May 23, 2025 • 50 mins
In this week's interview, Cal chats with Ruffed Grouse Society President & CEO, Ben Jones, about all things related to upland bird conservation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Col's week in Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Here's Cal,
all right, welcome back to Cal's weekend Review. We got
another awesome, super informed interview podcast dropping right now with
(00:31):
me as always is Jordan Sillers, and our special guest
is Ben Jones of the Rough Grouse Society. Ben is
the relatively new CEO two and a half years about.
Is that correct, Ben?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
No, it's actually been I'll hit seven years in June.
It doesn't mean no, it doesn't feel like that at
all to me. But it'll be seven years in June.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, that's crazy, boy, that's a bumble on my part.
But for those of you who don't know, the Rough
Grouse Society has been around for a long time, I
would say, you know, it's very regionally known out here
(01:19):
in the West. RGS is probably less top of mind
than some other species specific orgs. Not that RGS is
species specific. I would say it's right in there with
the habitat organizations. But Ben, I'll quit talking. Who are you?
(01:43):
What do you do? And what does urgs do?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah? You got it. I'm Ben Jones, I'm CEO. Of
the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society, so RGS.
The Rough Groud Society was formed in nineteen sixty one,
so you're right, there's a sixty plus year tenure there
of OURGS. And it was formed in Monterey, Virginia, which
(02:09):
might not be a place that comes front of mind,
as you said, when people are thinking about rough grouse,
that it was started by some folks that were most
of them were grouse owners, but they were most interested
in learning more about forest conservation. Because if you think
in nineteen sixty one, there was still a lot going on.
I mean, we were starting to hit a pretty good
(02:31):
groove in wildlife science and wildlife as a profession, but
sixty years ago there was still a lot that we
didn't know about a lot of species and forest wildlife.
And they started the Rough Grouse Society, with rough grouse
is sort of their flagship ambassador species. But overall since
its formation, Rough Grouse Society has been about learning more
(02:54):
about forest wildlife conservation and applying the tenets of good
science to forest and wildlife management. And so those are
the things that we come back to day in and
day out. It's as true today as it ever was,
and it's a really appropriate ambassador. Rough grouse are really
dependent on healthy verse forests. They're non migratory, so they're
(03:18):
indicative of what's going on in that place where you
do or in some cases don't find them. And so
over the years we've really advocated strongly for science based
forest and wildlife management and we are a hunter based
conservation group, one of the habitat groups, as you say,
(03:39):
and it's really all about still learning what we can
about these birds. But in twenty twenty five, taking what
we've learned over the past sixty years of really good
wildlife science and applying it on the ground. We've got
sixty years worth of good research on rough grouse. Our
biggest challenge is today twenty five or how to get
(04:01):
that work done and specifically how to manage sustainably manage
our forests on the ground. So that's what we do,
and I'll mention quick In twenty fourteen, the American Woodcock
Society was added on under the same umbrella. Because when
you're hunting grouse and woodcock across most of the rough
grouse range, you're hunting grouse and woodcock. They're almost synonymous.
(04:25):
In a lot of those covers. But the really interesting
thing about woodcock is they also occur in geographies where
there aren't and weren't ever any rough grouse places like
the coastal plain in Piedmont of the Carolinas down into
the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, because they are migratory and
those are places where they winter. So having the American
(04:46):
Woodcock Society under our same umbrella and now we're doing
work and a lot of that wintering ground. But it's
the same idea of managing our forests, applying science to
a good wildlife conservation.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, there's a lot going on in forest management right
now that I want to get into, but you jog
my memory because this weekend I was out hunting turkeys
in a really cool spot. It's a chunk of US
Forest Service ground that's under a trial management program, so
it's it's being manicured in a in a different way.
(05:24):
And one of the spots that I typically set up
and call from in the early morning has a great
little rough grouse kind of drumming spot and I do
all my bird hunting with the yellow lab by my side,
(05:45):
and she took off into this brushy patch next to
this old tree stump, that this rough grouse would jump
up on a drum and said, oh, that that bird
must be just hanging in his normal spot like you
has been the last two years. And much to my surprise,
(06:05):
she comes out and to heel with a rough grouse
in her mouth.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, And I you know, it was shocked because I
didn't hear any commotion, but this thing had been dead
for a day or two and had the telltale decapitation
and a visceration of maybe a howl, an owl or
or Yeah. I don't think there'd be like prairie falcons
(06:34):
in that zone. But yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
We we sometimes the anyway collectively call a danger of
being on a drumming log or a drumming rock wherever
they're at as death from above. It was one of
those gritters.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
That's exactly what it was. Yeah, I was. I was
pretty bummed to see it. But you know, that's.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
A that's a good point to bring up some of
the habitat require it's a rough grouse, so they're displaying
on these drumming logs. It's most often a log, but
it can be a platform or rock, and they're usually
and you mentioned that bird being there every year. You
might go to that spot for a decade and there
(07:15):
would be a bird occupying it. It's just like turkey roosts.
You know, that grouse isn't ten years old, but it's
a really good spot. So the next guy down the
line also finds it and makes use of it too.
But the really key thing and rough grouse habitat overall
is stem density, and that means a lot of small
stems that make really dense cover. And for anybody that's
(07:38):
ever hunted rough grouse us being the predator, they live
in some really tough places to shoot at them because
there will be tens of thousands of young saplings per
acre in those places, and when they're on the drumming log,
that's really what can protect them from predators, and specifically,
in this case, some kind of avian predator that had
(07:58):
an open shot at him him off that log.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So what's a great topic. What do rough grouse need?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
What are the typically I guess a lot of times
we talked about things in three right, food water shelter
being the primary example. But what if you want either
to find rough grouse or if you're doing some property
management and want to make your property a good rough
(08:30):
grouse habitat zone. What what are you looking to do.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The name of the game and rough grouse only occur
where they're for us, and the key is for us diversity.
So all of those threes are found for rough grouse
and really diverse for us. So when I'm talking about
diversity of for us for rough grouse, it means age
diversity the age of that for us. So what we
(08:57):
were just talking about with the cover requirements that they
need for a lot of the year that comes from
younger forest. We had a bumper sticker some years ago
that said little trees need hugs too, So yeah, we
like to make sure that there's a lot of young forest,
middle aged forest, and old forest on the landscape. And
(09:19):
for example rough grouse where they're setting their drumming logs,
they need that really dense stem cover. Interestingly, female rough
grouse many times will open nests and much more open
older stands of timber, and when they're raising their broods
in the summer, they'll use patchy bits of cover. Think
about tree blowdowns that are adjacent to where those nesting
(09:42):
habitats were, So throughout the year in the life cycle
of a rough grouse, they need a lot of diversity
and that comes from age diversity, which comes from actively
managing the forest. Those young forests are created when we
harvest timber sustainably and let that new a new generation
and forests grow up. So age diversity is really the.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Cky and what type of densities are we looking at
for rough grouse? Like, what's what's a healthy distribution? Obviously
you run into like family groups. It seems like family
groups like that that crew that hatch together is running
together in the in the early fall at least, is
(10:26):
that is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Or oh for sure? Yeah, so they'll be hanging out together.
It'll be the family groups or maybe a couple hens
with with their checks from that year. But come around
October first, into the first second week of October, those
broods will start breaking up. So here exactly right early fall,
you can get some of these almost like covees groups
(10:50):
of them, and most of the time that's kinfolk. That's
that's the mom and the chicks from the summer. Come
the first of October, and you may have heard about
this with some have called crazy flight, they start distributing
out from those family groups, and it's like this trigger
gets tripped in their brain, man, and they just got
to go. And they'll start doing straight line flights for miles.
(11:14):
And if you think about it from an ecological standpoint,
they're ready to redistribute their genetic material across the landscape.
So these grouse that have been with their mom and
with their siblings all summer, come the first of October
take off and this is when you'll see them flying
through camp windows, flying into cars. They could end up
(11:36):
anywhere because they're just dispersing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
But so at the same time, across the landscape, that
same area that's giving up some birds is receiving some birds.
So I did rough grouse research some years ago, and
it actually was in the southern apple Etian Mountains here
in the east, and we were putting right tags on
birds late August, September and October. And you might have
(12:04):
a bird on the air that you're tracking every day
for weeks and then all of a sudden it's just gone.
