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Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,

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

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Speaker 1: can't predict anything.

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Speaker 2: The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

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Speaker 2: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting

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Speaker 2: for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every

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Speaker 2: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light

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Speaker 2: dot com. F I R S T L I T

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Speaker 2: E dot com. All right, everybody, we're joined today by

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Speaker 2: the Prairie Preacher. He's in from Tennessee. I was excited

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Speaker 2: about him coming on as a guest, but I'm not

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Speaker 2: anymore because he was just trying to explain to me

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Speaker 2: that Pennsylvania is the South.

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Speaker 1: I told him parts of Pennsylvany.

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Speaker 2: I told him that's not true, because I of my

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Speaker 2: own maxim if you can ice fish, it's not the South. Honestly,

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Speaker 2: sitting here, he tried to lay some bullshit ecological argument

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Speaker 2: on me and didn't even try to tackle the ice

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Speaker 2: fishing question.

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Speaker 3: Lay a bullshit sociological reason on you. It's true, man,

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Speaker 3: parts of southern Pennsylvania are the South.

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Speaker 1: Man. We'll get into this in a minute. I wish

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Speaker 1: we were talking about Ohio because I have such a

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Speaker 1: great Ohio story I want to tell, and I associate

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Speaker 1: it with Pennsylvania because I had driven out of there

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Speaker 1: into Ohio and then the story happened, So it doesn't

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Speaker 1: really fit.

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Speaker 3: You're always starting stories and never finished.

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Speaker 1: But this is all on hold because there's all this stuff.

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Speaker 2: Crims just got a root canal she's got, she's all

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Speaker 2: novacane up in this. Say something? Does it sound slurred?

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Speaker 4: Oh no, it's like in the front, I feel I

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Speaker 4: feel weird. I feel like a fat I have a

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Speaker 4: fat lip in the front, left side, right side.

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Speaker 1: You don't look fat lipped. Okay, it's all on your head.

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Speaker 1: So if Chris is normal, is normal? Quick? I gotta

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Speaker 1: get into some stuff. I got a h we got

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Speaker 1: we got like a bucket of just tear. Like really, people,

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Speaker 1: people really fed up.

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Speaker 2: About last week's episode, which I'm going to try to

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Speaker 2: address for a while in a minute here why they're

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Speaker 2: right and wrong to be mad. But but back to

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Speaker 2: our the prayer Preacher Dwayne Askedes, doctor Dwayne Estes, Uh

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Speaker 2: he's poor on geography, but strong on.

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Speaker 1: Strong on ecology.

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Speaker 2: Dwayne Essa serves as the executive director at the Southeastern

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Speaker 2: Grasslands Institute, Full Professor of Biology, director of the A. P.

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Speaker 1: S u Rbarium. Where is that? What is that apple?

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Speaker 5: That's like a plant museum?

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Speaker 1: But what is a P. S You?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, Austin p State University just outside Nashville.

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Speaker 2: Okay, the herbarian Principal investigator for the Center of Excellence

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Speaker 2: for Field Biography Biology.

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Speaker 1: Sorry.

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Speaker 2: In January twenty seventeen, he co founded the Southeastern Grasslands

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Speaker 2: Institute with colleague THEO. Whitsell. And we're going to talk

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Speaker 2: about a lot of his work with grasslands. And I

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Speaker 2: got a boatload of questions for you. We got to

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Speaker 2: do something. But then we're going to talk about the questions.

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Speaker 2: And just a key up on the questions. One of

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Speaker 2: my many questions is one already brought up. I'm going

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Speaker 2: to allow you to to retort about why Brody's a Southerner.

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Speaker 3: No, I'm in.

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Speaker 1: Northern Brody's I'd be like a Brody's a Southerner.

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Speaker 3: Needs to be divided into several different states.

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Speaker 1: Okay, why Brody's a Southerner?

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Speaker 5: Upset?

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Speaker 2: Now, how Clay Clay should all in because he's gonna

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Speaker 2: be like just distraught that now, Brody's that.

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Speaker 1: Southerner.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm liking this.

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Speaker 4: Now.

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Speaker 1: I got another question about this, and I want to

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Speaker 1: get into this with you. Is like.

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Speaker 2: When reading about the colonial American period, so late Colonial

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Speaker 2: American period, mid seventeen hundreds, that that these long hunters

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Speaker 2: would go into present day Kentucky and you see similar

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Speaker 2: things from southern Indiana where they're like I can't see

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Speaker 2: a tree, Like, how the hell is that true? Don't

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Speaker 2: answer me now, but just noodle on that. And then

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Speaker 2: when they talk about going into cane breaks that are

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Speaker 2: so big you can get lost in cane breaks? How

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Speaker 2: the hell is that true?

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Speaker 1: So noodle on that?

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Speaker 5: Got it?

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Speaker 1: Noodle can Yeah, how that be true? How long does

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Speaker 1: he have he's got I don't know, five minutes, ten minutes. Uh?

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Speaker 1: You cool very much?

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Speaker 6: All right, make sure you're on that, Mike, Dwayne when

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Speaker 6: you're talking.

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Speaker 5: Got it?

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Speaker 6: Thank you?

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Speaker 1: He is just didn't hear him? He is cool with that.

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Speaker 2: There's I got so many questions about this stuff, why

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Speaker 2: things are different? And then like, is there any possibility

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Speaker 2: of getting southeastern grasslands fixed back up again?

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Speaker 5: Hmmm? Good question?

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Speaker 1: Noodle on that.

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Speaker 2: Uh okay, So lots of consternation about an episode we

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Speaker 2: did last week where we do a State of the

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Speaker 2: Union with We did a State of the Union sort

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Speaker 2: of a State of the Conservation Union with Joel Peterson,

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Speaker 2: who is the president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt

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Speaker 2: Conservation Partnership, and people just upset about how that conversation went.

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Speaker 2: And I feel like, I want to, like, without Joel

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Speaker 2: in the room, not that I would have said anything

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Speaker 2: different with him in the room, I want to context you, Liza,

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Speaker 2: a couple of things and offer a few observations to

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Speaker 2: people who really feel like the way that the way

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Speaker 2: that we've discussed the incoming administrations actions around conservation issues

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Speaker 2: has been inadequate. But first, allow me to explain a

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Speaker 2: couple of things from my position one Joel Peterson. Joel

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Speaker 2: Peterson is the president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt

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Speaker 2: Conservation Partnership, And for people that weren't listening carefully, the

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Speaker 2: Theatre Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is they are a d C

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Speaker 2: organization that works on federal policy. All right, This is

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Speaker 2: not like they're not like grassroots protests movements. They work

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Speaker 2: on federal policy, meaning engaging with lawmakers about federal policy.

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Speaker 2: As I tried to explain, this administration is here for

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Speaker 2: four years. This administration might likely have a round two.

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Speaker 2: Depending on how things go, they might have a round

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Speaker 2: two where someone such as JdE Vance carries the MAGA

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Speaker 2: mantle into another four years. If you worked in federal policy,

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Speaker 2: ask yourself this. If you worked in federal conservation policy,

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Speaker 2: and you have a high likelihood the way things look

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Speaker 2: right now, I would say a high likelihood that you

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Speaker 2: will need to be engaging with this administration for the

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Speaker 2: next eight years. Are you telling me that it's unfair

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Speaker 2: to say that you're trying to get the lay of

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Speaker 2: the land, trying to look at who's coming in, trying

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Speaker 2: to look at how the decision making is going, and

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Speaker 2: trying to take a somewhat slow, gradual process to engaging

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Speaker 2: with the administration around conservation issues. Does that really strike you?

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Speaker 2: Is that irrational that you're waiting a second and watching

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Speaker 2: and assessing how decisions are being made, what they care about,

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Speaker 2: what they don't care about, in order to engage in

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Speaker 2: a potentially eight year long dialogue about conservation now, Joel

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Speaker 2: Peterson laid out when we sat down to talk with

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Speaker 2: Joel Peterson. Prior to Joel Peterson coming on the episode,

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Speaker 2: Joel was already concerned. He's like, anything I say is

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Speaker 2: going to become outdated by the time you post the episode.

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Speaker 2: And before he came on, he wanted to clarify when

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Speaker 2: is it coming out? I need to choose my words

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Speaker 2: carefully about when it's coming out. I talked to Krinn

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Speaker 2: Krin said, will be able to put it out the

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Speaker 2: following Monday. We made a joke about how anything that

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Speaker 2: happens today is already going to be obsolete by the

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Speaker 2: time the episode releases on Monday. We release episodes on Monday.

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Speaker 2: It's always driven me kind of crazy, but that's how

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Speaker 2: we do it. There's a bunch of reasons I'll explain

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Speaker 2: some other day about why we keep a certain cadence

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Speaker 2: and don't just drop instantly. Trust me, it makes sixty percent.

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Speaker 2: That's sixty percent makes sense. So Joel Peterson comes on

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Speaker 2: already concerned. Then between Joel Peters Joel Peterson's appearance on

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Speaker 2: the show and the release of his episode, The The

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Speaker 2: Doge Boys, the Administration, however you want to put it,

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Speaker 2: axes thousands of Forest service positions and at SOMEHAE we

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Speaker 2: get a lot of emails from people again not listening carefully,

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Speaker 2: being like, well, how could you not bring that up? Well,

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Speaker 2: that's why that didn't come up. That hadn't happened yet.

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Speaker 2: In fact, this is the first time I've sat in

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Speaker 2: front of a microphone since that did happen.

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Speaker 1: But hold that thought for a minute.

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Speaker 2: And think about this before you get like, before you

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Speaker 2: start talking about who really has the back of public

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Speaker 2: lands people and who don't ask yourself this like like

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Speaker 2: Trump ran on the promise of having Elon Musk form

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Speaker 2: a group called Doge, and that Doge was going to

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Speaker 2: go in and look for federal efficiencies and reduce the

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Speaker 2: federal workforce. He ran on this.

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Speaker 1: And won on this.

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Speaker 2: People that are run around saying it's a coup, It's like,

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Speaker 2: that's an odd coup that you win in a that

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Speaker 2: you win a landslide election campaigning on the fact that

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Speaker 2: you're going to have a specific individual do a specific thing.

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Speaker 2: If you win, then you win the specific individual does

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Speaker 2: this specific thing. And somehow people are mistaking what this

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Speaker 2: is really all about. This isn't me saying what I

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Speaker 2: think about it, But come on, like, like, don't just

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Speaker 2: start reading the news one day and not go read

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Speaker 2: the news from the other days and start thinking you

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Speaker 2: understand what's going on. Also, ask yourself this, and I'm

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Speaker 2: going to get around to what I think about this

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Speaker 2: in a minute, ask yourself this. Do you think Elon

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Speaker 2: Musk gives a shit about the environment? I mean, this

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Speaker 2: guy has already focused. This guy has already set sale

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Speaker 2: for Mars. He's interested in Mars, which is a lifeless planet.

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Speaker 2: So if you think appealing to Doge on the fact

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Speaker 2: of conservation and land access and biodiversity, he's a interested

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Speaker 2: in the in the least biodiverse place you can possibly

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Speaker 2: think of, which is a place where life is inhospitable.

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Speaker 2: That's where he'd like to go. He wears a colonized

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Speaker 2: Mars shirt. So you think that coming to Doge and

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Speaker 2: talking about access and biodiversity, they don't care. Like they

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Speaker 2: don't care. They don't care. As Trump pointed out Trump,

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Speaker 2: Don Junior is a hunter. Okay, Don Junior has at times,

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Speaker 2: like Don Junior has at times in the past, I'm

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Speaker 2: not sure about currently has it at times in the past,

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Speaker 2: supported different conservation groups, holds lifetime memberships with conservation groups.

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Speaker 2: The guy likes wildlife. Okay, he's not driving this. So

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Speaker 2: for people to think that you might go that like that,

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Speaker 2: For someone in federal policy to take on like a

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Speaker 2: complaining tonality at this point right now might make Elon

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Speaker 2: Muskin doge reconsider cutting forest service jobs. It's like, get real,

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Speaker 2: that is not how you're gonna shape any kind of

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Speaker 2: action with and within this administration. You're so naive to

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Speaker 2: think that that that that's what you're gonna do. Here, Randall,

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Speaker 2: butt in at any time.

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Speaker 7: I I don't disagree with you. I mean I think, like,

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Speaker 7: do you want me to butt in.

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Speaker 1: Whenever you're writing. I'm just want you know you have

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Speaker 1: the right to butt in and Dwayne.

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Speaker 2: Dwayne's probably sitting over there and wonder what the hell

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Speaker 2: we're talking about because you didn't listen to the thing

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Speaker 2: we're talking about.

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Speaker 1: And you can comment on it too, or you can

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Speaker 1: just stick to what you want. This is something I

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Speaker 1: have to do.

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Speaker 2: I'm not speaking for Dwayne at all. So here here's

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Speaker 2: the other part about this. Other agencies like to understand

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Speaker 2: these for services. I'm gonna read a letter from a

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Speaker 2: for service gun a minute, but let's back up. Other

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Speaker 2: agencies are being axed Okay, us A I D. Is

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Speaker 2: being dismantled, enrolled in under the State Department. Now ask

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Speaker 2: yourself this question to be honest when you answer this.

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Speaker 2: Just promise me you're going to be honest with yourself.

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Speaker 2: Did you know did you know that USAID was not

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Speaker 2: under the State Department? Like, answer that in all honesty.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: However, USAID is being dismantled to be put under the

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Speaker 2: State Department. The administration ran on the idea of dismantling

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Speaker 2: the Department of Education. They are closing doors, turning off

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Speaker 2: email addresses, and axing the place. The Justice Department is

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Speaker 2: making huge cuts, The FBI is making huge cuts. The

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Speaker 2: military is probably going to be making big cuts. They're

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Speaker 2: already outlining cuts they're going to make within the military.

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Speaker 2: So point being, I don't applaud any of this. These

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Speaker 2: are areas that I'm not even an expert in, but

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Speaker 2: I see this going on. So to see that the

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Speaker 2: Forest Service, so the Bureau of Land Management, is going

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Speaker 2: to make a bunch of cuts. I can't look at this.

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Speaker 2: I can look at that and say that really sucks.

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Speaker 2: And I personally think that really sucks. They're cutting things

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Speaker 2: that I care about. But I can't look at it

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Speaker 2: and see that the administration is targeting land management agencies

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Speaker 2: because they're dismantling non land management agencies.

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Speaker 1: So in looking at the cuts to Forest Service and

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Speaker 1: the cuts.

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Speaker 2: To BLM, which are our big land management agencies, look

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Speaker 2: at it in the context of a broader conversation about

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Speaker 2: what is happening right now writ large across the federal government. Meaning,

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Speaker 2: if you're going to understand these cuts and talk about

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Speaker 2: these cuts, look at them in the context. This is

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Speaker 2: not meant to be at this point in time. This

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Speaker 2: is not meant to be an assault on the Forest Service.

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Speaker 2: It's meant to be an assault on the federal workforce,

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Speaker 2: of which the Forest Service is part. If I had

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Speaker 2: somehow like FIAT power as some kind of dictator to

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Speaker 2: come in and say, like what ones are okay and

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Speaker 2: what ones are not okay, believe me, I would probably

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Speaker 2: wind up saying I don't get USAID. A lot of

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Speaker 2: it seems kind of ridiculous. Go ahead, Forest Service, don't

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Speaker 2: touch it. In fact, take USAID's money and give it

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Speaker 2: to the Forest SERVI US That would be my perspective,

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Speaker 2: But that's not the position I'm in, and I don't

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Speaker 2: really know that pointing out aspects that people are pointing

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Speaker 2: out is going to reverse the situation. A lot of

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Speaker 2: other people wrote in about this national debt question, like

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Speaker 2: me having the audacity to talk about the impacts of

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Speaker 2: the national debt. Now, this is a kind of a

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Speaker 2: little bit situation where you can choose to play chess

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Speaker 2: or you can choose to play checkers around spending the

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Speaker 2: national debt. Like I'm going to keep this within a

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Speaker 2: within a conversation of National of Natural Resources Management, just

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Speaker 2: to give you some perspective. Every year this country, we

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Speaker 2: spend eight hundred billion dollars to pay interest, to pay

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Speaker 2: our interest on the national debt. Take a stab at

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Speaker 2: what the BLM's annual budget is, which I bet you

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Speaker 2: like I'm guessing most people don't know.

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Speaker 1: I had to look it up. Take a guess, Randall.

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Speaker 2: Oh, the national interest on the national debt is eight

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Speaker 2: hundred billion.

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Speaker 7: The BLM, I'd say thirty million. Way low, one hundred million.

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Speaker 5: Billion, way low, way low.

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Speaker 3: One hundred billion is low?

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Speaker 1: Oh no, way, Okay.

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Speaker 7: We're getting somewhere now five hundred million.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know it's a problem you're creating for me

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Speaker 1: right now. Exactly is you know, like if you're saying

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Speaker 1: like like this bark was huge, guess how big he was,

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Speaker 1: and then you guess bigger?

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Speaker 6: Two hundred We've run it got problem, I mean countless

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Speaker 6: times over the last six years.

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Speaker 1: And then I got to go, well, no, it was

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Speaker 1: one to eighty.

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Speaker 6: And then.

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Speaker 1: But let's back up.

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Speaker 3: Eight hundred billion in interest, and then the big.

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Speaker 2: This is not this is not paying down the debt.

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Speaker 2: Servicing the debt is eight hundred billion dollars. The BLM's

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Speaker 2: annual budget is one point seven billionllion dollars. So in

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Speaker 2: any conversation about the long term, like way long term

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Speaker 2: health of natural resources in this country and where we're

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Speaker 2: spending our money, I'm just saying, I'm saying, and I'm

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Speaker 2: asking you to consider this. If we didn't have to

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Speaker 2: factor in in our budget, in our federal budget, if

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Speaker 2: we weren't factoring in eight hundred billion dollars in interest

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Speaker 2: payments that don't pay down the debt, I have to

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Speaker 2: think I have to think that there would be more

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Speaker 2: room than one point seven billion for the BLM. I

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Speaker 2: can't sit here and guarantee you that that's where it

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Speaker 2: would go, but I think that the health of the country,

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Speaker 2: and by meaning the health of the country, the parts

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Speaker 2: I like about this country, the natural resources, the public lands,

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Speaker 2: the wildlife, those things are going to continue to sacrifice

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Speaker 2: if we have to continue to do this. So if

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Speaker 2: I bring up, like even friends of mine get mad

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Speaker 2: if I bring up the idea of the national debt,

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Speaker 2: meaning like, oh, you would sell our prime, our our

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Speaker 2: main global our national treasures in order to pay down

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Speaker 2: the debt.

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Speaker 1: I never said that. Ever.

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Speaker 2: I'm pointing out that if you're gonna like a lot

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Speaker 2: of times we keep conservation conversations like very.

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Speaker 3: In a bubble.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

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Speaker 2: I have over the years and talking about conservation, I

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Speaker 2: have oftentimes looked at it in a bubble, certain things

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Speaker 2: in a bubble, and these in this conversation. As the

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Speaker 2: administration goes along, we will wind up, I promise you,

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Speaker 2: we will wind up with plenty of bubbles. So when

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Speaker 2: I said, when I sat there and said waiting for

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Speaker 2: the people, are like, oh, I can't believe you would

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Speaker 2: say you're gonna wait for the dust to settle or

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Speaker 2: whatever the hell I said. Let me rephrase what I said,

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Speaker 2: because you're right, I would be disappointed to hear someone

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Speaker 2: say that too. What I'm waiting for is parts of

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Speaker 2: this to bubble wise. But right now it's hard to

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Speaker 2: bubble it because I can't take like the Force Service cuts.

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Speaker 2: Those can't be bubbilized because they're rolled into like a

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Speaker 2: wholesale reorganization of all of these federal agencies. So you're

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Speaker 2: not gonna be able to call your politician right now,

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Speaker 2: Like I'm telling you that, like it doesn't work. You're

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Speaker 2: not going to call your politician right now and say, hey, hey,

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Speaker 2: I understand like the thousands that the tens of thousands

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Speaker 2: of federal employees are getting caught across all of these

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Speaker 2: administrations or organizations. That's all fine. What I would like

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Speaker 2: you to do is put the Force Service people back.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't.

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Speaker 1: It ain't gonna happen.

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Speaker 3: Like, what's like top of mind and most concerning for

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Speaker 3: us is not it doesn't translate to the entirety of

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Speaker 3: the federal government or like the people who voted for

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Speaker 3: the people who are running the federal government right like

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Speaker 3: they're not necessarily They're top concern is not conservation and

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Speaker 3: land access and things like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because they're not looking at they're not looking at

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Speaker 1: any bubbles. Yep, they're not looking at at this point,

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Speaker 1: no one is talking about any particulars. It will come.

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Speaker 2: Like like starting already, it'll start to take some clarity,

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Speaker 2: but like right now, there's a little bit of like

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Speaker 2: waiting to see what happened. And with the Forest Service cuts, like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's like a catastrophic I'm

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Speaker 2: gonna read a letter where someone puts it really well,

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Speaker 2: But I'm inviting people to stop and like expand outside

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Speaker 2: of the way that we've historically framed conservation questions and

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Speaker 2: try to get a look at like where the national

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Speaker 2: mood is at right now with people in power, there

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Speaker 2: is this thing called the national debt, and know, like

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Speaker 2: the debt's not going anywhere, but they're going to make

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Speaker 2: a budget, and within this budget they're going to try

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Speaker 2: to find a way of how do you find the

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Speaker 2: money to facilitate the interest payments on the debt? And

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Speaker 2: how do you fund some tax cuts which they ran

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Speaker 2: on okay, and still balance the budget in some way

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Speaker 2: or another. All of these questions about what we're gonna

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Speaker 2: do on real specific conservation issues outside of like like

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Speaker 2: how we're gonna fight to keep mining interests out of

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Speaker 2: the headwaters of the Boundy waters, okay or sorry, on

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Speaker 2: the borders of the Boundy waters. How are you gonna

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Speaker 2: work on that? Where you gonna do about ambler Road,

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Speaker 2: What you're gonna do about anwar, What you're gonna do

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Speaker 2: about pebble mind, Like, all of these things are gonna

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Speaker 2: get specific with specific players doing specific things, and they're

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Speaker 2: like these little battles are gonna play out NonStop for

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Speaker 2: a bunch of years. But right now, on the employee thing,

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Speaker 2: it's part of such it's part of such a broader

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Speaker 2: conversation that gets really hard to explain how to be

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Speaker 2: like tactful at this moment. It's dizzying. It's dizzying. I

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Speaker 2: try to follow politics very closely. It's dizzying right now.

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Speaker 2: And it's like it's intentionally dizzy. That's a point people

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Speaker 2: keep bringing up. It's like it's it's it's meant to

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Speaker 2: be almost it almost appears without any kind of broader

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Speaker 2: goal in mind.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think that's I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 7: that people who want to shrink the federal government want

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Speaker 7: to shrink it in the way that it's being done right, correct.

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Speaker 7: I think lost in all this is that these are

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Speaker 7: just completely arbitrary decisions and that they've had to you know,

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Speaker 7: I saw it the other day that they'd cut security

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Speaker 7: people at nuclear facilities and then they realized they didn't

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Speaker 7: have anymore, and so they're trying to get in touch

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Speaker 7: with those people to bring them back. And the same

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Speaker 7: for bird flu. I saw just the other day of

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Speaker 7: the USDA cut all the people working on the bird

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Speaker 7: flu outbreak that's driving up the price of eggs, and

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Speaker 7: now they need to figure out how to get in

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Speaker 7: touch with those people to bring them back. So I think,

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Speaker 7: regardless of like where you stand, I think like we

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Speaker 7: can acknowledge that this is a very arbitrary and destructive

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Speaker 7: way of doing it.

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Speaker 1: It is, yeah, it is.

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Speaker 2: It's emerging that, and it's like, and parts of this

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Speaker 2: are hitting at things I care about deeply, But I'm

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Speaker 2: not succumbing to the temptation to look at it as

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Speaker 2: being an assault on the things I care about deeply

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Speaker 2: rather than an assault on like a kind of hamhanded

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Speaker 2: assault on the idea of the federal role in American lives.

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Speaker 3: When I'm scrolling through the news and it cuts here,

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Speaker 3: cuts there, cuts there, cuts in the Forest Service or wherever.

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Speaker 3: I've had to force myself not to like focus just

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Speaker 3: on that one thing, right because it's kind of unfair.

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Speaker 3: It's like unfair to think about it that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's thousands and thousands and thousands of people and

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Speaker 2: any person. I have a neighbor who is a school teacher.

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Speaker 5: He's like, he could.

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Speaker 2: Go on for a long time about what the Department

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Speaker 2: of Education dismantling means for him. Meanwhile, I look at

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Speaker 2: the Department of Education thing and I'm like, Eh, wells

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Speaker 2: it all mess with the four Service? BLM, I'm cool.

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Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: It's it's like.

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Speaker 2: It's a very hard like for the conservation space right now,

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Speaker 2: for the conservation movement right now, for the environmental movement

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Speaker 2: right now.

436
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Speaker 1: It's like a.

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Speaker 2: This is going to require a radical reorientation of how

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Speaker 2: we talk about things. They're using a playbook on the

439
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 2: federal workforce that was used on that was used on Twitter,

440
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 2: like breaking Twitter.

441
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:37,600
Speaker 3: Move fast and break things.

442
00:24:37,680 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 2: Yes, breaking Twitter is like okay, I mean broken, and

443
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 2: they already broken.

444
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 1: It will always be broken. But they did break it.

445
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 7: It became a wildly less, wildly less effective company and

446
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 7: lost a bunch of advertising and kind of sure took

447
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 7: a dump.

448
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 2: Yes, so I'm saying, like breaking the government, taking the

449
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:58,159
Speaker 2: same approach to break the government, Like, I hope it

450
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 2: goes better than it did when he broke Twitter. Yeah,

451
00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 2: to return to my main point, to somehow pin it

452
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:10,919
Speaker 2: on a person, to somehow suggests that an individual that

453
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 2: works in federal policy and is needing to figure out

454
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,600
Speaker 2: who am I talking to, what are we talking about,

455
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 2: where are some areas we can succeed in the next

456
00:25:21,880 --> 00:25:25,200
Speaker 2: four years or eight years, rather than saying, you know what,

457
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 2: I don't like the way this is looking, I'm going home.

458
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:32,880
Speaker 3: They have to work with who they have to work with, right,

459
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:36,879
Speaker 3: they don't have a choice. Yes, they've got to do

460
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 3: what they can do.

461
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 2: Imagine if he says, you know what, Okay, I'm not

462
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 2: going to talk to anybody about federal conservation policy for

463
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 2: the next four years. That'll stick them, That'll show them.

464
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:50,160
Speaker 7: And I think too, there's like a when you think

465
00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 7: about how a group like TIERCP works, there are other

466
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 7: groups out there that are going to be throwing bombs

467
00:25:57,440 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 7: at the administration. There are other groups out there that

468
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 7: are going to be like rallying the troops and and

469
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:09,200
Speaker 7: taking shots. Right, But like, if you're in d C

470
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,399
Speaker 7: and you're serious about trying to make change or trying

471
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 7: to protect what we like, you know, you got to

472
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 7: go to work every day.

473
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: There's different groups with different.

474
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 7: Roles and the and you're not gonna the biggest the

475
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 7: biggest advantage that you can have in d C is

476
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 7: that someone takes your calls or that someone has a

477
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 7: meeting with you.

478
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 3: Correctly if I'm wrong, But t RCP has like a

479
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 3: very good working relationship with politicians on both sides of

480
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:39,440
Speaker 3: the aisle, right, like right.

481
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:43,120
Speaker 1: That's their program, y, yeah, that is what that is

482
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 1: what they are.

483
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how they get shipped done.

484
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:51,080
Speaker 7: Yeah, and and and I mean that's that's how the how,

485
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 7: that's how it works, you know, whether you like it

486
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 7: or not, Like it's I mean, I think it's incredible

487
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 7: that we have a group like that who's using the power,

488
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 7: you know, like they're using the system in place, because

489
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:06,719
Speaker 7: that's where the rubber hits the road in DC, and

490
00:27:06,760 --> 00:27:08,960
Speaker 7: it's it's somebody going to take your so you can't.

491
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 7: You have to be the adult in the room sometimes

492
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 7: and and not throw bombs.

