Speaker 1: Hunters and anglers have a superpower. I have it, You
Speaker 1: probably have it. I think just about any outdoorsman or
Speaker 1: woman out there who has fallen in love with the
Speaker 1: pursuit of turkeys or trout, walleye or white tails.
Speaker 2: Probably has it too.
Speaker 1: And that superpower, that incredible gift, is optimism. Despite all
Speaker 1: the failed casts, the skunked outings, the seasons that just
Speaker 1: don't go your way, we keep returning to the field,
Speaker 1: into the water, believing that it's all gonna be different
Speaker 1: this time, Today is going to be the day. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be the year. Just this one last cast,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be the one. To hunt or fish simply
Speaker 1: demands this kind of optimism, and almost to an unseemly degree,
Speaker 1: And because of that demand, it also seems to breed
Speaker 1: more of that same thing, at least from what I
Speaker 1: can tell, the more you hunt or fish, the more
Speaker 1: it seems that you become the kind of person that
Speaker 1: believes good things can happen and that you can.
Speaker 2: Make those good things happen.
Speaker 1: It's for that reason I believe that hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: conservation organizations have become some of the most active and
Speaker 1: effective in.
Speaker 2: The entire world.
Speaker 1: These groups, these causes are armed not only with well
Speaker 1: appointed strategies and smart people and staff, but also an
Speaker 1: army of true believers, men and women who believe that yes,
Speaker 1: things will work out. Today will be the day things.
Speaker 2: Can get better. Take, for example, trout and salmon and.
Speaker 1: The many millions of people who obsess over them, myself included.
Speaker 1: As is the case with so many fish and wildlife today,
Speaker 1: trout and salmon do face some real challenges amidst this
Speaker 1: changing world.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, there.
Speaker 1: Is very real cause for optim about their future too,
Speaker 1: and much of that I believe is because of the
Speaker 1: legions of incredibly, maybe rationally optimistic anglers who have dedicated
Speaker 1: themselves and sometimes their entire lives, to making sure that
Speaker 1: that better future.
Speaker 2: Becomes a reality.
Speaker 1: One such angler and optimist is Chris Wood, the president
Speaker 1: and CEO of Trout Unlimited, one of the largest and
Speaker 1: most influential conservation groups in the hunting and fishing world.
Speaker 1: I've asked Chris to join me here today to help
Speaker 1: me better understand exactly what that future might look like
Speaker 1: for the fish and the rivers and the still waters
Speaker 1: that so many of us know and love, and why
Speaker 1: and how a brighter future might actually be possible. Trout
Speaker 1: and Salmon have a lot going for them, and I think,
Speaker 1: notably that can include us.
Speaker 2: Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: This is Future Wild presented by Concert First Bank. Chris Wood,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3: Hey, Mark, it's good to see you man.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're doing this again, this time on a
Speaker 1: different show, a different kind of platform.
Speaker 2: But any excuse to get to chat with one.
Speaker 1: Of the most well respected leaders of one of the
Speaker 1: most well respected conservation organizations that I know of is
Speaker 1: a treat I'm certainly appreciative of.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure I deserve that introduction, but I
Speaker 3: love chatting with you, and I love the work you do,
Speaker 3: so it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, I apologize then for what I'm about to do
Speaker 1: to you here, Chris, because I want to start with
Speaker 1: a doozy. I'm gonna drop you right in, and I
Speaker 1: want you to help explain a dilemma, the dilemma that
Speaker 1: I think many of the folks listening to this show
Speaker 1: can relate to. I would love for you to explain
Speaker 1: for me why it is that Sam Men and Trout
Speaker 1: drive so many of us absolutely nuts.
Speaker 2: Why is it driven.
Speaker 1: Why has it driven so many of us crazy and
Speaker 1: obsessed us and hooked us and caused us to spend
Speaker 1: so many of our our vacation days and our savings accounts,
Speaker 1: and our our sanity in pursuit of them?
Speaker 2: What is it about these fish?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean what I mean, I can
Speaker 3: think of one or two things that might be better
Speaker 3: than fishing for drout and salmon, but I'm not sure
Speaker 3: I know what they are, so I don't really I
Speaker 3: think I'm going to object to the nature of your question.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, you know, it's it's I think there's
Speaker 3: probably a complex and a simple answer. I think the
Speaker 3: the complex answer is that there's something about these critters
Speaker 3: that live below the surface of the water. And it's different.
Speaker 3: I know both both you and I hunt, and it's different.
Speaker 3: When you're hunt, to be, I mean, you're sort of
Speaker 3: in your element, and and when you're fishing, you're not
Speaker 3: in your element. And it takes a lot of knowledge
Speaker 3: and experience and time spent to become a really good angler.
Speaker 3: And I can't think of a single time that I
Speaker 3: went fishing in my life where I didn't learn something
Speaker 3: a single time. And it's I mean, and as much
Speaker 3: as I love the hunt, it's not that way when
Speaker 3: I hunt and so and and you're always becoming a
Speaker 3: better angler, always just by the people you talk to,
Speaker 3: the more time you spend on the water. And then
Speaker 3: I think there's a there's a there's a more complex
Speaker 3: answer as well, and that's you know, it's uh it's
Speaker 3: for me and not to get too woo woo here,
Speaker 3: but fishing is almost in affirmation of our ability to
Speaker 3: experience the wonder of God's creation. I mean, it is.
Speaker 3: It's just such a even whether it's out here on
Speaker 3: the Potomac or I just just finished writing a piece
Speaker 3: that we're going to publish soon, trying to encourage people
Speaker 3: to perhaps as it gets warm and we're about to
Speaker 3: hit like one hundred and five degrees this week here,
Speaker 3: to maybe think a little bit less about going out
Speaker 3: for trout in this kind of weather, and maybe, as
Speaker 3: I've been doing lately, you know, start plying waters like
Speaker 3: the Potomac with big Klauser minnows and full sync line
Speaker 3: to go after giant blue cats which can which can
Speaker 3: use the hurt because they're not they're invasive and uh
Speaker 3: d c are our d n r here in Washington
Speaker 3: actually encourages you do poke them in the head when
Speaker 3: you catch them. Very different though, very different than trout
Speaker 3: and catch and release. Yes, but I just think there's
Speaker 3: just something magical about being on the water. I was
Speaker 3: out this weekend speaking of the Potomac. We've got this
Speaker 3: little friends group that I'm a part of here called
Speaker 3: Friends of Fletcher's Cove, And we did this event on
Speaker 3: Saturday with this organization called Blue Star Families, and this
Speaker 3: is serving military families and trying to get them into
Speaker 3: the out of doors, like trying to help military families
Speaker 3: through outdoor experiences. And we had about twenty five kids.
Speaker 3: I think I had. I had, I know, I had
Speaker 3: two parents and two little kids. So the youngest was
Speaker 3: probably four and the older daughter was probably six or seven.
Speaker 3: And just I mean, you know, between untangling the lines
Speaker 3: and answering questions about everything that, especially that little boy saw,
Speaker 3: I mean, every single thing I had, I had the
Speaker 3: best time I've had in weeks. And they caught fish
Speaker 3: and and and and now they're hooked, you know, And
Speaker 3: so there's just something special about that. And so I
Speaker 3: don't think of it as a curse. I think of
Speaker 3: it as a blessing.
Speaker 2: I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1: Uh, and I can I can certainly relate to that
Speaker 1: second hand joy that comes from teaching right somebody else.
Speaker 1: I'm in the throes of that with my with my
Speaker 1: two young sons. We we just spent the past weekend
Speaker 1: up at our family deer camp and uh, we also
Speaker 1: did a lot of fishing. We've had a little creak
Speaker 1: on the property where there's a little brookies, so we're
Speaker 1: trying to get the boys on some little brookies. And
Speaker 1: then in the evenings we go to a lake down
Speaker 1: the road and they catch bluegill and uh, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so much fun to see them. Two things,
Speaker 1: one seeing them discovering the love of it and the
Speaker 1: joy of it and and and like you mentioned, like
Speaker 1: there's there's a different they recognize and appreciate all the
Speaker 1: things that we take for granted. After having done this
Speaker 1: for decades, they find so much joy just the excitement of.
Speaker 2: Look at look at the eye, look at look at
Speaker 2: how beautiful that eyeball is, you know, anything like that.
Speaker 1: But then also the the really interesting, uh opportunity you
Speaker 1: have to see someone figuring it out, not just how
Speaker 1: cool it is but figuring out how to do this thing,
Speaker 1: how to how to do this kind of complex activity
Speaker 1: that requires some precision and some uh a number of
Speaker 1: different things all working right together.
Speaker 2: That's really fun to see in a young person.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, amen, And you know one of the things
Speaker 3: I love about. And my kids are older now than yours,
Speaker 3: and so we're past this phase. But I get this
Speaker 3: vicariously through these weekends where we do stuff like we
Speaker 3: did with the Blue Star families this weekend. You know,
Speaker 3: one of the kids, so we have these uh, these
Speaker 3: cool like shale formations almost like these striations in the rock,
Speaker 3: and this you know, four year old boy, you know,
Speaker 3: after asking me about like scars all over my body
Speaker 3: and why I was losing my hair and are you
Speaker 3: sweating so much? And he looked at the rocks and said,
Speaker 3: why are the rocks like that? And you know, I
Speaker 3: looked at him. I thought, I don't know, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have to go look that up. Yeah. So kids they
Speaker 3: also teach us, you know, they they help us to
Speaker 3: see things that I've fished that river a thousand times,
Speaker 3: maybe ten thousand, and I've never really wondered about those rocks.
