The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 664: The State of the Conservation Union

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with the CEO of TRCP Joel Pederson, Ryan Callaghan, and Randall Williams. Topics discussed: Steve’s hemp project; kids on snowmobiles bringing the neighborhood together; a good word -- prognosticate; bear dens inside tree cavities; what Trump did and didn't do well in his first term for hunters and anglers; how things faired under Biden; working with both sides of the aisle; wind power having a bigger footprint than solar; developing public hunting and fishing lands; how executive orders only go so far and energy still relies on supply and demand; delisting and re-listing wolves; what priority shifts we'll see with the new administration; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey American history buffs, hunting history buffs, listen up, we're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition titled The Mountain Men, 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the Mountain Man era and what ended it.

We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white-tailed deer skin trade, which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761-1775. So again, you can buy this wherever audiobooks are sold. Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by Stephen Rinella. This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater podcast.

You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. You got a little hemp project going on? Making yourself a little necklace? I do. I'll explain it. Is the machine on Phil? It's on. Is it aiming at me? It's aiming

right, you're front and center right now, yeah. Cal was asking about this hemp project. This, I think, I feel like this is 100 years old. So this is the pull mechanism on the punt gun. Oh, sweet. And it had been pulled so many times that there was three strands over the eyelet and they had all failed. So I'm unwrapping this serving. I'm going to put a new loop in there through the pull thing and put the serving back on.

And it's like a little piece of copper pipe. Very cool. That's the noise that point. When are you guys going to touch that thing off? Well, we were going to touch it off the other day, but the weather was just too bad. So I don't know when we're going to touch it off. It's just not like hanging out outside, shooting a punt gun weather right now. Yeah. Like negative 18 snow blowing everywhere. Yeah.

It just wouldn't be any fun. Yeah. I will tell you, I wouldn't. It was one of my last pheasant hunts of the year, but, um, uh, I had a set of railroad tracks in Montana that I had no idea that we're still in use and it was super cold not as cold as it is now but it was down the in the teens you put your tongue on that track well it was like I was it Ives who the real Christmas he seems but this braves burl Ives is the singer, right? Oh, career. Career night. Oh, career night.

Yeah. Burl Ives is the, yeah. But the sun setting and this train comes around the tracks, you know, it's all the drift country. So all the snow had been dumped into the railroad tracks. That train came through and before the train even touched it, you know, it was like the vacuum effect of that freight coming through was blowing all that powder out. It was just like the most, I've

never been in love with trains before, but that afternoon I was like, oh that's amazing. My kids had been riding, they finally got in trouble for this. So we have like a road, it's not, it's like a road but not really. Like the only reason you'd be on our little loop, you know our house. Like the only reason you're on that loop is if you live there. Yep. And then there's like a big grass circle

which is all covered in snow. So my kids have taken the, like first it was like, we're just gonna ride the snowmobile around the loop real quick. And then it became just riding. Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride. And we were kind of laughing about when someone, when someone would snap and come complain to them, you know, and sure enough, they get flagged down by a couple

of neighbors who after days of riding, flag them down and complain to them. And they come back just outraged, you know. He says, he's going to take it up with you to me. You know, no one has, but he says you can't ride on the road. I'm like, I mean, you can't ride on the road. I didn't mention that, but no. Is this like a traditionally friendly neighbor, like someone you guys, you know, I don't have anything to do with them. You got people that you got people that see kids out playing outside and then they're and it makes them happy. And you got people that see kids playing outside and it makes them mad.

Yeah. Well, you, people in this world. Snowmobiles though, there's a tolerance level. I feel like the noise is, is yeah. If it's a four stroke, it's clean. Yeah. Yeah. People that are like, I'm going to enforce the rules. I love the rules. Yeah. Hey, wait a minute. Those kids are breaking the rules

Okay, think of what it's hurting, but they're breaking the rules It's the eight eight a.m. Kids just got out of the house you're having a chill cup of coffee and It's more like in the distance They're not like that. They go very slow. It's more like in the distance. Oh, when I'm watching, they got a trail that cuts through our yard. They go up on that berm. Yep. If I'm standing there washing dishes, I only know they're coming by because the headlight. Oh, sweet. They're riding the snowmobile on the berm. I love it.

They got loops all over the place. And all the neighbor kids are always riding with them. And they haven't contacted the community. It's bringing the community together. I was like, who could have complained? Cause everyone's kids rides on the snowmobiles. I got one neighbor offering me gas money. Keep my kid occupied. That's what you should have said. Did you offer them a ride when they stopped you? My wife had a really funny idea to, she thought that we should act oblivious

to what the issue was. And she said, let's ride the snowmobiles over to see what's going on. Bring an extra helmet. So funny. We do a thing, how often do we do this? We do a thing every year. Once a year. Yeah, we do a thing every year.

We do the State of the Union. We stole that. I don't know if they trademarked the State of the Union. I don't think they trademarked the State of the Union. We do the State of the Union on conservation in the US at the federal level with the CEO of TRCP. And historically, a number of times we've had on the former CEO, Whit Fosberg,

but today we're premiering the new CEO of TRCP, Joel Peterson. And we're gonna run through a State of the Union and I'm gonna do a giant caveat. Right? No one knows. No one knows. We're going to talk about some things from the past. We're going to go back a little bit.

Um, I think the furthest we'll stray back as we'll stray back about eight years ago, maybe. Okay. We're going to touch on to Trump Okay. We're going to touch on to Trump one. We're going to talk about Biden. We're going to talk about the early days of Trump too. And when we enter into the days of Trump too, there's a giant question mark because we're going to be talking about some federal policy and a lot of federal policies up in the air. I had breakfast with Joel this morning and I told him that he is not, he does not need to be, he does not need to be a prophet or

prophesize, prophesy, what the hell's the word? Yeah. Prophesize. Can you say prophesize? It's... Is that not an actual word? I don't know. Prophesize. In DC right now there's a tremendous amount of

uncertainty with the administration's changing over. A lot of policy changes. And a lot could change from the time we record this in the whatever six days until it airs. Well Joel's one step ahead of you. Joel wanted to speak, he had a specific question for Corinne because he says we're running the risk of anything we saying, anything we say changing. So he wanted to understand what sort of timeline he's dealing with. And we shared him. It's a tight as timelines we can provide.

Today's Tuesday? Yeah, six days. So it's six days. So a lot can change in six days, but it's different than if it was six months. Right. Steve, try this one on for size. Okay. Prognosticate.

Yes. Crystal ball-ish. That's a good one. Yeah. I would think that you were making that word up. Prognosticating. Well, the example's perfect. I won't prognosticate and say whether this will lead to other mainstream.