But you start an influx of new birds coming in
if you have good habita. So, as I mentioned earlier,
it's kind of a reshuffling of genetics across the landscape
and that's how grouse have adapted. But to your point
(12:25):
about densities, there was some work done and through the
early eighties set late seventies, early eighties that showed with
optimal distribution of forest ages, which is what grouse need,
that you can have approximately one drumming male per ten
to twenty five acres and then for every male there's
(12:48):
also a female, so you can kind of get to
these density estimates. But that was in northern Minnesota, which
is the core of rough grouse range where the densities
get the highest. You would never have densities today of
rough grouse as high, and say western North Carolina eastern
(13:10):
Tennessee is what you can get in the upper Great
Lakes region and a lot of that. Rough grouse are
really closely associated in their highest density regions, their prime
spots with aspen. It provides ideal cover, it provides ideal food.
The grouse are in the male in the male aspen
(13:31):
trees during the winter, eating these little protein pills that
are the buds from the top of aspen trees. So
aspen is like a superplant for rough grouse, and their
highest densities occur where there's aspen. With that said, they
also occur in places where there aren't aspen, like down
through the Appalachian Range up into New England.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Oh yeah, I like, I don't really associate rough grouse
with aspen at all, just because we have rough gralise
and not a lot of aspen right here.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
They're a pretty like regional, regionally adaptive or adaptable bird.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
They definitely are, and they can they can occur in
a variety of forest types, but their highest density will
be where there's aspen, places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, parts
of parts of New England. But there are sustainable grouse
populations all the way down through the upstate of South
Carolina and to North Georgia in places where there isn't
(14:35):
any aspen at all. Cool, wherever you're at. They need
a lot of forest age diversity to do well.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah. We always hear early successional growth, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, and that can come.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
From just early successional growth.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
No, No, it's the mix of early successional growth with young,
middle and order. It's just like a multiple generations in
a community or a family. You've got to have that
young forest, the middle aged forest in the older forest,
and the better it's mixed together, the better it is
for rough growse. And this work that was done by
(15:17):
Gordon Gullian trying to give habitat managers a sense of
how to do this in northern Minnesota. He actually laid
out a checkerboard pattern, so if you think of a
way to maximize your diversity, he had this checkerboard idea
where recently cut harvested areas would be adjacent to areas
that hadn't been harvested for ten years, which would be
(15:40):
adjacent to areas that hadn't been harvested for twenty to
thirty years. So this checkerboard was a great way to
mix things together.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So currently we are seeing a lot of stuff happening
nationwide with ideas is around forest management and planning for
the future. We just on on Friday, I actually actually
(16:10):
stuck around town on Friday so we could interview Senator
Tim Sheehy, our freshman senator here in Montana, who's got
some you know, his forest background is is in wildland firefighting,
aerial fire fighting, and we have also, you know, recently
(16:33):
interviewed Scott fitz Williams from the White River National Forest
and we've been talking with all the Association of Foresters
and trying to beef up our knowledge on forestry here
in the US, primarily because of the Trump executive orders
(16:59):
that would oh prioritize American timber harvest would be a succinct,
succinct way to put it, and trying to understand you
know what that means for us on the ground, you know,
the really important folks that like to just go hunt.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, well, it's something that's a good time to mention
too that if I have a landowner that comes to
me and wants a management plan on their forest for
rough grouse, and then landowner B wants a forest management
plan for whitetail deer, and the next landowner wants a
forest management plan to optimize bird watching, my forest management
(17:42):
plan for every one of those scenarios is going to
be almost identical. It's going to diversify the age of
the forest on that property using sustainable timber harvesting. At
the end of the day, whether it's white tail songbirds
or rough grouse, we want young forest, middle aged forest,
older forest, all mixed together on the landscape. Were right
(18:03):
in a management plan that's like the canvas. That's where
you get to be artistic how you mix it together.
But that diversity. If I've got a and I have
one here on our homestead where I'm out in south
central Pennsylvania, a property that I want to optimize for
whitetail hunting, which I do here, we need to have
those age glasses. In just two years ago, we did
(18:24):
a timber harvest here to try to get that mix
right on this landscape. So managing our forest timber production
is very important. And I've been in forest wildlife management
for over two decades, and our ability we're in ability
to manage the forest depends on products for markets for
(18:47):
those forest products. I wouldn't have been able to do
my timber sale and habitat work here on my property
or any of the properties that we manage in ourgs
if there wasn't a good market for that would And
so again, good force product markets determine whether we can
or cannot manage at scale. And a lot of the
(19:10):
rest of this conversation is the scale that we need
to manage at, whether it's wildfire mitigation, whether it's wildlife habitat, whatever.
We need to be able to manage a scale, and
we need to have good markets to move that wood
to be able to get the work done. I mean,
this is Gifford Pinchot's vision of conservation, right, protection through
use that are forests are part of the economic and
(19:35):
market driven exercise and for the good of our country.
It's to me in some ways turning back to that
core notion of the word conservation as was defined by
Gifford Pinchot. So with all that said, we like to
see things that are promoting force management and promoting good
(19:55):
force product markets because that enables us to do a
lot of this work. At the same time, we want
to make sure that we're keeping the science in there
and we're keeping the sustainability aspect as well, that we
don't just start doing for production for production's sake. There
are a lot of other things than our management planning
that we need to take into consideration to make sure
(20:16):
we're doing it well.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, And that's one of the big questions, right is
will the market provide for additional harvest, including the harvest
of you know, the other big buzzword that's been around
for a long time, reducing fuels, which isn't necessarily a
(20:42):
marketable product in the dimensional timber world.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right, Yeah, And that's the case, then a lot of
habitat projects depending on the land base you're looking at. All, Right,
we need to do any of three or four actions,
whether it's fuel reduction or habitat diversification or whatever it is.
How do we get this wood out of here? And
so dimensional lumber is one way. But if we also
(21:10):
think about pulp and paper markets, if we think about biofuel,
then you start talking about ways that you can utilize
different sizes of trees and different types of wood so
that you have more markets available to utilize and to
get that work done. And you bring up a good
point with the wildfire mitigation piece. A lot of that
isn't going to make dimensional lumber for framing houses, but
(21:32):
can that as we often call it, lower grade, smaller
would be used for other things like wood insulation, jet fuel.
And this is the idea of expanding markets so we
can use that wood and remove it to get good
work done.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And then you know, the other big component here is
are we talking about changing our wildfire management ideas. We've
gone through a couple of different changes, right like in
the in the nineteen thirties, we were looking at more
(22:06):
wildfire suppression with the theory being the more fire we
can knock down, the more of that dimensional marketable timber
we can take off, we won't lose it to fire.
And then all the different fire labs that we have
(22:26):
across the country, folks who are studying the effects of
fire on the landscape, I've only been to one, like
tall timbers down there and in Georgia.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, man, might as well goes right to the top.
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Oh so cool, so so cool. But you know, just
just using like very plane to see historical fire on
the landscape and they are able to grid off a
big enough area do controlled burns on different timelines, so
(23:07):
you can see what the landscape looks like when it's
burned every year, every other year, every five years, every
fifteen years. You know, it's a luxury. Not a lot
of places have to be able to do something like that.
But you know, for a while we were talking about
like applying that type of knowledge on you know, larger
(23:32):
western landscapes where we haven't seen that level of controlled
burning prescribe fire for quite a while for a number
of factors, right like social tolerance, just just waiting for
the right conditions to come together to do larger prescribe burns,
(23:55):
all sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, a lot of things have to align. I love
that you brought up prescribe burning or controlled burning, because
it's not just the fire mitigation tool. If we look
at managing mixed hardwood forests, that disturbance of fire. That's
how we create different age glasses and diverse structure on
(24:19):
a landscape is through disturbance. And if we can do
that with fire, that's absolutely wonderful. And we know from
good science over the years that to be able to
maintain oak forests, which are incredibly important for all fourst wildlife,
we've got to have fire at some or several points
within the life of that forest stand to be able
(24:39):
to maintain oak. So as we're talking about doing timber harvest,
fire goes hand in hand with that because before we
do a final harvest and an oak stand, we're probably
going to have to do controlled burning at least once,
maybe twice to make sure that we've got good oak
seedlings to be able to do that next harvest. So
beyond just fire mitigation and controlling fuels, as the fire
(25:02):
folks like to say, it's also a really important ecological
tool to let us create habitat diversity and healthy for
us and species like oak across landscapes. So skypfire is
really important.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Really interesting article just came out over the weekend from
the Mountain Journal that you know, this isn't set in
stone yet, nothing is been put into action, but there's
a fear right now that we could be going away
(25:40):
from prescribed fire without ever having to been able to
like really implement it, especially out here on the western landscapes,
right and going back to the Forest Service ten am policy,
which basically means once you spotify, it's got to be
(26:02):
contained by ten am the next day, which you know
some places sometimes might be attainable. But you know, the
reality is is if fire really picks up steam, especially
when we use the big C word catastrophic, it's a
change in weather conditions and fuel types that are going
(26:24):
to put that thing out, not the amount of man
power or resources that us humans throw at that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, it's a it's a throwback to the suppression at
all costs. You see a fire, put that put that
thing out, fire bad. It kind of takes the whole
nuanced part of this discussion and being able to harness
fire as a management tool out of it. When you're
when you're back to that ten AM strategy, it's there's
a fire, put that thing out.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
And you know, there's obviously there's a lot of benefits
that you can get out of the mechanic goal way
to manage our forests, but there's a lot of benefits
that you can get out of the fireway to manage
our forests too. And it's not like they're mutually exclusive.
