The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 336: State of the Union, 2022

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Whit Fosburgh and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: The TRCP turkey hunt; how Whit got hit by a car; how Steve passed out while his wife was giving birth; when a chinook helicopter causes turkeys to shock gobble; our own F-up with over-the-top headlines; MeatEater saves lives yet again; Danish scientists crack the code on growing morels; engineering to re-engineer; the issues that arise when you making rivers navigable; fixing the Federal appraisal process; unanimous MAPLand; the public's property rights; Recovering America's Wildlife Act not a slam dunk; ID spending half as much per grizzly as it does per kid in public school; good for the butterfly, good for the turkey and deer too; striped bass in steady decline for the past two decades; keep your blues; conservation that's durable; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Hey everybody. Joined today in the turkey woods. Well, very near the turkey woods with Whit Fosberg, President and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. We're actually here on part of our fundraising

mission. We are. Where we have the turkey hunt giveaway. We just hunted with the turkey hunt giveaway people. Yeah, so you guys are very generous in basically allowing us to sweepstakes you off. And two lucky winners came out here and hunted with you, Steve, and Yanni. And not fully successful, but I think everyone had a great time. And spectacular woods around here. Matt Cook's farm. Great place. Yanni and not fully successful but I think everyone had a great time and yeah spectacular woods around here Matt Cook's farm great place we're still running an 80 success rate yep

and just to give you an idea that you know in terms of what it did for us I mean we had we raised on this one 80 plus thousand dollars last year it was over 120 yeah so we're making real money for conservation and uh so we gotta find we gotta find some way to soup it up and get the numbers back up well i think it's remember we did it last year it was october and then now it's may so we had a much more truncated season and people who had just entered were asking them to enter again so i think as we move back out to an annual may cycle, because that's when our dinner is, we had to move it because of COVID. I think you're going to see those numbers get back up.

Oh, really? Plus, to the extent that the guys that were here this time who had a great time, they get the word out. It's pretty cool. I mean, we had 3,000-plus people enter last time. These two won. And super good guys, Western New York from Buffalo. We've talked, me and Yanni, These two won. Super good guys. Western New York from Buffalo.

Me and Yanni were talking about switching it to doing a raffle for an elk hunt. Wondering if that would make a huge difference or if it would make any difference. I don't know. We could certainly try it and see it. Elk hunt, as you guys know, is much harder to put on in general. This one is pretty darn easy and it's a high success rate. Very fun. And it's, you know, honestly you're sitting in a ground blind with you or Yanni or sneaking through the woods. I mean, they're going to learn more on this about hunting and about you guys than they would probably in a lot of the elk hunting situations.

They learned I like to take me a little midday nap. Yep. Uh, tell everybody how you got run over by a car. That's a good story. Uh, so I've been bike commuting for 20 years. My office is out to our home and I live just outside the DC line in

Maryland and I've never really had a close call, but DC has been doing a really good job of revamping its bike lanes. It's become a very good bike city, but a lot of the passenger cars are not quite used to it yet. They moved a bike lane over near the Watergate on Virginia Avenue. The Watergate? The Watergate. Both lanes are on the south side of the road. I'm literally heading home, and it's dark.

How long is your ride? It's about eight miles, nine miles. But so it was dark and rainy, and I'm heading into traffic, and a woman was running late for a performance at the Kennedy Center and just turned straight into me, and my bike goes under the car, I go over the car, and, you know, three broken ribs, broken clavicle, broken finger, separated shoulder. Whoa.

Hey, I fly fished last weekend, so everything's good. Yeah. How long ago did this happen? February 24th, same day as the Ukraine invasion. Wow. Yep. I would have never known that you're beat up just a couple months ago.

Well, part of that's the reason I haven't turkey hunted this year, because I didn't feel like putting a 12-gauge against my broken clavicle and pulling a trigger was a good idea. Yeah, just shoot left-handed with a red dot. Well, I could try that. I am very right-handed. I thought of you the other day because, you know, in the Salt Lake City Airport, they have this by the F.

Is it Salt Lake? Yeah, the Salt Lake City Airport. By the entrance to the F and G gates, they have this very large panoramic screen. And it's all advertising like Utah. So it's all these gorgeous scenics and people skiing and mountain climbing. And then they got a fly fisherman.

The worst cast I've ever seen. Everything's perfect. they didn't cast they did they just did a horrible job casting the caster and they should have had you come in there and paste one out for their little video well i mean honestly cast on the planet that's an aramic screen that's one of the things that made river run through it successful is they didn't have i mean i guess brad pitt learned how to fly fish but for the really beautiful fly fishing scenes they brought in this guy from wisconsin yeah what was his name uh borger i'm forgetting his first name his dad was a legend too but who's just a world-class you know flycaster and so all the sort of scenic fly casting shots you see are with one

of the best fly casters in the world and which makes a big difference yeah no they should definitely had you uh okay a couple things here here's a funny one someone sent us a tax exchange and it was someone saying uh oh it's their name katie i thought it was from your wife no different katie but you know what a lot like when i was a little kid everybody named everybody steve and jenny and then five years later they named them all katie how many like i got more katies in my life i don't know what to do with this here's another katie she's talking about how uh her husband was reading my new book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World, while she was in labor.

She was getting out ahead of it. Planning ahead. When my wife was in labor, my first kid, I passed out and had to have a nurse come resuscitate me. They got out that big ass, you ever see an epidural needle? Oh, yeah. Listen, man. Seeing that made you pass out? Yeah, because here's the deal, too.

My wife did all the garbage to have, the all natural, all these classes, and all this practicing and shit. They get there, and they put the little heart monitor on the baby. They're like, that ain't happening. Pulled out so she's all upset.

Then they pulled off this biggest needle I've ever seen. Looked like something you'd baste a turkey with. Like an injector. I just passed right out and woke up out in the hallway with my head in a nurse's lap. Yeah. Wow. I could cut your arm off and eat it, Giannis.

You wouldn't pass out. But that needle going into my wife's spine, maybe pass out. Wow. Has that ever happened to you before? No. You went? No. I like to think I was overtired.

I got really close i mean because but we were in like hour 40 or something of labor and had not maybe had some cat naps but not really and it's getting very intense but i'm also like just feeling my body shutting down. Did you say hour 40? Yeah. Yeah. Cause we went all natural the whole way and it went long, mega long. Yeah. But that includes like, you know, the beginnings,

like where do you, where, where does the timer start? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Of labor.

So, but yeah, I remember just being on my knees and the kind of next to the bed with my arms on the bed and just like looking at the midwife being like, okay, I just, I I'm, I'm think I'm just going to lay down. I have to lay down just for a little bit, just for a little bit. And I was like literally tapping out, but then, uh, Ina came out and then we both went and took a nap. I think you should count it for when the water breaks. But I'm not a, you know, what do you call them? Maternity nurse or something like that.

A guy wrote in, this is interesting. This is a thing to add to our list of things that make a turkey gobble, which we were heavy duty into for a long time, but kind of got away from it. A Chinook helicopter flying 100 feet off the ground as the propellers split the air you know that sound says got every turkey in the woods gobbling that's good but you know they can adjust the pitch on those and make it louder and quieter i More if you can set them to like ultra shot gobble setting.

Well, no, I was, I happened to, when we went to hunt a region in Montana, I was talking to a wildlife biologist and he says, well, I won't be able to hook up with you because every morning and evening I'll be flying doing deer count. I said, well, if you're flying over where I'm going to be, do a couple of low passes and make that chopper

really sound off and give me a couple of free shot gobbles. I saw the chopper, but that didn't get any gobbles. You didn't hear any gobbles off it. You've been following this, the corner crossing, Wyoming corner crossing case? Yeah, not professionally as much as just as a citizen. Yeah, as a citizen, that's what I'm guessing. Have we updated this yet?

We've been working on – I don't want to get out ahead of myself. A lot more to come on this subject. But just to update, the four... This is a while ago now. The four Missouri hunters who were being tried for trespassing over having corner crossed in Wyoming were all found not guilty. However, three of the four hunters acquitted. So they were found not guilty in criminal trespassing.