What? Exactly. Oh, it ends in an ellipsis. No, it doesn't. It rolls, but I, sorry. It was perfect up until I see, I see. Now, but if we were talking about vague, if we were talking about a current appointment, then, oh, this example would be sure perfect all the way through. Understood.

I was thinking more about policy, not appointment. So, uh, to, to recap in short, we're going to, we're going to hand it over to Joel here to talk about, uh, what TRCP does, what federal policy looks like, what his personal background is. But again, this is a, this is meant to be a quick crash course in the state of the conservation movement, particularly like conservation issues that impact American hunters and anglers, the state of the conservation union as we enter into a new administration and

embark on a new four years. So with that Joel, tell everybody what TRCP is. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is a nonprofit organization. We've been around for 23 years now and we were really brought together, like I said, 23 years ago to help unify and amplify the sportsman's voice. And what we do, our mission is guaranteeing all Americans quality places to hunt and fish. And so at the core of everything we do, we try to tie it back to that. But the challenge that was seen over two decades ago was that every single one of the conservation organizations were coming into Congress or coming into the administration and asking for their own little thing.

And it wasn't a unified message. And so the power of the millions of sportsmen that are out there that are represented individually by the various conservation organizations just wasn't being captured to help make the point about some of the big conservation issues. And so fast forward to today, we now have 63 organizations that we partner with. And it's a willing partnership. It's not a pay to play. But we have tried to reach out to the groups like National Wild Turkey Federation, Mule Deer Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, the ones that everybody's heard of. But we also have as part of our partnership groups like the Tall

Timbers Association, which is down in South Georgia, and they're really focused on prescribed fire and how that benefits, in that case, quail, but everything else that's out there. We also work in marine fisheries. We've got groups like Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. And so it's a very diverse group that we have that brings a lot of important voices together to think about the conservation issues that the community, not just the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is facing. So when we think about this, we've kind of broken the work that we do into five different

areas. Public lands is one that I know this team is very well aware of. It's often at the center of a lot of the things that this that you're interested in. We also have a private land center that deals a lot with farm bill. We also have some of the work we're doing with chronic wasting disease in that area. We have our marine fisheries, which deals largely, we do a lot with forage fish, but it's also been a big focus on the Mississippi floodplain, coastal Louisiana, coastal restoration there, moving up the Mississippi River with some of the work we're doing now.

And then we have a water program as well that's largely been focused to date on the Colorado River, the Rio Grande River, and the water issues that are there, but really that entire watershed and what we can do about that. And then we also have a focus on climate or resiliency, if you will, and really thinking about how some of the changes we're seeing on the landscape impacts across all those other centers, the impacts that it's having on our public lands, private lands, wildlife in general,

and integrating that work into those different centers, taking advantage of some of the opportunities that are out there. Hit folks with your personal background, how you came to the work. Well, you know, I think like most people that have been involved in conservation, it started when I was young. I grew up in Nebraska hunting and fishing with my dad and my grandparents,

more fishing than hunting because the Northeast Nebraska, there wasn't a whole lot to hunt back then. Pheasants was about the only thing. And I was actually grew up the Dayton myself, but after the real golden age of that, but before CRP really hit and kind of brought it back for a stretch of 10 to 12 years, uh, in the eighties and early nineties. Um, so I did that.

I was involved with Boy Scouts as well. And, uh, it was fortunate the troop I was with, we, we camped every month year round. And so really grew up with a love for the outdoors. And by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I realized there was a thing called a wildlife biologist that you could make a career out of. And so I, one of those few people that I think knew from a very young age, this is what I

want to do and was able to do that. So graduated with a degree in wildlife conservation from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, spent a year at the University of Idaho on an exchange program during my undergraduate. Then I went on to graduate school at the University of Tennessee where I got to live really a lifelong dream of being able to study black bears. I've been in love with black bears for a long time and over the years of my master's program I trapped nearly 200 black bears and pulled them out of the den and all that cool stuff that wildlife biologists get to do. And then I very quickly got into the reality of what a wildlife biologist is like when you work for a state agency or a federal agency.

I went to work for the state of Florida as a wildlife biologist. I spent most of my time dealing with people. So I was there for about four years. From there, I went to National Wild Turkey Federation. I worked with National Wild Turkey Federation in the conservation department for the majority of my 22 years there. Did just about everything you could do and conservation-wise.

And then when Becky Humphries, who I know has been on the show, actually was on about a year ago in the interim role at TRCP, when she took over as CEO there, she asked me to grow a government affairs program for National Wild Jerky Federation. And so I went to work directly for her, and I did that for about the last six years that

I was at NWTF. And then almost right out four years ago now, I had the opportunity to move west and ended up in Salt Lake and took over as CEO of the Mule Deer Foundation. And so I did that for about three years. And then fast forward to September 1st of last year, I made another jump and back across the country to Northern Virginia in the DC area to take over as president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which is a great opportunity to come in and do this.

Through my roles at Turkey Federation and at Mule Deer Foundation, I had the opportunity to work with TRCP as one of those partner organizations. And so I came in being somewhat familiar with the work that TRCP does, certainly on the private lands and public lands side of things more than anything. So it's been a great career that span in a lot of years now and never had it in mind to be a CEO, but that's kind of where things have led. And it's a great opportunity to be able to influence conservation in a different sort of way than just being the dirt kicking biologist that I wanted to be for a long time.

Let's scrap federal policy for a minute. What did you think about, I wasn't, before I wasn't aware that you had worked on specifically on black bears in Florida. In Tennessee. Oh so you okay. So for my master's program at Tennessee. But when you went, you say so you didn't wind up in Florida? I went to work for the state wildlife agency in Florida. But not with a black bear focus. Not with a Black Bear focus. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Tennessee is like the place for a degree of with, with focusing on Black Bears, right? Like that is the, the school. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the university at Tennessee through Dr. Mike Pelton had a program that spanned three decades.

They're looking at Black Bears in great smoky mountains, national park, and really across the Southeast and then on into Minnesota and it spanned other places as well. Virginia Tech was the other one at that time that was also had a very strong program with black bears. Tennessee was where those dudes were finding those black bears were dead in like 30 40 feet up in trees and stuff and those how that was fascinating man like how they even know those holes are up there. Right. Yeah. They, they seek them out and they find them. It's definitely preferred for them in that area. And, uh,

you know, I had the opportunity to crawl up some of those trees and try to, to find them and, and, uh, see what you could do. And, you know, a couple of, you never knew if the hole that you could see in the tree was just right there, or whether there was one I can remember it was, you know, the hole was 50 feet up in the tree, but the whole tree was hollow clear down into the root mass. And so the bear had not only climbed up, but then climbed all the way back down and was, you know, 60 feet below. And then another time that hollow tree. Yeah. Yeah.