Speaker 3: But I can be I can tell you for sure.
Speaker 3: This week I will look that up and find out
Speaker 3: why are the rocks striated that way?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is there is there any moment in your own life
Speaker 1: when you were getting into these things that you can
Speaker 1: point back to as standing out as a moment when
Speaker 1: you realized, oh wow, these fish, this experience with them,
Speaker 1: this is like it's got me you. Was there a
Speaker 1: moment for you or some series of moments when all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you realize, like your life is different
Speaker 1: now because this thing is so something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's funny you ask that, and a
Speaker 3: lot of people assume that because I can't you know,
Speaker 3: I work at Child Unlimited, that I came here because
Speaker 3: I love to fish, and I do. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 3: I'm a freak. I love I love to fish and hunt.
Speaker 3: But I came here because of conservation. It was it was,
Speaker 3: you know, the desire to protect wild places and and
Speaker 3: restore areas that led me here. And and so I
Speaker 3: my fishing background is is it's uh, it's more checker
Speaker 3: than pedigree. I remember I was. I went to school
Speaker 3: in Vermont and I had the Orvis. They still make this.
Speaker 3: It's like the tenth edition. Tom Rosenbauers, you know, orvis
Speaker 3: Guide Oorvis one oh one guide to fly fishing.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you do.
Speaker 3: We all do. And I remember sitting on my dorm floor,
Speaker 3: you know, cross leged. It was also obvious and black
Speaker 3: and white when it was on paper. And then I
Speaker 3: get to the river and I didn't care a trout
Speaker 3: for the first thirteen times I went on the unlucky
Speaker 3: thirteenth I caught a trout and I'll tell you how
Speaker 3: I caught it. I was untying a knot in the line,
Speaker 3: not even a knot in the leader, so it was
Speaker 3: this Gorgian knot and in the line, and my zugbug
Speaker 3: was trailing behind me. I had a little zugbug on
Speaker 3: and after about five minutes, some trout came by and
Speaker 3: ate the zug bug that was trailing fifteen feet behind
Speaker 3: me in the That was how I caught my first trout.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, but it's I you know, I
Speaker 3: think if there was ever a time where I kind
Speaker 3: of realized this is it, this is what I want
Speaker 3: to do it, and I think I've shared this story
Speaker 3: with you so I won't do it again. But it
Speaker 3: was in Alaska, and there I discovered salmon. And you know,
Speaker 3: I grew up in New Jersey in the northeast had
Speaker 3: you know, we didn't have any public lands in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't until I graduated and I went on
Speaker 3: this cross country trip across America with my dog Gus
Speaker 3: in a big box of Dnty Moore beastew and you know,
Speaker 3: we camped our way across America, and it was just
Speaker 3: incredible to me this notion that you know, you just
Speaker 3: by virtue of being an American citizen, I have the
Speaker 3: right to camp on all these lands, and in fact,
Speaker 3: not only I own them, and you know, for most
Speaker 3: of us, it's all the land we're ever going to own.
Speaker 3: And that's where I discovered the love of public lands.
Speaker 3: But the love of fishing happened later that summer. I
Speaker 3: went to visit my friend and Mickey, and I discovered
Speaker 3: salmon and the life cycle of these remarkable creatures that
Speaker 3: you know. They they they're reared in fresh water, they
Speaker 3: remained there for varying times, migrate out to the ocean.
Speaker 3: They come back after a certain period of time to
Speaker 3: the very place they were born to have sex one
Speaker 3: time before they die, and then their bodies, their decaying bodies,
Speaker 3: provide the nutrients that keep those systems intact. And I
Speaker 3: was so I was so captivated and taken by that.
Speaker 3: And again, sadly, this is when I was like twenty
Speaker 3: six years old. Shows how ignorant I was, you know,
Speaker 3: but I remember that sentiment of learning about salmon and saying,
Speaker 3: I want to save the salmon, that's what. And I
Speaker 3: was trying to figure out what I wanted to do
Speaker 3: with my career, and I was like, that's it. I
Speaker 3: want to save the salmon. I want to be part
Speaker 3: of this great movement of all of us to try
Speaker 3: to recover these most remarkable of God's creatures.
Speaker 2: What's that? What's that journey?
Speaker 1: What does it feel like to have been on that
Speaker 1: journey now for all the years since then, to have
Speaker 1: had a moment like that so impactful, so real and tangible, well,
Speaker 1: and then saying I want to I want to help
Speaker 1: protect this thing. And now many years later, you've you've
Speaker 1: been a very real, intangible part of doing just that.
Speaker 1: How does that feel to be able to look back
Speaker 1: and see that trajectory?
Speaker 3: It feels great. I mean, look, when I was in
Speaker 3: high school, I was. I went to Saint Peter's in
Speaker 3: Jersey City, and it's a Jesuit with school, and I
Speaker 3: had a great uh. He was a former Green Beret
Speaker 3: in the Vietnam War who was who taught theology, and
Speaker 3: I was convinced after taking his class as a sophomore,
Speaker 3: I wanted to be a priest. And and I was
Speaker 3: fine with the vow of obedience, and I was fine
Speaker 3: with the vow of poverty. It turns out that the
Speaker 3: valve of chastity became a bit of a bridge too far.
Speaker 2: And I get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but but and the family is in the and
Speaker 3: but I have that same sense of service every day
Speaker 3: that I go to work. I mean, I have told
Speaker 3: people that that we have a group of interns. We
Speaker 3: have three of them in here right now, and I
Speaker 3: tell them the same thing every time I meet with interns,
Speaker 3: that you know, I come to work every morning like
Speaker 3: it's Christmas morning, because I truly I get the sense
Speaker 3: that we're trying to make the world a better place.
Speaker 3: And whether you're doing that through conservation or through you know,
Speaker 3: service as a priest, or through whatever else you can
Speaker 3: do to give back to the world, I just think
Speaker 3: it's a great thing. So I'm I'm. You know, I've
Speaker 3: got brothers that are investment bankers. One of them is
Speaker 3: a CEO of a public and chairman of a publicly
Speaker 3: traded company. And I wouldn't trade what I do. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't trade a day of what I do for anything
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 1: When you think of all of the different projects underway
Speaker 1: right now, initiatives, campaigns, you know, the many, many, many
Speaker 1: different things going on right now that are impacting the
Speaker 1: future of trout and salmon. What gets you the most
Speaker 1: excited of the ongoing work at this moment? What is
Speaker 1: the thing that's getting you You mentioned waking up in
Speaker 1: the morning and going to work and being really charged
Speaker 1: to have this opportunity of service. What specific thing out
Speaker 1: there right now has got you the most fired up?
Speaker 3: Such a good question. You know, it's a combination of
Speaker 3: the profound in the mundane, to be honest, and I'll
Speaker 3: start with the mundane. And this is something I just
Speaker 3: wrote about. Like if you look at like the Colorado
Speaker 3: River basin right now, forty million Americans, you know, get
Speaker 3: their water from that basin. It's it's been in a
Speaker 3: prolonged mega drought, right a mega drought and now there's
Speaker 3: this you know, conflict between the upper basin states and
Speaker 3: the lower basin states. That's probably going to be resolved
Speaker 3: by the Department of Interior, but we'll almost certainly go
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court at some point. And you can
Speaker 3: look at that issue. And obviously climate change is having
Speaker 3: a profound effect on the basin this you know, where
Speaker 3: we're in the midst of a twenty year drought. It's
Speaker 3: you know, it's not getting any better. And and you know, tragically,
Speaker 3: over the weekend, we just lost three federal firefighters who
Speaker 3: were fighting a fire on the you know, the Utah
Speaker 3: Colorado border, and those fires aren't going to get any better.
Speaker 3: And and then in places like the northeast, you're getting
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred year floods occurring at the catal intervals.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's and so you know, it's easy to
Speaker 3: look at that and and to basically sort of take
Speaker 3: the you know, throw your hands up in the air
Speaker 3: and just sort of say what I can't there's nothing
Speaker 3: I can do about that. It's like, you know, taxes,
Speaker 3: what are you going to do about you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of people take that approach,
Speaker 3: but one of the things that I enjoy about Trout
Speaker 3: Unlimited is that. And you know, and when you think
Speaker 3: about it in the grand scheme of things, this business
Speaker 3: that we're in, this business of conservation, like it's it's
Speaker 3: really the business of overseeing loss, right, It's you know,
Speaker 3: we had twenty eight trout species in this country. Historically,
Speaker 3: we've got twenty five now three have gone extinct. Of
Speaker 3: those that remain, seventy five percent occupy less than a
Speaker 3: quarter of their historic capitat right, I mean, and water quality,
Speaker 3: open space. I mean, you can go on and on,
Speaker 3: and I think it's really easy to become disconsolate or
Speaker 3: defeatist in the presence of that reality. And one of
Speaker 3: the wonderful things about TU is and I think it's
Speaker 3: because we're an organization of anglers. You know. It's like
Speaker 3: this addiction that you talked about to kick the show off.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's why we're all we were perpetually late
Speaker 3: for dinner. You know, one more cast, one more cast.
