Speaker 1: This is the me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten, in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything, all right, I'm gonna go so far
Speaker 1: as to say we've got a very special guest in
Speaker 1: that he's arguably the most influential voice on public lands,
Speaker 1: wildlife management, and natural resources management in the country. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about US Congressman Rob Bishop from Utah, who chairs
Speaker 1: the House Natural Resources Committee. Now, I usually go way
Speaker 1: out of my way to not burden listeners with my
Speaker 1: political views outside of those areas where politics sort of
Speaker 1: intersect with the concerns of hunters and anglers and wildlife.
Speaker 1: Meaning I'm not going to go expound on my views
Speaker 1: around capital punishment or legalized weed. But I have no
Speaker 1: hesitation about giving my political input when it comes to
Speaker 1: things like public lands, conservation funding, and attacks on science
Speaker 1: based wildlife management. Over the life of the Mediator podcast,
Speaker 1: I've definitely stacked the deck in my own favor, so
Speaker 1: to speak, by giving voice to a load of guests
Speaker 1: who share my basic stance on these issues in that
Speaker 1: I support our federally managed public lands, I support robust
Speaker 1: protections for game and fish, habitat and wilderness, and I
Speaker 1: support state management of wildlife that allows for a sustainable
Speaker 1: harvest of resources. And we've definitely taken some heat for that,
Speaker 1: perhaps rightfully so by listeners who feel that I haven't
Speaker 1: been entirely fair to other viewpoints. Well, we are taking
Speaker 1: steps to fix that right now by sitting down for
Speaker 1: a conversation the Chairman Bishop. We have differing views on
Speaker 1: a lot of the issues that will be discussing today,
Speaker 1: but I'm excited to hear from him, and I'm thankful
Speaker 1: that he's willing to take the time to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk through a handful of issues that we all
Speaker 1: feel are very important for us and more importantly, for
Speaker 1: future generations of Americans. One of the things I want
Speaker 1: to start out with is to discuss the Land and
Speaker 1: Water Conservation fund um and before doing that, I'd like
Speaker 1: to open up to Chairman Bishop two, can you really
Speaker 1: quickly lay out sort of the scope of the Natural
Speaker 1: Resources Committee and what your primary goals are within the committee. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that surprised me because when I
Speaker 1: first got to Congress, I was concerned about public lands.
Speaker 1: Utah is a public land state, but the scope of
Speaker 1: what my committee does is so much broader than that.
Speaker 1: It sometimes is almost it's daunting of what kinds of
Speaker 1: things I cover with. So anything that deals with public lands, parks, forest,
Speaker 1: all of those are in the scope of my committee.
Speaker 1: Anything that deals with energy development that is on public lands,
Speaker 1: or anything that's energy development offshore is all under my jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: Anything that deals with water development or water water maintenance,
Speaker 1: not just in the West, but actually anything that will
Speaker 1: be done by b O R actually becomes under my jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: I have control of all the territories, which means, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, all of a sudden, for someone
Speaker 1: from northern Utah, Puerto Rico became extremely important to me.
Speaker 1: So I get Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands and Guam
Speaker 1: and Marianna's and American Samoa. Those are now part of
Speaker 1: my portfolio, which I'm grateful, especially in the winter because
Speaker 1: I think that's when I should be visiting those places
Speaker 1: or on the others. And and anything native of American
Speaker 1: that's in that's in our portfolio. So it's a wide area.
Speaker 1: Anything that deals with fishing anywhere, commercial or recreational, it's
Speaker 1: my portfolio. So how long have you served in the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives far too long. Uh, this is my
Speaker 1: eighth term, right, yeah, so it will be sixteen years
Speaker 1: next January. And in doing that, how long did you
Speaker 1: serve before you became involved in the Natural Resources Committee?
Speaker 1: And how long how do you get to where you
Speaker 1: achieve chairmanship of the committee on the House in Congress,
Speaker 1: because it actually goes back earlier than that. I I
Speaker 1: served here in Utah and the state legislature, and I
Speaker 1: was there for sixteen years. Also, you came out of
Speaker 1: education originally, right. I've always been a teacher, history teacher,
Speaker 1: and in in Utah it's, uh, it's like forty five
Speaker 1: calendar day, so it's a part time legislature. So I
Speaker 1: was teaching all the way. I was going through that,
Speaker 1: and as a teacher, I was not necessarily as involved
Speaker 1: in that. But at the end, especially when I was
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House here, I had a couple of
Speaker 1: members who came up to me that that got me
Speaker 1: involved in land issues where I thought, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: some of these people are being screwed over and it's
Speaker 1: not right. All of a sudden became deeply involved. So
Speaker 1: the my speakership, we established the Western States Coalition to
Speaker 1: Treme bring other Western states in to try and get
Speaker 1: part of the discussion on how the federal government deals
Speaker 1: with land issues um and that spurred my involvement in it.
Speaker 1: So when I went to Congress, I wanted to be
Speaker 1: on resources from the very get go. Because the Utah
Speaker 1: se Utah's controlled by the federal government. You gotta be
Speaker 1: on the public lands on the Resource Committee. That becomes essential.
Speaker 1: And except for the one term I was on the
Speaker 1: Rules Committee and they did not let me do both,
Speaker 1: I was I've always been on the Resource Committee. Now,
Speaker 1: unlike the Senate, where chairmanships come up totally by seniority,
Speaker 1: they have limits on the Republicans in the Senate limit
Speaker 1: their chairman's of six years, but it's the next senior member.
Speaker 1: The seniority plays a role, but it's not the only
Speaker 1: role that's been played in it. So when I went
Speaker 1: back into the Resources Committee to get a sub committee chairmanship,
Speaker 1: they jumped me over a couple of people, and I
Speaker 1: also jumped over a couple of people to become chairman
Speaker 1: of the committee. Is that because of having an expertise
Speaker 1: or just because having a vested interest based on where
Speaker 1: you're coming from. I thought because I was so lovable.
Speaker 1: I think it was. It was the expertise. I had
Speaker 1: almost been like groomed by the chairman before me. I
Speaker 1: did a lot of things in his in his place.
Speaker 1: So I had served for what was it like six
Speaker 1: terms on the committee before I became chairman. Um. I'd
Speaker 1: served in a lot of different subcommittees. I knew the issues,
Speaker 1: probably as well as anyone who was on there, and
Speaker 1: and I had what leadership at the time thought was
Speaker 1: the temperament to be the chairman of that committee. If
Speaker 1: you're good with that, are you ready to dive into
Speaker 1: land and water Conservation fund? I'd love to, OK, So
Speaker 1: what I want to do I want to have I
Speaker 1: want to give people a background on what it is,
Speaker 1: and then you get but then you get to you
Speaker 1: get to add color to that. If you feel like
Speaker 1: I'm missing something important here, no, I'm glad you're doing that,
Speaker 1: because most people have no clue of what land even
Speaker 1: those that are involved in it don't know what landing
Speaker 1: Water Conservation Fund actually is. Yeah. So the Landing cut
Speaker 1: Water Conservation Fund is a fund that draws its revenues
Speaker 1: from offshore oil and gas leases. Off Shore is defined
Speaker 1: like it's like a very specific mileage from shores, right
Speaker 1: mm hm fifty or two nine miles nine Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: States get to control nine miles out. Everything else is federal.
Speaker 1: It's in majistic so like the Gulf of Mexico has
Speaker 1: a lot of offshore a lot of offshore land. So
Speaker 1: this fund provides matching grants to state and tribal governments
Speaker 1: for the acquisition and development of public parks and other
Speaker 1: outdoor recreation sites. Um I was surprised to hear when
Speaker 1: I first started looking into this that every county in
Speaker 1: the country has had a project funded under the Land
Speaker 1: of Water Conservation Fund, things like boat launches, public access sites,
Speaker 1: and access for anglers and river users, and also oftentimes
Speaker 1: purchasing easements to give public access to what would otherwise
Speaker 1: be landlocked public lands. Now the thing used to be
Speaker 1: funded for a long time, like I used to have
Speaker 1: like it had like a ten year twenty year funding cycles,
Speaker 1: but recent it's fallen into kind of stop gap measures
Speaker 1: and it is now set to the programs now set
Speaker 1: to expire at the end of September two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: And I know that like if you if you follow
Speaker 1: sort of the politics of hunting and fishing. You hear
Speaker 1: a lot of noise about how we need to get
Speaker 1: in there and renew the renew the fund, but there's
Speaker 1: snags in the in the process, and it's not done
Speaker 1: to everyone's satisfaction. Can you kind of explain a little
Speaker 1: bit about out what sort of shortfalls you recognize in
Speaker 1: the Land of Water Conservation Fund. That might kind of
Speaker 1: explain how something that seems so straightforward and just great
Speaker 1: for everyone, how something like that does become problematic or
Speaker 1: controversial or have limited support. Yeah. Um, And it goes
Speaker 1: back to when this was originally developed, so that the
Speaker 1: plan came back in in the mid sixties. The idea
Speaker 1: was as you said, to allow well, actually it was
Speaker 1: Land of Water Conservation Fund was divided into two sections,
Speaker 1: so in that time was supposed to go to local projects,
Speaker 1: which is what you just said. So recreation areas, parks,
Speaker 1: access and easements. We're all supposed to be funded by
Speaker 1: the six of the money that was appropriated, and that
Speaker 1: would be determined by local interests. So people at the
Speaker 1: local level would decide what kind of recreation they want.
Speaker 1: They would go after grants, and it could even be
Speaker 1: used for like community swimming pools. Right, Yeah, whatever the
Speaker 1: locals wanted was supposed to go to the state of
Speaker 1: the federal government to buy in holdings in parks and
Speaker 1: other areas, so things that were totally surrounded, there's they
Speaker 1: could do that. It has morphed as that time went on,
Speaker 1: so that instead of going to these funding programs that
Speaker 1: most of the people who talked to me love and
Speaker 1: like and support, that was down to as little as
Speaker 1: twelve and ten percent. The rest of it went to
Speaker 1: the federal government for buying in holdings, which I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: over the years, the amount of money the federal government
Speaker 1: has had, they could have bought every in holding like
Speaker 1: four or five times if they really wanted to. So
Speaker 1: instead that money that went to the federal side, that
Speaker 1: has gone to basically buying up more land, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: in not a nice way. So instead of the Department
Speaker 1: of Interior or the Fourth Service sitting down and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: what kinds of areas would be beneficial to us. In
Speaker 1: the testimony our committee came came had we had former
Speaker 1: employee is the Department of Material who came and simply
Speaker 1: said what they do is sit around and say what
Speaker 1: land is owned by a special interest group that we
Speaker 1: want to reward by buying their stuff. So what has
Speaker 1: happened on the federal side, not the state side, but
Speaker 1: the federal side, is that groups will go out there
Speaker 1: and they'll buy property from private owner, they'll sit on
Speaker 1: it for a short period of time, and then sell
Speaker 1: it a nice profits of the federal government using land
Speaker 1: and water conservation funds and it has become a funding
Speaker 1: mechanism for special interest groups to keep up their lobbying
Speaker 1: and their litigation efforts. So to me, the Land and
Speaker 1: Water Conservation Fund has has morphed into something it was
Speaker 1: never supposed to be and never intended. And that's why
Speaker 1: I was literally surprised at the feedback that came when
Speaker 1: I said, maybe we should take that money and do
Speaker 1: something useful with it actually helps people out. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of groups that just came and glued and
Speaker 1: started spreading out what I think is misinformation because I
Speaker 1: was attacking their funding source and I don't think federal
Speaker 1: government should be a revenue source for special interest groups.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what has become. So what what we
Speaker 1: were trying to do, and normally programs are authorized for
Speaker 1: seven years that's what I'm supposed to do with seven years.
