January 27, 2025 • 57 mins
Keely has investigated murders in the cartel controlled areas of northern California and many instances where government agencies seem to be trying to run ranchers off their properties. She has the purest form of courage and investigates wherever the truth leads her. In this jaw dropping episodes we dig into these stories. You can learn more about what she does at America Unwon.
Fair warnning, these aren't stories that are going to make you feel good, but they are 100% stories that you need to hear.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
these are stories of outdoor adventure and expert
advice from folks with callousedhands.
I'm james nash and this is thesix ranch podcast Keely what is
(00:27):
Unwon.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Unwon is a word that I did not know was a word, but I
came up with it to describe theproject that I want to do.
Essentially, I want to writeabout the American West.
I started doing that back in2012.
And to me it sort of typifiedtwo things One, the idea that
there's still a lot ofopportunity out there for young
(00:50):
people who may have been toldthat the American dream is dead,
so sit in a cubicle becausethat's your only option.
Growing up the way I did, I knowthat's not true.
I know there's a lot ofAmericans still living a very
you know, they're marching tothe beat of their own drum in
the American West, and I wantedto highlight those folks,
especially for youngergenerations, who don't fit in
the mold that they're told theyneed to fit into today.
But as this project has grown,I think it started to embody the
(01:14):
other meaning of the word,which is that the American West
truly isn't one.
We face a lot of obstacles here, and I do think we face again,
not to sound conspiratorial, butthere's a lot of folks who
don't like the freedom that thispart of the country embodies
and typifies, and I think we'reseeing sort of an attack on the
Western way of life, and sothat's a lot of what I've come
(01:36):
to write about at Unwant since Istarted.
How's that?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I think it's great.
Longer answer.
Your writing is special.
I was going through yourwebsite and it is so crisp and
clear.
I haven't encountered anythinglike it in a very long time, and
everything from yourphotography to your prose to the
speed that you move throughtopics is so concise.
(02:03):
There's something really,really special just about your
skill and what you're goingafter.
But the actual substance of it,of course, is very important to
me, and I've talked a lot abouthow hard it is to be a rancher,
how hard it is to be a farmer,how important it is that this.
You know, one to 2% of ourpopulation continues to produce
(02:26):
food for the other 98%, and somepeople might be sick of hearing
from me about it, and that istoo bad for them, because I'm
not going to stop.
Why is this important to you?
What's your background thatmade you realize that this is a
big deal, that it is importantand that you need to take your
skills and shed light on it?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, thank you for saying that, james.
That means a lot coming fromyou, truly.
I think you know I grew up in avery small town in Northern
California.
My dad is a ranch vet, my momis too, but she had eight kids,
so that became her focus and itwas just a different way of
growing up.
And Northern California, Ithink, is a bit of a forgotten
(03:11):
part of the country.
We're about three hours Northof San Francisco and even when I
tell other Californians where Ilive, they think I'm in Oregon
by then.
We got another four hours to gountil we hit the Oregon border.
So that part of Californiatruly is the wild west.
My childhood I didn't realizehow wild and wooly it was until
I went to North LA County forcollege and had the biggest
(03:35):
culture shock of my life and Ireally saw how disconnected my
generation was from their food,exactly like you're saying but
also just from their fellowAmericans.
There was this very negativeattitude toward America that was
in vogue when I was in collegeand I think that's changing a
little bit.
But when I was a kid it justkind of shocked me because you
(03:57):
know, you hear this idea of theugly American, the backward
American.
That's not what I grew up with.
All my heroes are people you'venever heard of, who are just
authentic and self-reliant andgood neighbors with amazing
stories and incredible skillsets.
They're building their own life, they're building their
American dream, and I just hadthis desire to let my classmates
(04:21):
, my peers even in college, knowabout those Americans, that
other half of America that Ithink has been forgotten for so
long and I think it's only goneon to fuel a lot of the change
we're seeing in our country, alot of the conversations we've
had in our country since then.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I think and I've told people this before that
Northern California has more incommon with Eastern Kentucky
than it does with what peoplethink of when they think of
California.
It is a very, very wild placeand oftentimes fairly lawless.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wow, I love that you said that.
I've never heard anyone elsesay that, but when I went home
last year for a short doc I didon a murder that happened out
there, I just had this thoughtthat it really reminds me of
almost like Appalachia.
It's like these little hollowsthat sort of lends itself to
outlaws and yeah, it's a wildplace, and I haven't heard
(05:17):
anyone else make that comparison.
So I love that you said that.
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, and I don't mean it in a negative way at all
Love Kentucky, love people fromKentucky.
They're awesome.
Absolutely, and the same thingwith Northern California and you
touched on it, but if you hitthe Oregon-California border and
drive south for five hours,you're still in Northern
California.
This is a big chunk of ground,yeah.
(05:43):
State of Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Exactly.
Long live Jefferson.
Yeah, we're not very wellrepresented but we're a yeah,
we're kind of a rowdy bunch andI love it.
I mean, it's part of thatcharacter has to do with the
cannabis industry, the blackmarket cannabis.
That's been part of the cultureand the Emerald for the last
what?
50 years, but it goes back, Ithink, even before that
(06:08):
California is just a boom andbust mentality since the gold
rush.
You know you've got people whocome there for these huge
opportunities.
It's kind of the most insaneAmericans who made it all the
way to the coast till they ranout of land.
And it's just there's some ofthat spirit still there.
Whether you have Silicon Valleyor Hollywood or even the
Emerald Triangle, where there'sthis black market cannabis
industry, there's definitely aboom and bust mentality, very
(06:31):
outlaw spirit.
So I love Northern California.
I think it's beautiful.
It's just it's very ignored bySacramento and it gets maligned
with the rest of our statefairly for the politics.
But yeah, you got a lot of agpeople in California.
It sounds like you've beenthere, you get it.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, yeah, and I've got friends from there,
fantastic people.
The first time I fought firethere was when I was in college
and I was really naive aboutwhat Northern California was and
we were fighting fire in likethe Feather River country and
then a little bit out of Chicoand into the Mendocino and stuff
(07:09):
like that.
I was on a helicopter repelcrew, so we're flying into all
these fires and as we're flyingover the towns, it's the middle
of summer, it's scorching hot.
And I said to one of the olderguys on the fire crew I was like
why does everybody have aChristmas tree in their backyard
?
And he's like oh you, hee-haw,bumpkin, those aren't Christmas
(07:33):
trees, you idiot.
And I was like, oh really.
So as we continued to fight firethere, we started to run into
these grow operations andsometimes, flying into the fires
, you'd see guys on the groundrunning around with assault
rifles, with AK-47s and stufflike that.
We knew that there was boobytraps around some of these
places, so I could be way out inthe wilderness someplace and
(07:58):
then suddenly run into like adrip irrigation system and then,
no matter what was going onwith the fire, you needed to
back out of that spot.
And it was just mind blowing tome that that kind of stuff was
going on.
You know I was naive to all ofit, but it has been going on
there for a long time.
With the legalization ofcannabis, how did that change
the way those illegal growoperations were conducted?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh man, that's the money question right now,
because everybody has adifferent opinion.
When I shot this doc, I spokewith some guys who are longtime
cannabis growers, old back tothe landers, some of the second
generation of that group, andyou'll hear different things but
the prevailing belief is theydon't like legalization because
(08:47):
California rolled it out the waythey roll everything out.
They overregulated it.
So it kicked some of the youknow, maybe more honest brokers
or the little guys out and itemboldened the bad actors who
never cared about regulation inthe first place Some of the
folks you're talking about.
So when I was growing up, mydad's a vet.
(09:10):
He's a mobile vet, so he's gothis pickup truck and he would
drive two, three hours in anygiven direction for work, and so
I think I had a uniqueexperience as a kid because I
would go on these growoperations and they'd welcome us
.
But we were probably some ofthe looking back, you know, like
some of the only outsiders theywould really let on the
(09:32):
property because they're the vet.
You know, you've got a sickanimal, you're going to call the
vet, you're not going to bringthem into town.
So I remember, you know, goingup places like Spyrock Road and
some of the more outlaw cornersand pockets and we'd pull up to
a gate and some guys with AK-47sthey'd boil out of the woods.
(09:53):
They'd open the gate for you,nod at you, keep on going.
They'd always pay in cash.
They'd always give a big tip.
They were nice guys but theywere outlaws, absolutely living
on the edge and I don't knowthat legalization really erased
that part of the market.
I think it erased.
You know, the guy with a littleChristmas tree in his backyard
(10:14):
or some of the more tame players.
I think the big guys.
I don't think they're phasedmuch and I've heard that.
You know we did a lot ofinvestigating into this topic
when we were shooting our docand the sheriff's told us
there's been studies done indispensaries and a lot of the
product that you buy in a legaldispensary is still coming from
the black market.
(10:34):
So it's not like the supplychain has really changed and the
cartels have gotten really,really, really bad in Northern
California, like that's theprevalent issue.
More than anything, I would sayYou've still got outlaw growers.
You've got thoseback-to-the-landers who, for
(10:56):
better or worse, a lot of themare just farmers or hippies who
wanted to live off-grid and grewa plant in the backyard while
they were at it.
That's really where this allstemmed from.
But that infrastructure andthen the culture of silence
around it, because all of us gotused to not talking about this
and keeping your mouth shut.
I think that's when we createdlike this, you know, welcoming
environment for truly bad people, like Bulgarian Chinese cartel,
(11:19):
you know, and then the, thewhole, you know, south America
Mexican cartels.
There's just a huge presence upthere and most people do not
believe me when I say that.
So the fact that you've seen it, it's just like this undertold,
ignored piece of reality rightnow in the US.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, and a lot of the fires that we were dealing
with were fires that were fromthe cartels, so they were
burning each other's operations.
There were some cartel warsgoing on, so they would just
slip out and burn somebodyelse's product, and then they
didn't care if that turned intoa giant forest fire in July in
(11:59):
Northern California.
Okay, Wow so yeah, it waspretty wild.
Who killed Dick drury?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
well, you're trying to get me in trouble.
I can't, apparently legally Ican't say what I think, but the
documentary we did, I thinkpretty compelling evidence
anyway in my opinion, that itwas a black market grower.
That's my opinion.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
The article you wrote is fascinating.
Can you tell me the story?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
So the story of Dick Drury?
Yeah Well, he's a soul timer,Wonderful guy.
His family's been ranching upon Bell Springs Road, which is
another one of those hot pocketsin the Emerald, since the 1860s
or so.
They've been on the same pieceof land and he was just a
(12:55):
soft-spoken, wonderful guy whoworked for the county.
He had cows, he had two adoptedsons, his wife Phyllis, who was
sick, and he took care of herfull time.
And one day, January 21stliterally yesterday, four years
ago, in 2021, he was found deadon Bell Springs road with a
gunshot wound to the head.
(13:15):
His Ford Explorer was stillrunning and that case has been
unsolved.
So when I first heard about it,I was working with my dad, I was
home visiting and I just, youknow, on a work call with my dad
and we were up at this remoteranch called Lone Pine, which is
way out in the boonies, and theCowboys were talking about this
murder that happened and Ithink it was funny doing the
(13:38):
documentary because nobodyreally wanted to tell us they
were scared or that they feeluncomfortable, because you can't
really allow yourself thatthought and still work where
these guys work.
They just don't, they don'tallow themselves to think about
it.
They're just daily life forthem, it's just part of what
they have to deal with.
But you could just tell thatthere was a little more
uncertainty than usual because Ithink we always told ourselves
(14:01):
the ranching community will stayto ourselves, We'll do our work
, and the outlaw growers, thecartels, whoever else is out
there in the woods, they'regoing to do their thing, but we
are going to leave each otheralone and we'll coexist like
that.
And when Dick Drury was murdered, the natural thought was that
this was a cartel hit.
That's what it looked like,that's what it felt like and
(14:23):
that's kind of what hisneighborhood would suggest.
So that's what it looked like,that's what it felt like and
that's kind of what hisneighborhood would suggest.