Speaker 3: That's the fifteenth last cast, you know, and all of
Speaker 3: that adds time, yes, and so, but you know, anglers
Speaker 3: are inherently and I think fly anglers take this to
Speaker 3: a ridiculous level. We're optimists, you know. We we cast
Speaker 3: this combination of fur and feather and wire at river ghosts,
Speaker 3: and we're perpetually late because we think that the last
Speaker 3: cast is going to yield the biggest fish of the day,
Speaker 3: and so we our lives and so we take that
Speaker 3: sentiment into conservation. And so you look at the situation
Speaker 3: that I just talked about in the Colorado River basin,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like, well, what are we going
Speaker 3: to do about it? What is little old trout on
Speaker 3: Limity going to do? Well? The reality is we're doing
Speaker 3: We're we're replicating or we're modeling the kinds of things
Speaker 3: that can actually ameliorate or even help to fix the
Speaker 3: problems in the Colorado River basin by you know, by
Speaker 3: by doing these small mundane things like we have probably
Speaker 3: built over the past two years ten thousand beaver dam
Speaker 3: analogs minimum ten thousand. And what a beaver dam analog
Speaker 3: It's simply you go in and you drive steaks across
Speaker 3: the stream, wooden steaks by hand, and then you weave
Speaker 3: alders or willows or whatever your native vegetation is, to
Speaker 3: try to basically replicate what beavers have done historically. And
Speaker 3: by doing that you slow the water down, you create
Speaker 3: more pool habitat, you create more complexity to the habitat,
Speaker 3: which is just inherently good for trout. But it keeps
Speaker 3: the water in the system longer. And then that's good
Speaker 3: not only for those of us who love to fish,
Speaker 3: but it's also great for late season flows for irrigators.
Speaker 3: For example. The longer we can hold the water in
Speaker 3: these systems, the more that we can recover the natural
Speaker 3: resilience of these rivers and streams to the effects of
Speaker 3: climate change, the floods and the fire and the drag out.
Speaker 3: The better that is for fish, but it's also better
Speaker 3: for downstream communities. And I see that literally. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't have the number, but I bet we're working
Speaker 3: on over one thousand projects across national forests and private
Speaker 3: lands in the Rockies across the West that helped to
Speaker 3: hold water in systems longer, which obviates the need, for example,
Speaker 3: to build storage reservoirs, which are bad for fish, definitely
Speaker 3: bad for salmon. It provides late season flows, which is
Speaker 3: great for downstream farmers and ranchers. It frankly helps to
Speaker 3: filter water, which diminishes downstream water filtration costs, And now
Speaker 3: is this work even if we could take it to
Speaker 3: scale like we've got this proposal, we in seventy other
Speaker 3: entities proposed a two billion dollar fund in the Colorado
Speaker 3: River basin to be able to take this kind of
Speaker 3: work to scale. And will will that solve the problem?
Speaker 3: Probably not? Will it make a big difference? Absolutely? Absolutely will?
Speaker 3: And so you know, that's the mundane piece is that
Speaker 3: these every day working with tribes, working with our partners
Speaker 3: like the Forest Service and the Bureau of Reclamation and
Speaker 3: the BLM, and working with other nonprofits to go out
Speaker 3: there and just try to help recover the natural resiliency
Speaker 3: of these systems so they're better able to withstand the
Speaker 3: effects of changing climate. That inspires me every day to
Speaker 3: know that that work is happening right now. And then
Speaker 3: the profound is really the you know, the it's the
Speaker 3: harder stuff, right, it's the you know, I got involved
Speaker 3: in this because I wanted to save Snake River salmon
Speaker 3: And the only way we're ever going to save Snake
Speaker 3: River salmon is by removing the four lower Snake River dams.
Speaker 3: And that's not going to be easy. It's not going
Speaker 3: to happen anytime soon. But I do think it will
Speaker 3: happen in our lifetimes. And I think it will happen
Speaker 3: because common sense prevails, and there isn't a single use
Speaker 3: of that river system, of those four dams and the
Speaker 3: reservoirs that's behind them, There's not a single economic or
Speaker 3: social use that we couldn't replace, not a single one.
Speaker 3: And I just think it's going to take the right
Speaker 3: political climate and you know, the right application of common
Speaker 3: sense to common problems for the common good before we
Speaker 3: can have the conversation that leads to those the vested interest,
Speaker 3: the ones who want to keep those dams in place, realizing, well,
Speaker 3: why are we arguing these dams had a lifespan of
Speaker 3: fifty years, We're now you're fifty seven. What are we
Speaker 3: doing here? I can be made better, I can be
Speaker 3: made whole and better. So it's you know, it's the
Speaker 3: So it's a long winded answer mark to your question.
Speaker 3: But it's a combination of that, just the everyday stuff
Speaker 3: that TU staff, our four hundred staff in the field
Speaker 3: and our tens of thousands of volunteers are doing in
Speaker 3: local communities around the country to you know, just frankly,
Speaker 3: make our rivers and streams more resilient and the potential
Speaker 3: to do really big things. The you know, the Bristol Bay,
Speaker 3: the protecting places like Bristol Bay, and the passage of
Speaker 3: federal legislation like my friends Senator Heinrich and Senator Heinrich
Speaker 3: from New Mexico and Rish from Idaho what they made
Speaker 3: possible and passing good Samaritan legislation. It's it's the combination
Speaker 3: of those two things that get me fired up every day.
Speaker 2: Do you think that the dams on the Snake.
Speaker 1: Is that the single most impactful you know, if you
Speaker 1: were to wave a magic wand and change the thing
Speaker 1: right now for salmon in the United States? Is that
Speaker 1: the thing is that like the greatest lever we could
Speaker 1: ever pull to change the game right now.
Speaker 3: Without question, without question. So you look at that basin,
Speaker 3: about forty five percent of it is either wilderness or
Speaker 3: roadless in the Snake basin. That is because of the
Speaker 3: great you know, the network of wonderful wilderness we have there,
Speaker 3: like the frank Church River of No Return and then
Speaker 3: all those the nine million acres of roadless areas in
Speaker 3: Idaho that you know, Senatorish helped to protect, and you know,
Speaker 3: we do a ton of work on the coasts, Like
Speaker 3: we're involved in this thing called the Salmon super Highway,
Speaker 3: which is this awesome effort on the coast of Oregon
Speaker 3: to basically help coho and steelhead primarily that aren't impacted
Speaker 3: by dams, but are impacted by things like culverts that
Speaker 3: are perched. And when these culverts blow out, they happen
Speaker 3: to take the road above them, which makes it impots
Speaker 3: possible for farmers to move their products to market. So
Speaker 3: it's been this great collaboration with like creamerries and cheeseries like,
Speaker 3: and we've I think we've recovered, We've reconnected. Now it's like,
Speaker 3: I think it's ninety eight of one hundred and seventy
Speaker 3: miles that we have for the Salmon super Highway. The
Speaker 3: problem is, though, that those are lower elevation areas and
Speaker 3: we don't know what's going to happen in it with
Speaker 3: a changing climate. To be certain, what we're doing has
Speaker 3: immense psychological and perhaps even more profound social benefits. But
Speaker 3: the Snake basin those are high elevation systems. Seventy percent
Speaker 3: of that area is high elevation wilderness quality, roadless quality habitat.
Speaker 3: That's the best remaining habitat for Pacific salmon in the
Speaker 3: lower forty eight And that is the one thing. And
Speaker 3: we've got all kinds of like small to adult return
Speaker 3: survival ratio that show the difference between having to traverse
Speaker 3: four dams, because there's eight dams that they have to
Speaker 3: traverse to get you know, up to the you know,
Speaker 3: south fork of the Salmon River drainage for example. But
Speaker 3: we have great data in other basins like the John
Speaker 3: Day Basin and the to Shoots basin and show what
Speaker 3: happens when salmon just have to traverse four dams versus eight.
Speaker 3: It's the it's the death of eight cuts that is
Speaker 3: making salmon unsustainable in the Northwest, at least in the
Speaker 3: Snake River basin. If we could remove those four dams,
Speaker 3: they'd not only have a great chance, they'd have I
Speaker 3: mean it's it's their best chance without question.
Speaker 1: Could you paint the picture a little bit more broadly
Speaker 1: for someone who maybe is coming into this without the
Speaker 1: background as far as why that's nake You mentioned it
Speaker 1: being a high elevation wilderness roadless set of you know,
Speaker 1: watersheds there, but I mean house antel of the Salmon
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest salmon population we're talking about that's impacted by
Speaker 1: this what's the scale of the impact here? And then
Speaker 1: can you help me then understand how actually could these
Speaker 1: dams be removed? What would that lead to? How would
Speaker 1: that change things? I guess I'm asking you for quite
Speaker 1: a lot here, but give me the cliff notes version
Speaker 1: of a little bit more detail of why that population
Speaker 1: is so important, and then what this possible pathway looks
Speaker 1: like to changing the current situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so just to give you a sense of again,
Speaker 3: we're talking about largely wilderness quality habitat in high elevation areas.