Speaker 1: The last reauthorization was done for three years, primarily so
Speaker 1: I could be around when it's going to be reauthorized again.
Speaker 1: But what we try to do is say, okay, let's
Speaker 1: put some parameters in here. Let's divide the money back
Speaker 1: up again fifty fifty, so still goes for the funding projects,
Speaker 1: not the twelve eight percent last couple of years, and
Speaker 1: go to the federal governments for getting in holdings, but
Speaker 1: some parameters on what those in holdings have to be,
Speaker 1: like actually in holdings or an area that butts uh
Speaker 1: federal land. Like I have a personal experience with this
Speaker 1: with with some relatives I knew about a piece of property.
Speaker 1: Please i'd I'd love to hear it. Yeah, who will
Speaker 1: be nameless because you know, I want to go to
Speaker 1: family re unions again. They had a piece of property
Speaker 1: which was not terribly productive, very steep. They sold it
Speaker 1: to one of the special interest groups will be nameless
Speaker 1: for but can you give me a sense of like
Speaker 1: what sort of special interest group? Well, like, like what
Speaker 1: what an environmental group that that that practices conservation and protection.
Speaker 1: They sat on it for a few months and and
Speaker 1: like they sold it for six figures. It's a relative
Speaker 1: and the first figure was not a one. They they
Speaker 1: sold it and then they sat on it and then
Speaker 1: gave it back to the UH. This was to forest
Speaker 1: for service land for service to use London Water Conservation
Speaker 1: Fund and made a nice, healthy profit for themselves by
Speaker 1: doing it supposedly as mule deer habitat. The problem is
Speaker 1: um there's no vegetation on the thing, and it was
Speaker 1: surrounded on three sides by homes, so you know, the
Speaker 1: community up there would have a fact. They did, like
Speaker 1: they came to me and say, can we get this
Speaker 1: piece of property for for a city cemetery so we
Speaker 1: can finally use and make it useful. As it was
Speaker 1: sold as mule deer habitat, it was totally useless. There
Speaker 1: was no vegetation. Mule deer didn't go there. It was
Speaker 1: just land that was controlled by the Fourth Service. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we finally did legislation, although it took how a long time,
Speaker 1: like six years to finally get it through, just to
Speaker 1: transfer this acreage back to the city so it could
Speaker 1: be put into useful production. Now, that's that's the kind
Speaker 1: of that's the invitation I had to finding out about
Speaker 1: how Land and Water Conservation Fund works on the federal side,
Speaker 1: but please realize on the state side, I'm off four it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea. It was originally authorized
Speaker 1: to be up to nine hundred million dollars can be
Speaker 1: spent on that. It has never been funded more than
Speaker 1: four fifty million dollars. Usually it's around three hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: And put that in some kind of perspective, Um, like
Speaker 1: the Robertson Pittman Fund Pittman Robertson Fund that generates a
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year from Sportsman's Land and Water Conservation
Speaker 1: Fund is three million, and if we are justifiably as
Speaker 1: it was originally intended to be, half of that would
Speaker 1: go to to recreation opportunities that were that were desired
Speaker 1: by local people. So what I simply said, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: keep the half. Um people can't use imminent domain on
Speaker 1: these on these properties, which I think is fair. Keep
Speaker 1: the half for them, and that includes the easements that
Speaker 1: you talked about. Is probably the most popular element of
Speaker 1: that I can imagine, because I mean, like yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think the Eastman's are hugely important to people
Speaker 1: who are coming from the perspective that I hear from
Speaker 1: the most of people who are trying to who have
Speaker 1: a goal to increase access opportunities on public lands. They're
Speaker 1: extremely important for those who do want access. They're also
Speaker 1: extremely important opportunities for especially those in rural rural areas.
Speaker 1: They want to maintain agriculture while they're around, so they
Speaker 1: grant the easements, they can maintain their property, but it's
Speaker 1: still will be there for agricultural purposes, and they have,
Speaker 1: but it's it's also some of those easement takes place
Speaker 1: in urban areas to like on the Baltimore the highway
Speaker 1: between Baltimore and Washington is actually owned by the Park
Speaker 1: Service and they have easements on it, and they're part
Speaker 1: of this LWCF funding for those easements. So with that
Speaker 1: no domain. But then take the other half that goes
Speaker 1: to federal government and say, let's make sure that we
Speaker 1: can do something useful with that money. The federal side
Speaker 1: of the money. The federal half, for example, we have
Speaker 1: a seventeen billion dollar backlog in the Park Service. Let's
Speaker 1: put some of that money into actually solving our our
Speaker 1: park service. Fish and Wildlife and BLM also have double
Speaker 1: digits in the millions of dollars in back billions dollars
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, in backlog in their areas. Put them money
Speaker 1: in there. We do payment in lieu of tax is
Speaker 1: to states so that they can actually provide services on
Speaker 1: the county level where there is massive amount of federal
Speaker 1: land that has always been We're doing better than when
Speaker 1: I first came here, but that's around four million years.
Speaker 1: Put some to boost up that. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Let's take the federal side of the money and not
Speaker 1: just spend it to reward special interest groups, but put
Speaker 1: it on programs that actually help people. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. But but it would steer money away
Speaker 1: from acquisition. Uh yeah, but I'm telling you that acquisition
Speaker 1: I think has pretty well been steered away already. So
Speaker 1: but I want to move on to other stuff. I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure I understand something. When it
Speaker 1: originally came out, was it not where the percentage is
Speaker 1: not codified by law. It was just sort of loose understanding.
Speaker 1: Originally it was sixty and then they how did it drift?
Speaker 1: They removed its Congress later on about eight nine years
Speaker 1: after that, simply removed it so that the understanding was
Speaker 1: they would continue on with that six S forty split,
Speaker 1: but they wanted to give some flexibility to both sides.
Speaker 1: The flexibility was basically the stuff that actually gives and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the flexibility was actually moved over to the
Speaker 1: federal side from the local. But also when you say
Speaker 1: the local access, especially to some of your listeners, that
Speaker 1: comes through the state side, the local funding, not through
Speaker 1: the federal acquisition of the land, does not mean there's
Speaker 1: I'm going to be access for any kind of recreation
Speaker 1: that takes place. It's simply acquisition acquisition of land. Um.
Speaker 1: But if you really want to have have any process
Speaker 1: that actually helps with the access for sportsman's that usually
Speaker 1: comes to the state side funding of that program, which
Speaker 1: I want to maintain. Actually, I want to maintain the
Speaker 1: entire program if you could, if you could actually put
Speaker 1: the boundaries that I want so that I know the
Speaker 1: money is going to solve problem problem problems, I would
Speaker 1: really like to go on lobby to make sure that
Speaker 1: we could spend all nine million of it. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of the things we said is the money, as
Speaker 1: you said, comes from offshore energy development. That's the money
Speaker 1: that keeps going in there. We have an aging workforce.
Speaker 1: I mean, the workforce that works on offshore is really
Speaker 1: becoming uh, they're all reaching retirement age. We don't do
Speaker 1: anything to try and train people to go into those good,
Speaker 1: high paying jobs. Most as as Americans are retiring on
Speaker 1: those off shore projects, most of them are being replaced
Speaker 1: by people from South American, a lot of Brazilians that
Speaker 1: are coming up for them. So I said, why don't
Speaker 1: you take some of that money and put it into
Speaker 1: into colleges, get programs to try and train environmental and
Speaker 1: um and uh petroleum not petroleum engineers. There's there's a name,
Speaker 1: there's a word. Don't ever become my age. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Names and nouns go first. And this is this is
Speaker 1: the time it happened. Do some of that get make
Speaker 1: the money useful. But you mean, so by that, are
Speaker 1: you suggesting that by training oil profess artionals and engineers, geologists, whatever,
Speaker 1: that you would be facilitating more extraction, which would be
Speaker 1: allowing more money to feed in or just like just
Speaker 1: kind of like finding a whole new purpose for the funds. No,
Speaker 1: I mean no, the fund could actually if you're trying
Speaker 1: to solve problems on the federal side, you could solve
Speaker 1: more of those problems. But the idea is this is
Speaker 1: kind of like the ghost is laying the golden egg,
Speaker 1: So feed it, make sure it says vibrant so it
Speaker 1: can actually put money into that. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that think he has emphasized as he's been Secretary
Speaker 1: of Interior that there used to be a whole lot
Speaker 1: of revenue that was coming in from from extraction industries
Speaker 1: that funded programs within the Interior Department that over the
Speaker 1: last ten years has dissipated to almost almost virtually nothing.
Speaker 1: Put it back in there. Make sure that you can
Speaker 1: do a whole lot of money with the royalties that
Speaker 1: are coming off those programs. So it's it's the extraction
Speaker 1: industry is going to exist regardless, it's just will Americans
Speaker 1: be part of it. Will they actually have good paying
Speaker 1: jobs out of it, or will they all go to
Speaker 1: foreign workers coming in there? And can we actually boost
Speaker 1: the long long activity so we can get more money
Speaker 1: to actually do better things for people. It is a
Speaker 1: funny thing that that I find, like when you when
Speaker 1: you sort of sniff out your internal like self hypocrisies,
Speaker 1: uh personally would be like if you do if you
Speaker 1: look at you want to vibrant, well funded land and
Speaker 1: water conservation fund because you like the things that it
Speaker 1: delivers to and in my case, like the deliverers of
Speaker 1: people that I think of as being like me, hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers who use boat launches and exers. Sites like
Speaker 1: that I want, right, But then I look and I'll
Speaker 1: oftentimes have a little bit of a suspicion or a
Speaker 1: leeriness about offshore oil operations, and you do find in
Speaker 1: there there's there's a tension between those two ideas because
Speaker 1: that's where that money comes from. Yeah, they've funded your
Speaker 1: boat ramp, so why Yeah, you know, I recognize that
Speaker 1: it wants up being a company, It wants up being
Speaker 1: a world that's like a bit more complicated than you'd
Speaker 1: like it to be, and and some of the things.