(27:14):
You can do both. But you know, like the example
that I think about, right is I have some great
old dark timber spots where I pick big, fist sized
moral mushrooms on old skinner trails where that forest disturbance
(27:34):
has been provided by mechanical means. Yeah, and you can
get get some great mushroom picking and they're big, media
awesome mushrooms. Yeah, But there's no way it's going to
amount to more mushroom picking than when that whole thing burns. Yeah.
(27:54):
When there's fire on the landscape, it blooms with mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah. And that's the challenge doing all of this at
landscape scale, because you can have small, myopic projects and
some feel good stuff, but the scale of our forest
health challenges right now is huge. And if we look
at grouse and woodcock, start with rough grouse, so they're
listed as a species of greatest conservation need and at
(28:21):
this point nineteen state Wildlife Action plans. So this is
North America's most widely distributed game bird, rough grouse, and
they're listed as a species of concern in nineteen state
Wildlife Action Plans. That is because of lack of diversity,
lack of this kind of management disturbance in our forests.
(28:42):
So the scale that we've got to start acting right
now to reverse what is fifty seventy percent declines and
the species, we've got to work at a really large
scale and figure out how to get this done. And
that's where we can embrace some of these market market supported,
market driven activities to be able to operate at scale,
(29:03):
because again, whether we can or can't do it, I
have found is fully determined by our the markets for
those products. Because I've seen some of these projects and
seen the price tags. You know you're paying one thousand,
fifteen hundred three thousand dollars per acre just to remove
this material with no market for it. You can't get
(29:24):
a whole lot of acres done with the price tag
like that versus even if somebody is paying you a
dollar a ton and you can get that material removed
and it can be utilized, but it's not costing you
three thousand dollars per acre. That's where the solutions are
to be able to operate at scale, and we absolutely
need to operate at scale. There's a new document that
(29:45):
just came out by all the best and brightest of
the upland bird biologists east of the Mississippi River, the
Rough Grouse Working Group that says that very thing, that
this is a species that locally will be extirpated. So
our most widelyttributed game bird, the King of game Bird
says it has been called is under threat of being
(30:06):
locally extinct in some areas if we don't act at scale.
So we definitely have to think big. And so as
I see secretari of memos coming out of USDA and
so forth thinking at a bigger scale, then we're going
to see if we can use that to get some
work done.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Oh yeah, I mean, you got to find the opportunities
with every administration, right and you know, I think my
concerns in whether we're not the free market is actually
going to respond to this, right, Are we going to see,
(30:49):
you know, some level of pulp mills near the source
pop up? Are we going to see, you know, those
necessary facts in the market step up to allow this
to happen.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, that's the hard part, isn't it. I heard a
figure recently that actually shocked me, and I pay attention
to this kind of stuff. It's like a couple hundred
million dollars to build a new processing facility like that.
So you're right, you've got to have some assurances. You've
got to know how much wood is there with anything.
(31:28):
When you're trying to spur on to start up a
market where there isn't one, investors need to have some
some sort of assurances that you're going to be able
to recover that investment. And also to say, this thing
is also about our local communities too. I live in
a rural community where I'm at right now, many of
our members do, and when we're thinking about jobs in
(31:51):
those local communities, economic development is very much needed where
I live. But our people here, me included, don't want
to lose the rural nature of where we live. So
we don't want that economic development to come from big
box stores. So are there scenarios. Meanwhile, we've got lots
of public lands, lots of available for us, for us
(32:14):
habitat work that needs to be done, would on the
landscape that could be utilized. Do those things come together
to help support rural economies with green jobs? And that
to me is a really exciting part of it. Because
I'm going to DC in a couple weeks. Not many
people there are going to care about rough grouse. But
we can talk about jobs, we can talk about sustainability,
(32:36):
we can talk about green restoration economies, whatever it is,
and those are the things that we can get policy
makers and investors to really care about because you know,
unless you're an upland bird hunter, rough grouse probably aren't
going to really peak your interest. We've got to talk
about the biggest picture.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
The bigger picture, Oh yeah, like you kind of turn
your bird for bird into the side benefit of of
what's what could happen? Right? And we need enough stability
out there in the marketplace that because so much of
(33:13):
this is done mechanically. Now it's not putting a bunch
of people to work, you know, clear and undergrowth. But
you know, like that family if they're going to invest
in in a new you know, skidter or whatever. You know,
it's a half million dollar piece of equipment before you
(33:36):
get it out the door.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Right, So yeah, no doubt. And if there's one thing
that I would want listeners to take from this part
of the conversation is to just go back and read
about what Gifford Pinchot and Teddy roseveout we're doing. When
Pinchow coined the phrase, it was his word conservation and
(33:58):
what it means, and it was trying to these kinds
of things out. If you think about it, around a
couple decades give or take of nineteen hundred, I mean,
there were timber barns, there were no protected lands, there
was no forest science, it was none of this stuff,
and they were trying to figure out ways to protect
our forests. And the key with Pinchot and Roosevelt was
(34:18):
this idea of conservation is protection through use. We've got
to show the utility and the use of these forests
to be able to protect them. So every time this
is kind of pet peeve for me, a maybe challenge
listeners to think about it and look, when you see
a headline that says conservation groups sue Forest Service over
(34:40):
logging project. Conservation is protection through use? Are those really
conservation groups like the Rough Grouse Society that are suing
the Forest Service over logging project. They're not. They're preservationist groups.
So I get a little hot under the callar when
our word conservation is hijacked for something that it was
(35:04):
never intended these for us per conservation by definition will
be protected through us.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Oh yeah, I mean that's a great point, right, Like
to a lot of us, conservation means work and the
co opting of that term to mean hands off it
is pretty frustrating.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Right. Sorry, man, that's my rant. That's my last rant
for the podcast. But I think it's a word for
us to rant about.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I mean, it's it is, it is for sure. Yeah.
You know what we were talking over the weekend and
somebody brought up the the Big Burn. Sure you've read
that one, but you know there's a couple of it
outlines that that point in our history really well. Right, Like,
(35:57):
so Theodore Rose, Gifford Pinchot got together to protect forest
land through executive order and it was you know, this
this idea of government regulation was there to try to
balance all these public interests and make that timber harvest
(36:22):
sustainable for resource management was was the idea.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Right, Yeah? Yeah, and from that was born in a
profession of forest right too at the same time.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, I'll be honest, I have no
idea that the rough grouse, which you know, certain seasons
when things really come together well in western Montana, you
could provide like a chicken dinner to the entire state
(36:56):
off a rough grouse. Sometimes, no idea that it's a
species of concern in nineteen States.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, I think it's hunter conservationists. It's really important to
highlight that we recently did a survey of our membership.
Are you a hunter, are you a conservationist? Or are
you both? And the vast majority of our members identify
as hunter conservationists. I think it's really important to know,
and you know that there's a lot out there about
(37:26):
stage grouse and especially the prairie grouse and their status.
It's really important for all of us to know, even
if you don't hunt rough grouse, that the most widely
distributed game bird in North America is becoming a pretty
highly threatened species. And so whether you hunt them or not,
as hunter conservationists, I think this is something that everyone
(37:47):
should know. And it's something that we can fix too
by managing our forests using good science, using market supportive methods.
