Ep. 664: The State of the Conservation Union

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
If this is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening to podcast,
you can't predict anything.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
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Speaker 3 (00:40):
You got a little hemp project going on, making yourself
a little necklace?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I do. I'll explain it is the machine on Phil
it's on. Is it aiming at me? It's aiming right
your front and center right now. Yeah, Cal was asking
about this hemp project. This I think. I feel like
this is one hundred years old. So this is the
poll mechanism on the punk gun. And it had been

(01:08):
pulled so many times that there was three strands over
the islet and they had all failed. So I'm unwrapping
this serving. I'm gonna put a new loop in there
through the pole thing and put the serving back on
and it's like a little piece of copper pipe.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Very cool. When are you guys gonna touch that thing off.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, we were going to touch it off the idea,
but the weather was just too bad. So I don't
know when we're going to touch it off. It's just
not like hanging out outside shooting a punk gun weather right.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Now, like negative eight.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Snow blowing everywhere. Yeah, it just wouldn't be any fun.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah, I will tell you.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
I went.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
It was one of my last pheasant hunts of the year.
But i'd set a road tracks Montana that I had
no idea that we're still in use. And it was
super cold, not as cold as it is now, but
it was down the in the teens.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
And you put your tongue on that track, well.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
It was like, was it ives? Who the real Christmas?
He scenes? But this trains caierl lives. Yeah, but the
sun setting and this train comes around the tracks. You know,
it's it's all the drift country, so all this snow
had been dumped into the railroad tracks. That train came through,

(02:35):
and before the train even touched it, you know, it
was like the vacuum effect of that freight coming through
was blowing all that powder out. It was just like
the most I've never been in love with trains before.
But that afternoon. I was like, oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
My kids had been riding. They finally got in trouble
for this. So we have like a road. It's not
it's like a road but not really. The only reason
you'd be on our little loop, you know, our house,
Like the o reason you're on that loop is if
you live there, yep. And then there's like a big
grass circle which is all covered in snow. So my

(03:13):
kids have taken the Like first it was like, we're
just gonna ride the snowbill around the loop real quick,
and then it became just riding d D ride and riding,
and we were kind of laughing about when someone when
someone would snap and come complain to them, yeah, you know,

(03:33):
and sure enough they get flagged down by a couple
of neighbors who after days of riding, flag down and
complain to them. And they come back just outraged. You know,
he says he's going to take it up with you.
To me, you know, no one has but uh, he
said you can't ride on the road. I'm like, I mean,
you can't ride on the road. I didn't mention that,

(03:59):
but no, it's like a traditionally friendly neighbor like someone.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
You guys, you know, I.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Don't have any to do with them. You got people
that you got people that see kids out playing outside
and it makes them happy, and you got people that
see kids playing outside and it makes them mad.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Well, guys, people just work snowmobiles. Though. There's a tolerance level, right,
Like the noise is is Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
A four stroke clean. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah. People that are like, oh, I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Enforce the rules. I love the rules.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, hey, wait a minute, those kids are breaking the rules. Okay,
think of what it's hurting. But they're breaking the rules.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
It's the eight eight am kids just got out of
the house. You're having a chill cup of coffee.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
And they're not like that. They very slow. It's more
like in the distance. Man, they got a trail that
cuts through our yard. They go up on that burm.
If I'm standing at washing dishes, I only know they're
coming by because the.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Headlight, Oh sweet, the snow on the berm.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
They got loops all over the place, and all the
neighbor kids are always riding with.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Them and they haven't contact the community is bringing the
community together.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
I was like, who could complain because everyone's kids rides
on the snowbills. I got one neighbor offered me gas money.

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Occupied, that's what you should have said.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Did you offer them a ride when they stopped.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
My wife had a really funny idea to She thought
that we should act oblivious to what the issue was,
and she said, let's ride the snowmobiles over to see
what's going on.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Bring an extra helmet.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's so funny. Uh, we do a thing. How often
do we do this? We do a thing every year. Yeah,
we do a thing every year. We do the State
of the Union. We stole that. I don't know if
they trademarked State of the Union. I don't think the
trademark and State of the Union. We do the State
of the Union on the conservation in the US at

(06:22):
the federal level with the CEO of TRCP, and historically
a number of times we've had on the former CEO
with Fosburg. But today we're premiering the new CEO of TRCP,
Joel Peterson, and we're gonna run through a State of
the Union, and I'm gonna do a giant caveat right.

(06:43):
No one knows. No one knows. We're gonna talk about
some things from the past. Yep, we're gonna go back
a little bit. I think the furthest will stray back
as we'll stray back about eight years ago. Maybe. Okay,
we're going to touch on to Trump one. We're gonna

(07:04):
talk about Biden. We're gonna talk about the early days
of Trump too, and and when we enter into the
days of Trump too, there's a giant question mark because
we're gonna be talking about some federal policy and a
lot of federal policies up in the air. I had
breakfast with Joel this morning, and I told him that
he is not He does not need to be. He

(07:25):
does not need to be a prophet or prophesize prophecy.
What's the hell's the word prophecies? Can you see prophesies?
It's is that not a word? Prophesies? In DC right now,
there's a there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty with the
administration's changing over a lot of policy changes.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
And a lot could change from the time we record
this in the whatever six days until it airs well.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Joe, Joel's one step ahead of you. Joel wanted to speak. Uh.
He had a specific question for Corinn because he says,
we're running the risk of anything we're saying, anything we
say changing. So he wanted to understand what sort of
timeline he's dealing with, and we sured him it's the
tightest timeline as we can provide, which Tuesday, six days,

(08:13):
So it's six days, so lock and change in six days.
But it's different than if it was six.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Months, Right, Steve, try this one on for size. Okay, prognosticate, Yes,
that's a good one.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, I would think that you were making that word up, prognosticating.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Well, the examples perfect. I won't prognosticate and say whether
this will lead to other mainstream what exactly?

Speaker 5 (08:42):
Oh it ends in an ellipses, No.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
It doesn't, it rolls. But I sorry, it was perfect up.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Until oh I see, I see.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, now, but we were very vague. If we were
talking about a current appointment, then this example would be
sure perfect all the way through.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Understood.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
I was thinking more about policy, not appointment.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
So to recap, in short, we're gonna we're gonna hand
it over to Joel here to talk about what TRCP does,
what federal policy looks like, what his personal background is.
But again, this is a this is meant to be
a quick crash course in the state of the conservation movement,

(09:30):
particularly like conservation issues that impact American hunters and anglers,
the state of the conservation Union as we enter into
a new administration and embark on a new four years.
So with that, Joel, tell everybody what TRCP is.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
So Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is a nonprofit organization. We've
been around for twenty three years now, and we were
really brought together, like I said, twenty three years ago,
to help unify and amplif the sportsman's voice. And what
we do. Our mission is guaranteeing all Americans quality places

(10:06):
to hunt and fish, and so at the core of
everything we do we try to tie it back to that.
But the challenge that was seen over two decades ago
was that every single one of the conservation organizations were
coming into Congress or coming into the administration and asking
for their own little thing, and it wasn't a unified message.
And so the power of the millions of sportsmen that

(10:29):
are out there, that are represented individually by the various
conservation organizations just wasn't being captured to help make the
point about some of the big conservation issues. And so
fast forward to today. We now have sixty three organizations
that we partner with and it's a willing partnership. It's

(10:49):
not a pay to play. But we have tried to
reach out to the groups like National Wild Turkey Federation,
Mule Deer Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, the ones that everybody has
heard of. But we also have as part of our
partnership groups like the Tall Timbers Association, which is down
in South Georgia and they're really focused on prescribed fire

(11:12):
and how that benefits in that case quail, but everything
else that's out there. We also work in marine fisheries.
We've got groups like Bonefish and tarp and Trust and
so it's a very diverse group that we have that
brings a lot of important voices together to think about
the conservation issues that the community, not just the Theodore

(11:34):
Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is facing. So when we think about this,
we've kind of broken the work that we do into
five different areas. Public lands is one that I know
this team is very well aware of. It's often at
the center of a lot of the things that you're
interested in. We also have a Private Land Center that

(11:54):
deals a lot with farm Bill we also have some
of the work we're doing with chronic wasting disease in
that area. We have our marine fisheries which deals largely
we do a lot with forage fish, but it's also
been a big focus on the Mississippi flood Plain, coastal
Louisiana coastal restoration there, moving up the Mississippi River with

(12:19):
some of the work we're doing now. And then we
have a water program as well that's largely been focused
to date on the Colorado River, the Rio Grande River
and the water issues that are there, but really that
entire watershed and what we can do about that. And
then we also have a focus on climate or resiliency,
if you will, and really thinking about how some of

(12:41):
the changes we're seeing on the landscape impacts across all
those other centers, the impacts that it's having on our
public lands, private lands, wildlife in general, and integrating that
work into those different centers, taking advantage of some of
the opportunities that are out there.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Folks with your personal background, how you came to the work.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
Well, you know, I think, like most people that have
been involved in conservation, it started when I was young.
I grew up in Nebraska, hunting and fishing with my
dad and my grandparents, more fishing than hunting because of
Northeast Nebraska, there wasn't a whole lot to hunt back then,
pheasants was about the only thing. And I was actually
grew up the dating myself, but after the real golden

(13:25):
age of that, but before CRP really hit and kind
of brought it back for a stretch of ten to
twelve years in the eighties and early nineties, so I
did that. I was involved with Boy Scouts as well,
and I was fortunate the troupe I was with we
camped every month year round, and so really grew up
with a love for the outdoors and a By the

(13:47):
time I was a sophomore in high school, I realized
there was a thing called a wildlife biologist that you
could make a career out of. And so one of
those few people that I think knew from a very
young age, this is what I want to do, and
was was able to do that. So graduated with a
degree in wildlife conservation from the University of Nebraska at Carney,

(14:07):
spent a year at the University of Idaho on an
exchange program during my undergraduate that I went on to
graduate school at the University of Tennessee, where I got
to live really a lifelong dream of being able to
study black bears. I'd been in love with black bears
for a long time, and over the years my master's program,
I trapped nearly two hundred black bears and pulled them

(14:28):
out of the den and all that cool stuff that
wildlife biologists get to do. And then I very quickly
got into the reality of what a wildlife biologist is
like when you work for a state agency or a
federal agency. Went to work for the State of Florida
as a wildlife BIOLOGI spent most of my time dealing
with people, so I was there for about four years.
From there, I went to National Wild Turkey Federation. I

(14:52):
worked with National Wild Turkey Federation in the Conservation Department
for the majority of my twenty two years there, did
just about everything you could do in conservation wise. And
then when Becky Humphries, who I know has been on
the show, actually was on about a year ago in
the interim role at TRCP. When she took over as

(15:14):
CEO there, she asked me to grow a government affairs
program for National Wild Turkey Federation and so I went
to work directly for her, and I did that for
about the last six years that I was at NWTF,
and then almost right out four years ago now I
had the opportunity to move west and ended up in

(15:34):
Salt Lake and took over as CEO of the Meldair Foundation,
and so I did that for about three years, and
then fast forward to September first of last year, I
made another jump and back across the country to Northern
Virginia in the DC area to take over as President
and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which is

(15:54):
a great opportunity to come in and do this. Through
my roles at Turkey Federation and at Mule Deer Foundation,
I had the opportunity to work with TRCP as one
of those partner organizations, and so I came in being
somewhat familiar with the work that TRCP does, certainly on
the private lands and public lands side of things more

(16:14):
than anything. So it's been a great career that has
spen in a lot of years now, and never had
it in mind to be a CEO, but that's kind
of where things have led, and it's a great opportunity
to be able to influence conservation in a different sort
of way than just being the the dirt kicking biologists
that I wanted to be for a long time.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Hey, let's let's let's scrap federal policy for a minute.
What did you think about I wasn't there before. I
wasn't aware that you had worked on specifically on black bears.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
In Florida in Tennessee. Oh so, okay, so for my
master's program at Tennessee.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
But when you went, you say so, you didn't wind
up in Florida.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
I went to work for the State Wildlife Agency in.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Florida, but not with a black bear focus, not with
a black bear follow I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Tennessee is like the place for a degree with focusing
on black bears, right, Like that is the school?

Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah, yeah, University of Tennessee, through doctor Mike Pelton, had
a program that spanned three decades there looking at black
bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and really across
the southeast and then on into Minnesota, and it spanned
other places as well. Virginia Tech was the other one
at that time that was also had a very strong

(17:30):
program with black bears.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Tennessee was where those dudes were fine, and that those
black bears were den in like thirty forty feet up
in trees and stuff and those How that was fascinating, man, Like,
how they even know those holes are up there right?

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, they seek them out and they find them. It's
definitely preferred for them in that area. And you know,
I had the opportunity to crawl up some of those
trees and try to to find them and see what
you could do. And you know, a couple of you
never knew if the hole that you could see in
the tree was just right there or whether there was

(18:02):
one I can remember it was. You know, the hole
was fifty feet up in the tree, but the whole
tree was hollow clear down into the root mass. And
so the bear had not only climbed up, but then
climbed all the way back down and was you know,
sixty feet below.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
And then another down that hollow tree.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
Yeah yeah. And then contrast that with and you crawl
up the next one and your eye to eye two
feet away with a mama bear that's looking at you.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
You know, yeah, I thought that was wild man, just
thinking about how like unless in some of those trees,
unless he happened to be up there picking masts or something. Right,
they must just go up there and scout him out.

Speaker 4 (18:41):
I think they do well.

Speaker 5 (18:43):
And then on the on the sixty foot climb down,
he's got to be pretty confident that he can turn
around at the bottom, right, I mean, you'd think that
there's quite a few trees that the hole just tapers
off and you're gonna find a bunch of bear bones
down there.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, that's a good point, Like gets in there and
can't get back up pretty confident, right, Yeah, that's a
great points though, is it. Yeah? Oh, you know what
I asked this to Carl Malcolm. That's right, Carl. You
know what Carl Malcolm said to me. I forgot. Yeah,
he said, what way do you go down the ladder?

(19:16):
So that I probably said first of course, Yeah, that's
a good point. He just walks back up when things
get tight on his butt. All right, So let's let's
jump back. I said, we had to go back eight years.
Hit me with a Hit me with a conservation recap
on Trump administration. One, Like every administration has their areas

(19:41):
where they focus. Right, there's things that their predecessor did
that they kind of let go, you know that they
let they let it drift away. There's new priorities. Uh,
and Trump won? What did what did we see?

Speaker 6 (19:56):
Like?

Speaker 2 (19:56):
What did he get right for hunters and anglers? And
where do you feel that things could have gone better
during Trump won?

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah? You know, so in the first Trump administration, we
were definitely benefited with his son, Don Junior, who is
an avid hunter and fisher and definitely has some influence
over the president there and so we always had a
voice and I think that we'll continue to have that
voice in the current administration as well. But a couple
of i'd say real wins out of the first Trump administration.

(20:26):
One of them had to do with access, for sure,
and the work that he did through then Secretary Zinky
at Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service and
really looking at opportunities to open up hunting and fishing
access on wildlife refuges. And people remember that part of
it and the millions of acres that have then been

(20:47):
opened up since and that is something that carried through
to some extent into the Biden administration and will continue on,
I believe. But the other thing that that did which
has gotten less attention is it it asked the Fish
and Wildlife Service on their refuges to do the best
job they could to align the regulations on the refuges

(21:08):
with the regulations of the state so that you didn't
have to have a different number of shells in a
shotgun on a refuge versus public land and ammunition opening
days things like that, and so I think that that
was a good thing.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah, quite a few refuges would have a shell restriction, right,
so it's like you can only have twelve shells on
you on the refuge, whereas anybody outside the refuge you
can carry as around as many shotgun shells as you're willing, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
So it was just trying to get some things like
that that were out of the way and make it
easier on hunters and fishermen to access. And so access
was one of them. Migration corridors. We've talked a lot
about migration corridors over the last eight years, and Secretarial
Order three three six two that again then Secretary Ryan
Zink signed, really put attention on migration corridors and it

(22:09):
led to a lot of the funding for research that
we've had over the years for mapping those corridors, and
we've seen great use come out of that for conservation
measures as well as just having that body of information
and then funding there to know where to do the
work to preserve these, to preserve the corridors and the

(22:30):
winter range, but then also the species that go with it.
And then Trump was also.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
On that one. Sorry they put money there too.

Speaker 4 (22:38):
Right, Yeah, I forget exactly how much it was, but
it was millions, low tens of millions maybe on an
annual basis to really fund some of that research and
a lot of what we know now from the GPS
callers that are out there, they were around it being
used some, but this really gave a push to that
through that funding to grow those pro grams and our

(23:00):
understanding of big GA migration corridors and what they use,
which then leads to wise use decisions about management and development,
et cetera that we've been able to use.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, we did a show some time ago now with
Matt Kaufman and who's coffin work, Sorr. I'm mixing up
two names, Monteeth, Kevin mont Kevin Monteeth and uh. We
talked to them a lot about the ability from from
their coloring data on big game animals, particularly in wyoming,

(23:34):
but allowing you to get pretty focused and targeted on
on on like specific points on a map. You know
that when you're looking at when you're looking at migration
corridors and things like narrowing down to very precise spots
that needed help or needed protection or needed overpasses. And
that came from being able to watch generations, right, you know,

(23:58):
the generational turnovers quick, but to watch generations of deer
moving across the landscape, you know, to find those things
that are those those constants, right.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
Yeah, And so that's had some real practical uses. Kind
of fast forward into the Biden administration on this point.
Some of the Bill and IRA money that came about
was for explan by Partisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation
Reduction Act, and that was what was passed during the
first two years of the Biden administration. That it was

(24:31):
the money that everybody's It went to everything, but there
was a couple trillion dollars that went towards conservation work.
One of the programs that was stood up in that
was a wildlife Crossing's pilot program through the Transfer Transfer
Transportation Department. Actually, but because of the work that a

(24:54):
lot of the Western States have, you can go now
and look at that program and say this is where
we need to put the crossing instead of just kind
of guessing based upon where you'd see roadkill. Now they
had some good data for that that helped to drive
the ability to implement that program. But I think really
the ability or even the thought process of being able

(25:15):
to put some money towards that program and have it
be carried out successfully. But maybe an even more important
example is as the BLM was looking at their solar
program Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and really looking at how
they were going to place solar over BLM lands per

(25:37):
instruction from the Biden administration to make lands available for this.
One of the things that TRCP was very successful in doing,
and it was dependent upon this data, was saying, hey,
you've the first draft that you've put out here, you're
not paying attention to migration corridors or winter range. And
so we worked really hard to get comments in from

(25:58):
the public from our partners raise their awareness that we
have really good data for this. And so the final
rule that came out on that excluded known mapped migration corridors,
winter range, and stopover range, but in addition also had
language in there that said, and any future ones that
get mapped within these areas, we're going to take that

(26:19):
out as well. And so you know, the benefit from
that s O three three six two eight almost you know,
eight nine years ago now is really carried.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Forward, got it? And what are something what are some
things in Trump won that could have been that could
have been better for Hunter's nahors.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
There's we're going to face this again. But energy development
is certainly one of them. But we don't with that
in the Biden administration. As I just said there, it
was just it was different. It was solar and solar
and wind, and here it's going to be back to
oil and gas. And I guess one of the advantages
that we have as oil and gas have been around

(27:02):
for a lot longer, and so we better know how
to deal with that, how to cite it. And there's
there's a lot more technology and there's a lot of
regulations already in place. So so that's one that is
always there. I think development is another one. I think
one I'm kind of fast forwarding to now, but one

(27:23):
that's on everybody's mind is public lands and what's going
to happen with public lands and Trump in the first
administration was great on public lands, very strongly came out
and said we shouldn't dispose of public lands, uh, and
made sure that that didn't happen. And we think that'll continue.
But it's you know, there's also a different tenor around

(27:45):
the country right now on that, and so that's something
that we're being cognizant cognizant about as well, and in
trying to watch that.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, that's the thing. I've brought this up. I've told
a story one hundred times. But the first time I
saw first and only time I actually saw if Trump
speak was very early in his campaign, his first campaign,
and a very conservative audience. Okay, at shot show Yep,

(28:15):
Trump spoke and he got up and and he I
felt as though someone had just said, hey, I'll explain
this later, but go out and say this, just because
it seemed like for a guy like, you know, he's
like from New York City, you know, he's a developer.
But he got up and he said, I'm not gonna
sell off your public lands.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
And I remember being like just surprised that would have
been that early in the campaign, that would have been
on his radar. Do you know what I mean to
have brought that up, and then it kind of stayed
whatever the motivation on it was, stayed pretty true to
that and that there wasn't you know at that at
that time, we still haven't seen it. There wasn't a

(28:58):
like wholesale effort that want up being successful and like
reducing federal land management, you know, like it always gets
talked about, but it hadn't happened, and probably for a
handful of reasons. You could watch just in our recent
state campaign here, all all candidates would would try to

(29:21):
establish their public lands bona fides. All can't. It's like
it's like saying you're pro American, Ye, you're gonna do it.
People are gonna say they're going to articulate being pro
public lands, you know here, you know, in this state
at least.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah, it's definitely important in Montana and a lot of
the other Western states.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, like you have to give, you have to articulate,
you have to express that viewpoint, right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
Yeah, But you know, I think I've met with members
of your delegation many times over the years, and the
ones that I know, they've been solid in that space
for a long time because it's very personal to them, right,
Congressman Zinkee, Senator Danes very personally both loved their time
out on the land, and so when they say it,
I'm I tend to believe them. And there's a lot

(30:11):
of others out west as well.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, uh, you already touched on this a little bit.
Let's let's track some of the primary issues that What
are some of the things that that continued, Like when
when Biden came in after Trump won again, as we
clarified earlier, Biden comes into his own priorities. Some things
they're just going to get ignored, something is going to
be pushed forward. What was sort of the conservation continuity

(30:39):
or conversy like the lack of continuity we saw when
Biden came in and what way is it. Did he
have a unique focus, and what sorts of things died
on the vine, what sorts of things kept going, What
new ideas were brought forward?