Speaker 1: You know, it depends on where your listeners are living.
Speaker 1: Especially out here in the West, there is so much land,
Speaker 1: there's so much space that their idea that there has
Speaker 1: to be a competition between preservation, access and development, preservation,
Speaker 1: recreation and development. That's a phony concept. There is plenty
Speaker 1: of area to do all three of those. There can
Speaker 1: be development, there also can be a whole lot of
Speaker 1: recreation and there can be conservation at the same time.
Speaker 1: What what I would rather like to do is make
Speaker 1: sure that we have a wiser way of how we're
Speaker 1: defining where those lands are, so that people know where
Speaker 1: they can so businesses know where they can actually develop,
Speaker 1: and people know where they can recreate and what will
Speaker 1: be set aside strictly for conservation and protection UM, which
Speaker 1: which usually excludes people who want to recreate. When you
Speaker 1: have those kinds of lands, there there's enough for all
Speaker 1: of it. The same thing out in the ocean, there's
Speaker 1: there's plenty of times for fishing rights as well as
Speaker 1: the economic development that can take place. There's lots of
Speaker 1: various That's a that's a good moment there to jump into.
Speaker 1: The next subject I'd like to talk about with you,
Speaker 1: and this one has been a real hotbed issue, is
Speaker 1: to get into monuments. You probably take a talking about monuments,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe you love talking about monuments UM. Either way,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask a bunch of questions about him. And
Speaker 1: again I want to jump in and give a little background,
Speaker 1: and you can color that background if you feel like
Speaker 1: missing something. So when we talk about a monument designation,
Speaker 1: I'm not in educating Chairman Bishop about this. I'm educating
Speaker 1: you the listener. We talk about a monument designation. This
Speaker 1: goes back to the Antiquities Act, which was signed in
Speaker 1: the law by President Theodore Roosevelt, and famously his first
Speaker 1: monument designation was Devil's Tower, which had you know, tremendous
Speaker 1: cultural archaeological significance. And there it was especially for Spielberg
Speaker 1: especially yeah, because uh, close encounters, Close Encounters ends the
Speaker 1: Devil's Tower. I've been there, um, did not see any spaceships,
Speaker 1: but it is it is a beautiful site. And initially
Speaker 1: the Antiquities Act was used for things like I mentioned earlier, battlefields, um,
Speaker 1: places of archaeological significance, cultural significance, and over time people
Speaker 1: started to rethink, reimagine um. People might use less flattering,
Speaker 1: less flowery terms for this transition, but to think on
Speaker 1: more landscape scale issues. And we had in in you know,
Speaker 1: the last handful of administrations, we've had some big landscape
Speaker 1: scale monument designations. And these are things that a president
Speaker 1: can just declare through proclamation and create a monument, not
Speaker 1: without action. Now, the reason it's became very newsworthy recently
Speaker 1: is President Obama and towards the very end of his
Speaker 1: term and gone in and done a couple of large
Speaker 1: monument designations in Utah, including the Bearsier's National Monument. About
Speaker 1: a year later, President Trump came in into a proclamation
Speaker 1: that eliminated the majority of the Bearsier's National Monument, so
Speaker 1: put it back to where it was before it had
Speaker 1: become a monument, just sort of set back the clock
Speaker 1: on the majority of that land, and also simultaneously cut
Speaker 1: the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in about half. So
Speaker 1: moving the land designations back to where they began. I
Speaker 1: think that they want of being like a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion where you heard people say that, um, your land
Speaker 1: had been stolen or various things like that, but it
Speaker 1: just land management decisions or landman designations were just set
Speaker 1: back to where they had been earlier. The reason that
Speaker 1: shook everybody up really bad is that doesn't happen. So
Speaker 1: President Kennedy made like a minor change to Bandalier Monument
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. But in the modern era, no president
Speaker 1: had acted to go in and reduce a national monument
Speaker 1: through executive action, even though people create monuments through executive action.
Speaker 1: Am I cool? So far from your perspective? Is this
Speaker 1: Am I saying stuff that's making you cringe as I
Speaker 1: say this? Well, yeah, but you're okay, go ahead, Oh okay, No,
Speaker 1: I want to get into the parts just before we
Speaker 1: get into the next part. I want to Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to hear like like, um, like I'm a history teacher. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a there's an element of history that's attached
Speaker 1: to it, like I know, I would love to I
Speaker 1: would love to hear your perspective and this and if
Speaker 1: I'm and if I'm trying to do the most like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do the most even keeled walks through
Speaker 1: of the monuments, you're doing very well at that, by
Speaker 1: the way. Okay, um, because I'm gonna get to the question.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna get to the question now and then
Speaker 1: and and then you can go in and wait wait,
Speaker 1: let's go back through the history first. So okay, it
Speaker 1: did start nineteen o six, and it was that perfectly,
Speaker 1: and it was to protect the reason it was called antiquities.
Speaker 1: It was to protect antiquities, specifically Indian ruins and Indian sites.
Speaker 1: So it had to be a specific thing and it
Speaker 1: had to be a specific man made structure that was
Speaker 1: supposedly there. So that's why a lot of people get
Speaker 1: upset with landscapes, especially when you're doing it on water,
Speaker 1: because I'm sorry, a fish is not an antiquity. So
Speaker 1: if that's what you're trying to preserve, you're expanding what
Speaker 1: the Antiquities Act was supposed to be. So the Antiquities
Speaker 1: Act was put in there, and the debate on the
Speaker 1: Antiquities Act was whether it would be basically a half
Speaker 1: a square mile or a square mile, and then someone said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you want to have more than actually six
Speaker 1: forty I think is a square mile. Maybe you want
Speaker 1: to get like the eight hundred and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: eight hundred acres. So let's not put a specific language
Speaker 1: in there, will say smallest footprint possible. But that which
Speaker 1: is still a slippery term. Yes it is. That's the
Speaker 1: problem because it still means it's still a legal requirement
Speaker 1: has to be the smallest footprint possible. But acres is
Speaker 1: a little bit different than the one point three million
Speaker 1: acres of bears ears, just just slightly. But it also
Speaker 1: had to be about something specific. That's why this idea
Speaker 1: of landscapes was not in what the original presence did
Speaker 1: Most presidents have done it, but they also did it
Speaker 1: very very very discreetly. Most presidents have done a monument designation,
Speaker 1: but but for the bulk of them, the average was
Speaker 1: five thousand acres or less for every monument monument that
Speaker 1: they did, so you did not get. And eleven of
Speaker 1: them did reduce the size of monuments, so there is
Speaker 1: precedent in doing that too. I think the last one
Speaker 1: was not Kenny. I thought the last one was Eisenhower,
Speaker 1: but I may be wrong on that. Who actually reduced
Speaker 1: the size of Well, the bandalier was like an adjustment
Speaker 1: of border. Did it well? And if it reduced it,
Speaker 1: then there has been some reductions too, And and in fact,
Speaker 1: technically that's what Prump did. He adjusted the boundary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the issue was and and many presidents didn't do
Speaker 1: it at all. So from Reagan and Bush one and
Speaker 1: Ford nothing they never they didn't do anything, didn't designate
Speaker 1: anything at all. The change came with basically for the
Speaker 1: last five presidents, maybe four the last six. Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: was the first one, went up to Alaska, and I
Speaker 1: saw him once to an interview where he said, I
Speaker 1: know the people in Alaska didn't like what I was doing,
Speaker 1: but I had the power to do it, so I
Speaker 1: did it anyway. He used antiquities and took half the
Speaker 1: state and then smiled about it in the way only
Speaker 1: he can do. Yeah, I mean, but but he had
Speaker 1: There was a lot of work done in Alaska at
Speaker 1: that time. I mean, if you factor in like the
Speaker 1: Native Claim settlement, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: st happening there, but that a lot of the deferred
Speaker 1: decisions that were being Yeah, but that was all done
Speaker 1: legally by legislation. Ultimately, not what he did on the
Speaker 1: Antiquities Act. Then Clinton did at big time didn't happen
Speaker 1: again until Clinton. Clinton did it just in his reelect.
Speaker 1: And that was the Grand Staircase Escalanti, which is the
Speaker 1: first time you had a president who, in the internal
Speaker 1: memos that they were sending back and forth, clearly realized
Speaker 1: that they did not have tradition on their side in
Speaker 1: what they were about to do, and they couldn't claim
Speaker 1: that there really was an antiquity that needed to be preserved.
Speaker 1: They also had to realize that they could not have
Speaker 1: any input whatsoever by the law. Is if if Clinton
Speaker 1: had asked the Interior Department to give him recommendations about stuff.
Speaker 1: It would have triggered NEPU, which would require open public
Speaker 1: meetings and a very long process. So what it had
Speaker 1: to be as a gotcha moment, the president had to
Speaker 1: announce something without any kind of input whatsoever. It had
Speaker 1: to coming from him or you, or you trigger NIPA,
Speaker 1: and the Antiquities Act is not allowed as as an
Speaker 1: access point for them. And then Clinton did the first
Speaker 1: win in Utah, and then he did about eighteen of
Speaker 1: them somewhere in that area, just as he was in
Speaker 1: his last two years of presidency. Bush only did a couple.
Speaker 1: He did six total, but the one was was on
Speaker 1: for water and that one was a whopper two that
Speaker 1: was huge. And then Obama came in there and once
Speaker 1: again in his last term, as he was going out
Speaker 1: of the office, then he went he went bananas with them.
Speaker 1: All he did twenty three or twenty two or twenty
Speaker 1: three total monument designations, including Bears Ears, which we were
Speaker 1: trying to do with some other process. So that's why
Speaker 1: what has happened with Antiquities Act is it's not being
Speaker 1: used as it was intended to be used. That's why
Speaker 1: I always say it's an abuse of the Antiquities Act,
Speaker 1: not a use of the Antiquities Act, because it's not
Speaker 1: about a specific antiquity. It's not the smallest footprint possible,
Speaker 1: and you can't claim that there is an impending damage
Speaker 1: that was taking place. And that's the other reason why
Speaker 1: they gave the power to Roosevelt. If there was something
Speaker 1: that's about to be destroyed, let the president make a
Speaker 1: quick declaration. And then the idea was always Congress would
Speaker 1: go back then and codify it, which they make a
Speaker 1: big deal about, like Zions, Grand Canyon. All those were
Speaker 1: antiquities designations originally. Then Congress though, went back in there
Speaker 1: and made them into parks and expanded all of them too.