Speaker 3: So it's more it's better able to withstand drought, it's
Speaker 3: better able to withstand heat you know is higher in
Speaker 3: the watershed, so it's better able to withstand flooding. Half
Speaker 3: of all of the steelhead for examp in the Columbia
Speaker 3: River basin used to come from the Snake basin, so
Speaker 3: it you know, it was historically the driver, the productivity
Speaker 3: driver for the entire Columbia River basin, the snake was.
Speaker 3: And that's what we've lost, I mean, we haven't had
Speaker 3: we haven't. And those you know, the little towns in
Speaker 3: Idaho that used to have salmon fisheries. They depended on
Speaker 3: those They were absolutely economically dependent on those fisheries, and
Speaker 3: it would be the biggest shot in the arm to
Speaker 3: the Northwest's economy that I can think of. And the
Speaker 3: reality is that, you know, we get about three percent
Speaker 3: of the not the power in the US, but we
Speaker 3: get about three percent of the region's power from those
Speaker 3: four dams, three percent of the regent's power, and that
Speaker 3: can easily be offset by either renewable sources or other
Speaker 3: power sources. It's just it's a paltry amount of power.
Speaker 3: We can build rail to move the wheat that is
Speaker 3: being or the other commodities that are being grown in
Speaker 3: places like Idaho and western Washington. We can we can
Speaker 3: extend the pipes down to the river to a free
Speaker 3: flowing river for the farmers and the irrigators who depend
Speaker 3: on that system for water, for irrigation water. We can
Speaker 3: literally replace every single social and economic benefit air quotes
Speaker 3: that's provided by those four dams. But the salmon, they
Speaker 3: need a river. They need a river, you know, And
Speaker 3: it's and it's not that complicated. Congressman Mike Simpson, Republican
Speaker 3: from Idaho, a few years ago in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: I think it was he came out with a proposal
Speaker 3: that basically it would have left the dams in place.
Speaker 3: Actually his idea was to keep the concrete there, don't
Speaker 3: reach them, just bypass them, you know, literally build the
Speaker 3: river around the dams. So we can keep the investment
Speaker 3: in concrete. I guess even though it's already outlived, it's
Speaker 3: you know, projected lifespan, we can still keep that and
Speaker 3: bypass bypass the dams with a river, a functioning river.
Speaker 3: And the key thing that would happen Mark is we
Speaker 3: get rid of the the dozens upon dozens of mile
Speaker 3: of bathwater warm reservoirs that are predator laden and that
Speaker 3: are killing the smolt. It's it's really, I mean, there
Speaker 3: is a five to ten percent mortality at each of
Speaker 3: those dams as you march upstream. And you know, if
Speaker 3: you have a cohort, say have one hundred coming upstream,
Speaker 3: you can do the math at each but it's the
Speaker 3: downstream mortality on the smalt. So the juvenile salmon, they
Speaker 3: don't actually swim to the ocean. They're pushed by the
Speaker 3: spring freshet. So they're pushed by the snowfall the melting
Speaker 3: snowfall and all that that creates the spring flow and
Speaker 3: they actually get flushed downstream and when they hit those reservoirs,
Speaker 3: what used to take maybe forty eight hours to get
Speaker 3: down to the ocean now can take weeks, and they
Speaker 3: undergo physiological physiological changes. They're more likely to to, you know,
Speaker 3: become affected by disease. And and they're really the you know,
Speaker 3: the giant issue is all the predators that are in there,
Speaker 3: you know, species like Wiley that weren't there historically, bass
Speaker 3: that you know, wouldn't persist in a free flowing, cold
Speaker 3: water environment. And you know, and I you know, I
Speaker 3: thought we would get there in twenty twenty two. I
Speaker 3: really did. Maybe it was twenty twenty one. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm you know, having been in d C for as
Speaker 3: long as I have, I'm rarely surprised by politics anymore.
Speaker 3: But and you know it, a lot of our tribe
Speaker 3: like to blame the Republicans for everything, but the reality
Speaker 3: was that we had a very conservative, powerful member of
Speaker 3: Congress come up with this proposal, and there was one
Speaker 3: Democrat who supported him, a liberal Democrat from Portland supported him.
Speaker 3: But the silence on the left was deafening, and I
Speaker 3: just think it's a failure of imagination. It's a failure
Speaker 3: of leadership, of course, but it's a failure of imagination
Speaker 3: to help us to realize that there's a way to
Speaker 3: bring these magnificent fish back and to make everybody socially
Speaker 3: and economically whole. And that's our job. Our job as
Speaker 3: advocates is to help our elected leaders understand that it's
Speaker 3: in their best interest to do this, and it's in
Speaker 3: the interest of the people that they represent to do it.
Speaker 3: And that's the work we have cut out for us.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of imagination, though, one of the hard things
Speaker 1: to do is you just alluded to, is helping people
Speaker 1: recognize not just the reality of the boogeyman, the bad
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on. That's easier sometimes to help folks
Speaker 1: understand and for people to take action against, but it's
Speaker 1: sometimes harder to help people imagine.
Speaker 2: A better future. That's possible if we were to do
Speaker 2: a B or C.
Speaker 1: But in this case, with the idea of removing these dams,
Speaker 1: we do have some other analogs to look to right
Speaker 1: some other places where where dams have come down, and
Speaker 1: we've seen some really encouraging results, right, I mean, can
Speaker 1: you speak to some of these examples, like the climate
Speaker 1: or any others where we've yeah taken damil down.
Speaker 3: A great example is the El Wah in Washington State.
Speaker 3: The Elwah dams basically blocked habitat for about one hundred years.
Speaker 3: They came down about ten years ago or so, and
Speaker 3: steelhead were functionally extinct from that base because they were
Speaker 3: impassable dams. And we had a group of scientists go
Speaker 3: in there and snorkel it. A couple of years after
Speaker 3: the dams came out, they found three hundred pair of
Speaker 3: spawning steelhead. So what happened was the rainbow trout uncorncas MICUs,
Speaker 3: which are the same as steelhead anchorncas MICUs oh MICUs.
Speaker 3: They remembered that, hey, wait a minute, we can be
Speaker 3: an adremus fish. So they called they recovered their anadromy
Speaker 3: They remembered, I don't have to be a resident rainbow.
Speaker 3: I can move down and go into the estuary and
Speaker 3: migrate to the ocean. And they did that, and then
Speaker 3: you know, a more recent example, of course, is the
Speaker 3: famous example on the Klamath. You know those I remember
Speaker 3: when I first started a trout unlimited it was. It
Speaker 3: was a little bit before I started, actually, but they
Speaker 3: had had in I think it was two thousand, the
Speaker 3: Clinton administration chose to shut the river off to irrigators
Speaker 3: in order to protect an endangered sucker fish. And then
Speaker 3: there was an election, and in two thousand and one,
Speaker 3: similar drought condition, the Bush administration shut the river off
Speaker 3: to the river and they allowed the irrigators to take
Speaker 3: all the water they needed, and as a result, they
Speaker 3: were tremendous low flows in the Klaimate and we lost
Speaker 3: thirty to fifty thousand Imperial old salmon and steelhead that
Speaker 3: year to low flows, to hypoxia and other diseases. And
Speaker 3: four years later that year class never you know, it
Speaker 3: never materialized, and so they shut the commercial fishing industry
Speaker 3: down off the coast of California for the first time
Speaker 3: in its history. And it was from that controversy that
Speaker 3: twenty years later we were able to negotiate an agreement
Speaker 3: to take out the four Klamath River dams and not
Speaker 3: only take them out, but engage in you know, we
Speaker 3: had actually acquired an organization called the Klamath Basin rangeland
Speaker 3: trust I think it was called I could be wrong,
Speaker 3: but our VP for the Pacific Northwest may have founded it,
Speaker 3: but they were doing restoration up in that area for
Speaker 3: a long time before the dams came out, and so
Speaker 3: you know, we were able to see fish colonizing and
Speaker 3: receding areas they hadn't been doing one hundred and six years.
