the first one in the country, the White River. I
Speaker 2: gotta stop saying we they and it was it was
Speaker 2: in the twenty sixteen farm bell. President Trump actually signed it.
Speaker 2: Where we have what's called administrative sites where we used
Speaker 2: to have a district office or a boneyard or something.
Speaker 2: We'm all over the place where we have you know,
Speaker 2: crappy housing on them. Now that this legislation allows us
Speaker 2: to lease this property to we got to give a
Speaker 2: right of first refusal to a community, a county, a
Speaker 2: local government, and in exchange for the lease, they will
Speaker 2: build us employee housing and then they get to build
Speaker 2: other all affordable housing. So we have a project in Dylan,
Speaker 2: Colorado where we have eleven acres beautiful overlooking the thing
Speaker 2: we used to have like six crappy falling apart for
Speaker 2: service houses on it's now been bulldoz. We're working with
Speaker 2: the Summit County government where they're going to lease it
Speaker 2: and they're going to bild one hundred and twenty one
Speaker 2: million dollars worth of affordable housing deed restricted you know
Speaker 2: application actual affordable housing. And instead of paying the government
Speaker 2: for the leasing the land, they're paying us in kind
Speaker 2: by building us a new you know, fire shop and
Speaker 2: giving us house and housing. That's cool program, but that's a.
Speaker 4: Lot of work that's not on the side of a
Speaker 4: mountain somewhere right Like it's like I'm assuming, yeah in.
Speaker 2: Town, Yeah, it's it's next to it a nice site.
Speaker 4: You're not going to build some big affordable housing.
Speaker 2: All over the country. We have those administrative sites that
Speaker 2: are under Utilie. I think you know. I started my career.
Speaker 2: My first permanent job was in Jackson Hall, where ninety
Speaker 2: eight percent of the county is federal land. And I
Speaker 2: don't know how the federal government can't play a role.
Speaker 2: I think we should, you know, but man, every acre
Speaker 2: is sacred there.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you when I on this issue. One
Speaker 1: of the areas where I felt like that I had
Speaker 1: a knowledge gap would be I would want to what
Speaker 1: I'm asking is I want to have the authority to say.
Speaker 1: I want to be the final say, and I'll visit
Speaker 1: every patch the ground and I'll say would this lead
Speaker 1: my My lit miss will be this, would this lead
Speaker 1: to a loss of wildlife habitat? If it's yes, then
Speaker 1: it's no. If it's no, then it's yes. The case
Speaker 1: you're bringing up where it's like it's already a developed landscape.
Speaker 1: It's in a town. It's a developed landscape, it has buildings,
Speaker 1: it's not like on the side of wildlife habitat right now,
Speaker 1: that makes that's different to me than than uh other
Speaker 1: you know that that's different to me in other cases.
Speaker 1: And when you look at the acreage, I feel like
Speaker 1: when you look at the acreage, it will have to stray,
Speaker 1: like it'll have to stray from already developed sites. Like
Speaker 1: do you feel that you're going to get there?
Speaker 2: I don't. I hope not. I mean I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think there's enough already develop sites
Speaker 1: to like fuel this ambition?
Speaker 2: No, not to fill the gap of what we you know,
Speaker 2: to meet affordable housing needs. Know you would have, but
Speaker 2: there are still some spots that again you if you
Speaker 2: were king, you get to look at and decide it
Speaker 2: where it's just I don't know, survey from one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago, where it's like it's kind of it's it's
Speaker 2: not developed, there's nothing on it, but it's there's a
Speaker 2: little spot right by Eastvale or.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not like valuable wildlife habitat range.
Speaker 2: Technically, but it's also surrounded by a hotel and so
Speaker 2: like forty acres, we should build housing on that, but
Speaker 2: it's not designated to administrative sites. So but I'm with
Speaker 2: you one hundred percent. I don't think we can you
Speaker 2: start to crawl up the mountain and the other thing.
Speaker 2: It should be for some public good, not let's just
Speaker 2: sell it off so a rich person could buy it
Speaker 2: and build a second home. Yeah, like this whole issue
Speaker 2: of affordable housing indeed restrict to housing, I can get
Speaker 2: on board some of that.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that there's a way that you would
Speaker 1: take this affordable housing issue? That's that's forward right now,
Speaker 1: unless say we have a way that we there's a
Speaker 1: checks and there's a system to measure, like is this
Speaker 1: achieving the goal? If the public is behind affordable housing?
Speaker 1: Is this creating affordable housing? And that seems like to
Speaker 1: me like a thing that you could either that you
Speaker 1: could that you could put numbers around and understand if
Speaker 1: this is true in execution or not, Like define affordable
Speaker 1: housing and then something will monitor to make sure that
Speaker 1: this is being effective and creating affordable housing. Is there
Speaker 1: a way to get there with land swaps where if
Speaker 1: we're talking if we define like these are like marginal pieces,
Speaker 1: isolated pieces, marginal pieces of wildlife habitat that are close
Speaker 1: to urban centers or suburban centers, we're going to open
Speaker 1: these up. Is there a way to pull this off
Speaker 1: where there's not a net loss in public acreage? Can
Speaker 1: we get better stuff.
Speaker 2: And say you can get a gain an actual acre
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, that's kind of been the
Speaker 2: trend because the place closer to the resort, if you will,
Speaker 2: or closer town, is gonna be worth more than some
Speaker 2: stream side up the hill, some in holding up the hill.
Speaker 2: So I think that's a great way to do it.
Speaker 2: The problem is if I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 2: if the states could do it, I guess the counties
Speaker 2: would have to zone that to say this has to
Speaker 2: be affordable housing. We're not helping the situation if we're
Speaker 2: just making more second homes. That's what's wrecking all these communities.