Speaker 1: That was how it was supposed to have been done.
Speaker 1: It has not been done in either the Clinton lesser
Speaker 1: to extent with George W and especially the Obama years.
Speaker 1: So that's the history of it, and that's that kind
Speaker 1: of is your unease with it is that it's sort
Speaker 1: of drifted off purpose. But but it it also specifically
Speaker 1: does not allow for any kind of public input. If
Speaker 1: you do that, it triggers NIPA, So that has to
Speaker 1: be a gotcha moment has to be something that surprises everyone.
Speaker 1: And that's what most of the people in these areas
Speaker 1: who live around those their complaining about, Like you, you
Speaker 1: just did this to me and I didn't have a
Speaker 1: chance to say anything about it. Now they often say, well,
Speaker 1: we did have that process. But to be honest, if
Speaker 1: it was a real process where you're talking about maps
Speaker 1: and talking so salad, you can go down to the
Speaker 1: Bearrisier's area and say I'm going to have a meeting,
Speaker 1: come and tell me what you think about this entire
Speaker 1: area very general. But if you had a map of
Speaker 1: specifics and say is this where the line should be,
Speaker 1: that triggers an NEPA process. You can't do that. That
Speaker 1: has got to be a gotcha moment. There needs to
Speaker 1: be reform of the ACT. I don't want to do
Speaker 1: away with antiquities Act per se. I want to put
Speaker 1: some sidebars on there. So once again, it insists that
Speaker 1: there is some kind of of public input and it
Speaker 1: allows the people who live in those areas to have
Speaker 1: some kind of real say in how it is developed
Speaker 1: and what is going to be developed in those areas.
Speaker 1: And and there's also you know, one of these other
Speaker 1: things I'm getting off topics. I haven't even allowed to
Speaker 1: ask the question yet. I apologized for that. No, no,
Speaker 1: you're but you already you already entered it on the question.
Speaker 1: But um, oftentimes these are said, as we're making these
Speaker 1: monuments to protect these areas, it has to be federal
Speaker 1: land in the first place. So in Bears Ears it
Speaker 1: was all federal land. It had the same federal protections
Speaker 1: on all these lands. When you made it a monument,
Speaker 1: you didn't add any other protection except that you allowed
Speaker 1: a land manager to go in there and make decisions
Speaker 1: on how this area that's now protected would be used. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: and that's the problem we've had in other monuments that
Speaker 1: were created. Oftentimes that protection is to deny access to people,
Speaker 1: and so motive access, no any kind of access you
Speaker 1: can and and what the proclamation says doesn't even have
Speaker 1: to be obeyed to be honest with you, So when
Speaker 1: Clinton had Grand Staircases said there would be no reduction
Speaker 1: in grazing, there's a total reduction graze, reduction in grazing,
Speaker 1: even though that's what the proclamation said. But how the
Speaker 1: land managers then decide to impute that language is the problem.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the problems I had that, especially
Speaker 1: why when we were trying to deal with lands in
Speaker 1: in eastern Utah as well as this area. I tried
Speaker 1: to codify specifically what those access rights would be and
Speaker 1: put them in there. That says, you know, if if
Speaker 1: the if the land manager decides that something needs to
Speaker 1: be closed, they have to provide an alternative opportunity in
Speaker 1: something that is of equal value. So you can't take
Speaker 1: away the access or opportunity rights. And that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: any of these designations. If the land is just federal
Speaker 1: BLM land, the default is always open access. Anyone go
Speaker 1: in there, you can, you can recreate to your heart's content.
Speaker 1: It's when you start designating titles to it, like monuments.
Speaker 1: That's when you actually authorize the land manager to come
Speaker 1: in there and put specific restrictions, and that happens. That's
Speaker 1: the one thing I don't that's another I'm rambling. I
Speaker 1: used to teach speech. I'll get a complete sentence out
Speaker 1: here eventually. That's one thing I want to do in
Speaker 1: my committee is actually codify all this stuff, so you
Speaker 1: put into law what will be accessible and how it
Speaker 1: will be accessible. So, for example, in Bear's Ears, the
Speaker 1: natives Native Americans who abut that area are basically the
Speaker 1: white maca Utes and the Novajos. They go in there
Speaker 1: for um, for gathering a firewood. It's a ceremonial purpose,
Speaker 1: as well as some of them sell it for just
Speaker 1: substance substance purposes. They go in there by truck. That's
Speaker 1: what they want to do. The proclamation, Obama, you said
Speaker 1: nothing about it, he said you. Actually, it didn't restrict anything.
Speaker 1: It didn't say anything about it. But it allows the
Speaker 1: land manager to go in there later on and say
Speaker 1: I don't think you should have a truck going into
Speaker 1: my monument, and he could then stop that process. So
Speaker 1: we're trying to do in our legislation is saying now
Speaker 1: these activities will always be legal, and they will be
Speaker 1: allowed by the land manager, including going in there with
Speaker 1: a truck to get the firewood going in there. Verb
Speaker 1: you have to do that because if you don't spec
Speaker 1: scifically state that access and opportunity rights, some land manager
Speaker 1: eventually down there will say we'll make will make an
Speaker 1: arbitrary decision that actually cuts off that kind of access. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's what bothers me. All right, you brought up
Speaker 1: a ton of things that I need to a little
Speaker 1: bit back up because I want to hit on a
Speaker 1: couple of points. We haven't yet drawn a distinction between
Speaker 1: when you declare a monument who administers the monument, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of confusion I think where people feel
Speaker 1: that the bears ears. In Grand Staircase monuments, there was
Speaker 1: some sort of restriction on hunting, for instance, But generally
Speaker 1: the monuments that are ministered by the BLM and monuments
Speaker 1: administered or handed over to the Forest Service, they have
Speaker 1: a multiple use doctrine and so part of that multiple
Speaker 1: use is usually includes hunting. So we haven't seen a
Speaker 1: loss there. I think that the nervousness that people have
Speaker 1: is what could happen with nationally like monuments that administered
Speaker 1: by National Park Service, where they have like a bigger
Speaker 1: tool kit to restrict activities there. There are only two
Speaker 1: National Park Service monuments that allow any kind of hunting activity,
Speaker 1: and I think six six yeah have some kind of
Speaker 1: snowble billing activity. But BLM traditionally is supposed to be
Speaker 1: much more flexible. What I'm trying to say is there's
Speaker 1: nothing that guarantees that and any land manager can change
Speaker 1: and make arbitrary and capricious decisions. That does the restriction
Speaker 1: unless you put in statue. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: it should be done not by an antiquities designation, but
Speaker 1: letting Congress pass a law that says we are guaranteeing
Speaker 1: in law these activities will be allowed. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: that it would make a lot of people feel more
Speaker 1: comfortable to have those things put in place. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that winds up killing people
Speaker 1: is the uncertainty about what's going to come in the future,
Speaker 1: and that sort of generates the rumor mill. And and
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of the weird part about this that
Speaker 1: if it's not monument designated as a monument, the fallback
Speaker 1: is you've got it open access. As soon as you
Speaker 1: designated as a monument, then I'll of a sudden you
Speaker 1: bring up the opportunity of putting restrictions on it. So
Speaker 1: the designation of itself does not necessarily add protection to
Speaker 1: the land. It actually can put in restrictions on the land.
Speaker 1: I want to revisit for a minute something uh that
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, and I want you to kind of
Speaker 1: reconcile it with what we're talking about now, is early
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and
Speaker 1: you had said you were talking about like original intents
Speaker 1: and how because needs change and situations change, you wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of change that original attempt to match the future.
Speaker 1: What would you say if someone brings up to you,
Speaker 1: um that that the antiquities that could be something that
Speaker 1: evolves in morphs over time to match up with our
Speaker 1: needs today the same way that you would suggest the
Speaker 1: Land and Water Conservation Fund, Like like, how do you
Speaker 1: cord of balance out those two ideas which someone might
Speaker 1: point out and think that it could be regardless like
Speaker 1: mildly hypocritical. Now, the Land No Antiquities Act is words,
Speaker 1: and the words have meaning. If you want to change
Speaker 1: the focus of the Antiquities Act to do what they're
Speaker 1: doing right now, change the law, words have meaning and
Speaker 1: words have impact. So I want if if I'm just
Speaker 1: sitting here saying, Okay, that's what the word tells me
Speaker 1: to do, but gee, I think I'd like to do
Speaker 1: something else, I'm sorry that that is not the way
Speaker 1: the rule of law happens, and that's not the way
Speaker 1: you have civilized society works together. So if indeed you
Speaker 1: want to have the Antiquities Act doing landscape preservation. Change
Speaker 1: the law to allow that to take place, and that
Speaker 1: will that will then have people being able in public
Speaker 1: to debate whether that's a good idea or not. How
Speaker 1: far do you think that idea would get uh, depending
Speaker 1: on actually Okay, personally, I hope that doesn't get to
Speaker 1: that point because I don't think it was ever intended
Speaker 1: for land landscape preservation. And as I think I've also
Speaker 1: said earlier, giving those designations doesn't mean you actually improve
Speaker 1: the land like there is if indeed, President Obama was
Speaker 1: saying he wants to have more protection for these artifacts,
Speaker 1: his proclamation doesn't do that. You had one, You had
Speaker 1: one BLM officer for a million miles when he had
Speaker 1: made his proclamation. There is still one for a million miles.
Speaker 1: What we're trying to do in the law. But Curtis
Speaker 1: introduced saying, Okay, we're gonna have BLM contract with local
Speaker 1: officials to have a minimum of ten people there to
Speaker 1: protect those areas. Now, that's what you should be doing,
Speaker 1: and that's what a proclamation doesn't do. That's what the
Speaker 1: Antiquities Act doesn't do. If you really want to do
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, change the law to allow that
Speaker 1: to take place. If you also think, I also think
Speaker 1: not everything is going to be defeated in Congress. I
Speaker 1: know that's that's the viewpoint even I have right now.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of these things that can
Speaker 1: go through. Like um I am. I am, allegedly by
Speaker 1: some of the things I have read about myself hating
Speaker 1: of wilderness. I created wilderness in my first MAXO is
Speaker 1: the third term, but I had a specific reason for
Speaker 1: creating it. The first bill I let go through when
Speaker 1: I became chairman was a wilderness bill. And in Idaho,
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to that. I just want the process
Speaker 1: to be done correctly, and I wanted to make sense,
Speaker 1: and I want there to be some kind of balance.