And then contrast that with, and you crawl up the next one and you're eye to eye two feet away with a mama bear that's looking at you, you know. Yeah. I thought that was wild, man. Just thinking about how like, unless in some of those trees, unless he happened to be up there picking mast or something, they must just go up there and scout them out. I think they do. Well, and then on the, on the 60 foot climb down, he's got to be pretty confident

that he can turn around at the bottom. Right. I mean, you'd think that there's quite a few trees that the hole just tapers off and you're going to find a bunch of bare bones down there. Yeah. That's a good point. Like you get in there and can't get back up. Pretty confident. Right. Yeah. That's a great point. I think it's there and can't get back up. Pretty confident. Right? Yeah. That's a great point. I think it's a butt first descent though. Is it? Yeah. Oh, you know what? I asked this to

Carl Malcolm. That's right. Carl Malcolm says, you know what Carl Malcolm said to me? I forgot. Yeah. He said, what way do you go down a ladder? You're like, damn it. So then I probably said head first, of course. Yeah, that's a good point. He just walks back up when things get tied on his butt. All right. So let's jump back. I said, we're going to go back eight years.

Hit me with a, hit me with a conservation recap on Trump administration. One, like every administration has their areas where they focus. Right. There's things that their predecessor did that they kind of let go, you know, that they let it drift away. There's new priorities. Uh, and Trump won. What did, what did we see? Like what did he get right for hunters and anglers and where do you feel things could have gone better during Trump one? Yeah, you know, so in the first Trump administration, we were definitely benefited with his son, Don Jr. He was an avid hunter and Fisher and definitely has some influence

over the president there. And so we always had a voice. Um, and I think that we'll continue to have that voice in the current administration as well. But a couple of, I'd say, real wins out of the first Trump administration, one of them had to do with access, for sure. And the work that he did through then Secretary Zinke at Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service and really looking at opportunities to open up hunting and fishing access on wildlife refuges.

And people remember that part of it and the millions of acres that have then been opened up since. And that is something that carried through to some extent into the Biden administration and will continue on, I believe. But the other thing that that did, which has gotten less attention, is it asked the Fish and Wildlife Service on their refuges to do the best job they could to align the regulations on the refuges with the regulations of the state. So that you didn't have to have a different number of shells in a shotgun on a refuge versus public land to and

ammunition Opening days things like that. And so I think that that was a that was a good thing. Yeah quite a few refuges Would have a shell restriction, right? Right. So it's like you can only have 12 shells right on you on the refuge Whereas anybody outside the refuge You can carry around as many shotgun shells as you're willing, right? Yeah Yeah So it was just trying to get some things like that that were out of the way and make it easier on Hunters and fishermen to access and so access was one of them migration corridors

we've talked a lot about migration corridors over the last eight years and Secretary of Order three three six two that again then Secretary Ryan Zinke signed really put attention on migration corridors and it led to a lot of the funding for research that we've had over the years for mapping those corridors and we've seen great use come out of that for conservation measures as well as just having that body of information and then funding there to know where to do the work to preserve these, to preserve the corridors in the winter range, but then also the species that go with it.

And then Trump was also- On that one, sorry. They put money there too, right? Yeah. I forget exactly how much it was, but it was millions, low tens of millions maybe on an annual basis to really fund some of that research. And a lot of what we know now from the GPS collars

that are out there, they were around and being used some, but this really gave a push to that through that funding to grow those programs in our understanding of big-range migration corridors and what they use which then leads to why it's used decisions about management and development etc that that we've been able to use yeah we did a show some time ago now with Matt Kaufman and whose coffin work. I'm mixing up two names. Monteith Kevin, Monteith, Kevin Monteith. And, uh, we talked to them a lot about the ability from,

from their coloring data on big game animals, uh, particularly in Wyoming, but allowing you to get pretty focused and targeted on, on, on like specific points on a map. Yeah. You know, that when you're looking at, when you're looking at migration corridors and things like narrowing down to very precise spots that needed help or need a protection or needed overpasses.

And that came from being able to watch generations, right? You know, the, the generational turnover is pretty quick, but to watch generations of deer moving across the landscape, right? You know, the, the generational turnover is pretty quick, but to watch generations of deer moving across the landscape, you know, define those things that are those, those constants, right?

Yeah. And so that's had some real practical uses kind of fast forward into the Biden administration on this point. Um, some of the bill and IRA money that came about was for, um, bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act. And that was what was passed, uh, during the

first two years of the Biden administration that it was the money that everybody's, um, it went to everything, but there was a couple trillion dollars that went towards conservation work. One of the programs that was stood up in that was a wildlife crossings pilot program through the transportation department actually. But because of the work that a lot of the Western states have, you can go now and look at that program and say

this is where we need to put the crossing instead of just kind of guessing based upon where you'd see roadkill. Now they had some good data for that that helped to drive the ability to implement that program but I think really the ability or even the thought process of being able to put some money towards that program and have it be carried out successfully. But maybe an even more important example is as the BLM was looking at their solar program, programmatic environmental impact statement and really looking at how they were going to place solar over BLM lands per instruction from the Biden administration to make lands available for this. One of the things that TRCP was very successful in doing, and it was dependent upon this data,

was saying, hey, the first draft that you've put out here, you're not paying attention to migration corridors or winter range. And so we worked really hard to get comments in from the public, from our partners, and raise their awareness that we have really good data for this. And so the final rule that came out on that excluded known mapped migration corridors, winter range and stopover range.

But in addition also had language in there that said, and any future ones that get mapped within these areas, we're going to take that out as well. And so, you know, the benefit from that. So three, three, six, two, eight, almost, you know, eight, nine years ago. Now, um, is really carried forward. Got it. Now, what are some things, what are some things in Trump one that could have been, that could have been better for hunters and anglers?

Yeah, there's, um, we're going to face this again, but energy development is certainly one of them. But we dealt with that in the Biden administration, as I just said. There it was. It was different. It was solar and wind, and here it's going to be back to oil and gas. And I guess one of the advantages that we have is oil and gas have been around for a lot longer. And so we better know how to deal with that, how to cite it.

And there's a lot more technology and there's a lot of regulations already in place. So that's one that is always there. I think development is another one. I think one I'm kind of fast forwarding to now, but one that's on everybody's mind is public lands and what's going to happen with public lands. And Trump in the first administration was great on public lands, very strongly came out and said we shouldn't dispose of public lands and made sure that that didn't happen. And we think that'll continue, but it's, you know, there's also a different

tenor around the country right now on that. And so that's something that we're being cognizant about as well. And in trying to watch that. That's the thing I've brought this up. I've told this story a hundred times, but the first time I saw first and only time I actually saw Trump speak was very early in his campaign, his first campaign. And, um, uh, and a very conservative audience. Okay.