493
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:16,400
Speaker 2: And not name call so yeah, And I like I've

494
00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: even like as a board member at TRCP, you know

495
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 2: I have, I don't like, I have a voice in

496
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 2: the room. And the part about having a board is

497
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:29,920
Speaker 2: you try to assemble a board with a bunch of

498
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 2: disparate voices. So sure I have, you know, I have

499
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 2: perspective on things where I talk to someone privately about

500
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 2: what I think. When when Utah was trying to figure

501
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 2: out a way to declare that public lands were effectively unconstitutional,

502
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,359
Speaker 2: I'm on the phone with TRCP, knowing the other people

503
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 2: around the phone with TRSP, and I'm giving my take

504
00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 2: on it. Then they're in the role of taking these

505
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,160
Speaker 2: different takes, shaping them, asking who they can speak with,

506
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:01,679
Speaker 2: and then make it some progress. But if you're just

507
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,360
Speaker 2: gonna throw Molotov cocktails for them, I'm not talking about me, Yeah,

508
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 2: for them, if they're gonna throw Molotov cocktails and then

509
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,239
Speaker 2: one day call up and be like, but seriously, uh

510
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 2: the farm bill? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, how

511
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:18,560
Speaker 2: are we gonna keep the CRP programs alive?

512
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: Like that still has to happen.

513
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, And and you need a seat at the table,

514
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 7: you're like, and it's very easy to lose your seat

515
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 7: at the table if you if you come out and

516
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 7: start throwing punches.

517
00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to be like like, ask yourself,

518
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 2: like someone else said, oh pretty rich that Steve said,

519
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 2: get involved in the conservation movement after saying blah blah

520
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:49,239
Speaker 2: blah whatever he said, uh to everyone else, I'll say this,

521
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 2: if you want to get involved in the conservation movement

522
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 2: and you want to do it in a way where you.

523
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: Have a voice.

524
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 2: At the you have a voice in a seat at

525
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 2: the highest level of table, right the top table. You

526
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 2: want to voice there, get on board with an organization

527
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 2: like TRCP. That doesn't mean that people going out and

528
00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 2: protesting that their state capital isn't effective. It's a way

529
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 2: to show forces. If that's where you're at. TRCP is

530
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 2: not your group. If you like, if you are willing

531
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 2: to be like patient and somewhat intellectual and strategic and

532
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 2: play in Washington.

533
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: D C. That's different.

534
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 7: It's just different, and there's room for both and you

535
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:31,280
Speaker 7: can support both at the same time, right, Like, I mean,

536
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 7: there's certainly it's effective to go and let your elected

537
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 7: officials know where you stand and strongly worded calls to

538
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 7: your reflected officials do work, but that there's also another

539
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 7: model that's having like high stakes meetings with people who

540
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 7: have the power, and you're not going to get very

541
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 7: far with them by calling them up and leaving a

542
00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 7: strongly worded voicemail.

543
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try to give a little bit to explain

544
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 2: myself a little bit with with the with the parallel

545
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,239
Speaker 2: thing that occurred to me one time, Like picture that

546
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 2: you picture. You're a kid growing up in America and

547
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:13,880
Speaker 2: movies come out, and you just in the movies come out,

548
00:30:13,880 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 2: and you become aware of movies. You see movies, and

549
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 2: then there's books that are in the bookstore, there's books

550
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 2: in the library, and they just are there because they're there.

551
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,280
Speaker 2: And the movies that get made get made because they

552
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 2: get made. That that's how I grew up. I don't know,

553
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 2: just like movies came out and you went so me

554
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 2: never gave any thought to what happened. Right then, as

555
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 2: my career went along and I got into my thirties,

556
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 2: and I started going and having meetings with people that

557
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 2: make TV shows and people that make books and people

558
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,719
Speaker 2: that make movies, and I understood, like why they do

559
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 2: what they do, how they do what they do, how

560
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 2: it's finance how the whole bigger project works. All of

561
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 2: a sudden, you go, all of a sudden, it's like,

562
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 2: you know, I never use like the whole like stupid

563
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 2: red pill thing.

564
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: You get red pilled. You're like, oh shit, that's how

565
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: all this works. Do you know what I mean? And

566
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, I get it now.

567
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 2: That's why the books that are out are out, and

568
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,680
Speaker 2: that's why this that that's how this whole thing functions,

569
00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you understand the world in

570
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 2: a different way. I over time, being someone involved in

571
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 2: wildlife conservation have had I've.

572
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: Like undergone a sort of evolution. What's the opposite evolution?

573
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 5: The evolution?

574
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 2: Do you know where opposite evolution? Okay, some might say, oh,

575
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 2: he went through a de evolution.

576
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: I don't know. To me, it feels yeah, devolved.

577
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 2: No, No, because I don't want to seem my I

578
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 2: my picture of how things happen.

579
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 5: Mmmm, there we go, rand.

580
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: Point. I'm trying to make point. I'm trying to make here.

581
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 2: My understanding of how things happen and why the world

582
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,479
Speaker 2: looks like it does in wildlife conservation has changed as

583
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 2: much as my understanding of why what shows get made

584
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,200
Speaker 2: and what books come out in print. It's like it's

585
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 2: changed with education. It has changed. I have come to

586
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 2: see more of the value of like back room high

587
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 2: level conversations. There are other people who've come up with

588
00:32:18,920 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 2: a very different opinion. If you really want to get

589
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 2: into this, you could go read about what happened with

590
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 2: Why did the Sixties fizzle? You could dig into Joan Didion.

591
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 2: You can start watching things about the efficacy and evolution

592
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 2: of Vietnam protesters. I don't know, there's different ways to

593
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 2: engage in policy discussions.

594
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: The civil rights movement was disruptive and very effective. Other

595
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: movements have been disruptive and they faltered and haven't worked.

596
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,760
Speaker 1: What else? Oh my for service?

597
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 2: Let I personally personally, Yeah, I'm gonna say a couple

598
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 2: more personal things here. I've always had a thing where

599
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 2: I have a I've tried to keep a brand promise

600
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 2: where we stay out of issues that we stay out

601
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 2: of issues that aren't directly relevant to hunters and anglers. Okay,

602
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 2: so at times this is where I'm in a little

603
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 2: bit of a bind. At times I have expressed appreciation

604
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 2: for some things half some number of things that the

605
00:33:42,600 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 2: current administration ran on and is doing I have expressed

606
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,400
Speaker 2: appreciation for because it's just true.

607
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: It's just true. I appreciate a bunch of the things.

608
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 2: I would have to violate my pact with the audience

609
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 2: to start talking about the things I appreciate.

610
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: There's a thing called a nypothesis. Randall knows what it is.

611
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:02,440
Speaker 1: I do.

612
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:06,280
Speaker 2: An apothesis is when you bring something up by saying

613
00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 2: you're not going to bring it up. So my example

614
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 2: will be your fighting with your wife. Your wife says, well,

615
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to bring up what you did

616
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 2: on Friday. That's an apothesis. She's bringing it up by

617
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 2: not bringing it up. So I'm gonna do an apothesis

618
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 2: when I'm talking about this administration. I'm not going to

619
00:34:22,120 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 2: bring up that I think that the country should have borders. Okay,

620
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 2: I'm not going to bring that up. I'm not going

621
00:34:30,120 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 2: to bring up that I don't think people should have

622
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,200
Speaker 2: their livelihoods and careers destroyed because they fail to get

623
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 2: on board with whatever.

624
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: New sloganism emerges in a given day. Like, I'm not

625
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: going to bring that up.

626
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not going to bring up things I think

627
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 2: about with human biology and distinctions between males and females.

628
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 1: Not going to bring it up.

629
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 2: But when I've talked about things the administration is done,

630
00:34:57,200 --> 00:34:58,920
Speaker 2: I'm talking about some things I'm not going to bring

631
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 2: up that I think are pretty good. Do I then

632
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 2: think that what they're they're threatening to do, what it

633
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 2: seems like they're going to do to American wildlife and

634
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 2: American wild places and public lands? Do I think that

635
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:14,919
Speaker 2: that's accessible? No, I don't. But I can hold two

636
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 2: things in my hands at the same time that, like,

637
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 2: there's things I like about the administration, there's also seems

638
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:21,840
Speaker 2: to be like some things that they're going to be

639
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:24,600
Speaker 2: doing and are doing that are going to be catastrophic

640
00:35:24,680 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 2: for public.

641
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: Lands and wildlife.

642
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 2: And it's part of my personal thing to sort out

643
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 2: these two issues and find out where I'm going to

644
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 2: land on it. But I can't sit here and tell

645
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 2: you that every single thing Donald Trump does pisses me off,

646
00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 2: because that's not true. Like it doesn't. Some of the

647
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 2: stuff is absolutely going to But I'm not gonna look

648
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:48,840
Speaker 2: at it like that. I'm gonna look at it like

649
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:52,279
Speaker 2: I'm going to find the areas and weigh in on

650
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 2: the areas that I think they're screwing up, and it's

651
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 2: starting to look like there's going to be quite a

652
00:35:57,840 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 2: pile of them.

653
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 1: Any else? Uh? No, letter? Where do I begin the letter?

654
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: Put my spectacles on.

655
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,840
Speaker 2: My name is blank, and I am a Forest Service

656
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 2: mule packer. As I write to you February fourteenth, I

657
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 2: am still an employee of the US Forest Service. Today

658
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:26,840
Speaker 2: I lost many co workers that I call friends to

659
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:30,480
Speaker 2: the new administration's recent cutbacks on federal employees.

660
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: For valid and invalid reasons. The new administration has decided

661
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: to pick on the US Forest Service. I'm going to

662
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: step in and editorialize here. I'm outside of the letter

663
00:36:42,719 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 1: for a minute. People don't want to hear this, But

664
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:49,399
Speaker 1: I don't think the word choice is right. I don't

665
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: think they've decided to pick on a lot of people.

666
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 2: It'd be like if I went into a class. If

667
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 2: I was a bully and went into a class and

668
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 2: beat up all the kids in the class, they would.

669
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 1: Say he was picking on Bobby. Right? Is that a

670
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: good announce Yeah? Yeah.

671
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 2: Throughout my career, I'm back to the letter. Throughout my

672
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,680
Speaker 2: career and the Recreation and Range departments, I have witnessed

673
00:37:13,719 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 2: decrease in budgets every year, forcing us to do more

674
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 2: with less. Last year, all seasonal non fire field workers

675
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:26,319
Speaker 2: were fired. That was last year under Biden. They left

676
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:31,720
Speaker 2: US field going permanence. They left US field going permanent

677
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:35,800
Speaker 2: employees feeling overwhelmed, to say the least, for the upcoming

678
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 2: field season. But today the new administration fired over thirty

679
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 2: employees on the Beaverhead Deer Lodge National Forest. All but

680
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 2: one of the wilderness rangers were let go on the

681
00:37:47,560 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: Crassle Ranger District of the frank Church River of No

682
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 2: Return Wilderness, and all the trail crews of the Spotted

683
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 2: Bear Ranger District and the Bob Marshall Wilderness were let go.

684
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 2: This is the Ranger district no longer has any trail

685
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 2: crew to maintain the anacon of Pintler Willderness either a

686
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:11,560
Speaker 2: dear friend was days away from graduating from probationary status.

687
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 2: He was fired from the NRCS in Alaska along with

688
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 2: her entire tribal relations team. Out of all the wasteful

689
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 2: spending and government, for this administration to pick on the

690
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 2: hardest working, lowest paid, and most dedicated workers makes me ill.

691
00:38:29,640 --> 00:38:33,400
Speaker 2: This may be an honest, uneducated attempt to cut wasteful

692
00:38:33,400 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 2: spending in government. Now this is this is like why

693
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,280
Speaker 2: this particular letter resonated with me because of this line.

694
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:43,480
Speaker 2: This may be an honest, uneducated attempt to cut wasteful

695
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 2: spending in government. He says, in my off season, I

696
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 2: work for different outfitters guiding elk hunts in multiple states.

697
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 2: We rely on these trail systems, do our job and

698
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 2: earn a modest living doing what we love. These layoffs

699
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 2: are taking away access to our public lands. Over one

700
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty years of blood and sweat by the

701
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:05,920
Speaker 2: American working class maintaining these trail systems will be lost.

702
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 2: Those that making that make a living in these areas

703
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 2: will suffer, but most importantly, the American people will lose

704
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:15,759
Speaker 2: their access to the last place they can escape the

705
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:23,759
Speaker 2: modernities we call progress in this world. And he ends

706
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 2: with a plea, use your voice to let the American

707
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 2: public know what these government cutbacks are costing us.

708
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: A lot all across the board.

709
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:38,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think, like.

710
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 7: Just on the subject of people who are working in

711
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 7: these jobs, like beyond the end and and there's lots

712
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 7: of people wondering how they're going to pay their mortgage

713
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:54,320
Speaker 7: this month, or how they're going to pay their rent,

714
00:39:54,520 --> 00:40:01,799
Speaker 7: and beyond that, like immediate in individual tragedy, like there's

715
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:05,440
Speaker 7: a larger I think tragedy, and like there's probably some

716
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 7: talented young kids right now in college who are studying.

717
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 7: They're trying to figure out what they're going to study

718
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 7: and what career they're going to pursue. And if I

719
00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 7: was graduating from college right now, I probably wouldn't be

720
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 7: thinking about trying to go work for the Forest Service,

721
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 7: you know, or try and try to go work for

722
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 7: the National Park Service. And those jobs require a ton

723
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 7: of sacrifice year after year after year to get your

724
00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:32,319
Speaker 7: foot in the door, and then the pay is not

725
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:35,799
Speaker 7: great and then you're probably transferring around to you know,

726
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 7: if you're in the Park Service, bouncing from park to park.

727
00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: Or wherever you are.

728
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 7: Like I think we're going to see generational consequences from

729
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 7: the past few weeks just on the types of people

730
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 7: we can attract to those jobs. And that, for me,

731
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 7: I think is like a pretty profound Like even if

732
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:58,439
Speaker 7: they hired all these people back next week, Like there's

733
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 7: a chink in the armor that it is hard to

734
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 7: polish out at this point, and it's just like, yeah,

735
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:08,440
Speaker 7: I don't know. I mean when I was when I

736
00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:11,560
Speaker 7: was finishing college, I tried really hard to get my

737
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 7: foot in the door at a public land management agency

738
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 7: and couldn't do it. I did, you know, And I'm

739
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 7: lucky that. I'm lucky that things went the way they did.

740
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 7: But yeah, it's just like, these people love the resource,

741
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 7: and I never go out on our public lands and

742
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 7: think I wish there were fewer I wish there are

743
00:41:33,760 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 7: fewer guys working on roads, you know, I wish there

744
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 7: were fewer interpretive rangers telling people what's great about this

745
00:41:40,600 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 7: landscape or telling people about these animals we're looking at.

746
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: Like I just yeah that.

747
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,240
Speaker 7: Obviously I'm having a hard time like putting my finger

748
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:54,799
Speaker 7: on it. But it's really hard to not sort of

749
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 7: have your thoughts spiral when you think about the compounding

750
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 7: consequences of this stuff that's being done by twenty year

751
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:06,760
Speaker 7: old kids that don't know anything about the government.

752
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 3: And the impact like the like the real world impact

753
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:14,720
Speaker 3: to hunters and anglers and all kinds of outdoor recreation people.

754
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 3: Like it's gonna take a while to see what actually happens,

755
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:24,879
Speaker 3: you know, with like trail access and boat ramps and

756
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 3: like who knows, Like, we don't know necessarily what we're

757
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:32,720
Speaker 3: gonna be facing when the fall rolls around for hunting season.

758
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:34,959
Speaker 1: No, you don't. And to return to my analogy about

759
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:36,240
Speaker 1: the bully coming in and beating.

760
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 2: Up everybody in the class, like the like it's kind

761
00:42:39,239 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 2: of great analogy, but not trying to quit the same thing.

762
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 2: But you might look and be like, well, yeah, I

763
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 2: mean a lot of those kids had it coming, but

764
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 2: little Billy, well, he's the nicest kid in the world.

765
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,840
Speaker 2: And so yeah, like, I don't think you're gonna find like,

766
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 2: you're not gonna look at the Forest Service and the

767
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 2: Rocky Mountain West and and and and Musk aren't gonna

768
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 2: be like and look at all the embarrassing look at

769
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:09,280
Speaker 2: all the embarrassing, crazy expenditures they were making.

770
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:10,320
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen.

771
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, but here's where here's where a thing I do

772
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:14,680
Speaker 2: predict happening as this goes on.

773
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: And again, this is all new news, but I could

774
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: picture this.

775
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:22,799
Speaker 2: Do you remember when Dwayne I'm sorry, where I'm almost done?

776
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 2: He could cause that a bad moment. Do you want

777
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:34,280
Speaker 2: to come back? Do you remember when when Trump floated

778
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:35,919
Speaker 2: the idea, and I talked about this the other day,

779
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 2: Like I was the ere day. I was explaining, if

780
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 2: I get really mad at my kids about iPads and phones,

781
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 2: I'll say something like I'm about ready to take all

782
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:44,160
Speaker 2: those iPads.

783
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,279
Speaker 1: Out and run them over with my truck. I use

784
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: that one.

785
00:43:47,320 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 2: Now they know I'm not gonna run the iPads over

786
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,280
Speaker 2: the truck, but they also know he's gonna do something.

787
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: He's fed up.

788
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 2: I was saying, how I was just joking around, saying

789
00:43:57,680 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 2: how when Trump said I got half of mine to

790
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:02,880
Speaker 2: the out gaza and make a big resort, he was

791
00:44:02,960 --> 00:44:05,279
Speaker 2: kind of saying, I'm gonna put all the iPads in

792
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 2: the driveway and run them over my truck. Meaning people

793
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 2: are like, he's not gonna do that, but he's pissed.

794
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 2: He's gonna do something. Well, who's the guy who's the

795
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:15,240
Speaker 2: libertarian from Kentucky?

796
00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: Oh, Paul right away?

797
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:23,560
Speaker 2: He uh now that Twitter's not Twitter, it's called the

798
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 2: X When you tweet, what are you doing xing?

799
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 3: He They still say, tweeted just a horrible businesses. Yeah,

800
00:44:31,719 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 3: he tweets this thing.

801
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 2: He's running the government, ran Paul tweets. I thought we

802
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 2: voted for America first. Right, Yeah, Now, just to capture

803
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 2: that sentiment, here's a thing that I do picture happening.

804
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 2: Much of this conversation about the right and the left

805
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 2: in this country has been framed over the previous years

806
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 2: as a as a rural people, interior people battling for

807
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:01,280
Speaker 2: the soul of the country against the coastal elites.

808
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 1: Remember this, mm hmm.

809
00:45:03,320 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 2: Okay, as doge, if they do take a wrecking ball

810
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 2: to the interests of rural people, to the people that

811
00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 2: were supporting Trump, he won overwhelmingly in this state. When

812
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,080
Speaker 2: you run for office in this state, you have to

813
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Montana. If you're running for office in Montana,

814
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:30,959
Speaker 2: I don't care what you're doing, you have to pay

815
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 2: lip service at least to being pro public lands. You

816
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 2: have to say public lands in public hands. You have

817
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 2: to do it else you can't win. You have to

818
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 2: do it, just like you can't say at the federal level,

819
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:44,360
Speaker 2: I'm going to cut social Security.

820
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 1: You lose. If here you say I want to sell

821
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:48,000
Speaker 1: off public lands, you lose.

822
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 2: Now, So that's true of Montana, Montana. I've met Trump

823
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 2: the first time, won Montana by fourteen points. Right, they

824
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 2: don't even need a campaign here gonna win. But what

825
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 2: happens when what happens when you start seeing in the

826
00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 2: erosion of these things that the people and not in

827
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 2: this state care a lot about, which is their public

828
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 2: lands of public land access. You risk alienating your own

829
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 2: support network.

830
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 3: You risk the pendulum swinging the other way.

831
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:20,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people in a couple.

832
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 3: Of years when the midterms come.

833
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 2: Up, and just like rand Paul, was it, Rand Paul,

834
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:29,320
Speaker 2: Yeah said I thought we were voting for America. First,

835
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 2: someone might say I thought I was voting for guys

836
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,560
Speaker 2: like me. This isn't serving my interest.

837
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 1: No, excuse yourself, Randall, I'm really sorry.

838
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 6: Keeping that in that was incredible.

839
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:48,239
Speaker 3: I was wondering where you can't tell where it's coming from.

840
00:46:48,640 --> 00:46:49,239
Speaker 1: Excuse me?

841
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:52,400
Speaker 7: That was only supposed to be fin was elsewhere at

842
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:52,800
Speaker 7: the moment.

843
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: Can I start interviewing Dwayne? But what's up?

844
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 3: We should re enter do him because everyone probably forgot

845
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 3: who he is.

846
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 1: It's terrible joining us today.

847
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 2: Doctor Dwayne asked us who I have heard about from

848
00:47:14,480 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 2: a ton of people and has been uh and Krim

849
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 2: was very eager to have him on The Prairie Preacher,

850
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 2: co founder and executive dress director of Southeastern Grasslands Institute.

851
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 2: I first have to say everything I just said is

852
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 2: me talking, not Dwayne talking.

853
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 1: But I would like to invite if Dwayne, if you have.

854
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 2: Any comments about anything about what we just said, because

855
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 2: you're sort of now like like you're sort of affiliated

856
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 2: with the conversation.

857
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:44,239
Speaker 1: You could either sit it out or you could give

858
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 1: you some of your thoughts. You'd say whatever hell you want.

859
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: I don't care.

860
00:47:46,200 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Well, number just wade

861
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,320
Speaker 5: in number one, there's a there's a double meaning to apothesis.

862
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:57,480
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, it's the it's the broad portion of

863
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 5: a pine cone scale. Just just f wi from a

864
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,919
Speaker 5: little bit botanical. Yeah, like you had a pine cone, right,

865
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:06,400
Speaker 5: You've got the little the prickle there. It's that broad

866
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 5: triangular face that you see. That's the apopthesis.

867
00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:13,239
Speaker 1: Ship. Yeah, I love that, you.

868
00:48:13,200 --> 00:48:22,759
Speaker 5: Know, drop knowledge next week show. No, uh, you know,

869
00:48:22,760 --> 00:48:25,120
Speaker 5: I find it fascinating, man, because we're all in this

870
00:48:25,280 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 5: limbo right now, and as a founder and executive director

871
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:34,279
Speaker 5: of a conservation organization, we're like everybody else, you know.

872
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:36,800
Speaker 5: I talked to a good friend of mine who is

873
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:39,879
Speaker 5: a former senator, and he said he reminded me he said,

874
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:42,440
Speaker 5: you know this, Uh, I hear you. He says, not

875
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 5: about you, it's you know, there's worldwide ramifications of what's happening.

876
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:49,640
Speaker 5: And I think that helped to frame it in a

877
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:51,960
Speaker 5: context that made me kind of just sit back and

878
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 5: try to chill and get through it and just say,

879
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 5: you know, it's going to take a little while for

880
00:48:57,800 --> 00:48:59,959
Speaker 5: us to kind of figure out what the road ahead

881
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 5: looks like. You know, we're trying to go through planning

882
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:06,320
Speaker 5: right now and to think about what are our options.

883
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,879
Speaker 5: You know, it could be that we get by unscathed.

884
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 5: It could be that our organization fails in four weeks

885
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 5: because of what we're currently faced with. So yeah, it's scary, man.

886
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:21,919
Speaker 5: People's livelihoods at stake. Good people, good hardworking people doing

887
00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 5: habitat restoration work, you know, planting seeds, plant and prairies,

888
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 5: doing prescribed fire, people with babies and kids and elderly parents,

889
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:38,200
Speaker 5: farmers that we work with, seed producers, they're all they're

890
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 5: all uncertain right now, and they're you know, a little

891
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:43,919
Speaker 5: bit scared about what's coming. So to me, I found

892
00:49:43,960 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 5: the fascination conversation be very fascinating.

893
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: I just was enjoying it, really. I wouldn't call it

894
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:50,640
Speaker 1: a conversation.

895
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:52,279
Speaker 5: Is more like a monologue.

896
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:58,680
Speaker 3: But it's okay, monologue version verging on rant, But that's okay.

897
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, wasn't rant because a rant you're pushing a thing.

898
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:05,000
Speaker 2: I was pushing a question mark.

899
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 3: Your face wasn't red and there wasn't like a blood

900
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 3: vessel sticking out of your forehead.

901
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: Thank you? Yeah. Uh, let's let's set the stage for Grasslands. Yeah.

902
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:21,840
Speaker 1: Can we can we tackle this first? Explain how Brody's

903
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:22,479
Speaker 1: a song again?

904
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 6: Right?

905
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 5: Okay, So Brody and anybody, well, anybody in southern Ohio,

906
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:32,880
Speaker 5: southern Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey. Imagine that you're in the

907
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 5: South man, Yeah, you're in the South. I'll draw you

908
00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:36,440
Speaker 5: the South. I'm gonna tell you that.

909
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with two ways of drawing this line. I'm

910
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:41,479
Speaker 1: familiar with the Mason Dixon line.

911
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 5: Yeah.

912
00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: And I'm familiar with my thing about where it's a

913
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:46,000
Speaker 1: line of where you ice fish or not.

914
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the Mason Dixon line and got nothing to

915
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 5: do with what I'm about to show you. So I

916
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 5: do like I do like geography. By the way, By

917
00:50:55,200 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 5: the way, you gotta put the Chesapeake Bay in there,

918
00:50:57,680 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 5: you know, you got to put the New Jersey in.

919
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 5: There's your Long Island right there, that's the that's the

920
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:07,240
Speaker 5: northern extent of the South right there. Yeah, no ship man, absolutely,

921
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 5: need they talk. No seriously, man, we could even make

922
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:14,919
Speaker 5: a case for southern Nova Scotia and Cape Cod I'm

923
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:16,400
Speaker 5: telling you, all right, So then what we do is

924
00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:19,400
Speaker 5: we draw that line coming across the southern two thirds

925
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 5: of Pennsylvania.

926
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 1: Okay, not no, no, no, he's a Yankee.

927
00:51:23,920 --> 00:51:28,759
Speaker 5: Yeah, ere, he's out. You're in those glaciated plains, yes,

928
00:51:29,880 --> 00:51:30,480
Speaker 5: very close.

929
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:31,279
Speaker 1: All right.

930
00:51:31,360 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 5: Now, now what you're going to just bring it down

931
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:36,319
Speaker 5: the trader. Yeah, you're gonna pull in the edge of Appalachia,

932
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 5: country of Ohio. You do, bring in Cincinnati, Yeah, southern

933
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 5: third of Indiana, southern Illinois, cut right across south of

934
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:48,239
Speaker 5: the Columbia a US map a shirt now.

935
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:52,160
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you're drawing a map of basically what right there,

936
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:53,359
Speaker 7: what wasn't covered by.

937
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 3: The middle of Texas.

938
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 6: You want to hold that up for the camera.

939
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:58,840
Speaker 1: I can't believe you just did that without having a reference.

940
00:51:59,040 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 5: Man, I've been studying since I was wearing a diaper. Bro. Yeah,

941
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:07,760
Speaker 5: that's the South right there, The SGI focal region.

942
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:10,760
Speaker 1: I'm still Yankee, twenty four states.

943
00:52:11,880 --> 00:52:13,760
Speaker 5: It all gets down to biogeography, Steve.

944
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:17,360
Speaker 1: So you're you're you're a Johnny reb now there around yep, Yeah,

945
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: just south of the south of the Hills there. Yeah.

946
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: Look weat explain that to me. What's going on within

947
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: that map?

948
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, so pretty much when you look at this region

949
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:33,440
Speaker 5: and you know, again this is not the cultural South, right,

950
00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 5: this is that kind.

951
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: Of stuff we're talking to, Collegy.

952
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're talking about plants and animals, you know,

953
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,399
Speaker 5: there is a high level of endemism here. So lots

954
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 5: of species that occur within this region that that don't

955
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:47,640
Speaker 5: occur anywhere else on earth. And so there's lots of

956
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 5: these clusters of endemic species, and they all are really clustered,

957
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 5: like in the southern Appalachians or in the what we

958
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 5: call the Interior Plateau or parts of Florida East Texas,

959
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:02,160
Speaker 5: and many of those species are really narrowly distributed, you know.

960
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 5: But then you also have wide ranging species. That's the

961
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 5: ones we look at, like look at post oak trees

962
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 5: for example. Post oaks grow all the way out to

963
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:13,160
Speaker 5: the cross timbers of Texas. They grow up into southern Illinois,

964
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:14,880
Speaker 5: they go all the way up to Long Island or

965
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 5: so they don't go any farther north. So what you

966
00:53:17,719 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 5: have then is this perpetual pattern of species that reach

967
00:53:21,160 --> 00:53:24,760
Speaker 5: their northern range limits and their western range limits because

968
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 5: of climatic barriers. So here you get into the boreal northeast,

969
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 5: you get into the true you know, the tall grass

970
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:34,160
Speaker 5: prairie of the Midwest and the Great Plains, and then

971
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 5: the arid basically Chiwalla desert margin right here in South Texas.