Speaker 1: So if you were gonna impose let's say you for
Speaker 1: a minute, you didn't have participate in government. You could
Speaker 1: just do things by fiat if you wanted. If you
Speaker 1: were going to come in and impose the sort of
Speaker 1: discipline you'd like to see around the Antiquities Act, what
Speaker 1: would it look like actually have a bill that we introduced.
Speaker 1: It would be what I said, let the President designate
Speaker 1: five thousand acres or less at will at whim, especially
Speaker 1: if there's an emergency basis. But if it's going to
Speaker 1: be bigger than five thousand acres, then you have to
Speaker 1: have an e I S. This is HR three. Have
Speaker 1: have an environmental impact statement, you have to go through
Speaker 1: the Kneeper process. And if it's going to be more
Speaker 1: than eighty six thousand, and we picked that number specifically
Speaker 1: because that's the average that Teddy Roosevelt did in all
Speaker 1: of his stuff. You have to involve the local, local, state,
Speaker 1: and local governments, so they have to be involved in
Speaker 1: it to what extent they have to. They have to
Speaker 1: prove it, they have to sign off on it. If
Speaker 1: you're going to be bigger than that acres, then involve
Speaker 1: local governments so they actually have a sign off on it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's fair and that's appropriate. In addition
Speaker 1: to that, if you're going to shrink it down, we
Speaker 1: went through the same kind of process in reverse. If
Speaker 1: it's going to be a big shrink it, you've gotta
Speaker 1: have local government sign off on it. If it's going
Speaker 1: to be a small shrinkage, the president can do that
Speaker 1: by simply designating so I their sideboards. At some point,
Speaker 1: you can't just go in there and say I'm going
Speaker 1: to take that entire map and this big section. I'm
Speaker 1: going to do it because I want to without at
Speaker 1: least letting people have some kind of say in it
Speaker 1: who lived there, affecting their lives and their and their futures.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that there was like some lesson learned
Speaker 1: in what we've seen here kind of that you were
Speaker 1: involved for a long time and before Obama came in
Speaker 1: and did Bears Ears, you would have been involved for
Speaker 1: a long time and trying to strike a compromise and
Speaker 1: make it and perhaps have made him feel that it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessary. When you look at like, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't like no, I was like, what was the looking
Speaker 1: at it now like looking at what happened now? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you feel went wrong? Was it a lack
Speaker 1: of compromise on two sides? A lack of compromise on
Speaker 1: one side? Like like what led to the current what
Speaker 1: led to the current problem or what led to the
Speaker 1: hostilities around Bears Ears? From from a mile high perspective, UM,
Speaker 1: I think we're talking to out a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: So there was always a group that wanted to do Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry Bears Ears. In my estimation was still a
Speaker 1: political statement that was made, not necessarily conservation statement, and
Speaker 1: in fact, calling it bears ears instead of giving it
Speaker 1: a Native American name kind of emphasizes this was this
Speaker 1: was something that's going to be cute and sellable. But
Speaker 1: I've never I've never thought of the marketing implications. Well,
Speaker 1: there are certain groups that got involved and put the
Speaker 1: money up, and that's what they said, can we trust
Speaker 1: working with the Indians? And I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to have a Navajo name in there. We change
Speaker 1: or Trump changed it. In our legislation, we continued that
Speaker 1: just sasta, which is the Navajo word for bears ears.
Speaker 1: I like that a whole lot more. But what I
Speaker 1: think you were referring to us, I was trying to
Speaker 1: do what we call the public Lands Initiatives by going
Speaker 1: into the seven eastern counties in Utah, getting everyone to
Speaker 1: sit down the table and come up with some kind
Speaker 1: of compromises. Both sides will point to the other one
Speaker 1: is having broken that. And in part it was a
Speaker 1: unique experience because these are groups that had never compromised before,
Speaker 1: and so far they haven't still, but the tipping point
Speaker 1: and and and once again I did those three things
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. I want to say land can
Speaker 1: be designated for economic development, for recreation, and for conservation.
Speaker 1: And actually I thought I was really kind of cool
Speaker 1: with the numbers I was coming up with. So for
Speaker 1: every one acre of economic development and recreation, I put
Speaker 1: four acres aside simply as wilderness conservation. I thought those
Speaker 1: were who could complain about those numbers. Obviously everybody did.
Speaker 1: But the tipping point was when I said, Okay, if
Speaker 1: we come up with this compromise, no more screwing around
Speaker 1: with these lands in which antiquities has got to be
Speaker 1: off the table for these seven counties. If we make
Speaker 1: this deal, you can't go back in there. And then
Speaker 1: you can't say, okay, thank you for the wilderness. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to go after the recreation and economic lands
Speaker 1: and we'll make those world us too. So it has
Speaker 1: to be we're done, We're finalized, no more discussion, no
Speaker 1: more litigation. You gotta agree to that. And that's where
Speaker 1: the environmental groups that were on the at the table
Speaker 1: basically said screw you and walked away. Now I was told,
Speaker 1: and this is totally anecdotal, but one of the groups
Speaker 1: were in varying degrees of cooperation, and that on both sides.
Speaker 1: Some of my counties were really great to cooperate, some
Speaker 1: for a pain. It does the same thing on the
Speaker 1: environmental NGOs that were there. Some of them were nice.
Speaker 1: I like them. Some of them. You know, I can
Speaker 1: still turn around. You can get their their cutlery out
Speaker 1: of my back if you want to. But one of
Speaker 1: them came to me and said, Rob, I feel sorry
Speaker 1: for you because you were sincere in what you were
Speaker 1: trying to do. But some of the groups on our
Speaker 1: side never intended to cooperate. They were there to watch us.
Speaker 1: Um and I I feel bitter about that entire process
Speaker 1: because we were trying to come up with the solution
Speaker 1: that I thought would be fair and truly a compromise,
Speaker 1: and everyone just said screw it. And then when when
Speaker 1: he did the Bearsier's proclamation, that was it. That was
Speaker 1: like the final straw. We're not going go and go
Speaker 1: back into that route again. UM. I also feel frustrated
Speaker 1: because there was language I was asking from Department of
Speaker 1: Interior and other the groups and they never gave it
Speaker 1: to me. They kept saying we'll get it to you,
Speaker 1: we'll get it to you. It never happened, and and
Speaker 1: then said, well, I never came up with the bill.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually push my bill forward while I was
Speaker 1: waiting on you guys to give me the language you promised.
Speaker 1: I I feel somewhat disenchanted about that process too. Do
Speaker 1: you have any concerns about the the legality of what
Speaker 1: Trump did when he when he shrunk the monuments? But you,
Speaker 1: but you'd like to see it explaining greater detail or
Speaker 1: codified in some other way that that settle some of
Speaker 1: these disputes down in the future. If I'm condifying how
Speaker 1: you do it, it seems only fair you codify how
Speaker 1: you undo it at the same time. And then once again,
Speaker 1: let the people's representatives their voice. I'm told when I
Speaker 1: read the Constitution, let them actually make those kinds of
Speaker 1: decisions in open and in legislation. Do you have anything
Speaker 1: else you want to add on on the subject of
Speaker 1: monuments specifically, No, But I'm glad you went into that
Speaker 1: kind of detail, because there are a whole lot of
Speaker 1: what I consider still to be misinformation. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of groups that are out there trying to equate
Speaker 1: a monument with a park as if it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: and you're right, it's not. It's totally not. And you also,
Speaker 1: I'm pleased to do this because most people don't don't
Speaker 1: differentiate between a Park Service monument and a BLM monument.
Speaker 1: They are different, they are different creatures. So I think
Speaker 1: everybody's gotten. I mean, I want to see everybody, people
Speaker 1: who follow these issues have recently got recently gotten like
Speaker 1: a sort of a crash course where they wanted to
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, in the last months, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have come to like struggle
Speaker 1: with these definitions. That's that's true. And and you can
Speaker 1: play around at least what is conservation, what is protection?
Speaker 1: You can play around with that all the time. And
Speaker 1: you're right. I get frustrated because, like I said, this
Speaker 1: goes back to me the Carter administration. At first, when
Speaker 1: I was a state legislator here in Utah, we were
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff. Um, it's it's frustrating that we're
Speaker 1: still talking about this stuff and having a lot of
Speaker 1: misinformation about what it is, especially some of those phrases
Speaker 1: like you know, when when the when it came out
Speaker 1: there that Trump stole your land. Yeah, I'm sorry, give
Speaker 1: me a break, it was federal first, it's federal now.
Speaker 1: If anything, he gave you greater access opportunity by reclassifying
Speaker 1: it simply as federal land and not monument land. You know,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. I was, Um. I was
Speaker 1: disappointed by the decision, but I was equally disappointed by
Speaker 1: the way some people were explaining what was going on,
Speaker 1: even people who I might agree with their general motives.
Speaker 1: I thought that the the the stole your land was
Speaker 1: a real reach and misleading, and it was kind of
Speaker 1: embarrassing to come from, um, you know, to to come
Speaker 1: from the side of an issue that I was sympathetic
Speaker 1: two and I felt that it Uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like right now, but it is simple in
Speaker 1: itsels Yeah, But in the in the in the plarity
Speaker 1: that we're seeing, I see oftentimes from both sides things
Speaker 1: that embarrassed me about how inaccurate they are. So hopefully
Speaker 1: maybe we'll in our chat here clear up a couple
Speaker 1: of these things for a couple of people. Dude, you're
Speaker 1: living in the life of you know, the land of Twitter.
Speaker 1: And I'm very proud that well, my committee tweets. I'm
Speaker 1: still proud. I've been I've been outed by Hill mag
Speaker 1: Hill paper back there in the Yeah, as the only
Speaker 1: member that actually has a Twitter account who has never
Speaker 1: tweeted a single character, and now they've outed me I'm
Speaker 1: taking as a challenge. I'll be damned if I'm actually
Speaker 1: going to do when ever. Ever, so so people that
Speaker 1: follow you are they don't have an exciting morning when
Speaker 1: they open it up now, And I don't think I
Speaker 1: can be snarky now. My staff thinks I can easily
Speaker 1: do that, but I'm going to have to use that
Speaker 1: in some other traditional form. What what per sorry did?
Speaker 1: But what percentage of your colleagues do you feel, like, say,
Speaker 1: tweet on a daily basis? I don't know, but there's
Speaker 1: a whole well first, whether they tweet or they have
Speaker 1: a staff or tweet for them. Actually, I have no
Speaker 1: clue I would. I would guess like two thirds. Okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just you saying it's the age of you know, Twitter,
Speaker 1: So I was wondering, you know how prevalent it is.