So that's what we all believed.
And there were a lot of rumors.
The rumor I heard most commonlyI remember first hearing it at
Lone Pine was that he wasprobably shot by a Bulgarian
cartel boss Bulgarian crime boss, whatever whose dog got into
his cows and Dick shot his dogand this crime boss put a hit on
(14:45):
his life, which is the thing wesee a lot, because these guys,
these illegal operators, they'llthey'll have these big dogs
that guard their grows and thenat the end of harvest they'll
often just let them loose.
So it's exactly like you'redescribing, James, where they
don't really care what happensin the forest and they don't
really care what happens totheir neighbors.
These dogs aren't their problemanymore.
(15:06):
And so up in Covolo, which is anative reservation town it's a
tribal community we'd have theselike packs of wild dogs that
would find each other and runaround and terrorize people.
Up at Lone Pine the cowboy toldme all his horses had torn ears
from these wild dogs from thecartel grows.
So we know that these dogs areout there, we know that they
(15:27):
cause all this trouble and itkind of made sense that you know
something like that would havehappened.
And then Dick would haveprotected his cattle and shot
the wrong dog, wrong person'sdog.
So that's what we believed.
But there was no progress on thecase for about four years.
Until well, there still isn'tany progress on the case.
It's unsolved, no arrests havebeen made.
(15:48):
But thinking about my dad backhome driving around doing his
job in the mountains, knowingthat something had shifted, that
our worlds had collided, so tospeak, was just so disturbing to
me, and I got the opportunityto do a documentary, a short doc
, and this was a big story tobite off for a 20-minute doc but
felt like a good excuse to golook into it.
(16:10):
We had some funding to makethat happen and so went home and
tried to piece together whatmight have happened and in the
end I thought it was the carteland not to give it away.
But I believe it had more to dowith the original outlaw
cannabis community than thecartel.
That's my opinion after what Isaw and spoke to and some of
(16:32):
what you see in the doc.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Did you uncover any evidence that you were able to
hand over to law enforcementthat could help inform the case?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean I found some interesting documentation
on social media, actually frompotentially a daughter of the
perpetrator, potentially allegedwhatever legal term I'm
supposed to throw in there.
But I, you know, we shared allthat with the police.
I have to say the police havegotten a lot of heat for this
(17:03):
case, but they were very helpfulto us.
They really wanted to beinvolved.
They gave us a lot of theirtime and access.
What I've heard is that the DAis the one who doesn't want to
take the case, doesn't thinkthere's enough evidence.
Personally, I think there's alot of stuff to go off of
(17:24):
already, but it's in the handsof the DA at this point.
But yeah, they have everythingwe found, everything we saw.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Man, where do you get the courage to take stuff like
this on?
Like I know you're tough, butlike are you?
Like let's take on.
You know outlaw murderer cartelgroups tough.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I mean, maybe I'm just not very smart.
Like, what's going on I have toread.
After we got a little deeperinto this case, I was pretty
relieved that it wasn't headingdown a cartel route, because I
don't know if we had found thatout I mean even our producers in
DC.
I told them like, if we, youknow we're mean even our
producers in DC.
I told them like if we, youknow we're, we're shooting, we
have, however much time to shoot, we're going to find out what
(18:10):
we find out, but we may not beable to use it depending on what
we find out, cause my parentsstill live here and, um, you
know I'm, I, I just some thingsare not worth the risk, um, and
it is a little risky for sure,but I think I don't know.
James, it's like nobody hasdone anything for my community
(18:32):
in so long and I've seen peoplejust live in fear good people
for so long.
It's just, it's frustrating.
And if I'm going to befrustrated and not do something
about it, you know I don'treally have a leg to stand on.
Where I have the opportunityand I think journalism, if
that's the field that you wantto go into, you have to go where
(18:52):
the truth leads you, you know,to the best of your ability.
So this seemed like animportant story.
I had a lot of respect for DickDrury's family.
I didn't know him.
I was close with hissister-in-law, billy Drury, who
was this like 80-year-oldcowgirl who was just like my
hero.
She was amazing.
She's like riding horsesthrough her 80s and I just loved
that family and I was closewith his nephew and his best
(19:17):
friend's family and he was justone of these forgotten people
that no one cared about and noone knew his name and I just it
was so wrong for an 85 year oldman to be killed like that on
his almost next to his ranchwhere he was just a good
neighbor his whole life andnobody did anything about it.
It just kind of made me sickand you hear about, you know the
so much in the news is sofrivolous and his life was
(19:38):
totally ignored and my neighborswere scared, People were scared
, so yeah, I'm sure they stillare.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, I'm sure they stillare.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So what has to change to bring security back to this
community?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I mean one of the sheriffs I spoke with, matt
Kendall, who's incredible, justsuch a great person.
We grew up in Kovalev, localguy done his best to get the
word out on this just salt ofthe earth.
He feels that we needlegalization at the federal
level.
That's kind of his opinion,because sort of the local
(20:18):
legalization is still creatingthis black market that the crime
thrives off of.
I'm not sure if that's whereI'm at or not.
I don't.
I don't love the whole culturearound.
Uh, what I saw growing up.
To be completely honest withyou, though, that wasn't the
stance I was coming into to makethe stock.
I wasn't trying to make like ananti-cannabis film or something
.
Um, maybe legalization is theanswer, better education around
(20:43):
the risks or in the productionof it, you know, because there's
a lot of environmental damage.
You probably saw that out inthe forest covering these fires.
Yeah, it's a pretty gnarly thingto grow the way that they grow
it anyway.
So, and there's a lot ofpesticides in the product.
We're having this kind of likehealth resurgence, but a lot of
weed has just nasty stuff in itbecause cartels don't really
(21:05):
care about regenerativeagriculture.
So, you know, I think there'san argument to that.
But in general, in my communityspecifically, I think it would
help if Gavin Newsom gave a shit.
I think that would be helpfulto start with.
You know, the sheriffs say thathe has never answered their
phone calls.
I've become friends with thisguy who's on Joe Rogan's show,
(21:26):
john Norris.
He's incredible.
He started the marijuanaenforcement team back in the day
and he's done amazing work onthis.
He wrote two books on thistopic.
If people want to dive into it,he's a true expert and he's
amazing Branching backgroundGabe Morgan in California, who
just stumbled into this andwanted to do something about it,
and he had a task force withfunding from the Trump
(21:47):
administration and they werereally making some progress on
getting the cartels out of theforest in Northern California.
And then I believe Gavin Newsomwas the one who came in and cut
off cooperation between thestate and the feds.
So I do think there's a lot ofjust typical California politics
at play here.
You know they could dosomething, but is there the
willpower?
For for some reason it doesn'tseem like it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Well, uh, president Trump just declared the cartels
as terrorist organizations anduh, that's going to help.
I hope so.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I sure hope so.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You've taken on some other very interesting stories.
Yeah, I sure hope so.
You've taken on some other veryinteresting stories.
One of them that is developingright now that I'd like to get
into to the extent that you'reable to is what's going on at
Point Reyes, and I feel prettyconfident that 99% of this
audience doesn't even knowanything square one about that.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So take us through it kind of from the beginning and
tell us what's happening.
Sure, so this is a brand newsituation to me.
It kind of came out about aweek and a half ago.
Someone made me aware of it,but have you ever been out to
Point Reyes?
I was curious out in SanFrancisco.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Okay, it's right out of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
actually it's, it's uh, yeah, it's right out of San
Francisco Actually, it's likeshockingly close, but it's
really desolate and beautifulright on the little peninsula
there.
Um, and since I think beforeCalifornia was a state, point
Reyes has had ranching on it,sold Spanish land grant for land
.
Um, some wealthy attorneysduring the gold rush bought it
(23:24):
and they divided it up intothese ranch properties from A to
Z and they had Azorean andSwiss immigrants working on
these dairies and beef ranches.
Eventually a lot of thoseimmigrants bought the land.
So it's just this littleisolated community of
agriculture.
They're in Marin County, kindof in the heart of the beast,
right next to San Francisco, andthey've been there forever,
right next to San Francisco, andthey've been there forever.
(23:46):
And in the 50s and 60s-ish Ithink they got some development
pressure.
They were feeling that theircommunity was threatened by
these outside developers and soMarin County kind of got
together with these ranchers anddecided to sell the property to
the federal government, to thePark Service, as a national
seashore, which is not anational park but similar in
(24:10):
most ways, and it would alwayshave agriculture as part of the
seashore.
It would be part of the culturethere, it would be written into
the way that the land was sortof zoned and deeded and so they
sold to the government fairmarket value, with the agreement
to have these long-term leaseswhere they'd be able to continue
their operations but they'd beprotecting the peninsula from
(24:32):
development.
So this was always a projectbetween the agricultural
community in Marin and theNational Park Service and I
think they saw what was coming.
They saw the developmenthappening and creeping up and
they wanted to protect theirheritage and the local food
there.
So that's what they did and atthe time the environmental
(24:53):
groups were all for it.
They were very pro, the wholearrangement, anti-development,
pro-farmer, rancher, whatever.
And as you know better thananyone, that has totally changed
the environmental groups.
For the most part they don'tfeel that way anymore.
They feel that the ranchers area threat to this pastoral,
beautiful place that should berewilded and overrun with tule
(25:15):
elk and that's all they want andthat's how they see it.
So there's been an ongoingbattle for these guys to get
their leases renewed.
And Obama's Secretary of theInterior, ken Salazar he
approved the leases.
They should have got theirleases renewed.
And Obama's Secretary of theInterior, ken Salazar, he
approved the leases.
They should have got theirleases.
They should have got 25-yearleases but that didn't happen
(25:35):
for whatever reason, and theseenvironmental groups have sued
the Park Service time and againover the ranchers.
The ranchers have not beenallowed to make improvements to
their barns and their homes andtheir pastures.
They've been harassedincessantly, subjected to all of
that.
These ranchers are all going toleave forever.
They're going to be quoteunquote bought out, um, for
(26:10):
whatever price.
That is undisclosed, uh, andthey're going to leave the
peninsula forever, all 12ranching families, and it's
going to get turned over to oneof these environmental groups
who's going to run the leases.
So, um, since I heard aboutthis, I've just been trying to
dig a little bit more and get tothe bottom of what's going on
here.
Um, the farmers can't talk tome, they're gagged.
(26:31):
But there's a great video froma town hall that happened last
week, with a rancher named kevinlenny who speaks pretty
eloquently and I think it's just.
I don't know if you saw that,but to me his pain is pretty
obvious.
How he truly feels about thissituation is pretty obvious in
what he says.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
No, it's brutal.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
One of those conservation organizations is
the Nature Conservancy.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's right, yep.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, so it sounds like there was some type of
easement that was put on this,and that was what was preventing
people from making any types ofimprovements to their
infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think that was and this is where I get into my
opinion.
Right, I can't exactly provethis, but from what I've heard
from a lot of folks and myconclusion although I'm still
investigating this I think thepark service doesn't want
ranchers there.
I don't think they've wantedranchers there for a long time
and I think they haven't beenallowing these improvements and
so on, because I don't thinkthey welcome ranchers at all.
(27:33):
I would bet that they'reworking with these environmental
groups.
Again, just my opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, and the tule elk were there already right.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Some people say they're native.
They weren't there for a whiledecades they were reintroduced
at some point.
But one rancher has to pay like$100,000 a year to feed them.
They've got these fences up allover the peninsula to keep the
elk away from the cattle, allover the peninsula to keep the
(28:10):
elk away from the cattle.
Um, and you know there's a thatthat was a short-lived thing,
because the environmental groupshave been and I do know about
this because this has been inthe news a lot, they've been
trying to get those fences down.
They'll talk about how the elkare kidnapped and imprisoned.
With these fences they shouldbe able to run all over the
ranch land and so on.
So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
As of 2021, the Nature Conservancy owns 119
million acres of land worldwide.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Isn't that wild.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Gnarly, and as a nonprofit they get to do some
interesting stuff with money.