972
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:42,879
Speaker 5: So that means then everything in this region is kind

973
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:46,720
Speaker 5: of temperate. It's got seasonality, with exception of South Florida,

974
00:53:46,760 --> 00:53:50,840
Speaker 5: which is subtropical, it's mostly you know, people think of

975
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:53,880
Speaker 5: it as a deciduous forest region. That drives me bonkers.

976
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:56,839
Speaker 5: You don't like that term, No, I don't. Actually, it's

977
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:00,040
Speaker 5: a huge misnomber and it's not based in science or his.

978
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:01,839
Speaker 1: Can you tell what it means and why you don't

979
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: like it?

980
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 5: Yeah, because what it does is it extrapolates you know,

981
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:10,839
Speaker 5: all parts of the East as being you know, people think, well,

982
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 5: it all used to be forest, right. There's this what

983
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:13,560
Speaker 5: we call the myth of the.

984
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:15,880
Speaker 1: Squirrel that tell you the squirrel.

985
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:16,480
Speaker 5: Yeah.

986
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 1: I was raised on this good Okay, what the squirrel

987
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,720
Speaker 1: could go from blank to blank and never touch the ground.

988
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 1: Squirrel could go from Kentucky to Michigan, from Florida to

989
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: New Jersey, that's right, whatever and never touched the ground.

990
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:36,560
Speaker 5: Yeah. I heard it as my sixth grade teacher, Tommy John's,

991
00:54:36,760 --> 00:54:40,120
Speaker 5: who also paddled me thirteen times for talking too much.

992
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:41,280
Speaker 7: Does he invent the surgery?

993
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:41,840
Speaker 5: He told me?

994
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 1: No, I don't know Tommy john surgery.

995
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:45,239
Speaker 6: No, this is.

996
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 5: I call it. I call it Tommy John's in the

997
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:49,800
Speaker 5: fabled squirrel.

998
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,040
Speaker 1: You know, we still got whooped when I was a kid.

999
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:55,399
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm forty six. Huh yeah, I got I got

1000
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:56,879
Speaker 5: thirteen of them in nineteen ninety.

1001
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, mister Bricken, Yeah, man, he called me down, whooped

1002
00:54:59,280 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 1: me one time.

1003
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:02,759
Speaker 5: But he told me, he said, look, a squirrel could

1004
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:05,439
Speaker 5: travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River without

1005
00:55:05,440 --> 00:55:06,240
Speaker 5: ever touching the ground.

1006
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 2: That's what I heard it. I was screwing the whole

1007
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 2: thing up. That's my dad would like to tell me.

1008
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,319
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know it really no, I don't buy

1009
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 5: it at all. And it has its origins. The origin

1010
00:55:16,080 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 5: is kind of complex. I wrote to the pretty well

1011
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 5: known author Stephen J. Pine and said, you know, do

1012
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,480
Speaker 5: you know where that originated? And we both have been

1013
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:28,920
Speaker 5: sort of scratching our heads over the true origins. That

1014
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:31,479
Speaker 5: myth are a little bit hard to put to nail down.

1015
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 5: But what's easily provable is that it's not true. All

1016
00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:40,240
Speaker 5: you got to do is go back into the annals

1017
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 5: of American history the days of Boone and in his contemporaries,

1018
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:47,400
Speaker 5: or you can look at multiple lines of scientific evidence

1019
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,520
Speaker 5: at many different places across that and say, oh, there

1020
00:55:50,560 --> 00:55:54,120
Speaker 5: were vast prairies there, there were cane breaks there, non

1021
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 5: forested eco systems. So for us to take this mantra

1022
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,800
Speaker 5: that it was all forested has had a deleterious effect

1023
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:07,280
Speaker 5: for biodiversity and conservation. Think about it. We've invested billions

1024
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 5: of dollars in the eastern United States into forests. When

1025
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,799
Speaker 5: we go by land for protection we create public new

1026
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 5: state parks or new national parks. It's all the mountainous

1027
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:21,279
Speaker 5: forested or big swampy bottom lands that get all the attention. Yep.

1028
00:56:21,800 --> 00:56:27,280
Speaker 5: Nobody thinks about the open spaces when you do prioritization

1029
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 5: for you know, conservation action, all the places that get

1030
00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 5: the conservation focus. And I'm talking about terrestrial week systems,

1031
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:38,360
Speaker 5: not streams and rivers at this point. But you know,

1032
00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 5: it's big river floodplains, it's big swampy intact forests, it's

1033
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:45,960
Speaker 5: big mountain systems that are still forested. Nobody gives a

1034
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:50,160
Speaker 5: shit about pasture lands and crop fields, but those are

1035
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 5: the areas that used to be grassland, and they no

1036
00:56:54,040 --> 00:56:55,640
Speaker 5: longer are in most places.

1037
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:59,959
Speaker 2: Is it safe to say that those went first because

1038
00:57:00,680 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 2: you could grill a corn, a crop of corn on

1039
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 2: them without needing to girdle all.

1040
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,399
Speaker 1: The trees, and so it just everything got gobbled up.

1041
00:57:07,680 --> 00:57:11,239
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely, And we were beginning to sort of lay

1042
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:16,280
Speaker 5: a fact trail of evidentiary information that proves that exact point.

1043
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 5: You know, you got people in the eighteen seventies who

1044
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 5: are writing back about conditions and say the eighteen forties

1045
00:57:22,160 --> 00:57:25,120
Speaker 5: in Tennessee and say, you know, the earliest waves of settlers,

1046
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 5: for example, who went from Middle Tennessee into West Tennessee

1047
00:57:28,480 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 5: when that land was purchased by Andrew Jackson from the

1048
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 5: Chickasaw Nation. They settled in the already open lands first,

1049
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 5: because quote it opened, you know, a crop of corn

1050
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 5: and cotton very quickly, and so you can look again

1051
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 5: and again in places throughout the East, and what we

1052
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 5: have begun to advance is what we call this push

1053
00:57:52,160 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 5: pull hypothesis. You know, it's the same thing that was

1054
00:57:55,720 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 5: driving Boon to Daniel Boone to want to kind of

1055
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 5: move around, and he didn't like the pressure of a

1056
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:05,760
Speaker 5: neighbor being ten miles away from it, So he was

1057
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:10,960
Speaker 5: being sort of pushed by this ever increasing population density factor.

1058
00:58:12,280 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 5: What we like to say, though, is look at the

1059
00:58:14,160 --> 00:58:17,600
Speaker 5: pool sure, right, why was Boone being attracted to the

1060
00:58:17,680 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 5: Kentucky Bluegrass or the Nashville base in the Cumberland River Valley.

1061
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 5: He certainly wouldn't going to hunt in a big, vast,

1062
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:27,920
Speaker 5: extensive forest. He was going to hunt the meadow lands,

1063
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:33,520
Speaker 5: the cane break margins, the savannahs. That's what people were

1064
00:58:33,560 --> 00:58:37,480
Speaker 5: attracted by. Like these early land surveyors and land speculators,

1065
00:58:37,680 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 5: they wanted good land that was going to open up

1066
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:47,120
Speaker 5: settlement opportunities for incoming westward migrating settlers and colonists. So

1067
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 5: that's what was pulling America's migration patterns in the sixteen

1068
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:55,840
Speaker 5: hundreds and seventeen hundreds. It was the availability of open space.

1069
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:59,920
Speaker 5: That story has never been told in American history, but we're.

1070
00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 2: Telling speaking of history, you know the I don't know

1071
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:05,000
Speaker 2: if you know Randall's specialty.

1072
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 5: M tell me about it, Randal.

1073
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: Well he doesn't.

1074
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was waiting to hear you.

1075
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: Randall has been formally trained to your thing about where

1076
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 1: did that squirrel thing come from? He's been formally trained

1077
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 1: to find that kind of stuff. Wow, he's a pH

1078
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: d in history.

1079
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 5: That's what we need, man, we need we need to

1080
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 5: figure it out.

1081
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:29,920
Speaker 7: The first time I ever heard that.

1082
00:59:29,960 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: He's busy right now.

1083
00:59:30,840 --> 00:59:32,040
Speaker 5: We need more PhDs.

1084
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:35,959
Speaker 2: But if you put Randall on that, he'd probably coming

1085
00:59:36,080 --> 00:59:37,720
Speaker 2: after a couple of weeks. He'd come tell you where

1086
00:59:37,760 --> 00:59:38,560
Speaker 2: that first appeared.

1087
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about that.

1088
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 7: I mean that stuffs so hard to pin down.

1089
00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 1: But yeah, like never mind, Well, well it's a great compliment.

1090
00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:54,080
Speaker 7: I really I feel like I'm sitting up straighter in

1091
00:59:54,120 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 7: my chair now. But uh yeah, I think you're probably

1092
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 7: doing the Stephen Pine as well, the as much as

1093
01:00:02,160 --> 01:00:02,920
Speaker 7: can be done on that.

1094
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:07,000
Speaker 1: What Uh I wish I had.

1095
01:00:07,040 --> 01:00:10,640
Speaker 2: I wish I had compiled more specific examples, but places

1096
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 2: random This will jogging memory, places where I don't. I

1097
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 2: don't necessarily from Boonez descriptions, but places where guys seven

1098
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:23,960
Speaker 2: around seventeen seventy whatever are describing could be north of

1099
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 2: the Ohio and some places, mostly south of the Ohio River,

1100
01:00:26,840 --> 01:00:28,240
Speaker 2: are saying that like not.

1101
01:00:28,240 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 1: A tree in sight. Yeah, I mean, where in the

1102
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:32,400
Speaker 1: world is that happening?

1103
01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 7: I thought that was when you're reading all those accounts.

1104
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 7: I mean they're describing savannahs and.

1105
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:42,360
Speaker 1: The barons.

1106
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:45,360
Speaker 7: The Barons is this region that they talk about all

1107
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:49,400
Speaker 7: the time. And in my mind, having grown up in

1108
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:54,440
Speaker 7: Ohio and driven interstates, you know, up and down to

1109
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:58,280
Speaker 7: the you know, to the south and throughout sort of Tennessee, Kentucky,

1110
01:00:58,320 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 7: how this I picture? It's trees on the hills and

1111
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:05,720
Speaker 7: farms in the bottom. And you read these descriptions from

1112
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 7: that time period of all this open country, and for me,

1113
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:12,120
Speaker 7: it was just like I didn't have a visual reference

1114
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:14,320
Speaker 7: in my imagination for what that looks like.

1115
01:01:16,720 --> 01:01:19,120
Speaker 5: I kind of think about the land as I told

1116
01:01:19,160 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 5: a friend this recently, and she kind of looked at

1117
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 5: me like she didn't believe me. I said, imagine if

1118
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 5: you were to go into like the eighty one Corridor,

1119
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:30,120
Speaker 5: which takes you from Pennsylvania down, you know, into Tennessee.

1120
01:01:31,400 --> 01:01:34,320
Speaker 5: The Great Valley as it's called, you know, it's the

1121
01:01:34,360 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 5: bottom of the valley is relatively open today. I think

1122
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 5: the vast majority of Americans would look at that valley

1123
01:01:40,440 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 5: and say, oh, at some point in our past, it's

1124
01:01:42,320 --> 01:01:44,560
Speaker 5: been cleared, you know, it's been deforested.

1125
01:01:44,680 --> 01:01:48,240
Speaker 1: I would think it was open anthroporogenically.

1126
01:01:47,280 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, you know. And I would maintain that many

1127
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:55,920
Speaker 5: sections of eastern United States are relatively about the same

1128
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:59,800
Speaker 5: in terms of the approximate closure of the landscape versus

1129
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:04,600
Speaker 5: openness as it was to pre settlement times. So that

1130
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:07,160
Speaker 5: you know, those open cattle pastures you see down in

1131
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:11,320
Speaker 5: there in western Virginia today, or cornfields or valley bottom

1132
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:16,280
Speaker 5: hay meadows, those were probably mostly always open. Sure, there

1133
01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:20,200
Speaker 5: are blocks that were deforested, yes, but the relative balance

1134
01:02:20,240 --> 01:02:22,880
Speaker 5: of land open to closed, I think is relatively the same.

1135
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 5: It's just what happened to the land. The forests went

1136
01:02:25,800 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 5: through the mountain sides, some of them were cleared and

1137
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:32,560
Speaker 5: logged and grew back up into secondary and tertiary forests.

1138
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:36,720
Speaker 5: Those valley lands, though, those were part of that pull

1139
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:40,400
Speaker 5: factor that attracted for people moving out of Chesapeake Bay

1140
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:45,080
Speaker 5: and stuff and Tidewater, Virginia. And when they moved into that,

1141
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:50,480
Speaker 5: they moved in state forever. Right. They converted those meadow

1142
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:56,480
Speaker 5: lands and those savannahs into the first cornfields and crop

1143
01:02:56,600 --> 01:03:01,160
Speaker 5: lands and plantations. And when those got exhaust then sometimes

1144
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 5: they let them go back and go follow into pasture lands,

1145
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:07,040
Speaker 5: or they went into pasture lands from the beginning. And

1146
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:11,240
Speaker 5: many of our grasslands too, especially the savannah types, they've

1147
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:14,000
Speaker 5: always had trees. And that's one of the big hallmarks

1148
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 5: of what we call southern grasslands is not all of

1149
01:03:17,560 --> 01:03:20,000
Speaker 5: them had trees. There are certainly many examples that were

1150
01:03:20,080 --> 01:03:22,200
Speaker 5: essentially treeless that we can point to, and we can

1151
01:03:22,240 --> 01:03:26,680
Speaker 5: talk about where they were and why. But eighty percent

1152
01:03:26,720 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 5: at least of southern grasslands had somewhere between probably ten

1153
01:03:31,560 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 5: and fifty percent tree cover. And so many of our

1154
01:03:34,400 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 5: friends said, well, hell, why don't you just call that

1155
01:03:36,000 --> 01:03:39,320
Speaker 5: a forest and be done with it. Well, because you

1156
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:41,640
Speaker 5: could call it an open forest, you can call it

1157
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:44,480
Speaker 5: a woodland. We don't really give a shit what you

1158
01:03:44,560 --> 01:03:46,560
Speaker 5: call it. The fact of the matter is we need

1159
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:50,800
Speaker 5: to understand what its structure needs to be, right, what

1160
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,160
Speaker 5: does it need to be to be healthy and flourishing

1161
01:03:54,720 --> 01:03:58,480
Speaker 5: for both native plants and native wildlife. It needs to

1162
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 5: be something other than what it is today. We have

1163
01:04:01,600 --> 01:04:06,720
Speaker 5: deviated from the natural condition so profoundly that people in

1164
01:04:06,760 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 5: the East are just unaware of that deviation.

1165
01:04:12,120 --> 01:04:14,640
Speaker 7: Good, well, this is a non sequitur.

1166
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:17,000
Speaker 5: I don't even know what that means.

1167
01:04:17,640 --> 01:04:20,600
Speaker 7: It's not going to fall what you just said. I

1168
01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 7: wasn't sure what we were walking into today. And I

1169
01:04:22,840 --> 01:04:26,360
Speaker 7: love profanity, but you've said the word shit a few times,

1170
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:29,040
Speaker 7: which is not something that I expected from the prairie preacher.

1171
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 7: Now I'm understanding that they heard.

1172
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:33,120
Speaker 5: It from you guys the gospel.

1173
01:04:33,200 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 1: Oh please, I mean I thought he was a preacher, yeah,

1174
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: from the prairie. No, I mean I read that.

1175
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,440
Speaker 7: I was like, I wonder sort of where the preacher

1176
01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:44,120
Speaker 7: comes from. And now I'm getting you know, you've got

1177
01:04:44,160 --> 01:04:47,919
Speaker 7: your own gospel here of of what the East used

1178
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,960
Speaker 7: to look like. But yeah, I don't know, that's just

1179
01:04:51,040 --> 01:04:52,480
Speaker 7: my thought. I don't really have a question.

1180
01:04:53,600 --> 01:04:59,120
Speaker 1: Thank you. Back to you, how much of your work

1181
01:04:59,240 --> 01:05:01,200
Speaker 1: is about.

1182
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:05,960
Speaker 2: Where do you split your work and your worldview from

1183
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:12,720
Speaker 2: trying to capture what things looked like? I'll add a

1184
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:15,040
Speaker 2: little bit on that because random I have experiences as

1185
01:05:15,080 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 2: well as in some of our research about market hunting

1186
01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:23,040
Speaker 2: that we've been doing lately, where we're sort of taking

1187
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:31,520
Speaker 2: the first far west meaning Appalachia, Kentucky, Tennessee south the

1188
01:05:31,520 --> 01:05:35,880
Speaker 2: Ohio River and looking at the source material that explains

1189
01:05:36,040 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 2: what that looked like, who was there, what it looked like,

1190
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 2: what are the first experiences that Euro Americans had there.

1191
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:46,520
Speaker 2: The source material for that versus the source material for

1192
01:05:46,600 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 2: the Rocky Mountains. The source material for the Rocky Mountains

1193
01:05:51,120 --> 01:05:55,960
Speaker 2: is just relatively vast. I mean, you can't in a lifetime,

1194
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:58,720
Speaker 2: you can't get through all the first hand accounts of

1195
01:05:59,000 --> 01:06:06,280
Speaker 2: what a quote unquote untouched West looked like, like the

1196
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:11,120
Speaker 2: what it looked like in the Native America state. You

1197
01:06:11,160 --> 01:06:14,360
Speaker 2: can't read it all. If you're trying to find accounts

1198
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:17,480
Speaker 2: of what this what we're talking about looked like in

1199
01:06:17,480 --> 01:06:20,240
Speaker 2: an untouched state, it's like it's.

1200
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:21,400
Speaker 1: Like a paucity of material.

1201
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:25,400
Speaker 2: The people that weren't talking and describing weren't describing that.

1202
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 2: So like, how much of your focus is understanding what

1203
01:06:31,800 --> 01:06:35,240
Speaker 2: that was because it's so mysterious what it looked like,

1204
01:06:35,360 --> 01:06:39,040
Speaker 2: how it functioned, what it did and how much of

1205
01:06:39,080 --> 01:06:41,720
Speaker 2: your work is about, well, what do we do now?

1206
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 2: Like knowing that, what do we do now?

1207
01:06:44,400 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, I would say we're equally split, cause it

1208
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 5: took us, you know, for our first eight years. We've

1209
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:53,680
Speaker 5: we've been around since twenty seventeen. You know, we really

1210
01:06:53,760 --> 01:06:58,640
Speaker 5: kind of grew first out of this desire to know

1211
01:06:58,800 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 5: what it was and document and substantiate how we know

1212
01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:06,440
Speaker 5: what it was, right getting back to that original source material,

1213
01:07:08,160 --> 01:07:11,320
Speaker 5: educate the public and the masses to the extent we

1214
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 5: could about you know, what it looked like, giving someone

1215
01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:17,640
Speaker 5: a visual reference for you know, ecosystems that are nearly extinct.

1216
01:07:18,560 --> 01:07:21,840
Speaker 5: So we really were heavily research based and sort of

1217
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 5: into the documentation up until now, and we still are.

1218
01:07:26,440 --> 01:07:29,280
Speaker 5: That's one big branch of what we do as an organization.

1219
01:07:31,120 --> 01:07:34,320
Speaker 5: And then the other thing that we've grown into really

1220
01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:37,760
Speaker 5: in the past three to four years is the restoration.

1221
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:39,280
Speaker 5: It's like, what do we do about it? You know?

1222
01:07:39,320 --> 01:07:42,600
Speaker 5: So we have these remnant grasslands where we have these

1223
01:07:42,640 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 5: areas that a private landowner wants to restore or the

1224
01:07:45,440 --> 01:07:49,800
Speaker 5: National Park Service wants to restore. We've been rapidly building

1225
01:07:49,840 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 5: our team up until the big freeze I have to say,

1226
01:07:53,960 --> 01:07:56,400
Speaker 5: we've been rapidly building our team up and we were

1227
01:07:56,560 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 5: just poised to really begin to do some real impactful

1228
01:08:01,160 --> 01:08:04,840
Speaker 5: on the ground habitat restoration work. Those are the two

1229
01:08:04,920 --> 01:08:10,920
Speaker 5: equal halves of our organization, and yeah, I'm excited by

1230
01:08:11,360 --> 01:08:14,480
Speaker 5: you know. One is I listened to the audible version

1231
01:08:14,560 --> 01:08:16,240
Speaker 5: of the Long Hunter.

1232
01:08:16,080 --> 01:08:17,800
Speaker 1: Book that you use there is.

1233
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:22,520
Speaker 5: I love it, man, you know, I love the complementary.

1234
01:08:22,560 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 5: Is that a word between You're in Clay's southern accent? Yeah?

1235
01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:28,760
Speaker 5: I thought that played off real well.

1236
01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:32,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like one of these guys is obviously, uh,

1237
01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:33,759
Speaker 2: you know, a man of the people.

1238
01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:38,880
Speaker 5: But I love the book. And you know what I

1239
01:08:39,000 --> 01:08:41,839
Speaker 5: found is that you found You talk about the paucity

1240
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:44,439
Speaker 5: of those records, You found some of them. You found

1241
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:46,920
Speaker 5: some of the few. You know, like you mentioned the

1242
01:08:46,960 --> 01:08:49,800
Speaker 5: Casper Mansker and the Bloods. I always forget if it's

1243
01:08:49,840 --> 01:08:52,160
Speaker 5: Isaac or Anthony, you know, the brother two?

1244
01:08:52,320 --> 01:08:55,680
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, and I can't remember which one was with

1245
01:08:55,840 --> 01:08:59,040
Speaker 8: Mansker when they encounter the lick and what is modern

1246
01:08:59,120 --> 01:09:02,760
Speaker 8: day Summer County s and you know the first time

1247
01:09:02,800 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 8: they came, as you alluded to in your book, they

1248
01:09:05,400 --> 01:09:07,679
Speaker 8: were on horseback and they shot a deer.

1249
01:09:08,120 --> 01:09:10,599
Speaker 5: It was in the middle of this giant herd of bison, right,

1250
01:09:11,439 --> 01:09:13,880
Speaker 5: and they couldn't get off their horses for fear of

1251
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:16,320
Speaker 5: being trampled to death. But as long as they stayed

1252
01:09:16,320 --> 01:09:19,760
Speaker 5: on their horses, they were good. You know. There were hundreds,

1253
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:23,760
Speaker 5: possibly you know, a few thousand buffalo into that particular

1254
01:09:23,800 --> 01:09:27,679
Speaker 5: lick that they were in, and you found that reference

1255
01:09:27,760 --> 01:09:31,840
Speaker 5: to that. There's a couple more to that exact same

1256
01:09:32,160 --> 01:09:35,439
Speaker 5: same place though. That has always stuck with me, For example,

1257
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:37,720
Speaker 5: when they came back the following year, and I think

1258
01:09:37,760 --> 01:09:40,559
Speaker 5: you may have references too. All those bison had been

1259
01:09:40,720 --> 01:09:44,360
Speaker 5: exterminated French. Yeah, the French hunters like Timothy de Munbrin

1260
01:09:44,479 --> 01:09:48,560
Speaker 5: and his his you know, cronies were all kind of

1261
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:52,559
Speaker 5: hunting around in that area. So you know, you've stumbled

1262
01:09:52,600 --> 01:09:55,439
Speaker 5: upon like one of the very few references to what

1263
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:57,840
Speaker 5: I would say is a reference that alludes to the

1264
01:09:57,880 --> 01:10:05,040
Speaker 5: savannahs around the Nashville area. Some regions have really well

1265
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:08,680
Speaker 5: documented grasslands, like the black Belt Prairie region of Mississippi

1266
01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:10,840
Speaker 5: and Alabama. It goes all the way back to like

1267
01:10:11,720 --> 01:10:14,680
Speaker 5: seventeen oh one, you know, when that was French territory.

1268
01:10:15,880 --> 01:10:18,880
Speaker 5: You had French generals and stuff like, they were based

1269
01:10:18,880 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 5: in New Orleans, they and their armies were crisscrossing northern Mississippi.

1270
01:10:25,120 --> 01:10:28,519
Speaker 5: Those are all recorded in the French archives, and I've

1271
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 5: got a colleague, doctor John Barone, who's published and pulled

1272
01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 5: that stuff out. But part of the challenge of the

1273
01:10:36,000 --> 01:10:38,680
Speaker 5: South and the East in general is that many of

1274
01:10:38,680 --> 01:10:44,960
Speaker 5: these areas were settled so rapidly and hectically chaotically that

1275
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:48,160
Speaker 5: the original landscape. We always say they were gone before

1276
01:10:48,200 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 5: the camera was invented. They were gone before people who

1277
01:10:52,080 --> 01:10:54,479
Speaker 5: could write about them visited. In some cases they were

1278
01:10:54,520 --> 01:10:58,479
Speaker 5: transformed before they could be recorded, and oftentimes they were

1279
01:10:58,479 --> 01:11:03,200
Speaker 5: gone before the first artist came through. So the record

1280
01:11:03,320 --> 01:11:05,920
Speaker 5: has to be sort of pieced back together, like Humpty Dumpty.

1281
01:11:06,760 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 5: And that's one of the things that we're actively doing,

1282
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:11,360
Speaker 5: is piecing back where they were, what they looked like.

1283
01:11:12,080 --> 01:11:14,040
Speaker 5: One of our great friends, and you gotta have them

1284
01:11:14,080 --> 01:11:17,559
Speaker 5: on your show. He's amazing. He's the best oil painter

1285
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:19,480
Speaker 5: you'll ever meet.

1286
01:11:19,800 --> 01:11:22,040
Speaker 1: And careful knockcuse, my wife's taken over now, man.

1287
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:26,439
Speaker 5: But he goes back and he tours like when William

1288
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:30,400
Speaker 5: Bartram was an explorer in the South in the seventeen seventies.

1289
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:34,280
Speaker 5: He goes back to where William Bartram was in Montgomery, Alabama,

1290
01:11:35,120 --> 01:11:37,880
Speaker 5: and he uses Bartram's words and his ability to look

1291
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:40,840
Speaker 5: at the modern landscape to put back the scene that

1292
01:11:40,880 --> 01:11:43,600
Speaker 5: Bartram would have seen. And it's a vast prairie that

1293
01:11:43,720 --> 01:11:45,439
Speaker 5: looks like the Flynn Hills of East Kansas.

1294
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:52,080
Speaker 3: You were talking about bison, Do you guys suspect that

1295
01:11:52,120 --> 01:11:56,120
Speaker 3: they played a role in maintaining these these grasslands?

1296
01:11:56,360 --> 01:11:59,559
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Now, bison in the East, as

1297
01:11:59,600 --> 01:12:03,360
Speaker 5: you guys, I'm sure no, is very complicated. You know,

1298
01:12:03,439 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 5: I've read Ted Bulow's book. I love It's one of

1299
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:06,519
Speaker 5: my favorite of all times.

1300
01:12:07,080 --> 01:12:08,160
Speaker 1: This whole thing is a great story.

1301
01:12:08,160 --> 01:12:12,760
Speaker 5: I got them a backpack. But you know, there's some

1302
01:12:12,840 --> 01:12:15,880
Speaker 5: new evidence emerging on bison in the East. There's some

1303
01:12:16,320 --> 01:12:20,760
Speaker 5: archaeology and paleontology work that's been done. You know, we

1304
01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:23,160
Speaker 5: thought that bison had kind of re emerged in the

1305
01:12:23,200 --> 01:12:26,360
Speaker 5: South in like the middle fifteen hundreds early fifteen hundreds,

1306
01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:30,160
Speaker 5: after the depopulation of Native Americans from some of the

1307
01:12:30,360 --> 01:12:34,960
Speaker 5: different pandemic diseases that they came back in from the

1308
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:38,400
Speaker 5: Great Plains I think that the supporting evidence suggests that

1309
01:12:38,479 --> 01:12:42,559
Speaker 5: is true. Right, But if you had asked, most people, Okay,

1310
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:45,960
Speaker 5: so bison came back into the South, because you know,

1311
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:49,240
Speaker 5: they were definitely here in the South in ice age

1312
01:12:49,240 --> 01:12:53,559
Speaker 5: times we had multiple species of bison. But most people

1313
01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:56,759
Speaker 5: kind of considered that in states like North Carolina, Georgia,

1314
01:12:57,040 --> 01:13:00,920
Speaker 5: you know, Tennessee, that bison had essentially been gone for

1315
01:13:01,920 --> 01:13:04,960
Speaker 5: you know, since fifteen thousand years ago, up until about

1316
01:13:05,040 --> 01:13:08,400
Speaker 5: the year fifteen fifty or so. And so then you

1317
01:13:08,760 --> 01:13:11,439
Speaker 5: get into saying, well, well, wait a minute, does that

1318
01:13:11,479 --> 01:13:15,360
Speaker 5: mean there were no big animals grazing southern grasslands three

1319
01:13:15,400 --> 01:13:20,800
Speaker 5: thousand years ago, five thousand, nine thousand years ago. That

1320
01:13:20,840 --> 01:13:23,240
Speaker 5: was kind of the I think the consensus.