It can also support rural economies. This is one of
those things to me that is if we can't solve
this issue, then which ones can we solve? Because there
are too many things pointing in the right direction of
(38:08):
being able to fix this and we've just got to
manage our for us.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, I mean, I cannot agree more. You know, driving
I was in western Montana this weekend out looking for turkeys,
and it's it's crazy to me how fast people build
homes once a fire rolls through in in spots that
(38:34):
will once again be a really bad spot to have.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
A home, right right. This isn't a once and done
kind of thing with fire.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, and it really complicates that idea of management. And
and you know, that preservationist mindset that we all have
when it comes to our life is in our property breeds,
(39:04):
a preservation mindset around those areas as well. It's like
we don't want the smoke, we don't want fire on
that particular landscape, yeah, but at the same time, we
do want the rest of that forage forest managed well.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, yeah, Well I've from a hunter's perspective. I've heard
you say it before, how much you know you're just
you're liking your chops when you're thinking about going into
a recently burned area, just because of the difference in
hunting opportunity there. And you mentioned that you're head to
West Virginia shortly to do some hunting, certainly in places
(39:44):
in the eastern deciduous forest. The first thing I'm looking for,
and I'm pulling up on X. I mean, at this point,
what an amazing tool to be able to find areas
that are being actively managed. So one of our most
important layers everywhere that I go hunting as the states
that have the ability to pull up that forest management
(40:05):
layer and where's active management occurring. If I'm going on
a trip hunting white tails somewhere, that's the first thing
I'm looking for. The last place I'll go as a
chunk of public ground that hasn't been managed and it
all has one hundred and twenty five year old hardwood
stands with no diversity, that's the last place I'm going.
I'm going to find the place that has some younger cuts,
(40:28):
some access places like you were talking about from old
retired skit trails or hall roads. That's where I'm going
to go looking for white tails or black bears or
certainly rough drowse.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
We did a really phenomenal trip into the Boundary Waters
real short couple of years ago in October, and we
you know, did the whole Boundary Waters thing. We packed
up canoes and jumped between a bunch of different lakes
in this little chain and crawled around through just like
(41:01):
the thickest, nastiest blowdown to scratch out I think two
ruffed grouse. And then for a day when we got out,
we looked at where they were doing cuts on the
(41:28):
edge of the Boundary Waters and we shot a lot
of rough grouse off you know, off the road right
so or you know, hunting off the road, yeah, because
you know, it's like we were in a spot where,
you know, quite honestly, like I would have had somebody,
(41:49):
I would have had a canoe full of fuz road
flares and somebody paddling me and we would have just
cruised the shoreline and it would have been thrown those
suckers out about everything the art because that's what it needed.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, that disturbance is necessary. And you get these in
the boundary waters. It's interesting when you're talking about the
put every fire out places like the boundary waters that
are big enough, that are areas like that where you
can let some natural fires burn where the boundary water
is in that case where you have no choice but
to let some of those fires burn because it's so
(42:25):
difficult to get in there. Yeah, then now you can
have that natural driven diversity occurring in those places. But
this the preservationist idea that you can just let nature
take its course and everything will be fine. The science
is telling us just doesn't work out because, as I
often say, the last I checked, this is definitely a
(42:46):
human dominated planet, and so we don't have herds of
bison roaming and fires that can burn across three states.
I mean, all these natural processes, you know, one unquote
let nature take its course, It's just it's not even reality.
So to have that diversity and to be able to
(43:09):
maintain the species. If I'm a bird watcher and I'm
looking to check off the most species possible on a
trip on my bucket list, I'm going to go to
places that have the most diversity of forests, not just
a single older age class of forests.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, everything changes except for us.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Man, I'm not changing a bit. I'm getting younger. It's
all good. Yeah, man, you're making me think how long
i've been at OURGS now earlier on, I'm like, oh man,
it has been seven years. How about that? But it's been.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
A well yeah, you're kind of like a farmer, right,
you get you know, new new seasons bring on new challenges.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
That's absolutely true. And there are so many parts of
this year with all the executive orders and trying to
get a handle on where things are going, and of
course a lot of uncertainty and rapid changes. It was
really reminiscent of twenty twenty another time when we had
a lot of changes going on, and we took that
opportunity in twenty twenty a are just to change our
(44:16):
business model because when you have disruption, there's really no
better time if you need to disrupt things to just
do it all at once. So we found opportunities out
of that, and we're engaged with the Forest Service more
than we've ever been. And now if we're just thinking
of the Forest Service and those tens of millions of acres,
(44:37):
there can be opportunity with all that's going on right
now to help our partners at the Forest Service in
the midst of staff reductions and so forth. I listened
to the interview that you did with Terry Baker talking
about NGOs and other partners being able to actively engage
in management on national forests, and that's the business model
we changed in twenty twenty. So right now we've got
(45:00):
dozens of projects where we're helping the Forest Service get
good work done, whether it's prescribed fire, timber harvest both.
At the same time, we can help the Forest Service
build capacity. So now coming into twenty twenty five, it's
really apparent with the reduction in force and the reorganization
of the Forest Service that our ability to help them
(45:22):
get good work done both for habitat management and access.
Our role is going to be more important than ever
in helping our Forest Service partners, which in turn is
a national forests are a really important land based for
so many of us that love to hunt. So we
want to be an active part of the solution and
not part of the problem here. So we're figuring out
(45:46):
ways to scale up and our business not model is
scalable and ways that we can increase our services to
the for service, and.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
That service is going to be what bend like helping
out with that management plan or on the actual subcontractor
or contractor side of things.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, when you're working with the Forest Service, it's all above,
all the above. So we work on stakeholder committees that
are part of the public input process if you're thinking
about that level of management planning. And then we also
can get the next step into the weeds with the
Forest Service on helping them lay out actual management plans
(46:29):
and doing it on large scales like developing twenty thirty
fifty thousand acre management plans. And then through stewardship authority,
we can actually help the Forest Service layout and administer
timber harvest within those plans as well. And the really
neat thing about shared stewardship and stewardship authority is that
(46:53):
when we help the Forest Service layout and conduct that
timber sale, any commercial value from the timber sold stays
right there on that district, that ranger district, and then
we can reinvest those funds from the commercial timber sale
into additional habitat work. That could be trail maintenance, that
(47:14):
could be new hunter walking trails, it could be some
of these projects like we were talking about earlier, that
don't have a market, that don't pay for themselves, we
can take as a stewardship partner the commercial value of
that timber and get all this value add work done.
So that's the model that we were really looking at
how to scale up as the Ford Service is going
(47:36):
to need more help in the coming years.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Well, Ben, what's the best way to figure out what
the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society you're
up to? And where can folks find you?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, check us out on social media? Of course Instagram
would keep things pretty active there. Our website, We've got
a good archive and current articles coming out every few
days on the blog spot on our website, So check
us out there. And as you're there, popping up all
over the place as it should be, are these little
(48:12):
join icons, So click on one of those and join,
and then you'll get our magazine four times a year.
You can also subscribe to our monthly we call it
the bell Weather Bulletin. We described the rough Grouse as
a bell Weather afore South, So the bell Weather Bulletin
comes out every month and you can subscribe to that.
Have it delivered great to your email. But come join us.
(48:35):
We need members. We need a strong membership base to
do all this work. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
And we really didn't even get into talking about woodcock,
but I'll tell you it's one of the coolest birds
out there for so many reasons. You know, it's relative,
I would say firmly any unknown class here in western Montana.
But we'll have to get you back on to to
talk about that super enigmatic little dude here in the future.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Man that's worthy of its own episode. And we talked
about sixty years worth awhile life research and knowing a
lot of things about white tails and rough growse. There
are things that we're only just now learning about woodcock
with our ability to put GPS transmitters on them while
they migrate. So yeah, enigmatic, quirky, strange little bird. So
let's get together sometime in the future and talk about them.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That sounds great, folks. I know you're gonna have a
lot of questions for Ben and the Rough Grouse Society
American Woodcock Society. Please go follow up, give them a subscribe.
You can certainly sign up for their email newsletters communications
and just know what they're up to, and then if
you're liking what you're seeing, if it clicks with you,
(49:51):
become a member. Super easy to do, and it's really
important to help them carry on their work. If you
have questions, you can always send them to A s
K C. A L. That's Ascal at the meeteater dot
com and we can get Ben back on here to
answer him, or we can connect with him and address
him on the Cow's We Can Review podcast. That's all
(50:15):
we got for you this week. Thank you so much
for listening, and Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
It was an absolute pleasure. I would really look forward
to the follow up Q and A. That would be
fun
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This
is Col's week in Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Here's Cal,
all right, welcome back to Cal's weekend Review. We got
another awesome, super informed interview podcast dropping right now with
(00:31):
me as always is Jordan Sillers, and our special guest
is Ben Jones of the Rough Grouse Society. Ben is
the relatively new CEO two and a half years about.