Speaker 3: There's incredibly cool videos. If you want to be inspired,
Speaker 3: take a look look up on you know, on the internet,
Speaker 3: salmon returning to the Klamath. They were coming back like
Speaker 3: right after the dams were taken out. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're in the midst of a really
Speaker 3: a big, hairy project now that you know. The Nature
Speaker 3: Conservancy did great work in securing a purchase agreement for
Speaker 3: four dams on the Kennebec in Maine. And the reason
Speaker 3: the Kennebec is important. We were very much involved in
Speaker 3: removing two dams and bypassing the third on the Pinobscot
Speaker 3: about ten years ago, and that resulted in huge returns
Speaker 3: of a host of anadremus fish like ale wives and
Speaker 3: shad and striper's straight bass, et cetera. We also saw
Speaker 3: increases in Atlantic salmon. But you know, the part of
Speaker 3: the problem is that you know, the population levels are
Speaker 3: so low there that we didn't get the big pulse
Speaker 3: back like we did, you know, seeing one hundred times
Speaker 3: the number of stripers coming back. But the reason that
Speaker 3: the Cannebec is so important is the Sandy River is
Speaker 3: a pristine It's like it's kind of like the headwaters
Speaker 3: of the Snake. It's this very pristine watershed with great
Speaker 3: habitat that will now be accessible once we take those
Speaker 3: dams out on the Kennebec. And we actually think we
Speaker 3: have a shot there with Atlantic salmon, our best shot
Speaker 3: in the lower forty eight. And so, you know, there's
Speaker 3: examples of how fisheries respond to dam removals around the country,
Speaker 3: large and small. I was in Rhode Island a few
Speaker 3: years ago. I'm not going to name names because I
Speaker 3: don't want to get any of my friends in trouble,
Speaker 3: but I remember there was I had been there a
Speaker 3: couple of years before, and there was a little dam
Speaker 3: like like a like a like a dam you'd build
Speaker 3: with your kids, like a six foot maybe a four
Speaker 3: foot dam, And the temperature differential on the upstream side
Speaker 3: was like eight degrees It was eight degrees warmer or
Speaker 3: nine degrees warmer in this reservoir created by this little
Speaker 3: dam that it was downstream, and it was just thermal pollution,
Speaker 3: and it was also a physical barrier for migrating brook trout.
Speaker 3: So I got it invited to come out there and
Speaker 3: we were going to take this dam out. So there
Speaker 3: were like fifteen people and we had a winch off
Speaker 3: somebody's jeep, and we winched this jeep or this concrete
Speaker 3: dam out of the river. And I remember asking we
Speaker 3: did have a fisheries biologist. I asked him if I
Speaker 3: could see the plans, and the plans were something he
Speaker 3: had handwritten on a like a napkin. And this is
Speaker 3: the truth. After we took that dam out, a bunch
Speaker 3: of us walked up to the trucks to get sandwiches
Speaker 3: or whatever, and it took us like an hour, and
Speaker 3: this young woman who was volunteering there came running up
Speaker 3: the trail screaming because she literally had seen brook trout
Speaker 3: passing through the opening that we had created in the river,
Speaker 3: like like while we were there getting sandwiches. And so
Speaker 3: these are you know, I guess the point in this
Speaker 3: is rivers and streams are incredibly resilient, and salmon and
Speaker 3: steelhead and trout for that matter, are incredibly resilient creatures
Speaker 3: and if we give them half a chance, they will
Speaker 3: come back. We just have to give them that chance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really like this focus that to you in particular,
Speaker 2: and others.
Speaker 1: As well, but to you, over the years, you guys
Speaker 1: have leaned so much into the act of and the
Speaker 1: storytelling around hands on work and restoration. Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, there's all these different things that can discourage you.
Speaker 2: But when you have a hands on.
Speaker 1: In front of your face, you know, experience and then
Speaker 1: you can see the change on the ground. A it
Speaker 1: makes a difference and b it fuels you in a
Speaker 1: different right, got it. I feel like another way you
Speaker 1: guys a story kind of done some storytelling around this
Speaker 1: is this conservation town initiative and the list that you
Speaker 1: guys launched earlier this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why'd you guys do that? Why why are you highlighting.
Speaker 1: Some of these specific places where it seems like this
Speaker 1: kind of thing is happening and having really exciting results.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the conservation towns thing. It's it's interesting. Mark,
Speaker 3: we we talked. I remember when I started in my career,
Speaker 3: it was kind of at the tail end of the
Speaker 3: whole spotted owl fight. You know, it had already happened,
Speaker 3: and they had come out with the Northwest Forest Plan
Speaker 3: that you know, protected you know, old growth reserves and
Speaker 3: spotted owls and salmon, et cetera. But the old timers
Speaker 3: would talk about, you know, what are we going to
Speaker 3: do about these resource dependent communities. And these are communities,
Speaker 3: whether it's Hancock, New York, you know, in the Upper Delaware,
Speaker 3: or the timber towns out in the Pacific Northwest that
Speaker 3: were reliant on you know, forests like the Wilamott cutting
Speaker 3: a billion board feet of timber a year. Just to
Speaker 3: give you a frame of reference, a billion board feet.
Speaker 3: Today the Forest Service cuts nationwide about three billion. And
Speaker 3: they were taking a billion off off that one forest,
Speaker 3: the Lamote, back in the day. And so you know,
Speaker 3: these and the incentives were all twisted in frankly perverse.
Speaker 3: I mean, so it used to be that twenty five
Speaker 3: percent of every timber sales proceeds would go to these
Speaker 3: rural communities for schools and roads, and so the education
Speaker 3: of people's children was dependent on the harvest of old
Speaker 3: growth trees from the Pacific Northwest. Like I mean, talk
Speaker 3: about a losing proposition to.
Speaker 2: Argue, yeah, I did want to do that.
Speaker 3: Of course, it's your kids. I mean, what wouldn't you
Speaker 3: do for your kids? And so anyway, these and and
Speaker 3: people would talk about these resource dependent communities and the
Speaker 3: reality is they're still resource dependent today. They are they
Speaker 3: remain resource dependent. I mean, I think about Phillipsburg, which
Speaker 3: is one of these we named this. We picked five
Speaker 3: conservation town finalists and we picked Philipsburg to be the winner.
Speaker 3: And I think this will be an annual project for us.
Speaker 3: But you know, Phillipsburg was a you know, it had
Speaker 3: a heavy mining presence, heavy forestry presence, just like thousands
Speaker 3: of other communities around the Pacific Northwest, and then it
Speaker 3: all went, it all cratered, you know, the mind shut down,
Speaker 3: the timber ran out, and the community suffered. But what
Speaker 3: makes that community so special, and there's dozens of other
Speaker 3: communities like this around the country, is they never gave
Speaker 3: up on the town and they realized that they wanted
Speaker 3: to remain resource dependent. But the resources didn't have to
Speaker 3: be unsustainable. They could be sustainable. It could be the
Speaker 3: recreation economy, it could be the fishing, it could be
Speaker 3: the hunting, it could be the you know, people that
Speaker 3: want to move to an area like that because there's
Speaker 3: an amazing quality of life, And so we wanted to
Speaker 3: celebrate those people who never gave up on their communities
Speaker 3: or who moved there to help build new resource dependent communities.
Speaker 3: But in this case the resources are sustainable and again
Speaker 3: and in many cases, like you know, if you think
Speaker 3: about you know, we've worked in these different conservation towns.
Speaker 3: I think we've engaged in about one hundred projects in
Speaker 3: the five of them over the past decade or so.
Speaker 3: We're active involved with those communities doing that work. You
Speaker 3: just talked about a moment ago, getting our hands dirty
Speaker 3: actively cleaning up abandoned mines or you know, creating beaver
Speaker 3: dam analogs as we were talking about earlier, or helping
Speaker 3: with tree plantings, or taking wounded you know, helping wounded
Speaker 3: veterans to heal through fishing and time on the water,
Speaker 3: whatever it is. So we felt like we had a
Speaker 3: presence in these communities and we could credibly not as
Speaker 3: you know, some outside group that doesn't have roots in
Speaker 3: these places hold them up and celebrate. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: I think this is a cool if I if I
Speaker 3: if I lifted the computer up and brought you outside.
Speaker 3: We have a replica of the sign you know how
Speaker 3: like in you drive into a lot of these rural communities,
Speaker 3: like in my town in West Virginia, you drive in
Speaker 3: and there's a sign up that says like, you know,
Speaker 3: Kuwanas Club or ret and Club or you know whatever.
Speaker 3: So they have a conservation towns sign up, and we've
Speaker 3: got to replica over here on our wall. And I
Speaker 3: just think it's a it's a way to celebrate these
Speaker 3: places and the resiliency of people who they never gave
Speaker 3: up on their towns, even though the economic base shifted,
Speaker 3: they never gave up on their places, and and we
Speaker 3: never gave up on them either. And and it's it's
Speaker 3: wonderful to be able to celebrate the incredible. I mean,
Speaker 3: it sounds condescending to say comeback, but it's it's just
Speaker 3: amazing to celebrate the resilience of some of these.
Speaker 2: And is it fair to say that.
Speaker 1: There are many examples like that, Like this is a
Speaker 1: growing trend.
Speaker 2: There more and more and more.
Speaker 1: Communities like this right that are that are seeing conservation
Speaker 1: payoff and in tangible and economic and lifestyle in so
Speaker 1: many different ways.
Speaker 2: Right, this is not rare.
Speaker 3: It's not rare. It's it's you know, it's it's happening
Speaker 3: all over the country, and you know it's it's it.
Speaker 3: And you know I started out earlier by saying, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the challenging things about this work we do
Speaker 3: is that conservation is almost literally about loss. But it's
Speaker 3: also the single most optimistic, affirmative, forward looking idea that
Speaker 3: America ever gave the rest of the world. Write this
Speaker 3: idea that like you and I can take specific actions today.