Speaker 4 (30:53):
Yeah, So, you know, we touched on a couple of
these that that were around, and they they continued the
migration's work that started with so three three six two.
The Biden administration kept that program around and because it
was a secretarial order from the Trump administration, it would
have been very easy for them to just slice and

(31:14):
dice that one, and we're getting rid of it just
because of where it came from. But they kept it
around because they they heard about it from the sportsman community.
For sure, they heard about it from sportsman, but they
also saw the value of it. But it didn't get
the same level of funding, it didn't get the same
level of focus that it did in Trump won. They

(31:36):
kept it there and things continued by that token. What
we talked about with access and opening up the fish
and wildlife refuges to more hunting and fishing access is
another one that they kept around, but just absolutely not
at the same level. I forget the exact number here,
but the last last year they did it, it was

(31:58):
a couple hundred three hundre thousand acres that were opened
up as a post of millions in the first several years.
And they also you know, started putting some additional restrictions
and looking at some of this in terms of we're
going to open it up, but there's not going to
be any lead ammunition allowed, regardless of what you're hunting
for fishing for. It wasn't just tied to waterfowl and

(32:20):
some things like that. That that made it a little
more challenging in those regards. You know, the Biden administration
and I think democratic administrations in general there they're always
good about conservation funding. So we talked about the bipart
as an Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and
the nearly two trillion dollars that came towards conservation through that.

(32:47):
So the funding there was great. We'll probably see a
reduction in some of that funding with a Republican administration
and a Republican Congress coming in, and so it's kind
of hard to weave apart. Was it just the administration
because there's also Congress in there as well, and how
they're given the funding out when it came to kind

(33:10):
of some of the direct hunting related legislation and policies,
certainly we saw a drop off with that. And in
the Biden administration, access was important, access specific for hunting
and fishing less important. Second Amendment issues absolutely less important

(33:32):
within a democratic administration, and I think what we than
what we saw and what we'll see again in a
Republican administration. Energy development was still important for both, but
in a different in a different manner. As we talked
about a minute ago. And so I think those are
some of the differences that.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
We'll see if you had to, if you had to
look at the energy part of the question. With Biden
administration talking about DO and renewables, so solar arrays and
and uh, wind farms, what do you call it? What
do you actually call it? Wind farm?

Speaker 4 (34:06):
That's what I call it.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
You can use that term solar rays and wind farms.
And when it first came out, when it first came
up for comment, it was kind of like a felt
like a staggering amount of acreage being considered, right and
then and then it got debated, and as you pointed out,
people brought in issues like wildlife corridors and and and

(34:29):
and it shrank, the proposed footprint shrank. And I think
part of setting that policies you come out with a
big ask, knowing that you're asked, will you get whittled down? Okay?
And now with like energy dominance okay, and looking back
at fossil fuels and in the current administration pushing for

(34:49):
like a real concentrated focus on domestic fossil fuel energy production.
Which of those things do you think which of those
plans is going to lead to like the highest net
acreage of public hunting and fishing lands being developed. Like

(35:12):
is the footprint on Trump's fossil fuel plan? Will it
wind up being bigger than the biggest ask from the
buy An administration on the footprint of renewables.

Speaker 4 (35:23):
It's hard for me to prognosticate this, you tell uh no, I,
Like I said before, we've got a lot of history
with oil and gas development, right and we know that
what that footprint is. And with directional drilling and everything else,

(35:44):
it's they'll take up less of a footprint. You know.
One of the big problems with with solar is the
arrays go in and then they put an eight foot
chain link fence around it to keep everyone and everything out,
And with oil and gas you don't necessarily have to
do that, and you can leave some open space between them.

(36:04):
There's also some emerging technology that the companies have started
talking about where they can check their pumps. They can
check the flows more remotely than they ever used to,
because even though you've got a reduced footprint with oil
and gas, you still typically have historically had vehicles driving
those roads every day year round checking on everything. And

(36:27):
that disturbance just causes problems for the wildlife there, particularly
in the winter range right where you're getting that constant
disturbance on them. And so I think there's we've learned
more about how to mitigate those factors over the years
through oil and gas, where we're still learning it now
with solar and wind. And I forget the acreages now,

(36:50):
but TRCP and some of our partners put together a
document looking at at the surface area impact of the
various forms of energy to get this away from how
many killowat hours are we talking about generating to what's
the disturbance out there on the landscape, And it surprised

(37:13):
me the wind had a bigger footprint even than solar
when it came to the number of acres per kilowatt
hour that we're being generated on.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
That, oh for sure, and it was not well, maybe
it's better understood now than it was, but for lack
of a better term, the psychological impact to wildlife that
those blades rolling in the sky and how that affects
the noise and the blades, how it affects what goes

(37:43):
on down on the ground because you can look underneath
one of those suckers and see a bunch of grass, right.
But then and I just have had anecdotal conversations with
people who've taken ranch land and put it into that
and they'll come back and say, like buy and large
stuff avoids that part of the ranch now, like prong Horn,
particularly about prong Horn, just never getting comfortable with it, right,

(38:04):
So you wind up it's like the footprint winds up
being different than the footprint.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Right, you know, yeah, exactly, which.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
I think is what you're referring to in the amount
of traffic that a company's oil and gas correct, all
the vehicle traffic right.

Speaker 4 (38:18):
Right, yeah, yeah, And so like I said, we we
know better how to mitigate it when it comes to
oil and gas. But I think the other thing is,
you know, and we're seeing it already even with the
executive orders that have come out about energy dominance, you're
already seeing a little bit of the pushback from the
from the industry. Even that it's executive orders are only

(38:39):
going to go so far. It'll open it up for
the future, but it's probably not going to have an
immediate impact right now because it's all supply and demand, right.
And so we've got that aspect where with the subsidies,
the the solar and wind we're getting to try to
develop these technologies. I wonder if we were seeing more

(39:01):
of that go on the ground because of the subsidies around.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
There, it was a little bit divorced from free market economy.

Speaker 5 (39:07):
Yeah, I also think the like, what's one of the
interesting things in terms of just beyond the physical impact
is just leasing out because most leases don't get developed, right, right,
And so I think, like if I recall, once that
land is leased, it creates all sorts of hurdles for

(39:29):
trying to do other projects on that ground, like habitat improvement.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
So one of the.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
Concerns is not necessarily like all the administration is going
to sell a bunch of leases, even if they go undeveloped,
it still creates hurdles for doing things for wildlife on
those lands, even if those areas are never drilled, right. Yeah,
that's that's another concern.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Well, the Conservation Lease program is under review, so that
doesn't actually fact round at this point, right, So that's
part of the Secretary order. So that just came out
or sorry, executive orders.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Yeah, that came out.

Speaker 5 (40:05):
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. But like, even
outside of that, like aside from just leasing public ground
for wild so can you not.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Like overlap grazing allotment on that.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
I mean, I can't speak to the technicalities, but I
know that's one concern is like if you have a
massive least sale, even if they say we're not going
to drill this for a hundred years, there are immediate
consequences in terms of like wanting to do wildlife on
that land because they could drill it at any time.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
So there's like there's.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
There's kind of a primacy of use. Yea, so it
gets better consideration. I mean it's that way with grazing
as well. When you get a grazing allotment on public lands,
there's some deferment that goes to that rancher that's got
it because he's paying for that. And while there's still
can be habitat work that can be done, got to

(41:00):
take into consideration what's that going to do to the
to the forage, the cattle that are out there, the
sheep that are out there. Right and while there's there's
still hunting access, there may be areas within that that
get excluded because it's important to the ranchers operations and
things like that.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah, and I can see, like on the flip side,
if you're operating under grant to go out and do
improvements on the landscape, are you going to prioritize land
that may at some point be developed. Should kind of
be like throwing your your grant money away understime?

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, yeah, it Joel's an interesting point you brought up
that I hadn't really thought too much about, is you
can do executive orders, but it's all going to be
a little bit at the whim of the industry as
they watch the price of a barrel of oil, Like

(41:54):
there's certain places that are very expensive to operate in,
and until the market is such that it makes sense,
you can ask them to do it, but they might
not pull the trigger on it.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
Right, No, that's exactly right. And I think what the
executive orders do is they they create the framework to
be able to do more in the future, but it's
still going to be up to the markets.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah. And I think you're right and that that a
lot of renewables were being like highly incentivized, meaning the
wattage or however you measure the output of places you'd
get a premium price for depending on how that was
generated right, or you'd be you'd operate at a deficit
depending on how it was generated. Yeah, there's a lot

(42:35):
of parallels with how the New York Times bestseller list works,
and you happen to be thinking that, Yeah, like a
book sold in some places is worth a lot more
to their algorithm than a book sold in other places.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Yeah, Uh, So to play this game we played, we
looked at Trump won and coming out of Trump one,
what are some things that what were some areas where
we saw Biden's focus change? So if we look at
some areas of focus that Biden had, what are some

(43:13):
places where we might see some continuity. I think i'll
tee this up about something that you and I discussed
as breakfast as well as I can tell you. One
area where there will not be continuity is so far
is conversations around climate and it puts it creates a
particular pickle for people. And I'll recap a discussion we

(43:36):
had over breakfast. The Biden administration was so focused on
climate issues that researchers needed to change the language they
used when talking about wildlife conservation to get funding or
to stay at the top of the heap, meaning You
could be an individual who say, maps salmon runs, describes

(44:02):
salmon runs, looks at the relative strength of particular salmon runs,
what's going on with king salmon? Right? And this might
be your focus. Four years ago there was a dramatic
paradigm shift. You had to then say, well, how is
what I'm already doing? How can I frame this as

(44:23):
being a discussion about climate? Or you work on wildfire mitigation,
generally you work on wildfire issues. To keep doing your work,
you had to say, oh, and by the way, it's
a climate project, because that would enable you to get funding,
that would enable you to be published academically, because if

(44:44):
you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get published. If
you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get funding. And
now there's this this reality that you need to expunge
that language from your project. We had people whose arms
were bent and creating that language correct, Everything had to

(45:05):
flow through that lens. And now you have to retract
from that and demonstrate back to the old way you
would you would highlight your work or seek grants. Yeah,
and it's like it feels to me and this is
me talking. I want to be very clear This is
not Joel talking. This is me talking. It feels like
if I was a wildlife researcher, I would I would

(45:27):
feel disheartened about that, disheartened about this because I'd be like, dude,
I was overplaying it. I don't want to admit it now,
but I was overplaying that shit to get funding. Now
I gotta turn around and dial it back.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
I do think this is just like the same game
that gets played every four years or eight years. Though
it's like, oh, your emphasis is on this awesome. I
work on grizzly bears, and I'm gonna make grizzly bears
climate than yep, right, i work on grizzly bears. I'm
gonna make it. Uh. I'm gonna try to determine how
grizzly bears love oil and gas withdraw, but I'm gonna

(46:11):
steal work on yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Yeah, like, oh no, it's the same work, but now
it has to do with how I can mitigate risk
to the livestock industry by better understanding how bears live
and where they go. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And before I
wanted to find out how they live and where they
go because it could have something to do with climate yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yeah, it's a pre precursor to how the temperature is
changing on the ground something.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
Yeah. Yeah, No, I think you're you're both absolutely correct
on that, and and it is frustrating. I mean, it's
the fact of the matter, is I I So I
think back to my my Milder Foundation days when we
were While I was there, Meal Deer Foundation was a
benefactor of large tens of millions of dollars commitment from
for a service and BLM to go out and help implement,

(46:59):
in the eyes of the Mule Deer Foundation, great habitat
restoration work for mule deer to save mule deer, make
sure they had the best quality habitat out there on
winter range, summer range, wherever it was. But it was
coming through a lens of this money is coming on
the ground to help us mitigate climate change, to help

(47:21):
us mitigate the wildfire crisis, and all of that. The
work the Mule Deer Foundation and those contractors are doing
is exactly the same three years ago as it will
be next year. It's just in the name of however
you want to frame it up.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
And so that's probably overlaps a lot with what Tall
Timbers has been doing for like seventy years now.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Exactly exactly. Yeah, And so you get this and when
we come in with just the broad brush that it
said climate, it must be bad. I don't you know.
It's just too broad stroke and it just politicizes the

(48:07):
issues like everything is politicized now in Congress and conservation
and everything else, which is is really unfortunate because the
work that we do is nonpartisan, right, and we can
do good things for whatever you care about with this
money being done or the research being done. It's just
it's unfortunate that the word climate gets caught up in

(48:30):
all of this.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Yeah, what are some other areas where you think we'll
see So we talked about oil and gas like a
fundamental change of perspective on what kind of energy like.
But both administrations agreed that we wanted to do energy work, right,
but a real difference, and we're talking about renewables v.