1321
01:13:23,600 --> 01:13:26,920
Speaker 2: But this this wedgend, if you have wedging, well, I

1322
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:28,880
Speaker 2: just want some of the things people have looked at

1323
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:31,240
Speaker 2: and describing that That that I've read about is like

1324
01:13:31,280 --> 01:13:36,720
Speaker 2: that the the Spanish and the French would come through

1325
01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:43,080
Speaker 2: places in the early sixteen hundreds and they'd describe everything

1326
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:45,960
Speaker 2: right down to possums, no mention of buffalo.

1327
01:13:46,320 --> 01:13:47,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, you go to the.

1328
01:13:47,560 --> 01:13:51,439
Speaker 2: Effigy mounds, like the mound builders, the Mississippian cultures on

1329
01:13:51,560 --> 01:13:58,759
Speaker 2: the Ohio Mississippi River. They carve and have things every snake, turtle, deer, bear.

1330
01:13:59,360 --> 01:14:01,440
Speaker 1: They don't have buffalo effigies.

1331
01:14:03,360 --> 01:14:05,479
Speaker 2: And I think that that like that kind when we're

1332
01:14:05,479 --> 01:14:08,719
Speaker 2: talking about evidence, like that kind of evidence, it's almost

1333
01:14:08,760 --> 01:14:15,479
Speaker 2: like a omission. I'm try like omission equals absence. I'm

1334
01:14:15,479 --> 01:14:17,840
Speaker 2: familiar with that kind of evidence, like, well, if they

1335
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:22,240
Speaker 2: were there, they would have talked about them, so they

1336
01:14:22,360 --> 01:14:23,240
Speaker 2: must not have been there.

1337
01:14:23,520 --> 01:14:26,479
Speaker 5: I've encountered a lot of that logic, right, Yeah, And

1338
01:14:26,520 --> 01:14:29,880
Speaker 5: I think that's that's generally it seems like there's wide

1339
01:14:29,880 --> 01:14:34,000
Speaker 5: agreement that there generally were few to know bison in

1340
01:14:34,040 --> 01:14:38,080
Speaker 5: the East and Southeast before the early fifteen hundreds. You know,

1341
01:14:38,120 --> 01:14:40,439
Speaker 5: when you get to the French explorers of the sixteen

1342
01:14:40,479 --> 01:14:45,240
Speaker 5: eighties through you know, the seventeen twenties, ample, ample discussion

1343
01:14:45,280 --> 01:14:49,080
Speaker 5: of bison just just it's it's everywhere, you know, when

1344
01:14:49,120 --> 01:14:52,320
Speaker 5: you get to the seventeen sixties and seventies seventies, everybody

1345
01:14:52,360 --> 01:14:54,880
Speaker 5: who goes out is talking about bison in every valley

1346
01:14:54,960 --> 01:14:58,360
Speaker 5: in West Virginia and every big you know whatever. Isn't

1347
01:14:58,360 --> 01:15:01,320
Speaker 5: that crazy, It's crazy, you know? But and so many

1348
01:15:01,360 --> 01:15:04,720
Speaker 5: place names too. But here's the challenge. Uh we we

1349
01:15:04,760 --> 01:15:06,680
Speaker 5: thought they essentially had disappeared at the end of the

1350
01:15:06,720 --> 01:15:09,759
Speaker 5: ice Age. But I think his name is doctor Gary Moore.

1351
01:15:09,840 --> 01:15:14,439
Speaker 5: He's an archaeologist from East Carolina State University. Was doing

1352
01:15:14,439 --> 01:15:18,040
Speaker 5: some work at a archaeological site in the Piedmont of

1353
01:15:18,080 --> 01:15:23,000
Speaker 5: South Carolina and using a technique where they looked at

1354
01:15:23,040 --> 01:15:28,360
Speaker 5: these spear points, these stone projectile tools. Right, they were

1355
01:15:28,360 --> 01:15:30,559
Speaker 5: able to go into you know, you guys have seen

1356
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:33,000
Speaker 5: those flint nappers, right and you're sitting there making it,

1357
01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:37,880
Speaker 5: making a projectile. Yeah, there you go. Well, those those

1358
01:15:37,880 --> 01:15:42,439
Speaker 5: stone tools have little microfractures in them that through capitalar

1359
01:15:42,479 --> 01:15:45,280
Speaker 5: re action, you know, draws in blood and other types

1360
01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:48,600
Speaker 5: of material when you when you kill an animal. And

1361
01:15:48,680 --> 01:15:51,880
Speaker 5: what doctor Moore's work has shown is that they can

1362
01:15:51,920 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 5: actually extract not the DNA, but they can extract the

1363
01:15:55,280 --> 01:15:58,879
Speaker 5: protein residues of animals that were killed with these stone tools.

1364
01:15:59,520 --> 01:16:04,960
Speaker 5: Is well, I know I've heard mixed opinions on it too,

1365
01:16:05,040 --> 01:16:07,120
Speaker 5: but but if it's true, let's just say if it is,

1366
01:16:07,840 --> 01:16:09,760
Speaker 5: and you know, it's gone through peer review, publication and

1367
01:16:09,800 --> 01:16:11,800
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. But what his work shows is

1368
01:16:11,800 --> 01:16:15,400
Speaker 5: that there's a continuous record of bison in South Carolina

1369
01:16:16,000 --> 01:16:19,679
Speaker 5: from the Late Ice Age, so probably fifteen thousand years ago,

1370
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:22,760
Speaker 5: all the way up until seven thousand years ago. So

1371
01:16:22,840 --> 01:16:25,479
Speaker 5: that's a totally different story. If you got bison in

1372
01:16:25,520 --> 01:16:28,200
Speaker 5: South Carolina at seven thousand years ago, you probably had

1373
01:16:28,240 --> 01:16:30,880
Speaker 5: them in Tennessee, Kentucky. You may have had them even farther,

1374
01:16:31,040 --> 01:16:33,720
Speaker 5: you know, to the west and south. So then that

1375
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:37,720
Speaker 5: means that the window without bison is actually much narrower

1376
01:16:37,760 --> 01:16:40,080
Speaker 5: than we suspected gotch So it's that kind of that

1377
01:16:40,160 --> 01:16:44,720
Speaker 5: kind of emerging evidence which adds to and somewhat you know,

1378
01:16:45,120 --> 01:16:48,840
Speaker 5: clouds the whole picture of southeastern grassland ecosystems.

1379
01:16:49,000 --> 01:16:53,639
Speaker 2: Can you speak to the impact of Native American burning

1380
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:56,320
Speaker 2: like this? This was I can't remember what year it was,

1381
01:16:56,360 --> 01:16:58,439
Speaker 2: but this became a very fashionable.

1382
01:16:57,880 --> 01:16:59,240
Speaker 1: Idea that.

1383
01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:05,719
Speaker 2: Open country, that all this open lands was a result

1384
01:17:05,800 --> 01:17:10,920
Speaker 2: of slash and burn agriculture, or there are accounts, I

1385
01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:14,439
Speaker 2: believe there's French accounts where they were using fire and

1386
01:17:14,520 --> 01:17:20,000
Speaker 2: game drives. Yeah, I mean they would encircle big areas,

1387
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:22,040
Speaker 2: get some hunters staked up, and just burn the place

1388
01:17:22,240 --> 01:17:24,120
Speaker 2: to push out deer. And so for a while it

1389
01:17:24,160 --> 01:17:26,920
Speaker 2: seemed like everybody was really hip on this idea that

1390
01:17:27,000 --> 01:17:33,040
Speaker 2: all that open country was that was anthropogenic and not natural,

1391
01:17:33,160 --> 01:17:36,760
Speaker 2: you know, like not whatever the hell the opposite anthropogenic is.

1392
01:17:37,040 --> 01:17:41,280
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think I'm reading the book Forgotten Fires right now,

1393
01:17:41,400 --> 01:17:45,120
Speaker 5: right and they talk about you know, it's written by

1394
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:49,680
Speaker 5: an anthropologists, so it relies heavily on that perspective and

1395
01:17:49,760 --> 01:17:54,800
Speaker 5: sort of the science of anthropology. There's no question when

1396
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:57,400
Speaker 5: you go back into the earliest seventeen hundreds and sixteen

1397
01:17:57,520 --> 01:18:01,639
Speaker 5: hundreds and maybe slightly beyond that, there are just ample

1398
01:18:02,360 --> 01:18:06,680
Speaker 5: documentary evidences and observations of Native Americans burning the landscape

1399
01:18:06,680 --> 01:18:10,400
Speaker 5: for you know, setting large, you know, circular fires on

1400
01:18:10,439 --> 01:18:16,519
Speaker 5: the land, and that's really well documented. I think, though,

1401
01:18:16,520 --> 01:18:19,640
Speaker 5: there's a slippery slope and it's just too far to go.

1402
01:18:19,760 --> 01:18:23,400
Speaker 5: It's too big of an extrapolation to say with surety

1403
01:18:23,520 --> 01:18:27,680
Speaker 5: that Native Americans created open ecosystems of the South. And

1404
01:18:27,720 --> 01:18:31,320
Speaker 5: I think what that does is it makes a bunch

1405
01:18:31,360 --> 01:18:34,960
Speaker 5: of assumptions. One of the ways I think in my

1406
01:18:35,080 --> 01:18:38,559
Speaker 5: colleague who's our chief science advisor, doctor Reid Nass, he

1407
01:18:38,640 --> 01:18:42,040
Speaker 5: wrote a book in twenty thirteen called Forgotten Grasslands of

1408
01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:45,160
Speaker 5: the South, and it really was a game changer and

1409
01:18:45,200 --> 01:18:51,080
Speaker 5: turned the messaging around southern ecosystems. There's one very clear

1410
01:18:51,160 --> 01:18:55,160
Speaker 5: line of evidence as to why it doesn't make sense

1411
01:18:55,280 --> 01:18:59,360
Speaker 5: that Native Americans created these landscapes. They probably moved into

1412
01:18:59,400 --> 01:19:03,000
Speaker 5: them and found them already largely open. They may have

1413
01:19:03,080 --> 01:19:05,759
Speaker 5: expanded some of the smaller ones to make them larger,

1414
01:19:06,600 --> 01:19:08,680
Speaker 5: But the clear line of evidence that they did not

1415
01:19:09,560 --> 01:19:13,080
Speaker 5: create most of them is in the presence of endemic species.

1416
01:19:13,720 --> 01:19:16,519
Speaker 5: When you have plants and animals that have, you know,

1417
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:21,000
Speaker 5: through the process of evolution, it just takes time. Most

1418
01:19:21,040 --> 01:19:24,200
Speaker 5: of the species that evolve on this planet, they require

1419
01:19:24,400 --> 01:19:27,479
Speaker 5: tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. Some of them

1420
01:19:27,560 --> 01:19:30,920
Speaker 5: require millions of years to evolve. If we have conclusively

1421
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:34,120
Speaker 5: had people in the South for say thirteen fourteen thousand years,

1422
01:19:34,960 --> 01:19:39,120
Speaker 5: most of these modern species likely originated prior to the

1423
01:19:39,200 --> 01:19:42,799
Speaker 5: arrival of man into the southeastern United States. Grassland species,

1424
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:47,880
Speaker 5: they're grassland obligate species. That's the biggest testament to that

1425
01:19:48,000 --> 01:19:51,639
Speaker 5: longevity factor. Now here's the other one. Very rich fossil

1426
01:19:51,680 --> 01:19:55,000
Speaker 5: evidence for grasslands and grassland endemic species in the South.

1427
01:19:55,640 --> 01:19:58,640
Speaker 5: And so if you know you say, okay, well, you

1428
01:19:58,640 --> 01:20:01,760
Speaker 5: know what if it's true that Native Americans uh came

1429
01:20:01,800 --> 01:20:05,439
Speaker 5: into and created these. Again, I am not in any

1430
01:20:05,439 --> 01:20:08,559
Speaker 5: way trying to take away the importance of indigenous management.

1431
01:20:08,560 --> 01:20:12,240
Speaker 5: I think that is a exceptionally important, you know, component

1432
01:20:12,320 --> 01:20:14,920
Speaker 5: to this. But you can go back to the fossil

1433
01:20:14,920 --> 01:20:19,120
Speaker 5: record in Florida and East Tennessee and various places, uh

1434
01:20:19,160 --> 01:20:21,960
Speaker 5: and find a rich wealth of some of the biggest

1435
01:20:22,000 --> 01:20:26,000
Speaker 5: grassland dependent you know, megafauna and carnivores. You can imagine.

1436
01:20:26,400 --> 01:20:29,519
Speaker 5: You know, there's a recent discovery of the American cheetah

1437
01:20:29,520 --> 01:20:33,360
Speaker 5: in the in the the Appalachians of southwest Virginia. Seriously, yeah,

1438
01:20:33,439 --> 01:20:34,960
Speaker 5: no joke, found out.

1439
01:20:34,880 --> 01:20:37,799
Speaker 3: I was reading there was caribou in Alabama, Georgia.

1440
01:20:38,040 --> 01:20:42,120
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, that you know, uh, big longhorn bison. And

1441
01:20:42,120 --> 01:20:44,720
Speaker 5: by the way, that that cheetah was found within the

1442
01:20:44,760 --> 01:20:46,679
Speaker 5: county adjacent to Cumberland Gap.

1443
01:20:47,080 --> 01:20:47,400
Speaker 1: Mmm.

1444
01:20:47,640 --> 01:20:49,240
Speaker 5: No, kid, yeah, I know, you know, I know you

1445
01:20:49,280 --> 01:20:50,000
Speaker 5: love Cumberland Gain.

1446
01:20:50,160 --> 01:20:53,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, huh.

1447
01:20:53,320 --> 01:20:55,280
Speaker 5: So there's a there's a wealth, I mean, the endemic

1448
01:20:55,280 --> 01:20:58,599
Speaker 5: species alone. Man, that that that is the biggest piece

1449
01:20:58,600 --> 01:20:59,160
Speaker 5: of evidence.

1450
01:21:00,520 --> 01:21:02,560
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a little kid, man, do

1451
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:05,240
Speaker 2: you remember what did do you guys remember what the

1452
01:21:05,479 --> 01:21:05,800
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1453
01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:07,320
Speaker 1: It's still around the Epcot Center.

1454
01:21:09,479 --> 01:21:16,759
Speaker 3: It's very much still, isn't it.

1455
01:21:16,760 --> 01:21:17,639
Speaker 5: It's a big glass.

1456
01:21:17,720 --> 01:21:21,040
Speaker 3: It's like a big glass, like a giant.

1457
01:21:21,880 --> 01:21:24,120
Speaker 1: I went there when I was just a youngster.

1458
01:21:24,160 --> 01:21:26,280
Speaker 2: I went down I remember we went down there to

1459
01:21:26,400 --> 01:21:29,479
Speaker 2: we fished, We watched them shoot a space shuttle off,

1460
01:21:29,600 --> 01:21:32,360
Speaker 2: and we went to the Epcot Center and they did

1461
01:21:32,360 --> 01:21:35,920
Speaker 2: this thing where you were like cruising at very low altitude,

1462
01:21:39,320 --> 01:21:41,960
Speaker 2: Like it's like a planetarium experience where it's like you're

1463
01:21:42,000 --> 01:21:45,799
Speaker 2: cruising very fast at very low altitude over the country.

1464
01:21:47,479 --> 01:21:47,639
Speaker 4: Uh.

1465
01:21:49,600 --> 01:21:51,240
Speaker 1: I know, there's like some budget problems.

1466
01:21:54,439 --> 01:21:57,679
Speaker 2: Has have you guys tried like any kind of wide

1467
01:21:57,760 --> 01:22:00,320
Speaker 2: scale visual representation.

1468
01:22:01,080 --> 01:22:05,120
Speaker 1: Of what a flyover like, you know, I mean, like

1469
01:22:05,760 --> 01:22:09,360
Speaker 1: what a flyover of the area you mapped out looked

1470
01:22:09,400 --> 01:22:12,960
Speaker 1: like in fourteen ninety two.

1471
01:22:13,640 --> 01:22:16,000
Speaker 5: That sounds like a good collaboration with meat Eator if

1472
01:22:16,000 --> 01:22:17,240
Speaker 5: you want me to tell you about it. But no,

1473
01:22:18,479 --> 01:22:22,080
Speaker 5: what we have, what we have embarked on is the

1474
01:22:22,160 --> 01:22:25,760
Speaker 5: creation of a web platform we call Grasslandia.

1475
01:22:26,200 --> 01:22:28,760
Speaker 9: You know it sounds kind of fanciful, right, Come with

1476
01:22:28,880 --> 01:22:31,880
Speaker 9: me to the grassland the world of Grasslandia.

1477
01:22:32,600 --> 01:22:35,000
Speaker 5: And No, I think that needs to happen. We need

1478
01:22:35,040 --> 01:22:39,320
Speaker 5: to have that sort of visual you know, flyover reenactment

1479
01:22:39,360 --> 01:22:42,160
Speaker 5: so people can see it, because nobody can can see

1480
01:22:42,200 --> 01:22:44,360
Speaker 5: it and understand it today and if you can't see it,

1481
01:22:45,280 --> 01:22:48,360
Speaker 5: you can't visualize it. Or the largest remnants you have

1482
01:22:48,520 --> 01:22:52,080
Speaker 5: left is the footprint of this building, you know, or

1483
01:22:52,120 --> 01:22:54,800
Speaker 5: a quarter of an acre. How are you going to

1484
01:22:54,880 --> 01:22:58,320
Speaker 5: inspire people to go back in and care about those

1485
01:22:58,400 --> 01:23:02,040
Speaker 5: landscapes and rebuild them and reconstruct them so we can

1486
01:23:02,600 --> 01:23:05,839
Speaker 5: prevent the continued collapse of our wildlife and bio diversity

1487
01:23:05,960 --> 01:23:07,040
Speaker 5: which is all around us.

1488
01:23:07,120 --> 01:23:12,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, tell us about some of those patches you found, Yeah, well,

1489
01:23:13,720 --> 01:23:16,720
Speaker 2: like native patches of like yeah, historic.

1490
01:23:16,360 --> 01:23:18,160
Speaker 1: Grass and how small they are.

1491
01:23:18,280 --> 01:23:21,360
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, the probably the best patch that we have

1492
01:23:21,479 --> 01:23:24,400
Speaker 5: left in Tennessee where I'm from, it's called May Prairie.

1493
01:23:25,080 --> 01:23:28,160
Speaker 5: And you know, the story is back in the sixties,

1494
01:23:28,200 --> 01:23:31,080
Speaker 5: a couple of professors from the University of Tennessee. We're

1495
01:23:31,120 --> 01:23:33,800
Speaker 5: sitting at a cafe across the street on Highway forty one,

1496
01:23:34,000 --> 01:23:39,080
Speaker 5: you know, which like goes from Chicago to Florida. And

1497
01:23:39,120 --> 01:23:41,280
Speaker 5: they're sitting at this restaurant it's called the Prairie Cafe,

1498
01:23:41,800 --> 01:23:45,479
Speaker 5: and they look over to the lady and said, miss ma'am,

1499
01:23:45,680 --> 01:23:48,240
Speaker 5: why is this called the prairie Cafe? She said, you

1500
01:23:48,240 --> 01:23:50,639
Speaker 5: see a line of trees over there across the highway.

1501
01:23:51,439 --> 01:23:52,880
Speaker 5: Well look through there. You see how it kind of

1502
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:55,320
Speaker 5: looks open and sunny. There's a prairie in there. And

1503
01:23:55,400 --> 01:23:58,639
Speaker 5: these were two botanists, right like I am. So they

1504
01:23:58,640 --> 01:24:00,360
Speaker 5: get they finish up their meal and they go out

1505
01:24:00,360 --> 01:24:03,479
Speaker 5: across road to walk in and they find May Prairie,

1506
01:24:03,720 --> 01:24:06,679
Speaker 5: which is eleven acres and it's still to this day

1507
01:24:07,200 --> 01:24:12,479
Speaker 5: is eleven acres. May Prairie is the most biodiverse single

1508
01:24:12,520 --> 01:24:16,360
Speaker 5: eleven acres in the eastern interior United States. Kid, you know,

1509
01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:20,760
Speaker 5: oh crazy, totally separate side story. In two thousand and eight,

1510
01:24:21,960 --> 01:24:24,160
Speaker 5: I was part of the Natural Areas conference that came

1511
01:24:24,200 --> 01:24:27,040
Speaker 5: to Tennessee. It was in Nashville, and they asked me,

1512
01:24:27,040 --> 01:24:30,720
Speaker 5: I said, will you lead a grass identification hike down

1513
01:24:30,720 --> 01:24:32,960
Speaker 5: to May Prairie for the for the conference? I said,

1514
01:24:32,960 --> 01:24:35,120
Speaker 5: for sure, will I go down there? And I'm walking

1515
01:24:35,120 --> 01:24:37,479
Speaker 5: through this prairie It's October of two thousand and eight,

1516
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:39,720
Speaker 5: and I see this plant. I look down and I said, man,

1517
01:24:39,800 --> 01:24:43,040
Speaker 5: this is weird. This is the type of little member

1518
01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:46,960
Speaker 5: of the sunflyer family. I said, this is not anything

1519
01:24:47,040 --> 01:24:50,640
Speaker 5: currently known from Tennessee. And Buddy Mine says, how you know?

1520
01:24:50,720 --> 01:24:52,519
Speaker 5: I said, just trust me. I know, I know the

1521
01:24:52,560 --> 01:24:55,760
Speaker 5: floor of Tennessee. There's nothing else like it. I don't

1522
01:24:55,800 --> 01:24:57,360
Speaker 5: know what it is. So I get back and later

1523
01:24:57,400 --> 01:25:00,400
Speaker 5: that email, I sent an email to the national uh,

1524
01:25:00,439 --> 01:25:03,040
Speaker 5: the international expert on that particular group of plants, who

1525
01:25:03,040 --> 01:25:05,880
Speaker 5: happened to be in Waterloo, Canada, and he wrote back

1526
01:25:05,880 --> 01:25:09,360
Speaker 5: and he said, congratulations, you have discovered a completely new species.

1527
01:25:10,200 --> 01:25:12,920
Speaker 5: And not only did it prove to be new, but

1528
01:25:13,000 --> 01:25:15,800
Speaker 5: it's endemic to that single prairie and nowhere else on earth.

1529
01:25:16,000 --> 01:25:16,640
Speaker 1: You're kidding me?

1530
01:25:16,720 --> 01:25:17,639
Speaker 7: Did you get to name it?

1531
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:19,280
Speaker 5: He actually named it for me, so.

1532
01:25:21,720 --> 01:25:22,840
Speaker 1: I thought you couldn't do that anymore.

1533
01:25:23,000 --> 01:25:24,639
Speaker 5: No, I can't. I can't name it for myself.

1534
01:25:25,040 --> 01:25:28,439
Speaker 3: So by new it was actually old, like is that

1535
01:25:28,479 --> 01:25:29,040
Speaker 3: what you're saying?

1536
01:25:29,240 --> 01:25:29,320
Speaker 1: Like?

1537
01:25:29,400 --> 01:25:32,200
Speaker 9: It was endemic to probably all over damn place once

1538
01:25:32,280 --> 01:25:35,960
Speaker 9: upon a time, endemic in the sense that it Yeah,

1539
01:25:35,960 --> 01:25:38,439
Speaker 9: it probably was more widely distributed because that area had

1540
01:25:38,600 --> 01:25:40,000
Speaker 9: had about a million acres.

1541
01:25:39,680 --> 01:25:42,840
Speaker 5: Of grass historically. That's one of the last fragments left.

1542
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:46,920
Speaker 5: But yeah, and old in the sense it probably took

1543
01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:50,679
Speaker 5: tens of thousands of years to evolve as a species. Yeah,

1544
01:25:50,680 --> 01:25:54,880
Speaker 5: the name is sympiatricum estesia. Well not the sexiest name around.

1545
01:25:55,160 --> 01:25:59,120
Speaker 3: Like, we've got prairie out here, and it's you know,

1546
01:25:59,240 --> 01:26:01,920
Speaker 3: obviously it's diverse and there's different kind of plants and

1547
01:26:01,960 --> 01:26:06,839
Speaker 3: animals and stuff. But like, what would like a patch

1548
01:26:06,840 --> 01:26:09,680
Speaker 3: of that prairie that size of this table look like

1549
01:26:09,840 --> 01:26:12,080
Speaker 3: that year talking like, is it a bunch of different

1550
01:26:12,080 --> 01:26:14,599
Speaker 3: flowers and plants and grass and.

1551
01:26:15,160 --> 01:26:17,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's gonna look like your tall grass

1552
01:26:17,040 --> 01:26:21,080
Speaker 5: prairie and like parts of Missouri or Iowa very similar.

1553
01:26:21,160 --> 01:26:23,080
Speaker 5: It's just oftentimes it is gonna have a bit more

1554
01:26:23,120 --> 01:26:24,799
Speaker 5: tree cover, you know, it's gonna.

1555
01:26:24,560 --> 01:26:28,599
Speaker 3: Have what would those be, conifers or hardwoods or both,

1556
01:26:28,880 --> 01:26:29,840
Speaker 3: mostly hardwoods.

1557
01:26:29,880 --> 01:26:32,160
Speaker 5: So like in lots of the Upper South you'll have

1558
01:26:32,720 --> 01:26:36,040
Speaker 5: post oak, black jack oak those those or burroak those

1559
01:26:36,160 --> 01:26:39,479
Speaker 5: in my you know, my way of thinking, especially for

1560
01:26:39,520 --> 01:26:42,479
Speaker 5: our region, are essentially grassland trees, which is kind of

1561
01:26:42,479 --> 01:26:46,160
Speaker 5: a weird concept for people. Like black jack oak won't

1562
01:26:46,200 --> 01:26:50,799
Speaker 5: even reproduce anymore, Like it's acorns just never germinate because

1563
01:26:51,520 --> 01:26:54,000
Speaker 5: most black jack oaks today are shrouded in forest that

1564
01:26:54,120 --> 01:26:57,840
Speaker 5: is unnaturally forested, where the forest has overtaken grassland. So

1565
01:26:57,880 --> 01:27:00,559
Speaker 5: you've got an oak that essentially can no longer germinate

1566
01:27:00,760 --> 01:27:02,400
Speaker 5: and reproduce itself.

1567
01:27:02,439 --> 01:27:04,960
Speaker 2: Like he's dropping his acorn in a place that yeah,

1568
01:27:05,040 --> 01:27:06,519
Speaker 2: or excuse me's acorn, that's.

1569
01:27:06,439 --> 01:27:09,000
Speaker 5: Right, and it doesn't do any good, and he's on

1570
01:27:09,080 --> 01:27:11,920
Speaker 5: his way out, you know, and another generation or two,

1571
01:27:12,040 --> 01:27:14,760
Speaker 5: those oaks will die and they will never replace themselves

1572
01:27:15,760 --> 01:27:18,439
Speaker 5: without things like fire and buffalo and those kind of things.

1573
01:27:18,880 --> 01:27:22,599
Speaker 5: But you know, yeah, visually very similar to what you'd

1574
01:27:22,600 --> 01:27:25,920
Speaker 5: see with the eastern tallgrass prairie. That's essentially what ours were.

1575
01:27:25,920 --> 01:27:28,599
Speaker 5: They were sort of eastern outliers of but they were

1576
01:27:28,720 --> 01:27:30,720
Speaker 5: very different in terms of the plants. They had their

1577
01:27:30,760 --> 01:27:35,880
Speaker 5: own species, their own composition, They were unique, and now

1578
01:27:35,880 --> 01:27:36,839
Speaker 5: they're mostly gone.

1579
01:27:37,280 --> 01:27:39,959
Speaker 1: What's it look like subsurface in that may prairie.