Okay. But they had done the same thing at the same ranch. They had done the same thing near there in 2020. So rather than, yeah, we did talk about this. I remember making the parallel. Remember how the juice wasn't in trouble for killing his wife in the waiter? Criminally. But then got in trouble for killing his wife and the waiter, Ron Perlman.

Is that his name? Is that his name? Goldman? Just look up real quick. Who'd he kill? I will. Ron Perlman. You don't follow this wit?

No. I can tell you where I was sitting when he was driving down the road trying to get away from the cops. You're talking to OJ now. Who'd you think I was talking about? Oh, down the road trying to get away from the cops. You're talking OJ now. What did you think I was talking about? Oh, yeah. He said the Jews. Yeah, yeah. I was sitting in Bo Niki's bar in Muskegon County, Michigan, watching OJ drive around in that truck.

Bronco. Yeah, that truck would be worth a lot of money right now. Yep. Goldman, I think was his name, wasn't it? Come on, yeah. This is the easiest web search in the world. It's not. Are you kidding me?

When you type in OJ, Nicole Brown Simpson, Ron... I hope Phil plays like a ticking clock. I would have solved this 10 times. Ronald Lyle Goldman. There you go. Why was I talking about OJ? Oh, because I feel like we talked about this. Meaning, OJ was not

in trouble criminally, but he was in trouble civilly. Several of these guys are now facing a civil suit from a landowner from actions taken in 2020. I got a feeling that won't go anywhere. We often report on really how wildlife issues

are so egregiously misreported in the news. And Corinne, who's not here right now, felt that for us to be fair and morally consistent, we would have to point out our own egregious abuse of language in reporting wildlife news. If you go to the meat, we changed it, but if you go to theme meat eater.com we had coverage of a fox that snuck into a zoo and killed how many did he kill a lot like 26 25 a fox snuck into the smithsonian national zoo and killed 25 flamingos. There's a term for that. It's called,

what's it called when they do like an overkill thing? Oh, right. When they just sort of indulge. Surplus killing. Genocide. No, like when a mountain, no, no. Like when a mountain lion gets into it

like a pen full of llamas, right? Yeah. You just can't help himself. Yeah, they get excited yeah like it kills way more than he can eat surplus surplus killing the fox got in there and somehow managed to kill 25 flamingos our headline which we changed i had a we had uproar i had an uproar was wild animal massacres flamingamingo Flock at Famous American Zoo. Which, now we'll read if you go look.

Wild Animal kills Flamingo Flock at Famous American Zoo. Applying the same level of maturity to our own reporting as we do the reporting of others. She has a crime scene in red down there too. Did she not like the use of crime scene for that? I was informed by Spencer that was meant to be tongue in cheek. Ah, yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. I could read you the text exchange I have with Spencer. Like Spencer always does. Spencer, um, I could read you the text exchange I had with Spencer. Spencer always does. Spencer is disinclined to admit wrongdoing. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, he's not going to give me my answer from that last trivia round. Oh, here's another example of saving lives. A woman rode in from British Columbia out hiking with her 12-year-old.

They got a moose kind of trying to attack them. And the 12-year-old had read our Wilderness Skills book and knew what to do from having read the book, and it worked. Scared the moose off. Did we have a part in there about how to scare a moose off? Yeah. and knew what to do from having read the book, and it worked. Scared the moose off. Did we have a part in there about how to scare a moose off? Yeah, we did. He did it.

That's good to know. That's more common than probably a bear charge, you know? Yeah. This is one that has enormous implications for me and everyone that likes to hunt morels. Over the years years many people have liked to come forward and claim to have dialed in morel production and it often winds up being not true or exaggerated it seems like some danish biologists judging by the photos, some Danish biologists have now tamed the last true piece of wildlife in America. The one thing that man couldn't conquer has been conquered.

The morale. I mean, look it. They got a shitload of them. What about the huckleberry? A huckleberry is a souped up. A huckleberry is a diminutive blueberry. Right, but I thought they couldn't grow them. Listen, if you ever talk to, oh, your wife's a botanist.

Does your wife really buy into huckleberries being, it's a little blueberry. Yeah, that's true. The same way if you take a wild strawberry.'s it's a little blueberry yeah that's true it's the same way like if you take a wild flavor i know a wild strawberry is small and more flavorful that's right but strawberries have absolutely been domesticated that's true so yeah if a huckleberry just a blueberry then yeah it's been domestic we're in the middle of uh a lot of blueberries right now and the one thing that's that was the main reason that, and not my view,

like morels taste good, but the main thing I liked about them was that they were, they couldn't be conquered. They were unconquerable. And the Danes who make a hell of a good movie, uh, have figured out cultivating morel mushrooms indoors year round. The Danish Morel Project.

40 years of research. Collaboration with the Royal Veterinarian Agricultural University and the University of Copenhagen. The growing method of their black morels in a climate-controlled environment over a 22-week cycle produces 20 pounds of mushroom per square yard

per year. So depressing. Because like when you see a morel, you're like, someone went out in the woods and picked that son of a bitch. You know what I mean? Found it. now it'll be like white tails morels are gonna have the same problem that white tails have like when you go into a house and see a giant white tail i'm always like who knows you know what i mean like who knows who really knows is it a white tail or is it not? Is it a fake white tail?

No. So depressing. The reason it was tough to cultivate wild morels is because of an extra step in their life. I'm reading here. In their life cycle. Called the sclerodium. A word I had never heard. Sounds vaguely sexual. Sclerodium.

To germinate in spring, the sclerodium can either form new mycelium the root light network of underground filaments or they can form a fruiting body which is the above ground mushroom that people remember we had a big fight about this word before i was calling it a macro fructation but it is a macro fructification is If you imagine the part that makes a morel, there's a whole apple tree underground, but now and then it sticks an apple up above the dirt. The mycelium is the apple tree living underground.

Instead of it producing fruit, a.k.a. an apple, it produces a macro fructification, which is the part you cut off with your knife and the reason you're supposed to come off with a knife and not yank them out of the ground is so you don't damage the mycelium which i don't know if that's i've never heard if that's actually true or not so yeah the death of one more cool thing what do you think about that whip uh you know i'm not a mushroom hunter so i'd love to be but i don't i want never had anybody to teach me it's one of the things that you just don't go blind into i could teach you right now well we're sitting here yeah and then you cut it yeah yeah no but that's that's maybe a morel there are a lot of other ones out there oh yeah you don't know about yeah uh my my recommendation to budding my uh mycologist michael michael philiax

is um michael philia right that means you love mushrooms um is stick to the, there's like the foolproof four, the failsafe four, the failsafe five, foolproof five. Depending on who you ask, it's like different ones. But there's certain just dead nuts, right? Puff balls don't taste good, really. People act like they do, but they don't. Are always edible. Like all the puff balls, the white puff balls are all edible. Morels,

chanterelles are hard to mess up. Oysters are very hard to mess up. Just stick with those. All right. You don't need to be eating like the crazy ones. All right. I can't remember when, maybe Corinne will put it in the show notes.

We had a episode, a podcast episode called, I believe it was called Farewell Red Wolf, I think. And we had a Red Wolf expert talk about Red Wolves, Red Wolf recovery. For the first time in four years, a litter of Red Wolf pups was born in the wild. Six pups in total, four females and two males. Found last month in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina.

To give you a sense of the decline, 47 red wolves were born in the wild in 2008, down to only four pups 10 years later in 2018. U.S. Fish and Wildlife reported not a single red wolf birth in the past three years. 2019, 2020, 2021 until now. There are an estimated 15 to 17 red wolves in the wild today with another 241 in captivity.

You think people get fired up about wolves in the Rocky Mountains. They get real fired up down there about wolves. Like that it's illegit, that it's not an actual species, that it's like a coyote hybrid,

that the feds are sticking it down their throat, that it's conservation dependent. It's all a bunch of bullpucky. On and on and on. If you're interested in that whole debate check out the episode of Farewell Red Wolf and you will learn more than you can remember about it

hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps

that include public and crown land hunting zones aerial imagery 24k topo maps waypoints and tracking that's right you were always talking about. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

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Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. All right, you ready to get into this? Sure, anytime. Totally recovered. Yep, more or less. What's going on in Washington, D.C.? I mean, I know what's going on in Washington, D.C., but what, I know what's going on in Washington, D.C., but what's going on in the bowels of Washington, D.C.?