(48:53):
Fossil fuel, right, And I think within that you can't
really separate that conversation from from the client a conversation,
because the climate conversation was driven by an idea that
renewables great good. You're bad. If you talk, you know,
you're you're you must not love the environment. If you
bring up questions about renewables to being renewables bad, fossil

(49:16):
fuels good, that's a major shift. Are there some other
like just like ideological shifts that you think will see
I mean only as it pertains the conservation though, I'm
not going to make you go down some you know,
you don't talking about the A word or anything, but
what are some fundamental shifts that you think we're going
to see in terms of in terms of attitude and focus.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
You know, I think that's probably the biggest one. I
think how conservation gets funded. There's probably the other one
that that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about,
and my counterparts and the organizations have I've brought up
the bill and i ra A funding a couple of
times when there's big slug of money there, what's going

(50:01):
to happen with that money?

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Those?

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Again, those that money was going to programs that people
care about. Right. There was so one example I can
use it goes to private lands. In the Farm Bill.
There was about twenty billion dollars through the Inflation Reduction
Act that went to the Farm Bill to help farmers

(50:23):
and ranchers do projects on their land that had conservation
benefits and water quality benefits that were programs that existed
before this money passed. Landowners like it. There was more
landowners that wanted funding than there was funding available for

(50:43):
and a number I saw recently about eighty percent of
that funding that's gone out the door has gone to
Republican congressional districts. And so even the people that voted
for this administration, they're the ones that are benefiting from this,
and they like it. Well, what's going to happen with
that funding as we go forward and we're thinking about

(51:04):
reconciliation and reducing the size of the government. Those programs
are still there. They're still going to do great things
for conservation and for agriculture. I'd argue they need to stay.
But where's the priority going to be between reducing the
size of government, reducing the amount of money going out
the door, and the conservation issues that are really important

(51:26):
to us. To the point, and this is where I'll
tie it back to climate here a little bit. At
the end of last Congress, there was a recognition that
there was an opportunity here to take ten twelve, fourteen
million billion dollars that had not yet been spent through

(51:46):
those programs and roll it into the baseline of the
next Farm bill. And the Republican and Democrat leadership for
both the House and Senate agg committees were in favor
of doing this. They saw it as an opportunit need
to increase funding to do private land conservation work down
the road. But there was a faction of individuals out
there that just could not live with the fact that

(52:08):
we might take climate out of the equation and say
and just remove the word that this money has to
be spent for climate work, even though it was going
to do exactly the same work. And so it didn't
happen at the end of last Congress, and we don't
know if it'll happen again now.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
So yeah, because we're on our second Farm bill extension,
that's right right now. Whereas technically we shouldn't have an extension,
we should have a new farm bill.

Speaker 4 (52:35):
Should have had a new farm bill two years ago, right,
But this was just an attempt at the end of
Congress to get this rolled in. So when they did
work on the next extension, it went on into the baseline, right, And.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
That's referencing like the climate credits for soil conservation through
things that a lot of ranchers want to do anyway,
which is grow native grass as that deeper rip structures,
they sequester more carbine, but they're also super drought and
fire tolerant, and they're just really good forage for those

(53:09):
landscapes because that's what was there long before they were there.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
So yeah, yeah, you know, President Trump has overwhelming support.
I gu it's fair to say, like overwhelming support from
the agricultural industry, right, farmers, ranchers. I mean, if you're
gonna pull farmers and ranchers, he's got their support. Yes,
not without exception, but overwhelmingly correct When you look at

(53:35):
like like over your career and over your time of conservation,
when you look at that, do you find that, like
we remove it just from a conversation about Trump, at
any administration, do you find that they'll wind up looking
at that that constituency is supportive, here's some federal spending
that aids that constituency, and that gets a level of favoritism.

(53:58):
I don't mean to be cynical, but I mean that
has to be a thing that plays out in the
psychology of any president.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
Absolutely. I mean, we can talk about conservation and you
talk about all those other programs that we're not going
to talk about today, right, but but absolutely it's there.
And ultimately it boils down to how can I get
those votes and then how can I follow through on
those votes I got with the promises that I made
to get him there? And so yeah, definitely is a factor.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
What does need to happen? Uh, what does need to
happen with the farm Bill? And is it fair to
say too? Is my understanding this credit simple?

Speaker 3 (54:41):
Simple?

Speaker 2 (54:43):
But is the main like if you maybe i'm maybe
I'm I don't have a sophisticated understanding, and I know
it's like it's byzantine, right, but but one of the
main issues of the farm bill is having CRP lands.
Is that under Is that like under selling other initiatives
in the farm bill? Or is that kind of like

(55:03):
one of the primary points and from conservation, not from
everything else, but in the conservation part of the question
is land CRP lands.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
Yeah, So CRP is extremely important as a program in
there For those that may not be familiar, it's basically
a short term lease on that land to put it
into to native hopefully native grasses, but at least into
some sort of cover. So it's not in row agriculture,
and it's supposed to the marginalized lands, but it's you know,

(55:35):
twenty to thirty million acres depending upon the year and
where that cap has been over the years. That's of
marginal land that's being set aside that ends up creating
great wildlife habitat. And so it is absolutely an anchor
of the of the Farm Bill program. There's a lot
of other good programs in there through some of the

(55:56):
Wetland Reserve Program, which has been through several different iterations
and names over the year. The Environmental Quality and Sentence
Program is another one that's about six hundred million a
year that comes out through that that encourages private landowners
to do conservation related practices to help with water quality,
fencing issues, water issues, et cetera on their properties. And

(56:22):
so there's all sorts of really good programs under there
that need to happen. And then so Congress passes the
farm Bill and you ask what needs to happen, Well,
that's it. They need to actually pass one instead of
continuing to go on the extension after extension after extension.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
What has been the greatest obstacle to getting it passed.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
A hell of a question. I don't it's hard to
put my finger on it. Just I think it's become
like everything else, it just kind of became politicized and
trying to come up with the baseline numbers. But you
can't just look at the conservation aspect of the farm
bill and focus on that, because what a lot of

(57:04):
people don't understand is the conservation title within the farm
bill is small compared to the insurance programs, the food
stamp programs, and everything else that's tied in. And so
that's where the real that's where the real rub comes is.
There's a lot of programs there that help urban communities

(57:27):
and help underserved communities to go along with the conservation
and the farm subsidies and all of that. And so
you got all of these great things, and so we
can look at, you know, the little bit of quote
infighting that might happen within the conservation organizations about whether
it ought to be grasslands, or whether we need to
pay more attention to forestry, or do we need more

(57:48):
for easements and all of that, but all of that
pales in comparison to the broader fight about that really
comes down to political sides over where this money should go.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah, so those issues in a way are held hostage
by these much more expensive, much more contentious issues. Yes.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
And if you go like all the way back to
like waters of the United States, sure, right, So you
got a lot of farmers who are like, oh my god,
government overreach. We can't do anything as far as like
water that they can manage on their private property. Trump
one big rollback of WOTIS, and we see a pretty

(58:33):
drastic increase in drain tile right, so we're losing intermittent wetlands.
In the Farm Bill, there's a lot of programs that
are kind of like the carrot not the stick approach
to Hey, not great to tile that farm for a

(58:53):
bunch of different reasons. Here's a bunch of incentives that
you have access to in the farm that would prevent
got that pract that particular farming practice.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
It that can help you make the right choice for
conservation without an economic without as much of an economic
cost to your operation.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
Yeah, or without the feeling of like being held against
your will. I guess I understand, depending on who who's
coming at it. From wood angle, yeah, uhh.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
We talked about wolves from mint everybody's favorite topic right
just a minute, though, should be able to cover it. Uh, well, no,
it's more of like a it's more like a how
to how does stuff work in Washington? Question? Yeah? Okay,
so I have a question I wrote up. So I
was going to say, moving to the lower forty eight.

(59:47):
So we're going to talk about Alaska and we still
might talk about Alaska. We're gonna talk about Alaska. I
was gonna say moving to the lower forty eight. My
beloved colleague Brody Henderson just alerted me that there's a
bill right now. I have no idea where it sits.
There's a bill right now once again, moving to delist
wolves across the lower forty eight, which would have big

(01:00:08):
implications for right now Colorado, wouldn't have implications for Idaho,
Montana and Wow have implications for Colorado, potential implications for
Utah other states. How likely is something like that to advance?
Meaning I've had people explain to me that that questions

(01:00:31):
around listings and d listings are somewhat insulated from from
presidential administrations. Meaning these are things that move slow. They
move at department levels, and it's not like presidents come
in and are able to. They don't come in and
manipulate or push directly like Endangered Species Act discussions, that

(01:00:57):
might not even be true. I don't know. But if
you have, if you have a Republican Senate, a Republican Congress,
Republican president, all the appointees going along, is there a
power play? Is there a power play that can happen?
That would be we're gonna begin the delisting of grizzly

(01:01:19):
bears and we're gonna delist wolves in the Upper Great
Lakes or across the lower forty eight Or is that
just completely outside of how the election just went? Yeah,
does that make any sense? That was not a very
well articulated question. Try to say what I'm saying, Randall.

Speaker 4 (01:01:37):
I'm tracking.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
What what do you think?