Speaker 2: It's and I don't.
Speaker 3: Well, look at Park City, Jackson, Holly Bozeman, Like the
Speaker 3: neighborhood I live in just just filled up magically with
Speaker 3: the the the heavy snow gone, including my next door
Speaker 3: neighbor who's sidewalk I've been maintaining in their absence. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a shitload of housing there that nobody is living
Speaker 3: in until the weather gets nice.
Speaker 2: Or the VRBO or whatever.
Speaker 3: If you look at the newspaper here in town, it's
Speaker 3: been every week there's been a oh that affordable housing thing.
Speaker 3: Nobody liked that in the gallat and Valley.
Speaker 2: We need to just build it somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, exactly, and ketch mydaho. There's a great project
Speaker 3: for housing for for forest service.
Speaker 2: It's the same leasing program, man, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Same leasing program. The town doesn't like it. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be put too many people who go to the bars,
Speaker 3: was one of the quotes in one spot.
Speaker 1: The bar owners like, sweet, the other.
Speaker 5: Built this town makes his town great. Let's not have
Speaker 5: them here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other affordable housing project that they did squeak
Speaker 3: through in zoning to get one more level on an
Speaker 3: existing property downtown, right, that all turned into vrbos. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's no no affordable housing there. And so you cannot
Speaker 3: tell me like it'd be like you parents should chime
Speaker 3: in on this, your kids like, I can't live in
Speaker 3: my room anymore. You're like, well, why is that? Well,
Speaker 3: I got too much shit everywhere.
Speaker 4: It sounds familiar.
Speaker 3: I need another room do you go to?
Speaker 1: Which I say, well, why don't you clean up your room?
Speaker 3: Right? And that's the situation that we're in over and
Speaker 3: over and over again. I mean examples everywhere. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: we don't want to block people's site lines by letting
Speaker 3: somebody build a four story building in town, so we
Speaker 3: would like to build up on that hillside or in
Speaker 3: that migration area or in winter range because we can't
Speaker 3: affect anybody who's lived here for thirty years. Park City, Utah. Right,
Speaker 3: that is a fully a tinerant workforce. And all of
Speaker 3: those houses like you go through, like I haven't been
Speaker 3: there in years, but it's all like old mining house,
Speaker 3: single story, little tiny homes that are overwhelmingly like VRBO
Speaker 3: vacation rental properties. Right, It's like we can't ignore that
Speaker 3: problem and expect this new acreage.
Speaker 2: Right, If you're going to do we should that should
Speaker 2: going to the public land should be towards the end
Speaker 2: of the resort, more of the last resort. But if
Speaker 2: you're going to do that, while you don't control short
Speaker 2: term rentals, you don't control the number of second homeowners. Again,
Speaker 2: it's not going to be sustainable because we're going to
Speaker 2: be in the same place because there'll be more people.
Speaker 2: They're going to take by this land and use it
Speaker 2: for second homeowners got address the affordable housing. It looks
Speaker 2: like Bozman's building a lot of apartments. Are those deed restricted?
Speaker 2: Any of them?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. It was just the last couple that
Speaker 3: have been in the paper have been in the downtown core,
Speaker 3: Like there's a conversion of a Senior citizen center that
Speaker 3: would allow a lot more people to live downtown. People
Speaker 3: are up in arms over that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't understand getting up arms over that. Man.
Speaker 3: It's just like, what the hell.
Speaker 1: It's a great place to put people, right.
Speaker 3: We just don't listen. We're all here because we love
Speaker 3: the out out of doors, but we'd rather construct more
Speaker 3: stuff on the out of doors if it affects my
Speaker 3: parking downtown.
Speaker 1: We're getting terribly local.
Speaker 5: Now, you did you brought up land swaps?
Speaker 3: Did you.
Speaker 5: Administrate much of that, because that's a big thing that
Speaker 5: you know, we talked about, especially now with corner crossing,
Speaker 5: you know, back up in the news where it sure
Speaker 5: seems like you could like just quickly make a bunch
Speaker 5: of these quick moves and consolidate the private people's spots
Speaker 5: and then you know, not have the private in holdings
Speaker 5: on the forest, the LM and everybody would be better off.
Speaker 5: How how come that's not easier to pull off?
Speaker 2: You said quickly, And I was thinking, there's a sixty
Speaker 2: for we have a sixty four step process for land exchanges.
Speaker 2: The land deals are hard. You got to praise everyone,
Speaker 2: and you know you gotta so that just you know,
Speaker 2: title work, that just takes time. And when you're using
Speaker 2: you know, checkerboarded land or trying to consolidate. I think
Speaker 2: you're right on. I think we need to do more
Speaker 2: of it. It's getting a little harder. People aren't getting
Speaker 2: punkier about it. Used to be like, oh, you give
Speaker 2: this little part up in town to someone and then
Speaker 2: you get all this acreage or close the town and
Speaker 2: everyone loves it. But now, just like we've been talking
Speaker 2: about the whole, every every piece seems to matter. You
Speaker 2: can't give that piece up.
Speaker 3: Now we try finding like an apples to apples comparison.
Speaker 2: And then they're comparables and the values are changing so
Speaker 2: fast and so there it's getting harder. But I think
Speaker 2: where Congress can help us do legislative, legislatively mandated ones
Speaker 2: where you don't have to It's like they tell you, okay,
Speaker 2: now go figure out the acreage. But you're doing this
Speaker 2: through legislation as opposed to when it's a discretionary action
Speaker 2: by a for supervisor. We have to go through the
Speaker 2: public public benefit determination, which of course gets into values
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. But I think it's absolutely what
Speaker 2: we need to do more of and that we could
Speaker 2: get help legislatively. But they're tough. I mean, you guys
Speaker 2: are heard of the one over in the Crazies and
Speaker 2: with the Elstone Club and stuff, and it's pretty good exchange.