Is that correct, Ben?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
No, it's actually been I'll hit seven years in June.
It doesn't mean no, it doesn't feel like that at
all to me. But it'll be seven years in June.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, that's crazy, boy, that's a bumble on my part.
But for those of you who don't know, the Rough
Grouse Society has been around for a long time, I
would say, you know, it's very regionally known out here
(01:19):
in the West. RGS is probably less top of mind
than some other species specific orgs. Not that RGS is
species specific. I would say it's right in there with
the habitat organizations. But Ben, I'll quit talking. Who are you?
(01:43):
What do you do? And what does urgs do?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah? You got it. I'm Ben Jones, I'm CEO. Of
the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society, so RGS.
The Rough Groud Society was formed in nineteen sixty one,
so you're right, there's a sixty plus year tenure there
of OURGS. And it was formed in Monterey, Virginia, which
(02:09):
might not be a place that comes front of mind,
as you said, when people are thinking about rough grouse,
that it was started by some folks that were most
of them were grouse owners, but they were most interested
in learning more about forest conservation. Because if you think
in nineteen sixty one, there was still a lot going on.
I mean, we were starting to hit a pretty good
(02:31):
groove in wildlife science and wildlife as a profession, but
sixty years ago there was still a lot that we
didn't know about a lot of species and forest wildlife.
And they started the Rough Grouse Society, with rough grouse
is sort of their flagship ambassador species. But overall since
its formation, Rough Grouse Society has been about learning more
(02:54):
about forest wildlife conservation and applying the tenets of good
science to forest and wildlife management. And so those are
the things that we come back to day in and
day out. It's as true today as it ever was,
and it's a really appropriate ambassador. Rough grouse are really
dependent on healthy verse forests. They're non migratory, so they're
(03:18):
indicative of what's going on in that place where you
do or in some cases don't find them. And so
over the years we've really advocated strongly for science based
forest and wildlife management and we are a hunter based
conservation group, one of the habitat groups, as you say,
(03:39):
and it's really all about still learning what we can
about these birds. But in twenty twenty five, taking what
we've learned over the past sixty years of really good
wildlife science and applying it on the ground. We've got
sixty years worth of good research on rough grouse. Our
biggest challenge is today twenty five or how to get
(04:01):
that work done and specifically how to manage sustainably manage
our forests on the ground. So that's what we do,
and I'll mention quick In twenty fourteen, the American Woodcock
Society was added on under the same umbrella. Because when
you're hunting grouse and woodcock across most of the rough
grouse range, you're hunting grouse and woodcock. They're almost synonymous.
(04:25):
In a lot of those covers. But the really interesting
thing about woodcock is they also occur in geographies where
there aren't and weren't ever any rough grouse places like
the coastal plain in Piedmont of the Carolinas down into
the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, because they are migratory and
those are places where they winter. So having the American
(04:46):
Woodcock Society under our same umbrella and now we're doing
work and a lot of that wintering ground. But it's
the same idea of managing our forests, applying science to
a good wildlife conservation.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, there's a lot going on in forest management right
now that I want to get into, but you jog
my memory because this weekend I was out hunting turkeys
in a really cool spot. It's a chunk of US
Forest Service ground that's under a trial management program, so
it's it's being manicured in a in a different way.
(05:24):
And one of the spots that I typically set up
and call from in the early morning has a great
little rough grouse kind of drumming spot and I do
all my bird hunting with the yellow lab by my side,
(05:45):
and she took off into this brushy patch next to
this old tree stump, that this rough grouse would jump
up on a drum and said, oh, that that bird
must be just hanging in his normal spot like you
has been the last two years. And much to my surprise,
(06:05):
she comes out and to heel with a rough grouse
in her mouth.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, And I you know, it was shocked because I
didn't hear any commotion, but this thing had been dead
for a day or two and had the telltale decapitation
and a visceration of maybe a howl, an owl or
or Yeah. I don't think there'd be like prairie falcons
(06:34):
in that zone. But yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
We we sometimes the anyway collectively call a danger of
being on a drumming log or a drumming rock wherever
they're at as death from above. It was one of
those gritters.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
That's exactly what it was. Yeah, I was. I was
pretty bummed to see it. But you know, that's.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
A that's a good point to bring up some of
the habitat require it's a rough grouse, so they're displaying
on these drumming logs. It's most often a log, but
it can be a platform or rock, and they're usually
and you mentioned that bird being there every year. You
might go to that spot for a decade and there
(07:15):
would be a bird occupying it. It's just like turkey roosts.
You know, that grouse isn't ten years old, but it's
a really good spot. So the next guy down the
line also finds it and makes use of it too.
But the really key thing and rough grouse habitat overall
is stem density, and that means a lot of small
stems that make really dense cover. And for anybody that's
(07:38):
ever hunted rough grouse us being the predator, they live
in some really tough places to shoot at them because
there will be tens of thousands of young saplings per
acre in those places, and when they're on the drumming log,
that's really what can protect them from predators, and specifically,
in this case, some kind of avian predator that had
(07:58):
an open shot at him him off that log.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
So what's a great topic. What do rough grouse need?
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Like?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
What are the typically I guess a lot of times
we talked about things in three right, food water shelter
being the primary example. But what if you want either
to find rough grouse or if you're doing some property
management and want to make your property a good rough
(08:30):
grouse habitat zone. What what are you looking to do.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The name of the game and rough grouse only occur
where they're for us, and the key is for us diversity.
So all of those threes are found for rough grouse
and really diverse for us. So when I'm talking about
diversity of for us for rough grouse, it means age
diversity the age of that for us. So what we
(08:57):
were just talking about with the cover requirements that they
need for a lot of the year that comes from
younger forest. We had a bumper sticker some years ago
that said little trees need hugs too, So yeah, we
like to make sure that there's a lot of young forest,
middle aged forest, and old forest on the landscape. And
(09:19):
for example rough grouse where they're setting their drumming logs,
they need that really dense stem cover. Interestingly, female rough
grouse many times will open nests and much more open
older stands of timber, and when they're raising their broods
in the summer, they'll use patchy bits of cover. Think
about tree blowdowns that are adjacent to where those nesting
(09:42):
habitats were, So throughout the year in the life cycle
of a rough grouse, they need a lot of diversity
and that comes from age diversity, which comes from actively
managing the forest. Those young forests are created when we
harvest timber sustainably and let that new a new generation
and forests grow up. So age diversity is really the.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Cky and what type of densities are we looking at
for rough grouse? Like, what's what's a healthy distribution? Obviously
you run into like family groups. It seems like family
groups like that that crew that hatch together is running
together in the in the early fall at least, is
(10:26):
that is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Or oh for sure? Yeah, so they'll be hanging out together.
It'll be the family groups or maybe a couple hens
with with their checks from that year. But come around
October first, into the first second week of October, those
broods will start breaking up. So here exactly right early fall,
you can get some of these almost like covees groups
(10:50):
of them, and most of the time that's kinfolk. That's
that's the mom and the chicks from the summer. Come
the first of October, and you may have heard about
this with some have called crazy flight, they start distributing
out from those family groups, and it's like this trigger
gets tripped in their brain, man, and they just got
to go. And they'll start doing straight line flights for miles.
(11:14):
And if you think about it from an ecological standpoint,
they're ready to redistribute their genetic material across the landscape.
So these grouse that have been with their mom and
with their siblings all summer, come the first of October
take off and this is when you'll see them flying
through camp windows, flying into cars. They could end up
(11:36):
anywhere because they're just dispersing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
But so at the same time, across the landscape, that
same area that's giving up some birds is receiving some birds.
So I did rough grouse research some years ago, and
it actually was in the southern apple Etian Mountains here
in the east, and we were putting right tags on
birds late August, September and October. And you might have
(12:04):
a bird on the air that you're tracking every day
for weeks and then all of a sudden it's just gone.