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
Yeah, so you're correct that this is supposed to be insulated.
I mean it is all through the Endangered Species Act.
When a species is listed, you're supposed to eventually Typically
it's supposed to happen when it gets listed, but it
usually takes no more time to get a recovery plan.
And within that recovery plan, there are goals about the

(01:02:03):
number of individuals or the number of breeding pairs that
you have to hit before it would be delisted. The
Endangered Species Act was never written and designed to house
a species forever. It was designed to let's identify what
it is, let's identify how we recover it, and let's
get it off the books, and let's put the management

(01:02:24):
of that species back to the state, just like they're
managing for the game species right now. Right. And so
when you look at wolves and over the years, I mean,
it's been going back and forth since the Biden administration,
I think was the Biden administration with wolves? Or we
can overcomplicate this and get into all the distinct population

(01:02:45):
segments and all that other stuff. But the bottom line
is they said the Biden administration, this novisser has said
they've met recovery. Let's get it off the books.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
That came from the Biden administration.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
I'm sorry, the Obama administration going way back the Obama administration,
people didn't like that, so they took it to court.
The court overruled. I forget the reasons. Oftentimes it's a technicality.
It's not based upon how many are out there on

(01:03:17):
the landscape. It's did you follow the rules to the
letter of the law, right, and so We've been back
and forth on this with wolves on several occasions, listed, delisted, listed, dlisted.
And so does Congress have an influence on this? They
can they you know, they certainly can they get together

(01:03:39):
and pass something. So what you mentioned now, I think
it's called the pet and Livestock Protection Act, and it's
been introduced to get wolves off. I don't know much
about it other than it's got thirty Republican co sponsors,
no Democratic co sponsors on this, So.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
That's in the House.

Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
I think it is in the House right now. Right, Well,
it passed the House on a slim margin party line. Yeah,
but this is not something this is something that in
the Senate unless they do it away with the filibuster,
they're gonna have to get sixty votes for There's no
way they get to sixty votes. So I don't think
you're going to legislate it. Can it be influenced by
the administration, It absolutely can be, because all of those

(01:04:23):
rules not only go through the Agency, but then they
go through the Council on Environmental Quality the CEQ, which
is an office of the White House that all of
this environmental related, wildlife related stuff goes through. And so
there's a filter there, and there's direction coming from there
about you know, this is where the administration would like
to go. Ultimately, they still have to base it upon

(01:04:47):
the merits right, and so with the recent Grizzly Bear
decision that the Biden administration did, they in a way
they kind of changed the goalpost because this was about
distinct population segments and they said, well, no, let's look
at this across the whole landscape and what those numbers are.
So you get all of those things going on. Ultimately,
what's going to happen. I think it's going to continue

(01:05:08):
to be a political ping pong ball, which is a shame.
And when I think about the influence on this and
think about legislation to try to get us out of
this quagmire, I can't say that I'm a real fan
because I start thinking about ballot box initiatives that happened
at the states, right, It's not that. Look, wolves in

(01:05:29):
most cases should be delisted based upon the merits of recovery,
and it shouldn't be going back and forth between the
politicians and the courts, and the special interest groups and
the courts and all of that. We ought to just
be able to get it back to nonpartisan, science based
decisions like as it was designed to be, and how
we get there. I don't know if I ever figure

(01:05:50):
it out. I'm you know, I'm not going to be
doing this job anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
I think I might have been sitting next to you
when I heard this. I believe I'll sit next to
you and I and the Governor of Utah was addressing
the audience and the Governor of Utah pledged the wolves
aren't coming into Utah, and I remember thinking to myself,
I don't know if that's up to you, right, Yes,

(01:06:18):
I mean i'd be like, care for what you promise?

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
Well, right, I mean they do have legs, Yeah, kind
of like they got to Colorado before a malady initiative
there said let's put them back they were already there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Yeah, I'd be like, if you're looking at a map
and you just have that figured out based on the
map you're looking at, that's one thing. But if you
mean politically, I don't think that's that's not your call
right now. Yeah, Like if they walk in, they walk in.

Speaker 3 (01:06:40):
Well, the pro wolf people were like, there's no way
with the way Wyoming manages wolves that a wolf will
ever walk from Wyoming into Colorado, Like, well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Really, they'd be incentivized to.

Speaker 3 (01:06:56):
They're sprinting, they're walking.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Yeah, it's like the you know, yeah, like the equip
of the Southern Railroad. Uh yeah, good answer on that one.
It is a ping pong ball.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Man, It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
It is a ping pong ball. I feel that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
I feel that the if I had to look at it,
if I was going to crystal ball what's the word prognosticate,
If I was going to prognosticate, and I was going
to come up with like a realistic the realistic goal
for the next four years when it comes to the
when it comes to the delisting issue, I think that

(01:07:38):
saying declaring delisted across the lower forty eight, I think
that kind of winds up. I wouldn't be a poet.
I wouldn't really get worked up about it in a
negative way. But I think it kind of goes against
a lot of the work we've done about distinct population segments.
And I think that if the distinct population segment, if

(01:08:02):
that idea was being used the way it was intended
to be used, that'd be a quicker path forward. So
I think that to throw your hands up in the
air and be like, we're going to delist across the
entirety of the Lower forty eight. Is kind of like
me telling my kids, I'm gonna take all their iPads
and run them over with my truck. Well, they're like,
they're thinking, like, he's not really gonna do that, but
he is pissed, do you know what I mean? So

(01:08:27):
I think that realistically doing Northern Great Lakes on wolves right,
finding some clarity because that's been a ping pong back
and forth, back and forth. We're doing doing wolves in
the Northern Great Lakes back to state management, so Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. Right,
that's like a realistic goal. And this is my opinion,
and again this is me talking, not Joel talking. That's

(01:08:49):
a realistic goal. And I think doing to do grizzly
bears in one or two of the distinct population segments,
starting with the Yellowstone DPS and maybe the Northern Continental
Divide DPS, that seems to me like on that issue,
that would I would view that as a success. I

(01:09:09):
think it's starting to talk about the whole Lower forty
eight is just it's you're you're you're kind of reintroducing
an old paradigm that got us in trouble in the
first place. Was the problem was listing them in the
lower forty eight didn't give you any sort of nuanced control.
So to go back to talking about lower forty eight,
you're almost repeating like an old you know, it's kind

(01:09:31):
of you're repeating an old mistake. And I'm just talking
about I'm just talking about being strategic, like I'm talking
about getting making some progress. I feel that it'd be
much better to focus on these these pre existing sets
of rules that we've been operating under and like try
to be impactful there.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
Yeah. Well, I will prognosticate on this one, and my prediction,
as it continues to be a ping pong ball, that
this administration will ask the Service to go back and
look at it again and they'll find some merits for
delisting based upon the science that's out there, and end
up back in the courts something too.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
I'd ask him like this, I'd say, find the areas
that have the most grizzly bears hit by cars or
lethally removed, and let's just look at those, and all
the ones that don't have shockingly high numbers. We'll set
those areas aside for further review.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Right now, here's cal introducing like a whole new metric
and thing. When I just made a plea for sticking
with the conversation, now it's gonna be a vehicle collision conversation.

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
I want people to be like, oh, holy shit, one
hundred and some grizzly bears get killed every every single year.
I thought there were no grizzly bears.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Yeah, how they have any left?

Speaker 4 (01:10:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Okay. Trump appointees yep, As far as I'm aware of
his appointees, only one is with on. So they've been
having some good they've been having good success moving appointees
through the Interior department. Doug Bergham, he's a hunter, he is, right,

(01:11:11):
a successful businessman. He's a pretty popular governor. What's your
what's your take on what it's going to be like
working with the Department of Interior going forward, and any
other and any other kind of news or opinions to
have about other appointees and who are people going to
be what names are people going to be hearing a
lot in the next four years?

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
Right, Yeah, a lot of questions. Eric, We'll see if
I can remember them all and get to first off, Bergham,
I think I think he's going to be really good
to work with. I don't have a lot of personal
experience with him, but some of our staff has worked
with him through Western Governors Association and some of those

(01:11:52):
UH some of the groups through that, and it's been
a positive experience. And we're hearing some names. It's probably
too early to say of people that UH worked with
him in North Dakota that were in the first Trump
administration that will likely be coming back in So I
think there'll be some some known entities there. As you said,

(01:12:13):
he he is a hunter and fisherman. I actually was
at a reception last week celebration of the Explorer Act
and Secretary Bergham showed up as his first public appearance
since being confirmed UH and was there and he talked
personally about hunting and fishing and growing up and shared
some personal stories and you can tell it's it's not

(01:12:36):
just words with him in that regard, you know. He
he touched on at that a little bit about oil
and gas and the mandate from the President for energy dominance,
and he's also the energies are so he's going to
play a role in that but what he highlighted there

(01:12:56):
in this group of conservation minded folks in North Dakota,
they grew to be the number three producer of oil
and gas in the country during his administration, and they
did that while only impacting one percent of the surface area.
And so he's about technological advances to move these things forward.

(01:13:19):
He's about finding the balance, and I truly I think
he's got the track record to show that on the
energy side of things. Within the Department of Interior, another
name that's out there is Kate McGregor is Deputy Secretary.
She's not been confirmed yet, but that's who they've put up.
They'll start going to these second tier confirmations here in

(01:13:41):
the coming weeks once they get the main ones done.
Kate served in the same or similar role under the
first Trump administration, so she knows how the department works
and she's going to be able to bring some of
that knowledge there into how it operates. And it's somebody
the TRC and the other organizations worked with in the

(01:14:02):
first Trump administration, So a known entity there.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
You know, let me wet something in there is from
a conversation you and I had this morning, is with
so much upheaval in the federal workforce right now.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:14:14):
We had talked about, you know, with the federal buyout
reducing agencies, we've talked about a loss of institutional knowledge, correct,
And you had mentioned to me that some of these
secondary positions are going to wind up need to be
things you pay attention to, Like, are people coming into

(01:14:35):
some of these agencies that have a big conservation mandate
or a big implication for conservation. Are some of the
people that are coming in in leadership roles? How familiar
are they familiar? Are they with the agency? Do they
have a generally positive attitude toward conservation work within that agency?
Or in some cases, are they like complete outsiders who

(01:14:59):
are there more or to reduce and dismantle rather than
make more efficient and effective. Right, And that's just something
I guess we'll just have to wait and see on
some of those issues, right.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
Yeah, you know, we will have to wait and see.
I think Kate and her first time around, she generally
was good on her issues. Like I said, she understands it.
She left the administration and she went to work for
an energy company, which incidentally was actually more based on
wind and solar than it was oil and gas. Huh.

(01:15:28):
But so she's coming back in so she understands the
energy side of things. And you know, that's a huge
mandate with the Department of Interior. It's a huge agency, mining, minerals,
all of that stuff, water reclamation, Bureau of Reclamations in there.
We always think about it from the BLM and the
Fish and Wildlife Service, but there's a whole bunch of
other things that that secretary and that Deputy secretary have

(01:15:51):
to think about on top of that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
You know a thing that your predecessor at TRCP said
to me about Secretary Bernhardt that always stuck with me.
He had said he was talking about liking working with Bernhardt,
and he had an interesting thing he liked about him.
He's like, he doesn't waste your time, meaning when he

(01:16:14):
tells you something, he tells you what he's going to do,
and he doesn't pull the carpet off from under you.
So it will allow you to be pretty focused in
your ass where you didn't get like grinned along and
then later realized that he was having a totally separate
conversation and just leading you along. He said it allowed

(01:16:36):
for a certain efficiency where he'd be like, you're not
going to get anywhere on this, but if you'd like
to talk about this, I'm all ears, yeah, right, it
let you be, let you sort of understand the landscape,
right which I thought was just an interesting way to
look at someone who is an ally and adversary and like,
how efficient are you in figuring out where you line

(01:16:56):
up and don't line up right? Well?