Speaker 1: Look I when I was first elected blogs. No, that's
Speaker 1: making me sound really old. I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 1: But I've seen the evolution of social media coming through there,
Speaker 1: and I still use legal pads so let me just
Speaker 1: leave it at that where you can generate big, long
Speaker 1: and complicated thoughts. Oh yeah, yeah, I have all sorts
Speaker 1: of files of my writing. It's cool. I want to
Speaker 1: bump along too, and it monuments falls under public lands
Speaker 1: of course, but I want to just jump jump into
Speaker 1: like kind of like general thoughts around public lands. Again.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lay a little bit out and and you
Speaker 1: can go on that. There are poles to suggests that
Speaker 1: sev seventy two of hunters in the American West, and
Speaker 1: that that area, like the Inner Mountain West, includes your
Speaker 1: own constituents here in Utah use public lands um. All
Speaker 1: across the country. The numbers shrink significantly when you reach
Speaker 1: over to the eastern US, but you still find thirty
Speaker 1: six of hunters in America use public lands. UM. Think
Speaker 1: everyone's sitting at the table knows it's critically important for
Speaker 1: sportsman and Utah sportsman. Now, a lot you're no stranger
Speaker 1: to this. A lot of folks will tell you that
Speaker 1: the Utah Delegation has been you know, the tip of
Speaker 1: the spear and calling for the transfer of public lands
Speaker 1: to the states, or oftentimes you're here pushing for the
Speaker 1: privatization of public lands. Can you lay out like lay
Speaker 1: out your biggest Yeah, I use the term REALI your
Speaker 1: biggest sort of mile high perspective on what you generally
Speaker 1: think about when you think about public lands, federally managed
Speaker 1: public lands, like what sort of your your guiding principles
Speaker 1: and how we distribute, manage, organize the public lands estate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I only recoil at the word privatization because no one's
Speaker 1: ever talking about that. That's one of the that's one
Speaker 1: of the words. That's one of the words has a
Speaker 1: connotation you throw out when you want to make a
Speaker 1: cute public statement. Okay, So I give me a minute out.
Speaker 1: Because states, all states have had federal land grants, have
Speaker 1: gotten have unloaded a lot of their lands. I think,
Speaker 1: I mean Utah maybe from from original from what the
Speaker 1: state originally held through actually like for from land grant
Speaker 1: from federal down to state it is gone, honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't mean to stay gone, but is no longer held
Speaker 1: by the state. Um, that's accurate. In California they sold
Speaker 1: off most of their stuff, and Texas got rid of
Speaker 1: virtually all of their state land. I don't know because
Speaker 1: they they don't have any federal So I don't get
Speaker 1: involved in that at all. Um. But it depends on
Speaker 1: how you actually write the bill. So for the p
Speaker 1: L I I was doing for Eastern Utah, everything that
Speaker 1: I was transferring to the state, we always had the
Speaker 1: caveat put in there that had to be held for
Speaker 1: public purpose, which simply meant you can't sell it, you
Speaker 1: can't privatize it. And so why is that point missed?
Speaker 1: No one wants to hear it. I keep saying it.
Speaker 1: So you tell me, I don't really know. So so
Speaker 1: you're you, you will tell me now that you will say,
Speaker 1: like if you look like, forget what happened in the past,
Speaker 1: forget what might have happened with you know, in different states,
Speaker 1: what they did a school, trust lands and things. You're
Speaker 1: comfortable with the idea that if this day going forward,
Speaker 1: your coming with the idea that federal lands that would
Speaker 1: be handed over to the states, you'd be comfortable with
Speaker 1: some sort of compromise saying that these would always stand
Speaker 1: in the public domain so they could be used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is there a differences so they could be used in
Speaker 1: public domain? Ah? No, public purposes has to be if
Speaker 1: you use public purpose language, that means has to be
Speaker 1: government controlled in some way, and it has to be
Speaker 1: used for a public purpose, which is not the same
Speaker 1: thing as yeah, like purposes. It's the phrase I want
Speaker 1: to put in there because ultimately I look at it
Speaker 1: is land land, just land has to be able there
Speaker 1: to help people. And I actually think that in most cases,
Speaker 1: the states do a better job in maintaining the land
Speaker 1: and helping people than the federal the federal government does.
Speaker 1: I mean, states don't have a seventeen billion dollar backlog
Speaker 1: in the maintenance of their state parks, and especially in Utah,
Speaker 1: Coral Springs down in southern Utah and the place outside
Speaker 1: of Moab, all of those were lands that either we
Speaker 1: were given to the state or they went into a
Speaker 1: state partnership with them. The state occupied them and did
Speaker 1: them and used them so they could become really recreation
Speaker 1: opportunities and destination spots that the federal government simply wasn't doing.
Speaker 1: They either didn't have the desire or they didn't have
Speaker 1: the money or the manpower to do it. They allowed
Speaker 1: either in the case at Moab, the county to manage
Speaker 1: it and run it as a great record Asian destination spot.
Speaker 1: And in Cannab Kane County area, it was the state
Speaker 1: that took it over and ran is a very well
Speaker 1: run state park. I think states can do that, but
Speaker 1: that is the issue. What you want to do is
Speaker 1: make sure that the land is managed for the greatest
Speaker 1: access for people. And that's why sometimes a lot of
Speaker 1: the conservation efforts that are out there simply to designate
Speaker 1: lands as monuments or whatever you want to or even
Speaker 1: as wilderness, it stops that kind of access. That's why
Speaker 1: when I was going through the p l I process
Speaker 1: in eastern Utah, the idea was, let's designate the areas
Speaker 1: that could be specifically their primary purpose, their focal purpose,
Speaker 1: their number one priority purpose. Especially once again, I'll get
Speaker 1: a complete sentence out here eventually, I'm sorry. A lot
Speaker 1: of people talk about multiple use. It's a great thing,
Speaker 1: which is good, but multiple use also can give you
Speaker 1: some problems when somebody's use of what their version of
Speaker 1: what is multiple use is more important than their version
Speaker 1: of multiple use. So what I was trying to do
Speaker 1: is say, Okay, give me the areas in which the
Speaker 1: primary use should be for recreation opportunities. That means in
Speaker 1: bike trails, that means in hiking trails, motorized trails, we
Speaker 1: even took some specific book cliffs. That's what I was
Speaker 1: looking for in the book cliffs, to make sure that
Speaker 1: that was always set aside specifically for hunting and fishing,
Speaker 1: and make that as the number one most significant issue.
Speaker 1: And if you then can put in other areas with
Speaker 1: that that doesn't take away from that primary issue of recreation, fine,
Speaker 1: but that has to be the primary area. And then
Speaker 1: put in other areas the primary purpose will be for development.
Speaker 1: If you can do recreation around the development, fine, but
Speaker 1: make sure there's a primarial and there's plenty of land
Speaker 1: for all of that. So whether if the federal government
Speaker 1: will actually do that, I'm cool with that. But what
Speaker 1: I have said on history, I have seen that federal
Speaker 1: land managers oftentimes make arbitrary and capricious decisions in which
Speaker 1: they actually close the access to those areas without every
Speaker 1: are trying to talk to people, and they don't. They
Speaker 1: don't care. They don't give a damn whether it hurts
Speaker 1: anybody or not. Having four areas that have always had
Speaker 1: a triathlon running their forest land and all the sudden
Speaker 1: they side, we're not going to do that anymore because
Speaker 1: we don't want to. And they didn't ever give a reason,
Speaker 1: or they give an alternative access to it. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I've used I have very seldom seen state and local
Speaker 1: governments do that. And besides, if you're a person there
Speaker 1: and it's owned run by the counties, run by the state,
Speaker 1: you have a better chance of getting to that person
Speaker 1: who's making that decision and voicing your objection than if
Speaker 1: it's run by the federal government. If you don't like
Speaker 1: what d O I did, you can come back here
Speaker 1: and throw rocks at their windows, but there's very little
Speaker 1: access that you actually have to say I don't like
Speaker 1: how you're managing my lands. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: bills that were coming through us our decisions have been
Speaker 1: made by federal land managers that legislators and their constituents
Speaker 1: just think they screwed us. They weren't supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: They took away an opportunity, and not just in the West.
Speaker 1: We past one in Michigan where the federal land managers
Speaker 1: decided to cut off voting activities and recreation activities on
Speaker 1: the shore of this area just because even though the
Speaker 1: locals didn't want it, it it had always been there. The
Speaker 1: locals were upset about it. We actually had to pass
Speaker 1: a piece of legislation that said, no, we reinstate those
Speaker 1: kinds of activities. I have found the federal government has
Speaker 1: a more cavalier attitude about lands than state and locals do.
Speaker 1: But once again, for me, it is are we using
Speaker 1: the lands actually to be a benefit and actually helping people?
Speaker 1: And that includes sportsman's, sportsmen, hundreds and fishers. They are
Speaker 1: extremely important to me. That's also why actually sportsman's are
Speaker 1: having I think an undue burden to try and make
Speaker 1: sure that we keep these lands open. I said the
Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson that comes up with a billion dollars. You
Speaker 1: guys are funding that land and water conservation which is offshore.
Speaker 1: That's three million dollars. I mean you are spending. And
Speaker 1: another reason, without mentioning any kind of names, their group
Speaker 1: out there that make a whole lot of money on
Speaker 1: federal lands. But actually, besides their taxes that they their
Speaker 1: corporate taxes, they spend, they don't put an extra dime
Speaker 1: into the maintenance of those public lands, but they insist
Speaker 1: those public lands to be open to actually fatten their
Speaker 1: bottom line. That bothers me too. You've mentioned a number
Speaker 1: of times the maintenance backlog on federally managed public lands
Speaker 1: and not having the resources to manage the land that
Speaker 1: you do have. I'm sure you're familiar with if I
Speaker 1: want to this idea, but I like to bring it
Speaker 1: up to get your feedback on or how you feel
Speaker 1: about it. Is Oftentimes you'll hear people articulated as a
Speaker 1: design to fail situation. And there's an analogy I've used
Speaker 1: and and and I'll use it here. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a far reaching analogy, but I think it kind
Speaker 1: of explains it. Like in my home, we have a dishwasher,
Speaker 1: dishwashing machine. I have sort of an aesthetic fundamental dislike
Speaker 1: of the thing. My wife likes it a lot. I
Speaker 1: will argue that it's not as efficient and not as
Speaker 1: effective as hand washing, okay, and she will argue that
Speaker 1: hand washing is not as efficient and not as effective
Speaker 1: as usual the dishwasher. So I have like a fundamental
Speaker 1: distrust and dislike of the contraption. If I were to
Speaker 1: go in and damage the machine internally so that it
Speaker 1: would clearly stop working well, and I could then later
Speaker 1: point out and say, you see, it doesn't work as
Speaker 1: well as this, I think that some people would look
Speaker 1: at the federal backlog on maintenance the lands, and would
Speaker 1: say that there are people who have a sort of
Speaker 1: fundamental dislike of federally managed public lands and they do
Speaker 1: their best to strip them of funding so that they
Speaker 1: can then point to how poor of a job they're doing.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that there's that that's that that argument
Speaker 1: has merit or do you not think that that could
Speaker 1: in some way explain it? Like? Um? Like now, actually, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I understand because my dishwasher at home works,
Speaker 1: my win in my apartment in Washington doesn't, so I
Speaker 1: do everything by hands. So so you're you're you're intimately
Speaker 1: familiar with both strata and I haven't fixed it, so
Speaker 1: you'll be happy with that dishwasher. Um, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to discount the validity of the argument that you're making.