It here in in our localranching communities where
they'll do stuff like uh likebuy a ranch and allow somebody
(29:00):
to live on it for the rest oftheir life, but they can't sell
it, they can't pass it off tothe next generation.
So it's like, okay, you get toranch for however long until you
die, and then you're done, andthen it's just going to become
Nature Conservancy after that.
And I've heard stuff like theywant to eventually own like a
third of the planet and likeit's wild.
(29:21):
The Nature Conservancy doessome good, but man, they are a
land-hungry organization.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Wow, yeah, no, it does seem that way.
I mean, if you hear some of theranchers talk well, to be
honest, I background here.
They, the ranchers and farmers,cannot say anything negative
about the Nature Conservancy.
That's part of the agreement,right, and their NDA part of the
settlement.
But the original three groupsthat sued them were Western
(29:52):
Watersheds and I have to lookthis up Center for Biological
Diversity, and another one thathas the initials RRI and I
cannot remember Resource Renewalor something like that.
They keep blowing me up onInstagram every time I post
anything.
So I should know it.
But really aggressive groups,right?
So they're the ones who suedthe park over these ranchers.
(30:12):
The Nature Conservancy steppedin like this generous angel and
decided to broker the settlementbetween the ranchers and the
environmental groups, becausethe ranchers eventually entered
the lawsuit because theirlivelihoods are at stake.
So all these parties the NatureConservancy comes in.
Kind of interesting what you'resaying.
(30:33):
They seem like a good guy.
They bought out the ranch butthey're letting the ranchers
stay there.
But what's happening is allthese ranchers are gone and the
settlement again not disclosed.
But most sources I've spokenwith not the ranchers, but other
sources I've spoken with havejust suggested that it's not
nearly enough to relocate theseranches and farms.
(30:53):
But yeah, the NatureConservancy is left with the
lease and they get to dowhatever they want, which
apparently entails bringing in agrazing contractor.
So you won't hear the farmerssay anything negative about
Nature Conservancy.
Maybe they mean it, maybethey're grateful to be done and
to have somebody willing to givethem a buyout.
But yeah, it's a littleinteresting to me, at least as
an outside observer, to watchthis all go down.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think you know if some of these folks have been
there for many generations.
If you're talking aboutranching history that goes back
to before California was a state.
Those aren't people who want togive up.
Those aren't people who want tobe done, who want to be bought
out.
That's just not the case.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
They're just left without an option, exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah.
Yeah exactly Okay, this isn'tthe most heartwarming podcast
I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I'm sorry, I'm such a depressing guest.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Let's keep going with it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Tell me about Charles and Heather.
Heather maude.
Oh man, another really cheerfulstory.
Yeah, well, they're.
Uh, james, you make me soundlike the most unpleasant person,
like all these stories are sodark.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You're fun, you're fighting the fight and you're in
the mud.
Okay, like, like it's, it's not.
I wish I could cover half ofyour stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you.
Yeah, sometimes, sometimesafter work, I feel like I got
hit by a truck or something.
Yeah, so the mods are anotherone there in South Dakota which
you'd think would be a little, alittle safer.
But this little sweet familythere in South Dakota They've
got a fence that's been theresince 1950, I believe Charles'
(32:36):
ancestor.
These are also gag folks.
They can't talk to me at all,they can't say anything at all.
This is all from other sources,right, but Charles, 39 years
old, has got this generationalranch.
They've got a fence on theirgrazing lease with the National
Forest.
Some hunter allegedly asked theForest Service to remove a no
(32:57):
hunting sign from a fence post,which I think is interesting
because that hunter's never comeforward.
There's no real documentationof this hunter but for whatever
reason, they want them to takethis no hunting sign off.
So the mods complied.
Then, long story short, forestService shows up at their house
we need to check out this fence.
This might not be in the rightarea.
(33:18):
We need to resurvey the land.
Mods are totally fine with that.
Then they show up.
They say, well, let's take ayear.
Within a year we'll resurveythis land.
Five days later they show upwith a survey team.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Five days later.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Five days later yeah, yeah, gave them absolutely no
time, and I want to say it waslike a month or two after that
they came back with indictmentsand just the works terrorizing
this family.
Both Charles and Heather areseparately charged, this husband
and wife ranching coupleseparately charged.
(33:54):
They both face 10 years inprison, huge fines.
They have to retain their ownlegal counsel to defend
themselves All over this fencethat the Forest Service alleges
was in the wrong spot, eventhough it's been there since
1950.
The family says in previousstatements or through their
attorney or whatever, thatthey've had this ongoing grazing
agreement with the ForestService for 60 years and that,
(34:16):
you know, every time theirgrazing lease is renewed, the
Forest Service has acknowledgedwhere the fence is at.
And so, yeah, I think they justgot a trial date.
I was trying to look that up.
I think it's in April.
But, yeah, man, just kind of atheme right.
Just these little independentguys who aren't, you know, bill
(34:36):
Gates with his massive amount offarmland, not the Nature
Conservancy.
It's always these little guysthat are kind of easy pickings
that get faced with this stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So these aren't rare stories and I'm sure that you're
going to continue to cover moreof these.
But, you know, are you familiarwith the story?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
from Burns, oregon, from a couple years ago.
Tell me more about.
You're talking about the Bundysor the Hammonds, or the
Hammonds, yeah, the.
Hammonds.
Okay, yeah, tell me about thatone again.
It's been a minute.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Well, I'll get most of these details wrong, so
forgive me because I'm justdoing it from memory, but
basically the Hammonds had atsome point lit a backfire on
their own property that burnedinto some BLM in order to keep a
larger fire from burning uptheir whole place.
It burned up 160 acres of BLMlike sagebrush country right
(35:36):
Land that only God in the BLMcould love and they ended up
getting thrown in jail Like anold man and his son ended up
actually serving prison time.
And prior to the sentencingthere was a huge backlash from
(35:59):
the community and people thatcame in from Nevada and of
course, some of these werecertifiably crazy people like
sure enough crazy people.
And at one point, while avehicle, including some of these
people who had showed up wastraveling through a Forest
Service road, they hit aroadblock and the driver ended
(36:21):
up getting shot yeah, shot andkilled by I don't know if it was
state police or the FBI, butthey had a helicopter over the
top of him.
There's a lot of conspiracy andcontroversy about whether they
were getting shot at from thehelicopter, shot at on the
ground, the guy on the groundthere's video of him when he did
(36:44):
get shot and he was actingreally aggressively, like he
didn't just pull over and say,all right, yeah, let's talk
about it.
But yeah, really, really saddeal, and it all stemmed from
just nothing.
Right, like, okay, you lit abackfire that burned up a little
(37:05):
bit of sagebrush.
That could be a fine.
That could honestly probablyjust be a conversation, be like
look, this is a problem, butthey ended up charging them with
domestic terrorism and that'snot what it is.
That's not what it is at all.
But that's a case where you'vegot a small generational
ranching family going up againsta large federal government
(37:28):
organization and it's not awinning fight.
Wow, now, some of the stuffthat you're talking about with
these lawsuits that groups likethe Center for Biological
Diversity make all their moneyon.
They use EJA, the Equal Accessto Justice Act.
Have you gotten into that atall?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Just a little bit.
Tell me more about that.
How do they use that?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Okay.
So this came up during theCarter administration and it
basically it came from a goodplace and they wanted people to
be able to fight the governmentwithout going bankrupt, because
the government can outspend allof us.
And what happens and thishappens with wildlife stuff, it
happens with logging projects,all kinds of things A
(38:16):
preservation group will file alawsuit and then they can use
the Equal Access to Justice Actto pay for that lawsuit with
taxpayer dollars and they canuse their own staff attorneys
and charge exorbitant legal fees.
So they're getting money fromtheir supporters and from their
(38:36):
donors, but then they get taxmoney as well every time they
file a lawsuit and they use thisEASIA and it happens in
wildlife and hunting all thetime and they just make vast
amounts of money off of itDrives me crazy.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Wow.
Okay, that's really interestingbecause, diving into this whole
point race thing, I've talkedto a family that went through
this and they're kind ofanonymous right now anyway, but
their opinion was that the parkservice has been doing this for
a long time, working with theseenvironmental groups, and their
mechanism is just, yeah,enabling these environmental
groups to sue.
(39:12):
I didn't realize that was themechanism, that was EJA to that
they were able to fund this.
I know they cause they makesettlements too right, when they
win these cases they also gettaxpayer money from from that on
top of that, and then they haveall their donors.
It's pretty, it's pretty grossand and this is what this family
told me and I did find somepretty interesting stuff to back
(39:34):
up what they said so one of thenational parks in California
now is the Channel Islands, butit used to be a lot of ranching
out there and the guy who ranthe Channel Islands at the time,
the superintendent's name, wasTim Setnicka, and I'm going to
butcher this because I'm justreading about it.
I haven't written it yet, but Ifound this old article in
(39:55):
Outside Magazine from 97 calledthis is the Park Service.
Come out with your hands up,people can look it up and this
little family on Santa CruzIsland was given the government
just wasn't selling as quick asthe government wanted.
They had these historic Adobebuildings.
The government wanted it fortheir park center.
It was the last piece ofprivately owned property on the
Channel Islands.
So five years go by.
(40:17):
They're not settling fastenough.
The patriarch of the family is,I believe, 82.
And he said in this article hesaid you know, I'm willing to
sell, I just haven't beenoffered a good price.
The government decides thisfamily has actually been robbing
Chumash Indian burial grounds.
So they raid the family intactical gear, black ski masks.
(40:38):
There's a little 15-year-oldgirl at the ranch house.
She's shackled.
She said she was on the floorin shackles for two hours.
She didn't even know who thesepeople were.
They didn't announce who theywere.
It's just terrorizing.
Raid all over this crime ofIndian burial robbery, which was
very convenient for the parkservice to come up with, in my
(41:01):
opinion.
And then there were otherfamilies that were also forced
off and they used all kinds ofdifferent things.
On Santa Rosa Island apparentlythey decided that the tule elk
there were non-native, so theywanted all non-native species
off the island, including elk,deer, cattle and horses.
Some reports they ended upmachine gunning elk from a
(41:24):
helicopter once they finally gotthe ranchers off.
So that was their environmentalrestoration, I guess, was just
killing all these wild pigs andelk, but anyway, at any rate,
the superintendent of theChannel Islands at the time was
Tim Setnicka.
He was pretty complicit with allthis and then he ended up going
rogue on the Park Service.
He wrote a three-part editorialthat I'm trying to track down,
(41:45):
but it was in this Santa Barbarapaper that's now closed.
But he laid out the wholeplaybook and he said the Park
Service, they want something.
They work with theseenvironmental groups to get what
they want, and they've done ittime and time again.
This is, you know, back in theearly 2000s he did a speech I
found in 2014 in Marin Countyand he told the Point Reyes
(42:06):
ranchers you guys are next,they're coming for you.
He said the National ParkService has no soul and he told
them they want to end ranchingand they're going to come for
you.
And all the ranchers at thetime didn't want to believe him.
And here we are, you know, 13years later, all those ranchers
are gone and it's in a voluntaryagreement with these
environmental groups.
The Park Service is justwatching over all of it.
Their hands are clean.
(42:27):
You know they didn't haveanything to do with it.
Pretty suspicious, right?
It just starts to look like apattern.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Well, this happened in Hell's Canyon, which is right
next to me, in the 70s, againduring the Carter administration
.
My granddad had a generationalhomestead down there.
There's lots of families up anddown the river who had
homesteads and were runningcattle and running sheep.
My granddad had a littleoutfitting operation.
We have the correspondencebetween him and the Forest
(42:57):
Service just talking about howmany people were coming down to
go hunting and fishing, that hewas letting through there or
that he was hosting himself.
And then they ended up usingeminent domain to take the
entire canyon and kick everybodyout, all the settlers and you
know this is not long ago, thisis in the 1970s.
(43:18):
They gave them a third ofmarket value and the options
were you can take this price oryou can go to jail and we'll
take it anyways.