Speaker 3: Anybody listening can do this to make the world a
Speaker 3: better place for your kids, and even if you don't
Speaker 3: have kids, you can make a better place for those
Speaker 3: who you know will come because you believe there will
Speaker 3: be others who come because you have faith. You have
Speaker 3: faith that we can make the world a better place
Speaker 3: than the one we inherited. I mean, and that's what
Speaker 3: communities are doing all around the country. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think about Phillipsburg. So we did this cool video about
Speaker 3: conservation towns, and they had a I think there's like
Speaker 3: eight hundred people in Phillipsburg. They had one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty seven people show up to the oldest operating theater
Speaker 3: in Montana, by the way, to watch this video, one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty seven out of eight hundred people showed up,
Speaker 3: and that just it shows you the pride that they
Speaker 3: have in their community. And I remember back in the day,
Speaker 3: like in the early aughts, you know, people would talk
Speaker 3: about like these New age economists would talk about like
Speaker 3: the recreation economy of the West, and it kind of
Speaker 3: became this divisive thing, you know, this us against them, thinking, oh,
Speaker 3: you're going to have a bunch of likera clad you know,
Speaker 3: freaks coming into my community. And I just it's so
Speaker 3: cool to see how far we've moved beyond that. And
Speaker 3: I do think that it is in part because of
Speaker 3: the groups like to you that make investments in these
Speaker 3: communities and don't give up on them.
Speaker 1: So speaking of communities that folks have not given up
Speaker 1: on and encouraging examples. When I look back at the
Speaker 1: last twenty years or so and I try to find
Speaker 1: wins moments where a community of diverse individuals, different stakeholders
Speaker 1: all came together to protect something they really care about.
Speaker 1: Relevant to salmon and trout, you can't not think of
Speaker 1: Bristol Bay and just this years and years and years
Speaker 1: long effort by so many different people from so many
Speaker 1: different walks of life, both locally right there on the ground,
Speaker 1: and nationally and statewide. So many different stakeholders came together
Speaker 1: to save this last greatest stronghold of salmon and.
Speaker 2: So many other fish species. What do you what do
Speaker 2: you take from that?
Speaker 1: Looking back on that journey over the last twenty plus years.
Speaker 2: I've spent a good amount of time over.
Speaker 1: The last couple of years trying to dissect that, trying
Speaker 1: to understand that, what we learn from that, what can
Speaker 1: we take from that for the next, you know, the
Speaker 1: next battle down the road, and also a source of
Speaker 1: hope because that was a big one that there were many, many,
Speaker 1: many financial incentives. Like the financial incentive there was massive.
Speaker 2: And salmon came out on top. Though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you look at that, what stands out to
Speaker 1: you is is how that happened, as why that happened,
Speaker 1: as how we can make sure the next one happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's I'll tell you that I've never
Speaker 3: said this before. I just thought of it. The microcosm
Speaker 3: example of the win in Bristol Bay may have been,
Speaker 3: and I bet you've never heard of this, the Wyoming
Speaker 3: Range Legacy Act.
Speaker 2: I have heard of that.
Speaker 3: You have, Okay, then I take it forget, But I
Speaker 3: would love.
Speaker 2: For the rest of the audience to hear about it
Speaker 2: because it's amazing.
Speaker 3: So that passed in two thousand and nine, I think
Speaker 3: in an omnibus Public Lands Bill, which is basically a
Speaker 3: bill where they grab a whole bunch of different bills
Speaker 3: that have gone through the regular process. But you know,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, we it's another conversation. Congress doesn't have
Speaker 3: votes on standalone bills anymore. And it protected I think
Speaker 3: it's one point eight million acres of the Wyoming Range
Speaker 3: habitat to three of the four Native cutthroat in Wyoming
Speaker 3: from oil and gas development forever. And to do something
Speaker 3: like that in Wyoming is analogous to stopping a mine
Speaker 3: in Alaska. Alaska had never in the state's history not
Speaker 3: permitted in mine. And the reason it's also analogous is
Speaker 3: we did polling in the state of Wyoming prior to
Speaker 3: leading the campaign the Wyoming Range Legacy At campaign, and
Speaker 3: I think the numbers were like thirty five percent of
Speaker 3: the people in Wyoming had ever heard of the Wyoming Range. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's who in Wyoming, And so we had a huge
Speaker 3: job to do, and I don't think it was dissimilar
Speaker 3: to what the job we had to do in Bristol Bay.
Speaker 3: Most of us, including this guy, hadn't heard of Bristol
Speaker 3: Bay before I heard about this threat that was posed
Speaker 3: up there, and we had a great director at the
Speaker 3: time named Tim Bristol who encouraged me to get up there.
Speaker 3: He wanted me to see the queen Jack River, which
Speaker 3: is one of the systems, one of the rivers that
Speaker 3: would have been affected. An amazing place, and someone who's
Speaker 3: become a good friend of mine, Brian Kraft, owns the
Speaker 3: Alaska Sportsman's Lodge up there, and he took me out
Speaker 3: and he flew me over the proposed mind sight on
Speaker 3: Tallaric Creek. We sat out on the queen Jack, which,
Speaker 3: for those of you who've never been there, it's this
Speaker 3: wonderful river system full of braids and it's just a
Speaker 3: super cool river. Have this enduring memory I have to
Speaker 3: share of the Quijack. I had to, and so I
Speaker 3: fished there a lot of times since then, since Brian
Speaker 3: convinced me that Trout to libit In need to needed
Speaker 3: to get involved in this campaign. Yeah, but I was
Speaker 3: on the quijack and I had to leave early, and
Speaker 3: so I was actually going to see the CEO of
Speaker 3: Tiffany and Company, who became a benefactor of our efforts
Speaker 3: to protect Bristol Bay. Shout out to Tiffany and Company,
Speaker 3: those of you looking to buy your spouse and get
Speaker 3: the little blue box. They put their money where their
Speaker 3: mouth is for conservation. But I remember we were they.
Speaker 3: You know, you can fish eggs or beads, which you know,
Speaker 3: honestly gets a little boring to me, but you can
Speaker 3: also swing flash flies or big streamers. And so I
Speaker 3: was swinging a flash fly. I didn't look like any
Speaker 3: other minue. It was looks like a piece of drifting
Speaker 3: flesh of a stick. Pretty strange too, It is strange, yeah,
Speaker 3: so anyway, but I remember it. You know, you swinging, swinging,
Speaker 3: and then you let it get straight and you lift
Speaker 3: the line a couple times and then boom it hit
Speaker 3: and it all the fish almost sets himself. And then
Speaker 3: I remember, on a ninety degree angle to my right,
Speaker 3: a fish came out of the water as this one hit.
Speaker 3: And I turned to my guide next to me, and
Speaker 3: I said, did you see a fish jump over there?
Speaker 3: And he says, yeah, that's your fish. And so that
Speaker 3: fish was it was. It was only twenty five inches
Speaker 3: and it's that powerful that it hit at the end
Speaker 3: of my drift down there and it came out of
Speaker 3: the water over there. So they were just incredibly powerful rainbows.
Speaker 3: And but I remember Bryan making the case that you know,
Speaker 3: TU need to be involved in this. And I think
Speaker 3: the other similarity between the Wyoming Range and Bristol Bay
Speaker 3: is we realized that nobody wanted to listen to a
Speaker 3: bunch of fast talking white guys from DC that wasn't
Speaker 3: And so much of Alaska's history of conservation and I'd
Speaker 3: say for better has been imposed by the Lower forty eight,
Speaker 3: whether it's an Ilka, the Alaska Lands, Alaska Native Lands
Speaker 3: Claim Settlement Act, or all the land that President Carter protected,
Speaker 3: the forty nine million acres. I think it was we
Speaker 3: realized support had to come from the communities, and I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the things that's coolest about that
Speaker 3: whole campaign was the amazing support that came from By
Speaker 3: allowing the indigenous people to lead, by allowing the commercial
Speaker 3: fishermen to lead, we created and then the proponent for
Speaker 3: the mind did some boneheaded things we could talk about,
Speaker 3: but we created a climate where it became okay for
Speaker 3: Alaskans to say, wait a minute. You know, we like
Speaker 3: resource development, we really like resource extraction, but we want
Speaker 3: to keep the world's finest salmon fishery intact. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think that conservation that is most local is often
Speaker 3: most durable. And this goes back to a question you
Speaker 3: asked earlier. It's not there's a lot of organizations that
Speaker 3: do on the ground restoration. You and I are members
Speaker 3: of them, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever Wild Turkey Federation, and
Speaker 3: there's a ton of groups that do advocacy BHA, NWF,
Speaker 3: the Wilderness Society, and RDC. There's one group that does both,
Speaker 3: and that's t you. And what we do is we
Speaker 3: try to leverage the goodwill that we create in thousands
Speaker 3: of communities around the country to drive policy gains. And
Speaker 3: there's a reason people don't do both because it's really complicated.
Speaker 3: Like you, when you do advocacy and you litigate things,
Speaker 3: you antagonize people by definition, you make them angry with you,
Speaker 3: and so it's hard, you know, but I think that
Speaker 3: we have managed to find that balance of engaging local
Speaker 3: voices who are familiar with us, And it was a
Speaker 3: little different in Alaska because we we now, by working
Speaker 3: with companies like kin Ross in places like Resurrection Creek,
Speaker 3: we actually have a strong portfolio of on the ground restoration.