Speaker 2: But there's some folks that don't like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean you're giving up Elk Habitat for
Speaker 3: Mountain Goat habitat. Right is one way to look at it.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about it.
Speaker 3: We can't draw it can't drawn Mountain Goat tag, but
Speaker 3: you can sure hunt over the counter Elk and the Crazies.
Speaker 3: Durfy Hills would be another great one that was proposed
Speaker 3: for land exchange. I mean, that's that's a whole ecosystem
Speaker 3: would be kind of a strong word, but it's a
Speaker 3: whole region with its own elchord, all public, totally landlocked.
Speaker 3: You can fly in there and it's like but the
Speaker 3: exchange for that is like Antelope Country, oh really right,
Speaker 3: So like trying to find again, like find that apples
Speaker 3: to apples comparable and and and then you have historical use.
Speaker 3: You know, there's still plenty of folks of who have
Speaker 3: uh hunted that place and traditionally hunted that place for
Speaker 3: decades and there just is not a comparable swap type
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard propose. You know, when I get
Speaker 1: that job, if I get to be the ANA many
Speaker 1: part of what I'm going to look at and I
Speaker 1: suggest the poor service adopt this is how much what
Speaker 1: biomass does that piece of land host or support? An
Speaker 1: important word and in any swap, any swap would be
Speaker 1: are you gaining biomass that you're supporting or hosting?
Speaker 4: Well, the White River National Forest supports the largest el
Speaker 4: kurd in the world, so it'd be a big ass
Speaker 4: biomass and that's how you help do it.
Speaker 2: And we support the largest biomass of elk hunters in
Speaker 2: the world. I think.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Speaking of which, like what what uh like, what's
Speaker 4: going to happen this fault when like if you could
Speaker 4: crystal ball it based on all the cuts that have
Speaker 4: been made, like when people are trying to get into
Speaker 4: their elk spot, Like is it like, are they going
Speaker 4: to be able to get there? Is there going to
Speaker 4: be safety issues when they do get there, Like it's.
Speaker 3: Going to be a COVID poop pandemic.
Speaker 2: This is where I need to push all those fear buttons.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing is, this is another one. Man,
Speaker 1: I hate to keep doing this. This is another one
Speaker 1: that people are throwing out there that I'm not buying
Speaker 1: what I'm not buying that like that there's like an
Speaker 1: x extent that it's an existent crisis that the trails
Speaker 1: won't be cleared. I don't. I don't view it as existentially.
Speaker 3: I think for let's say, like you know, I have
Speaker 3: a bunch of friends that are in this position where
Speaker 3: it's like young families. Their best way of getting out
Speaker 3: is through like established campgrounds with a camper.
Speaker 1: That type of campgrounds is a real problem that.
Speaker 2: Here I can tell we had a budget meeting, so
Speaker 2: we already knew we were going into this field season,
Speaker 2: we will have zero seasonal workforce, the people we just
Speaker 2: hire temporary for the summer. So we knew that. So
Speaker 2: that's zero is zero. Normally we would have fifty or
Speaker 2: sixty or something like that. So that's you know, it
Speaker 2: could be less people clear and trail and things like that.
Speaker 2: We fired you know these what would be like crew leaders,
Speaker 2: the people that are permanent, but they only work half
Speaker 2: the year, and so that'll be problematic. Will it be
Speaker 2: like our people could go, oh my god, what happened?
Speaker 2: I don't think. So are our road maintenance the road
Speaker 2: maintenance budget on the White River when when I left
Speaker 2: and we had a budget meeting because they signed the
Speaker 2: continuing resolution, so we know what our budget's going to
Speaker 2: be the rest of the year. Pretty much. Our road
Speaker 2: maintenance budget we have twenty We have twenty eight hundred
Speaker 2: miles in the road was zero, so that's how much.
Speaker 2: And normally we give that money and to the in
Speaker 2: the agreements, to counties because they have better equipment, to
Speaker 2: more people. And now we have a small we have
Speaker 2: a greater and a three person crew. So we'll we'll
Speaker 2: we'll clean the culverts, thatch blowout or whatever, beavers filling.
Speaker 4: Have you got someone to do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have three people. We've lost two.
Speaker 3: But so you for you folks and the White you
Speaker 3: recreationists and the forest over there. If you see this
Speaker 3: three person crew, I'm sure they'd really like to know
Speaker 3: the areas that also need work.
Speaker 2: That's right now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the road system feels custential is maybe too
Speaker 1: big of a word, right, But the road system that
Speaker 1: work feels to me like a real issue.
Speaker 2: Right, But it's also something it's like one year, you
Speaker 2: may not notice it, two years, three years, just like
Speaker 2: the road you know, just the way maintenance of infrastructure works.
Speaker 2: The recreation budget on the busiest recreation force in the country,
Speaker 2: so discretionary. So we've got our people we paid for.
Speaker 2: But then like the clean toilets, the toilet contracts and
Speaker 2: you know, toilet paper and whatever stuff was one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty thousand bucks for two and a half million
Speaker 2: acres and eighteen million people. Comes to about zero point
Speaker 2: nine cents per visitor. If you're wondering, you kidding me, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So will it be?
Speaker 1: Is that intact.