And they kicked out all thehomesteaders and all the
livestock and made it a nationalrecreation area Right.
So that was the first step wasto make it a national recreation
area, right.
(43:38):
So that was the first step wasto make it a national recreation
area.
And then they tried to put anadditional dam in so that they
could have more hydropower, andthat was going to be a private
company, the.
The jet boaters actually foughtand stopped that from occurring
.
So now you have to have allsummer long.
You have to have a permit toaccess the river, Um.
(43:59):
You have to apply for in alottery program to get a permit
to even go down there, Um, inthe.
In the off season you don't.
You don't have to like you cango down there, but in the
summertime you need a permit, Um.
And then they tried to turn itinto a national park fairly
recently.
So it was a step like firstlet's get the ranchers out and
(44:23):
then we'll make it a nationalrecreation area and then we're
going to try and make it anational park.
There's also some differentlanguage.
Like you talked about thenational seashore, Some other
language that gets used now is anational monument, and
President Obama tried to createall these national monuments
where they were going to againuse eminent domain to kick
(44:46):
everybody out.
It just scares the hell out ofme and people here are still
very, very hurt by this.
You know there's still folksliving in this community who
grew up down there and had theirhomes taken from the government
and now the bulk of who gets touse it are recreational rafters
and whitewater outfitters andthen all those homesteads are
(45:10):
just fading into dust.
It's heartbreaking and it's notin good shape.
So, since the livestock hasmoved out of the canyon, the
wildlife has diminished rapidly,so noxious weeds have taken
over and now the elk populationis crashing, the bighorn sheep
(45:30):
population is crashing, the muledeer are almost non-existent.
It's just.
It's a tragedy.
It's an absolute tragedy, and Ithink it does come from people
who their heart is in the rightplace, right?
They, they have this idea aboutwilderness that, uh, it could
be so pristine if we just didn'thave people there, and that we
(45:53):
need to have this and and thenwe can.
It can be public whereeverybody can go there, but
that's just not what actuallyhappens In the end, time and
time again, it's not the realityof it.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Totally.
Yeah, they don't realize.
We're so disconnected, we don'trealize how ranching families
like yours are the reason theseplaces are pristine and
beautiful.
They're not in the way it's aproduct of generational
stewardship Like in Point Reyes.
I've had a lot of people reachout since I started sharing this
stuff and this one wonderfullittle person named Billie.
(46:27):
She reached out to me.
She's like a traveling, she'slike a hundred sheep or goats or
something and she travelsaround in her camper and is
grazing for hire and she's outthere on Point Reyes and just
south of that in Bolinas, andshe's like I saw these beautiful
farms and they're all abandoned, they're all just in total
disrepair, these beautiful oldbarns and houses, and I tried to
(46:51):
understand what's going on.
Can I winter here at least, ifthese people don't live here
anymore?
She found out it was allparkland and she saw this one
house.
These people don't live hereanymore.
She found out it was allparkland and she saw this one
house.
She sent me a video of thisbeautiful, old, quintessential
Northern California dairy barnand house and it's just in total
disrepair.
The windows are boarded up.
She says she sees Park Servicevehicles there.
(47:12):
There's Parks employees livingin that house.
Now she says it's totallytrashed and this is someone's
generational home, this is wherepeople lived for generations.
Now she says it's like, totallytrashed and this is someone's
generational home.
You know, this is where peoplelived for generations.
And she was telling me how thesoil out there is the best that
she's ever seen.
It's this incredible topsoilfrom 150 years plus of grazing
out on the peninsula and that'swhy that place is beautiful.
(47:32):
She showed me contrast videosof grazed pastures that still
have cattle on them and thesebarren, you know, overgrown
pastures covered in scotch brush.
This is what the that's thepark's maintenance.
That's their, you know, that'stheir management at work.
So it's truly like it's just so.
There's just a lot of hubris init.
(47:53):
Right, because it's it's likeyou forget that the reason these
places look the way they do isbecause it's not wilderness,
it's been stewarded.
I did a documentary just quickly, a couple years ago with a
conservation easement group here, ranch group called California
Rangeland Trust, which isfounded by Nita Vail, who's one
of the daughters of the Vail andVickers Ranch on Santa Rosa
(48:16):
Island.
So she watched her family losetheir heritage and she's an
amazing person and she ended upchanging her whole career.
She was working for thegovernor at the time.
She left her career to reallyfight for other ranchers to not
go through what she went through.
Anyway, we did this documentary, kind of looking at some of the
ranchers in California who haveit rough because it's not a
(48:36):
politically friendly place foragriculture.
And there was one professor fromUC Berkeley and she told us she
was, you know, lynn Hunsinger,very pro grazing professor of
rangeland science.
Shockingly, at Berkeley she'sjust like a huge advocate for
grazing.
And she said she talked withthis older Native American man
who said you know, wilderness isa myth of the white man.
(48:56):
Because we took care of thisplace, it's never been
wilderness and that's alwaysstuck with me because I think
we're doing that now to ranchingfamilies where you just want to
rewild but you don't know whatyou're talking about.
The reason that you want thatplace, the reason that you want
to preserve it, is because it'sbeen stewarded by grazing and by
maintenance, like your family,for so long.
(49:17):
That's why the wildlife arethriving there and the
watersheds and all of thesethings.
So we've divorced it's ananti-human attitude really where
we've divorced human beingsfrom nature.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I don't know what these folks think they're going
to eat Right.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, what are you going to wear Like?
Imagine your world without glue.
You know like you need us.
You need us to be successful.
Um, I don't know, maybe they'llfind out.
Okay, I got to lighten it up.
Every kid I know who grew upwith a large animal veterinarian
(49:55):
who traveled around with thatvet has some wild stories.
Oh man, let's put your dad onthe burner here for a second.
You tell me a wild story thatyour dad got you into.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Oh my gosh, there's so many really putting me on the
spot here.
You know, what's so funny isliving in California.
You get like, on the one hand,there's like flooding in my mind
right now my dad needs to writea book.
You're so right, it is thewildest way to grow up.
You see the most eccentrichuman beings.
Do you remember when Tiger Kingwas a big deal in like 2020,
(50:33):
whenever we were all locked up.
We turned it on because I washome for the pandemic.
We were all in lockdown in mywell, not really, but you know,
in a small town it's kind oflike a normal day, but anyway
we're watching this show.
My dad was like turn this off.
I these are my clients like Icannot watch these crazy people
with these animals theyshouldn't have, this is not
entertaining.
So he's got like these.
You know, california is a mixedbag, so you've got some people
(50:57):
who they're just eccentric and Idon't exactly know why.
They think they need to live ina rural community and own the
animals that they've chosen toown, but they're on that trip.
So for a while, when I was akid and I do think that this is
like a consistent thing abouthuman nature there's like a
fashionable animal Like rightnow we've got this whole
(51:17):
homesteading thing going on andpeople really want those fuzzy
cows.
You know, like what are they?
Highland?
Speaker 1 (51:23):
or something.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
There's always like a yeah, yeah, there's like a
fashionable animal.
So when I was a kid it was potbelly pigs, for whatever reason,
I remember this phase Peoplewere keeping their houses and
stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, so bizarre, that's right.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
That's right.
So my dad had this one lady andshe owned a bunch of pot belly
pigs and she loved these pigs somuch and they she had a new.
You know, she had a bunch oflittle baby pigs.
They needed cash trading andshe didn't want to be there for
the the scene, but she wantedthem to be comfortable.
So we show up and she goes Rich, I can't be here, I got to go,
(52:03):
I can't hear this, but they'reall in my bedroom and I just
want you to castrate them in thebedroom because I want them to
be comfortable.
And my dad was like that is aterrible idea.
He's like ma'am, please justdon't do this to yourself, you
don't want to do this.
She's like no, no, no, I'vethought about it, I've thought
(52:25):
about it and this is what I wantfor my babies.
They need to be comfortable.
This is a traumatic experience.
My dad begged this woman.
He was like, seriously, youdon't want to do this.
Yeah, so we did our best, Imean we tried.
She left the house.
All her little pigs are in herroom.
Oh my God, it was like a warzone.
(52:48):
It was insane.
We did our best.
These things are like runningaround spraying blood all over
the walls all over.
It was traumatic and so, anyway, but it was done.
We did what she wanted.
Next time my dad talked to her,he she was like that really
made a mess.
Yeah, you think.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's why we don't castrate pigs in
the house, even pot belly pigs,even designer pigs, oh man no, I
, I did a show years ago with aveterinarian friend of mine and
it was during the tiger kingdays.
Right and uh, he had a galnamed carol.
(53:27):
Fly to spokane, washington, andget three tigers and cram them
into crates that were made forgerman shepherds on a hot day
left them in a tarmac, and acouple of them died.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Oh my God, yeah, wow, post-tiger King this wasn't the
same lady, this wasn't Baskin,or whatever.
We don't know, no comment, nocomment.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Yeah, but her name was Carol, and this was during,
like when everybody was watchingTiger King.
In fact, we recorded the showin Hell's Canyon and this is
another funny Forest Servicething they had shut down the
boat ramps, like it was illegalto go to the boat ramp to launch
a boat, to go into this riverwilderness.
(54:11):
But there was this little chunkof ground that the church owned
that made it down to the river.
First Amendment can't shut downreligion and I'm going to say
that jet boating is my religion,so I was able to launch my boat
over the rocks into the river.
Nice, nice yeah we really hadthe place to ourselves down
(54:32):
there.
It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
That is awesome.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Now veterinarians get into some crazy stuff.
They should all write booksbecause it's endlessly
entertaining.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
It truly is you should.
I mean, he'd be a better guestthan me.
He's got stories for days.
If anybody wants a career thatmay not pay you as much as you
should get paid as a doctor, butyou will have the most wild
days like no.
Two days are like ever.
You should be a large animalvet.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Highly recommend yeah , there's another job that's
kind of going away.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Very few people are getting into it and huge, yeah,
man not to throw women under thebus, but because I know plenty
of great female large animalvets.
But you know these schoolsaccept mostly, mostly female
students and most of them wantto be small animal vets.
So you know it's not alwaysabout grades.
(55:24):
It's like these vet schoolshave a responsibility to divide
up more.
There's a huge shortage.
There really are not very manylarge animal ranch you know
dairy vets anymore, and it'spartly a function of there's a
lot of small animal vets and youdo get paid more.
It's a lot easier, You're inair conditioning, but I think
it's less fun.
I think your clients are lessfun.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Oh for sure, yeah, your designer cat clients are
going to be less fun than yourguy.
That's like, this cow can't getup, I don't know.
Please help, yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And if you have lots of littlekids, my dad was always like,
hmm, got to pull a kid, you knowthey're a goat.
You got to get the kids in thefamily.
With the smallest hands You're,you're up for the job.
So if you have kids, I'll go towork with you and help you out.
That's another nice hack ofbeing a large animal vet no
child labor laws.
It seems whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Well, keely, where can people check out this
tremendous work that you'redoing with Unwon, watch these
documentaries and, honestly,reading these articles, I mean
it's incredible stuff.
It's truly incredible whatyou're doing.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Thank you, james.
That means a lot coming fromyou again.
Truly, um, I really appreciateit.
Uh, you can check it all outAmerica on one.
Uh, u N W O Ncom.
Um, that's across the board.
Instagram X all that good stuff, uh.
But, thank you, james, I trulyappreciate it.
I feel that, uh, you're doingreally important work.
(56:58):
I love that you profile thepeople with calluses.
I think that, man, you guyshave the best stories.
So, thank you for what you do.
Huge fans, it's an honor to bewith you today.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Likewise, keep up the good work and please reach out
if there's ever something I cando to help.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
I will do that Same to you.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
Okay, bye everybody.
Thank you to everyone who hastaken the time out of their busy
lives to write a review for theshow and share it with their
friends.
I'm extremely proud of howintelligent, engaged and
adventurous this audience is.
Original music for the SixRanch Podcast is written and
performed by Justin Hay.