Speaker 4 (01:16:58):
And that's a lot of what we're spending our time,
not only t RCP, but everybody that works up there
right now is trying to figure out as much as
we can about these appointees and where they're going to
land on that. And you know, there's a level of
excitement when a known entity goes in there so that
you don't have to build the time creating the relationship
and you can kind of know what their track record is.
But somebody like Burgham, you know, we know a little

(01:17:22):
bit about his track record. Beyond Bergham and McGregor that
I mentioned, we're not hearing a lot of names for
the next level down and the agency directors at this time.
It's still a little early to tell. In Department of
ag it's you know, a little bit on the flip
side there Brooke Rawlins is the new Secretary of AG there.

(01:17:43):
She was in the first Trump administration, but in a
very different role, had nothing to do with AG. She's
got a degree from Texas A and M, so she's
an aggie in that regard. But she's been in the
interim since last ministration. She's been part of the American
First Policy Institute, or she was CEO of that, which

(01:18:05):
is a conservative think tank. And in her first role,
you know, she was really about what was it it
was ran the Domestic Policy Council during the first term,
which basically is his cabinet and helps to set the
presidential agenda. And so it's been you know, she's not

(01:18:27):
a known entity in the AG space, and we don't
know who she's going to bring in. She hasn't worked
in that space, so she doesn't have a bunch of
people that she can pull from. But you know, they've
named a few more people over there. Richard Fordyce is
one of the under secretaries. I think there's three under
secretaries over there. Two of them we care about. One

(01:18:47):
is for Farm Production and Conservation, which oversees Farm Services
Agency and the NRCS. Farm Services Agency implements CRP, the
Natural Resources Concertvation Service or in our CS, implements the
rest of the conservation programs in the farm bill, So
that's an important one for us. He's a farmer out

(01:19:09):
of Missouri. He was administrator of Farm Service Agency in
the first Trump administration, so he understands some of the
egg policy and things like that, and apparently does a
lot of conservation work on his own farm back in Missouri.

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
We had talked as well about the idea of reconciliation,
which is something I hadn't given much thought to. Meaning
we're hearing a lot about cuts, yep, right, like we have.
I mean, we have like an existential problem in the
country about a budget deficit and debt. Like all the

(01:19:49):
money we're talking about, right, all this money we're talking
about that that we could spend on conservation. If you
were gonna compare that the amount of money that this
country spends servicing its debt, it's not it's nothing. We
spend far more servicing our debt than we do on
conservation by probably like some factor of hundreds.

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
I don't know exactly what that number is, but the
amount of money of uh for you, I lost the term.
I'm looking for but of the non obligated federal budget
goes to conservation.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Well, non obligated, yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 4 (01:20:31):
A non mandatory discretionary is the word I'm looking for.
The discretionary budget goes to the conservation issues.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
So if you rolled in the total federal budget would
be a much smaller fraction. So, uh, we have a
problem with like with debt, no remedy, like any remedy
is going to have a bunch of people pissed off.
It's like, that's what's created the problem. We have it,

(01:21:01):
and we so far we've just generally seen administration after
administration after administration people can't stomach what it would take
to fix it. Trump's in a similar bind. He's in
a similar bind because he can't go after and not can't.
It'd be politically detrimental to go after Social Security, Medicare,

(01:21:24):
and Medicaid, right, So you wind up needing to fidget around,
to fidget around in these much smaller things when like
seventy percent of the money is going to these things
that it's political suicide to talk about entitlement spending. It's
political suicide. So you need to go after the less

(01:21:45):
the areas with less friction, right, and you wind up
talking about little little chunks of money here and there
because you just can't talk about the big chunks of money.
I'll tell you I watched an interview with Steve Bannon,
who was in the early first Trump administration, was a huge,
the impactful person. And so here's Bannon saying, you know,

(01:22:05):
he was like a naval commander, right, he was in
the navy, He's got kids in the military. He's like
establishing how hawkish he is. But he goes, and this
is coming from me, we need to talk about the
defense budget down the road. We need to talk about
the social safety in that budget, because we're not going
to get there with the kinds of things we're talking about.
But to get back to the original point I was

(01:22:26):
going to make is we can talk about places to
save money, but you also the administration also needs to
look at how you make money, right, Right, There's like
you can cut out going, but what do you do
to bring it in? And one of the ways you
can bring money in is leasing, right, and probably some
other issues right.

Speaker 4 (01:22:46):
Right, Yeah, for sure. And so yeah, when it comes
to reconciliation, that's something that I don't know how much
the sportsman's community is paying attention to. But it is
certainly something that we're watching for a couple of reasons.
One is, and we've talked about it several times, the
slug of money that came out through Bill and IRA
that goes to conservation, that is from day one, been
a target because of how it came about, because it

(01:23:09):
has the climate connotations, because it was a Biden administration priority,
that's an area they're going to cut in. Anything that
at least that hasn't been obligated right now is on
the blocks to come back. The ten twelve, fourteen million
that I talked about with the farm bill program earlier
is part of that. That is the chance of getting

(01:23:30):
recisioned back out to decrease spending. So that's one part
of it. But then another part of it, as you said,
is increasing the revenue. And so we've heard and I
don't know how serious it is. And so with reconciliation,
it has to tie right back to the budget, and
so some of this may be a stretch, but if

(01:23:51):
they can tie it back to revenues, it may not
be a huge stretch. And so some big wins that
the conservation community and TARRASEPA has had over the course
of the last four and eight years having to do
with mining. The Biden administration decided that they weren't going
to permit a critical mineral's mind up in the Boundary

(01:24:12):
Waters Canoe area of northern Minnesota. That's been something that's
been going on for a long time, well in the
headwaters the headwaters, Yeah, thank you. That has specifically been
mentioned that maybe we need to bring that back online
so the royalties we get from that Pebble mine, which
Trump won when he was president before came out strongly

(01:24:32):
against and said no, we're not going to do this.
We need to protect Bristol Bay. That one has specifically
been brought up by Congress as another one where let's
bring that back on and get the royalties to bring
money in, to bring money in because of the royalties
that eventually would come from that. And then another issue
that TRCP and it's partners have worked on here over

(01:24:53):
the course of the last four years that the Biden
administration was a champion on was the Ambler Road and
the Brooks Range ere a two hundred and eleven mile
road that would have three thousand stream crossings and bisect
the West Alaska Cariboo herd and just all of the
negative things that come from that in this largely undeveloped

(01:25:13):
kind of the last bastion of wildness that this country has.
The BLM decided they weren't going to permit that. That's
something else that not only came up in the executive
Order about unleashing Alaska's greatness, but it's also been mentioned
as potentially coming in through reconciliation because we can open

(01:25:37):
up that mine right well, that mine if it depending
on how good it is. One of the documents from
one of the companies doing it said, yeah, we want
to do this so week and send it all overseas
to be developed. Right So it's not even going to
come back to our critical menus, but it would create
some royalties, so we're watching it for that. There's also
a positive on this as well with reconciliation. So there

(01:26:00):
is a loophole in the federal excise tax around archery
equipment and fishing tackle that is being exploited right now
by direct to consumer sales largely over the internet for
products that are starting outside of the country. Whereas we
all know that through the Pittman Robertson Act and Daniel
Johnson Act. There's an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, fishing tackle,

(01:26:24):
et cetera. But what's happening right now is with that
direct to consumer is not being taxed when it's purchased
online and it's being shipped from outside of the country
into the country because it's the first first point of
sale in the country. Is where that's collected. Oh really, yeah,
And so that's about a seventeen million dollar bump that

(01:26:48):
we think we could see for fish and wildlife conservation.
That is, when you buy a fishing reel, or you
buy a fishing tackle that's developed in China or arrow
shafts is another big one, and you buy them online
and it gets shipped directly to your home. Nobody's collecting
that tax. You're the one Steve that should be paying
that because you're the first point of purchase on that.

(01:27:10):
So there's legislation that's been in the talks, and I
think it's going to get introduced. There was talks that
would be introduced last week or this week that would
close that loophole and that would have a talk direct tie.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
To You're digging pretty hard for some blue sky there, Joel,
do it, I can't. I mean, it's it's great. I
think we could crowdsource seventeen million dollars if we really
needed to against Ambler road, right, pebble mine, yeah, boundary

(01:27:44):
waters right. But I guess the efficiency part of this,
right is I respect you well enough to bust your
your your jobs a little fair the because we have
seen so to go back to the farm bill, right, Like,
the farm Bill is a big thing, and that's why

(01:28:05):
I was joking on. This is a layup deal, right,
and it's a big complex package to the point where
it needs like a lot of physical people on the
ground to facilitate that just the use of a lot
of the programs within the farm bill. So you have
a lot of users on the ground who are working outside,

(01:28:26):
they're doing non techy things, and there's a system in
place that is very onerous for these people to in
their spare time try to access some of these programs
that will greatly benefit them and their bottom line and
for generations to come sometimes and that's a big barrier

(01:28:46):
to entry. So there's a lot of people involved in
the farm bill that work on the farm bill. My
understanding is all these people just got a notice that said, hey,
if you want to retire early, you can hit the
easy button and go right now.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
In regards to which has not had widespread adoption, No,
it went out to two point five million, and I
think there are sixty.

Speaker 3 (01:29:12):
Secretary Berghum all of his people in Interior got the
same notice. And at the same time what we were
just talking about, right, wants to review, officially review every
national monument going back to President Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen
oh six, So basically anything that was used in the

(01:29:36):
the Antiquities Act, every mineral withdrawal, which obviously is what
we just talked about, and every BLM Resource Management Plan
which ties into ample road. I mean, pick one of those.
And I can't imagine how many physical people it would

(01:29:57):
take to accomplish a full review of just one.

Speaker 2 (01:30:01):
Right, So yeah, like, do.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
We know that the right hand is talking to the
left hand in Washington?

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
Right? No, I think it's unclear. And I and on
the federal employee thing, when I looked at I saw
someone put in line with normal annual turnover is I
can't remember what it was in excess of one hundred
thousand normal annual turnover at the federal of that two
point five million federal employees normal annual turnovers one fifteen.

(01:30:29):
I'm looking at rand I don't know, yeah, check, But
I mean I think that the point being I just
think that it was.

Speaker 3 (01:30:37):
Like, you can see it as a positive like this
they're more loyal, well.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
Well as a positive negative. I just viewed it as
I thought that number of you wig the hell higher,
especially when I looked at what normal turnover is. Yeah,
then it'll wind up being as much as that's gotten
a lot of media attention, it'll wind up being kind
of like a non event. It's also changing.

Speaker 5 (01:30:57):
It's all there's nothing behind it. I mean they just
got an email. There's no there's no promise, right, like,
there's nothing. I mean, I think that's the thing is
it's sort of an io you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:08):
Yeah, I'd be scared.

Speaker 5 (01:31:10):
Yeah, I mean there's no I mean, you like.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
To take the deal, I'd be like, can I get
my money up front?