Speaker 2: The budget the toilet paper budget? No, it's not. Literally,
Speaker 2: we were we don't have enough money. We were looking
Speaker 2: at and I don't normally get involved with this, we're
Speaker 2: like in the detail, but they were looking at. Normally
Speaker 2: these sites are pumped three times a year. We're going
Speaker 2: to do them once. Well, those are it's not gonna
Speaker 2: be great. So will people see things, yes, will it
Speaker 2: be like you know, it's not going to be the
Speaker 2: end of the world. I think depending on fire seasons
Speaker 2: and flood seasons and things like that, I think there'll
Speaker 2: be some change. I'm worried a lot. So when there's
Speaker 2: a fire of any significance, there's what's called an agency administrator.
Speaker 2: It's one of us line officers. So if there's a
Speaker 2: fire on the White River or you know, on the
Speaker 2: on the Galloton, here the local line officers he had
Speaker 2: made agency administrators and we we we have overall responsibility.
Speaker 2: Even if a thousand firefighters come in, we're still overseeing them.
Speaker 2: We go through a ton of training and stuff. They
Speaker 2: do the work, but we set objectives. We you know,
Speaker 2: things like that, here's what I want you to do
Speaker 2: with this fire, because fire crew would come and just
Speaker 2: spend money and put it out. I mean, but you know,
Speaker 2: here's what resources. I want these houses protected as a priority.
Speaker 2: A lot of us that are retiring are the most
Speaker 2: experienced people doing that. You know, in our region in
Speaker 2: Colorado we lost two of the three most experience. That
Speaker 2: won't matter if there's not a bad fire season. But
Speaker 2: if it is, that's the stuff that's going to add up.
Speaker 2: And so that's the stuff I'm worried about in the future.
Speaker 2: I don't see a land sale real quick, but this
Speaker 2: stuff matters.
Speaker 1: Can I hit you with a thing I'm worried about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you can tell me if this is a reasonable fear,
Speaker 1: if you should sleep at night. I'm worried about this.
Speaker 1: I could picture a for a supervisor in a left
Speaker 1: leaning state. So let's say a forest supervisor in Washington,
Speaker 1: a forest supervisor in California says, fine, I'm closing my
Speaker 1: forest because I don't have the staff right and they
Speaker 1: use it to score political points. Is that possible?
Speaker 2: Before I left, we got explicit direction that shall not happen.
Speaker 1: I was hoping that because I could picture someone saying, right,
Speaker 1: I'm taking my marbles and going home.
Speaker 2: We call it the you know, the Washington Monument strategy.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 2: Park Service is masterful at this. Cut the park service
Speaker 2: budget close, oh yeah, yeah, and closing the Washington Monument
Speaker 2: and make it screams and said what happened? And so
Speaker 2: we've never done that, We've never taken that out. I
Speaker 2: think I think there's going to be some things that
Speaker 2: are going to require it. Well, at least when I
Speaker 2: left a month ago. If you had if you could
Speaker 2: show your budget couldn't support a campground being opened, it
Speaker 2: had to go all the way to the Secretary's office
Speaker 2: to get approval. So that's gonna be hard to get
Speaker 2: a campground.
Speaker 1: So they're like reviewing a campground site. We have. We
Speaker 1: have this beautiful four visitors site here. We'd like to
Speaker 1: get back up and run.
Speaker 2: If a four supervisor proposes to close any public facility,
Speaker 2: it's got to be run up to change. So I
Speaker 2: don't think you have to worry to.
Speaker 1: They're like they're anticipating and ten at because it would happen.
Speaker 1: It's called the Washington Mall strands.
Speaker 2: The Washington Monument was. Moment she closed the monuments, I'll close, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have. The Park Service gets away with it. They've
Speaker 2: gotten away with it since nineteen ninety four. I mean,
Speaker 2: you guys are all too young for that. But when
Speaker 2: the Republicans in ninety four took control the House for
Speaker 2: the first time in forty years, right, they they went
Speaker 2: after everything, the contract with America and Newt Grich was
Speaker 2: the speaker of the house, and they were cutting and stuff,
Speaker 2: and they went after the Park Service pretty harshly, and
Speaker 2: and they cut their budget pretty good. In the parks
Speaker 2: said fine. And Mike Finley was the superintendent of Yellowstone
Speaker 2: here and he was he was like this with President Clinton.
Speaker 2: He was really close to him and Ted Turner and
Speaker 2: he eventually went out to run the Turner Foundation. But
Speaker 2: they just said, fine, we'll close the gates, We'll close
Speaker 2: the whole faithful and and uh and I mean you
Speaker 2: you know a little newspaper you get when you go
Speaker 2: into the park. After those budget cuts, like it was
Speaker 2: like Bambi's gonna die because of congressional bubjet cuts really
Speaker 2: really oh yeah, they and within a year and a
Speaker 2: half there was the give the Park Service as much
Speaker 2: money as you want, supported by Congressmen on both sides,
Speaker 2: and they got all the money they wanted. So but
Speaker 2: the Park Service has gates and you know they can
Speaker 2: do that. You much better. And back then things weren't
Speaker 2: quite as well as they are politically, but it was
Speaker 2: awesome to watch. It was like, damn, how do you
Speaker 2: guys do that? As they cut our budgets and we
Speaker 2: didn't get int of it.
Speaker 3: Back that would be.
Speaker 5: My worry is that with lack of employees, there's probably
Speaker 5: some amount of enforcement employees that will not be on
Speaker 5: the ground anymore. And if you it kind of links
Speaker 5: up to the same thing with the maintenance, if that's
Speaker 5: not getting done well. I think we saw it once
Speaker 5: in an Eagle County and this is just what I
Speaker 5: was told. I don't know, and we're not going to
Speaker 5: bring up the spot with so I don't.
Speaker 3: Want to burn it.
Speaker 5: But because the road couldn't be maintained and the ruts
Speaker 5: got too big, it was too dangerous, they just closed
Speaker 5: the road and so I don't know if that was
Speaker 5: the actual reason.
Speaker 3: But instead of like being.