But you start an influx of new birds coming in
if you have good habita. So, as I mentioned earlier,
it's kind of a reshuffling of genetics across the landscape
and that's how grouse have adapted. But to your point
(12:25):
about densities, there was some work done and through the
early eighties set late seventies, early eighties that showed with
optimal distribution of forest ages, which is what grouse need,
that you can have approximately one drumming male per ten
to twenty five acres and then for every male there's
(12:48):
also a female, so you can kind of get to
these density estimates. But that was in northern Minnesota, which
is the core of rough grouse range where the densities
get the highest. You would never have densities today of
rough grouse as high, and say western North Carolina eastern
(13:10):
Tennessee is what you can get in the upper Great
Lakes region and a lot of that. Rough grouse are
really closely associated in their highest density regions, their prime
spots with aspen. It provides ideal cover, it provides ideal food.
The grouse are in the male in the male aspen
(13:31):
trees during the winter, eating these little protein pills that
are the buds from the top of aspen trees. So
aspen is like a superplant for rough grouse, and their
highest densities occur where there's aspen. With that said, they
also occur in places where there aren't aspen, like down
through the Appalachian Range up into New England.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Oh yeah, I like, I don't really associate rough grouse
with aspen at all, just because we have rough gralise
and not a lot of aspen right here.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
They're a pretty like regional, regionally adaptive or adaptable bird.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
They definitely are, and they can they can occur in
a variety of forest types, but their highest density will
be where there's aspen, places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, parts
of parts of New England. But there are sustainable grouse
populations all the way down through the upstate of South
Carolina and to North Georgia in places where there isn't
(14:35):
any aspen at all. Cool, wherever you're at. They need
a lot of forest age diversity to do well.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah. We always hear early successional growth, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, and that can come.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
From just early successional growth.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
No, No, it's the mix of early successional growth with young,
middle and order. It's just like a multiple generations in
a community or a family. You've got to have that
young forest, the middle aged forest in the older forest,
and the better it's mixed together, the better it is
for rough growse. And this work that was done by
(15:17):
Gordon Gullian trying to give habitat managers a sense of
how to do this in northern Minnesota. He actually laid
out a checkerboard pattern, so if you think of a
way to maximize your diversity, he had this checkerboard idea
where recently cut harvested areas would be adjacent to areas
that hadn't been harvested for ten years, which would be
(15:40):
adjacent to areas that hadn't been harvested for twenty to
thirty years. So this checkerboard was a great way to
mix things together.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So currently we are seeing a lot of stuff happening
nationwide with ideas is around forest management and planning for
the future. We just on on Friday, I actually actually
(16:10):
stuck around town on Friday so we could interview Senator
Tim Sheehy, our freshman senator here in Montana, who's got
some you know, his forest background is is in wildland firefighting,
aerial fire fighting, and we have also, you know, recently
(16:33):
interviewed Scott fitz Williams from the White River National Forest
and we've been talking with all the Association of Foresters
and trying to beef up our knowledge on forestry here
in the US, primarily because of the Trump executive orders
(16:59):
that would oh prioritize American timber harvest would be a succinct,
succinct way to put it, and trying to understand you
know what that means for us on the ground, you know,
the really important folks that like to just go hunt.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, well, it's something that's a good time to mention
too that if I have a landowner that comes to
me and wants a management plan on their forest for
rough grouse, and then landowner B wants a forest management
plan for whitetail deer, and the next landowner wants a
forest management plan to optimize bird watching, my forest management
(17:42):
plan for every one of those scenarios is going to
be almost identical. It's going to diversify the age of
the forest on that property using sustainable timber harvesting. At
the end of the day, whether it's white tail songbirds
or rough grouse, we want young forest, middle aged forest,
older forest, all mixed together on the landscape. Were right
(18:03):
in a management plan that's like the canvas. That's where
you get to be artistic how you mix it together.
But that diversity. If I've got a and I have
one here on our homestead where I'm out in south
central Pennsylvania, a property that I want to optimize for
whitetail hunting, which I do here, we need to have
those age glasses. In just two years ago, we did
(18:24):
a timber harvest here to try to get that mix
right on this landscape. So managing our forest timber production
is very important. And I've been in forest wildlife management
for over two decades, and our ability we're in ability
to manage the forest depends on products for markets for
(18:47):
those forest products. I wouldn't have been able to do
my timber sale and habitat work here on my property
or any of the properties that we manage in ourgs
if there wasn't a good market for that would And
so again, good force product markets determine whether we can
or cannot manage at scale. And a lot of the
(19:10):
rest of this conversation is the scale that we need
to manage at, whether it's wildfire mitigation, whether it's wildlife habitat, whatever.
We need to be able to manage a scale, and
we need to have good markets to move that wood
to be able to get the work done. I mean,
this is Gifford Pinchot's vision of conservation, right, protection through
use that are forests are part of the economic and
(19:35):
market driven exercise and for the good of our country.
It's to me in some ways turning back to that
core notion of the word conservation as was defined by
Gifford Pinchot. So with all that said, we like to
see things that are promoting force management and promoting good
(19:55):
force product markets because that enables us to do a
lot of this work. At the same time, we want
to make sure that we're keeping the science in there
and we're keeping the sustainability aspect as well, that we
don't just start doing for production for production's sake. There
are a lot of other things than our management planning
that we need to take into consideration to make sure
(20:16):
we're doing it well.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, And that's one of the big questions, right is
will the market provide for additional harvest, including the harvest
of you know, the other big buzzword that's been around
for a long time, reducing fuels, which isn't necessarily a
(20:42):
marketable product in the dimensional timber world.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Right, Yeah, And that's the case, then a lot of
habitat projects depending on the land base you're looking at. All, Right,
we need to do any of three or four actions,
whether it's fuel reduction or habitat diversification or whatever it is.
How do we get this wood out of here? And
so dimensional lumber is one way. But if we also
(21:10):
think about pulp and paper markets, if we think about biofuel,
then you start talking about ways that you can utilize
different sizes of trees and different types of wood so
that you have more markets available to utilize and to
get that work done. And you bring up a good
point with the wildfire mitigation piece. A lot of that
isn't going to make dimensional lumber for framing houses, but
(21:32):
can that as we often call it, lower grade, smaller
would be used for other things like wood insulation, jet fuel.
And this is the idea of expanding markets so we
can use that wood and remove it to get good
work done.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And then you know, the other big component here is
are we talking about changing our wildfire management ideas. We've
gone through a couple of different changes, right like in
the in the nineteen thirties, we were looking at more
(22:06):
wildfire suppression with the theory being the more fire we
can knock down, the more of that dimensional marketable timber
we can take off, we won't lose it to fire.
And then all the different fire labs that we have
(22:26):
across the country, folks who are studying the effects of
fire on the landscape, I've only been to one, like
tall timbers down there and in Georgia.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, man, might as well goes right to the top.
That's a good one.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Oh so cool, so so cool. But you know, just
just using like very plane to see historical fire on
the landscape and they are able to grid off a
big enough area do controlled burns on different timelines, so
(23:07):
you can see what the landscape looks like when it's
burned every year, every other year, every five years, every
fifteen years. You know, it's a luxury. Not a lot
of places have to be able to do something like that.
But you know, for a while we were talking about
like applying that type of knowledge on you know, larger
(23:32):
western landscapes where we haven't seen that level of controlled
burning prescribe fire for quite a while for a number
of factors, right like social tolerance, just just waiting for
the right conditions to come together to do larger prescribe burns,
(23:55):
all sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yeah, a lot of things have to align. I love
that you brought up prescribe burning or controlled burning, because
it's not just the fire mitigation tool. If we look
at managing mixed hardwood forests, that disturbance of fire. That's
how we create different age glasses and diverse structure on
(24:19):
a landscape is through disturbance. And if we can do
that with fire, that's absolutely wonderful. And we know from
good science over the years that to be able to
maintain oak forests, which are incredibly important for all fourst wildlife,
we've got to have fire at some or several points
within the life of that forest stand to be able
(24:39):
to maintain oak. So as we're talking about doing timber harvest,
fire goes hand in hand with that because before we
do a final harvest and an oak stand, we're probably
going to have to do controlled burning at least once,
maybe twice to make sure that we've got good oak
seedlings to be able to do that next harvest. So
beyond just fire mitigation and controlling fuels, as the fire
(25:02):
folks like to say, it's also a really important ecological
tool to let us create habitat diversity and healthy for
us and species like oak across landscapes. So skypfire is
really important.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Really interesting article just came out over the weekend from
the Mountain Journal that you know, this isn't set in
stone yet, nothing is been put into action, but there's
a fear right now that we could be going away
(25:40):
from prescribed fire without ever having to been able to
like really implement it, especially out here on the western landscapes,
right and going back to the Forest Service ten am policy,
which basically means once you spotify, it's got to be
(26:02):
contained by ten am the next day, which you know
some places sometimes might be attainable. But you know, the
reality is is if fire really picks up steam, especially
when we use the big C word catastrophic, it's a
change in weather conditions and fuel types that are going
(26:24):
to put that thing out, not the amount of man
power or resources that us humans throw at that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, it's a it's a throwback to the suppression at
all costs. You see a fire, put that put that
thing out, fire bad. It kind of takes the whole
nuanced part of this discussion and being able to harness
fire as a management tool out of it. When you're
when you're back to that ten AM strategy, it's there's
a fire, put that thing out.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
And you know, there's obviously there's a lot of benefits
that you can get out of the mechanic goal way
to manage our forests, but there's a lot of benefits
that you can get out of the fireway to manage
our forests too. And it's not like they're mutually exclusive.