When you get outside of Supreme Court leaks and the war in Ukraine and inflamed partisanship and the January 6th committee. So I'm going to start over on the administrative side because the big thing right now is implementation of the bipartisan infrastructure law that passed in the fall, which is $1.2 trillion for roads and bridges, traditional infrastructure, but also billions for natural infrastructure. And that can range from

migration crossings over highways to investing in seed sources for restoration to Everglades restoration. how do they wedge that like i'm glad i'm supportive but how do they wedge that in there because we're always annoyed when stuff gets wedged in that we don't want yep but then when stuff gets wedged in that you do want you're glad about it but you don't complain so i mean a lot of this stuff i mean let's use everglades as an example yeah Yeah. I mean, we have- Sell me on it as infrastructure.

So what we did back in its wisdom in the mid-1900s, the Corps of Engineers channelized Central Florida to have the water go east and west, as opposed to flow south through the Everglades to Florida Bay that it had done naturally. And that's where you have things like the River of grass and you know those iconic you know images of yesteryear so the impacts of that can we dive into that little story for a second i just want people to make sure we we had a podcast about this long long time ago but um i don't think people people that haven't spent time on there can fully grasp what that was like. Yeah. So you have an incredibly flat terrain that runs essentially across from mid to Southern, all the way down to Florida Bay.

That is one giant wetland. The gradient is crazy. I forget what it is. We talked about it in that podcast, but it's like an inch over like a mile or a foot over a mile or something like that. So the water would have many, it's like a many, a foot over a mile or something like that. So the water would vary. It's like a many, many miles wide river.

Yes. And shallow and ecologically incredibly rich. But what it would do is take polluted water historically from developed areas in Northern Florida. And by the time it reached Florida Bay, it would be cleaned up naturally. And Florida Bay was one of the best fisheries

in the world and then what happened after they channelized that and sent the river water east and west is you've had one florida bay was starved of fresh water as was a bunch of the everglades i like to point out to people just so they know um and talk about the everglades a lot of times in history, we skip like, for instance now, we're dealing with all the dams on the Columbia system, right? And someone's like, you could have the idea that someone built those dams

just to screw salmon, right? But it was, they're generating electricity. And some people point to the fact that we did one of the you know when people like to define like how we won world war ii one of the things is we could smelt aluminum and make and produce aircraft faster than anybody yep because we had all that electricity yep so at a time it was like a it was a deliberate thing and then you move on and then you deal with mistakes you made. But they had that in the Everglades.

They had that flood. I don't know what it killed. Thousands of people. But it was even more than that. It wasn't so much the impacts of people on flooding. It was largely mosquitoes. It was just how to get the water out of there faster in general. To quote, reclaim it. Right. So you could

then do more sustainable or more reliable agriculture in those areas. You could have housing developments that didn't flood every other year. So that was at least a lot. It wasn't someone being like, I got an idea to really mess things up. Right. But at that a lot. It wasn't someone being like, I got an idea to really mess things up. Right. But I mean, you know, at that time, you know, the Corps of Engineers across the country, you know, channelized rivers, you know, basically made them move faster, you know, got rid of wetlands. And we're, over time, we recognize the, you know, the fallacy of that whole model, which was we needed those wetlands. We needed the curves in the river, which slowed down the velocities to mitigate the floods. Yeah. And, but we didn't really understand that at the time we were doing all this we could do it because

we could and it seemed like a good idea at the time i always wish i could go back and i'm sure you could if you you know a good historian could go back is who were the at the time there i'm sure they were labeled as lunatics and alarmists. Who were the people that were saying, you know what, man? If you do that, right? Yep. Those voices are lost, not lost to history probably,

but lost to popular history, right? Yeah, but they look pretty prescient now. Like the guy on the Columbia River that was being like, you know, if you do this, my feeling is that you will doom all of those salmon species to extinction. And people were probably like, ah, you tree hugger. Well, at that time, you could even say, well, we'll just build a hatchery, which is what they did. Right. And so that was the way they dealt with it there. But in Florida, you know, we've seen the impacts because now you have the huge dead zones and, you know, red tides and algae blooms coming off the east and west side for all this water, polluted water being shunted out. And, you know, so that's having huge economic impacts, you know, in addition to the decline of Florida Bay and the Everglades and, you know, the various species.

So we're in the process of restoring that to make it work way you know nature was supposed to make it work so is the is the infrastructure logic and again i support the decision i'm trying i'm trying to get to the lot is the infrastructure logic that it was like a core of engineers infrastructure project that created an issue meaning it was it was like earth moving construction dam building putting roads on tops of dams and it's not going to get fixed naturally we're going to have to go back and re-engineer that system yeah and so that's what we're doing in south florida does that become a core project core of engineers oh yeah absolutely okay yeah and money's running through their budget but also a bunch of other budgets and but that's just a classic example of natural infrastructure.

Another would be in the South Louisiana, reconnecting the Mississippi River with this delta. Because we've basically put up huge levees and move all that water and all the sediment that's coming down the Mississippi out into the Gulf of Mexico. And so you have this huge land loss in Louisiana, where literally South Louisiana is sinking. Help people understand why the land is vanishing. Well, because historically, the Mississippi River would braid out as soon as it got down past New Orleans, that area. And all that sediment would then settle and maintain this vast area of wetlands. And that vast area of wetlands, in addition to being good ecologically,

is what protected, you know, places like New Orleans from hurricanes and, you know, tidal surges that would come in. And as we lose that, we expose, you know, the people, you know, to far greater risk. And we saw that obviously with Katrina and other events. So what we're trying to do now is to actually break some of those levees along the lower Mississippi River to allow the river to spread back out, to allow that sediment to dump where it's supposed to be, to try to end the subsidence that's happening right now, and then also create a natural system

that will protect flood surge. That's easy to see on infrastructure because it was one of the main reasons you channelize the river was to make it predictable for navigation. Correct. Like if you go back and read, um, Mark Twain, uh,

his book about the river captains, um, you had to have like a guy that knew how to navigate that river back in those days, which was constantly changing. You couldn't run deep. You couldn't run deep vessels. You had to have a very detailed, constantly evolving knowledge of how to get boats up the mississippi channel because it changes all the time and they just made it a straight shot right for shipping

so that's easy to see on infrastructure i mean nobody's really talking about that main shipping channel you know changing that that is what it is but as you get down past the you know new orleans yeah that is where we need to recreate those wetlands. Now, another example is things like the crossings over highways. Oh, I got one more question about the Mississippi. Is the primary energy, the political energy,

to start rehabilitating the Delta, is the primary energy to start rehabilitating the delta um is the primary energy coming from a public safety regarding hurricanes or is the primary energy coming from the conservation community all of the above and i think that largely this is being funded through you know basically bpo oil spill dollars okay so there's still some of that that hasn't spent? There's still some of that that's going to be spent for several more years. That's going to be obviously kicked up through the infrastructure spending. But no, I think they recognize that it's critical to basically protect New Orleans and the people that live along there. There's also recognition that we're destroying that ecosystem, which is phenomenal

fishery, waterfowl habitat you name it so i think everybody's come together and this is one of those things like it's mom and apple pie in louisiana you know by and large that everybody agrees this is the right thing to do but that's been a sea change in people's attitudes you know where we have a long history of controlling nature and now we're trying to get nature to actually play a role in protecting us. Just another example of infrastructure would be that there's a pilot program in the bill that was passed in November of $350 million for expanding highway overpasses and underpasses for wildlife. And you see that in places like down in Trappers Point in Wyoming

and where they've you know done that already and they're incredibly successful i mean animals use them they reduce accidents with people and death and uh you know so and it's just you know as we think about a changing climate and animals needing to move i mean having those basically intact migration quarters is more important than ever so we're going to see a big influx of that. And it's not just, you know, for mule deer and elk and, you know, pronghorn in Wyoming. You know, this is going to be for reptiles and amphibians in New Jersey, getting under roads as they move in their spring migrations too. So it's a different, it's a pilot program and it's going to be around the country and it's a chance to show that it works and to expand that but this is just a different way of thinking about traditional roads and bridges

and we have so much better data today about you know how animals move than we did even a decade ago you can be much more targeted much more targeted and you know where to put that overpass and you know it's going to be used and that's got to be combined with some fencing to push them into there but you know that is you know that is a to be used. And that's got to be combined with some fencing to push them into there. But, you know, that is a solution to a lot of problems. Because, you know, if you look at a lot of migration maps, they end right at, you know, I-5 or whatever it is in Wyoming. And that's not the way it's supposed to work. Walk me through on those three examples, unless you're ready to move away from the infrastructure.