Speaker 5: Able to drive way up in there, you had to
Speaker 5: hike from the bottom, and it was a heck of
Speaker 5: a much longer hunt at that point. But if there's
Speaker 5: no one to enforce that gate and people just start
Speaker 5: going around it, and then we end up with like
Speaker 5: what you see down Alaska when you're flying into your
Speaker 5: moose spot and the ATV trails just go farther and
Speaker 5: farther every year, and the big swamp buggy trails go
Speaker 5: farther and farther every year.
Speaker 1: Zero enforcement action.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it could become like you know, wild West lawless
Speaker 4: stuff like people doing whatever they want. Right, Okay, so
Speaker 4: is that a real worry I should have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm hesitating because I don't want to like, hey, this,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're to go out there and do bad stuff.
Speaker 3: It's happening right now. Yeah, right, I mean it's.
Speaker 2: A huge concern because what I've seen in the data
Speaker 2: shows the biggest atterrent is just boots on the ground.
Speaker 2: Doesn't have to be a cop with a gun. Doesn't
Speaker 2: that be just that they see a white truck or
Speaker 2: back in the day, a green truck. People behave more.
Speaker 2: I mean just the way it is, and without those
Speaker 2: people out there, I absolutely think we're going to have
Speaker 2: that kind of there's no one to go to take
Speaker 2: care of it, and then people get frustrated, up, why
Speaker 2: aren't you doing anything about that? That's the public service
Speaker 2: cycle I hate to see broken. And what I'm at
Speaker 2: least at this stage and whatever you know, reform is
Speaker 2: being done to our public land agencies.
Speaker 4: This is is there a law enforcement aspect to the
Speaker 4: National Forest Service Like I know we used to see
Speaker 4: like BLM officers, like service rangers.
Speaker 2: There's there's law enforcement officers again, it's just part of
Speaker 2: the culture of our agency. We we just we're not
Speaker 2: the enforcement people. And so you know, our force the
Speaker 2: busiest in the country and in the most visitors and
Speaker 2: the inner state running right through the middle of it.
Speaker 2: There's now one when we're fully staffed, we have.
Speaker 1: Three so pistol pack and rangers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fully you know vested or whatever they call.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, they can actually arrest you, dat, they.
Speaker 2: Can rescue there. The state has they can enforce some
Speaker 2: state law, you know, state violations, and yeah we have.
Speaker 3: Because you can also have a lot of people who
Speaker 3: have the authority to write citations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are called force protection officers of PLS. Where
Speaker 2: you go to a forty r class you can learn
Speaker 2: how to So that's good. A bunch of people we
Speaker 2: fired were the force protection officers, So that's too bad.
Speaker 2: So we got to get more people trained and so cumultively,
Speaker 2: I'm worried about that.
Speaker 3: But it's not part of the budget discussion, especially after
Speaker 3: this last uh. I don't know order that that Schultz
Speaker 3: sent out. I did like his letter to the Forest Service,
Speaker 3: by the way, that was good, but I imagine it would
Speaker 3: be a logical discussion to be like Okay, we have
Speaker 3: point nine cents per visitor to spend on toilet paper,
Speaker 3: and we can only pump all these toilets wants. So
Speaker 3: what if we close.
Speaker 2: Three of them and keep five open? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: More that That is what my predecessors are going to
Speaker 2: have to all of them. That's what's going on across
Speaker 2: the country is the massive prioritization. Again, we're thirty six
Speaker 2: trillion dollars in debt as an age, as a nation,
Speaker 2: were every aspect the government should be doing this, thirty
Speaker 2: six trillion dollars. If your kids are not my kid,
Speaker 2: and your kids your kids, they're going to deal with this, dude.
Speaker 3: But the thing is kind of dealing with it like that, right,
Speaker 3: So prior Biden administration, you'll love this. Why because I said, Biden,
Speaker 3: you know the Infrastructure Reduction or sorry, Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 3: You know, I heard a lot of people inside the
Speaker 3: Forest Service. I'm really nervous about this influx of cash
Speaker 3: because it didn't end up get getting spent on the
Speaker 3: boots on the ground stuff the people, the stuff the
Speaker 3: people can see and rely on, and it got spent
Speaker 3: in positions that are pretty far removed from the end user.
Speaker 2: No and that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3: And did those positions get cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did. And a huge amount of that money
Speaker 2: is unspent. Yet, first of all, you throw any that
Speaker 2: kind of money, I mean you throw billion dollars at
Speaker 2: the Department of Defense or multi billion dollars in the
Speaker 2: case of infrat IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill those that
Speaker 2: was a huge, multi billion dollar pump to the four service.
Speaker 2: We're not set up to kind of spend that kind
Speaker 2: of money. Department to Defense. You give me a billion dollars,
Speaker 2: that's one plane, got it done. We're not set up
Speaker 2: for that. So that was just poor planning. And and
Speaker 2: now a lot of that money has not gotten to
Speaker 2: the fuel's work. A lot of the gao A money,
Speaker 2: uh Great America Outdoors money, which you know your senator
Speaker 2: was big and Senator Danes was getting passed again. Influx
Speaker 2: of money and we're not getting it out there to
Speaker 2: the ground fast enough. That's the restructuring. I'd like to
Speaker 2: see why, let's evaluate what's wrong. Well, we don't have
Speaker 2: people in the right places. Takes engineers. When you're redoing
Speaker 2: a campground, you gotta have engineers. Well, this force doesn't
Speaker 2: have one, so it sits there, and it sits there,
Speaker 2: and it sits there. So there's there's plenty to fix
Speaker 2: and plenty to evaluate. I just I worry too as
Speaker 2: we keep going back and forth. This has been the
Speaker 2: biggest swing Trump Biden Trump. Now, like these eight years
Speaker 2: have been like why we are going so far? I
Speaker 2: don't even remember transitions between Bush and Obama. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: talked more about this, but they were seamless. Now we're
Speaker 2: getting these big swings, and I think that's like the
Speaker 2: world we live in, you know, is just more things.