Speaker 3: Back then when we started that campaign, we really didn't.
Speaker 3: But I think there's enough credibility and goodwill that's been
Speaker 3: created through all those local projects that when we try
Speaker 3: to engage people as advocates, whether it's for good Samaritan
Speaker 3: legislation or protecting Bristol Bay or keeping public lands in
Speaker 3: public hands, we bring a little bit more street cred
Speaker 3: than other organizations that Jester advocates.
Speaker 1: Where do you see that specific the specific instance, the
Speaker 1: Bristol Bay dilemma, Where do you see that headed? Because
Speaker 1: you know, I just saw the issue the clan water protections.
Speaker 1: They're being protested in court just just recently that came
Speaker 1: up again. Yeah, so I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: feel like it was put to bed, but it's not quite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's like, what's what's yet to come there?
Speaker 3: What's that zombie show that never ends? Walking Dead? Walking Dead? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is a little bit like that. But look, the
Speaker 3: important thing is that it was the Trump administration that
Speaker 3: actually dealt the death blow in twenty twenty by denying
Speaker 3: the Clean Water Act permit that the Pebble Partnership needed.
Speaker 3: And you know, the Trump administration defended their four O
Speaker 3: four CE determination in court. That court hearing that you're
Speaker 3: talking about, that just happened last week. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm hopeful that because we built such a strong
Speaker 3: ground game from the bottom up in Alaska and and
Speaker 3: and the Pebble Limited Partnership has you know, demonstrated that well,
Speaker 3: let me not even speak to the Pebble Limited Partnership.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm confident that we will continue to prevail their
Speaker 3: their these court cases will have to play out like
Speaker 3: they always do. But I mean, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 3: going to say, you know, it's kind of like that
Speaker 3: Monty Python, I'm not dead yet. I mean, it is
Speaker 3: kind of like that. You know, it's like, I'm not
Speaker 3: dead yet, but but it really is. It should be
Speaker 3: dead at this point. It's had, it's got tremendous bipartisan support.
Speaker 3: The economics of the mind don't make sense. The economics
Speaker 3: of the fishery do make sense. But you know, as
Speaker 3: with all these things, you know, Number one, they take decades.
Speaker 3: In some cases, they take decades, and you have to
Speaker 3: stick with them.
Speaker 1: So speaking of sticking with something then, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if there is a celebratory way to spin this one,
Speaker 1: because this one seems like something a little bit the
Speaker 1: opposite of Bristol Bay, in which there was something that
Speaker 1: was protected twenty some years ago, and now it seems
Speaker 1: more and more likely that we are possibly going to
Speaker 1: lose that. This is what we talked about last summer.
Speaker 1: You and I had a great chat last year about
Speaker 1: the Roadless Rule and what that was and why so
Speaker 1: many people were concerned about the possibility of that being rescinded.
Speaker 1: In the year since, we've continued to see more and
Speaker 1: more progress towards that, several different attempts to do that
Speaker 1: in different kinds of ways. All the tea leaves seem
Speaker 1: to suggest that the administration will follow through with that
Speaker 1: it will be rescinded. But tell me what you know now,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve months ish since we last chat about this,
Speaker 1: where do you back to see this end up in
Speaker 1: the next few months. What's going to happen with the
Speaker 1: Royless Rule? What does that mean for salmon and Trump.
Speaker 3: As you know, this one is a bit of a
Speaker 3: passion play for me. I was there at the Forest
Speaker 3: Service when we promulgated that rule twenty five years ago. Now,
Speaker 3: and to answer your last question first, from a trout
Speaker 3: and salmon perspective, the roadless rule is the single most
Speaker 3: important conservation tool we have. When you look at the
Speaker 3: where native and wild trout and salmon are today, there's
Speaker 3: a direct overlay with roadless areas on our national forest system.
Speaker 3: I mean direct, so in places like Idaho, eighty seven
Speaker 3: percent of all the chinook and steel head habitat found
Speaker 3: in roadless areas. In places like Oregon, sixty five percent
Speaker 3: of all the bull trout habitat in various basins are
Speaker 3: found in roadless areas. In places like Idaho, as you
Speaker 3: probably well know, you know you have the longest center
Speaker 3: fire rifle seasons in roadless areas and you have in
Speaker 3: places like Wyoming. It's about you have a ten times
Speaker 3: greater likelihood of succeed in succeeding and taking an elk
Speaker 3: or a mule deer in a roadless area than you
Speaker 3: would in e roaded area. I mean, we've done a
Speaker 3: report on this that's at tu dot org. That's well
Speaker 3: worth taking a look at, because if this were simply
Speaker 3: a question of benefits to hunters and anglers, we wouldn't
Speaker 3: have this conversation. The social and ecological and economic values
Speaker 3: of hunting and angling in the places far outweigh the
Speaker 3: benefits of building roads into high elevation roadless areas with
Speaker 3: low timber values so that US taxpayers can lose money.
Speaker 3: And knowing full well that eighty percent of our fires
Speaker 3: start within half a mile of a road, and eighty
Speaker 3: five percent are caused by people, So why on God's
Speaker 3: green earth would we ever want to put roads in
Speaker 3: these backcountry areas? It makes no sense. The Forest Service
Speaker 3: has a ten and a half billion dollar maintenance backlog
Speaker 3: today the vast majority of those our are a backlog
Speaker 3: on its existing road system. So if logic were to
Speaker 3: prevail here, we wouldn't have this conversation right now. And
Speaker 3: I can tell you that there's absolutely no appetite within
Speaker 3: the Forest Service for doing this. This is it's not
Speaker 3: a substantive issue. It's a religious issue. It's basically there
Speaker 3: are certain people who just are deregulatory, They don't believe
Speaker 3: in regulation. And I mean I remember I sat down
Speaker 3: with some of the Forest Service leadership, and you know,
Speaker 3: they said something to me like, we want to just
Speaker 3: make sure that all of these decisions are made at
Speaker 3: the forest plan level. And I said, we did that
Speaker 3: for twenty five years, and it wasn't working. The Forest
Speaker 3: Service was getting crushed by these stupid proposals to build
Speaker 3: roads and roadless areas everywhere they did that, it compromised
Speaker 3: the social license that they otherwise would have benefited from
Speaker 3: in those communities to do other projects, to do aggressive thinning,
Speaker 3: for example, around communities, to protect communities of people. You know.
Speaker 3: And the irony of this whole situation is this report
Speaker 3: that I mentioned brings this out. Our report, we've actually,
Speaker 3: on a per a basis, we've done more hazardous fuels
Speaker 3: treatments in roadless areas than we have in the general forest.
Speaker 3: It's insane and so anyways, but to answer your question,
Speaker 3: I imagine that, and as you know, Congress entered the
Speaker 3: Fray a few weeks ago and on what would have
Speaker 3: been a tremendously bipartisan fire bill, a bill to help
Speaker 3: promote the kind of hazardous fuels treatments that we're talking
Speaker 3: about here, there was a poison pill amendment that was
Speaker 3: inserted into that bill that would rescind the roadless rule
Speaker 3: and then make any such similar rule in the future illegal.
Speaker 3: So the good news is that the proponent of that
Speaker 3: idea was the same fella who made clear that he
Speaker 3: doesn't believe in the very idea of public lands last year.
Speaker 3: And I mean, you know, in Mark, you're going to
Speaker 3: you're going to now get cynical and be like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, this guy's always looking for the pony and
Speaker 3: the pile. But I mean, the good news is that
Speaker 3: I think more hunters and anglers are activated now on
Speaker 3: this issue because of his doing that than would have
Speaker 3: been otherwise. And my hope is that we can rally
Speaker 3: with the same kind of effect and force that we
Speaker 3: did last spring, not this spring, the spring before, to
Speaker 3: beat back that boneheaded idea of selling mandating the sale
Speaker 3: of two to three million public acres or public land
Speaker 3: acres a year. And I look, my hope is the administration,
Speaker 3: and we've been trying to talk to them about this,
Speaker 3: that they just try to make it a little more
Speaker 3: nuanced and don't make it this whole all or nothing thing.
Speaker 3: And because we worked on to you and I personally
Speaker 3: worked on both the Idaho Rule and the Colorado Rule,
Speaker 3: and I know some in the conservation community, some of
Speaker 3: the environmental community, I don't love those, but we defended
Speaker 3: them in court and they prevailed. And I would argue
Speaker 3: that the Idaho Rule is even more protective than the
Speaker 3: OH One rule that I was associated with, you I was,
Speaker 3: frankly an architect of. And so my hope is that
Speaker 3: at least the administration will give states the opportunity to
Speaker 3: advance their own roadless rules, you know, in a regulatory setting,
Speaker 3: as frankly the Bush administration did, which is how we
Speaker 3: ended up with the Idaho and the Colorado Rule. But
Speaker 3: it is it is, I mean, it's disheartening, you know too,
Speaker 3: see that it's such a I mean, there's so many
Speaker 3: important things that the Forest Service needs to work on,
Speaker 3: and frankly, this isn't one of them.