1580
01:27:40,880 --> 01:27:44,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, that particular prairie does have you know, it's it's

1581
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:48,439
Speaker 5: an intact system. So it's the underground is intact too,

1582
01:27:48,680 --> 01:27:51,040
Speaker 5: and it's prairie soils and stuff. But that's that's a

1583
01:27:51,040 --> 01:27:53,960
Speaker 5: big misnumber, big misconception a lot of people have is

1584
01:27:54,000 --> 01:27:57,080
Speaker 5: that prairie is always associated with a given soil type.

1585
01:27:57,720 --> 01:27:59,599
Speaker 5: You know, in the Midwest, a lot of your prairies

1586
01:27:59,600 --> 01:28:02,840
Speaker 5: are these black prairie soils they call mollosaws. But in

1587
01:28:02,880 --> 01:28:05,520
Speaker 5: the South we get prairies on every soul type imaginable,

1588
01:28:06,000 --> 01:28:09,240
Speaker 5: So that really doesn't hold much water for us with

1589
01:28:09,640 --> 01:28:10,559
Speaker 5: the actual sul type.

1590
01:28:10,840 --> 01:28:13,960
Speaker 1: Got it? Yeah, yeah, What is the history of how

1591
01:28:14,000 --> 01:28:19,559
Speaker 1: that made prairie? How did it stay intact just because

1592
01:28:19,560 --> 01:28:20,519
Speaker 1: something didn't happen.

1593
01:28:20,880 --> 01:28:23,000
Speaker 5: Well, that's the sort of the case that we see

1594
01:28:23,000 --> 01:28:25,280
Speaker 5: with a lot of our eastern grasslands. Is the thing

1595
01:28:25,320 --> 01:28:28,400
Speaker 5: that caused them to survive four hundred years of you know,

1596
01:28:28,479 --> 01:28:33,320
Speaker 5: Euro American settlement was Oftentimes they're too wet or too rocky,

1597
01:28:33,640 --> 01:28:36,920
Speaker 5: or maybe they're on the natural edge. So in this case,

1598
01:28:36,960 --> 01:28:39,640
Speaker 5: it has it's we'll call hard pan prairie. So if

1599
01:28:39,640 --> 01:28:41,559
Speaker 5: you dig down them by a foot, it actually has

1600
01:28:41,560 --> 01:28:45,799
Speaker 5: a clay hardpan that restricts tree growth and actually favors

1601
01:28:45,840 --> 01:28:49,400
Speaker 5: grasses and wildflowers and those kind of things. So it's

1602
01:28:49,479 --> 01:28:53,479
Speaker 5: naturally predisposed to being being grassy. But it's also really

1603
01:28:53,479 --> 01:28:56,200
Speaker 5: really wet in the wintertime. You can't really develop there.

1604
01:28:56,280 --> 01:28:59,519
Speaker 5: It's not a good good for cropping soils are highly acidic,

1605
01:29:00,520 --> 01:29:02,519
Speaker 5: so that's one of the reasons why it's kind of

1606
01:29:03,040 --> 01:29:06,760
Speaker 5: you know, persistent to the modern day. But a lot

1607
01:29:06,800 --> 01:29:10,160
Speaker 5: of these other sites, you know, if they're rocky that

1608
01:29:10,200 --> 01:29:12,160
Speaker 5: will preclude development, or if they're in a like a

1609
01:29:12,160 --> 01:29:14,200
Speaker 5: power line corridor. We see a lot of our best

1610
01:29:14,240 --> 01:29:19,200
Speaker 5: grasslands in power lines and on roadsides. Really yeah, but strangely,

1611
01:29:19,240 --> 01:29:21,920
Speaker 5: you know, or not strangely, I guess, but especially in

1612
01:29:21,920 --> 01:29:24,040
Speaker 5: the past twenty five years, those are the hardest hit,

1613
01:29:25,120 --> 01:29:27,200
Speaker 5: you know, from the usage of herbicides to kind of

1614
01:29:27,240 --> 01:29:30,439
Speaker 5: manage those environments. So they were the last to remain

1615
01:29:30,800 --> 01:29:34,599
Speaker 5: and now they're the sort of those little last scraps

1616
01:29:34,600 --> 01:29:39,879
Speaker 5: are being devastated, and those remnants are key to rebuilding efforts.

1617
01:29:39,960 --> 01:29:41,720
Speaker 5: You know, if you want to rebuild prairie, if you

1618
01:29:41,720 --> 01:29:44,439
Speaker 5: want to rebuild savannahs, it's important to know where those

1619
01:29:44,439 --> 01:29:45,080
Speaker 5: remnants are.

1620
01:29:45,680 --> 01:29:49,960
Speaker 2: Can can those remnants if you rate the right conditions.

1621
01:29:51,040 --> 01:29:53,680
Speaker 2: Do those remnants want to grow or do they want

1622
01:29:53,720 --> 01:29:56,800
Speaker 2: to shrink based on what's on the edge of them.

1623
01:29:56,880 --> 01:30:00,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, they do not grow. They that's they're not They

1624
01:30:00,680 --> 01:30:04,000
Speaker 5: don't have a natural predispicient predisposition to being able to

1625
01:30:04,080 --> 01:30:06,960
Speaker 5: move easily as a as a vegetation type.

1626
01:30:06,800 --> 01:30:08,120
Speaker 1: So it's not like a BlackBerry patch.

1627
01:30:08,240 --> 01:30:10,240
Speaker 5: No. Now, in fact, that that's one of the things

1628
01:30:10,240 --> 01:30:12,800
Speaker 5: that's really hard for a lot of people to understand.

1629
01:30:13,080 --> 01:30:16,920
Speaker 5: You know, in the wildlife biology arena, the term early

1630
01:30:16,960 --> 01:30:21,680
Speaker 5: successional habitat is like rampant, right. That's actually one of

1631
01:30:21,720 --> 01:30:25,720
Speaker 5: the terms that's least helpful to us, because I think

1632
01:30:25,760 --> 01:30:29,440
Speaker 5: people have always looked at grasslands as early successional habitat.

1633
01:30:30,760 --> 01:30:33,719
Speaker 5: That's true of some types, but what we're talking about

1634
01:30:33,800 --> 01:30:37,479
Speaker 5: are grasslands in some cases that have survived hundreds or

1635
01:30:37,520 --> 01:30:41,200
Speaker 5: thousands of years. They are old growth ecosystems. So you know,

1636
01:30:41,479 --> 01:30:45,200
Speaker 5: a lot of effort to recognize old growth forests almost

1637
01:30:45,240 --> 01:30:48,599
Speaker 5: no effort to recognize old growth grasslands. That's what may

1638
01:30:48,640 --> 01:30:52,880
Speaker 5: prairie is. And if people could visualize them like that,

1639
01:30:53,080 --> 01:30:56,439
Speaker 5: I think that would maybe add to the appreciation that

1640
01:30:56,479 --> 01:30:58,639
Speaker 5: people have for them. But it's really hard for people

1641
01:30:58,680 --> 01:31:01,040
Speaker 5: to get by. You know, see is just a grassy

1642
01:31:01,080 --> 01:31:04,680
Speaker 5: patch or just an old field. It's hard to It's

1643
01:31:04,720 --> 01:31:08,320
Speaker 5: not like an old growth forest where's immediately clear to

1644
01:31:08,439 --> 01:31:10,320
Speaker 5: all why it's old.

1645
01:31:10,240 --> 01:31:14,360
Speaker 1: Growth yep, yep, oh.

1646
01:31:13,800 --> 01:31:16,479
Speaker 3: What is I mean? You're probably gonna get to this,

1647
01:31:16,560 --> 01:31:20,320
Speaker 3: But what would restoration look like? Is it cutting down

1648
01:31:20,439 --> 01:31:25,320
Speaker 3: trees and replanting stuff or is it because you said

1649
01:31:25,320 --> 01:31:27,840
Speaker 3: it won't grow on its own, right, So you've got

1650
01:31:27,840 --> 01:31:29,240
Speaker 3: to step in at some point.

1651
01:31:29,479 --> 01:31:32,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think it's first important to kind

1652
01:31:32,000 --> 01:31:34,840
Speaker 5: of understand what type of grassland you're dealing with, right, So,

1653
01:31:35,320 --> 01:31:39,200
Speaker 5: like in our work for this entire southeastern geography, we've

1654
01:31:39,200 --> 01:31:43,559
Speaker 5: identified one and eighteen major types of grasslands. Those can

1655
01:31:43,600 --> 01:31:47,679
Speaker 5: be further subdivided into probably six hundred types, so you're

1656
01:31:47,720 --> 01:31:50,800
Speaker 5: you're dealing with a vast number. First of all, you know,

1657
01:31:50,960 --> 01:31:56,200
Speaker 5: coastal dune grasslands versus lonely pine savannah grasslands versus tall grass,

1658
01:31:56,200 --> 01:32:00,120
Speaker 5: prairie type grasslands versus the meadow in West Virginia. They

1659
01:32:00,120 --> 01:32:04,120
Speaker 5: all are going to require different starting points for healing

1660
01:32:04,200 --> 01:32:07,200
Speaker 5: and restoring and rebuilding those landscapes. That's kind of the

1661
01:32:07,200 --> 01:32:12,000
Speaker 5: first thing. So you know, if we go into let's say,

1662
01:32:12,040 --> 01:32:15,320
Speaker 5: an area that used to be prairie in central Kentucky,

1663
01:32:17,280 --> 01:32:20,120
Speaker 5: we first want to know is there any remnant potential left?

1664
01:32:20,840 --> 01:32:24,240
Speaker 5: Most times it's no. We have a landowner says, yeah,

1665
01:32:24,240 --> 01:32:25,720
Speaker 5: I want to build prairie out here. Tell me if

1666
01:32:25,720 --> 01:32:27,560
Speaker 5: it's a good site. You know, we don't want to

1667
01:32:27,560 --> 01:32:30,040
Speaker 5: necessarily rebuild a prairie that naturally should be in a

1668
01:32:30,080 --> 01:32:34,479
Speaker 5: forested landscape. You're fighting a losing battle there. So we

1669
01:32:34,560 --> 01:32:37,120
Speaker 5: try to use our knowledge of the local history. We

1670
01:32:37,240 --> 01:32:41,760
Speaker 5: try to use our knowledge of biodiversity too, you know,

1671
01:32:42,080 --> 01:32:45,519
Speaker 5: constructively and very thoughtfully suggest what should be there to

1672
01:32:45,560 --> 01:32:47,120
Speaker 5: begin with. That's all based in science.

1673
01:32:47,640 --> 01:32:51,240
Speaker 1: Real quick, let's say you had this hypothetical landowner, yeah,

1674
01:32:51,320 --> 01:32:53,680
Speaker 1: in central Kentucky on what you Let's say we're in

1675
01:32:53,680 --> 01:32:56,439
Speaker 1: a spot where you know, categorically like you know that

1676
01:32:56,520 --> 01:33:00,679
Speaker 1: this was prairie. Is it possible that the guy comes

1677
01:33:00,720 --> 01:33:02,640
Speaker 1: forward and he's got a thousand acres and you go

1678
01:33:02,680 --> 01:33:04,559
Speaker 1: look and there's none?

1679
01:33:04,720 --> 01:33:08,800
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's just gone. Yeah. We're working

1680
01:33:08,840 --> 01:33:11,639
Speaker 5: on a five thousand acre farm right now, just south

1681
01:33:11,680 --> 01:33:15,920
Speaker 5: of the Kentucky line. It was founded by George Washington's cousin,

1682
01:33:16,400 --> 01:33:19,599
Speaker 5: and it was the second largest tobacco plantation on earth

1683
01:33:20,080 --> 01:33:23,559
Speaker 5: in the decades before the Civil War. There's nothing left.

1684
01:33:23,680 --> 01:33:24,840
Speaker 5: There's no prairie there are.

1685
01:33:25,200 --> 01:33:28,040
Speaker 1: You know that it was prairie and now there's none, right.

1686
01:33:27,960 --> 01:33:30,559
Speaker 5: Yeah, And there's there's none left. And so you know,

1687
01:33:30,800 --> 01:33:33,200
Speaker 5: the three states. Essentially you can think of is that

1688
01:33:33,360 --> 01:33:37,960
Speaker 5: those areas with really fertile, agriculturally productive soils in all

1689
01:33:38,040 --> 01:33:41,600
Speaker 5: cases in the East, all of them have been decimated

1690
01:33:41,640 --> 01:33:44,800
Speaker 5: by ninety nine point ninety nine percent. That's not hyperbole,

1691
01:33:44,920 --> 01:33:49,960
Speaker 5: that's demonstrated loss. The second group is what we're formerly like,

1692
01:33:50,320 --> 01:33:54,000
Speaker 5: less fertile, but they were meadowlands. Shennonto a valley of

1693
01:33:54,160 --> 01:33:57,120
Speaker 5: northern Virginia comes to mind, the new river settlements that

1694
01:33:57,160 --> 01:33:58,800
Speaker 5: I know you and I have read a lot about

1695
01:33:59,640 --> 01:34:02,360
Speaker 5: the River Valley on these areas. They were really fertile,

1696
01:34:02,400 --> 01:34:05,120
Speaker 5: but not like good for plant and crops. They were

1697
01:34:05,160 --> 01:34:09,240
Speaker 5: fertile for grazing lands. Well, those got overgrazed in the

1698
01:34:09,280 --> 01:34:13,120
Speaker 5: early periods of American history. Then they got improved by

1699
01:34:13,120 --> 01:34:16,559
Speaker 5: planting tall fescue and you know, Scottish grass and all

1700
01:34:16,600 --> 01:34:19,760
Speaker 5: these other kinds of invasive species. And today they're like

1701
01:34:20,040 --> 01:34:24,040
Speaker 5: ninety nine point nine to nine percent pasture lands dominated

1702
01:34:24,080 --> 01:34:27,679
Speaker 5: by Eurasian grasses. And in the third category, like you're

1703
01:34:27,680 --> 01:34:32,240
Speaker 5: more rolling, sandy, sort of rocky grasslands with trees, those

1704
01:34:32,240 --> 01:34:38,160
Speaker 5: were savannahs. Those really dependent on fire, you know, places

1705
01:34:38,160 --> 01:34:41,720
Speaker 5: like tall timbers in South Georgia, for example, you take

1706
01:34:41,760 --> 01:34:45,200
Speaker 5: fire out of the equation, you take big animals out

1707
01:34:45,200 --> 01:34:47,879
Speaker 5: of the equation, those grow up and become forests.

1708
01:34:48,280 --> 01:34:48,519
Speaker 1: God.

1709
01:34:48,880 --> 01:34:52,040
Speaker 5: So the you know, vast swaths of our public lands

1710
01:34:52,080 --> 01:34:56,880
Speaker 5: today in the south Piney Woods of East Texas, big

1711
01:34:57,240 --> 01:35:01,280
Speaker 5: game lands in central Virginia, into Piedmont big lands in

1712
01:35:01,320 --> 01:35:06,439
Speaker 5: the Florida Panhandle that are today densely, densely forested and dry,

1713
01:35:07,000 --> 01:35:11,280
Speaker 5: used to be open savannahs. God, and we've lost it.

1714
01:35:12,240 --> 01:35:15,720
Speaker 5: But that's actually the greatest potential for recovery. And so

1715
01:35:15,960 --> 01:35:17,600
Speaker 5: you know, back to your question, Brodie, is how do

1716
01:35:17,640 --> 01:35:20,200
Speaker 5: you how do you rebuild these? Well, again starting with

1717
01:35:20,280 --> 01:35:22,880
Speaker 5: knowing what they were, But you know, what you do

1718
01:35:22,960 --> 01:35:25,360
Speaker 5: to recover a savannah is very different what you do

1719
01:35:25,479 --> 01:35:28,480
Speaker 5: to plant a prairie. So savannahs are probably the trickiest.

1720
01:35:28,560 --> 01:35:32,559
Speaker 5: They're the easiest to restore, the most potential right now

1721
01:35:32,800 --> 01:35:36,400
Speaker 5: as a nation, to restore millions of acres of savannah

1722
01:35:36,960 --> 01:35:41,120
Speaker 5: that are just suppressed under artificially forested conditions. It's not

1723
01:35:41,160 --> 01:35:43,559
Speaker 5: gonna be popular because you're gonna have to cut trees.

1724
01:35:43,760 --> 01:35:46,080
Speaker 3: That's what I was kind of getting that people don't

1725
01:35:46,200 --> 01:35:48,960
Speaker 3: like that, And unfortunately the biggest.

1726
01:35:49,080 --> 01:35:51,000
Speaker 1: It comes from a good place though, Yeah it does.

1727
01:35:51,360 --> 01:35:53,640
Speaker 2: It comes from reading low Rex and all that, like

1728
01:35:53,680 --> 01:35:54,599
Speaker 2: it comes from a good day.

1729
01:35:54,680 --> 01:35:57,519
Speaker 7: Well, to circle back to the earlier point, I mean

1730
01:35:57,560 --> 01:36:01,000
Speaker 7: when I growing up, when if someone said they're going

1731
01:36:01,080 --> 01:36:03,280
Speaker 7: to restore something, I thought, oh, you're going to plant

1732
01:36:03,360 --> 01:36:06,280
Speaker 7: trees there, Just more trees is restoration.

1733
01:36:06,880 --> 01:36:09,040
Speaker 2: I found myself trying to explain to someone the other

1734
01:36:09,160 --> 01:36:12,200
Speaker 2: day that we're talking about conservation, and I was talking

1735
01:36:12,200 --> 01:36:16,640
Speaker 2: about it's so regions specific, like what that means. And

1736
01:36:16,720 --> 01:36:21,000
Speaker 2: I'm saying that there's a perception among the general populace

1737
01:36:21,240 --> 01:36:24,679
Speaker 2: of well meaning people the conservation means not doing anything.

1738
01:36:25,600 --> 01:36:25,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1739
01:36:26,600 --> 01:36:29,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was trying to explain the concept of

1740
01:36:29,320 --> 01:36:35,040
Speaker 2: active land management that if not doing anything doesn't give

1741
01:36:35,040 --> 01:36:38,240
Speaker 2: you what in some places, not doing anything doesn't deliver

1742
01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:39,200
Speaker 2: what you want.

1743
01:36:39,479 --> 01:36:43,559
Speaker 5: Oh absolutely. And in the case of grasslands, which they

1744
01:36:43,680 --> 01:36:47,000
Speaker 5: either require most grasslands not all, but most require either

1745
01:36:47,400 --> 01:36:53,559
Speaker 5: some combination of big animals bison, elk especially fire. Again,

1746
01:36:53,640 --> 01:36:56,200
Speaker 5: not all types. The blue grasses of animals, the blue

1747
01:36:56,240 --> 01:37:01,160
Speaker 5: grass of Kentucky, for example, was probably a bison elk

1748
01:37:01,280 --> 01:37:05,800
Speaker 5: dependent ecosystem, not a fire dependent ecosystems. Right, yeah, But

1749
01:37:06,760 --> 01:37:10,439
Speaker 5: you take those two combinations of factors out and you

1750
01:37:11,160 --> 01:37:15,280
Speaker 5: then you know, interject you know, conversion to crop land

1751
01:37:15,880 --> 01:37:20,439
Speaker 5: or overgrazing. That's how you lose what we had. But

1752
01:37:20,520 --> 01:37:25,000
Speaker 5: if they're done well, they almost always require people to

1753
01:37:25,040 --> 01:37:27,040
Speaker 5: be involved in the process. I think that's part of

1754
01:37:27,080 --> 01:37:31,280
Speaker 5: the success story is the people who love land and

1755
01:37:31,360 --> 01:37:36,920
Speaker 5: conservation and hunting. There's a great opportunity and it's enjoyable.

1756
01:37:37,040 --> 01:37:39,599
Speaker 5: I mean, I think about the farms that we work with.

1757
01:37:40,400 --> 01:37:42,760
Speaker 5: One of the best is this eleven thousand acre farm

1758
01:37:42,800 --> 01:37:47,240
Speaker 5: in Alabama. This farm's nine miles wide and this family

1759
01:37:47,280 --> 01:37:51,080
Speaker 5: it's been in their farm since nineteen eighteen. They've never

1760
01:37:51,200 --> 01:37:55,240
Speaker 5: needed the federal government or the state government or anybody

1761
01:37:55,880 --> 01:37:58,840
Speaker 5: to tell them what to do with it. And they

1762
01:37:59,040 --> 01:38:02,880
Speaker 5: just they've made managed it perfectly in one hundred years.

1763
01:38:03,160 --> 01:38:06,479
Speaker 5: And it's like stepping back into a time capsule to

1764
01:38:06,520 --> 01:38:11,400
Speaker 5: about the eighteen teens in west central Alabama. It's amazing.

1765
01:38:13,840 --> 01:38:19,320
Speaker 3: You mentioned her. Besides having a big impact on you know,

1766
01:38:19,640 --> 01:38:26,160
Speaker 3: killing all this stuff, do you in order to combat

1767
01:38:26,560 --> 01:38:29,439
Speaker 3: all those Eurasian evasive grass species, do you have to

1768
01:38:30,640 --> 01:38:33,880
Speaker 3: whatever hold hands with the devil and use that stuff? Also?

1769
01:38:34,160 --> 01:38:37,320
Speaker 5: Absolutely? Yeah, And boy, that's a big hot button issue

1770
01:38:37,320 --> 01:38:43,040
Speaker 5: for us because you know, right now the technology and

1771
01:38:43,080 --> 01:38:47,120
Speaker 5: then know how to take something from a field of johnsngrass,

1772
01:38:47,160 --> 01:38:51,120
Speaker 5: which is this nasty invasive from Africa. For us to

1773
01:38:51,840 --> 01:38:54,559
Speaker 5: do something better than Johnson grass, we have to nuke

1774
01:38:54,600 --> 01:38:58,400
Speaker 5: it like six times, you know, and we don't want

1775
01:38:58,400 --> 01:39:00,840
Speaker 5: to do that. But guess what once we take care

1776
01:39:00,880 --> 01:39:03,400
Speaker 5: of the Johnson grass problem. Like we're doing a project

1777
01:39:03,439 --> 01:39:07,479
Speaker 5: right now with Google, and you know, we are treating

1778
01:39:07,520 --> 01:39:11,080
Speaker 5: a site and preparing it, but once we get it

1779
01:39:11,160 --> 01:39:14,240
Speaker 5: planted with the most diverse species mix it's ever been

1780
01:39:14,280 --> 01:39:18,679
Speaker 5: planted in Central Tennessee, you know, except for coming back

1781
01:39:18,680 --> 01:39:21,840
Speaker 5: in and just with our volunteers and spot treating a

1782
01:39:21,880 --> 01:39:25,040
Speaker 5: couple of problem areas, we'll never again have to use

1783
01:39:25,040 --> 01:39:28,720
Speaker 5: that stuff there. And you know, we've got American bumblebees

1784
01:39:28,760 --> 01:39:32,800
Speaker 5: coming back, We've got grasshopper sparrows, got Northern harriers, We've

1785
01:39:32,840 --> 01:39:36,639
Speaker 5: got otters coming in from the Creek Bank. So hopefully, Yeah,

1786
01:39:37,000 --> 01:39:38,800
Speaker 5: that's a big problem here. I mean, I have some

1787
01:39:38,920 --> 01:39:41,640
Speaker 5: really high profile clients that say, no, this is a

1788
01:39:41,640 --> 01:39:44,320
Speaker 5: certified organic farm, and we don't want to give up

1789
01:39:44,360 --> 01:39:48,519
Speaker 5: on doing it organically. It's just really right now, very

1790
01:39:48,600 --> 01:39:51,240
Speaker 5: challenging to do it at scale. You could do it

1791
01:39:51,280 --> 01:39:54,800
Speaker 5: at one to two acres, but the how you're going

1792
01:39:54,840 --> 01:39:57,080
Speaker 5: to do it at one hundred acres you know, or

1793
01:39:57,120 --> 01:39:59,280
Speaker 5: even ten acres is very challenging right now.

1794
01:39:59,560 --> 01:40:04,479
Speaker 4: That's to take a lot because you're throwing off the

1795
01:40:04,520 --> 01:40:07,400
Speaker 4: balance in the soil as well, so you probably need

1796
01:40:07,479 --> 01:40:09,880
Speaker 4: a yeah, a lot of layers deep.

1797
01:40:10,479 --> 01:40:13,120
Speaker 5: It's it's very complicated. I mean we've had to turn

1798
01:40:13,200 --> 01:40:17,400
Speaker 5: away some you know, high profile clients that said, hey,

1799
01:40:17,439 --> 01:40:20,080
Speaker 5: this is this is a certified organic farm. You won't

1800
01:40:20,080 --> 01:40:22,040
Speaker 5: be using that stuff on my place, and there's just

1801
01:40:22,080 --> 01:40:24,000
Speaker 5: nothing you can do. Then no, And then they actually

1802
01:40:24,040 --> 01:40:27,559
Speaker 5: did plant before we came in. They tried to plant,

1803
01:40:27,800 --> 01:40:30,439
Speaker 5: and it fails because if you don't take care of

1804
01:40:30,479 --> 01:40:34,160
Speaker 5: the invasives all, it takes about three years to get

1805
01:40:34,160 --> 01:40:36,400
Speaker 5: on top of it. I know that's a lot, but

1806
01:40:36,439 --> 01:40:38,519
Speaker 5: if you can, if you can manage the invas as

1807
01:40:38,520 --> 01:40:40,599
Speaker 5: well for three years to make sure that you are

1808
01:40:40,640 --> 01:40:45,720
Speaker 5: planting into something that is very you know, receptible to

1809
01:40:46,720 --> 01:40:49,360
Speaker 5: all these you know species of grasses and wafflars that

1810
01:40:49,400 --> 01:40:53,360
Speaker 5: you need for healthy wildlife habitat. It's just a three

1811
01:40:53,439 --> 01:40:55,480
Speaker 5: year quick sacrifice.

1812
01:40:54,880 --> 01:40:57,479
Speaker 3: And once it's established, it can kind of hold that

1813
01:40:57,520 --> 01:40:58,280
Speaker 3: stuff at bay.

1814
01:40:58,800 --> 01:41:02,840
Speaker 5: Yeah, it can. Now, it may depending on the severity infestation.

1815
01:41:02,960 --> 01:41:04,840
Speaker 5: You know. Again, what we're trying to do is build

1816
01:41:04,840 --> 01:41:07,639
Speaker 5: a team of young men and women who come in

1817
01:41:07,720 --> 01:41:10,120
Speaker 5: and we stay on top of it. Right And that's

1818
01:41:10,160 --> 01:41:12,200
Speaker 5: the thing is that you can't just build a prairie

1819
01:41:12,200 --> 01:41:15,519
Speaker 5: and walk away. That's one of the reasons why it's

1820
01:41:15,600 --> 01:41:19,120
Speaker 5: exceptionally hard to get a lot of people on board

1821
01:41:19,120 --> 01:41:22,200
Speaker 5: with this idea of eastern grasslands is because it does

1822
01:41:22,240 --> 01:41:24,400
Speaker 5: require perpetual management.

1823
01:41:24,680 --> 01:41:27,120
Speaker 1: How many years of management or do you mean perpetual perpetual?

1824
01:41:27,200 --> 01:41:30,519
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think perpetual, you know, and you know it's

1825
01:41:30,560 --> 01:41:32,360
Speaker 5: going to need most of them are going to need fire.

1826
01:41:32,520 --> 01:41:35,479
Speaker 5: You know, some of them would benefit from grazing, you know.

1827
01:41:35,600 --> 01:41:37,720
Speaker 5: So where we have the greatest success is working on

1828
01:41:39,840 --> 01:41:43,599
Speaker 5: you know, nothing's guaranteed, but we're right now we're having

1829
01:41:43,640 --> 01:41:45,839
Speaker 5: the greatest success. There's probably some of the private lands

1830
01:41:46,479 --> 01:41:49,519
Speaker 5: where people are still young and active and they're like,

1831
01:41:49,560 --> 01:41:54,559
Speaker 5: my kids are into this, and it's all hands on deck. Otherwise,

1832
01:41:54,560 --> 01:41:57,320
Speaker 5: it takes a fairly steep monetary investment to get into

1833
01:41:57,320 --> 01:41:59,720
Speaker 5: some of this and right now, we're trying to. What

1834
01:41:59,760 --> 01:42:04,240
Speaker 5: we're trying to basically inform the American public on is

1835
01:42:04,280 --> 01:42:06,840
Speaker 5: that we can't afford not to because so much of

1836
01:42:06,840 --> 01:42:14,080
Speaker 5: our Eastern bid diversity, northern bob white countless songbirds, pollinators,

1837
01:42:14,160 --> 01:42:17,080
Speaker 5: you know, they're in free fall collapse in the eastern

1838
01:42:17,120 --> 01:42:20,640
Speaker 5: part of the United States. We would argue largely in

1839
01:42:20,720 --> 01:42:23,520
Speaker 5: part because we're not doing what we need for our habitat.