Speaker 2: You know, in the Biden administration, we had to we
Speaker 2: had to label everything. Did it's climate change stuff? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh really, I didn't know that clearing that trail was okay, well.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that a bunch. You had to take
Speaker 1: for a while. You had to find a way to
Speaker 1: do what you felt was necessary, but you had to
Speaker 1: rearticulate the reason behind it. And now it led it
Speaker 1: just some like some pretty crazy, like very elastic thinking
Speaker 1: that kind of became almost of self parody.
Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, and and and and the emphasis on
Speaker 2: monuments and wilderness areas and stuff. I'm fall for that.
Speaker 2: But it's been done. It's been pushed by the the
Speaker 2: ends of the spectrums. And now you know in this
Speaker 2: administration it's it's gonna be ol and gas, livestock and timber.
Speaker 2: And there's just something just came out from in the
Speaker 2: for Service where they wanted twenty five percent increase in
Speaker 2: timber production. And the Secretary has declared pretty much every
Speaker 2: piece of National Force land in the country as an
Speaker 2: emergency and it's called Secretarials Emergency Declaration. And and what
Speaker 2: that can do is now that's designated the NEPA process.
Speaker 2: The process changes considerably. There's only two alternatives. Either you
Speaker 2: do it. It's action or no action. So that cuts
Speaker 2: your analysis. Well, what about this alternative? What about this? Ah? See,
Speaker 2: there you do it? You don't there's no objections. You
Speaker 2: know that internal process where someone can say I object
Speaker 2: to this, and we evaluate.
Speaker 1: It and.
Speaker 2: We can implement it immediately. And so you either litigate
Speaker 2: to stop it immediately or it's going to go through
Speaker 2: and it's a round fuels forest health. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's such a bad thing. It's just such a
Speaker 2: big swing, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I offered my services on land swaps, correct.
Speaker 1: I will also offer my services. I will come in
Speaker 1: and unilaterly be red light green light on timber projects.
Speaker 1: And trust me, there are a lot of timber projects
Speaker 1: that I would give a green light too.
Speaker 2: I think you would too.
Speaker 3: I am so.
Speaker 1: They're I'm gonna be busy.
Speaker 3: Because you know, it's a free market deal. Like I'm
Speaker 3: not lighting my hair on fire over the timber mandate
Speaker 3: because I mean, I don't in a lot of Montana,
Speaker 3: I don't see anything changing. There's a lot of chunks
Speaker 3: of forests that people walk into and they're like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, this should be cleaned up. Well, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to pay out a pocket to have somebody coat
Speaker 3: go clean.
Speaker 2: Work a couple thousand bucks an acre?
Speaker 3: How much?
Speaker 2: Oh a couple grand for fuels? Work that just that
Speaker 2: where there's nothing merchantable at the.
Speaker 3: It's not merchantable, right, and we don't.
Speaker 2: Have that's a lot of money right for us.
Speaker 3: Like plus like like Missoula is such a great example, right,
Speaker 3: Like when Steve was going to school there, I was
Speaker 3: growing up, right, we really had three lumber mills right there.
Speaker 3: We have zero now right right, There's still a lot
Speaker 3: of forest around Missoula, and a lot that I think
Speaker 3: people would really argue needs to be something's got to
Speaker 3: be done here.
Speaker 2: I don't know this for a fact because I'm not
Speaker 2: an expert in the industry, but there were no tariffs
Speaker 2: on Canadian timber.
Speaker 1: No I thought there was. I mean they had it
Speaker 1: led to the emergency order.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. They at the end they pulled out a
Speaker 2: timber was lumber was not, oh tiff because we don't
Speaker 2: have the capet. We can't produce enough lumber here in
Speaker 2: America to keep the builders going. So the builders must
Speaker 2: have got someone and said, hey, don't do this because
Speaker 2: you're going to jack the prices through the.
Speaker 1: Real dude, there was recently a big There was real.
Speaker 1: They wrapped it up, but there was a big clear
Speaker 1: cut in There was a big clear cut in our
Speaker 1: area where we hang out in southeast Alaska.
Speaker 5: Oh, I thought, you're going to talk about my spot
Speaker 5: there in Wisconsin. No.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he's a private clear cut.
Speaker 3: There's down like twelve trees.
Speaker 1: There was a big clear cut in southeast Alaska and
Speaker 1: it was tribal land. But there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: land swaps to put the package together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So it wound up being that state moved.
Speaker 1: To federal, and federal move to tribal, and the tribal
Speaker 1: moved to state. Whatever the hell. And in the end
Speaker 1: they put together a cut and we got to wash
Speaker 1: this cut over the summer and or over many summers.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you man, that would okay. Those trees
Speaker 1: go into the ocean cutting logs with the bark on
Speaker 1: and then they go on to a barge and they
Speaker 1: do not touch American soil. Nope, that ship is over seas.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even get Like I mean, if some bark
Speaker 1: falls off in the ocean, that's as much processing as
Speaker 1: that wood is getting in the US. Dude, and it's gone.
Speaker 1: And then you hear about losing our capacity on lumber
Speaker 1: and stuff. It's like, dude, it's going over in the round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it used to be and I don't even know where
Speaker 1: it again. Like you could look and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that seems crazy, but I don't even know where to
Speaker 1: begin to start, Like I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: begin to.