At shot show, Trump spoke and he got up and, um, and he, and I, I, I felt as though someone had just said, Hey, I'll explain this later, but go out and say this just because it seemed like for, for a guy like, you know, he's like from New York city, you know, he's a developer, but he got up and he said, um, I'm not going to sell off your public lands. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I've never been like, just surprised that would have been that early in the campaign That would have been on his radar, right? Do you know what I mean? Yeah to have brought that up and then kind of stayed

Whatever the motivation on it was stayed Pretty true to that and that there wasn't you know at that at that time We still haven't seen there wasn't a like wholesale effort that wanted being successful and like reducing federal land management. You know, like it always gets talked about, but it hadn't happened. Right. And, um, probably for a handful of reasons. You could watch just in our recent state campaign here, um, all, all candidates all candidates would try to establish their public lands bona fides.

It's like saying you're pro-American, you're gonna do it. People are gonna say they're gonna articulate being pro-public lands here, in this state at least. Yeah, it's definitely important in Montana and a lot of the other western states. Yeah, like you have to give, you have to articulate, you have to express that viewpoint. Right. Yeah. But you know, I think I've met with members of your delegation many times over the years and the ones that I know, they've been solid in that space for a long time. Cause it's very personal to them, right? Congressman Zinke, Senator Daines, very personally, both love their time out on

the land. And so when they say it, I, I tend to believe them. And there's a lot of others out West as well. Yeah. You already touched on this a little bit, but let's track some of the primary issues that, what are some of the things that continued, like when Biden came in after Trump won, again, as we clarified earlier, Biden comes in with his own priorities, some things they're just going to get ignored, some things are going to be pushed forward. What was sort of the conservation continuity, or conversely, like the lack of continuity we saw when Biden came in.

In what ways did he have a unique focus and what sorts of things died on the vine, what sorts of things kept going, what new ideas were brought forward? Yeah. So, you know, we touched on a couple of these that, that were around and, and they, they continued the migrations work that started with SO-3362, the Biden administration kept that program around. And because it was a secretarial order from the Trump administration, it would have been very easy for them to just slice and dice that one and we're getting rid of it just because of where it came from. But they kept it around

because they heard about it from the sportsman community for sure. And they heard about it from sportsmen, but they also saw the value of it. Um, but it didn't get the same level of funding. It didn't get the same level of focus that it did in Trump one. They, they kept it there and things continued, uh, by that token, what we talked about with access and opening up the fish and wildlife refuges to more hunting and fishing access is another one that they kept around, but just absolutely not at the same level.

I forget the exact number here, but the last year they did it, it was a couple hundred, three hundred thousand acres that were opened up as opposed to millions in the first several years. They also started putting some additional restrictions and looking at some of this in terms of we're going to open it up, but there's not going to be any lead ammunition allowed regardless of what you're hunting for or fishing for. It wasn't just tied to waterfowl and some things like that, that made it a little more challenging in those regards.

The Biden administration and I think democratic administrations in general, they're always good about conservation funding. So we talked about the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act and the nearly $2 trillion that came towards conservation through that. So the funding there was great. We'll probably see a reduction in some of that funding with a Republican administration and a Republican Congress coming in. So it's

kind of hard to weave apart. Is it just the administration? Cause there's also Congress in there as well and how they're giving the funding out. Um, when it came to kind of some of the direct hunting related, um, legislation and, and policies, certainly we saw a drop off with that in the, in the Biden administration. Access was important, access specific for hunting and fishing, less important.

Second Amendment issues, absolutely less important within a Democratic administration than I think what we saw and what we'll see again in a Republican administration. Energy development was still important for both, but in a different manner, as we talked about a minute ago. And so I think those are some of the differences that we'll see. If you had to look at the energy part of the question, with Biden administration talking about doing renewables. So solar arrays and wind farms, what do you call,

what do you actually call a wind farm? That's what I call them. Oh, you can use that term. Solar arrays and wind farms. And when it first came out, when it first came up for comment, it was kind of like a, felt like a staggering amount of acreage being considered.

Right. And then, and then it got debated. And as you pointed out, people brought in issues like wildlife corridors and, and, and it shrank, but the, the proposed footprint shrank. And I think part of setting that policy is you come out with a big ask knowing that your ask, we get whittled down. Okay. And now with like energy dominance, okay, and looking back at fossil fuels and the current

administration pushing for like a real concentrated focus on domestic fossil fuel energy production, which of those things do you think which of those plans is going to lead to like the the highest net acreage of Public hunting and fishing lands being developed Like is the footprint on Trump's fossil fuel plan? Will that wind up being bigger than the biggest ask from the Biden administration on the footprint of renewables? It's hard for me to prognosticate this. I had to use that word after you threw it out.

It's too early to tell. No, like I said before, we've got a lot of history with oil and gas development, right? And we know what that footprint is. And with directional drilling and everything else, it's, they'll take up less of a footprint. You know, one of the big problems with solar is the arrays go in and then they put an eight foot chain link fence around it to keep every one

and everything out. And with oil and gas, you don't necessarily have to do that. And you can leave some have to do that. And you can leave some open space between them. There's also some emerging technology that the companies have started talking about where they can check their pumps. They can check the flows more remotely than they ever used to. Because even though you've got a reduced footprint with oil and gas, you still typically have historically had vehicles driving those roads every day, year round checking on everything.

And that disturbance just causes problems for the wildlife there, particularly in the winter range, right? Where you're getting that constant disturbance on them. And so I think there's, we've learned more about how to mitigate those factors over the years through oil and gas, where we're still learning it now with solar and wind. And I forget the acreages now, but TRCP and some of our partners put together a document looking at, at the surface area impact of the various forms of energy to get this away from how many kilowatt hours are we talking about generating to what's the disturbance out there

on the landscape? And it surprised me, but wind had a bigger footprint even than solar when it came to the number of acres per kilowatt hour that were being generated on that. Oh, for sure. And what's not well, maybe it's better understood now than it was, but the, for lack of a better term, um, the psychological impact to wildlife of that, those blades rolling in the sky and how that affects the noise and the blades how it affects what goes on down on the ground Because you can look underneath one of those suckers and see a bunch of grass, right?

but then and I just have that anecdotal conversations with people who've taken ranch land and put it into that and They'll come back and see like by and large Stuff avoids that part of the ranch now, you know, like, like pronghorn talk, particularly about pronghorn, just never getting comfortable with it. Right. So you wind up, it's like the footprint winds up being different than the footprint. Right. You know, exactly. Which I think is what you're referring to the amount of traffic that accompanies oil and gas, all the vehicle traffic, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And so like I said, we, we know better how to mitigate it when it comes to the, to oil and gas, but I think the other thing is, you know, and we're seeing it already, even with the executive orders that have come out about energy dominance. You're already seeing a little bit of the pushback from the, from the industry, even that it's executive orders are only going to go so far. It'll open it up for the future, but it's probably not going to have any immediate impact right now because it's all supply and demand, right? And so, we've got that aspect where with the subsidies,

the solar and wind we're getting to try to develop these technologies, I wonder if we were seeing more of that go on the ground because of the subsidies that were out there. It was a little bit divorced from free market economy. Yeah. I also think the, like what's one of the interesting things in terms of just beyond the physical impact is just leasing out because most leases don't get developed. Right. Right. And so I think like, if I recall, once that land is leased, it creates all sorts of hurdles for trying to do other projects on that ground, like habitat improvement.