Like before we leave the infrastructure. So before we leave infrastructure, here's the challenge. We have billions of dollars for conservation in that infrastructure package. We have agencies that are not equipped to handle that level of money. Getting it on the ground is going to be a huge challenge. How do you mean? First of all, we've had years of bashing the federal government and talking about we need to downsize federal government. We've had attrition from all the national resource agencies over the years.

So you need to have an infrastructure in place to apply these funds and make sure they get on the ground in a reasonable way because nobody wants this money to be wasted. Nobody wants it just to sit in an agency's bank account and not get spent So part of the challenge here and we have a working group of our various partner organizations that is working on this is identify You know places where this money can get put to get it on the ground quickly, for example National Fish and Wildlife Foundation you know, which is handling a lot of the BP oil settlement funds. It has a 30-plus year track record of doing great conservation work and knows how to get money on the ground quickly with very

low overhead. You have supersized the programs there to get that money on the ground. After Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey, they created a coastal resiliency fund, managed a lot of the Department of Commerce funds that came into that to basically rebuild wetland habitats, barrier islands, all the rest, and incredibly successful, matched by private dollars, matched by state dollars, use that same sort of model here to get the money out of the agencies to an organization that knows how to do grants, that knows how to monitor, knows how to evaluate, and knows how to get that money out quickly. And that's what's happening right now. So they just did an announcement a short while ago, a billion dollars going to

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for a host of different projects, terrestrial, marine, you name it. And those are, you know, RFPs are on the street right now. So I think that's the big challenge is, you know know how do we make sure that all this money has been appropriated it actually gets to good projects and if it doesn't you can see a change in administration the committee is saying we have all this unused money we're going to rescind it and pull it back out and nobody wants that to happen yeah so i think that's a lot of the challenge right now. Explain to me how, if you look at the role of TRCP and other players, when they're shaping what the infrastructure package will look like, and they're building, they're creating legislation,

and they have to keep in mind that it has to be passable, right? So it's not just like a wish list. It has to be somewhat pragmatic to get the votes, and it has to be signed by the president. At what point does the conservation community insert themselves into the dialogue to say, if we're going to be spending money on infrastructure we need to be like spending it in these ways and how do you keep it in the end from all the work just evaporating so it was very clear early on that infrastructure was one of those few areas that democrats and republicans could agree on you know trump talked about it you know obama talked

about it biden talked about on. Biden talked about it on the campaign trail. So back during the middle of the Trump administration, we started gearing up a campaign with our partner organizations. The way we're organized, we have 61 different groups under our broad umbrella. And then they mobilize into working groups on particular issues like infrastructure. And so we may have 20 different groups on this particular issue. And so we may have, you know, 20 different groups on this particular issue. And so we created a website years ago called Conservation Works for America that talked about putting people back to work through conservation projects and the benefits that would do for infrastructure, for natural habitats, for hunting and fishing. And based on that platform, then that basically gave us a seat at the table early on as it started getting negotiated. And so then as, you know, became more real under when Biden came in, you know, then we

were prepared the whole series of different road programs we thought needed investment. And, you know, and they were happy to have our support on this. And because they were trying to make it bipartisan, the hunting and fishing community tends to lean Republican. And so I think they valued our input and participation. And plus, it was the right thing to do. It met their climate objectives, met their jobs objectives, and met their infrastructure objectives. And it was something that was, frankly, pretty easy to get at the end of the day.

So at some point, someone comes in, they're like, I got an idea for you. Yep. Huh. And plus, think about the groups that are underneath the partnership and you have ducks unlimited trout unlimited pheasants forever association of fish and wildlife agencies i mean these guys have been doing on the ground projects for decades and they know what works they know it doesn't work they know the input you know some of the you know basically impediments to getting money on the ground, be it, you know, NEPA analysis, be it matching fund requirements, things like that, that all need to be tweaked

if you're going to get this stuff out and get it on the ground quickly. So there's a tremendous amount of expertise there. And this is, you know, this is right in those groups wheelhouse. And what we do is, you know, we take advice from them and then we coalesce, coalesce around the lobbying communication, and try to push that through inside the Beltway. And then if we're successful, like we were this time, there's a buttload of money that goes back out to these groups to actually put projects on the ground. If you go back to the Great American Outdoors,

what is implementation looking like there? You have some of the same challenges. So just to remind your listeners, the Great American Outdoors Act had two big components. One was permanent and full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, $900 million a year for projects that conserve sensitive habitats, that expand access, you know, that they could be, you know, fee acquisition, it could be conservation easements, it runs the gamut. That is only one time in the history of the program, since it was passed in 1965, I think, have we had full funding of $900 million. So again, we have some of the same challenges with the agencies. The appraisal process is a real problem here because the way that the federal appraisal

process works is they'll look at a kick-ass elk or mule deer property in a place like Montana, but they appraise it on its ability to grow corn or soybeans. And so you have these ridiculously low valuations that don't meet with today's. I mean, you look at a haul and haul brochure or something like that, and these amenity ranches that have great habitat are going for insane amounts of money. They have nothing to do with how much corn and soybean they can produce. Yeah, I've heard frustrations from agency people about that that you know people should be clear that that and it makes sense and the in and it seems like a good thing um that the government can't just buy and

like insanely priced pieces of property like there has to be some sort of objective understanding of its value yeah and that's and that's in law yeah Yeah, to keep taxpayers from getting screwed by someone making horrible financial decisions, right? Paying $100 million for something that's worth $10 million. You just screwed taxpayers over. So it's supposed to have some discipline. But it doesn't

keep up to speed. Or someone explained to me they're still looking at stocking rates of cows and calves on places that are absolutely going to sell as recreational wildlife habitat. Right. They're going to sell as recreational properties. Yeah. The values have changed since the 1950s or 60s.

And you're not competing in the modern era because it's not a thing where you're looking at contemporary comps. Right. And you have a landowner that wants to do the right thing, like make this public. But it's really hard for them to do if they're getting off 25% of what they would get on the open market. Yeah. And so they're just not going to do it.

Yeah. A landowner might be like, it's got miles of trout stream, hundreds of elk, antelelope we see black bears and the feds are sitting there like it'll it's got 13 acres of irrigated alfalfa and support three cow calf pairs per unit you know whatever and some yeah some tax income then he's like i'll take it right so you know basically we're having to deal with that issue so that's in the process being changed you know as we speak and hopefully that gets done pretty quickly but then you also have a sort of a different orientation even like when you look at that it's being changed but how is it being like what specifically are they changing i think the federal the methodologies

i don't think this has to go through congress i think this is administrative act okay and again i've got people on our staff that know far more about this than I do. But what they basically need to do is publish a new appraisal system that reflects modern values. And that goes through a rulemaking process. It takes a little bit of time. And so that whole process is underway right now. In fact, we had Tommy Boudreau, who's number two at the department of the interior talked to our collective groups last week about his personal frustration with this but the fact that it is moving forward and as fast as they can make it go yeah and just washington doesn't do things quickly i've heard other stories of landowners' families that wanted to try to move ranch land into public access

and just grew to be very frustrated by the time. Some landowners can afford that delay. I can't do this for three years. Right. No, I totally agree. It's a very legitimate concern. Yeah, there's economic uncertainty. Who knows what the market's going to be like. I can't wait

for you guys. Well, and also the other thing about the Great American Endorsed Act, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, part of that is it really also has a little bit different orientation. I mean, we got a provision in that that requires that at least 3% of the funds, or upwards of $25 million annually, be used for