(57:36):
Art for the Six Ranch Podcastwas created by John Chatelain
and digitized by Celia Harlander.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again next week.
these are stories of outdoor adventure and expert
advice from folks with callousedhands.
I'm james nash and this is thesix ranch podcast Keely what is
(00:27):
Unwon.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Unwon is a word that I did not know was a word, but I
came up with it to describe theproject that I want to do.
Essentially, I want to writeabout the American West.
I started doing that back in2012.
And to me it sort of typifiedtwo things One, the idea that
there's still a lot ofopportunity out there for young
(00:50):
people who may have been toldthat the American dream is dead,
so sit in a cubicle becausethat's your only option.
Growing up the way I did, I knowthat's not true.
I know there's a lot ofAmericans still living a very
you know, they're marching tothe beat of their own drum in
the American West, and I wantedto highlight those folks,
especially for youngergenerations, who don't fit in
the mold that they're told theyneed to fit into today.
But as this project has grown,I think it started to embody the
(01:14):
other meaning of the word,which is that the American West
truly isn't one.
We face a lot of obstacles here, and I do think we face again,
not to sound conspiratorial, butthere's a lot of folks who
don't like the freedom that thispart of the country embodies
and typifies, and I think we'reseeing sort of an attack on the
Western way of life, and sothat's a lot of what I've come
(01:36):
to write about at Unwant since Istarted.
How's that?
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I think it's great.
Longer answer.
Your writing is special.
I was going through yourwebsite and it is so crisp and
clear.
I haven't encountered anythinglike it in a very long time, and
everything from yourphotography to your prose to the
speed that you move throughtopics is so concise.
(02:03):
There's something really,really special just about your
skill and what you're goingafter.
But the actual substance of it,of course, is very important to
me, and I've talked a lot abouthow hard it is to be a rancher,
how hard it is to be a farmer,how important it is that this.
You know, one to 2% of ourpopulation continues to produce
(02:26):
food for the other 98%, and somepeople might be sick of hearing
from me about it, and that istoo bad for them, because I'm
not going to stop.
Why is this important to you?
What's your background thatmade you realize that this is a
big deal, that it is importantand that you need to take your
skills and shed light on it?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Well, thank you for saying that, james.
That means a lot coming fromyou, truly.
I think you know I grew up in avery small town in Northern
California.
My dad is a ranch vet, my momis too, but she had eight kids,
so that became her focus and itwas just a different way of
growing up.
And Northern California, Ithink, is a bit of a forgotten
(03:11):
part of the country.
We're about three hours Northof San Francisco and even when I
tell other Californians where Ilive, they think I'm in Oregon
by then.
We got another four hours to gountil we hit the Oregon border.
So that part of Californiatruly is the wild west.
My childhood I didn't realizehow wild and wooly it was until
I went to North LA County forcollege and had the biggest
(03:35):
culture shock of my life and Ireally saw how disconnected my
generation was from their food,exactly like you're saying but
also just from their fellowAmericans.
There was this very negativeattitude toward America that was
in vogue when I was in collegeand I think that's changing a
little bit.
But when I was a kid it justkind of shocked me because you
(03:57):
know, you hear this idea of theugly American, the backward
American.
That's not what I grew up with.
All my heroes are people you'venever heard of, who are just
authentic and self-reliant andgood neighbors with amazing
stories and incredible skillsets.
They're building their own life, they're building their
American dream, and I just hadthis desire to let my classmates
(04:21):
, my peers even in college, knowabout those Americans, that
other half of America that Ithink has been forgotten for so
long and I think it's only goneon to fuel a lot of the change
we're seeing in our country, alot of the conversations we've
had in our country since then.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I think and I've told people this before that
Northern California has more incommon with Eastern Kentucky
than it does with what peoplethink of when they think of
California.
It is a very, very wild placeand oftentimes fairly lawless.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wow, I love that you said that.
I've never heard anyone elsesay that, but when I went home
last year for a short doc I didon a murder that happened out
there, I just had this thoughtthat it really reminds me of
almost like Appalachia.
It's like these little hollowsthat sort of lends itself to
outlaws and yeah, it's a wildplace, and I haven't heard
(05:17):
anyone else make that comparison.
So I love that you said that.
I totally agree.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, and I don't mean it in a negative way at all
Love Kentucky, love people fromKentucky.
They're awesome.
Absolutely, and the same thingwith Northern California and you
touched on it, but if you hitthe Oregon-California border and
drive south for five hours,you're still in Northern
California.
This is a big chunk of ground,yeah.
(05:43):
State of Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Exactly.
Long live Jefferson.
Yeah, we're not very wellrepresented but we're a yeah,
we're kind of a rowdy bunch andI love it.
I mean, it's part of thatcharacter has to do with the
cannabis industry, the blackmarket cannabis.
That's been part of the cultureand the Emerald for the last
what?
50 years, but it goes back, Ithink, even before that
(06:08):
California is just a boom andbust mentality since the gold
rush.
You know you've got people whocome there for these huge
opportunities.
It's kind of the most insaneAmericans who made it all the
way to the coast till they ranout of land.
And it's just there's some ofthat spirit still there.
Whether you have Silicon Valleyor Hollywood or even the
Emerald Triangle, where there'sthis black market cannabis
industry, there's definitely aboom and bust mentality, very
(06:31):
outlaw spirit.
So I love Northern California.
I think it's beautiful.
It's just it's very ignored bySacramento and it gets maligned
with the rest of our statefairly for the politics.
But yeah, you got a lot of agpeople in California.
It sounds like you've beenthere, you get it.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah, yeah, and I've got friends from there,
fantastic people.
The first time I fought firethere was when I was in college
and I was really naive aboutwhat Northern California was and
we were fighting fire in likethe Feather River country and
then a little bit out of Chicoand into the Mendocino and stuff
(07:09):
like that.
I was on a helicopter repelcrew, so we're flying into all
these fires and as we're flyingover the towns, it's the middle
of summer, it's scorching hot.
And I said to one of the olderguys on the fire crew I was like
why does everybody have aChristmas tree in their backyard
?
And he's like oh you, hee-haw,bumpkin, those aren't Christmas
(07:33):
trees, you idiot.
And I was like, oh really.
So as we continued to fight firethere, we started to run into
these grow operations andsometimes, flying into the fires
, you'd see guys on the groundrunning around with assault
rifles, with AK-47s and stufflike that.
We knew that there was boobytraps around some of these
places, so I could be way out inthe wilderness someplace and
(07:58):
then suddenly run into like adrip irrigation system and then,
no matter what was going onwith the fire, you needed to
back out of that spot.
And it was just mind blowing tome that that kind of stuff was
going on.
You know I was naive to all ofit, but it has been going on
there for a long time.
With the legalization ofcannabis, how did that change
the way those illegal growoperations were conducted?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh man, that's the money question right now,
because everybody has adifferent opinion.
When I shot this doc, I spokewith some guys who are longtime
cannabis growers, old back tothe landers, some of the second
generation of that group, andyou'll hear different things but
the prevailing belief is theydon't like legalization because
(08:47):
California rolled it out the waythey roll everything out.
They overregulated it.
So it kicked some of the youknow, maybe more honest brokers
or the little guys out and itemboldened the bad actors who
never cared about regulation inthe first place Some of the
folks you're talking about.
So when I was growing up, mydad's a vet.
(09:10):
He's a mobile vet, so he's gothis pickup truck and he would
drive two, three hours in anygiven direction for work, and so
I think I had a uniqueexperience as a kid because I
would go on these growoperations and they'd welcome us
.
But we were probably some ofthe looking back, you know, like
some of the only outsiders theywould really let on the
(09:32):
property because they're the vet.
You know, you've got a sickanimal, you're going to call the
vet, you're not going to bringthem into town.
So I remember, you know, goingup places like Spyrock Road and
some of the more outlaw cornersand pockets and we'd pull up to
a gate and some guys with AK-47sthey'd boil out of the woods.
(09:53):
They'd open the gate for you,nod at you, keep on going.
They'd always pay in cash.
They'd always give a big tip.
They were nice guys but theywere outlaws, absolutely living
on the edge and I don't knowthat legalization really erased
that part of the market.
I think it erased.
You know, the guy with a littleChristmas tree in his backyard
(10:14):
or some of the more tame players.
I think the big guys.
I don't think they're phasedmuch and I've heard that.
You know we did a lot ofinvestigating into this topic
when we were shooting our docand the sheriff's told us
there's been studies done indispensaries and a lot of the
product that you buy in a legaldispensary is still coming from
the black market.
(10:34):
So it's not like the supplychain has really changed and the
cartels have gotten really,really, really bad in Northern
California, like that's theprevalent issue.
More than anything, I would sayYou've still got outlaw growers.
You've got thoseback-to-the-landers who, for
(10:56):
better or worse, a lot of themare just farmers or hippies who
wanted to live off-grid and grewa plant in the backyard while
they were at it.
That's really where this allstemmed from.
But that infrastructure andthen the culture of silence
around it, because all of us gotused to not talking about this
and keeping your mouth shut.
I think that's when we createdlike this, you know, welcoming
environment for truly bad people, like Bulgarian Chinese cartel,
(11:19):
you know, and then the, thewhole, you know, south America
Mexican cartels.
There's just a huge presence upthere and most people do not
believe me when I say that.
So the fact that you've seen it, it's just like this undertold,
ignored piece of reality rightnow in the US.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, and a lot of the fires that we were dealing
with were fires that were fromthe cartels, so they were
burning each other's operations.
There were some cartel warsgoing on, so they would just
slip out and burn somebodyelse's product, and then they
didn't care if that turned intoa giant forest fire in July in
(11:59):
Northern California.
Okay, Wow so yeah, it waspretty wild.
Who killed Dick drury?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
well, you're trying to get me in trouble.
I can't, apparently legally Ican't say what I think, but the
documentary we did, I thinkpretty compelling evidence
anyway in my opinion, that itwas a black market grower.
That's my opinion.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
The article you wrote is fascinating.
Can you tell me the story?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah.
So the story of Dick Drury?
Yeah Well, he's a soul timer,Wonderful guy.
His family's been ranching upon Bell Springs Road, which is
another one of those hot pocketsin the Emerald, since the 1860s
or so.
They've been on the same pieceof land and he was just a
(12:55):
soft-spoken, wonderful guy whoworked for the county.
He had cows, he had two adoptedsons, his wife Phyllis, who was
sick, and he took care of herfull time.
And one day, January 21stliterally yesterday, four years
ago, in 2021, he was found deadon Bell Springs road with a
gunshot wound to the head.
(13:15):
His Ford Explorer was stillrunning and that case has been
unsolved.
So when I first heard about it,I was working with my dad, I was
home visiting and I just, youknow, on a work call with my dad
and we were up at this remoteranch called Lone Pine, which is
way out in the boonies, and theCowboys were talking about this
murder that happened and Ithink it was funny doing the
(13:38):
documentary because nobodyreally wanted to tell us they
were scared or that they feeluncomfortable, because you can't
really allow yourself thatthought and still work where
these guys work.
They just don't, they don'tallow themselves to think about
it.
They're just daily life forthem, it's just part of what
they have to deal with.
But you could just tell thatthere was a little more
uncertainty than usual because Ithink we always told ourselves
(14:01):
the ranching community will stayto ourselves, We'll do our work
, and the outlaw growers, thecartels, whoever else is out
there in the woods, they'regoing to do their thing, but we
are going to leave each otheralone and we'll coexist like
that.
And when Dick Drury was murdered, the natural thought was that
this was a cartel hit.
That's what it looked like,that's what it felt like and
(14:23):
that's kind of what hisneighborhood would suggest.
So that's what it looked like,that's what it felt like and
that's kind of what hisneighborhood would suggest.
So that's what we all believed.
And there were a lot of rumors.