So one of the concerns is not necessarily like, oh, the administration is going to sell a bunch of leases even if they go undeveloped, it still creates hurdles for doing things for wildlife on those lands even if those areas are never drilled, right? Like that's another concern. Well the conservation lease program is under review so that doesn't actually factor in at this point. So that's part of the secretarial orders that just came out, or sorry, executive orders that just came out.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even outside of that, aside from just leasing public ground for wildlife habitat. Oh, so could you not overlap grazing allotment on that? I mean, I can't speak to the technicalities, but I know that's one concern is like if you have a massive lease sale, even if they say we're not going to drill this for a hundred years, there are immediate consequences in terms of like wanting to do wildlife on that land because they could drill it at any time. So there's like, there's

the kind of a primacy of use. Yeah, exactly. So that, yeah, it gets better consideration. I mean, it's that way with grazing as well. When you get a grazing allotment on public lands, there's some deferment that goes to that rancher that's got it because he's paying for that. And while there's still, can be habitat work that can be done, you got to take into consideration what's that going to do to the, to the forage, the cattle that are out there, the sheep that are out there. Right.

And while there's, there's still hunting access, there may be areas within that that get excluded because it's important to the ranchers operations and things like that. Yeah. And I can see like on the flip side, if you're operating under a grant to go out and do improvements on the landscape, are you going to prioritize land that may at some point be developed? It should kind of be like throwing your, your grant money away. Yeah.

I understand. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it. Joel's an interesting point you brought up that I hadn't really thought too much about is you can do executive orders, but, um, it's all going to be a little bit at the whim of the industry as they watch the, the, the, the price of a barrel of oil, right? You know, like there's certain places that are very expensive to operate in.

And until the market is such that it makes sense, you can ask them to do it, but they might not pull the trigger on it. Right. No, that's exactly right. And I think what the executive orders do is they, they create the framework to be able to do more in the future, but it's still going to be up to the markets. Yeah. And I think you're right.

And that a lot of renewables were being like highly incentivized, meaning the, um, wattage or however you measure the output of places, um, you'd get a premium price for depending on how that was generated. Right. Or you'd be, you'd operate at a deficit depending on how it was generated. Yeah. There's a lot of parallels with how the New

York times bestseller list works. And you happen to be thinking about that. Why? Yeah. Like a book sold in some places is worth a lot more to their algorithm than a book sold in other places. Interesting. Yeah.

Uh, so to, to play this game we played, we looked at, um, Trump won and coming out of Trump won, what are some things that, that were some areas where we saw Biden's focus change? Um, so if we look at some areas of focus that Biden had, what are some places where we might see some continuity? I think I'll tee this up about something that you and I discussed at breakfast as well is,, is I can tell you one area where there will not be continuity is so far is conversations around climate. And it and it puts, it creates a particular pickle for people. And I'll recap a discussion we had over breakfast.

The Biden administration was so focused on climate issues that researchers needed to change the language they used when talking about wildlife conservation to get funding or to stay at the top of the heap. Meaning you could be an individual who say, uh, maps salmon runs, maps salmon runs, describes salmon runs, looks at the relative strength of particular salmon runs, what's going on with king salmon. This might be your focus. Four years ago, there was a dramatic paradigm shift.

You had to then say, well, how is what I'm already doing? How can I frame this as being a discussion about climate? Or you work on wildfire mitigation. Generally you work on wildfire issues to keep doing your work. You had to say, Oh, and by the way, it's a climate project because that would enable you to get funding that would enable you to get funding. That would enable you to be published academically because if you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get published. If you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get funding.

And now there's this, this reality that you need to expunge that language from your project. And you had people whose arms were bent in creating that language. Correct. Everything had to flow through that lens. And now you have to retract from that and demonstrate back to the old way

you would highlight your work or seek grants. Yeah. And it's like, it feels to me, and this is me talking. I want to be very clear. This is not Joel talking. This is me talking. It feels like, um, if I was a wildlife researcher, I would, I would feel, uh, um, disheartened about, disheartened about this because I'd be like, dude, I was overplaying it. I don't want to admit it now, but I was overplaying that shit to get funding. I was overplaying it.

I don't want to admit it now, but I was overplaying that shit to get funding. Now I got to turn around and dial it back. I, I, I do think this is just like the same game that gets played every four years or eight, eight years though. It's like, Oh, your emphasis is on this. Awesome. I work on grizzly bears and I'm going to make grizzly bears a climate thing. Yep. Right. I work on grizzly bears and I'm going to make grizzly bears a climate thing. Right. I work on grizzly bears. I'm going to make it, uh,

I'm going to try to determine how grizzly bears love oil and gas withdrawal, but I'm going to still work on grizzly bears. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Oh no, it's the same work, but now it has to do with how I can mitigate risk to the livestock industry by better understanding how bears live and where they go. Yeah, exactly. Yep.

And before I wanted to find out how they live and where they go, because it could have something to do with climate. Yeah. Yeah. It's a precursor to how the temperature is changing on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're, you're both absolutely correct on that. And, and it is frustrating. I mean, it's the fact of the matter is I, I No, I think you're both absolutely correct on that and it is

frustrating. I mean, it's the fact of the matter is I, so I think back to my Mule Deer Foundation days when we were, while I was there, Mule Deer Foundation was a benefactor of large tens of millions of dollars commitment from Forest Service and BLM to go out and help implement in the eyes of the Mule Deer Foundation, great habitat restoration work for mule deer to save mule deer, make sure they had the best quality habitat out there on winter range, summer range, wherever it was. But it was coming through a lens of this money is coming on the ground to help us mitigate climate change, to help us mitigate climate change, to help

us mitigate the wildfire crisis and all of that. The work that Milder Foundation and those contractors are doing is exactly the same three years ago as it will be next year. It's just in the name of however you want to frame it up. And so that's, probably overlaps a lot with what tall timbers has been doing for like 70 years now. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so you get this and, and when we come in with just the broad brush that it said climate, it must be bad.