(27:14):
You can do both. But you know, like the example
that I think about, right is I have some great
old dark timber spots where I pick big, fist sized
moral mushrooms on old skinner trails where that forest disturbance
(27:34):
has been provided by mechanical means. Yeah, and you can
get get some great mushroom picking and they're big, media
awesome mushrooms. Yeah, But there's no way it's going to
amount to more mushroom picking than when that whole thing burns. Yeah.
(27:54):
When there's fire on the landscape, it blooms with mushrooms.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah. And that's the challenge doing all of this at
landscape scale, because you can have small, myopic projects and
some feel good stuff, but the scale of our forest
health challenges right now is huge. And if we look
at grouse and woodcock, start with rough grouse, so they're
listed as a species of greatest conservation need and at
(28:21):
this point nineteen state Wildlife Action plans. So this is
North America's most widely distributed game bird, rough grouse, and
they're listed as a species of concern in nineteen state
Wildlife Action Plans. That is because of lack of diversity,
lack of this kind of management disturbance in our forests.
(28:42):
So the scale that we've got to start acting right
now to reverse what is fifty seventy percent declines and
the species, we've got to work at a really large
scale and figure out how to get this done. And
that's where we can embrace some of these market market supported,
market driven activities to be able to operate at scale,
(29:03):
because again, whether we can or can't do it, I
have found is fully determined by our the markets for
those products. Because I've seen some of these projects and
seen the price tags. You know you're paying one thousand,
fifteen hundred three thousand dollars per acre just to remove
this material with no market for it. You can't get
(29:24):
a whole lot of acres done with the price tag
like that versus even if somebody is paying you a
dollar a ton and you can get that material removed
and it can be utilized, but it's not costing you
three thousand dollars per acre. That's where the solutions are
to be able to operate at scale, and we absolutely
need to operate at scale. There's a new document that
(29:45):
just came out by all the best and brightest of
the upland bird biologists east of the Mississippi River, the
Rough Grouse Working Group that says that very thing, that
this is a species that locally will be extirpated. So
our most widelyttributed game bird, the King of game Bird
says it has been called is under threat of being
(30:06):
locally extinct in some areas if we don't act at scale.
So we definitely have to think big. And so as
I see secretari of memos coming out of USDA and
so forth thinking at a bigger scale, then we're going
to see if we can use that to get some
work done.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Oh yeah, I mean, you got to find the opportunities
with every administration, right and you know, I think my
concerns in whether we're not the free market is actually
going to respond to this, right, Are we going to see,
(30:49):
you know, some level of pulp mills near the source
pop up? Are we going to see, you know, those
necessary facts in the market step up to allow this
to happen.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, that's the hard part, isn't it. I heard a
figure recently that actually shocked me, and I pay attention
to this kind of stuff. It's like a couple hundred
million dollars to build a new processing facility like that.
So you're right, you've got to have some assurances. You've
got to know how much wood is there with anything.
(31:28):
When you're trying to spur on to start up a
market where there isn't one, investors need to have some
some sort of assurances that you're going to be able
to recover that investment. And also to say, this thing
is also about our local communities too. I live in
a rural community where I'm at right now, many of
our members do, and when we're thinking about jobs in
(31:51):
those local communities, economic development is very much needed where
I live. But our people here, me included, don't want
to lose the rural nature of where we live. So
we don't want that economic development to come from big
box stores. So are there scenarios. Meanwhile, we've got lots
of public lands, lots of available for us, for us
(32:14):
habitat work that needs to be done, would on the
landscape that could be utilized. Do those things come together
to help support rural economies with green jobs? And that
to me is a really exciting part of it. Because
I'm going to DC in a couple weeks. Not many
people there are going to care about rough grouse. But
we can talk about jobs, we can talk about sustainability,
(32:36):
we can talk about green restoration economies, whatever it is,
and those are the things that we can get policy
makers and investors to really care about because you know,
unless you're an upland bird hunter, rough grouse probably aren't
going to really peak your interest. We've got to talk
about the biggest picture.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
The bigger picture, Oh yeah, like you kind of turn
your bird for bird into the side benefit of of
what's what could happen? Right? And we need enough stability
out there in the marketplace that because so much of
(33:13):
this is done mechanically. Now it's not putting a bunch
of people to work, you know, clear and undergrowth. But
you know, like that family if they're going to invest
in in a new you know, skidter or whatever. You know,
it's a half million dollar piece of equipment before you
(33:36):
get it out the door.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Right, So yeah, no doubt. And if there's one thing
that I would want listeners to take from this part
of the conversation is to just go back and read
about what Gifford Pinchot and Teddy roseveout we're doing. When
Pinchow coined the phrase, it was his word conservation and
(33:58):
what it means, and it was trying to these kinds
of things out. If you think about it, around a
couple decades give or take of nineteen hundred, I mean,
there were timber barns, there were no protected lands, there
was no forest science, it was none of this stuff,
and they were trying to figure out ways to protect
our forests. And the key with Pinchot and Roosevelt was
(34:18):
this idea of conservation is protection through use. We've got
to show the utility and the use of these forests
to be able to protect them. So every time this
is kind of pet peeve for me, a maybe challenge
listeners to think about it and look, when you see
a headline that says conservation groups sue Forest Service over
(34:40):
logging project. Conservation is protection through use? Are those really
conservation groups like the Rough Grouse Society that are suing
the Forest Service over logging project. They're not. They're preservationist groups.
So I get a little hot under the callar when
our word conservation is hijacked for something that it was
(35:04):
never intended these for us per conservation by definition will
be protected through us.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Oh yeah, I mean that's a great point, right, Like
to a lot of us, conservation means work and the
co opting of that term to mean hands off it
is pretty frustrating.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Right. Sorry, man, that's my rant. That's my last rant
for the podcast. But I think it's a word for
us to rant about.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
I mean, it's it is, it is for sure. Yeah.
You know what we were talking over the weekend and
somebody brought up the the Big Burn. Sure you've read
that one, but you know there's a couple of it
outlines that that point in our history really well. Right, Like,
(35:57):
so Theodore Rose, Gifford Pinchot got together to protect forest
land through executive order and it was you know, this
this idea of government regulation was there to try to
balance all these public interests and make that timber harvest
(36:22):
sustainable for resource management was was the idea.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Right, Yeah? Yeah, and from that was born in a
profession of forest right too at the same time.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah yeah, so yeah, I'll be honest, I have no
idea that the rough grouse, which you know, certain seasons
when things really come together well in western Montana, you
could provide like a chicken dinner to the entire state
(36:56):
off a rough grouse. Sometimes, no idea that it's a
species of concern in nineteen States.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, I think it's hunter conservationists. It's really important to
highlight that we recently did a survey of our membership.
Are you a hunter, are you a conservationist? Or are
you both? And the vast majority of our members identify
as hunter conservationists. I think it's really important to know,
and you know that there's a lot out there about
(37:26):
stage grouse and especially the prairie grouse and their status.
It's really important for all of us to know, even
if you don't hunt rough grouse, that the most widely
distributed game bird in North America is becoming a pretty
highly threatened species. And so whether you hunt them or not,
as hunter conservationists, I think this is something that everyone
(37:47):
should know. And it's something that we can fix too
by managing our forests using good science, using market supportive methods.