1840
01:42:23,960 --> 01:42:28,160
Speaker 1: Do you think that's what that's what is ultimately has

1841
01:42:28,240 --> 01:42:29,760
Speaker 1: happened to the bob Wait Quail.

1842
01:42:29,880 --> 01:42:32,800
Speaker 5: One thousand percent? Yeah, And I you know, I enjoyed

1843
01:42:32,840 --> 01:42:35,040
Speaker 5: the episode that you guys had on Quail recently. Not

1844
01:42:35,080 --> 01:42:38,800
Speaker 5: everyone did well, you know, I enjoyed it, but uh

1845
01:42:38,840 --> 01:42:41,240
Speaker 5: and I learned a lot about eye parasites, you know.

1846
01:42:42,000 --> 01:42:44,120
Speaker 5: But I was thinking the time the whole time I

1847
01:42:44,160 --> 01:42:48,559
Speaker 5: watched it. Well, when you take an ecosystem or a

1848
01:42:48,600 --> 01:42:54,960
Speaker 5: collection of open, brushy, grassy ecosystems that offered Quail everything

1849
01:42:55,000 --> 01:42:58,439
Speaker 5: they needed, and then you take away ninety five percent

1850
01:42:58,439 --> 01:43:01,720
Speaker 5: of that, what the hell do you expect? What do

1851
01:43:01,760 --> 01:43:05,439
Speaker 5: you expect? And even even I'm not even just talking

1852
01:43:05,479 --> 01:43:09,880
Speaker 5: about pre settlement landscapes. Uh, As a boy growing up

1853
01:43:09,920 --> 01:43:13,840
Speaker 5: in southern middle Tennessee. In the eighties and nineties, every

1854
01:43:13,960 --> 01:43:19,200
Speaker 5: hillside for miles around was just broomsedge fields, you know,

1855
01:43:19,320 --> 01:43:22,679
Speaker 5: golden broomsedge Athropogon virginicas standing through the winter.

1856
01:43:22,920 --> 01:43:23,360
Speaker 1: What is that?

1857
01:43:23,760 --> 01:43:25,720
Speaker 5: It's a it's a type of blue stem native blue

1858
01:43:25,720 --> 01:43:28,759
Speaker 5: stem grass. It's it's it's shipped for forage. So farmers

1859
01:43:28,800 --> 01:43:31,160
Speaker 5: don't really like it, and it's often a sign of

1860
01:43:31,200 --> 01:43:33,799
Speaker 5: beat up pastures and stuff. But you know what, Quail,

1861
01:43:33,960 --> 01:43:37,639
Speaker 5: Quail loved it. And we had BlackBerry patches everywhere. I mean,

1862
01:43:37,640 --> 01:43:41,679
Speaker 5: this is this is not your ideal, pristine, high quality habitat.

1863
01:43:41,720 --> 01:43:45,519
Speaker 5: It was very much an agricultural beat up, brushy pasture

1864
01:43:45,600 --> 01:43:48,720
Speaker 5: land on somewhat poor farms that I grew up on.

1865
01:43:49,360 --> 01:43:53,200
Speaker 5: But the thing is it was everywhere. But then by

1866
01:43:53,200 --> 01:43:58,520
Speaker 5: the latest nineties, everybody, everybody in their mama started mowing religiously,

1867
01:43:59,479 --> 01:44:02,559
Speaker 5: and oat side started getting sprayed and fence rows started

1868
01:44:02,560 --> 01:44:05,920
Speaker 5: getting taken out. And I think what we hear a

1869
01:44:06,000 --> 01:44:09,960
Speaker 5: lot of times is I've heard some colleagues push back

1870
01:44:09,960 --> 01:44:13,439
Speaker 5: and say, well, yeah, but you know, Quail, they really

1871
01:44:13,840 --> 01:44:16,400
Speaker 5: made a big spike in this sort of era of

1872
01:44:16,560 --> 01:44:22,479
Speaker 5: land disturbance and clearance, and this agricultural revolution. I think

1873
01:44:22,520 --> 01:44:27,000
Speaker 5: that most people saying that don't really have a grasp

1874
01:44:27,080 --> 01:44:31,519
Speaker 5: on what we just lost. They're working from this nineteen

1875
01:44:31,560 --> 01:44:34,720
Speaker 5: fifties mindset that it was all easternsiduous forest. They got

1876
01:44:34,760 --> 01:44:39,000
Speaker 5: opened up into brushy, scrubby great quail habitat. They're not

1877
01:44:39,080 --> 01:44:42,599
Speaker 5: even stopping to consider the three point seven million acres

1878
01:44:42,640 --> 01:44:45,840
Speaker 5: of prairie lost from central Kentucky, the barons, the Big

1879
01:44:45,880 --> 01:44:49,400
Speaker 5: Barons as it was called, that today less than one

1880
01:44:49,479 --> 01:44:50,879
Speaker 5: hundredth of a percent remains.

1881
01:44:50,960 --> 01:44:52,080
Speaker 1: And that was quail country.

1882
01:44:52,120 --> 01:44:53,040
Speaker 5: That's quail country.

1883
01:44:53,360 --> 01:44:55,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know what's kind of funny is my buddy

1884
01:44:55,120 --> 01:44:58,040
Speaker 1: Kevin Murphy. I was down hunt with him in Kentucky.

1885
01:45:00,320 --> 01:45:02,400
Speaker 1: Where is He's not? Is he Paduca?

1886
01:45:02,479 --> 01:45:02,639
Speaker 5: Yeah?

1887
01:45:02,640 --> 01:45:08,679
Speaker 2: I thinks Anyways, he gets permission on an Amish farm,

1888
01:45:09,800 --> 01:45:15,800
Speaker 2: gets real exciting because that's where the game's at. And uh,

1889
01:45:15,920 --> 01:45:18,479
Speaker 2: he was right, only quail I've ever seen walking around, Kevin.

1890
01:45:18,800 --> 01:45:19,679
Speaker 1: They grew up on quail.

1891
01:45:19,720 --> 01:45:22,000
Speaker 2: The only quail I've ever seen walking around with Kevin

1892
01:45:22,080 --> 01:45:24,280
Speaker 2: Murphy's One day he got permission on an Amish farm,

1893
01:45:24,320 --> 01:45:25,719
Speaker 2: And I'm like, why is that just different?

1894
01:45:25,760 --> 01:45:31,479
Speaker 1: He's like different practices. The fence rose right, but.

1895
01:45:31,479 --> 01:45:36,400
Speaker 2: Again highly disturbed, highly disturbed landscape. But he had he

1896
01:45:36,439 --> 01:45:40,200
Speaker 2: had said a couple things, hell on predators not cutting

1897
01:45:40,240 --> 01:45:45,000
Speaker 2: fence rows, dirtier areas meaning like you know, like big

1898
01:45:45,040 --> 01:45:46,679
Speaker 2: areas full old equipment that kind.

1899
01:45:46,560 --> 01:45:47,519
Speaker 1: Of grew up and cover.

1900
01:45:48,200 --> 01:45:53,599
Speaker 2: So you start to associate quail today, You associate quail

1901
01:45:53,680 --> 01:45:57,880
Speaker 2: with man made ecosystems that somehow give them what they need.

1902
01:45:58,479 --> 01:46:00,320
Speaker 1: But then you got to try to remember that that's

1903
01:46:00,360 --> 01:46:02,240
Speaker 1: not what they came from.

1904
01:46:02,439 --> 01:46:05,080
Speaker 2: They use it as refugeia, but it wasn't like the

1905
01:46:05,120 --> 01:46:09,000
Speaker 2: main thing. Yeah, the main thing was like grasslands. Otherwise

1906
01:46:09,040 --> 01:46:09,720
Speaker 2: whitetail deer.

1907
01:46:10,040 --> 01:46:13,880
Speaker 7: You just think they came from tracktomes in suburbia, right.

1908
01:46:14,040 --> 01:46:18,040
Speaker 1: Exactly right, yeah, exactly right, Like you drive around exactly

1909
01:46:18,080 --> 01:46:20,360
Speaker 1: what they need. Yeah, you see a big bucket?

1910
01:46:20,400 --> 01:46:21,640
Speaker 5: What did they do before all this?

1911
01:46:21,960 --> 01:46:24,400
Speaker 1: What they do before that neighborhood? Well, you know that

1912
01:46:24,439 --> 01:46:25,160
Speaker 1: big buck lip.

1913
01:46:25,280 --> 01:46:27,400
Speaker 5: And in the archaeological record, we've got you know, we've

1914
01:46:27,400 --> 01:46:30,719
Speaker 5: got records of quail going back you know, ten thousand

1915
01:46:30,800 --> 01:46:33,800
Speaker 5: years ago. In North Alabama. There's a cave called Dust

1916
01:46:33,840 --> 01:46:38,600
Speaker 5: Cave near Florence, Alabama, And uh, dust Cave is one

1917
01:46:38,640 --> 01:46:43,920
Speaker 5: of these sites where these academics that study these sites

1918
01:46:44,479 --> 01:46:48,920
Speaker 5: basically detailed all that the Native Americans were utilizing from

1919
01:46:48,920 --> 01:46:52,280
Speaker 5: the landscape that they could that they could find in

1920
01:46:52,320 --> 01:46:55,799
Speaker 5: the remains of those cave settlements. Right, They put together

1921
01:46:55,880 --> 01:46:59,040
Speaker 5: like a list of one hundred animal species. It's crazy,

1922
01:46:59,080 --> 01:47:02,720
Speaker 5: at least dozens. Every kind of duck and waterfowl and

1923
01:47:02,920 --> 01:47:05,840
Speaker 5: thing you could imagine being in the backwaters of the

1924
01:47:05,880 --> 01:47:09,479
Speaker 5: Tennessee River. They were utilizing it. Every kind of turtle,

1925
01:47:09,680 --> 01:47:14,320
Speaker 5: every kind of major fish species. They had fragments of it, rattlesnakes, boom,

1926
01:47:14,360 --> 01:47:16,800
Speaker 5: they got it. But they all said quail and greater

1927
01:47:16,840 --> 01:47:19,960
Speaker 5: praid chickens, you know, and we see greater prayer chickens,

1928
01:47:20,160 --> 01:47:22,120
Speaker 5: which has often thought of as this classic sort of

1929
01:47:22,120 --> 01:47:26,760
Speaker 5: Midwestern species. But you know John James Audubon when he

1930
01:47:27,000 --> 01:47:32,759
Speaker 5: painted in his original paintings of the species hardin County, Kentucky,

1931
01:47:32,880 --> 01:47:35,559
Speaker 5: you know, just south of Louisville, greater prairie chickens, greater

1932
01:47:35,600 --> 01:47:39,680
Speaker 5: prayer chickens. And before we end today, I hope it's

1933
01:47:39,720 --> 01:47:41,600
Speaker 5: not right now, but when it is, I need to

1934
01:47:41,600 --> 01:47:44,600
Speaker 5: tell you one of my favorite quotes. I'll tell you

1935
01:47:44,720 --> 01:47:45,120
Speaker 5: right now.

1936
01:47:45,160 --> 01:47:45,519
Speaker 1: Tell me.

1937
01:47:46,120 --> 01:47:48,760
Speaker 5: I need you guys close your eyes. Okay, we're gonna

1938
01:47:48,760 --> 01:47:49,840
Speaker 5: do a little prairie preaching right here.

1939
01:47:49,880 --> 01:47:54,160
Speaker 1: Okay is the lap? Okay, I'm ready.

1940
01:47:54,160 --> 01:47:55,920
Speaker 5: We're gonna ask Wanda to come up and play on

1941
01:47:55,960 --> 01:47:59,559
Speaker 5: the Oregon. We're gonna have an ultra call.

1942
01:47:59,400 --> 01:48:00,679
Speaker 4: Well, where's the music job?

1943
01:48:02,600 --> 01:48:07,160
Speaker 5: It would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, For

1944
01:48:07,200 --> 01:48:10,479
Speaker 5: as far as the eye could reach, they seemed one vast,

1945
01:48:10,720 --> 01:48:15,320
Speaker 5: deep green meadow, adorned with countless numbers of bright flowers

1946
01:48:16,040 --> 01:48:21,880
Speaker 5: springing up in all directions. Only a solitary tree now

1947
01:48:21,920 --> 01:48:25,280
Speaker 5: and then a scattered post oak were to be seen.

1948
01:48:26,760 --> 01:48:30,519
Speaker 5: It was here where the wild strawberries grew in such

1949
01:48:30,600 --> 01:48:35,200
Speaker 5: profusion as sustained the horses hoofs a deep red color.

1950
01:48:36,800 --> 01:48:40,280
Speaker 5: It was here that I afterwards met with the prairie bird,

1951
01:48:40,560 --> 01:48:44,040
Speaker 5: or the barren hen, as we called it, which I

1952
01:48:44,080 --> 01:48:47,920
Speaker 5: afterwards met with in such vast numbers on the great

1953
01:48:47,960 --> 01:48:52,160
Speaker 5: prairies of Illinois. Ruben Ross eighteen twelve.

1954
01:48:54,560 --> 01:48:55,880
Speaker 1: Hallelujah, Where was he?

1955
01:48:56,280 --> 01:48:59,719
Speaker 5: This is right on the Kentucky Tennessee line, just about

1956
01:48:59,720 --> 01:49:03,840
Speaker 5: an hour southwest of Bowling Grain, near well my town, Clarksville, Tennessee,

1957
01:49:03,680 --> 01:49:04,840
Speaker 5: where we're based.

1958
01:49:05,680 --> 01:49:07,280
Speaker 1: It'd be a sweet deer hunting permission.

1959
01:49:08,120 --> 01:49:11,720
Speaker 3: Strawberries got me strawberries, and I butchered that quote a

1960
01:49:11,720 --> 01:49:12,000
Speaker 3: little bit.

1961
01:49:12,040 --> 01:49:13,400
Speaker 5: The strawberries actually coming to the end.

1962
01:49:13,479 --> 01:49:19,360
Speaker 2: But you know, if you you use the term earlier tertiary,

1963
01:49:19,360 --> 01:49:20,759
Speaker 2: what's that mean tertiary forest.

1964
01:49:21,280 --> 01:49:24,559
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like the third you know, it's you know,

1965
01:49:25,200 --> 01:49:27,360
Speaker 5: secondary tertiary, quaternary.

1966
01:49:31,840 --> 01:49:33,880
Speaker 2: I've been so much more familiar with the West and

1967
01:49:34,880 --> 01:49:37,800
Speaker 2: my adult life. But like, let's say you have a

1968
01:49:39,000 --> 01:49:41,280
Speaker 2: let's see you go twenty miles from here in the mountains, okay,

1969
01:49:42,240 --> 01:49:45,800
Speaker 2: and something burns. I mean it burns down to the rocks.

1970
01:49:46,560 --> 01:49:49,640
Speaker 2: Let's say, like that kind of fire. Right, It's like

1971
01:49:50,160 --> 01:49:55,720
Speaker 2: dirt and rocks are done. It's hard to picture, but

1972
01:49:55,760 --> 01:49:58,240
Speaker 2: I would say to my kids, like it'll go through

1973
01:49:58,240 --> 01:50:02,679
Speaker 2: a bunch of steps, and if nothing happens from people

1974
01:50:02,760 --> 01:50:03,480
Speaker 2: or whatever.

1975
01:50:03,960 --> 01:50:05,920
Speaker 1: It'll it's hard to picture, it'll.

1976
01:50:05,640 --> 01:50:11,559
Speaker 2: Wind up just like it was when it burnt. It'll,

1977
01:50:11,600 --> 01:50:13,280
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of these forests, it will wind

1978
01:50:13,360 --> 01:50:15,080
Speaker 2: up being that. It winds up being like it'll be

1979
01:50:15,080 --> 01:50:18,360
Speaker 2: big lodge poles and it'll bet those little knitic knick

1980
01:50:18,880 --> 01:50:21,080
Speaker 2: berries growing on the ground or whatever.

1981
01:50:20,840 --> 01:50:21,200
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.

1982
01:50:21,240 --> 01:50:24,640
Speaker 2: It'll like find its way back to that is that

1983
01:50:25,920 --> 01:50:28,639
Speaker 2: does that wind up not being true in the east

1984
01:50:28,760 --> 01:50:30,800
Speaker 2: because of non native plants?

1985
01:50:31,560 --> 01:50:36,160
Speaker 1: Meaning if you'd gone in fourteen hundred and you would

1986
01:50:37,320 --> 01:50:39,400
Speaker 1: put round up on a patch of this prairie, you

1987
01:50:39,439 --> 01:50:42,200
Speaker 1: put round up on it till it, put round up

1988
01:50:42,200 --> 01:50:44,040
Speaker 1: on it till it, put round up on it till it,

1989
01:50:44,080 --> 01:50:50,599
Speaker 1: and just till it's good and dead and left by

1990
01:50:50,760 --> 01:50:53,080
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred whatever the hell, it probably would have been

1991
01:50:53,120 --> 01:50:56,040
Speaker 1: back to being right.

1992
01:50:56,280 --> 01:51:00,639
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, what you're described back to be in prairie. Yeah.

1993
01:51:00,680 --> 01:51:02,599
Speaker 5: I mean, well, there's a couple of things there. One

1994
01:51:02,760 --> 01:51:07,200
Speaker 5: is you're describing that pioneer process, right, that's primary succession.

1995
01:51:07,320 --> 01:51:09,920
Speaker 5: So when you take something back to you know, just

1996
01:51:10,000 --> 01:51:13,840
Speaker 5: bear subsoil, right, the things that are first going to

1997
01:51:13,880 --> 01:51:17,679
Speaker 5: colonize that are the weeds, you know. So broom sedge,

1998
01:51:17,720 --> 01:51:20,400
Speaker 5: which I mentioned earlier, is a type of native grass,

1999
01:51:20,680 --> 01:51:23,599
Speaker 5: but it's a weedy native grass. It has a very

2000
01:51:23,680 --> 01:51:26,719
Speaker 5: low what we call conservatism value. It's like a one

2001
01:51:26,880 --> 01:51:28,360
Speaker 5: or a two on a scale of one to ten.

2002
01:51:29,040 --> 01:51:31,519
Speaker 5: Something that's a one, two three can just move right

2003
01:51:31,560 --> 01:51:35,160
Speaker 5: on in. It tends to persist for a little while

2004
01:51:35,320 --> 01:51:40,639
Speaker 5: as other things then invade and stabilize that ecosystem over time,

2005
01:51:41,280 --> 01:51:46,680
Speaker 5: and some natural communities are really adapted to long term stability,

2006
01:51:46,880 --> 01:51:53,320
Speaker 5: you know, like meaning like not just complete disruption. You know,

2007
01:51:53,400 --> 01:51:58,400
Speaker 5: prairies are pretty stable, you know. But then but most

2008
01:51:58,400 --> 01:52:01,840
Speaker 5: of your native prairie grasses are not pining your species.

2009
01:52:02,200 --> 01:52:04,920
Speaker 5: That's why don't call them early successional. You know, you

2010
01:52:04,960 --> 01:52:07,600
Speaker 5: go open up a new cornfield, you let it go

2011
01:52:07,640 --> 01:52:09,439
Speaker 5: follow and let's say you got a prairie next to it.

2012
01:52:10,240 --> 01:52:12,760
Speaker 5: You can hope and wish all damn day, but those

2013
01:52:12,800 --> 01:52:16,120
Speaker 5: prairie species are not going to move into your cornfield. Yeah,

2014
01:52:16,200 --> 01:52:19,280
Speaker 5: they don't do that. They don't behave that way. It

2015
01:52:19,360 --> 01:52:22,599
Speaker 5: takes a long time for these natural communities to assemble,

2016
01:52:22,720 --> 01:52:26,080
Speaker 5: what's called assembly time. And in the case of doctor

2017
01:52:26,120 --> 01:52:29,120
Speaker 5: Joseph Weldman at Texas A and M has published a

2018
01:52:29,120 --> 01:52:31,800
Speaker 5: paper a few years ago, twenty fifteen or so that

2019
01:52:32,000 --> 01:52:35,880
Speaker 5: talked about old growth grasslands, they require thousands of years

2020
01:52:35,880 --> 01:52:39,759
Speaker 5: to assemble. That's god man, nobody's thinking about that stuff.

2021
01:52:39,960 --> 01:52:43,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the term you're using, is helpful assemble, Yeah,

2022
01:52:43,560 --> 01:52:46,240
Speaker 2: because it's not like how you're going to have fire

2023
01:52:46,280 --> 01:52:48,960
Speaker 2: weed but then all of a sudden, immediately you're going

2024
01:52:49,040 --> 01:52:52,360
Speaker 2: to have all these little lodge pole pine things and

2025
01:52:52,400 --> 01:52:54,080
Speaker 2: then pretty soon lodge pole pine is.

2026
01:52:54,040 --> 01:52:55,000
Speaker 1: Gonna win out.

2027
01:52:55,160 --> 01:52:57,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're talking about two things coming together, right,

2028
01:52:58,000 --> 01:53:01,839
Speaker 2: which which would be like dwarf wortleberry, lodge pole pine, whatever,

2029
01:53:02,000 --> 01:53:03,920
Speaker 2: two things you're talking about.

2030
01:53:04,000 --> 01:53:07,120
Speaker 1: How do you get these perhaps dozens?

2031
01:53:07,960 --> 01:53:10,799
Speaker 5: Yeah? Well, and you also were asking about invasive species,

2032
01:53:10,840 --> 01:53:13,920
Speaker 5: So yeah, now that's the factory that gets in a way. Right,

2033
01:53:14,120 --> 01:53:16,120
Speaker 5: You've got a site that it's going through this early

2034
01:53:16,240 --> 01:53:20,519
Speaker 5: phase of disturbance. Invases are going to move in and

2035
01:53:20,600 --> 01:53:26,200
Speaker 5: sort of suspend that natural successional pathway, and that complicates

2036
01:53:26,240 --> 01:53:28,880
Speaker 5: things for us out there in the habitat restoration world

2037
01:53:28,880 --> 01:53:31,400
Speaker 5: a big time. You know. But you're always gonna have weeds.

2038
01:53:31,439 --> 01:53:34,759
Speaker 5: You know. Where you would have had this weedy flora

2039
01:53:35,400 --> 01:53:39,400
Speaker 5: in the east, let's say three thousand years ago, would

2040
01:53:39,439 --> 01:53:42,639
Speaker 5: have been around a Mississippian probably a thousand years ago

2041
01:53:42,720 --> 01:53:47,040
Speaker 5: Mississippian Native American village. You know, a lot of cornfields

2042
01:53:47,040 --> 01:53:49,240
Speaker 5: and stuff where they were disturbing. You would have expected

2043
01:53:49,320 --> 01:53:52,559
Speaker 5: native weeds to be all in and around their settlements. God,

2044
01:53:52,640 --> 01:53:55,679
Speaker 5: where you had a bison wallow, you know, three hundred

2045
01:53:55,760 --> 01:53:58,759
Speaker 5: years ago, the weeds would have been around that bison wallow,

2046
01:53:59,280 --> 01:54:03,080
Speaker 5: But you're more ecosystems that are not, especially when it

2047
01:54:03,080 --> 01:54:05,400
Speaker 5: comes to soil disturbance. That's the big thing that they like,

2048
01:54:05,479 --> 01:54:08,800
Speaker 5: the weeds like. But your other forms of disturbance, like

2049
01:54:09,360 --> 01:54:13,720
Speaker 5: you know, grazing, pressure or fire, they don't have the

2050
01:54:13,720 --> 01:54:17,960
Speaker 5: same kind of detrimental resetting effect that like plowing till

2051
01:54:18,000 --> 01:54:19,000
Speaker 5: and wallowing half.

2052
01:54:19,520 --> 01:54:22,600
Speaker 3: Is there, like in your eyes, is there an acceptable

2053
01:54:22,840 --> 01:54:27,679
Speaker 3: like approximation of the original as far as restoration where

2054
01:54:27,680 --> 01:54:31,479
Speaker 3: it's like it's not perfect, but it's close enough that

2055
01:54:31,680 --> 01:54:33,320
Speaker 3: like it's pretty damn good.

2056
01:54:33,640 --> 01:54:35,720
Speaker 5: Yeah. What we do is we look to remnants where

2057
01:54:35,720 --> 01:54:39,120
Speaker 5: they exist. You know, I mentioned Long Island earlier, right,

2058
01:54:39,160 --> 01:54:42,160
Speaker 5: there was sixty thousand acres of prairie up until about

2059
01:54:42,240 --> 01:54:46,640
Speaker 5: nineteen oh five, nineteen ten. That prairie lasted longer than

2060
01:54:46,680 --> 01:54:50,160
Speaker 5: the prairies near my home at for Campbell Army Base

2061
01:54:50,880 --> 01:54:52,400
Speaker 5: or in Middle Tennessee, Kentucky.

2062
01:54:52,480 --> 01:54:54,440
Speaker 1: Did they have that moor hen out there.

2063
01:54:54,480 --> 01:54:58,000
Speaker 5: Where they had the what they called the heath hen. Yeah,

2064
01:54:58,520 --> 01:55:01,400
Speaker 5: you're right, and it went extinct a decade or two later.

2065
01:55:01,600 --> 01:55:04,920
Speaker 5: But today, out of that former sixty thousand acre landscape,

2066
01:55:05,000 --> 01:55:08,640
Speaker 5: there's only twenty four acres left adjacent to Nassau Community College.

2067
01:55:08,680 --> 01:55:11,240
Speaker 5: What Yeah, So if you want to rebuild a grassland

2068
01:55:11,240 --> 01:55:13,200
Speaker 5: on Long Island, one, you got to where you're gonna

2069
01:55:13,200 --> 01:55:15,240
Speaker 5: do it right. But then you could go look at that,

2070
01:55:15,280 --> 01:55:18,880
Speaker 5: at that last surviving remnant, harvest the seeds from it,

2071
01:55:19,520 --> 01:55:23,080
Speaker 5: learn how to then structurally attempt to rebuild it across

2072
01:55:23,120 --> 01:55:26,560
Speaker 5: the road. That's the approach we're using all across our region.

2073
01:55:26,600 --> 01:55:26,800
Speaker 1: Now.

2074
01:55:26,800 --> 01:55:29,320
Speaker 5: We go look at the last surviving remnants on army

2075
01:55:29,360 --> 01:55:33,520
Speaker 5: bases or someone's private ranch or farm, and then those

2076
01:55:33,920 --> 01:55:36,760
Speaker 5: we collect seeds from and we work with seed farmers

2077
01:55:36,800 --> 01:55:40,880
Speaker 5: like Roundstone Native Seed out of Kentucky or Earned Native

2078
01:55:40,920 --> 01:55:44,160
Speaker 5: Seed out of Pennsylvania. We buy the seed from them

2079
01:55:44,400 --> 01:55:46,760
Speaker 5: and then we rebuild those ecosystems to the very best

2080
01:55:46,800 --> 01:55:47,320
Speaker 5: that we can.

2081
01:55:48,080 --> 01:55:51,440
Speaker 1: And what's like to Brody's point, to put a finer

2082
01:55:51,520 --> 01:55:53,480
Speaker 1: answer on it, like, what.

2083
01:55:53,720 --> 01:55:59,840
Speaker 2: Is what's as close as we could get to good enough?

2084
01:56:01,120 --> 01:56:05,720
Speaker 2: I think sixty of the species biodiversity? Like like when

2085
01:56:05,760 --> 01:56:07,840
Speaker 2: do you go, like, sweet, let's go find a new spot.

2086
01:56:08,440 --> 01:56:11,640
Speaker 5: That's a great question. I think I'll give you just

2087
01:56:12,200 --> 01:56:16,200
Speaker 5: I'll just give you a real scattershot of what people

2088
01:56:16,480 --> 01:56:18,800
Speaker 5: have been doing. Right. So you know in the nineties

2089
01:56:18,800 --> 01:56:21,960
Speaker 5: and two thousands, Uh, we have a saying back where

2090
01:56:22,000 --> 01:56:24,920
Speaker 5: I'm from, where native warm season grasses, everybody planning the

2091
01:56:25,000 --> 01:56:28,440
Speaker 5: native warm season grasses like twenty years ago, and they

2092
01:56:28,440 --> 01:56:31,520
Speaker 5: would use three species big blue stem indian grass and

2093
01:56:31,560 --> 01:56:34,200
Speaker 5: little blue stem sometimes ate out of fourth switch grass.