I don't, you know, it's just too broad stroke and it just politicizes the issues. Like everything is politicized now in Congress and conservation and everything else, which is really unfortunate because the work that we do is nonpartisan. Right. And we can do good things for whatever you care about with this money being done or the research being done. It's just, it's unfortunate that the word climate gets caught up in all of this. Yeah. What are some other areas where you think we'll see, so we talked about oil

and gas, like a fundamental change of perspective on what kind of energy, like both administrations agreed that we wanted to do energy work, but a real difference. And we're talking about renewables V fossil fuel. Right. Um, and I think within that, you can't really separate that conversation from the, from the climate conversation from the climate conversation because the climate conversation was driven by an idea

that renewables, great, good. You're bad if you talk, you must not love the environment if you bring up questions about renewables. To being renewables, bad, fossil fuels, good, that's a major shift. Are there some other like, just like ideological shifts that you think we'll see? I mean, only as it pertains to conservation though. I'm not gonna make you go down some, you know, we don't have to start talking about the A word or anything.

But what are some fundamental shifts that you think we're gonna see in terms of, in terms of attitude and focus? You know, I think that's probably the biggest one. I think how conservation gets funded is probably the other one that, uh, that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and my counterparts and the organizations have, um, I've brought up the bill and IRA funding a couple of times, but there's big slug of money there. Um, what's going big slug of money there.

What's going to happen with that money? Again, that money was going to programs that people care about. So one example I can use goes to private lands in the farm bill. There was about $20 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act that went to the Farm Bill to help farmers and ranchers do projects on their land that had conservation benefits and water quality benefits. They were programs that existed before this money passed. Land owners like it. There was more landowners that wanted funding than there was funding available for. And a number I saw recently, about 80% of that funding that's gone out

the door has gone to Republican congressional districts. And so even the people that voted for this administration, they're the ones that are benefiting from this and they like it. Well, what's going to happen with that funding as we go forward and we're thinking about reconciliation and reducing the size of the government? Those programs are still there. They're still going to do great things for conservation and for agriculture. I'd argue they need to stay, but where's the priority going to be between reducing the size of government, reducing the amount of money going out the door, and the conservation

issues that are really important to us? To the point, and this is where I'll tie it back to climate here a little bit, at the end of last Congress, there was a recognition that there was an opportunity here to take 10, 12, 14 million billion dollars that had not yet been spent through those programs and roll it into the baseline of the next farm bill. And the Republican and Democrat leadership for both the House and Senate ag committees were in favor of doing this. They saw it as an opportunity to increase funding to do private land conservation work down the road.

But there was a faction of individuals out there that just could not live with the fact that we might take climate out of the equation and say, and just remove the word that this money has to be spent for climate work, even though it was going to do exactly the same work. And so it didn't happen at the end of last Congress and we don't know if it'll happen again now. So yeah, because we're on our second farm bill extension. That's right. Right now, whereas technically we shouldn't have an extension, we should have a new farm bill. Should have had a new farm bill two years ago. Right. but this was just an attempt at the end of, end of Congress to get this rolled in.

So when they did work on the next extension, it went on into the baseline, right? And some of that's referencing like the climate credits, um, for, uh, soil conservation, um, through things that a lot of ranchers want to do anyway, which is grow native grasses that have deeper root structures. They sequester more carbon, but they're also super drought and fire tolerant and they're just really good forage for those landscapes because that's what was there long before they were there. So yeah, you know, President Trump has overwhelming support. I think it's fair

to say like overwhelming support from the agricultural industry, right? Absolutely. Farmers, ranchers. I mean, if you're going to pull farmers and ranchers, he's got their support. Yes. Not without exception, but overwhelmingly.

Correct. When you look at like, like over your career and over your time in conservation, when you look at that, do you find that, like remove it just from a conversation about Trump but any administration, do you find that they'll wind up looking at that that constituency is supportive?

Here's some federal spending that aids that constituency and that gets a level of favoritism? I don't mean to be cynical, but I mean that has to be a thing that plays out in the psychology of any president. Absolutely. I mean we can talk about conservation and talk about all those other programs that we're not going to talk about today, right? But absolutely it's there and ultimately it boils down to how can I get those votes and then how can I follow

through on those votes I got with the promises that I made to get them there and so yeah, definitely is a factor. What does need to happen with the farm bill? And is it fair to say too, is my understanding this correct? That's a simple layup for you there. But isn't the main, like, if maybe I'm, maybe I'm, don't have a sophisticated understanding here.

I know it's like, it's Byzantine, right? But one of the main issues of the farm bill is having CRP lands. Is that under, is that like, underselling other initiatives in the farm bill? Or is that kind of like one of the primary points and from conserv, not from everything else, but in the conservation part of the question is CRP, CRP lands. Yeah. So CRP is extremely important as a program in there. It's a,

for those that may not be familiar, it's basically a short-term lease on that land to put it into native, hopefully native grasses, but at least into some sort of cover so it's not in row agriculture and it's supposed to be marginalized lands. But it's 20 to 30 million acres, depending upon the year and where that cap has been over the years That's of marginal land that's being set aside that ends up creating great wildlife habitat And so it is absolutely an anchor of the CR of the farm bill program There's a lot of other good programs in there through some of the wetland reserve program Which been has been through several different iterations and names over the year.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program is another one that's about $600 million a year that comes out through that, that encourages private landowners to do conservation-related practices to help with water quality, fencing issues, water issues, etc. on their properties. So there's all sorts of really good programs under there that need to happen. So Congress passes the Farm Bill and you ask what needs to happen? Well that's it. They need to actually pass one instead of continuing to go on extension after extension after extension.

What has been the greatest obstacle to getting it passed? It's a hell of a question. I don't, it's hard to put my finger on it. Just, I think it's become like everything else. It just kind of became politicized and trying to come up with the baseline numbers. But you can't just look at the conservation aspect of the farm bill and focus on that. Because what a lot of people don't understand is the conservation title within the farm bill is small compared to the insurance programs,

the food stamp programs and everything else that's tied in. And so that's where the real rub comes is there's a lot of programs there that help urban communities and help underserved communities to go along with the conservation and the farm subsidies and all of that. And so you've got all of these great things. And so we can look at the little bit of quote,

infighting that might happen within the conservation organizations about whether it ought of these great things. And so we can look at, you know, the little bit of quote, in fighting that might happen within the conservation organizations about whether it ought to be grasslands or whether we need to pay more attention to forestry or do we need more for easements and all of that. But all of that pales in comparison to the broader fight about that really comes down to political sides over where this money should go. Yeah. So, so those issues in a way are held hostage by these much more expensive, much more contentious issues. Yes.

Yeah. And if you go like all the way back to like waters of the United States, right? So you got a lot of farmers who were like, Oh my God, government overreach. We can't do anything. As far as like water that they can manage on their private property, um, Trump won big rollback of, of WOTUS and, uh, we see, uh, a pretty drastic increase in, in, um, drain tile. Yeah. Right.