The rumor I heard most commonlyI remember first hearing it at
Lone Pine was that he wasprobably shot by a Bulgarian
cartel boss Bulgarian crime boss, whatever whose dog got into
his cows and Dick shot his dogand this crime boss put a hit on
(14:45):
his life, which is the thing wesee a lot, because these guys,
these illegal operators, they'llthey'll have these big dogs
that guard their grows and thenat the end of harvest they'll
often just let them loose.
So it's exactly like you'redescribing, James, where they
don't really care what happensin the forest and they don't
really care what happens totheir neighbors.
These dogs aren't their problemanymore.
(15:06):
And so up in Covolo, which is anative reservation town it's a
tribal community we'd have theselike packs of wild dogs that
would find each other and runaround and terrorize people.
Up at Lone Pine the cowboy toldme all his horses had torn ears
from these wild dogs from thecartel grows.
So we know that these dogs areout there, we know that they
(15:27):
cause all this trouble and itkind of made sense that you know
something like that would havehappened.
And then Dick would haveprotected his cattle and shot
the wrong dog, wrong person'sdog.
So that's what we believed.
But there was no progress on thecase for about four years.
Until well, there still isn'tany progress on the case.
It's unsolved, no arrests havebeen made.
(15:48):
But thinking about my dad backhome driving around doing his
job in the mountains, knowingthat something had shifted, that
our worlds had collided, so tospeak, was just so disturbing to
me, and I got the opportunityto do a documentary, a short doc
, and this was a big story tobite off for a 20-minute doc but
felt like a good excuse to golook into it.
(16:10):
We had some funding to makethat happen and so went home and
tried to piece together whatmight have happened and in the
end I thought it was the carteland not to give it away.
But I believe it had more to dowith the original outlaw
cannabis community than thecartel.
That's my opinion after what Isaw and spoke to and some of
(16:32):
what you see in the doc.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Did you uncover any evidence that you were able to
hand over to law enforcementthat could help inform the case?
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean I found some interesting documentation
on social media, actually frompotentially a daughter of the
perpetrator, potentially allegedwhatever legal term I'm
supposed to throw in there.
But I, you know, we shared allthat with the police.
I have to say the police havegotten a lot of heat for this
(17:03):
case, but they were very helpfulto us.
They really wanted to beinvolved.
They gave us a lot of theirtime and access.
What I've heard is that the DAis the one who doesn't want to
take the case, doesn't thinkthere's enough evidence.
Personally, I think there's alot of stuff to go off of
(17:24):
already, but it's in the handsof the DA at this point.
But yeah, they have everythingwe found, everything we saw.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Man, where do you get the courage to take stuff like
this on?
Like I know you're tough, butlike are you?
Like let's take on.
You know outlaw murderer cartelgroups tough.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I mean, maybe I'm just not very smart.
Like, what's going on I have toread.
After we got a little deeperinto this case, I was pretty
relieved that it wasn't headingdown a cartel route, because I
don't know if we had found thatout I mean even our producers in
DC.
I told them like, if we, youknow we're mean even our
producers in DC.
I told them like if we, youknow we're, we're shooting, we
have, however much time to shoot, we're going to find out what
(18:10):
we find out, but we may not beable to use it depending on what
we find out, cause my parentsstill live here and, um, you
know I'm, I, I just some thingsare not worth the risk, um, and
it is a little risky for sure,but I think I don't know.
James, it's like nobody hasdone anything for my community
(18:32):
in so long and I've seen peoplejust live in fear good people
for so long.
It's just, it's frustrating.
And if I'm going to befrustrated and not do something
about it, you know I don'treally have a leg to stand on.
Where I have the opportunityand I think journalism, if
that's the field that you wantto go into, you have to go where
(18:52):
the truth leads you, you know,to the best of your ability.
So this seemed like animportant story.
I had a lot of respect for DickDrury's family.
I didn't know him.
I was close with hissister-in-law, billy Drury, who
was this like 80-year-oldcowgirl who was just like my
hero.
She was amazing.
She's like riding horsesthrough her 80s and I just loved
that family and I was closewith his nephew and his best
(19:17):
friend's family and he was justone of these forgotten people
that no one cared about and noone knew his name and I just it
was so wrong for an 85 year oldman to be killed like that on
his almost next to his ranchwhere he was just a good
neighbor his whole life andnobody did anything about it.
It just kind of made me sickand you hear about, you know the
so much in the news is sofrivolous and his life was
(19:38):
totally ignored and my neighborswere scared, People were scared
, so yeah, I'm sure they stillare.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, I'm sure they stillare.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So what has to change to bring security back to this
community?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
I mean one of the sheriffs I spoke with, matt
Kendall, who's incredible, justsuch a great person.
We grew up in Kovalev, localguy done his best to get the
word out on this just salt ofthe earth.
He feels that we needlegalization at the federal
level.
That's kind of his opinion,because sort of the local
(20:18):
legalization is still creatingthis black market that the crime
thrives off of.
I'm not sure if that's whereI'm at or not.
I don't.
I don't love the whole culturearound.
Uh, what I saw growing up.
To be completely honest withyou, though, that wasn't the
stance I was coming into to makethe stock.
I wasn't trying to make like ananti-cannabis film or something
.
Um, maybe legalization is theanswer, better education around
(20:43):
the risks or in the productionof it, you know, because there's
a lot of environmental damage.
You probably saw that out inthe forest covering these fires.
Yeah, it's a pretty gnarly thingto grow the way that they grow
it anyway.
So, and there's a lot ofpesticides in the product.
We're having this kind of likehealth resurgence, but a lot of
weed has just nasty stuff in itbecause cartels don't really
(21:05):
care about regenerativeagriculture.
So, you know, I think there'san argument to that.
But in general, in my communityspecifically, I think it would
help if Gavin Newsom gave a shit.
I think that would be helpfulto start with.
You know, the sheriffs say thathe has never answered their
phone calls.
I've become friends with thisguy who's on Joe Rogan's show,
(21:26):
john Norris.
He's incredible.
He started the marijuanaenforcement team back in the day
and he's done amazing work onthis.
He wrote two books on thistopic.
If people want to dive into it,he's a true expert and he's
amazing Branching backgroundGabe Morgan in California, who
just stumbled into this andwanted to do something about it,
and he had a task force withfunding from the Trump
(21:47):
administration and they werereally making some progress on
getting the cartels out of theforest in Northern California.
And then I believe Gavin Newsomwas the one who came in and cut
off cooperation between thestate and the feds.
So I do think there's a lot ofjust typical California politics
at play here.
You know they could dosomething, but is there the
willpower?
For for some reason it doesn'tseem like it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Well, uh, president Trump just declared the cartels
as terrorist organizations anduh, that's going to help.
I hope so.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I sure hope so.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You've taken on some other very interesting stories.
Yeah, I sure hope so.
You've taken on some other veryinteresting stories.
One of them that is developingright now that I'd like to get
into to the extent that you'reable to is what's going on at
Point Reyes, and I feel prettyconfident that 99% of this
audience doesn't even knowanything square one about that.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So take us through it kind of from the beginning and
tell us what's happening.
Sure, so this is a brand newsituation to me.
It kind of came out about aweek and a half ago.
Someone made me aware of it,but have you ever been out to
Point Reyes?
I was curious out in SanFrancisco.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Okay, it's right out of San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
actually it's, it's uh, yeah, it's right out of San
Francisco Actually, it's likeshockingly close, but it's
really desolate and beautifulright on the little peninsula
there.
Um, and since I think beforeCalifornia was a state, point
Reyes has had ranching on it,sold Spanish land grant for land
.
Um, some wealthy attorneysduring the gold rush bought it
(23:24):
and they divided it up intothese ranch properties from A to
Z and they had Azorean andSwiss immigrants working on
these dairies and beef ranches.
Eventually a lot of thoseimmigrants bought the land.
So it's just this littleisolated community of
agriculture.
They're in Marin County, kindof in the heart of the beast,
right next to San Francisco, andthey've been there forever,
right next to San Francisco, andthey've been there forever.
(23:46):
And in the 50s and 60s-ish Ithink they got some development
pressure.
They were feeling that theircommunity was threatened by
these outside developers and soMarin County kind of got
together with these ranchers anddecided to sell the property to
the federal government, to thePark Service, as a national
seashore, which is not anational park but similar in
(24:10):
most ways, and it would alwayshave agriculture as part of the
seashore.
It would be part of the culturethere, it would be written into
the way that the land was sortof zoned and deeded and so they
sold to the government fairmarket value, with the agreement
to have these long-term leaseswhere they'd be able to continue
their operations but they'd beprotecting the peninsula from
(24:32):
development.
So this was always a projectbetween the agricultural
community in Marin and theNational Park Service and I
think they saw what was coming.
They saw the developmenthappening and creeping up and
they wanted to protect theirheritage and the local food
there.
So that's what they did and atthe time the environmental
(24:53):
groups were all for it.
They were very pro, the wholearrangement, anti-development,
pro-farmer, rancher, whatever.
And as you know better thananyone, that has totally changed
the environmental groups.
For the most part they don'tfeel that way anymore.
They feel that the ranchers area threat to this pastoral,
beautiful place that should berewilded and overrun with tule
(25:15):
elk and that's all they want andthat's how they see it.
So there's been an ongoingbattle for these guys to get
their leases renewed.
And Obama's Secretary of theInterior, ken Salazar he
approved the leases.
They should have got theirleases renewed.
And Obama's Secretary of theInterior, ken Salazar, he
approved the leases.
They should have got theirleases.
They should have got 25-yearleases but that didn't happen
(25:35):
for whatever reason, and theseenvironmental groups have sued
the Park Service time and againover the ranchers.
The ranchers have not beenallowed to make improvements to
their barns and their homes andtheir pastures.
They've been harassedincessantly, subjected to all of
that.
These ranchers are all going toleave forever.
They're going to be quoteunquote bought out, um, for
(26:10):
whatever price.
That is undisclosed, uh, andthey're going to leave the
peninsula forever, all 12ranching families, and it's
going to get turned over to oneof these environmental groups
who's going to run the leases.
So, um, since I heard aboutthis, I've just been trying to
dig a little bit more and get tothe bottom of what's going on
here.
Um, the farmers can't talk tome, they're gagged.
(26:31):
But there's a great video froma town hall that happened last
week, with a rancher named kevinlenny who speaks pretty
eloquently and I think it's just.
I don't know if you saw that,but to me his pain is pretty
obvious.
How he truly feels about thissituation is pretty obvious in
what he says.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
No, it's brutal.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
One of those conservation organizations is
the Nature Conservancy.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
That's right, yep.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, so it sounds like there was some type of
easement that was put on this,and that was what was preventing
people from making any types ofimprovements to their
infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think that was and this is where I get into my
opinion.
Right, I can't exactly provethis, but from what I've heard
from a lot of folks and myconclusion although I'm still
investigating this I think thepark service doesn't want
ranchers there.
I don't think they've wantedranchers there for a long time
and I think they haven't beenallowing these improvements and
so on, because I don't thinkthey welcome ranchers at all.
(27:33):
I would bet that they'reworking with these environmental
groups.
Again, just my opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, and the tule elk were there already right.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Some people say they're native.
They weren't there for a whiledecades they were reintroduced
at some point.
But one rancher has to pay like$100,000 a year to feed them.
They've got these fences up allover the peninsula to keep the
elk away from the cattle, allover the peninsula to keep the
(28:10):
elk away from the cattle.
Um, and you know there's a thatthat was a short-lived thing,
because the environmental groupshave been and I do know about
this because this has been inthe news a lot, they've been
trying to get those fences down.
They'll talk about how the elkare kidnapped and imprisoned.
With these fences they shouldbe able to run all over the
ranch land and so on.
So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
As of 2021, the Nature Conservancy owns 119
million acres of land worldwide.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Isn't that wild.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Gnarly, and as a nonprofit they get to do some
interesting stuff with money.
It here in in our localranching communities where
they'll do stuff like uh likebuy a ranch and allow somebody
(29:00):
to live on it for the rest oftheir life, but they can't sell
it, they can't pass it off tothe next generation.