Speaker 2: Dre I sing a problem like that, Well, it used
Speaker 2: Tonga's lumber used to not be They've approved special provisions
Speaker 2: to send it in the round overseas. It used to
Speaker 2: has to be manufactured at least on three sides, you know,
Speaker 2: in America, but the industry is in such dire straits
Speaker 2: up there. And yeah, I mean the reality is the
Speaker 2: old golf the industry cannot survive period.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, this same outfit, the same tribal court
Speaker 1: that did this clear cut. They they announced a ninety
Speaker 1: nine year moratorium on old growth.
Speaker 2: Oh no kidding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if they'll stick to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was internal strife. They announced a ninety nine year
Speaker 1: moratorium and they closed that cut early.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Uh, let me. I want to go ahead, and then
Speaker 1: I want to ask a last question. I just want
Speaker 1: you to clarify a point.
Speaker 2: I just wonder I've thought a lot about. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it'll be fixed, but you know how much
Speaker 2: advocacy and environmental groups and stuff owned some of the extremes.
Speaker 2: And I think people have got to really look in
Speaker 2: the mirror and start saying, what are we really fighting against?
Speaker 2: Is it fighting against something we're really concerned about, or
Speaker 2: is it this is a really good way to keep
Speaker 2: our money flowing. Because this model has worked really good.
Speaker 2: You demonize, say this guy is falling, find an enemy,
Speaker 2: and then say send us money. We'll save m you
Speaker 2: know whatever. And I think about that a lot, and
Speaker 2: I think about if that can work on that in
Speaker 2: my retirement to try to, you know, bring more collaboration
Speaker 2: to these discussions about about force management.
Speaker 1: But I want, I want to ask you a retired
Speaker 1: guy question. Yeah, in all these conversations that are happening
Speaker 1: right now, I just want to clarify a personal like
Speaker 1: a personal guiding strategy here in these conversations that we're having.
Speaker 1: I've tried to an issue and issues about federal management agencies.
Speaker 1: I've tried to be like to remain like somewhat cooperative
Speaker 1: because I've been very clear over the years about like
Speaker 1: the things that matter to me, right, things that matter
Speaker 1: to me is like hunting, fishing issues and wildlife habitat.
Speaker 1: And I joke about if I was the emperor of
Speaker 1: the country, what I would do, and it would be
Speaker 1: all wildlife all the time, right, And I would if
Speaker 1: I was the emperor of the country.
Speaker 3: But I'm not.
Speaker 1: No one's asking me to be. So I've tried to
Speaker 1: look at this issue and say, Okay, there are economic
Speaker 1: troubles in the country. We overspend, right, there's problems in
Speaker 1: the country at a macro level. So instead of saying
Speaker 1: that business as usual is the only acceptable path, I've
Speaker 1: tried to like find a way in my mind to
Speaker 1: be a little more constructive and say, Okay, what are
Speaker 1: the objectives, what are we trying to achieve? What are
Speaker 1: the objective realities here? And how could it be done
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't that is less negative for
Speaker 1: Americans in my community who use natural resources and and
Speaker 1: raise their families and spend their time and out, you know,
Speaker 1: in nature. Okay, with that rambling sort of precursor, what
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, I'm just like setting this question up.
Speaker 1: If someone had come to you, based on what you
Speaker 1: know about the Forest Service, if someone had come to
Speaker 1: you and said, we need to find efficiencies, like we
Speaker 1: have to find efficiencies, we have to spend less money,
Speaker 1: we have to save money, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: impact the American taxpayer who's utilizing these lands. We want
Speaker 1: to have minimized impact on that taxpayer. Like our customer,
Speaker 1: so to speak. And they said to you, here's the
Speaker 1: ten percent cut package. Okay, bring me a ten percent
Speaker 1: cut package, drink, bring me a twenty percent cut package,
Speaker 1: bring me a thirty percent cut package. At what percent
Speaker 1: would you start to be like impossible.
Speaker 2: Wow, my colleagues are still working. Probably kill me when
Speaker 2: it hears thirty to forty and and here's what, here's.
Speaker 4: Why is that you like specifically for White River or
Speaker 4: for Service Service wide?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Uh, there are there are things that we need
Speaker 2: to come to grips with. Did an analysis before it's
Speaker 2: cool thing about computers and SharePoint sits and stuff? Did
Speaker 2: an analysis? Set so for Service has a Washington office
Speaker 2: and has nine regional offices Denver, Missoula, California, Albuquerque, Salt Lake,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And then there's a field. Then there's
Speaker 2: the forest, and then there's forest has districts. Thirty five
Speaker 2: percent of our employees, of all our employees non fire.
Speaker 2: You got to set fireside because none of this discussion
Speaker 2: I didn to do with fire. Thirty five percent of
Speaker 2: our employees had a work at a Washington office or
Speaker 2: regional office. That seems high because people in Washington regional
Speaker 2: offices make a lot more than people on the ground.
Speaker 2: It's well over fifty percent of our salary costs as
Speaker 2: an agency are not where we delivered this. It's not
Speaker 2: the mission delivery that alone. There's no company that can
Speaker 2: survive on those numbers. I mean service companies are different.
Speaker 2: But if you're producing something or if you have a
Speaker 2: service to deliver, I mean I know is really well.
Speaker 2: I know for a fact that if they put over
Speaker 2: fifty of their you know, veil resorts, our corporate office
Speaker 2: in Broomfield, it's on the mountain because that's where the
Speaker 2: money's made, that's where the mission is delivered. So there's
Speaker 2: a problem. I think I've said a couple of times
Speaker 2: we got upside down and is where our mission was?