So we're losing intermittent wetlands In the farm bill, there's a lot of programs that are kind of like the carrot not the stick approach to Hey Not great to tile that farm for a bunch of different reasons. Here's a bunch of incentives That you have access to in the farm bill that would prevent that particular farming practice. That can help you make the right choice for conservation without an economic, without as much of an economic cost to your operation. Yeah, or without the feeling of like being held against your will, I guess. Depending on who's coming at it from what angle. Yeah. Uh,

we talk about wolves for a minute. Everybody's favorite topic, right? It's my, it is my favorite. Just a minute though. It should be able to cover it. Well, no, it's more of like a, it's more like a how, how does stuff work in Washington question? Okay. So I have a question I wrote up. So I was going to say moving to the lower 48.

So we're going to talk about Alaska and we still might talk about Alaska. We're going to talk about Alaska. I was going to say, move into the lower 48. Um, my, uh, beloved colleague, Brody Henderson disallerted me that there's a bill right now. I have no idea where it sits. There's a bill right now once again moving to delist wolves across the lower 48, which would have big implications for right now Colorado. Wouldn't have implications for

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, have implications for Colorado, potential implications for Utah, other states. How likely is something like that to advance? Meaning, I've had people explain to me that questions around listings and delistings are somewhat insulated from presidential administrations. Meaning these are things that move slow. They move at department levels and it's not like presidents come in and are able to They don't come in and

manipulate or push Directly like endangered species act discussions that might not even be true I don't know, but if you have if you have a Republican Senate a Republican Congress Republican president all the appointees going along is there a power play is there a power play that can happen that would be we're gonna begin the delisting of grizzly bears and we're gonna delist wolves in the upper great lakes or across the lower 48. Or is that just completely outside of how the election just went? Yeah.

Does that make any sense? That was not a very well articulated question. Try to say what I'm saying, Randall. I'm tracking. What do you think? Yeah. So you're correct that this is supposed to be insulated. I mean, it's all through the Endangered Species Act. When a species is listed, you're supposed to eventually,

typically it's supposed to happen when it gets listed, but it usually takes a little more time to get a recovery plan. And within that recovery plan, there are goals about the number of individuals or the number of breeding pairs that you have to hit before it would be delisted. The endangered species act was never written and designed to house a species forever. It was designed to let's identify what it is.

Let's identify how we recover it and let's get it off the books and let's put the management of that species back to the state, just like they're managing for the game species right now, right? And so when you look at wolves and over the years, I mean, it's been going back and forth since the, the Biden administration, I think was the Biden administration with wolves or we can over complicate this and get into all the distinct population segments and all of that other stuff.

But the bottom line is they said the Biden administration, the schnallersers said they've met recovery, let's get it off the books. That came from the Biden administration. I'm sorry, the Obama administration. Yeah, yeah. Going way back. Yeah.

Going way back. The Obama administration. I'm sorry. The Obama administration. Yeah, yeah. Initially. We're going way back. Yeah. Going way back. The, the Obama administration. Um, people didn't like that. So they took it to court. The court overruled. I forget the reasons. Oftentimes it's a technicality. It's not based upon how many are out there

on the landscape. It's did you follow the rules to the letter of the law? Right. And so we've been back and forth on this with wolves on several occasions, listed, delisted, listed, delisted. And so does Congress have an influence on this? They can.

They, you know, they certainly can. They get together and pass something. So what you mentioned now, I think it's called the, the pet and livestock protection act. And it's been introduced to get wolves off. Um, I don't know much about it other than it's got 30 Republican co-sponsors, no democratic co-sponsors on this. So that's in the house. I think it is in the house right now.

Right. Well, it passed the house on a slim margin party line. Yeah. But this is not something, this is something that in the Senate, unless they do away with the filibuster, they're going to have to get 60 votes for, there's no way they get to 60 votes.

So I don't think you're going to legislate it. Um, can it be influenced by the administration? It absolutely can be because all of those rules not only go through the agency, but then they go through the Council on Environment Quality, the CEQ, which is an office of the White House that all of this environmental related, wildlife related stuff goes through. And so there's a filter there and there's direction coming from there about, you know, this is the, where the administration would like to go.

Ultimately, they still have to base it upon the merits. Right. And so with the recent grizzly bear decision that the Biden administration did, they, in a way, they kind of changed the goalpost because this was about distinct population segments. And they said, well, no, let's look at this across the whole landscape and what those numbers are. So you get all of those things going on. Ultimately, what's going to happen.

I think it's going to continue to be a political ping pong ball, which is a shame. And when I think about the influence on this and think about legislation to try to get us out of this quagmire, I can't say that I'm a real fan because I started thinking about ballot box initiatives that happened at the States. Right. It's not that look wolves in most cases should be delisted based upon the merits of recovery. And it shouldn't be going back and forth between the politicians and the courts

and the special interest groups and the courts and all of that. We ought to just be able to get it back to non-partisan science-based decisions like it was designed to be. And how we get there, I don't know. If I ever figure it out, I'm not going to be doing this job anymore. Pete Slauson I think I might have been sitting next to you when I heard this. I believe I was sitting next to you and I, and the, uh, uh, uh, the governor of Utah was addressing the audience and the governor of Utah pledged um, the wolves aren't coming into Utah. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't know if that's up to you.

Right. Yes. I mean, I'd be like, careful what you promise. Well, right. I mean, they mean like careful what you promise. Well, right. I mean, they do have legs. Kind of like they got to Colorado before a ballot initiative there said, let's put them back. They were already there.

Yeah. I'd be like, if you're looking at a map and you just have that figured out based on the map you're looking at, that's one thing. But if you mean politically, I don't think that's, that's not your call right now. Yeah. Um, like if they walk in, they walk in. Well, the pro wolf people were like, there's no way with the way Wyoming

manages wolves that a wolf will ever walk from Wyoming into Colorado. Mm hmm. Like, well, really, they'd be incentivized. Dude, they're sprinting. Yeah. It's like the, you know, yeah. We like the equivalent of the Southern railroad. Uh, yeah.

Good answer on that one. Um, it is a ping pong ball, man. It's crazy. It is a ping pong ball. I feel that, uh, I feel that the, if I had to look at it um if I was gonna crystal ball it what's the word prognosis if I was gonna prognosticate and I was gonna come up with like a realistic a realistic goal for the next four years when it comes to the when it comes to the delisting issue. I think that saying declaring delisted across the lower 48,

I think that kind of winds up, like I wouldn't be a poet, I wouldn't really get worked up about it in a negative way. But I think it kind of goes against a lot of the work we've done about distinct population segments. And I think that if the distinct population segment, if that idea was being used the way it was intended to be used that'd be a quicker path forward so I think that to throw your hands up in the air and be like we're

gonna delist across the entirety the lower 48 is kind of like me telling my kids I'm gonna take all their iPads and run them over with my truck well they're like they're thinking like he's's not really going to do that, but he is pissed. So I think that realistically doing Northern Great Lakes on wolves, right? Finding some clarity. Cause that's been a ping pong back and forth, back and forth. We're doing, doing wolves in the Northern Great Lakes back to state management.