So it's like, okay, you get toranch for however long until you
die, and then you're done, andthen it's just going to become
Nature Conservancy after that.
And I've heard stuff like theywant to eventually own like a
third of the planet and likeit's wild.
(29:21):
The Nature Conservancy doessome good, but man, they are a
land-hungry organization.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Wow, yeah, no, it does seem that way.
I mean, if you hear some of theranchers talk well, to be
honest, I background here.
They, the ranchers and farmers,cannot say anything negative
about the Nature Conservancy.
That's part of the agreement,right, and their NDA part of the
settlement.
But the original three groupsthat sued them were Western
(29:52):
Watersheds and I have to lookthis up Center for Biological
Diversity, and another one thathas the initials RRI and I
cannot remember Resource Renewalor something like that.
They keep blowing me up onInstagram every time I post
anything.
So I should know it.
But really aggressive groups,right?
So they're the ones who suedthe park over these ranchers.
(30:12):
The Nature Conservancy steppedin like this generous angel and
decided to broker the settlementbetween the ranchers and the
environmental groups, becausethe ranchers eventually entered
the lawsuit because theirlivelihoods are at stake.
So all these parties the NatureConservancy comes in.
Kind of interesting what you'resaying.
(30:33):
They seem like a good guy.
They bought out the ranch butthey're letting the ranchers
stay there.
But what's happening is allthese ranchers are gone and the
settlement again not disclosed.
But most sources I've spokenwith not the ranchers, but other
sources I've spoken with havejust suggested that it's not
nearly enough to relocate theseranches and farms.
(30:53):
But yeah, the NatureConservancy is left with the
lease and they get to dowhatever they want, which
apparently entails bringing in agrazing contractor.
So you won't hear the farmerssay anything negative about
Nature Conservancy.
Maybe they mean it, maybethey're grateful to be done and
to have somebody willing to givethem a buyout.
But yeah, it's a littleinteresting to me, at least as
an outside observer, to watchthis all go down.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think you know if some of these folks have been
there for many generations.
If you're talking aboutranching history that goes back
to before California was a state.
Those aren't people who want togive up.
Those aren't people who want tobe done, who want to be bought
out.
That's just not the case.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
They're just left without an option, exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah.
Yeah exactly Okay, this isn'tthe most heartwarming podcast
I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I'm sorry, I'm such a depressing guest.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Let's keep going with it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Tell me about Charles and Heather.
Heather maude.
Oh man, another really cheerfulstory.
Yeah, well, they're.
Uh, james, you make me soundlike the most unpleasant person,
like all these stories are sodark.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You're fun, you're fighting the fight and you're in
the mud.
Okay, like, like it's, it's not.
I wish I could cover half ofyour stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you.
Yeah, sometimes, sometimesafter work, I feel like I got
hit by a truck or something.
Yeah, so the mods are anotherone there in South Dakota which
you'd think would be a little, alittle safer.
But this little sweet familythere in South Dakota They've
got a fence that's been theresince 1950, I believe Charles'
(32:36):
ancestor.
These are also gag folks.
They can't talk to me at all,they can't say anything at all.
This is all from other sources,right, but Charles, 39 years
old, has got this generationalranch.
They've got a fence on theirgrazing lease with the National
Forest.
Some hunter allegedly asked theForest Service to remove a no
(32:57):
hunting sign from a fence post,which I think is interesting
because that hunter's never comeforward.
There's no real documentationof this hunter but for whatever
reason, they want them to takethis no hunting sign off.
So the mods complied.
Then, long story short, forestService shows up at their house
we need to check out this fence.
This might not be in the rightarea.
(33:18):
We need to resurvey the land.
Mods are totally fine with that.
Then they show up.
They say, well, let's take ayear.
Within a year we'll resurveythis land.
Five days later they show upwith a survey team.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Five days later.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Five days later yeah, yeah, gave them absolutely no
time, and I want to say it waslike a month or two after that
they came back with indictmentsand just the works terrorizing
this family.
Both Charles and Heather areseparately charged, this husband
and wife ranching coupleseparately charged.
(33:54):
They both face 10 years inprison, huge fines.
They have to retain their ownlegal counsel to defend
themselves All over this fencethat the Forest Service alleges
was in the wrong spot, eventhough it's been there since
1950.
The family says in previousstatements or through their
attorney or whatever, thatthey've had this ongoing grazing
agreement with the ForestService for 60 years and that,
(34:16):
you know, every time theirgrazing lease is renewed, the
Forest Service has acknowledgedwhere the fence is at.
And so, yeah, I think they justgot a trial date.
I was trying to look that up.
I think it's in April.
But, yeah, man, just kind of atheme right.
Just these little independentguys who aren't, you know, bill
(34:36):
Gates with his massive amount offarmland, not the Nature
Conservancy.
It's always these little guysthat are kind of easy pickings
that get faced with this stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
So these aren't rare stories and I'm sure that you're
going to continue to cover moreof these.
But, you know, are you familiarwith the story?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
from Burns, oregon, from a couple years ago.
Tell me more about.
You're talking about the Bundysor the Hammonds, or the
Hammonds, yeah, the.
Hammonds.
Okay, yeah, tell me about thatone again.
It's been a minute.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Well, I'll get most of these details wrong, so
forgive me because I'm justdoing it from memory, but
basically the Hammonds had atsome point lit a backfire on
their own property that burnedinto some BLM in order to keep a
larger fire from burning uptheir whole place.
It burned up 160 acres of BLMlike sagebrush country right
(35:36):
Land that only God in the BLMcould love and they ended up
getting thrown in jail Like anold man and his son ended up
actually serving prison time.
And prior to the sentencingthere was a huge backlash from
(35:59):
the community and people thatcame in from Nevada and of
course, some of these werecertifiably crazy people like
sure enough crazy people.
And at one point, while avehicle, including some of these
people who had showed up wastraveling through a Forest
Service road, they hit aroadblock and the driver ended
(36:21):
up getting shot yeah, shot andkilled by I don't know if it was
state police or the FBI, butthey had a helicopter over the
top of him.
There's a lot of conspiracy andcontroversy about whether they
were getting shot at from thehelicopter, shot at on the
ground, the guy on the groundthere's video of him when he did
(36:44):
get shot and he was actingreally aggressively, like he
didn't just pull over and say,all right, yeah, let's talk
about it.
But yeah, really, really saddeal, and it all stemmed from
just nothing.
Right, like, okay, you lit abackfire that burned up a little
(37:05):
bit of sagebrush.
That could be a fine.
That could honestly probablyjust be a conversation, be like
look, this is a problem, butthey ended up charging them with
domestic terrorism and that'snot what it is.
That's not what it is at all.
But that's a case where you'vegot a small generational
ranching family going up againsta large federal government
(37:28):
organization and it's not awinning fight.
Wow, now, some of the stuffthat you're talking about with
these lawsuits that groups likethe Center for Biological
Diversity make all their moneyon.
They use EJA, the Equal Accessto Justice Act.
Have you gotten into that atall?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Just a little bit.
Tell me more about that.
How do they use that?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Okay.
So this came up during theCarter administration and it
basically it came from a goodplace and they wanted people to
be able to fight the governmentwithout going bankrupt, because
the government can outspend allof us.
And what happens and thishappens with wildlife stuff, it
happens with logging projects,all kinds of things A
(38:16):
preservation group will file alawsuit and then they can use
the Equal Access to Justice Actto pay for that lawsuit with
taxpayer dollars and they canuse their own staff attorneys
and charge exorbitant legal fees.
So they're getting money fromtheir supporters and from their
(38:36):
donors, but then they get taxmoney as well every time they
file a lawsuit and they use thisEASIA and it happens in
wildlife and hunting all thetime and they just make vast
amounts of money off of itDrives me crazy.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Wow.
Okay, that's really interestingbecause, diving into this whole
point race thing, I've talkedto a family that went through
this and they're kind ofanonymous right now anyway, but
their opinion was that the parkservice has been doing this for
a long time, working with theseenvironmental groups, and their
mechanism is just, yeah,enabling these environmental
groups to sue.
(39:12):
I didn't realize that was themechanism, that was EJA to that
they were able to fund this.
I know they cause they makesettlements too right, when they
win these cases they also gettaxpayer money from from that on
top of that, and then they haveall their donors.
It's pretty, it's pretty grossand and this is what this family
told me and I did find somepretty interesting stuff to back
(39:34):
up what they said so one of thenational parks in California
now is the Channel Islands, butit used to be a lot of ranching
out there and the guy who ranthe Channel Islands at the time,
the superintendent's name, wasTim Setnicka, and I'm going to
butcher this because I'm justreading about it.
I haven't written it yet, but Ifound this old article in
(39:55):
Outside Magazine from 97 calledthis is the Park Service.
Come out with your hands up,people can look it up and this
little family on Santa CruzIsland was given the government
just wasn't selling as quick asthe government wanted.
They had these historic Adobebuildings.
The government wanted it fortheir park center.
It was the last piece ofprivately owned property on the
Channel Islands.
So five years go by.
(40:17):
They're not settling fastenough.
The patriarch of the family is,I believe, 82.
And he said in this article hesaid you know, I'm willing to
sell, I just haven't beenoffered a good price.
The government decides thisfamily has actually been robbing
Chumash Indian burial grounds.
So they raid the family intactical gear, black ski masks.
(40:38):
There's a little 15-year-oldgirl at the ranch house.
She's shackled.
She said she was on the floorin shackles for two hours.
She didn't even know who thesepeople were.
They didn't announce who theywere.
It's just terrorizing.
Raid all over this crime ofIndian burial robbery, which was
very convenient for the parkservice to come up with, in my
(41:01):
opinion.
And then there were otherfamilies that were also forced
off and they used all kinds ofdifferent things.
On Santa Rosa Island apparentlythey decided that the tule elk
there were non-native, so theywanted all non-native species
off the island, including elk,deer, cattle and horses.
Some reports they ended upmachine gunning elk from a
(41:24):
helicopter once they finally gotthe ranchers off.
So that was their environmentalrestoration, I guess, was just
killing all these wild pigs andelk, but anyway, at any rate,
the superintendent of theChannel Islands at the time was
Tim Setnicka.
He was pretty complicit with allthis and then he ended up going
rogue on the Park Service.
He wrote a three-part editorialthat I'm trying to track down,
(41:45):
but it was in this Santa Barbarapaper that's now closed.
But he laid out the wholeplaybook and he said the Park
Service, they want something.
They work with theseenvironmental groups to get what
they want, and they've done ittime and time again.
This is, you know, back in theearly 2000s he did a speech I
found in 2014 in Marin Countyand he told the Point Reyes
(42:06):
ranchers you guys are next,they're coming for you.
He said the National ParkService has no soul and he told
them they want to end ranchingand they're going to come for
you.
And all the ranchers at thetime didn't want to believe him.
And here we are, you know, 13years later, all those ranchers
are gone and it's in a voluntaryagreement with these
environmental groups.
The Park Service is justwatching over all of it.
Their hands are clean.
(42:27):
You know they didn't haveanything to do with it.
Pretty suspicious, right?
It just starts to look like apattern.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Well, this happened in Hell's Canyon, which is right
next to me, in the 70s, againduring the Carter administration
.
My granddad had a generationalhomestead down there.
There's lots of families up anddown the river who had
homesteads and were runningcattle and running sheep.
My granddad had a littleoutfitting operation.
We have the correspondencebetween him and the Forest
(42:57):
Service just talking about howmany people were coming down to
go hunting and fishing, that hewas letting through there or
that he was hosting himself.
And then they ended up usingeminent domain to take the
entire canyon and kick everybodyout, all the settlers and you
know this is not long ago, thisis in the 1970s.
(43:18):
They gave them a third ofmarket value and the options
were you can take this price oryou can go to jail and we'll
take it anyways.
And they kicked out all thehomesteaders and all the
livestock and made it a nationalrecreation area Right.
So that was the first step wasto make it a national recreation
area, right.
(43:38):
So that was the first step wasto make it a national recreation
area.