projects that expand public access. So instead of... So you can measure it on that expand public access okay so instead of so you can measure it on that merit yeah so instead of a 25 000 acre you know plum creek holding someplace that you maybe buy under land and water conservation function may still be a great project this also encourages the agency to look at maybe that half section someplace you know that may not be worth a whole lot by itself but it it opens up 10,000 acres of national forest behind it. And so, you know, there's a different way of thinking even within the agencies that they look at this money

and how it's going to get spent. Because it's not just big landscape level acquisitions. I mean, it's conservation easements, it's access easements, it's, you know, small fee purchases. But it's hard to picture getting someone, getting a team of people who can be nimble, make quick assessments, quick intelligent assessments, and be nimble enough to participate in the market right now. So that's why you have the ngo component so you have groups like nature conservative trust for public land conservation fund that have done a lot of the early leg work and putting together the deals and making the public justification and getting the landowner

trust and then they're the ones that are probably doing the primary interface with the federal government saying lining this up saying this is queued up it's ready to go got it and so rocky mountain oak foundation does some stuff elk foundation is a perfect example yeah like they'll work deals where ranchers who may even be members of rmef come to rmef and be like we'd love to get our yep place protected but yeah yeah and then they become the interface with the federal agency or the state agency or whatever it might be that would take ownership or hold the conservation easement. There are other times where these groups will actually buy the area in fee just because the landowner is facing a real crunch from cash and this can't wait with the understanding that then they'll flip it to the federal agency. But that puts a big burden on the nonprofit because all of a sudden they're out however many million dollars that they're having to sit there and wait for the federal government to get

into its act. And there's probably always some apprehension that they'll change their mind. Sure. And that's the risk of the game. But the groups like Conservation Fund, Trust for Public Land, these are pros. They've been doing this for years. I think they have a pretty good sense about if this is going to happen or not. And now that you have a guaranteed stream of federal funding through Land and Water Conservation Fund, it's far more certain this is going to happen or not. And now that you have a guaranteed stream of federal funding through land and water conservation, it's far more certain that's going to happen at some point. The old days, the real concern was, okay, well, go ahead and buy this.

But let's say Congress, instead of giving $900 million, only decides to give it a hundred million and that's competing with projects all around the country. Then you can really be screwed. Are they having, uh, are they having a hard time finding projects on the right timeline? No, plenty of projects out there is a backlog of projects that are ready to go. The issue is more on the, it's just the administrative side, getting the appraisal process fixed, getting the people within the agencies to deal with in three times

as much volume of transactions that they've been doing historically, which means staffing up to a certain degree. So those are the bigger challenges. Now, you also have in the Great American Outdoors Act a $9.5 billion trust fund to address the maintenance backlog on public lands. National parks, national forests, that could be campgrounds, could be visitor centers, could be be roads, it could be trails. So they're facing a lot of the same problems there too about capacity because if you have an agency where you have a lot less people

than you had a few years ago, and all of a sudden you have this money to go do all this stuff, it's hard sometimes to get that money on the ground. Now, you're not going to go out there and build that visitor center. You're going to contract with somebody else, but you've got to do that due diligence on the front hand. You've got to go put out a bid. You've got to go through the RFP process and make sure you're, again, not getting screwed because this is taxpayer money you're using. Yeah. Explain the MAP Act. So MAP Land is an act that

just passed. So it's M-A-P-l-a-n-d mapland which is making our public lands accessible act it's i'm probably botching it is an acronym it's an acronym yeah but it's a nice acronym mapland so this is this just passed the house and the senate signed by biden two weeks ago uhanimous vote out of the Senate. Oh, is that right? Yep. And what this does is- Unanimous.

Unanimous, yeah. I knew it passed overwhelmingly, but I didn't know it was unanimous. Yeah, it was overwhelming in the House. I think we had like nine people that voted against it, and then unanimous in the Senate. Even though you haven't explained it to people yet, I'm just curious now. The nine that didn't like it, what didn't they like about it? Anti-federal government. It's going to cost some dollars.

It could sort of fall on the taxpayer concern. It's basically people that don't like conservation and don't spend any money for it. So out of the almost 400 people hanging around the house, nine didn't like it. Yeah, exactly. And then every senator liked it. Yeah.

Okay. So anyway, what it does, this goes back to the projects we did with Onyx that identified landlocked public lands. And in that process, we went through a multi-year and a series of different reports, and anybody can read them on our website. But identify all these lands that the public owns that the public can't get access to because there's no legal access right. Well, in the process of doing that, we discovered that there are a whole lot more legal access

rights that we know about and joel webster who runs our western lands or western conservation programs you know he and the folks at onyx that dude is one of the sharpest minds oh yeah when it comes to i mean i land designations land access holy shit he's uh he like i think he was like our little mad scientist in the back room concocting new schemes to protect public land to expand access and when i'm talking to him i'm always like how in the world does he know all that yeah well he's right i'm so distracted by wondering how he like he lives so i mean you know hardcore public land hunter yeah you'd be like you know what you see like a railroad crossing and it says something or another on

the map but then next to that it says something or not about dot or whatever he'll be like oh that's because yeah it's like no shit really yeah so but talking back to the map land i mean part of this process with onyx they discovered that the agencies and this is really forest service and blm you know had you know somewhere around 50 000 negotiated access easements of which somewhere around 5 000 actually been digitized so you you knew about them through a public process so if you're using your onyx or something like that it would show up the rest of them are in boxes in the basements of ranger districts someplace and we asked the forest like in that like do you mean literally literally do The rest of them are in boxes in the basements of Ranger District someplace. And we asked the foresters. Like, do you mean literally? Literally.

Do you mean if the building burnt down? Yes. Well, as it is right now, nobody, the people that are there, these may have been negotiated 50 years ago. People that are there now have no idea about them. A landowner may have put up a gate someplace a long time ago. Nobody really noticed. Everyone assumed it's been off limits forever. Yeah.

And he sold it three times. Yeah. So we asked the forest service and this is forest service is probably the worst. I mean, they've got 35,000, you know, access easements of which,

you know, far less than 5,000 had been actually digitized. So we asked them how long it would take you guys to get this stuff basically into a 21st century format. And they're like, well, our current levels of funding, probably between 10 and 20 years. And so what we did was, you know, Joel and his team drafted up this bill that would give the agencies the money they need, give them a two year window to get this all done. Tell them to get together to come up with a common data set because of course the agencies also have their own process and their own data standards and get it done and so you know that's

what passed congress and i think this is going to be a real game changer for a lot of the public land access because then if you have your handheld gps your onyx your whatever your format might be you're going to see you know what, where we have legal access rights. And there are going to be a bunch of stuff showing up that we had no idea was there. We have a mutual acquaintance. Okay. His name is Carl.

Yes. He recently had a very interesting, I'd like to have him explain this himself in long form i'm not gonna i'm not gonna talk about where it is we said a very interesting discovery in the midwest where he's looking at maps and sees that there's this block of state land and there is a hundreds of yard long, a hundreds of yard long strand on a map marked of like what appears to be state land. It's literally feet wide.

He's a lands expert. So he noticed something that maybe he wouldn't have noticed. He goes over to have a look and it is the windrow. The windrow between two crop fields, which is piled up with rock

as the over the years, farmers kick up rock, throw it in the windrow. It's rock and briar, but it's a windrow and he goes and does some research and it turns out this is owned by the state.

He goes and has a chat with one of the neighboring landowners who assures him that it's been closed. Right? He goes to the state office. They're like, it hasn't been closed. You can definitely use it. There hasn't been a trail there, but it was meant to be.

And in fact, I don't know what happened. That guy has asked us to close it. We don't really know what that means. Yep. And he walks down that stump, bitch. He gets down there, and guess what he finds? All kinds.

This is a place you can't bait. All kinds of bait piles. God. It's just like. Hey. So he now has's been and then he parked and he can legally park on the right away and he does this trudge he says it takes about an hour and a half to go down this thing to get to this lake that's otherwise inaccessible and the guy leaves um notes i'm calling the sheriff he goes and says let's call the sheriff together well i'm not calling him right now but it's a crazy story i don't think that's nice it's not federal but it's state right but it's

not isolated it's not isolated i think you're gonna find as we do this process and get this implemented you're gonna find those all over the this process and get this implemented, you're going to find those all over the place. And as you talked about corner crossings a little bit, I mean, this all sort of plays into, you know, one way to deal with overcrowding and a bunch of our public lands is to expand access to the public lands that nobody has access to right now. And map land is one tool to help us do that. And it's not infringing on private property rights

because we own these and you know maybe the new landowner doesn't know that but this is going to help i think a long term with reduced conflicts with private landowners because you know this is the way it is it's going to be digitized everyone knows where it is and everyone knows where it isn't that's the thing i think people need to um not need to, it's the thing I'd like people to recognize. Instead of the public going and sort of taking something from a private landowner, it's in effect the private landowner has taken something from the public. Correct. The private landowner is utilizing as their own, something that isn't theirs.