Speaker 1: I think it has it could they I don't know
Speaker 1: how to verify that, nor do I know how to
Speaker 1: quantity quantify it. I also do think, though, that a
Speaker 1: lot of the backlock has come from decisions that are
Speaker 1: being made that are counterproductive. Um. For actually, and they're
Speaker 1: how do I put this once again? For example, a
Speaker 1: park if we're talking about that, to me to fulfill
Speaker 1: the person. The purpose of a park people have to
Speaker 1: go there and see it and experience it. There are
Speaker 1: some people within the Park Service that don't believe people
Speaker 1: should be seeing their parks. They have this idea that
Speaker 1: parks should be conserved. That's their purpose, not to experience it,
Speaker 1: but to conserve it. So they will put roadblocks and
Speaker 1: make it more difficult for people to go in there.
Speaker 1: I don't think we do enough to try and attract
Speaker 1: people into the national parks. We put roadblocks, we put
Speaker 1: fees that are silly. We put restrictions on how you
Speaker 1: access it. You can't take bottled water into whatever it is.
Speaker 1: They put restrictions on that. I think that's the bigger problem.
Speaker 1: I also think that some of the money has been
Speaker 1: misused that goes into the Park Service as well. So
Speaker 1: in the A. Bomb administration when they did the big
Speaker 1: increase in federal funding at the very beginning of his administration,
Speaker 1: a lot of new money went to the Park Service.
Speaker 1: Most of that Park Service money, to my to my mind,
Speaker 1: went to administration and to buy new uniforms and to
Speaker 1: higher new administrators. As to opposing, as opposed to putting
Speaker 1: into a park, we have tried with the Centennial Fund
Speaker 1: that we passed last year to try and change that
Speaker 1: dynamics so that we have real businessmen who are now
Speaker 1: part of that fund that are trying to leverage private
Speaker 1: money to come in there and buy things to add
Speaker 1: to parks and and cut down on that maintenance and
Speaker 1: do things. But they also are clearly right that if
Speaker 1: if you are a private money, private person, you want
Speaker 1: to put personal money into a project, there are some
Speaker 1: projects you want to see. You want to see roads
Speaker 1: and campgrounds. You're not going to put personal money into
Speaker 1: a sewer system. That's just not sexy enough. But if
Speaker 1: we actually have those things working together so that the
Speaker 1: Centennial Fund can be leveraging corporate money and private donations
Speaker 1: to get the outward display, the money Congress appropriates the
Speaker 1: Park Service can be put into the internal functions that
Speaker 1: are not sexy and exciting to do it. And if
Speaker 1: we get them working together now that's with the new
Speaker 1: Centennial Fund, and I like the process that's going the
Speaker 1: the person who's cheering that fund right now, as well
Speaker 1: as the new Park Service interim director. Our sympaths are
Speaker 1: are are sympathetic, they see eye to eye, and they're
Speaker 1: working towards that that to me can help solve the problem.
Speaker 1: And I don't necessarily think they're trying to script the
Speaker 1: parks them. So we can say a hot sea, I
Speaker 1: told you so, although I can buy that, especially if
Speaker 1: there's somebody that believes having visitors coming to the park
Speaker 1: is not what I want. I want to close it
Speaker 1: all down so it will always be preserved in my park.
Speaker 1: And once again, we have have anecdotal examples, but they
Speaker 1: are real examples of land managers in parks that simply
Speaker 1: said I don't want people in there because it's too
Speaker 1: noisy for the rest of my park. Well, what do
Speaker 1: you say to people, Well, let me approach this a
Speaker 1: different way. I agree with you from the things that
Speaker 1: I've seen in my lifetime. I agree with you that
Speaker 1: people will take a something they perceive as necessary and
Speaker 1: they will look at the available tools that are all
Speaker 1: there to achieve it. So if someone says we are
Speaker 1: running out of undisturbed landscapes, or we're running out of
Speaker 1: pieces of habitat for for wildlife species that are very
Speaker 1: sensitive to habitat loss or habitat destruction, and they recognize
Speaker 1: the problem, and then you have to go and look
Speaker 1: and say, well, what tools are at my disposal, and
Speaker 1: when you look, you might wand it being there, there's
Speaker 1: nothing tailor made for what I'm after. So I will
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take this this Antiquities Act and try to
Speaker 1: apply that to get what I'm after, or I'm going
Speaker 1: to take you know, the park mandate and apply that
Speaker 1: to achieve what I'm after. Do you feel that there's
Speaker 1: a better way for people who are trying to address
Speaker 1: those concerns? Clearly I do, and and it once again,
Speaker 1: um well, the thought that came to mind recently is
Speaker 1: the person who's now in charge of fish and wildlife
Speaker 1: came from state government, and state government's goal was to
Speaker 1: actually actually enhance wildlife, and they realized that to do
Speaker 1: that you had to get the hundreds and fishers to
Speaker 1: be paying those fees to put the money into the
Speaker 1: enhanced wildlife. So if you get more fees, you can
Speaker 1: get better wildlife. If you have better wildlife, more people
Speaker 1: will be hunting and fishing, and therefore it can work
Speaker 1: together you solve that problem. On the federal level, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily see that actually happening. And sometimes and and
Speaker 1: that's probably a good reason why the states are in
Speaker 1: charge of wildlife because I think simply see they do
Speaker 1: a better job. I see a lot of people saying,
Speaker 1: all right, if I want to enhance wildlife, let's just
Speaker 1: carve it out so no one ever touches it or
Speaker 1: talks to it, and make sure that those people who
Speaker 1: could benefit by by you know, hunting and fishing, they
Speaker 1: don't get a chance to actually put in any input,
Speaker 1: they don't get a chance to actually fund that process.
Speaker 1: And if we did it differently, so on the federal level,
Speaker 1: we were also saying, let's try to learn how that
Speaker 1: we can enhance wildlife by allowing people who hunt and
Speaker 1: fish to pay into the fund that enhances it and
Speaker 1: make sure and that that also has to say is
Speaker 1: you've got to get the kind of wildlife that people
Speaker 1: want hunting fish and I don't think that's wrong. Wildlife
Speaker 1: does pretty well. You know. I think that we had
Speaker 1: a conversation with some of the other day. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the year I was born, there were about
Speaker 1: one point five million turkeys in the US. There are
Speaker 1: now seven million turkeys. The explosion of turkeys, and they're
Speaker 1: all in my neighbor. They come in my yard and
Speaker 1: eat my grapes all the time. The explosion of turkeys
Speaker 1: created like a whole new population of hunters who are
Speaker 1: paying into the fee structure to support hunting. So it
Speaker 1: is it's like enhancing wildlife is enhancing spending on wildlife.
Speaker 1: I think that that's pretty clear. But I think that
Speaker 1: a problem of frustration some people have and I want
Speaker 1: to move on to other ideas, but a problem of
Speaker 1: frustration I think people have is what do we do
Speaker 1: about if if we as a nation have does this
Speaker 1: society that we want to set aside that we want
Speaker 1: to save some places and just have it be to that,
Speaker 1: do we want the most pristine landscapes to remain intact?
Speaker 1: I think that people are going to continue to try
Speaker 1: to strive to find tools to make that happen. And
Speaker 1: and the question would simply be is how much of
Speaker 1: the land you want to have that classification? I think
Speaker 1: wilderness is what wilderness is one or two percent of
Speaker 1: the country. But you can also the land regenerates itself.
Speaker 1: You leave something alone long enough, it reverts back to
Speaker 1: wilderness characteristics. The deck on my apartment will eventually become
Speaker 1: wilderness if I don't do anything with it long enough.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean that it has to be. It
Speaker 1: has to be. Now you can reclaim land and use
Speaker 1: that and it can be regenerated into that process. So
Speaker 1: you don't have to get recreation off of something in
Speaker 1: order to eventually reclaim it as wilderness. You don't have
Speaker 1: to get economic development off is something in order to
Speaker 1: eventually someday reclaim that as pristine land that you can
Speaker 1: recreate on or use for wilderness. I still think it
Speaker 1: can be a win win situation. The Outdoor Industry Association
Speaker 1: recently pulled, I mean, as you I'm sure you all know,
Speaker 1: recently pulled their trade show from Utah due to what
Speaker 1: they perceived to be anti public lands position. Um, it's
Speaker 1: eight hundred seven seven billion dollar industry. Do you have
Speaker 1: I mean glad to see him go? Think it was
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding, a mischaracterization. No, I'm obviously not glad to
Speaker 1: see them go, because there are a lot of small
Speaker 1: um industry personnel that that that show was very beneficial
Speaker 1: to them. The problem I have, obviously is I think
Speaker 1: there were a few very rich companies, big companies that
Speaker 1: were motivating that they were making a lot of demands
Speaker 1: all the time on the state of Utah, which I
Speaker 1: found funny but I wasn't in state government, so I
Speaker 1: didn't have to deal with that at all. I do
Speaker 1: think that some of the rich companies that motive that
Speaker 1: that mandated that move UM had provided misinformation. I feel
Speaker 1: personally used by some of them. I think they have
Speaker 1: lied about my state as well, and and I'm somewhat
Speaker 1: bitter about that. But you know, with any private sector,
Speaker 1: you have a right to do whatever you want to do,
Speaker 1: and I think you, as much as anyone would respect
Speaker 1: that right. I acknowledged that right. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I respect aledge Uh. I wanna play a definition game. UM.