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
It's not exactly a pad on the back, yeah, right,
you know, it's like we all the you know, the
federal government gets summed up just like that, all the feds, right, Yeah.
And the more time you spend outside, the more interaction
you have with federal employees, and holy cow, are there's
like some phenomenally good, dedicated federal employees that deal with

(01:31:41):
a lot of sometimes literal human shit.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
And there's a lot of the opposite for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:31:48):
How many of the good ones go oh boy, these
guys don't have our back. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy, right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
I think that one one thing, that one point way
you got to hand it to the administration is they're
moving so fast that it it leaves you stuttering, right,
You're like, oh, you can't tell what's going on? So
and looking at trying to understand executive orders, right, and

(01:32:25):
other things. I find myself waiting for the dusta settle
a little bit to see like like, you know, I'm
opposed to Ambler Road project just taking Alaska. I'mposed of
the pebble mine project. I don't think that they should
drill Anmar. So you see the executive orders coming and

(01:32:47):
I kind of just wind up mentally hitting pause a
minute to understand how much of this is, Like how
what is symbolism? What's really going on? Where is their industry?
Where is there even industry buy in industry possibility at

(01:33:07):
the state level, what's the political mood, what is the
permitting process? No administration lasts forever. Some things just take forever.
What happens in two years, Like depending on how the
midterms go, how much of this stuff unravels if the
normal thing plays out where you normally, you know, it's

(01:33:30):
a majority of times a president in the midterms loses,
loses whatever their existing majorities are in the House and Senate.
So like, all of this stuff happening, and I catch
myself being like, oh, just just hold on a sec.
I'm trying to understand what's going on. Yeah, like, what
do you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:49):
Care about the words coming out of your mouth being true?
That is a smart thing to do.

Speaker 2 (01:33:54):
Yes, But then I also sit there thinking, I also
say that they're thinking to myself, there are things that
you know, there's things the administration is doing that I applaud,
and there's things the administration is doing that I'm very
nervous about. And I don't want to find that I'm

(01:34:15):
so on the things that I'm uneasy with or the
things that I oppose. I don't want it to be
that like everyone waits too long to try to get
their bearings and then realize that you missed your chance
to go Hey, wait a minute.

Speaker 5 (01:34:29):
Yeah, I guarantee you the I guarantee you. The ambler
roade people and the pebble mind people are not waiting
for the dust to settle, you know, they're not waiting
to see what happens in two years. Their foot on
the gas right now.

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):
It'd be like Colorado on the wolf thing. Yeah, they
get the votes and wolves. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
And I will say, like, hats off to the administration
for the strategy, right, Like it is an effective strategy.
We're gonna throw so much stuff out there, yeah, that
everybody is going to be like, oh my, oh that's illegal.
Wait is it illegal? Let's be sure about that. Can
somebody look that up. Let's let's make sure. Oh there's

(01:35:07):
another thing today. Oh there's another thing at two am today,
this tweet just went out. We got to make sure
what we can do, what our actions are. And some
of this stuff is going to stick. I think a
lot of it is not going to stick. But it's
a hell of a good strategy, right. And I think
from a conservation point of view, you gotta you can't

(01:35:28):
say everything's on fire all the time, because you can't
get people to show up all the time for everything,
Like you got to choose your fires and say, gang,
this one's the real one, and we got to show
up for this and and you know, yeah, some groups

(01:35:49):
are drawing some lines in the sand already. I think
a lot of folks are trying to be patient. It's
it's tough though, because it it's scary, Like there's a
lot going on on right now, and one of those
ambler road boundary waters pebble mind. I mean, we've already
had generation of conservation minded people work the majority of

(01:36:12):
their lives on some of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
Yeah, to give return it back order, Joel make because
it's gonna be his job. Joel's job is going to
be sorting all this out. But you know, earlier I
was making the point, and I want to clarify this
is very much me talking and not Joel talking. Earlier. Wait,
I'm not gonna say anything in sundiary. I'm just talking

(01:36:35):
about like and trying to understand the ass Is any
of this putting you in a bad position? No, no,
not yet. Earlier it won't at all. But remember earlier
I was making the joke about I was talking about
when I tell my kids, like listen, I'm gonna run
I'm gonna take everyone's iPads and run them over the driveway.
And and it's meant to be that. They go like, well,

(01:36:58):
he's not gonna do that, but he's here something some
some lesser version is gonna happen right now, Like they're
going in the gun safe is probably what's gonna happen.
It's probably what they're thinking, the iPads, not the kids. No, no, yeah,
Like I say I'm gonna run them over. In their head,
they're like, this is gonna settle out where my iPad's
in the gun safe right for like two weeks, like

(01:37:19):
I can see where this is going. So with a
lot of things and trying to get in like a
lot of things, are trying to understand how President Trump
operates and how he thinks is when is he doing
that I'm gonna run over all the iPads. When Trump
said I'm gonna empty we're straying way away from conservation.

(01:37:41):
I'm making up a conservation point. When Trump says I'm
gonna empty Gaza, I'm gonna empty Gaza and we're gonna
build a resort. He I think it's like I'm gonna
run over all the iPads. That's about where I'm at, right,
and anyone that has a stake in that is listening
and being like, man, a minimum, the iPads are going

(01:38:02):
in the gun safe. Right. It's a way of sort
of like it's a it's a way of communicating of
saying I'm at a point where I'm gonna do something major, right, Yeah,
So that's part of the thing is like him saying
energy like if we look at like energy extraction, you know,

(01:38:23):
if we look like like energy dominance such as and
you just throw out like such as ambler, pebble mind,
boundary waters. Is that running shit over in the driveway
or does that wind up being that they're going into
the gun set. Yeah, they're going to the gun safe.
And that's what's so bewildering to me personally.

Speaker 4 (01:38:45):
It is. But you know, there's another twist on this
because when I'm talking about pebble mine and boundary water
is an ambler in reconciliation that's congressional. So now you've
got not just the administration saying we ought to think
about this, but you've got Congress doing it, and you
start getting that synergy there, it's going to be even harder, right,
And so we're trying to be measured in our approach

(01:39:08):
right now. We're trying to be measured in what we say.
We've had several of our partners that have wanted to
be very vocal against some things that have come out already,
and it's like, you know, let's just hold on not
waiting too long. To your point, we can't do that.
But you know, we haven't even had to sit down
with Secretary Burgham as a community to say, here's the

(01:39:32):
things that we really care about. Here's our top ten issues.
Right where are you on these? We shouldn't go in
there and say we don't like this, don't do it
now before we even know what the lay of the
land is.

Speaker 2 (01:39:44):
Yeah, because it might backfire, right, and you.

Speaker 4 (01:39:46):
Know, just thinking about Alaska and unleashing Alaska's energy dominance.
Whatever the title of that one was, it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:39:55):
That really dramatic title.

Speaker 4 (01:39:57):
Yeah, I've got it somewhere, but it's spectacular it is. Yeah,
But there's like thirty different things that he identifies in there. Well,
which ones of those are gonna filter to the top.
Which ones will trcp's voice make a difference in, Because
if we're not going to move the needle on it.

(01:40:17):
There's probably no sense in wasting the political capital on
it and save it for those things like Pebble Mind
and Ambler Road that TRCP and our broader community have
worked so hard on for so long to really try
to put the stake in the ground on those when
the time is right.

Speaker 5 (01:40:35):
But I think one aspect of working for TRCP that
I hadn't really appreciated as an outsider is like, you
have to work with both sides of the aisle, and
it does that's.

Speaker 3 (01:40:50):
The literal job. Yeah you can't. Yeah no, I mean, like, like, no,
it's a.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
Good point it Yeah no.

Speaker 5 (01:40:56):
I mean, but like there's people that when Biden's in office,
they're saying, you know, tiercp's working with Biden and doing X,
Y and Z, and if you don't like Biden, you
don't like what tiercp's doing. And then if this administration
comes in and you work on priorities that you have
with this new administration, say, oh, they're just bending over
to Trump, you know. And so I think, like it's

(01:41:19):
easy if you're not trying to get access to the
Secretary of the Interior, it's easy to sort of sit
back in the cheap seats and you know, take a
flamethroat or whatever you don't like coming out of DC.
But I having worked for TIERCP, I appreciate the position
that you're in because you need to have influence no
matter who's sitting behind that desk, right, And so it's

(01:41:42):
a matter of aligning your priorities with their priorities and
finding where you can work on things. And then that
cooperation is what gives you the leverage to in turn say, actually,
pebblemind is a red line for us, you know, and
so it's like you have to pick those those battles strategically.

Speaker 4 (01:42:01):
Yeah. No, that's that's exactly where we are, where we've
been for a long time. And you know, there's groups
out there, not so much in the direct conservation space,
but there are groups out there that we're just going
to refuse to work with Trump because he's Trump, and
they're not going to see any of their priorities go
anywhere for the next four years and.

Speaker 2 (01:42:21):
Well potentially eight. I mean I'm not saying with Trump,
but I mean I if Trump, you know, if.

Speaker 3 (01:42:28):
True can put some policies in place.

Speaker 2 (01:42:30):
Yeah, well that are long last But I was even saying, like,
you know, it's it's it's fairly common for an administration
to continue on under a new you know, under new leadership,
with the priorities to continue. So you know, it's not
no one really knows, but you could have, you know, basically,
you know, presume me as Jade Vance, you'd have like

(01:42:52):
basically a Trump three point zero. And if you're going
to go and cry in the corner because you don't
want to deal with the right, uh, you might be
sitting in that corner a very long time right right now.

Speaker 5 (01:43:04):
And I have I mean I have like memories of
when I was working at TRCP talking to somebody like
at a bar not who's not working in conservation space.
But they're like you, you guys are working with this
individual or you're sending out a press release with with
this individual's office, like I thought they were against conservations,

(01:43:27):
Like well on this bill, they're in the right space,
you know. And so it's like you can't close too
many doors and.

Speaker 2 (01:43:35):
Still be effective.

Speaker 5 (01:43:37):
So I don't know, I don't know who I'm talking
to there, maybe just the yeah no. But I mean
it's like it's like there's when everything is political, when
everything's political if you work with somebody on one side,
like there's a large part of the public that turns
you into a bad guy. And that's if you want

(01:43:57):
to be effective in Washington. That's just not like an option.
So I don't know all that to say. I respect
the way that the RCP does well, it puts you
in an uncomfortable position a lot of times.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
I'll put it like I want to add to what
you're saying a little bit because the focus is so broad. Yeah,
when we're talking about conservation, like the focus is huge.
There's things that live under conservation that you know are
are sort of like cousins to conservation. But it's a
huge area. Right. If you're if you're an organization, let's

(01:44:30):
just say you're a gun rights organization, there's not going
to be really any way, Like you're not going to
go if you're focus singularly on defending Second Amendment rights,
you're not going to have the conversation with the Biden administration.
There's kind of like nothing to talk about. You're gonna
be like just resistance.

Speaker 5 (01:44:46):
You're gonna be fundraising.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
Yeah, you get you're like fundraising and resistance because you
have a a small area of focus in conservation, there's
so many different aspects to it, and servicing American hunters
and agy, there's so many different aspects to it. You
need to at any given time be able to be
push and pull because there's gonna be things within a

(01:45:10):
right linging administration that are going to be like easy
wins for you. You know, access on refuges and it's not
technically conservation, but it fits into that, it fits into
the interests of hunters and anglers, right, So you got
you always got to be ready to there's so many
issues you've got to be ready to, like pick your
moment and find the allies where you find them and

(01:45:32):
then do like a push poll thing because it's not
I don't think you can really afford to just burn
stuff down now. You become irrelevant for too long.