It can also support rural economies. This is one of
those things to me that is if we can't solve
this issue, then which ones can we solve? Because there
are too many things pointing in the right direction of
(38:08):
being able to fix this and we've just got to
manage our for us.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, I mean, I cannot agree more. You know, driving
I was in western Montana this weekend out looking for turkeys,
and it's it's crazy to me how fast people build
homes once a fire rolls through in in spots that
(38:34):
will once again be a really bad spot to have.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
A home, right right. This isn't a once and done
kind of thing with fire.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Yeah, and it really complicates that idea of management. And
and you know, that preservationist mindset that we all have
when it comes to our life is in our property breeds,
(39:04):
a preservation mindset around those areas as well. It's like
we don't want the smoke, we don't want fire on
that particular landscape, yeah, but at the same time, we
do want the rest of that forage forest managed well.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, yeah, Well I've from a hunter's perspective. I've heard
you say it before, how much you know you're just
you're liking your chops when you're thinking about going into
a recently burned area, just because of the difference in
hunting opportunity there. And you mentioned that you're head to
West Virginia shortly to do some hunting, certainly in places
(39:44):
in the eastern deciduous forest. The first thing I'm looking for,
and I'm pulling up on X. I mean, at this point,
what an amazing tool to be able to find areas
that are being actively managed. So one of our most
important layers everywhere that I go hunting as the states
that have the ability to pull up that forest management
(40:05):
layer and where's active management occurring. If I'm going on
a trip hunting white tails somewhere, that's the first thing
I'm looking for. The last place I'll go as a
chunk of public ground that hasn't been managed and it
all has one hundred and twenty five year old hardwood
stands with no diversity, that's the last place I'm going.
I'm going to find the place that has some younger cuts,
(40:28):
some access places like you were talking about from old
retired skit trails or hall roads. That's where I'm going
to go looking for white tails or black bears or
certainly rough drowse.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
We did a really phenomenal trip into the Boundary Waters
real short couple of years ago in October, and we
you know, did the whole Boundary Waters thing. We packed
up canoes and jumped between a bunch of different lakes
in this little chain and crawled around through just like
(41:01):
the thickest, nastiest blowdown to scratch out I think two
ruffed grouse. And then for a day when we got out,
we looked at where they were doing cuts on the
(41:28):
edge of the Boundary Waters and we shot a lot
of rough grouse off you know, off the road right
so or you know, hunting off the road, yeah, because
you know, it's like we were in a spot where,
you know, quite honestly, like I would have had somebody,
(41:49):
I would have had a canoe full of fuz road
flares and somebody paddling me and we would have just
cruised the shoreline and it would have been thrown those
suckers out about everything the art because that's what it needed.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, that disturbance is necessary. And you get these in
the boundary waters. It's interesting when you're talking about the
put every fire out places like the boundary waters that
are big enough, that are areas like that where you
can let some natural fires burn where the boundary water
is in that case where you have no choice but
to let some of those fires burn because it's so
(42:25):
difficult to get in there. Yeah, then now you can
have that natural driven diversity occurring in those places. But
this the preservationist idea that you can just let nature
take its course and everything will be fine. The science
is telling us just doesn't work out because, as I
often say, the last I checked, this is definitely a
(42:46):
human dominated planet, and so we don't have herds of
bison roaming and fires that can burn across three states.
I mean, all these natural processes, you know, one unquote
let nature take its course, It's just it's not even reality.
So to have that diversity and to be able to
(43:09):
maintain the species. If I'm a bird watcher and I'm
looking to check off the most species possible on a
trip on my bucket list, I'm going to go to
places that have the most diversity of forests, not just
a single older age class of forests.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, everything changes except for us.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Man, I'm not changing a bit. I'm getting younger. It's
all good. Yeah, man, you're making me think how long
i've been at OURGS now earlier on, I'm like, oh man,
it has been seven years. How about that? But it's been.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
A well yeah, you're kind of like a farmer, right,
you get you know, new new seasons bring on new challenges.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
That's absolutely true. And there are so many parts of
this year with all the executive orders and trying to
get a handle on where things are going, and of
course a lot of uncertainty and rapid changes. It was
really reminiscent of twenty twenty another time when we had
a lot of changes going on, and we took that
opportunity in twenty twenty a are just to change our
(44:16):
business model because when you have disruption, there's really no
better time if you need to disrupt things to just
do it all at once. So we found opportunities out
of that, and we're engaged with the Forest Service more
than we've ever been. And now if we're just thinking
of the Forest Service and those tens of millions of acres,
(44:37):
there can be opportunity with all that's going on right
now to help our partners at the Forest Service in
the midst of staff reductions and so forth. I listened
to the interview that you did with Terry Baker talking
about NGOs and other partners being able to actively engage
in management on national forests, and that's the business model
we changed in twenty twenty. So right now we've got
(45:00):
dozens of projects where we're helping the Forest Service get
good work done, whether it's prescribed fire, timber harvest both.
At the same time, we can help the Forest Service
build capacity. So now coming into twenty twenty five, it's
really apparent with the reduction in force and the reorganization
of the Forest Service that our ability to help them
(45:22):
get good work done both for habitat management and access.
Our role is going to be more important than ever
in helping our Forest Service partners, which in turn is
a national forests are a really important land based for
so many of us that love to hunt. So we
want to be an active part of the solution and
not part of the problem here. So we're figuring out
(45:46):
ways to scale up and our business not model is
scalable and ways that we can increase our services to
the for service, and.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
That service is going to be what bend like helping
out with that management plan or on the actual subcontractor
or contractor side of things.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, when you're working with the Forest Service, it's all above,
all the above. So we work on stakeholder committees that
are part of the public input process if you're thinking
about that level of management planning. And then we also
can get the next step into the weeds with the
Forest Service on helping them lay out actual management plans
(46:29):
and doing it on large scales like developing twenty thirty
fifty thousand acre management plans. And then through stewardship authority,
we can actually help the Forest Service layout and administer
timber harvest within those plans as well. And the really
neat thing about shared stewardship and stewardship authority is that
(46:53):
when we help the Forest Service layout and conduct that
timber sale, any commercial value from the timber sold stays
right there on that district, that ranger district, and then
we can reinvest those funds from the commercial timber sale
into additional habitat work. That could be trail maintenance, that
(47:14):
could be new hunter walking trails, it could be some
of these projects like we were talking about earlier, that
don't have a market, that don't pay for themselves, we
can take as a stewardship partner the commercial value of
that timber and get all this value add work done.
So that's the model that we were really looking at
how to scale up as the Ford Service is going
(47:36):
to need more help in the coming years.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Well, Ben, what's the best way to figure out what
the Rough Grouse Society and the American Woodcock Society you're
up to? And where can folks find you?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, check us out on social media? Of course Instagram
would keep things pretty active there. Our website, We've got
a good archive and current articles coming out every few
days on the blog spot on our website, So check
us out there. And as you're there, popping up all
over the place as it should be, are these little
(48:12):
join icons, So click on one of those and join,
and then you'll get our magazine four times a year.
You can also subscribe to our monthly we call it
the bell Weather Bulletin. We described the rough Grouse as
a bell Weather afore South, So the bell Weather Bulletin
comes out every month and you can subscribe to that.
Have it delivered great to your email. But come join us.
(48:35):
We need members. We need a strong membership base to
do all this work. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
And we really didn't even get into talking about woodcock,
but I'll tell you it's one of the coolest birds
out there for so many reasons. You know, it's relative,
I would say firmly any unknown class here in western Montana.
But we'll have to get you back on to to
talk about that super enigmatic little dude here in the future.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Man that's worthy of its own episode. And we talked
about sixty years worth awhile life research and knowing a
lot of things about white tails and rough growse. There
are things that we're only just now learning about woodcock
with our ability to put GPS transmitters on them while
they migrate. So yeah, enigmatic, quirky, strange little bird. So
let's get together sometime in the future and talk about them.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
That sounds great, folks. I know you're gonna have a
lot of questions for Ben and the Rough Grouse Society
American Woodcock Society. Please go follow up, give them a subscribe.
You can certainly sign up for their email newsletters communications
and just know what they're up to, and then if
you're liking what you're seeing, if it clicks with you,
(49:51):
become a member. Super easy to do, and it's really
important to help them carry on their work. If you
have questions, you can always send them to A s
K C. A L. That's Ascal at the meeteater dot
com and we can get Ben back on here to
answer him, or we can connect with him and address
him on the Cow's We Can Review podcast. That's all
(50:15):
we got for you this week. Thank you so much
for listening, and Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
It was an absolute pleasure. I would really look forward
to the follow up Q and A. That would be
fun
Host
Cal Callaghan
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Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
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