So if you, if you believe in this whole, like, you know, this whole idea of a property rights and stuff, we're just, we're simply, the public is simply asserting its property rights.

And I'm saying we, the public have access to certain things we'd like to clarify what it is and utilize it and there may be no malice on the landowner's part i mean as you mentioned it may have changed hands two or three times since this was negotiated he probably had no idea he or she and it's got to be a rude it's a rude awakening yep you can like i can easily get in the head of someone who has been on some chunk of ground for you know 20 years and all of a sudden someone says hey you know hate to break it to you but it turns out your driveway is a road. Yeah.

Yeah. Of course you're going to resist. No one's going to be like, oh, well, in that case, welcome. Yeah. But it is what it is. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcomemaps.com slash meet welcome to the to the onx club y'all there's a bunch of other stuff we're working on right now there's a bill that's pending in the senate called recovering america's wildlife act and that's a slam dunk right oh no no no this is a you know i mean it's we've got 16 democrats 16 republicans on it and this is in the senate so i mean it's got good bipartisan support but it's going to cost you know 1.4 billion dollars a year and any time that you have something that's that expensive there's going to be opposition to it we know that and it's not going to be something that sails through 100 to

nothing but you know the rationale behind this bill. But you have a split number of Democrats and Republicans supporting it. Yeah. But that's still 30 or 32 out of 100. Have the other ones not heard about it yet? Oh, they may have heard about it. They just haven't signed on as co-sponsors. When they sign on as co-sponsors, we know we got their vote.

And we've been very deliberate of making sure that for every Democrat we take, we're going to get a Republican to keep this bipartisan going the way through. And you got how many? 32 right now. How many of them have you talked to? We've talked to all of them. Well, you only got 18 to go and you're halfway at the... Sure, but you also have the filibuster in the Senate, which means you have to get above 60. Oh. But anyway, I think we can get it done, but it's not a slam dunk by any means. But what this bill would do is invest this money, 1.4 billion a year, to states to work on essentially non-game wildlife issues. And with the goal of keeping species off the Endangered Species Act list.

And you think about, you know, the state agencies which have primary jurisdiction for managing wildlife. Somewhere in that 60% plus of their annual budgets come from sportsmen. Through the excise taxes that go back out to the states for fishing tackle, ammunition, guns, archery equipment, motorboat fuel, all the rest. And licenses that we all pay and the tags we buy and all that so sportsmen are basically paying for wildlife management for years and some of that you know is understandably the agency's used to deal with things butterflies bats you

know whatever the non-game species might be but it's not a sustainable model and several years ago the states developed what they call their wildlife action plans, which is what they would need to deal with all these species that are in decline that will probably eventually get listed and cost a ton of money to recover. So how do we get ahead of that? And they added up, you add up the 50 states and the territories, and it came out to 1.4 billion a year, which is why we came up with that number. So, and this, you know, it's a penny wise, you know, this is a good investment to save a lot of money down the road because, you know, if it, as we say, if it species gets down to a red wolf status and we're spending however many tens of millions of dollars you know to try to recover

that species it would have made a whole lot more sense before it got to that level and red wolf may be a bad example to spend you know spend that money in advance to make sure that these species aren't you know collapsing and plus we're really talking about habitat management so we're talking about you know projects if you think about something like the sagebrush step you know sage And plus, we're really talking about habitat management. So we're talking about projects. If you think about something like the sagebrush steppe, sagegrouse is obviously an iconic species there. But we also have 350 other species that are not really game species that occupy that exact same ecosystem. So honestly, the reason we've been pushing this as much is, one, we think that we need that investment. But two, this is going to help game species as well, because we're really going to be investing in habitats and not just single species

management so we think it makes a ton of sense um we hope we're going to be able to get it done this year but you know it's again i think it's gonna be a fairly heavy lift there's a couple things i want to touch on um i want to back up a little bit we talked about great american outdoors act okay in the land and Water Conservation Fund. I feel like a lot of people are sitting there being like, where is all this money coming from? I just want to point out, we didn't cover this, but in the case of the Great American Outdoors Act,

which is funding LWCF, Land and Water Conservation Fund funding, that was a deal struck when? 1965. 1965. Okay, in 1965, it was that. When an oil company is leasing from the American people offshore oil field land. So it's like, how many miles you got to get off the coast for your out of state water? Three miles generally.

Okay. So if you, if you, let's say you live in California and you get in your boat and start heading west, you are in California water for a few miles and then you enter United States water and that goes, I don't know, quite a ways. 200 miles. 200 miles.

So that's land owned by the American people. Someone's going to go drill for oil. A for-profit venture is going to go drill for oil. Well, they're striking a deal with the American people saying like, we would like to lease this oil site from the American people to drill oil, to sell oil. That is where this revenue comes from it's a it's a percentage of the lease fee so we're saying as as americans you know like our

representatives are saying okay you're gonna pay us uh acts to use our land to draw oil from and we're gonna say that a percent like how many percent of that do you remember what it is yeah i can't remember. It was, you know, the percentage would have changed by now because it was a set dollar figure. Okay. 900 million. Okay.

So they're saying of that money, this amount, like of the money you're paying to us, America, we're pledging to spend this amount on access conservation projects. So this isn't like money that is just getting pulled out of thin air. No. This was a deal that was struck back then that allowed the outer continental shelf to be opened up for oil and gas development. And then the oil industry, in return, agreed to pay into this fund to pay for conservation on land.

Yeah. And it was a great model, and it's worked well, with the exception that the legislation was written in a fashion that didn't make that funding until the Great American Outdoors Act passed mandatory. So every year Congress would see that $900 million and decide, well, let's not appropriate maybe 900 million, let's do 400 million. Even though we were supposed to. Or 100 million. Yeah. But it wasn't protected from that. So Congress would rate it for all

sorts of other purposes. And that was what got fixed in the Great American Outdoors Act. Now, obviously, $900 million today is not worth the same as it was in 1965. It's still a lot of money, but it's a fraction of what it was originally intended to be. It would have been better if it was a percentage. Oh, it would have been. But, you know, listen, I'm happy we get $900 million dedicated for this because it's a whole lot better than what we were getting in the case of uh let's take this recovering america's wildlife act situation so here's the thing that is helpful to

consider i remember i was talking with a policy guy that worked on grizzly bear policy and in the lower 48 grizzly bears are listed as threatened under the endangered species act and someone was telling me that the state of idaho okay the state of idaho through the fish and Game Agency, which is funded by hunters and anglers, they spend half as much on every, annually, they spend half as much on every grizzly bear that lives in Idaho as they do on every kid enrolled in public school.

I would be skeptical of that number, but. Okay. All right. There's a couple. No. Listen, I got it through the New York Times fact checker. They don't let anything through.

Run it again? The state of Idaho was spending they were spending nine, they cost them like 9,000 bucks per year per kid for public school if that was i don't remember the exact numbers but something like that the state of idaho is

spending four thousand five hundred dollars on every grizzly bear in that state okay that makes more sense sorry so you're not talking about cumulative total no i'm saying they spend half as much per bear yeah as they do per kid to put them in public school. Yeah, yeah, I believe that. To put into context what it costs, what managing, what it costs to manage imperiled species. It's expensive to manage imperiled species.