Speaker 4 (01:45:40):
Right, or you irrelevant for a few years and then
you're either fundraising or you're just totally irrelevant.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:45:46):
And but trcp's track record over the last two plus
decades has been able to get stuff done no matter
who's in there. And that's something that I'm really proud of.
It's something that drew me to this Organization's the ability
to do that and have that kind of influence and
work on the variety of issues that we do.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
A thing that draws me to TRCP, and there's a
lot of ways to push conservation, but the thing that
draws me to the way TRCP handles conservation is you
guys have this every year, you have a Capital Conservation
Awards dinner. And it's like, I mean, it's ad mentally
somewhat symbolic, but intentionally so where it's you guys honor

(01:46:30):
someone from each side of the aisle, so you honor
a Republican, honor Democrat or someone from the typically someone
from the House, someone from the Senate. I've seen it
go where it's too Western governors and applaud them on
where areas where they were able to do conservation wins
right right, and the areas where they were able to

(01:46:51):
do conservation wins is often where they had political cover
within their party but not looking at it, singling it
out and applauding it in a bipartisan way. And that
like I said, it's it's symbolic, it's impactful, but it
like puts a stake in the ground about how we're
approaching this and how we're looking at it like we're
gonna partner with whoever is in power wherever they can

(01:47:13):
help us get conservation wins, of which there are many, right.

Speaker 4 (01:47:16):
You know, well, those awards also give us the chance
to to show the bipartisanship even by those members, right,
because those things don't get passed, those things don't get
done if there's not bipartisanship on that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:30):
So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:47:32):
We got that coming up again this year April thirtieth.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
I imagine. Yeah, I'll be there, and I.

Speaker 4 (01:47:38):
Hope you will since you're gonna mce.

Speaker 2 (01:47:39):
It, I see it, So you'll you'll be spend a
lot of time in your future having cups of coffee,
getting getting introduced to people.

Speaker 4 (01:47:49):
There's been a lot of that already, and I think
that's gonna be a lot of this first year.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
A lot of new faces around town.

Speaker 4 (01:47:55):
Yeah, there is. You know, we've focused a lot on
the administration, but there's big changes in Congress too, a
lot of new members there. But you know, I think
about the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where we
had Mansion and Brosso that have led that for a
long time, and we've got a new leader and a
new chair and a new minority leader in there, and

(01:48:16):
a lot of staff turnover that we've worked with for
a long time, and so myself and the rest of
the team have a lot of work to do just
to get to know the new players in Congress as
well as in the administration.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
Have they offered a buy out to Congressman, We'll pay
you through September. I wonder if I wanted to take
it if they did, let's talk about let's talk about
So we have the annual awards dinner coming up. Yeah,
but that's not you can't, like Joe blow off the
Street can't come in right.

Speaker 4 (01:48:49):
Absolutely, they can really, Yeah, explain that. Yeah. So you know,
this is largely driven by our sponsors and our partners
that we invite. We'll get a number of members ariss,
a lot of staffers will come to that event because
it is an opportunity to celebrate our conservation achievements as
you highlighted, and we'll recognize a Democrat and a Republican

(01:49:11):
from Congress. We also typically recognize someone from the outside world,
communications or supporting. I think last year's award winner might
be sitting next to me here.

Speaker 3 (01:49:22):
Two years ago I was I stepped in an m seed.

Speaker 4 (01:49:25):
You got recognized at one point too, did you not.

Speaker 5 (01:49:29):
I don't think you got the big award. You did
the Yeah, it's like people from the private sector and
give yourself an award.

Speaker 4 (01:49:36):
Colt, No, you missed your opportunity, man, man.

Speaker 3 (01:49:40):
I got a lot of stories like that. Brandon Newberg
got the Communicators Award, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I got
to make fun of them a little bit on stage,
which was always fun.

Speaker 4 (01:49:52):
Yeah. So so we use it for that and a
lot of our corporate sponsors come and so lebrate the night,
as well as our partners on the conservation side. But
we do have individual tickets for people that want to
come and be part of this and help to celebrate.
Www dot TRCP dot org slash C eight twenty twenty

(01:50:15):
five is where you can buy the find those tickets
and as we get closer to the event towards the
end of March, our auction items. We do an online
auction related to this and that's available to everybody, whether
you're there or not, and the auction items will be
on that same website as well is our dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:50:36):
I got a little loss because we're doing two things.
We're doing a wild game dinner that'll be auctioned, correct,
and that will be part of that auction. Yes, I
know we debated this, but I can't remember where we landed.

Speaker 4 (01:50:47):
That will be part of the auction.

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):
So you'll be able to come to our headquarters here.
We just remodeled our remodeled kitchen. We finished, We built
it and then immediately tore it apart and read did it?
That kitchen will be ready, and it's a dinner. I came.
Do we say four or eight? It was a lot. Yeah,
we're auctioning off at dinner for eight at me Eater headquarters.

(01:51:12):
And it'll be Randa will be there. He doesn't even know.

Speaker 3 (01:51:15):
I I hope.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
So I'm gonna say cal will be there. He doesn't know.
I'll be there for damn sure. And we're gonna do
a big, a big many course dinner in that kitchen.

Speaker 3 (01:51:30):
You're a you're adopting Trump speak already.

Speaker 2 (01:51:33):
The biggest day.

Speaker 3 (01:51:33):
It'll be a big many many.

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
The biggest best dinner.

Speaker 4 (01:51:37):
I heard.

Speaker 2 (01:51:38):
It was the best dinner ever. People are saying a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:51:42):
Of people are saying, love to help with the dinner
for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
Uh having a big dinner and we're gonna auction that
off and then we have our like seventh annual or
so many time annual Hunt sweep Steaks. It used to
be an Elk Hunt sweep steaks and then we turned
it into a Turkey Hunt sweep steaks where a winner
and a guest have all their expenses paid. So we

(01:52:09):
cover everything, airfare, lodging, We've even provided shotguns, shotgun, Ammo, camo,
we clean your turkeys for you. All everything taken care of,
and that we're going to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:52:25):
We're gonna do it later in the summer.

Speaker 2 (01:52:27):
Later in summer.

Speaker 4 (01:52:29):
One of the things that the team identified is that trying
to promote the sweepstakes while promoting the dinner and all
of the auctions kind of got lost. So we're going
to separate it a little bit. I think we're talking
about promoting that during June and.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
July and that that Turkey Hunt sweepstakes that's a raffle
and that was interesting to find out years ago we
did it. The first couple of times we did it,
we did it as an auction, and then when we
moved it to a raffle, it made a lot more
money as a raffle. And then we just had a
guests on who explained all the ways in which that
does not hold true when you're trying to distribute big

(01:53:05):
o'horn sheep tags. Raffles can't touch an auction. But in
the case of.

Speaker 3 (01:53:11):
Our hunts going to turkey counting with.

Speaker 4 (01:53:13):
Steve and the same allure as a big yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):
In the case of going turkey hunting on a on
a on an all expense paid turkey hunt, raffles are
way better. So we'll do the raffle. We'll do the
raffle in the summertime for the turkey hunt. And we're
going to auction to the highest bidder dinner for eight
at our headquarters here, and it'll be a many coarse
wild game dinner and we'll pair it with drinks.

Speaker 4 (01:53:38):
Sounds like it'll be a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 (01:53:40):
Paired with drinks. We'll be there. Travis Barton at Barton
Fabrication is as we speak, making the table that you
will sit at wow while eating the dinner, and you'll
look at this steel bar dividing these two large wooden
slabs and you'll think that it was an esthetic consideration
and you won't know that it had to do with

(01:54:02):
the wood slabs not being big enough.

Speaker 3 (01:54:08):
An awesome touch.

Speaker 4 (01:54:11):
Touch.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
Yeah, that's steel running down the middle of not Travis's fault.
Not Travis's fault. So we got that. Thanks for coming on. Man,
appreciate you An you want to wedge in there.

Speaker 4 (01:54:27):
Man, We've covered a lot of ground, I really think.

Speaker 2 (01:54:29):
So I appreciate. Uh, I just want to clothes to say.
And I appreciate that you're in a real like like
you're in a you're in a spot right now, you're
in you're in a you're coming into a new role
for an organizations that have been homing along for a
long time, and then getting your feet under you on

(01:54:50):
that and then at the same time dealing with a
as the Free Press puts it, a major vibe shift
in DC. The vibe is just different there right now,
and it's like, uh, that's got to be a daunting thing.

Speaker 4 (01:55:07):
It is.

Speaker 6 (01:55:07):
Yeah, for sure, just get getting getting your feet under
you at a new org and then and then getting
your feet under you with with the new administration and
is a very fast moving group of people.

Speaker 2 (01:55:18):
So I appreciate you taking your time to come talk
to us absolutely all that's going on. And I asked
people to you know, I did an interview yesterday and
and with the one of the podcasts by the Navy
Seals Foundation, and he was just saying, if you could
change one thing about hunting, what would you change? And
I said, it's a great question, and I thought about it,

(01:55:39):
and I couldn't really think of a good one, and
I said, I guess it would be that a greater
percentage of the people who like and un like to
hunt and fish increase their involvement and increase their involvement
and conservation, increase their involvement and conversations about funding for

(01:56:00):
and just demonstrated greater awareness about the issues at stake
and how to be impactful. And you can do it
at a broad scale like at the federal level, like
the conversations we've been having here today with TRCP, or
you can do it small scale, local about animals and
fish that you like that live in places where you
love to hang out, as represented by the huge partnership

(01:56:20):
the TRCP has with a lot of organizations that are
more singularly focused on specific issues surrounding specific animals. You
can take your pick. You can find the kind of
thing that fits with how you view the world, and
when consider that, consider TRCP and know that they have
their work cut out for them in the coming years,

(01:56:41):
and trying to make sure that conservation stays front and
centered in the minds of the lawmakers in DC.

Speaker 4 (01:56:49):
Yeah. No, I appreciate that, Steve, and I think that's
a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:56:52):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:56:52):
I think about all the partners we have, and there's
great partners that are getting the work out there on
the ground. It's a very tangible to see what they're doing.
One of the challenges I think TARRCP has always had
is that we work largely behind the scenes. We're up
there on Capitol Hill every day and we are facilitating
the funding, the rule making, the legislating that's happening. We're

(01:57:16):
working side by side with our partner groups. I don't
want to discount the work that they're doing, but those groups,
they're doing the advocacy on the hill, and they're doing
the implementation, and they're putting on all of the local banquets.
So they're doing all those things. We're just looking at
the policy side of this, and so fundraising is very

(01:57:39):
important to us and they help to do that. And
we're an organization where as we've talked for the last
couple of hours, we're nonpartisan We're in there all the time,
every year, working on both sides of the aisle to
get done what's important to the sportsmen that are out there.

Speaker 2 (01:57:55):
And for eighty you special listeners out there. We're getting
dinner going now. You just got to win the auction
and we'll do something we've never done before. Well, I'll
take requests mm hmm. You can send in like it'll
be round rough. You can give me rough.

Speaker 3 (01:58:07):
You're like, Nope, don't have that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:09):
Yeah, like I've always wanted to try, you know, elephant,
and I'll be like, eah, you had you ever had possible?
All right, thanks man, appreciate it. Keep

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Steven Rinella

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