Speaker 1: We talked, like in the sports community, we talked a
Speaker 1: ton about access, and we've talked a lot about it
Speaker 1: just sitting here today. Traditionally, my understanding of the word
Speaker 1: had been UM that access was if I were to say,
Speaker 1: like an increase in access for for hunters and anglers,
Speaker 1: increase and access for sportsmen, I would mean that lands
Speaker 1: that you couldn't practice your discipline on, that you couldn't
Speaker 1: hunt and fish on in the past, would be made
Speaker 1: available for those activities. So an increase in access would
Speaker 1: be that you're opening up places where you're allowed to
Speaker 1: do the activities. I feel that now people are taking
Speaker 1: people are looking at this idea that people love access,
Speaker 1: and you find people coalesced around this idea that we
Speaker 1: need more access because oftentimes when you go out and
Speaker 1: pull people who are coming into hunting and fishing, they
Speaker 1: will cite access as a significant barrier to entry. Many
Speaker 1: people name it as the primary barrier to entry, meaning
Speaker 1: a place to go. Um by people taking the taking
Speaker 1: the fact that people like the word access and applied
Speaker 1: it to different things, And now I think part of
Speaker 1: the conversation around access is almost like a like we
Speaker 1: had a misunderstanding and the access might in fact just
Speaker 1: mean increasing the ways in which people can access land,
Speaker 1: building new roads, removing restrictions on travel restrictions, and that
Speaker 1: is access enhancement. Do you have a working definition of
Speaker 1: public access, like like what it means to you and
Speaker 1: how you view it? Isn't it the same thing that
Speaker 1: opening open Having more area sometimes requires the ability of
Speaker 1: getting people into those areas. Yeah, so let's let's take this.
Speaker 1: It still opens more areas for their their use. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I would view if I was going to go
Speaker 1: look and say, like what would be a great access story,
Speaker 1: I would look at what recently happened in New Mexico
Speaker 1: where we had a wilderness area that was landlocked. So
Speaker 1: you have a small wilderness there a significant wilderness area
Speaker 1: that the public literally could not get into because they
Speaker 1: would have to trespass and leaving the public road, they
Speaker 1: would have to trespass to get in there. A landowner
Speaker 1: who owned one of the buffer the barrier pieces donated
Speaker 1: as property to the federal government. It came with certain caveats,
Speaker 1: um some the the senators from New Mexico, Heinrich and
Speaker 1: you'd all worked with Secretary Zinky, and we got a
Speaker 1: new piece of land added to the federal estate that
Speaker 1: provides access into the wilderness area. No one changed the
Speaker 1: travel restrictions within the wilderness area. It's it's a non
Speaker 1: motorized wilderness area. But now Americans can park their car
Speaker 1: and hike in and access this wilderness area, the Sabanosa
Speaker 1: Wilderness Area. So in my mind, I would look like
Speaker 1: that is a beautiful access story. I like that one
Speaker 1: a whole bunch um. That would be like a definition
Speaker 1: of access. And I feel that or I feel that
Speaker 1: some people are taking access and meaning just trying to
Speaker 1: remove travel restrictions on land that already is technically accessible
Speaker 1: to hunters of fishermen, and I think that that causes
Speaker 1: a certain amount of tention because people will look and
Speaker 1: feel that we have a finite amount of space that
Speaker 1: is off limits to mechanized use in vehicle travel, and
Speaker 1: they are working hard to try to preserve those intact spaces.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that there's merits of wanting those spaces?
Speaker 1: If I understand your question, yeah, you do, Uh, I
Speaker 1: think so. I mean the example you gave in New
Speaker 1: Mexico cool. I don't have a problem with that whatsoever. Um.
Speaker 1: We did have when when we lost a majority and
Speaker 1: went in minority, there were a couple of hearings we
Speaker 1: had in the Resource Committee again in which they brought
Speaker 1: some union people out because they thought they would be
Speaker 1: very positive about conservation concepts, and they were. But what
Speaker 1: they quit doing that quick soon because they found out
Speaker 1: that when you had economic development, like like an oil
Speaker 1: rig or something that was an oil well that was developed,
Speaker 1: they had to have roads that went into there. And
Speaker 1: the fact that they had some new roads developed opened
Speaker 1: up a whole area that was not part of the
Speaker 1: economic development for hunting and fishing that wasn't there before.
Speaker 1: Because they didn't have the road. So oddly enough, these
Speaker 1: union members were very positive about the economic development aspect
Speaker 1: because it allowed them to actually get into areas that
Speaker 1: they didn't have before. And I think that's the same
Speaker 1: thing you're saying, isn't it. Well, Uh, apologies on me
Speaker 1: a little bit opaque, but it's not my intention, and
Speaker 1: it's compared to some of the other things we talked about.
Speaker 1: It's probably a little bit not something you hear as
Speaker 1: much about, but it has to do with I don't
Speaker 1: feel that. I feel that a little in a little
Speaker 1: bit way, we're twisting the intent of access enhancement to
Speaker 1: make it be that we're trying to increase vehicle traffic
Speaker 1: and motorize use in areas where it wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: in camouflaging that as an achievement of access enhancement, but
Speaker 1: that you don't seem particularly like inspired and talking about that, um,
Speaker 1: and i'd like to ask you can we're running out topic.
Speaker 1: Were going into one last idea for a minute. I
Speaker 1: gotta think about what you just said, because I don't
Speaker 1: know whether I agree with you or not, but I
Speaker 1: don't disagree with you yet. Okay, maybe we'll return to
Speaker 1: it next time. Um, can you give me mile high
Speaker 1: perspectives on the Endangered Species Act? It's had some remarkable successes,
Speaker 1: had some remarkable failures. It leads to a lot of tensions.
Speaker 1: What are some of the things that you would like
Speaker 1: to see happen with the e s A As we
Speaker 1: increasingly talk about modifying it. There's been talking about Altright
Speaker 1: appealing it. Do you have a general guiding principle when
Speaker 1: you're looking at the Endangered Species Act? Yeah, frustration because
Speaker 1: they don't know how to fix it. The problem is
Speaker 1: right now with most of the species that are put
Speaker 1: on the Endangered Species Act, the goal is simply to
Speaker 1: control land area around it. It is not to improve
Speaker 1: the species. We is why the success rate of this
Speaker 1: program is probably one of the lowest of every program.
Speaker 1: Were you actually I got a good baseball store that
Speaker 1: goes even better than that? But Um, the bottom line,
Speaker 1: because I know you're running out of time, is I
Speaker 1: would love the Endangered Species Act to be better written
Speaker 1: so that what we do is having matrix that were
Speaker 1: in there on what it takes to actually rehabilitate a
Speaker 1: species and then moving towards that. I don't think we're
Speaker 1: doing that enough in fact, that we're not doing that
Speaker 1: at all right now, it's it's simply to control an
Speaker 1: area as if that will magically rehabilitate the species. That's
Speaker 1: not the same thing. I wish it was function more
Speaker 1: as how you actually do the job, as opposed to saying, okay,
Speaker 1: we list this as a species. Let's hope if we
Speaker 1: leave it alone and we'll get better. That doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, earlier I mentioned people that are trying to
Speaker 1: do landscape preservation reach out and try to find tools
Speaker 1: and apply those tools to get the job done, even
Speaker 1: if the tool isn't intended to be that way. And
Speaker 1: you feel that the ESA is is being used like
Speaker 1: that as well. Yeah, Yeah, clearly that happens. Sometimes Sometimes
Speaker 1: it just happens that we don't know how the hell
Speaker 1: do I actually rehabilitate the species, but it's listed anyway.
Speaker 1: What do you feel like, uh, in short term, what
Speaker 1: kind of thing do you feel that we're going to
Speaker 1: see movement on e s A modifications or or rewriting
Speaker 1: the essay or clarifying the essay. I hope we could
Speaker 1: clarify it in some way to add those those those
Speaker 1: modifications so you can find out so it can actually
Speaker 1: be successful and you can monitor and you know where
Speaker 1: you're going to get that success. To be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to write that into the language of
Speaker 1: the bill, which is why it is frustrating to me.
Speaker 1: So I have I have sarcastically said you might as
Speaker 1: well just get rid of it all and start over again. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't mean I really want to get rid of
Speaker 1: it and start over again. It's just I don't know
Speaker 1: short of doing that, how you start, how you fix it.
Speaker 1: I've seen where you've said that, and I've asked people
Speaker 1: what you might mean by that, and they've said that
Speaker 1: you were saying that it needs work, and you were
Speaker 1: starting at an extreme, hoping to find some solution in
Speaker 1: the middle ground. Now sometimes I just say stuff for
Speaker 1: the fun of it. Do you have any uh we've
Speaker 1: touched on a lot. Do you have any final thoughts
Speaker 1: you'd like to add in? It's been great to I
Speaker 1: mean admittedly, I mean I've been you know, reading your
Speaker 1: name for so long. Um, that's ominous. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: been great to hear from you how you know, how
Speaker 1: you kind of how you think and how you approach
Speaker 1: the world. And I think that people really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: But do you have any final things you want to
Speaker 1: touch on or add on now? I I appreciate the
Speaker 1: chance to discuss things, um and and the way you've
Speaker 1: presented them and given me the opportunity to talk about it. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: um as much as I said, you know, words have meaning,
Speaker 1: they can also be confusing, and sometimes we're not really
Speaker 1: talking at an issue, we're talking around it and using
Speaker 1: the same words with a different meaning to it all together.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lot of the problem that
Speaker 1: we have in the issues that deal with lands and
Speaker 1: public lands. We all have a common goal, but we
Speaker 1: have different meanings of how you achieve that common goal.
Speaker 1: So some it's easy to talk about this stuff. In fact,
Speaker 1: maybe that's one of the issues. I mean, we've gone
Speaker 1: through it. I haven't really gone through that many different topics,
Speaker 1: but you've gone into in depth with it. It's like,
Speaker 1: what an hour and a half in depth. Usually it's
Speaker 1: sound bites, it's tweets. Sorry. Usually I don't get a
Speaker 1: chance to talk this this level, this intensity of how
Speaker 1: we can try and solve some of these issues or
Speaker 1: bring people together. I don't get that kind of opportunity.
Speaker 1: This is kind of a union because I appreciate you
Speaker 1: doing it. Oh, I appreciate you coming on. And I
Speaker 1: think that as much as different people in different organizations
Speaker 1: have um wildly different perspectives on how to solve some
Speaker 1: of these problems, I think it says a lot for
Speaker 1: our times and a lot for the country that we
Speaker 1: have the luxury of being able to have a conversation
Speaker 1: around public lands and wildlife. Um, that we still have
Speaker 1: a lot of it, and it's very beautiful, and we're all,
Speaker 1: hopefully all of us are deeply invested in seeing that
Speaker 1: those things continue into the future. So thank you for
Speaker 1: your time. I know you're very busy, man. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you sitting down with us to discuss these issues. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the invitation.