So when you get into this question of is there a better funding mechanism than having a state which is get all of its funding through hunter angler participation or excise taxes on sporting goods to to have this like chunk of money spread so thin as like you're saying as we have increasing numbers and sure to have more species make the endangered species list right it's at a point you're going to be like weak at a state level we can't do it anymore i know there's fun there's like federal mechanisms too but at a point you're going to be that we're trying to and i know that state fish and game agencies are encouraged not to think this way anymore

where they look at like that they have a clientele their clientele being like hunters and anglers right and hunters and anglers want to see lots of elk lots of turkeys lots of trout just well-managed resources yeah and so they're like i want my money like i'm paying the money because i want i like to hunt i want you to take my money and make sure that these things that have all this public support are viable and you don't have people buying butterfly stamps stamps yeah so there's a there's a hole huge hole in in how we look at this stuff yep yeah and i just think that you know triage is not where we want to get we want to protect the ecosystems that maintain these species that are on the decline you know so they never get to that triage situation where it is not where we want to get. We want to protect the ecosystems that maintain these species

that are on the decline. So they never get to that treehouse situation where it costs so much money. And that's what this whole act's about. Yeah. And even if you're not a butterfly lover, I can just about guarantee you that if it's good for the butterflies,

it's probably going to be good for your turkeys and deer too. Oh, indeed. There aren't many... There aren't many habitat moves that turn out being bad for something. Yep. There's not many cases where you go help one thing and it turns out being bad for something else.

No, that's right. A couple other things worth noting. We just had a big milestone on striped bass on the east, which is the number one marine recreational fish in America. I didn't know that. Is that in terms of angler

hours? Angler hours, economic impact. And it's huge. It goes all North Carolina, all the way up through Maine. I've never even caught one. Awesome fish. Good to eat, too, right? Great to eat. And it's really, you know,

unlike something like a bonefish or a tarpon, it's an everyman's fish. They catch it from the beach. It's blue collar. I mean, you can catch them from the beach. You don't have to have a fancy boat. You know, you can catch them on a fly. I used to walk down to the beach in Rhode Island,

walk up and down the beach until I saw a bunch of them. Yep. Then you catch out there and you actually catch a whole bunch of bluefish. Oh, yeah. But now and then, wham! Yep. There he is.

So anyway, the striped bass, you may remember, you know, there was a full moratorium back in the 1980s. They were so overfished. Like, it got bad. It got really bad. What drove how bad it got? Oh, overfishing. 100%. I mean, there was, you know, some habitat stuff, too. But it was primarily overfishing. i mean there was you know some some habitat stuff too but it was

recreational it was recreational and commercial i mean recreational is the bigger part of the problem today like recreational anglers actually put a hurt on that fish big time i mean commercial did too but you know today 70 of the you know the fish that are caught are caught by or killed or killed by recreational anglers wow really and that's how popular the fish is are caught are caught by or killed or killed by recreational anglers. Wow, really? And that's how popular the fish is. I always run around telling people that like regulated recreational fishing is negligible. I mean, regulated is the key word there.

Got it. And we just didn't do what we needed to do at that time to regulate it properly. And until it was too late, then we had a full ass moratorium on commercial and recreational harvest for years. And was it because people are killing big females? That was certainly part of the problem, yeah.

And you have a big female, a 40 or 50-pound female, can lay, I forget, a million eggs or something. I mean, they are incredibly fecund. But we were starting to lose them, and also you're just killing too many fish, period. And even catch and release, we are far better today at surviving, knowing how to do that properly without huge impacts. I mean, if you're using live bait with treble hooks and you're letting the fish swallow it, you're not going to release that fish. Even if it's below the slot limit or you've already caught your limit for the day, that fish is going to die.

So there have been a lot of advancements in basically reducing mortality. But the species has still been in basically steady decline for the past 20 years. Still now. Yeah. And the last management action that was taken was taken in 2003 or 2004. And that was what they call amendment six to the striped bass plan and that's been intact till today and basically it's been you know in place as we've been watching this steady decline and so finally this year in fact just this past month

decline in total numbers is the decline in like numbers of large sexually mature fish total numbers at this point okay so but there are different management triggers they look at to determine you know how whether overfishing is occurring you know they do stock assessments they do young of the year indices in the key spawning areas you know so overall they will look at those and that's determines whether you know the stock is okay or whether it's being overfished. And right now we've been in a constant state of overfishing. So the Atlanta State's Marine Fisheries Commission, which is basically the body made up of all the states on the Atlantic coast, finally adopted last month something called Amendment 7,

which dramatically changes how we're going to be managing striped bass. It makes it much better for conservation. Now, rubber is going to hit the road in October when we have the stock assessment this year. We didn't get stock assessments during the pandemic because they weren't out doing it. And so we'll actually sort of see how bad it is come October. And if it's really bad, you're going to see a whole bunch of triggers put in place to reduce mortality. Give me a preview. Well, we've already had certain things done last year like requiring circle hooks on live bait because again, that treble hook is not good for catch and release.

What it could be is, it gets pretty wonky pretty fast and you can go on our website and read all about this. But for example, there is something called conservation equivalency which means that in a place like the chesapeake bay which doesn't have as big fish much of the year they allow you to catch fish that are much smaller and keep some because there simply aren't that the slot isn't in there you know when people are fishing in the summertime and that's been abused over the years so they're finally gonna if you're if it continued over fishing is occurring that goes away uh i want to make sure i'm getting this right they have a slot limit but then guys are like dude i'm not catching one that

i can keep well if you're in the chesapeake bay i mean those fish that are in the slot have moved out in the summer and they're so based on like cod based on angler And they're up in Cape Cod. And so based on angler feedback, they're doing an adjustment. Yeah, it's like the local industry. Sort of like never mind the slot. Yeah, never mind the slot. You guys get to have a different management regime down here to allow people to fish. Gotcha.

And we're just killing way too many fish. And so if it's decided that overfishing is still occurring come October in the stock assessment, then that is going to go away. So, yeah, tough. I mean, we just can't kill small fish. Can I share with you three quick striped bass things?

I spent several months in San Jose, California one time when I was working on a book and I had a, I would call him my fake uncle Don. Cause he was like, not even, he was sort of a relative, like a step. Seemed like an uncle, but he wasn't even kind of close to my uncle. Anyways,

he would take me out trolling in San Francisco Bay for striped bass. And he would troll so close to the San Quentin. You know, who was in there at that time? Remember that guy that took his wife out and says he took her out sturgeon fishing? Yeah. Killed her and sunk her down to the bottom of the bay?

Vaguely. Well, he was in there. Lord knows who else. We would troll so close to the guard tower at San Quentin that we'd wave to the guards and catch them good. Oh, yeah. And in the upper Delaware, I used to go fish the upper Delaware,

way up where it's like Pennsylvania, New York. Yeah, Hancock, that area. Used to the West Branch come together. You're catching trout, right? Oh, yeah. There's like rainbows and browns. That's where I was fly fishing two weeks ago. Well, sometimes you've probably seen this happen. I'd be in my canoe.

You're catching like rainbows smallmouths whatever and all of a sudden like you'd look down in some hole and just stripers as long as your leg oh yeah and i like i didn't know because i was new to the area i didn't know that that was a thing and i'd be like you know normally you see something like that you're like oh it must be a carp right like something like that big but they're fast and i was like what in the i thought i discovered a new species someone's like no dude striped bass will come all the way out of the ocean and come up here so the delaware is the longest trout stream it's the longest stretch of undamned river in the eastern united states so all the way from south philadelphia up to upstate New York. I thought I was hallucinating until

I figured, until someone explained what I was looking at. Yep. Well, they ever hit in that kind of stuff? Oh, sure. I can't even imagine. Oh, I've got friends that target them. Yeah. I can't imagine. There aren't that many that stay up there, but the ones that get up there are often like, you know, I may not go back out to the ocean because there are all these tasty little trout in here.

Oh, just incredible, man. My final one is this dude my brother danny used to work with was in connecticut and he took me out one night and uh i don't know what the hell river it was um we wait out in the river like the darkest night imaginable and you can't you can't i can't tell anything that's going on you can see the house lights and we're standing in a river like you know up to your crotch and some river i can't see we got there in the dark no idea what's going on and he's like just cast out there you know and i'm like this is the stupidest thing in the like this would never work boom oh yeah one of those things hits in the dark dude it's amazing man and that's the time to fish it out there because you know the long island sound around there is there, there's a lot of people.