Speaker 1: If if I were to tell you that ten years
Speaker 1: from now, let's say it's twenty thirty six, if I
Speaker 1: were to tell you then twenty thirty six, things were
Speaker 1: actually better for salmon and troue ten years from now
Speaker 1: than they are now. What would have to happen in
Speaker 1: that ten year span between now and then if you
Speaker 1: can place yourself at that time period looking back, tell
Speaker 1: me the story of what happens between now and then
Speaker 1: that led to us celebrating a better world for salmon
Speaker 1: and trou and for my kids. My boys will be
Speaker 1: sixteen and eighteen, and they're living in a far better
Speaker 1: world for wild trout and salmon, and they're full of
Speaker 1: hope and excitement about what's happening right then.
Speaker 2: They're living in the good old days. What happened to
Speaker 2: us there.
Speaker 3: That's great. Well, your eighteen year old is is leading
Speaker 3: our chapter in Livingston and he's the chapter president. And
Speaker 3: he is the president because he and his friends are
Speaker 3: so fired up about out all of the work that
Speaker 3: they're doing to help protect, reconnect and restore trout and
Speaker 3: salmon populations, and to help make those rivers and streams
Speaker 3: that they depend on more resilient to the effects of
Speaker 3: a changing climate. They've both got on their bucket list
Speaker 3: going to Bristol Bay, but more immediately they want to
Speaker 3: go up to the Klamath because Dad will allow them
Speaker 3: to borrow the car and fish for what is now
Speaker 3: a self sustaining and healthy population of salmon and steelhead
Speaker 3: that are returning up there. And most important, they want
Speaker 3: to be able to use your car to drive up
Speaker 3: to some of the incredible roadless areas like Kelly Creek
Speaker 3: and Idaho or too many to mention in Montana to
Speaker 3: fish for native westloak, cutthroat and other native trout in
Speaker 3: in pristine roadless areas that have remained that way. And
Speaker 3: I will say that to get out of uh, you know,
Speaker 3: looking ahead ten years for just a second. Although it's
Speaker 3: in the same context, we shouldn't think that the sky
Speaker 3: is falling because of something like the proposal to rescind
Speaker 3: the roadless rule, because there is no appetite at the
Speaker 3: Forest supervisor level in that agency to pump a bunch
Speaker 3: of roads into roadless areas zero zip, nilp none. And
Speaker 3: and it may be that by staying attentive at the
Speaker 3: local look, my hope is that you know, I hate
Speaker 3: the pendulum that swings back and forth. And one of
Speaker 3: the things we're not going to talk about today but
Speaker 3: we could is, you know, the Clean Water Act is
Speaker 3: another one of our you know, sort of bedrock environmental
Speaker 3: laws that is under siege right now. And what I
Speaker 3: would love nothing more is to begin a dialogue with
Speaker 3: the development with development, the development community and the agricultural community,
Speaker 3: and sportsmen sportsmen organizations that do advocacy, and there are
Speaker 3: many of us to actually figure out if we could
Speaker 3: come up with a workable solution to clean water rules
Speaker 3: that allow for some measure of protection for intermittent and
Speaker 3: ephemeral streams, but provide the certainty and stability that the
Speaker 3: you know, ag and development industries need on their end.
Speaker 3: But the we may or may not get there. But
Speaker 3: I don't think there's going to be a strong appetite
Speaker 3: to suddenly get into roadless areas that you know, the
Speaker 3: forests are. They're not that agency anymore that they used
Speaker 3: to be. The desire to. I remember I used to
Speaker 3: work with this old time fish biologist. They used to
Speaker 3: call them combat biologists, and he defined old growth in
Speaker 3: a joking way as timber that needed to be moved
Speaker 3: to a home. Get it old growth like an old
Speaker 3: folks home. And I just think that agency is in
Speaker 3: the rear of the mirror. And so what you know,
Speaker 3: I do you know, I imagine another administration will probably
Speaker 3: you know, repromulgate or you know, you know, however, whatever
Speaker 3: the right word is, create a new regulation that protects
Speaker 3: roadless areas. I hope they create carve outs for places
Speaker 3: like Colorado and Idaho still, but I don't think there's
Speaker 3: going to be this grand design of lowering the blades
Speaker 3: and starting to cut roads into these back country areas.
Speaker 3: And if that happens, then I think the Forest Service
Speaker 3: will have truly lost its way. And I don't think
Speaker 3: they have. I don't think there's any desire to do that.
Speaker 2: I'll throw one more softball at you and see where
Speaker 2: you take this. Give me the one thing.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned a couple of things here that are possibly concerning,
Speaker 1: but that you have belief that will work out in
Speaker 1: the end. What's the one thing of Maybe it's one
Speaker 1: of the many examples we've talked about already, maybe it's
Speaker 1: something different, But what's the one thing as you look
Speaker 1: forward that And I guess I'm circling back to my
Speaker 1: very first question in some ways, what's the one thing
Speaker 1: looking forward that gives you that sense of that same
Speaker 1: sense of excitement that you were talking about earlier about
Speaker 1: your trajectory and the years have led you to this moment.
Speaker 1: What's that one thing when you look forward to the
Speaker 1: next ten years, five, ten, fifteen, years. What's that one
Speaker 1: thing that makes you believe that that better future my
Speaker 1: kids will hopefully experience could actually happen.
Speaker 3: I have two answers. One is just my experience with
Speaker 3: our brand of conservation we call it collaborative stewardship, that
Speaker 3: I've seen it yield wins, like we've talked about the
Speaker 3: Klamath in Bristol Bay. There's ten thousand wins and little
Speaker 3: small projects all around the country nobody will ever hear
Speaker 3: about on a show like this that are providing thousands
Speaker 3: of family you know, I paying family wage jobs across
Speaker 3: rural America. So that's one answer, and the other is
Speaker 3: more recent. And you know, I think for years sportsmen
Speaker 3: and women were taken for granted by one political party
Speaker 3: and ignored by the other. And I don't think that's
Speaker 3: the case anymore. And it was something to behold to
Speaker 3: see hunters and anglers rise up the way we did
Speaker 3: in opposition to the sale of public lands. And there's
Speaker 3: still fifty eight million of us. You know, that's a
Speaker 3: big number. And you know, if we can continue, I
Speaker 3: don't even want to say begin, because there's groups like
Speaker 3: BHA and NWF and TU and others that are doing
Speaker 3: a great job of helping to give voice to hunters
Speaker 3: and anglers. But if we continue on that path, I
Speaker 3: think that it could become an incredibly powerful political force,
Speaker 3: even more than it is today. And that gives me
Speaker 3: great hope.
Speaker 2: I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you one other thing I'm right on
Speaker 1: board with is I do see that same future with
Speaker 1: my kids possibly being leadership roles at their local chapter
Speaker 1: of to you.
Speaker 2: So I just want to get out ahead of that
Speaker 2: and just throw it out there.
Speaker 1: If there's any career opportunities for them, let's say, ten
Speaker 1: years from now at TU, just just let them letting,
Speaker 1: you know, take it, keep an eyeut for that Kenyan last.
Speaker 2: Name, and get them at least an interview.
Speaker 3: All right, Yeah, No, So I mean, just so you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to probably regret this. But when I came
Speaker 3: to DC, I came here because I wanted to do
Speaker 3: policy work. So I started in Idaho doing working for
Speaker 3: one of the research stations out there for the Forest Service.
Speaker 3: But I was dating a girl who lived in DC,
Speaker 3: and so I wanted to come back here and I
Speaker 3: wanted to do policy work. And I think I had
Speaker 3: thirty two informational interviews, and mom and dad had bought
Speaker 3: me a suit. When I graduated, I did thirty two
Speaker 3: informational interviews. On the thirty third, I got offered a
Speaker 3: job that was an internship that was free, that meaning
Speaker 3: I didn't get paid, it was free. I could work
Speaker 3: for free at this organization. And I made a vow
Speaker 3: which I have kept to since then, that I will
Speaker 3: talk to any kid that wants to get involved in
Speaker 3: conservation as a career, because I had thirty three people
Speaker 3: who were willing to do that for me when I
Speaker 3: was completely clueless. I didn't even know it until I
Speaker 3: had that trip to Alaska. I didn't even understand the
Speaker 3: life cycle of salmon. I mean, it's almost you know,
Speaker 3: I'm like the perfect example of fake it till you
Speaker 3: make it. The fact that I'm the head of Child Unlimited,
Speaker 3: and you know, in my mid twenties knew nothing about
Speaker 3: Sam Well.
Speaker 1: What you had that helped you is what I think
Speaker 1: we all have as hunters and anglers. And what is,
Speaker 1: to your point, the thing that gives me a lot
Speaker 1: of hope for the future too, which is that hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers are incredible optimists by nature. That is the
Speaker 1: thing that keeps us out there in the field day
Speaker 1: after day because we believe it's going to happen. Today
Speaker 1: is going to be the day, and that's going to
Speaker 1: keep us moving forward in the right direction, I think,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate your role in making that possible.
Speaker 2: To thank you, Chris, No, thank you Martin