2094
01:56:35,520 --> 01:56:39,640
Speaker 5: That's not cutting. You're not adding sore three in enough.

2095
01:56:39,680 --> 01:56:41,839
Speaker 5: You're not adding what we call groceries on the ground.

2096
01:56:42,080 --> 01:56:45,680
Speaker 5: You don't have the seeds, the nectar, the cover, the

2097
01:56:45,720 --> 01:56:49,680
Speaker 5: structural diversity needed to support a diverse array of wildlife,

2098
01:56:50,360 --> 01:56:53,480
Speaker 5: including polleners and songbirds. You need to hold package. So

2099
01:56:53,560 --> 01:56:56,440
Speaker 5: then about ten years ago people were stepping up because

2100
01:56:56,480 --> 01:57:00,000
Speaker 5: a big limitation is where you're going to get the seeds.

2101
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:03,080
Speaker 5: If you don't have farmers producing seed, your shit out

2102
01:57:03,120 --> 01:57:03,440
Speaker 5: of luck.

2103
01:57:03,680 --> 01:57:06,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, was that little eleven acre patch

2104
01:57:06,600 --> 01:57:07,040
Speaker 1: isn't going.

2105
01:57:07,000 --> 01:57:09,640
Speaker 5: To right and you off the Yeah, and you would

2106
01:57:09,640 --> 01:57:12,320
Speaker 5: exhaust those patches too, right. They need their seeds to

2107
01:57:12,400 --> 01:57:15,560
Speaker 5: rain back down on that site to some extent. So

2108
01:57:15,760 --> 01:57:20,520
Speaker 5: you do need these native seed producers, these private companies

2109
01:57:20,560 --> 01:57:24,280
Speaker 5: mostly to go and buy the seed from. And so

2110
01:57:24,560 --> 01:57:27,120
Speaker 5: ten years ago most people were just barely able to

2111
01:57:27,120 --> 01:57:29,760
Speaker 5: get like a mix of like ten fifteen twenty species,

2112
01:57:30,360 --> 01:57:32,920
Speaker 5: and it wasn't really that cost effective to be able

2113
01:57:32,960 --> 01:57:35,200
Speaker 5: to You couldn't really afford to do a lot more

2114
01:57:35,480 --> 01:57:38,520
Speaker 5: even if they did exist. But in the last ten years,

2115
01:57:39,200 --> 01:57:42,720
Speaker 5: that's five years, those same companies now are offering to

2116
01:57:43,080 --> 01:57:47,880
Speaker 5: three hundred species. So what our project with Google when

2117
01:57:47,880 --> 01:57:50,960
Speaker 5: we planted it in twenty twenty, we used seventy seven

2118
01:57:51,000 --> 01:57:53,200
Speaker 5: species in our mix. That was the most at that time.

2119
01:57:54,200 --> 01:57:57,160
Speaker 5: We just planted an eighty nine species mix on a

2120
01:57:57,160 --> 01:58:00,440
Speaker 5: private farm in Tennessee. So you know, we're trying to

2121
01:58:00,440 --> 01:58:04,160
Speaker 5: get our mixes up eighty nine. Yeah. Now that's not

2122
01:58:04,160 --> 01:58:06,280
Speaker 5: for everybody, you know, but I would say you need

2123
01:58:06,280 --> 01:58:09,840
Speaker 5: to be somewhere, but you need to be somewhere in

2124
01:58:09,840 --> 01:58:15,400
Speaker 5: a twenty to forty range is a sweet spot.

2125
01:58:16,400 --> 01:58:19,280
Speaker 3: Let's say someone has a whatever, one hundred acre farm

2126
01:58:19,320 --> 01:58:21,839
Speaker 3: and they've got a twenty acre pasture. It's like ideal

2127
01:58:21,920 --> 01:58:27,080
Speaker 3: for a storing. They restore it. Can they then use

2128
01:58:27,240 --> 01:58:31,000
Speaker 3: that as a pasture or is it like hands off

2129
01:58:31,040 --> 01:58:34,480
Speaker 3: now because the animals might graze somewhere else and then

2130
01:58:34,520 --> 01:58:36,840
Speaker 3: bring in in base or it just can't handle the.

2131
01:58:37,720 --> 01:58:40,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can. It depends on the kind of grassland, right,

2132
01:58:41,040 --> 01:58:46,080
Speaker 5: Some are really conducive to being great for grazing. You

2133
01:58:46,120 --> 01:58:48,000
Speaker 5: do need to pay attention to like what you put

2134
01:58:48,000 --> 01:58:51,839
Speaker 5: in your forage mix. You know, for example, horses. Horses

2135
01:58:51,880 --> 01:58:55,440
Speaker 5: can't tolerate certain types of grasses that maybe cattle can.

2136
01:58:55,520 --> 01:58:57,720
Speaker 1: For example, Oh, like you might have a toxic plant.

2137
01:58:57,760 --> 01:58:59,360
Speaker 5: You could have a toxic plant, or you could have

2138
01:58:59,400 --> 01:59:01,760
Speaker 5: a plant with bristles on the spikelets of the grass

2139
01:59:01,800 --> 01:59:04,520
Speaker 5: that get into the mouth parts. So those are all

2140
01:59:04,640 --> 01:59:07,160
Speaker 5: considerations and we try to be real mindful of those

2141
01:59:07,240 --> 01:59:09,880
Speaker 5: kind of things. But now this same farm is called

2142
01:59:09,880 --> 01:59:13,560
Speaker 5: the Wessington Plantation north of Nashville. Uh, you know, we're

2143
01:59:13,600 --> 01:59:16,680
Speaker 5: putting eighty nine species in that mix, but we're absolutely

2144
01:59:16,680 --> 01:59:20,200
Speaker 5: going to be lightly grazing that. That site's really cool.

2145
01:59:20,400 --> 01:59:25,280
Speaker 5: It's got a two documented buffalo fords just down in

2146
01:59:25,320 --> 01:59:27,440
Speaker 5: the valley and you can still go and see the

2147
01:59:27,480 --> 01:59:30,520
Speaker 5: impressions where the bison would across the screen ship. Yeah,

2148
01:59:30,560 --> 01:59:31,360
Speaker 5: it's pretty awesome.

2149
01:59:31,440 --> 01:59:35,120
Speaker 1: Hey, I got a tactics question for you. Uh you

2150
01:59:35,160 --> 01:59:38,080
Speaker 1: were talking earlier. You use the expression nuke in the ground. Yeah,

2151
01:59:38,160 --> 01:59:40,560
Speaker 1: to get it ready. I appreciate the term we hate

2152
01:59:40,560 --> 01:59:42,920
Speaker 1: to do it. I'm assuming you're talking about glefil Sate.

2153
01:59:43,520 --> 01:59:46,920
Speaker 5: Glyfe Sate, and a few others. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh.

2154
01:59:49,320 --> 01:59:52,120
Speaker 2: That winds up you know earlier we're talking about political complexities.

2155
01:59:52,480 --> 01:59:55,400
Speaker 1: To return to the beginning of the return to political.

2156
01:59:55,720 --> 01:59:59,760
Speaker 2: Back in there, yeah nah, going back in there, springing

2157
01:59:59,840 --> 02:00:03,160
Speaker 2: up like we had a Feller sitting in that seat

2158
02:00:03,160 --> 02:00:03,600
Speaker 2: one time.

2159
02:00:03,640 --> 02:00:04,520
Speaker 1: That is.

2160
02:00:06,120 --> 02:00:13,080
Speaker 2: Very adversarial to round up. Right, how do you like,

2161
02:00:13,600 --> 02:00:15,200
Speaker 2: is there another.

2162
02:00:16,600 --> 02:00:20,680
Speaker 1: Emerging technology that gives you what you need if the

2163
02:00:20,760 --> 02:00:25,720
Speaker 1: tide against roundup turns with like the class action lawsuits

2164
02:00:25,720 --> 02:00:27,720
Speaker 1: and stuff. If round it becomes like can't get it,

2165
02:00:28,160 --> 02:00:30,880
Speaker 1: can't put it under ground, do you then have to

2166
02:00:30,880 --> 02:00:33,480
Speaker 1: be like, oh shit, this whole thing's over or is

2167
02:00:33,520 --> 02:00:34,640
Speaker 1: there is there a plan B.

2168
02:00:37,240 --> 02:00:41,800
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, that that's a great thing to consider, and

2169
02:00:41,840 --> 02:00:46,160
Speaker 5: it is something we worry about, you know, because right

2170
02:00:46,200 --> 02:00:49,800
Speaker 5: now it's just the knowledge and the the technology and

2171
02:00:49,840 --> 02:00:53,120
Speaker 5: the cost right of doing other options. And people could say, well,

2172
02:00:53,160 --> 02:00:54,920
Speaker 5: it's about the cost. No, it's not about the cost.

2173
02:00:54,960 --> 02:00:58,200
Speaker 5: It's about some of the top experts that I've been

2174
02:00:58,240 --> 02:01:00,920
Speaker 5: able to talk to on this issue have not found

2175
02:01:00,960 --> 02:01:02,880
Speaker 5: a way to do it. Above one to two acres

2176
02:01:02,920 --> 02:01:05,200
Speaker 5: at a time, and if we're tackling one or two

2177
02:01:05,200 --> 02:01:08,840
Speaker 5: acres at a time, damn it, we're not doing enough. We

2178
02:01:08,920 --> 02:01:13,920
Speaker 5: have to think about scaling this. And you know right

2179
02:01:14,320 --> 02:01:17,440
Speaker 5: now we've got six big anchor grasslands that were just

2180
02:01:17,480 --> 02:01:21,520
Speaker 5: been funded to begin restoring, and some of these are

2181
02:01:21,560 --> 02:01:24,360
Speaker 5: in very bad shape. They're going to require two full

2182
02:01:24,520 --> 02:01:27,120
Speaker 5: years of getting on top of the weeds so that

2183
02:01:27,120 --> 02:01:29,680
Speaker 5: we can have something better. If we were presented with

2184
02:01:29,720 --> 02:01:33,160
Speaker 5: an option where you can't use it, it would completely derail

2185
02:01:33,440 --> 02:01:35,360
Speaker 5: conservation efforts for grasslands.

2186
02:01:35,960 --> 02:01:39,000
Speaker 2: Now, Randall, do you remember how many acres of dan

2187
02:01:39,040 --> 02:01:40,400
Speaker 2: floories do by hand?

2188
02:01:40,840 --> 02:01:41,760
Speaker 1: Oh? I think that was.

2189
02:01:41,880 --> 02:01:43,880
Speaker 7: I think that was twenty or forty acres.

2190
02:01:45,240 --> 02:01:45,640
Speaker 1: It was.

2191
02:01:45,680 --> 02:01:49,520
Speaker 2: It was like a arid grass landing. But he had

2192
02:01:50,000 --> 02:01:51,880
Speaker 2: I think he did spot a nap weed and leafy

2193
02:01:51,920 --> 02:01:55,320
Speaker 2: spurge years years any spare moment.

2194
02:01:55,840 --> 02:02:00,480
Speaker 7: Yeah, Now, so what is the what is the current

2195
02:02:00,520 --> 02:02:04,960
Speaker 7: footprint of your organization look like in terms of on

2196
02:02:05,040 --> 02:02:09,560
Speaker 7: the ground being here, done that, or under underway.

2197
02:02:09,840 --> 02:02:11,760
Speaker 5: Let me just answer one last thing that Steve brought up,

2198
02:02:11,760 --> 02:02:16,720
Speaker 5: which is, uh, we are about to experiment with using

2199
02:02:16,760 --> 02:02:20,640
Speaker 5: a flame scorcher to do probably somewhere between five. It's

2200
02:02:20,680 --> 02:02:24,000
Speaker 5: a propane fuel flame scuorture, so you know, hot hot,

2201
02:02:24,040 --> 02:02:26,480
Speaker 5: and it even for those you know, then that gets

2202
02:02:26,480 --> 02:02:30,480
Speaker 5: into like fuel consumption and carbon emissions kind of territory.

2203
02:02:31,320 --> 02:02:34,760
Speaker 5: Either either way you go. You don't have a good approach,

2204
02:02:35,240 --> 02:02:36,200
Speaker 5: like you could get.

2205
02:02:36,000 --> 02:02:38,560
Speaker 1: That ship so hot that you wind up with an equal.

2206
02:02:39,000 --> 02:02:41,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, you'd have to do it several times. I mean,

2207
02:02:41,120 --> 02:02:44,280
Speaker 5: otherwise you're looking at solarization. You'd have to put black

2208
02:02:44,320 --> 02:02:47,120
Speaker 5: plastic down. Can you imagine trying to cover black plastic

2209
02:02:47,160 --> 02:02:49,280
Speaker 5: on one hundred acres? It's just not feasible.

2210
02:02:49,320 --> 02:02:51,200
Speaker 1: And everybody's all mad at plastic.

2211
02:02:50,800 --> 02:02:53,120
Speaker 5: Now right, you know, and that's what's going to break down.

2212
02:02:53,560 --> 02:02:57,080
Speaker 7: I just can't win these days.

2213
02:02:57,240 --> 02:02:59,200
Speaker 5: You could, You could disc the hell out of it,

2214
02:02:59,440 --> 02:03:01,600
Speaker 5: but that don't work on a slope where you're subjected,

2215
02:03:01,680 --> 02:03:05,120
Speaker 5: subjected people after you. And then the last one that

2216
02:03:05,160 --> 02:03:07,680
Speaker 5: comes to mind is, uh, you could graze the hell

2217
02:03:07,720 --> 02:03:09,920
Speaker 5: out of it for a long long time with.

2218
02:03:10,280 --> 02:03:11,160
Speaker 3: A bunch of goats.

2219
02:03:11,680 --> 02:03:12,520
Speaker 6: Yeah and all that.

2220
02:03:14,560 --> 02:03:18,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, but then you there's all these come with complexity. Sure,

2221
02:03:18,040 --> 02:03:21,000
Speaker 5: the quickest and most efficient is the approach we use,

2222
02:03:22,040 --> 02:03:24,400
Speaker 5: but it does have its you know, it comes with

2223
02:03:24,400 --> 02:03:25,480
Speaker 5: its drawbacks for sure.

2224
02:03:25,600 --> 02:03:25,880
Speaker 1: Yeah.

2225
02:03:26,000 --> 02:03:29,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a complicated world. Complicated, Yeah, the world. It's

2226
02:03:29,600 --> 02:03:30,800
Speaker 2: annoying this world.

2227
02:03:32,560 --> 02:03:35,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's uh. And now, Randal, you asked me what's

2228
02:03:35,680 --> 02:03:36,320
Speaker 5: our footprint?

2229
02:03:36,400 --> 02:03:41,400
Speaker 7: Yeah, like, how how many acres are you working on? Now?

2230
02:03:41,440 --> 02:03:44,120
Speaker 7: How many acres have you worked on? What's how's the

2231
02:03:44,160 --> 02:03:44,880
Speaker 7: scaling been?

2232
02:03:46,000 --> 02:03:50,120
Speaker 5: Yeah? So the region is twenty four states. We're actively

2233
02:03:50,600 --> 02:03:54,680
Speaker 5: working in or contracted before the freeze to work in

2234
02:03:54,760 --> 02:03:59,240
Speaker 5: seventeen states. We just this year, with the funding that

2235
02:03:59,640 --> 02:04:04,040
Speaker 5: the pro we've already started and what we've been funded

2236
02:04:04,080 --> 02:04:07,840
Speaker 5: to do, we would be able to begin our first

2237
02:04:07,840 --> 02:04:11,080
Speaker 5: ten thousand acres of restoration. So that's that's a big

2238
02:04:11,120 --> 02:04:14,240
Speaker 5: accomplishment for us because just a year and a half

2239
02:04:14,320 --> 02:04:17,440
Speaker 5: ago we had sort of reached our first thousand acres.

2240
02:04:17,960 --> 02:04:20,920
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, as an organization where you're starting

2241
02:04:20,920 --> 02:04:24,920
Speaker 5: from scratch to build what is now a fifty person team,

2242
02:04:26,040 --> 02:04:28,880
Speaker 5: you know eight years ago, first no one really knew

2243
02:04:28,920 --> 02:04:31,800
Speaker 5: about southeastern grasslands as a thing, so we had to

2244
02:04:31,920 --> 02:04:35,440
Speaker 5: educate why they're here. Then you know, we had to

2245
02:04:35,440 --> 02:04:39,320
Speaker 5: just build the team organically, you know, administrative assistance, communications,

2246
02:04:39,360 --> 02:04:44,240
Speaker 5: team on the ground, representation, fundraising, all that stuff, and

2247
02:04:44,320 --> 02:04:46,200
Speaker 5: it took us a good eight years to reach our

2248
02:04:46,240 --> 02:04:47,240
Speaker 5: first thousand acres.

2249
02:04:47,480 --> 02:04:50,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're using as inspiration ten acre.

2250
02:04:50,320 --> 02:04:53,600
Speaker 2: Patches, that's right, Yeah, which is when you put it

2251
02:04:53,640 --> 02:04:56,800
Speaker 2: in that like, when you consider that, that makes it

2252
02:04:56,840 --> 02:04:58,000
Speaker 2: more all the more extraordinary.

2253
02:04:58,440 --> 02:05:01,440
Speaker 5: And it's so it's so difficult, so to go from

2254
02:05:01,480 --> 02:05:04,680
Speaker 5: one thousand acres in twenty twenty three to now ten

2255
02:05:04,720 --> 02:05:09,120
Speaker 5: thousand acres. But our ability to do that, you know,

2256
02:05:09,320 --> 02:05:13,120
Speaker 5: is currently in limbo with the freeze that we're currently facing.

2257
02:05:13,160 --> 02:05:16,400
Speaker 5: We were super excited at the beginning of this year.

2258
02:05:18,320 --> 02:05:22,520
Speaker 5: We had just received major funding from a few major

2259
02:05:22,720 --> 02:05:26,800
Speaker 5: federal agencies to begin working on forty US National parks

2260
02:05:26,800 --> 02:05:30,720
Speaker 5: from Mississippi Vermont to do a few thousand acres of

2261
02:05:31,200 --> 02:05:35,880
Speaker 5: much needed eastern grasslands focused representation. And I'm talking about

2262
02:05:35,920 --> 02:05:38,000
Speaker 5: some of the most iconic landscapes that we have, like

2263
02:05:38,000 --> 02:05:41,920
Speaker 5: Gettysburg Battlefield. People don't realize that southeast Pennsylvania was home

2264
02:05:41,920 --> 02:05:46,080
Speaker 5: to grasslands before seventeen twenty. Great Smoking Mountains National Park,

2265
02:05:46,160 --> 02:05:48,880
Speaker 5: CAD's Cove. You know, these are places that are really

2266
02:05:48,920 --> 02:05:50,720
Speaker 5: well stated. It's Tennessee.

2267
02:05:51,400 --> 02:05:53,600
Speaker 1: These are all Republican states. They might still get it, Yeah,

2268
02:05:53,600 --> 02:05:54,200
Speaker 1: they might get it.

2269
02:05:54,240 --> 02:05:57,160
Speaker 5: You know, they might get it so.

2270
02:05:57,640 --> 02:06:00,360
Speaker 2: Battlegrounds now they need to keep them happy. They might

2271
02:06:00,400 --> 02:06:03,520
Speaker 2: send some of that money over there, hopefully and assuming

2272
02:06:03,520 --> 02:06:06,120
Speaker 2: they're going to use that money and strategically into.

2273
02:06:06,000 --> 02:06:08,760
Speaker 5: Like I'm gonna be positive, I'm gonna hope it's gonna

2274
02:06:09,040 --> 02:06:12,640
Speaker 5: clear up and go through. But I think if if

2275
02:06:12,640 --> 02:06:15,280
Speaker 5: things don't clear up into three to four week five

2276
02:06:15,400 --> 02:06:19,160
Speaker 5: six week process, we risk losing ninety percent of our team.

2277
02:06:19,480 --> 02:06:23,120
Speaker 3: Is there, seriously, Yeah, And there's no hope to like

2278
02:06:23,280 --> 02:06:26,880
Speaker 3: working directly with state agencies, They're just not the mould.

2279
02:06:27,400 --> 02:06:31,040
Speaker 5: And we've we've been cultivating what we've built for eight years,

2280
02:06:31,320 --> 02:06:33,200
Speaker 5: you know. And I had a farmer I don't want

2281
02:06:33,200 --> 02:06:35,520
Speaker 5: to say his name or getting in his business, but

2282
02:06:36,400 --> 02:06:40,000
Speaker 5: you know, when we got the agreements in place to

2283
02:06:40,080 --> 02:06:43,000
Speaker 5: work with the US National Park Service, you know, and

2284
02:06:43,080 --> 02:06:46,120
Speaker 5: these are mostly funded through the Inflation Reduction Act in

2285
02:06:46,160 --> 02:06:49,640
Speaker 5: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, you know, those those two two

2286
02:06:49,680 --> 02:06:51,680
Speaker 5: and a half to three years of discussions to get

2287
02:06:51,680 --> 02:06:55,320
Speaker 5: in place. We signed them all well ahead of the

2288
02:06:55,360 --> 02:06:59,640
Speaker 5: past several months, and those have been all obligated.

2289
02:07:00,080 --> 02:07:02,640
Speaker 1: Those are obligated, congressionally approved, all.

2290
02:07:02,520 --> 02:07:05,720
Speaker 5: Congressionally approved, and so then We spent all of last

2291
02:07:05,800 --> 02:07:08,800
Speaker 5: year staffing up to get ready for that. So we

2292
02:07:08,880 --> 02:07:12,560
Speaker 5: hired almost twenty five employees in the rounds of going

2293
02:07:12,600 --> 02:07:17,000
Speaker 5: through searches and interviews, et cetera. We had then build

2294
02:07:17,040 --> 02:07:19,760
Speaker 5: up our partnership base on the East coast, and so

2295
02:07:19,800 --> 02:07:22,160
Speaker 5: we reached out to a couple of private companies and said,

2296
02:07:22,640 --> 02:07:25,400
Speaker 5: do you guys have the capacity to join us with

2297
02:07:25,440 --> 02:07:30,960
Speaker 5: this effort. One major seed producer said, you know, I

2298
02:07:31,040 --> 02:07:34,040
Speaker 5: need about two or three weeks to deliberate, as this

2299
02:07:34,160 --> 02:07:37,240
Speaker 5: is a big, big opportunity for our small business. You know,

2300
02:07:37,240 --> 02:07:41,440
Speaker 5: they employed about forty people. They said, need some time

2301
02:07:41,480 --> 02:07:43,120
Speaker 5: to think about it. They came back two or three

2302
02:07:43,120 --> 02:07:45,280
Speaker 5: weeks later they said, we're in. We're going to work

2303
02:07:45,280 --> 02:07:47,520
Speaker 5: with you to help make sure you got all the

2304
02:07:47,520 --> 02:07:49,920
Speaker 5: seeds that you need to be to restore these lands,

2305
02:07:50,560 --> 02:07:54,800
Speaker 5: restore this wildlife habitat. And when the freeze took effect,

2306
02:07:55,080 --> 02:07:58,520
Speaker 5: it now puts that farmer, that small business, those forty

2307
02:07:58,560 --> 02:08:02,600
Speaker 5: people employed in that business at risk. My friend had

2308
02:08:02,640 --> 02:08:04,440
Speaker 5: to go out and take a one million dollar business

2309
02:08:04,480 --> 02:08:08,040
Speaker 5: loan to be able to have the to staff up

2310
02:08:08,040 --> 02:08:12,760
Speaker 5: and have the capacity needed to meet this federally obligated project.

2311
02:08:13,760 --> 02:08:16,400
Speaker 5: And I'm not trying to bitch about our situation because again,

2312
02:08:16,560 --> 02:08:20,080
Speaker 5: everybody's in the same boat. But you said it when

2313
02:08:20,120 --> 02:08:23,560
Speaker 5: it starts coming back and biting people in the ass

2314
02:08:24,360 --> 02:08:27,680
Speaker 5: who are just everyday Americans trying to have kids and

2315
02:08:27,720 --> 02:08:31,160
Speaker 5: babies and care for their elder aging parents and go

2316
02:08:31,200 --> 02:08:34,080
Speaker 5: out and hunt on some good lands. I don't know,

2317
02:08:35,160 --> 02:08:37,560
Speaker 5: you know, And so as the leader of our organization

2318
02:08:37,920 --> 02:08:41,280
Speaker 5: and the co founder, and I'm deeply worried about with

2319
02:08:41,320 --> 02:08:43,280
Speaker 5: the next three weeks. I just talked to a good

2320
02:08:43,280 --> 02:08:47,120
Speaker 5: friend of mine and a philanthropist and an advisor. I mean,

2321
02:08:47,160 --> 02:08:50,120
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the reality of needing to go raise

2322
02:08:50,200 --> 02:08:53,640
Speaker 5: thirty million dollars in six months. I got friends that

2323
02:08:53,680 --> 02:08:56,760
Speaker 5: tell me it's physically impossible. I got this mighty man

2324
02:08:56,800 --> 02:08:59,440
Speaker 5: attitude that says I can do it. I really don't

2325
02:08:59,440 --> 02:09:02,120
Speaker 5: know where to go, but I know I don't want

2326
02:09:02,160 --> 02:09:04,160
Speaker 5: to face the reality of letting my ONTUR team go.

2327
02:09:05,160 --> 02:09:07,600
Speaker 5: And we were we were standing at the world's highest

2328
02:09:07,640 --> 02:09:10,560
Speaker 5: point three and a half weeks ago. It just feels

2329
02:09:10,560 --> 02:09:14,560
Speaker 5: like we got our damn teeth kicked in. And so

2330
02:09:14,640 --> 02:09:16,480
Speaker 5: many of my friends are going through the same situation.

2331
02:09:17,080 --> 02:09:21,000
Speaker 5: M both sides of they this is a bipartisan, you

2332
02:09:21,040 --> 02:09:21,480
Speaker 5: know effort.

2333
02:09:21,680 --> 02:09:25,840
Speaker 1: Ye. That feels pretty America first to me. It does

2334
02:09:25,960 --> 02:09:27,800
Speaker 1: get in the grasslands.

2335
02:09:27,240 --> 02:09:31,160
Speaker 5: It does. Yeah, and we're telling them about brother Yeah, man,

2336
02:09:31,280 --> 02:09:32,000
Speaker 5: this is America.

2337
02:09:32,200 --> 02:09:38,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, put that first. Mega make America grassy again.

2338
02:09:38,240 --> 02:09:40,360
Speaker 5: Man, I've heard that somebody's mentioned that before.

2339
02:09:40,560 --> 02:09:43,280
Speaker 3: Is there any way for like someone on land and

2340
02:09:43,320 --> 02:09:45,680
Speaker 3: they wanted to like try to do some of this

2341
02:09:45,800 --> 02:09:49,560
Speaker 3: on their own, Like, could they contact you and get advice?

2342
02:09:49,680 --> 02:09:52,240
Speaker 3: Or is there like a handbook for so to speak,

2343
02:09:52,280 --> 02:09:54,720
Speaker 3: for doing this or is it something that needs to

2344
02:09:54,760 --> 02:09:57,760
Speaker 3: be done on such a larger scale that it's not.

2345
02:09:58,120 --> 02:10:01,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of people doing it,

2346
02:10:01,280 --> 02:10:03,360
Speaker 5: you know, on their own properties and stuff. I think

2347
02:10:03,400 --> 02:10:04,920
Speaker 5: you guys are going to talk to my good friend

2348
02:10:05,320 --> 02:10:07,600
Speaker 5: Kyle Iibarger coming up in a while, you know, with

2349
02:10:07,600 --> 02:10:10,120
Speaker 5: a Native habitat project. You know, Kyle does this kind

2350
02:10:10,160 --> 02:10:12,600
Speaker 5: of work. You know, he came up about five or

2351
02:10:12,600 --> 02:10:15,160
Speaker 5: six years ago, started this kind of work. You know,

2352
02:10:15,280 --> 02:10:20,440
Speaker 5: increasingly we're beginning to see a lot more attention. All

2353
02:10:20,480 --> 02:10:23,400
Speaker 5: we ever wanted was to give eastern grasslands an equal

2354
02:10:23,440 --> 02:10:25,720
Speaker 5: seat at the conservation table. I went to a conference

2355
02:10:25,800 --> 02:10:28,800
Speaker 5: recently and I got right with these people. You have

2356
02:10:28,880 --> 02:10:32,280
Speaker 5: been right with somebody, Steve, I don't know what means.