And you go during the day, there are people everywhere. And you get out there at night on these little coastal rivers or flats. Yeah, we were right in the mouth of a river. Yeah, I mean, first of all, there was nobody around. And the fish come in. And they've hit better at night than they do in the daytime anyway. Yeah, it's so dark when you cast that plug that plug you couldn't like the plug just sort of vanished into the darkness like you have no idea like where you cast no i did that for years and i'd love that

oh he was hooked i thought it was a riot man but you know you get that feeling like i don't know where you got going on there's no way this like you can't catch fish like this this doesn't work like this so anyway i think that the future is finally looking a little bit brighter for striped bass and hopefully we can stem this decline and start a recovery now there are other things that are working against it you know from you know maybe the chesapeake bay isn't as productive as it used to be due to climate getting a little warmer how much how much pushback uh do they anticipate from fishermen very little really so right now i mean all and this is one of the cool things about

this process, basically the entire recreational community you know is on board with you know taking very strong steps for conservation. You know which is a change. And I mean listen I'll take a little credit for that because you know we helped assemble the coalition of AS, American Sport Fishing Association,

Coastal Conservation Association, Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, National Marine Manufacturers, others, to make sure that we were all on the same page. Because there are other groups who are going to be good on this, but our community, especially the industry, just hates the thought of fewer people on the water and less economic activity. But I think everybody finally recognized that

if we don't take some steps now, we're looking at another moratorium down the road. And that helps nobody. You know, that's in people's memory. Yep. Oh yeah. Vivid. Gotcha. How do they do these counts? So,

I don't know how they do the stock assessments. They do young of the year indices in the Chesapeake Bay and Hudson River, which are the two main spawning areas for striped bass. And they have certain areas they go to all the time. And they see basically this time of year, they'll go in and do surveys a little bit later about the young, because they'll come up there.

The striped bass, like in D.C., will swim all the way up the Potomac past D.C. and spawn. And they come up there in that, you know, February, March, you know, time frame and then spawn the little guys come out and there are certain areas where the little ones tend to congregate where you can go and do little sane surveys and you use the same methodology year to year. You come up with some pretty good trend lines over time and they've been bad trend lines of late.

Hmm. with some pretty good trend lines over time. Yeah. And they've been bad trend lines of weight. And we also have things like, you know, blue catfish are now in the Chesapeake, which tend to love to eat little stripers. And that's an invasive species that was never there before. So, and people in the Chesapeake Bay aren't used to whacking them, even though they're great eating and, you know, good game fish.

But so they're out there and they're relatively unmolested, except they're doing a lot of molesting of striped bass. So people got to start keeping blues. Oh, big time. Hit them hard. That's some good eating fish too. People like to look down on the old catfish. Delicious.

Yeah. Clean it up right and fish fry it. Yeah, especially if it's been eating striped bass and such a like hanging out the sewer system outfall. Another question for you for the recovering America's wildlife. Are there non-hunting, non-sportsman groups that are like chipping in, helping out, pushing for it? Oh, absolutely. Like the butterfly lover groups? Absolutely.

The environmental community is strongly behind it. I mean, this is another one where there is really no separation between what we want, what the environmental community want. So everybody who cares about wildlife wants this to happen. When you're in a meeting, and there's a lot of different wildlife interests in the room, including a lot of people who are probably like instinctively adversarial to the hunting and fishing community. Are you guys just all business?

Oh, yeah. And honestly, there aren't that many groups. I mean, PETA, Humane Society, they don't deal in federal policy. They don't? No. They're much more comfortable throwing fake blood on somebody wearing a fur or something like that. So, I mean, they're not involved in these negotiations. And honestly, groups like Sierra Club supports hunting.

They don't make a big advertisement about that. But a group like PETA, I never thought about that. They're not a federal policy group. I mean, maybe they do in some places, but no, we've never bumped into them. Got it. But, you know, so we work really closely with groups like Audubon. Yeah. Yeah, which.

They're probably like pretty agnostic to it. No, I'm saying they're fine with hunting. I mean, they're just about good management. And, you know, so we've worked with them a ton on sage grouse, on infrastructure, on a variety of other things. And they've got great staff. They have, you know, long, proud tradition. They have good chapters. grouse on infrastructure on a variety of other things and they got great staff they have you know long proud tradition they have good chapters and you know some members of congress would rather hear from audubon some would rather hear from the boone and crockett club got you uh do you feel that

the recovering america's wildlife act if if we if it doesn't get done before midterms it's just all the hubbub of midterms going to kind of just i mean will it just so there's going to be so yeah so basically we have a working period between now and i would guess august recess after the august recess nothing's going to happen basically until after the election after the election. After the election, After the midterm. After the midterm.

Yep. And then there'll be like another little bit of activity. There could be a lame duck session, but that all depends on what's happening in the election. So the time to do this is now. I think so, yeah. I mean, listen,

we've got the wind at our back right now. We've had Great American Outdoors Act. We just got Mapland. We've had America's Conservation Enhancement Act. We have a variety of other things that are pushing through that we've managed to get done. I really feel that momentum's on our side. We've got to use that. To close out, explain to people, and you've explained it before, explain to people

the unexpected it before explained to people um the uh unexpected goodness of of times of inflamed pardon partisanship yeah you know it's i mean listen it's not dc in general is not a fun place to be in these days especially if you're a member of congress and you want to do the right thing but in this very broken system we're in, it turns out that our issues tend to be ones that folks can come together on. You have right Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. And most members of Congress, maybe I'm a little Pollyannic on this, are there for the right reasons.

They want to do public policy. They want to make a difference. They want to do what's right. And we're giving them things that Republicans, Democrats can support. They're good do public policy. They want to make a difference. They want to do what's right. And we're giving them things that, you know, Republicans, Democrats can support. They're good on the ground. You know, they can be proud of for multiple reasons from hunting and fishing to climate to access. And, you know, we've, you know, we're just in a sweet spot right now. Like if they want to have some win.

Yeah. They can often turn to conservation. Everybody wants to win. And, uh, you know, and these are ones that, and honestly, you know, I think that, you know, our community has, is the perfect messenger on this stuff because yeah. Okay. The community tends to lean conservative, lean Republican, but at the end of the day, they're pragmatists and, you know, they care about, you know, conservation.

They care about maintaining, you know, basically the best conservation system in the world, they're pragmatists. And they care about conservation. They care about maintaining basically the best conservation system in the world that we have in this country. And that requires Democrats, Republicans. And what we're trying to do is conservation that is durable, that does not depend on having a Democrat or Republican in the White House or in the House of Representatives or in the Senate.

These things make sense regardless of what party's in power. And if we maintain that, we're true to that, then, I mean, you were at our dinner, you emceed our dinner last week, and we always honor one Republican, one Democrat, some of them in the private sector. And, you know, that's the whole theme that there's plenty of- And quite often that private sector individual is an industry, you know, someone from- Oh yeah, yeah. This year it was Ben Special, the head of, you know someone from yeah this year it was ben special the head of you know yamaha marine and yamaha has done unbelievable things and you honored a someone from the beer industry yep yep new belgium the year before that and i mean it runs a gamut but you know the whole point is like someone from the corporate world who's running a great business

running a profitable business but but keeping in mind. Yeah, we work a lot with corporate America, but we try to identify the leaders in each of the sectors. And not just Patagonia and REI, but we work a lot with Shell Oil because I think they're by far the most conservation-minded, progressive of the big oil companies. And listen, oil and gas is going to be here for a long time in the future. Even if we get to a much more carbon free society and my truck's only two years old. I mean, I'm going to be driving it for a long time, I hope.

And, uh, but we want to work with companies that really have a commitment to doing the right thing. And, you know, that's sometimes harder than other times, but you know, like Ben special at Yamaha, that's an easy one. I mean, they have walked the walk for a long time now but i was going to say i mean there is plenty to disagree about in dc but these issues hunting fishing conservation should not be one of them no all right everyone

whit fosberg from trcp if you like uh wits approach and trcp.org yeah if you like wits approach and you like the kind of projects TRCP works on, tell them how to go find more. Yeah, just go to our website. It's pretty wonky, but we try to boil it down so it's understandable for the layperson. And become an activist. Your membership is free. If you want to give us a little money in exchange for something, we'd love to have it.

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