Speaker 2: We just delivering the mission and all the things you
Speaker 2: want to protect from your constituents our communities are clean
Speaker 2: water and all that stuff that all happens on the
Speaker 2: ground for cheap now fuels projects and stuff are get
Speaker 2: expensive when you you know. The other thing I think
Speaker 2: you have to look at is big things. You know
Speaker 2: we have and again my colleagues would kill me. We
Speaker 2: have a huge research department in the force. VICE created
Speaker 2: because when the back then there was not a single
Speaker 2: university in the country that researched any natural resource or
Speaker 2: forest re issues. So we created we have a state
Speaker 2: in private division a whole thousands of people because there
Speaker 2: were no state foresters. Now every state in the country
Speaker 2: has a whole state forestry division, but yet those were
Speaker 2: legacied in over years and years, so between thirty it's
Speaker 2: just I just believe in is the people on the ground.
Speaker 2: And I'm biased because that's work I did. Do we
Speaker 2: need policy? People? Do we need you know? You know, cio,
Speaker 2: But that's the cheap part of the job. So I,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know what's going to happen. You
Speaker 2: guys don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of
Speaker 2: crazy times in our country. But I always tell people
Speaker 2: public lands are not in the constitution. Nowhere in the
Speaker 2: constitution are they, and I and yet I believe it
Speaker 2: is one of the great experiments in democracy. No other
Speaker 2: country the world says, here's what we're gonna do. We're
Speaker 2: gonna take whatever seven percent or whatever the percentage of
Speaker 2: our country's land base. We're gonna put it in public
Speaker 2: trust manage for everyone, owned by everyone. And it what
Speaker 2: an experiment in democracy. And so far one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five years, it's we're doing all right. But I
Speaker 2: remind people it's not in the constitution. There's no guarantee
Speaker 2: that it can stay and so the endgame is stay involved,
Speaker 2: pay attention. I guess I'm not ready to light my
Speaker 2: hair and fire and say the public lands are going away.
Speaker 2: They're gonna sell them all. I'm going to pay attention now,
Speaker 2: obviously because my back. But I think your listener should
Speaker 2: pay attention. I think there are things in the system
Speaker 2: now that require, especially for hunters and anglers and people
Speaker 2: who enjoy it the way we do, pay attention. This
Speaker 2: is a time to pay attention, you know, get involved
Speaker 2: with that NEPA process a little more. Make sure your
Speaker 2: voices are heard, because there is no guarantee in the
Speaker 2: institution that this crazy experiment will continue.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on, man, pleasure to be here. What
Speaker 1: are your hobbies? What are you going to do now?
Speaker 2: Turkey hunting starts Saturday, So you know I love to
Speaker 2: hunt and fish and and get outside.
Speaker 4: You must stay where you're at in Colorado for a while.
Speaker 3: I mean you're sitting here right now because you're on
Speaker 3: a fishing.
Speaker 2: Tour, right yeah, and visit some friends tour. But yeah,
Speaker 2: my brothers and I you know, I'm from Wisconsin and
Speaker 2: uh and listening to you talk about how you grew
Speaker 2: up with your brothers identical. I mean right, Yeah, we
Speaker 2: were just across the pond from you, the Wisconsin side,
Speaker 2: and uh, we're building. We're almost done. We're building the
Speaker 2: cabin in the up Oh yeah, up in west of
Speaker 2: waters Meet. That's where we went as kids. That you know,
Speaker 2: there was with six kids in the cop salary. There
Speaker 2: was no Disneyland vacations. So yeah, we're just they're just
Speaker 2: about don I write the checks. I write checks to
Speaker 2: pay for things because they do.
Speaker 1: They do the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're there. I mean they're back there and
Speaker 2: so be doing that. And I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: ready to not be involved. I've gotten some calls about
Speaker 2: some work and we'll see. I'm gonna take two months
Speaker 2: to see what's out there. And then I'd love this
Speaker 2: stuff too much. I like to mix it up too much.
Speaker 1: And man, I well, just the fact that you're the
Speaker 1: fact that you're passionate about the forest, you're passionate about
Speaker 1: public lands, you put in a lot of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have opinions. I can't vet whether all of your opinions.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know enough, you know more than I know,
Speaker 1: so I can't say that all your opinions are right
Speaker 1: or wrong.
Speaker 2: Or whatever, but.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that you care. I would sure hope
Speaker 1: that people that need to start the people that do
Speaker 1: need to make decisions about where money goes and what
Speaker 1: money is there. If I knew that they were reaching
Speaker 1: out to guys like you to get an opinion that
Speaker 1: they could give an honest way. Now that you're not
Speaker 1: there anymore, I would be like, well, that sounds like
Speaker 1: a good idea to me. So hopefully some conversations will
Speaker 1: happen for you, you know, where someone can say like, well,
Speaker 1: now I can tell you what I actually think, and
Speaker 1: here's what I think, right, and no one's going to
Speaker 1: fire me for it.
Speaker 2: Good feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we always have a hard time having
Speaker 1: agency people on the show because they're so paranoid. But
Speaker 1: it's nice to have the Poe like you're hearing a
Speaker 1: post paranoid sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I would have come on and said most
Speaker 2: of this while I was working. That's what I got
Speaker 2: my reputation for, although I would have got in trouble,
Speaker 2: but you know, not fired. But I don't think what
Speaker 2: I had to say was all that controversial.
Speaker 1: You're not saying it, You're not.
Speaker 2: I'm not hacking on anyone. I just I think you know.
Speaker 2: There's changes coming, and some of them are good, some
Speaker 2: of them. I don't be here far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk to the guys that are
Speaker 1: like that recognize a reality and recognize how can we
Speaker 1: do this in the in the best way possible and
Speaker 1: not in ways that are kind of like ham handed
Speaker 1: knee jerk reactions. So thanks man, you bet.
Speaker 2: It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: Appreciate it, Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 3: Thanks Scott,