2357
02:10:32,360 --> 02:10:34,360
Speaker 5: That's when you start throwing out a couple of by gods,

2358
02:10:35,280 --> 02:10:38,360
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, yeah. So I went into I went

2359
02:10:38,400 --> 02:10:41,320
Speaker 5: into this gathering of about one hundred people, and I said,

2360
02:10:41,320 --> 02:10:46,080
Speaker 5: by god, it is pastime for y'all to start having

2361
02:10:46,120 --> 02:10:52,040
Speaker 5: a damn conservation conference in the southeastern United States. There

2362
02:10:52,040 --> 02:10:56,040
Speaker 5: better not ever be another conservation conference where grasslands don't

2363
02:10:56,040 --> 02:10:59,800
Speaker 5: get an equal seat at the damn table. I said,

2364
02:10:59,840 --> 02:11:03,840
Speaker 5: you can have forest and you talk about wetlands, and

2365
02:11:03,880 --> 02:11:07,120
Speaker 5: you talk about coastal ecosystems, and you talk about climate change.

2366
02:11:07,840 --> 02:11:11,839
Speaker 5: Grassland's harbor half the biodiversity of temperate eastern North America,

2367
02:11:13,480 --> 02:11:17,800
Speaker 5: and their biodiversity's collapsing. You got to do something about it.

2368
02:11:18,160 --> 02:11:20,440
Speaker 5: So I had a by god moment. I do apologize

2369
02:11:20,480 --> 02:11:22,840
Speaker 5: forgetting to the here you well, I don't know. I

2370
02:11:22,840 --> 02:11:27,320
Speaker 5: think they're hearing. I think we're witnessing the explosion of

2371
02:11:27,400 --> 02:11:30,000
Speaker 5: interest in this topic. But we ain't got it far

2372
02:11:30,080 --> 02:11:30,480
Speaker 5: enough yet.

2373
02:11:30,520 --> 02:11:32,160
Speaker 1: Steve, Well, I'll tell you this is.

2374
02:11:34,240 --> 02:11:38,800
Speaker 2: I'm new to the whole conversation, you know, the whole

2375
02:11:38,800 --> 02:11:40,920
Speaker 2: thing that I even started thinking about it. I would

2376
02:11:40,960 --> 02:11:44,160
Speaker 2: never even become aware of it had I not had

2377
02:11:44,200 --> 02:11:47,800
Speaker 2: such an interest in this particular era, in these early

2378
02:11:47,880 --> 02:11:50,760
Speaker 2: accounts of people rolling into these spots and describing them

2379
02:11:50,760 --> 02:11:52,480
Speaker 2: for the first time. If I had an encounter that

2380
02:11:52,520 --> 02:11:54,160
Speaker 2: I would never even have thought of it. I would

2381
02:11:54,160 --> 02:11:59,440
Speaker 2: have still tell them everybody about the squirrel running from.

2382
02:11:58,280 --> 02:12:00,080
Speaker 1: You know wherever. That's one am I going to the

2383
02:12:00,080 --> 02:12:01,720
Speaker 1: Mississippi never hitting the ground.

2384
02:12:01,880 --> 02:12:04,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, the long Hunters are one of my gateways into this.

2385
02:12:04,720 --> 02:12:07,640
Speaker 5: But I do need apologize. I just committed blasphemy.

2386
02:12:08,120 --> 02:12:09,040
Speaker 1: Oh we can beat it out.

2387
02:12:09,240 --> 02:12:13,640
Speaker 7: No, No, I appreciate that people know what was said.

2388
02:12:14,360 --> 02:12:18,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, God, well not even that.

2389
02:12:18,600 --> 02:12:21,680
Speaker 2: I think you should bleep it out, Phil sleeping out, Yeah,

2390
02:12:21,880 --> 02:12:25,800
Speaker 2: bleeping out. Get that I had earlier that loud that

2391
02:12:26,080 --> 02:12:27,560
Speaker 2: could be the new bleep we use.

2392
02:12:27,480 --> 02:12:31,880
Speaker 7: And my terrible, my terrible guess at the BLM's annual budget.

2393
02:12:31,880 --> 02:12:33,720
Speaker 7: I'd like that one stricken from the record as.

2394
02:12:33,600 --> 02:12:37,800
Speaker 2: Well anytime randalled Yeah he has something, Regrettably, he says,

2395
02:12:37,840 --> 02:12:39,160
Speaker 2: just put his belch in there.

2396
02:12:42,200 --> 02:12:44,080
Speaker 1: Hey, I keep meaning asked, what's up with that wedding

2397
02:12:44,160 --> 02:12:44,920
Speaker 1: ring you got on there?

2398
02:12:45,040 --> 02:12:48,720
Speaker 5: Uh, dude, I'll tell you what probably been married almost

2399
02:12:48,720 --> 02:12:52,040
Speaker 5: twenty five years? What yeah, man, Yeah, you got married

2400
02:12:52,040 --> 02:12:52,680
Speaker 5: at five.

2401
02:12:53,760 --> 02:12:56,680
Speaker 7: Or you're just a age gracefully.

2402
02:12:56,320 --> 02:12:58,400
Speaker 5: It's probably twenty two, twenty three. Yeah. My wife and

2403
02:12:58,400 --> 02:13:00,720
Speaker 5: I've been together since like two thousand and two. That's

2404
02:13:00,720 --> 02:13:03,440
Speaker 5: when we got married. Been together since ninety seven. Yeah,

2405
02:13:03,680 --> 02:13:05,320
Speaker 5: long time first girlfriend ever.

2406
02:13:05,720 --> 02:13:06,120
Speaker 1: Good for you.

2407
02:13:06,200 --> 02:13:07,720
Speaker 5: My first girlfriend turned into my wife. Yeah.

2408
02:13:07,760 --> 02:13:08,480
Speaker 1: You guys got kids?

2409
02:13:08,800 --> 02:13:11,160
Speaker 5: We do, got three kids. What's your wife's name, Shauna?

2410
02:13:12,080 --> 02:13:14,480
Speaker 5: I got an eighteen year old, sixteen year old, and

2411
02:13:14,520 --> 02:13:16,120
Speaker 5: a ten year old named Boom.

2412
02:13:16,560 --> 02:13:17,600
Speaker 1: You guys got right to it.

2413
02:13:18,080 --> 02:13:18,600
Speaker 5: I'm right, bro.

2414
02:13:20,600 --> 02:13:22,400
Speaker 1: See that was a good move. My buddy Clayed the

2415
02:13:22,400 --> 02:13:24,760
Speaker 1: same thing, got right to it young.

2416
02:13:25,080 --> 02:13:25,320
Speaker 5: Yeah.

2417
02:13:26,800 --> 02:13:29,240
Speaker 1: Like I keep thinking about, you know, like the kind

2418
02:13:29,240 --> 02:13:30,600
Speaker 1: of being the kind of old dude where you go

2419
02:13:30,680 --> 02:13:32,320
Speaker 1: get your grandkids because your kids don't want to hang

2420
02:13:32,360 --> 02:13:38,160
Speaker 1: out anymore. But I'm so far away from that happening, man. Yeah,

2421
02:13:38,200 --> 02:13:41,320
Speaker 1: like picking up your grandkids, taking them turt young your back.

2422
02:13:40,920 --> 02:13:44,400
Speaker 1: You're right on the cost.

2423
02:13:44,840 --> 02:13:45,960
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's true.

2424
02:13:46,080 --> 02:13:48,920
Speaker 1: You'll still be all walk around. I'll be rolling up

2425
02:13:48,960 --> 02:13:56,880
Speaker 1: in a wheelchair if at all. Huh, give me a

2426
02:13:56,880 --> 02:13:57,839
Speaker 1: piece of marriage advice.

2427
02:13:58,960 --> 02:14:05,440
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, man, my wife's always right. That's for one. Yeah,

2428
02:14:05,800 --> 02:14:06,440
Speaker 5: and uh.

2429
02:14:08,720 --> 02:14:10,520
Speaker 1: You're not telling me that she is. You're just saying

2430
02:14:10,560 --> 02:14:11,400
Speaker 1: you pretending.

2431
02:14:11,120 --> 02:14:14,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, pretending. I tell you I got lucky, Man, I

2432
02:14:14,800 --> 02:14:17,240
Speaker 5: got lucky. I'll tell you this. I will say this.

2433
02:14:17,440 --> 02:14:20,680
Speaker 5: All credit to you there. You know, there's a reasons

2434
02:14:20,720 --> 02:14:23,839
Speaker 5: why the Southeastern Grasslands Institute exists.

2435
02:14:23,920 --> 02:14:24,879
Speaker 1: Are we off marriage?

2436
02:14:25,080 --> 02:14:27,080
Speaker 5: No? No, no, I was.

2437
02:14:27,040 --> 02:14:29,879
Speaker 1: Gonna shout this is this is gonna bring this, gonna bring.

2438
02:14:29,640 --> 02:14:30,720
Speaker 5: It coming full circle.

2439
02:14:30,800 --> 02:14:32,120
Speaker 1: I'm with you, strong one.

2440
02:14:32,280 --> 02:14:35,840
Speaker 5: It wouldn't exist if a philanthropist from New York City

2441
02:14:35,880 --> 02:14:37,960
Speaker 5: hadn't discovered us and said, I want you guys to

2442
02:14:38,040 --> 02:14:43,000
Speaker 5: dream big, think programmatically, and create something special. But it

2443
02:14:43,040 --> 02:14:46,880
Speaker 5: also wouldn't exist without the relentless support of my wife

2444
02:14:47,360 --> 02:14:50,760
Speaker 5: because man, this to grow a new organization from nothing

2445
02:14:51,360 --> 02:14:55,280
Speaker 5: to a team of fifty soon to be sixty five, man,

2446
02:14:55,320 --> 02:14:57,080
Speaker 5: I had to have a strong woman in my life,

2447
02:14:57,360 --> 02:14:59,080
Speaker 5: and all credit to her.

2448
02:15:00,160 --> 02:15:00,480
Speaker 1: Uh.

2449
02:15:01,200 --> 02:15:04,240
Speaker 5: When I had to work sometimes thirty hours straight, got

2450
02:15:04,280 --> 02:15:07,480
Speaker 5: no sleep day in, day out, she made sure I

2451
02:15:07,520 --> 02:15:10,320
Speaker 5: had what I needed to keep running. And I'm deeply

2452
02:15:10,320 --> 02:15:11,600
Speaker 5: appreciative to her for that.

2453
02:15:12,200 --> 02:15:12,680
Speaker 1: It's great.

2454
02:15:13,040 --> 02:15:14,760
Speaker 2: You know, to quote, my friend told me, what's that

2455
02:15:15,360 --> 02:15:18,440
Speaker 2: behind every successful man is a woman who thinks he's

2456
02:15:18,480 --> 02:15:22,760
Speaker 2: an idiot, right, right, because.

2457
02:15:22,480 --> 02:15:28,960
Speaker 1: It pushes you, keeps you, it keeps you awakening and

2458
02:15:29,080 --> 02:15:29,920
Speaker 1: gets you up in the morning.

2459
02:15:29,960 --> 02:15:30,280
Speaker 5: That's right.

2460
02:15:30,560 --> 02:15:33,880
Speaker 1: I'm not that bad. Come on, I'm going to get to.

2461
02:15:33,760 --> 02:15:39,240
Speaker 3: It, Dwayne. Are you guys? Are you guys like a

2462
02:15:39,280 --> 02:15:41,400
Speaker 3: nonprofit that people can donate money to.

2463
02:15:42,120 --> 02:15:45,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you know, we are housed out of a

2464
02:15:45,080 --> 02:15:48,440
Speaker 5: university because I've been a professor for eighteen years, right,

2465
02:15:49,600 --> 02:15:52,720
Speaker 5: we currently function in sort of two capacities. We function

2466
02:15:52,880 --> 02:15:57,200
Speaker 5: as a nonprofit. Part of the university is our fiscal sponsors,

2467
02:15:57,200 --> 02:15:59,440
Speaker 5: what we call it. And then we function very much

2468
02:15:59,440 --> 02:16:03,880
Speaker 5: like an acidic department out of our our university, and

2469
02:16:03,880 --> 02:16:07,760
Speaker 5: that that really gives us a lot of amplitude and flexibility. Uh.

2470
02:16:07,880 --> 02:16:10,800
Speaker 5: This year, we are going to be creating our own

2471
02:16:11,040 --> 02:16:13,760
Speaker 5: you know, nonprofit still affiliated with the university.

2472
02:16:13,800 --> 02:16:15,280
Speaker 1: We'll run like a foundation.

2473
02:16:15,600 --> 02:16:18,560
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, right, so well you know, we'll have our

2474
02:16:18,560 --> 02:16:20,520
Speaker 5: own board of directors. We're going to be assembling that

2475
02:16:20,600 --> 02:16:23,600
Speaker 5: this year. And uh, I think that's gonna help us,

2476
02:16:23,720 --> 02:16:25,840
Speaker 5: you know, get to a point where we need to be.

2477
02:16:26,040 --> 02:16:27,640
Speaker 5: It's part of our business plan already.

2478
02:16:27,640 --> 02:16:30,760
Speaker 1: Anyway, what tell me the university you're out of.

2479
02:16:30,960 --> 02:16:34,200
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's called Austin P P E A Y. And

2480
02:16:34,320 --> 02:16:36,720
Speaker 5: our motto is let's go pee and uh.

2481
02:16:38,920 --> 02:16:41,480
Speaker 3: You guys that you guys are occasionally do well in

2482
02:16:41,520 --> 02:16:43,400
Speaker 3: the uh in the march madness.

2483
02:16:43,480 --> 02:16:46,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know, I know that. Yeah, And a

2484
02:16:46,760 --> 02:16:49,520
Speaker 5: lot of people say Pa or Paya or whatever, but

2485
02:16:49,520 --> 02:16:51,520
Speaker 5: it's just Austin P named for one of our former

2486
02:16:51,600 --> 02:16:54,640
Speaker 5: former governors. Yeah, it's good school.

2487
02:16:54,879 --> 02:16:57,480
Speaker 3: So at some point people will be able to jump

2488
02:16:57,520 --> 02:16:59,480
Speaker 3: on a website and donate some cash.

2489
02:16:59,680 --> 02:17:01,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, if they do check it out at you know,

2490
02:17:01,600 --> 02:17:05,400
Speaker 5: our website, Southeastern Grasslands Institute Segrasslands dot org. And of

2491
02:17:05,400 --> 02:17:09,400
Speaker 5: course we're on you know, Facebook and substack and you

2492
02:17:09,400 --> 02:17:10,600
Speaker 5: know all that stuff.

2493
02:17:11,200 --> 02:17:12,680
Speaker 2: And if you're sitting there and you got a big

2494
02:17:12,720 --> 02:17:20,360
Speaker 2: property within yourself, the Dwayne South, Yeah, and you're just

2495
02:17:20,400 --> 02:17:23,520
Speaker 2: wading through piles of money and you're thinking about it's

2496
02:17:23,520 --> 02:17:25,199
Speaker 2: how you want to do something good for your land

2497
02:17:25,920 --> 02:17:30,120
Speaker 2: because as Doug Duran says, it's not ours, it's just

2498
02:17:30,200 --> 02:17:33,120
Speaker 2: our turn that's right, And you want to do something

2499
02:17:33,200 --> 02:17:35,160
Speaker 2: right by your land, Maybe go check these guys out.

2500
02:17:35,879 --> 02:17:38,720
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I would like to. There's there's three things

2501
02:17:38,720 --> 02:17:41,680
Speaker 5: in particular, I'd love for your listeners to kind of

2502
02:17:41,680 --> 02:17:46,160
Speaker 5: help us think through Okay, and you guess too. One

2503
02:17:46,200 --> 02:17:51,520
Speaker 5: is we got so much existing public land and private land,

2504
02:17:52,040 --> 02:17:55,320
Speaker 5: it just needs to be managed in a better different direction. Right.

2505
02:17:56,400 --> 02:18:00,000
Speaker 5: Our organization, through this web portal that's been funded by

2506
02:18:00,160 --> 02:18:04,160
Speaker 5: the USDA called Grasslandia, is designed once we roll that

2507
02:18:04,240 --> 02:18:07,680
Speaker 5: out next year in partnership with EZRA, is designed to

2508
02:18:07,720 --> 02:18:12,240
Speaker 5: be that decision support tool that both public land managers

2509
02:18:12,280 --> 02:18:15,720
Speaker 5: and private landowners can come to Grasslandia and you'll better

2510
02:18:15,760 --> 02:18:17,800
Speaker 5: go into that world and see maps of where the

2511
02:18:17,800 --> 02:18:20,840
Speaker 5: grasses used to be, see the quotes from the early

2512
02:18:20,920 --> 02:18:24,240
Speaker 5: historians who follow the Long Hunter's work or Native Americans,

2513
02:18:25,120 --> 02:18:29,840
Speaker 5: and have that at your fingertips, along with information the

2514
02:18:29,879 --> 02:18:33,200
Speaker 5: photos what they look like, and the information of how

2515
02:18:33,240 --> 02:18:36,760
Speaker 5: to restore the seed mixes the fire regime that you need.

2516
02:18:37,800 --> 02:18:39,640
Speaker 5: So we need to do a lot better with the

2517
02:18:39,720 --> 02:18:43,640
Speaker 5: land we already have. But the second key points one

2518
02:18:43,680 --> 02:18:47,160
Speaker 5: is that we have remnants left on the landscape that

2519
02:18:47,520 --> 02:18:51,720
Speaker 5: are clinging to existence. They need us to recognize them

2520
02:18:51,720 --> 02:18:54,920
Speaker 5: for what they are. They need our help, and that's

2521
02:18:54,959 --> 02:18:56,960
Speaker 5: a hard thing to do. But we can't forget those

2522
02:18:57,000 --> 02:19:00,280
Speaker 5: remnants of places like May Prairie. They're critical is the

2523
02:19:00,280 --> 02:19:04,520
Speaker 5: building blocks to build back from seeds or to protect

2524
02:19:04,560 --> 02:19:07,840
Speaker 5: them because they are oftentimes they need to be protected

2525
02:19:07,840 --> 02:19:10,039
Speaker 5: to manage because they're the last of their kinds. That's

2526
02:19:10,080 --> 02:19:14,840
Speaker 5: the Model's the model. And then the third is I

2527
02:19:14,879 --> 02:19:19,240
Speaker 5: fear that people in the East especially have given up

2528
02:19:19,240 --> 02:19:22,480
Speaker 5: on this idea of big scale conservation. And we're not

2529
02:19:22,520 --> 02:19:26,760
Speaker 5: giving up. So our vision is in my lifetime, is

2530
02:19:26,800 --> 02:19:31,720
Speaker 5: to create two dozen large scale grasslands again in the East. Now,

2531
02:19:31,879 --> 02:19:34,640
Speaker 5: large scale is relative, you know, that's the eastern version

2532
02:19:34,680 --> 02:19:37,680
Speaker 5: of large, right, So there's no reason why we can't

2533
02:19:37,680 --> 02:19:41,040
Speaker 5: build an eleven thousand acre prairie in parts of Alabama

2534
02:19:41,080 --> 02:19:47,960
Speaker 5: Mississippi that connects to and integrates farms and you know,

2535
02:19:49,080 --> 02:19:51,840
Speaker 5: just all the different kinds of efforts grazing, et cetera

2536
02:19:51,920 --> 02:19:54,600
Speaker 5: that needs to happen at a large scale. Now, imagine

2537
02:19:54,600 --> 02:19:58,160
Speaker 5: if we did big scale grassland here in central North

2538
02:19:58,160 --> 02:20:02,280
Speaker 5: Carolina and western Kentucky. I think people have given up

2539
02:20:02,280 --> 02:20:05,080
Speaker 5: on that as a possibility. S g I, the Southeastern

2540
02:20:05,120 --> 02:20:08,160
Speaker 5: Grasslands Institute. That's that's where we're heading. That's our future,

2541
02:20:08,520 --> 02:20:11,480
Speaker 5: that's our next big thing, and what we want is

2542
02:20:11,520 --> 02:20:14,279
Speaker 5: to attract people to come join us on that bold,

2543
02:20:14,560 --> 02:20:19,160
Speaker 5: big vision. That's the future of Eastern conservation right there.

2544
02:20:20,560 --> 02:20:22,120
Speaker 1: Amen, I'm a convert.

2545
02:20:23,080 --> 02:20:25,800
Speaker 5: Come on down, and I have been sold to extend

2546
02:20:25,840 --> 02:20:30,000
Speaker 5: a hunting invitation to have you guys come on down

2547
02:20:31,040 --> 02:20:42,039
Speaker 5: some turkeys. I tell y'all, Yeah, I want you guys

2548
02:20:42,040 --> 02:20:44,120
Speaker 5: to come on down and see that bison trail at

2549
02:20:44,200 --> 02:20:46,320
Speaker 5: the at the Wessington.

2550
02:20:46,320 --> 02:20:47,880
Speaker 1: Farm, and I would love to see that.

2551
02:20:47,959 --> 02:20:50,040
Speaker 5: Come down, see the bison traces you can hunt in

2552
02:20:50,080 --> 02:20:53,320
Speaker 5: our newly restored grasslands down there. Really got some amazing

2553
02:20:53,360 --> 02:20:55,360
Speaker 5: turkey deer. Come on down.

2554
02:20:55,720 --> 02:20:58,840
Speaker 1: I love to have you like sounds of that. You

2555
02:20:58,879 --> 02:21:00,000
Speaker 1: know what book you might like to read?

2556
02:21:00,160 --> 02:21:02,200
Speaker 5: Man, tell me I'm looking for some good ones.

2557
02:21:02,240 --> 02:21:05,000
Speaker 1: Have you read The Land Breakers? No, it's from the sixties.

2558
02:21:05,800 --> 02:21:08,920
Speaker 2: So the other day I had dinner with my editor

2559
02:21:08,959 --> 02:21:12,959
Speaker 2: and my publisher at random House, and I was talking

2560
02:21:12,959 --> 02:21:15,360
Speaker 2: about They were asked me if I'd seen something that's

2561
02:21:15,400 --> 02:21:17,800
Speaker 2: out right now that everybody's watching, and I was saying,

2562
02:21:17,840 --> 02:21:19,640
Speaker 2: I have a hard time with stuff like that because

2563
02:21:19,680 --> 02:21:24,040
Speaker 2: I'll see something that wasn't accurate, historically accurate, and I'll

2564
02:21:24,040 --> 02:21:25,879
Speaker 2: forget all about what I'm watching and I'll just be

2565
02:21:25,920 --> 02:21:28,000
Speaker 2: real annoyed about that, so I can't watch it, yeah,

2566
02:21:28,240 --> 02:21:30,760
Speaker 2: which led us to a conversation of who gets it right?

2567
02:21:31,720 --> 02:21:35,199
Speaker 1: And I was making the case that I was making.

2568
02:21:35,000 --> 02:21:39,000
Speaker 2: The case that Corn McCarthy gets his stuff right like

2569
02:21:39,040 --> 02:21:43,160
Speaker 2: other writers, Alan Eckert gets his stuff right. They're just good,

2570
02:21:43,879 --> 02:21:45,720
Speaker 2: which led someone to say, have you read The Land

2571
02:21:45,760 --> 02:21:49,440
Speaker 2: Breakers from the six nineteen six? I think it was

2572
02:21:49,440 --> 02:21:53,800
Speaker 2: from sixty four and I hadn't. But the land Breakers,

2573
02:21:53,840 --> 02:21:58,800
Speaker 2: as you can imagine, it's like seventeen eighty right, and

2574
02:21:58,840 --> 02:22:04,080
Speaker 2: it's new people moving in to break the land.

2575
02:22:05,160 --> 02:22:06,119
Speaker 1: It's so well done.

2576
02:22:06,120 --> 02:22:08,320
Speaker 5: It's just kind of like the Liul Lamore is the

2577
02:22:08,400 --> 02:22:10,119
Speaker 5: Sacket series. It's sort of similar.

2578
02:22:10,200 --> 02:22:11,800
Speaker 1: Dude, I don't want to hack on Louis the Moore.

2579
02:22:13,240 --> 02:22:16,640
Speaker 1: How do I put this? I've read Louis, the more

2580
02:22:16,800 --> 02:22:19,480
Speaker 1: Dirt is a big Louis. Dirt is always reading Louis.

2581
02:22:19,480 --> 02:22:21,400
Speaker 1: The more I know how to say this in general way,

2582
02:22:22,800 --> 02:22:23,360
Speaker 1: just go for it.

2583
02:22:24,760 --> 02:22:27,360
Speaker 6: No, I mean I think I think.

2584
02:22:31,959 --> 02:22:37,320
Speaker 1: No, it is unbelievable. Uh. It is like like how

2585
02:22:37,480 --> 02:22:38,920
Speaker 1: that dude knows what he knows?

2586
02:22:39,360 --> 02:22:41,160
Speaker 2: And I've gone and checked a little bit to be

2587
02:22:41,280 --> 02:22:46,320
Speaker 2: like what, yeah, including this, but I mean, the stuff

2588
02:22:46,360 --> 02:22:48,280
Speaker 2: about trees and plants is unbelievable.

2589
02:22:48,720 --> 02:22:50,600
Speaker 1: Like he's done a lot of work. He later got

2590
02:22:50,640 --> 02:22:52,920
Speaker 1: involved in politics as an advisor.

2591
02:22:54,520 --> 02:22:55,360
Speaker 5: I can't wait to read it.

2592
02:22:55,400 --> 02:22:58,280
Speaker 1: Man, The land Breakers, I'll read it. Unbelievable. Anyhow, I

2593
02:22:58,400 --> 02:22:59,600
Speaker 1: learned in there, and I went and looked, and this

2594
02:22:59,720 --> 02:23:04,039
Speaker 1: is true when you're making leather wang for like leather

2595
02:23:04,120 --> 02:23:08,840
Speaker 1: stitching groundhog. Whow strongest ship out there? Wow?

2596
02:23:10,879 --> 02:23:13,480
Speaker 2: But no, I think it's like, I think you'd really

2597
02:23:13,520 --> 02:23:15,600
Speaker 2: appreciate that novel, The land Breakers.

2598
02:23:16,000 --> 02:23:17,440
Speaker 5: I'll check it out. Absolutely.

2599
02:23:17,800 --> 02:23:23,800
Speaker 1: I got nothing to gain from this. Well, in fact,

2600
02:23:23,840 --> 02:23:25,840
Speaker 1: I take that back. You should go check out Meterre's

2601
02:23:25,879 --> 02:23:31,640
Speaker 1: American history. Thanks for coming on.

2602
02:23:32,280 --> 02:23:34,480
Speaker 5: Hey, it's a tremendous honor to be here. Thank you

2603
02:23:34,560 --> 02:23:35,040
Speaker 5: for having me.

2604
02:23:36,840 --> 02:23:39,040
Speaker 1: Is how best to come find you? If people want

2605
02:23:39,080 --> 02:23:42,119
Speaker 1: to find you, go to where.

2606
02:23:42,160 --> 02:23:45,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, check us out on social media and come to

2607
02:23:45,800 --> 02:23:47,320
Speaker 5: our website and there's an email.

2608
02:23:47,120 --> 02:23:49,080
Speaker 1: Link there, say the website.

2609
02:23:49,200 --> 02:23:51,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, se grasslands dot org.

2610
02:23:51,920 --> 02:23:54,400
Speaker 1: S grasslands dot org. And on social what are you?

2611
02:23:55,320 --> 02:24:00,039
Speaker 5: On Facebook? And Instagram? At Instagram it's se grass land without.

2612
02:23:59,800 --> 02:24:03,120
Speaker 1: The yes all right, Yeah, I like grassland.

2613
02:24:04,040 --> 02:24:07,000
Speaker 5: Grass landy is gonna be cool man. Yeah, and it's

2614
02:24:07,040 --> 02:24:09,920
Speaker 5: gonna be cool for any research that you need for

2615
02:24:10,040 --> 02:24:13,000
Speaker 5: your book projects. So man, it's up excellent.

2616
02:24:13,080 --> 02:24:15,160
Speaker 2: We're kind of moving westward on our book projects, but

2617
02:24:15,200 --> 02:24:16,879
Speaker 2: we'll come back, come back, We'll double back.

2618
02:24:16,760 --> 02:24:20,200
Speaker 1: Come back, man, So far west will wind up back east. Yeah, right,

2619
02:24:20,520 --> 02:24:23,680
Speaker 1: just this South yea, thanks for coming on.

2620
02:24:23,879 --> 02:24:25,080
Speaker 5: Appreciate, appreciate you guys,