And then they tried to put anadditional dam in so that they
could have more hydropower, andthat was going to be a private
company, the.
The jet boaters actually foughtand stopped that from occurring
.
So now you have to have allsummer long.
You have to have a permit toaccess the river, Um.
(43:59):
You have to apply for in alottery program to get a permit
to even go down there, Um, inthe.
In the off season you don't.
You don't have to like you cango down there, but in the
summertime you need a permit, Um.
And then they tried to turn itinto a national park fairly
recently.
So it was a step like firstlet's get the ranchers out and
(44:23):
then we'll make it a nationalrecreation area and then we're
going to try and make it anational park.
There's also some differentlanguage.
Like you talked about thenational seashore, Some other
language that gets used now is anational monument, and
President Obama tried to createall these national monuments
where they were going to againuse eminent domain to kick
(44:46):
everybody out.
It just scares the hell out ofme and people here are still
very, very hurt by this.
You know there's still folksliving in this community who
grew up down there and had theirhomes taken from the government
and now the bulk of who gets touse it are recreational rafters
and whitewater outfitters andthen all those homesteads are
(45:10):
just fading into dust.
It's heartbreaking and it's notin good shape.
So, since the livestock hasmoved out of the canyon, the
wildlife has diminished rapidly,so noxious weeds have taken
over and now the elk populationis crashing, the bighorn sheep
(45:30):
population is crashing, the muledeer are almost non-existent.
It's just.
It's a tragedy.
It's an absolute tragedy, and Ithink it does come from people
who their heart is in the rightplace, right?
They, they have this idea aboutwilderness that, uh, it could
be so pristine if we just didn'thave people there, and that we
(45:53):
need to have this and and thenwe can.
It can be public whereeverybody can go there, but
that's just not what actuallyhappens In the end, time and
time again, it's not the realityof it.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Totally.
Yeah, they don't realize.
We're so disconnected, we don'trealize how ranching families
like yours are the reason theseplaces are pristine and
beautiful.
They're not in the way it's aproduct of generational
stewardship Like in Point Reyes.
I've had a lot of people reachout since I started sharing this
stuff and this one wonderfullittle person named Billie.
(46:27):
She reached out to me.
She's like a traveling, she'slike a hundred sheep or goats or
something and she travelsaround in her camper and is
grazing for hire and she's outthere on Point Reyes and just
south of that in Bolinas, andshe's like I saw these beautiful
farms and they're all abandoned, they're all just in total
disrepair, these beautiful oldbarns and houses, and I tried to
(46:51):
understand what's going on.
Can I winter here at least, ifthese people don't live here
anymore?
She found out it was allparkland and she saw this one
house.
These people don't live hereanymore.
She found out it was allparkland and she saw this one
house.
She sent me a video of thisbeautiful, old, quintessential
Northern California dairy barnand house and it's just in total
disrepair.
The windows are boarded up.
She says she sees Park Servicevehicles there.
(47:12):
There's Parks employees livingin that house.
Now she says it's totallytrashed and this is someone's
generational home, this is wherepeople lived for generations.
Now she says it's like, totallytrashed and this is someone's
generational home.
You know, this is where peoplelived for generations.
And she was telling me how thesoil out there is the best that
she's ever seen.
It's this incredible topsoilfrom 150 years plus of grazing
out on the peninsula and that'swhy that place is beautiful.
(47:32):
She showed me contrast videosof grazed pastures that still
have cattle on them and thesebarren, you know, overgrown
pastures covered in scotch brush.
This is what the that's thepark's maintenance.
That's their, you know, that'stheir management at work.
So it's truly like it's just so.
There's just a lot of hubris init.
(47:53):
Right, because it's it's likeyou forget that the reason these
places look the way they do isbecause it's not wilderness,
it's been stewarded.
I did a documentary just quickly, a couple years ago with a
conservation easement group here, ranch group called California
Rangeland Trust, which isfounded by Nita Vail, who's one
of the daughters of the Vail andVickers Ranch on Santa Rosa
(48:16):
Island.
So she watched her family losetheir heritage and she's an
amazing person and she ended upchanging her whole career.
She was working for thegovernor at the time.
She left her career to reallyfight for other ranchers to not
go through what she went through.
Anyway, we did this documentary, kind of looking at some of the
ranchers in California who haveit rough because it's not a
(48:36):
politically friendly place foragriculture.
And there was one professor fromUC Berkeley and she told us she
was, you know, lynn Hunsinger,very pro grazing professor of
rangeland science.
Shockingly, at Berkeley she'sjust like a huge advocate for
grazing.
And she said she talked withthis older Native American man
who said you know, wilderness isa myth of the white man.
(48:56):
Because we took care of thisplace, it's never been
wilderness and that's alwaysstuck with me because I think
we're doing that now to ranchingfamilies where you just want to
rewild but you don't know whatyou're talking about.
The reason that you want thatplace, the reason that you want
to preserve it, is because it'sbeen stewarded by grazing and by
maintenance, like your family,for so long.
(49:17):
That's why the wildlife arethriving there and the
watersheds and all of thesethings.
So we've divorced it's ananti-human attitude really where
we've divorced human beingsfrom nature.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
I don't know what these folks think they're going
to eat Right.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, what are you going to wear Like?
Imagine your world without glue.
You know like you need us.
You need us to be successful.
Um, I don't know, maybe they'llfind out.
Okay, I got to lighten it up.
Every kid I know who grew upwith a large animal veterinarian
(49:55):
who traveled around with thatvet has some wild stories.
Oh man, let's put your dad onthe burner here for a second.
You tell me a wild story thatyour dad got you into.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Oh my gosh, there's so many really putting me on the
spot here.
You know, what's so funny isliving in California.
You get like, on the one hand,there's like flooding in my mind
right now my dad needs to writea book.
You're so right, it is thewildest way to grow up.
You see the most eccentrichuman beings.
Do you remember when Tiger Kingwas a big deal in like 2020,
(50:33):
whenever we were all locked up.
We turned it on because I washome for the pandemic.
We were all in lockdown in mywell, not really, but you know,
in a small town it's kind oflike a normal day, but anyway
we're watching this show.
My dad was like turn this off.
I these are my clients like Icannot watch these crazy people
with these animals theyshouldn't have, this is not
entertaining.
So he's got like these.
You know, california is a mixedbag, so you've got some people
(50:57):
who they're just eccentric and Idon't exactly know why.
They think they need to live ina rural community and own the
animals that they've chosen toown, but they're on that trip.
So for a while, when I was akid and I do think that this is
like a consistent thing abouthuman nature there's like a
fashionable animal Like rightnow we've got this whole
(51:17):
homesteading thing going on andpeople really want those fuzzy
cows.
You know, like what are they?
Highland?
Speaker 1 (51:23):
or something.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
There's always like a yeah, yeah, there's like a
fashionable animal.
So when I was a kid it was potbelly pigs, for whatever reason,
I remember this phase Peoplewere keeping their houses and
stuff.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, so bizarre, that's right.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
That's right.
So my dad had this one lady andshe owned a bunch of pot belly
pigs and she loved these pigs somuch and they she had a new.
You know, she had a bunch oflittle baby pigs.
They needed cash trading andshe didn't want to be there for
the the scene, but she wantedthem to be comfortable.
So we show up and she goes Rich, I can't be here, I got to go,
(52:03):
I can't hear this, but they'reall in my bedroom and I just
want you to castrate them in thebedroom because I want them to
be comfortable.
And my dad was like that is aterrible idea.
He's like ma'am, please justdon't do this to yourself, you
don't want to do this.
She's like no, no, no, I'vethought about it, I've thought
(52:25):
about it and this is what I wantfor my babies.
They need to be comfortable.
This is a traumatic experience.
My dad begged this woman.
He was like, seriously, youdon't want to do this.
Yeah, so we did our best, Imean we tried.
She left the house.
All her little pigs are in herroom.
Oh my God, it was like a warzone.
(52:48):
It was insane.
We did our best.
These things are like runningaround spraying blood all over
the walls all over.
It was traumatic and so, anyway, but it was done.
We did what she wanted.
Next time my dad talked to her,he she was like that really
made a mess.
Yeah, you think.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's why we don't castrate pigs in
the house, even pot belly pigs,even designer pigs, oh man no, I
, I did a show years ago with aveterinarian friend of mine and
it was during the tiger kingdays.
Right and uh, he had a galnamed carol.
(53:27):
Fly to spokane, washington, andget three tigers and cram them
into crates that were made forgerman shepherds on a hot day
left them in a tarmac, and acouple of them died.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Oh my God, yeah, wow, post-tiger King this wasn't the
same lady, this wasn't Baskin,or whatever.
We don't know, no comment, nocomment.
Speaker 1 (53:49):
Yeah, but her name was Carol, and this was during,
like when everybody was watchingTiger King.
In fact, we recorded the showin Hell's Canyon and this is
another funny Forest Servicething they had shut down the
boat ramps, like it was illegalto go to the boat ramp to launch
a boat, to go into this riverwilderness.
(54:11):
But there was this little chunkof ground that the church owned
that made it down to the river.
First Amendment can't shut downreligion and I'm going to say
that jet boating is my religion,so I was able to launch my boat
over the rocks into the river.
Nice, nice yeah we really hadthe place to ourselves down
(54:32):
there.
It was awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
That is awesome.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
Now veterinarians get into some crazy stuff.
They should all write booksbecause it's endlessly
entertaining.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
It truly is you should.
I mean, he'd be a better guestthan me.
He's got stories for days.
If anybody wants a career thatmay not pay you as much as you
should get paid as a doctor, butyou will have the most wild
days like no.
Two days are like ever.
You should be a large animalvet.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Highly recommend yeah , there's another job that's
kind of going away.
Speaker 2 (55:04):
Very few people are getting into it and huge, yeah,
man not to throw women under thebus, but because I know plenty
of great female large animalvets.
But you know these schoolsaccept mostly, mostly female
students and most of them wantto be small animal vets.
So you know it's not alwaysabout grades.
(55:24):
It's like these vet schoolshave a responsibility to divide
up more.
There's a huge shortage.
There really are not very manylarge animal ranch you know
dairy vets anymore, and it'spartly a function of there's a
lot of small animal vets and youdo get paid more.
It's a lot easier, You're inair conditioning, but I think
it's less fun.
I think your clients are lessfun.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
Oh for sure, yeah, your designer cat clients are
going to be less fun than yourguy.
That's like, this cow can't getup, I don't know.
Please help, yeah.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And if you have lots of littlekids, my dad was always like,
hmm, got to pull a kid, you knowthey're a goat.
You got to get the kids in thefamily.
With the smallest hands You're,you're up for the job.
So if you have kids, I'll go towork with you and help you out.
That's another nice hack ofbeing a large animal vet no
child labor laws.
It seems whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Well, keely, where can people check out this
tremendous work that you'redoing with Unwon, watch these
documentaries and, honestly,reading these articles, I mean
it's incredible stuff.
It's truly incredible whatyou're doing.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
Thank you, james.
That means a lot coming fromyou again.
Truly, um, I really appreciateit.
Uh, you can check it all outAmerica on one.
Uh, u N W O Ncom.
Um, that's across the board.
Instagram X all that good stuff, uh.
But, thank you, james, I trulyappreciate it.
I feel that, uh, you're doingreally important work.
(56:58):
I love that you profile thepeople with calluses.
I think that, man, you guyshave the best stories.
So, thank you for what you do.
Huge fans, it's an honor to bewith you today.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Likewise, keep up the good work and please reach out
if there's ever something I cando to help.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
I will do that Same to you.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
Okay, bye everybody.
Thank you to everyone who hastaken the time out of their busy
lives to write a review for theshow and share it with their
friends.
I'm extremely proud of howintelligent, engaged and
adventurous this audience is.
Original music for the SixRanch Podcast is written and
performed by Justin Hay.
(57:36):
Art for the Six Ranch Podcastwas created by John Chatelain
and digitized by Celia Harlander.
Thanks for listening and we'llsee you again next week.
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