So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan Wisconsin Michigan right that's like a realistic goal and this is my opinion again this is me talking not Joel talking that's a realistic goal and I think doing to do grizzly bears and one or two of the distinct population segments starting with the Yellowstone DPS and maybe the Northern Continental Divide DPS. That seems to me like on that issue that would, I would view that as a success.

I think it's starting to talk about the whole lower 48 is just, it's all you're, you're, you're kind of reintroducing an old paradigm that got us in trouble in the first place was the problem was listing them in the lower 48. Didn't give you any sort of nuance control. So to go back to talking about lower 48, you're almost repeating like an old, you know, it's kind of like you're repeating an old mistake. And I'm just talking about, I'm just talking about being strategic. Like I'm talking about like getting, making some progress. I feel that it'd be much better to focus on these, these preexisting sets of rules that we've been operating under and like try to be impactful there.

Yeah. Well, I will prognosticate on this one. And my prediction is it continues to be a ping pong ball that this administration will ask the service to go back and look at it again, and they'll find some merits for delisting based upon the science that's out there and it'll end up back in the courts. So I'm going to sue. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd ask them like this. I'd say, find the areas that have the most grizzly bears hit by cars or lethally removed and let's just look at those and all the ones that don't have shockingly high numbers We'll set those areas aside for further review now, but right now. Let's see here Here's Cal introducing like a whole new metric and yeah, I just made a plea for sticking with the conversation Now it's gonna be a vehicle collision conversation. Yeah, I want people to be like oh, holy shit

100 and some grizzly bears get killed Yeah, every every single year. Mm-hmm. I thought there were no grizzly bears How they have any left? Yeah Okay Trump appointees, yep As far as I'm aware the of his appointees only one is withdrawn So they've been having some good they've been having good success moving appointees, only one is withdrawn. So they've been having some good, they've been having good success moving appointees through.

The Interior Department, Doug Burgum, he's a hunter. He is. Right? He's a successful businessman. He was a pretty popular governor. What's your take on what it's gonna be like working with the Department of

Interior going forward and any other and any other kind of news or opinions they have about other appointees and who are people going to be what names are people going to be hearing a lot in the next four years right yeah a lot of questions there we'll see if I can remember them all and get to them first off Bergham I think I think he's gonna be really good to work with. Um, I don't have a lot of personal experience with him, but some of our staff has worked with him through Western governors association and some of those, um, uh, some of the groups through that.

And it's been a positive experience and we're hearing some names. It's probably too early to say, of people that worked with him in North Dakota that were in the first Trump administration that will likely be coming back in. So I think there'll be some known entities there. As you said, he is a hunter and fisherman. I actually was at a reception last week, a celebration of the Explore Act, and Secretary Burgum showed up as his first public appearance since being confirmed and was there.

He talked personally about hunting and fishing and growing up and shared some personal stories. You can tell it's not just words with him in that regard. He touched on at that a little bit about oil and gas and the mandate from the president for energy dominance and he's also the energy czar. So he's going to play a role in that. But what he highlighted there in this group of conservation minded folks was that in North Dakota, they grew to be the number three producer of oil and gas in the country during his administration. And they did that while only impacting 1% of the surface area.

And so he's about technological advances to move these things forward. He's about technological advances to move these things forward. He's about finding the balance. And I truly, I think he's got the track record to show that on the energy side of things. Within the Department of Interior, another name that's out there is Kate McGregor as Deputy Secretary. She's not been confirmed yet, but that's who they've put up. They'll start going to these second tier confirmations here in the coming weeks once they get the main ones done.

Kate served in the same or similar role under the first Trump administration. She knows how the department works and she's going to be able to bring some of that knowledge there into how it operates. It's somebody that TRCP and the other organizations worked with in the first, uh, Trump administration. So a known entity there. You know, uh, let me wet something in there just from a conversation you and I had this morning is with so much upheaval in the federal workforce right now, we had talked about, um, you know, with the federal buyout, reducing agencies, we talked about a loss of institutional

knowledge. Correct. And you had mentioned to me that some of these secondary positions are going to wind up needing to be things you pay attention to, like are people coming into some of these agencies that have a big conservation mandate or big implication for conservation, are some of these agencies that have a big conservation mandate or a big implication for conservation, are some of the people that are coming in in leadership roles, how familiar are they? Familiar are they with the agency? Do they have a generally positive attitude toward conservation work within that agency? Or in some cases, are they like complete outsiders who are there more

to reduce and dismantle rather than make more efficient and effective? And that's just something I guess we'll just have to wait and see on some of those issues, right? Yeah, you know, we will have to wait and see. I think Kate and her first time around, she generally was good on our issues. Like I said, she understands it. She left the administration and she went to work for an energy company, which incidentally

was actually more based on wind and solar than it was oil and gas. She's coming back in, so she understands the energy side of things. That's a huge mandate within Department of Interior. It's a huge agency, mining, minerals, all of that stuff, water, reclamation, Bureau of Reclamation's in there. We always think about it from the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service, but there's a whole bunch of other things that that secretary and that deputy secretary have to think about on top of that.

You know, a thing that your predecessor at TRCP said to me about Secretary Bernhardt that always stuck with me. Um, he had said he was talking about liking working with Bernhardt. And he had an interesting thing that he liked about him is he's like, he doesn't waste your time. Right. Meaning when he tells you something, he tells you what he's going to do. And he doesn't pull the carpet out from under you. So it'll allow you to be pretty focused in your ass,

where you didn't get like grinned along. And then later realized that he was having a totally separate conversation and just leading you along. He said it allowed for a certain efficiency. Where he'd be like, you're not going to get anywhere on this, but if you'd like to talk about this, I'm all ears. Yeah.

Right. It'll let you be, it let you sort of understand the landscape, right? Right. Which I thought was just an interesting way to look at someone who is an ally, an adversary and like how efficient are you in figuring out where you line up and don't line up? Right. Well, and that's a lot of what we're spending our time, not only TRCP, but

everybody that works up there right now is trying to figure out as much as we can about these appointees and where they're going to land on that. And, you know, there's a level of excitement when a known entity goes in there so that you don't have to build the time, um, creating the relationship. And you kind of know what their track record is, but somebody like Burgum, you know, we know a little bit what their track record is, but somebody like Burgum, you know, we know a little bit about his track record, um, beyond Bergham and, and McGregor that I've mentioned, we're not hearing a lot of names for the next level down and the agency directors at this time.

It's still a little early to tell in department of ag. It's, uh, you know, a little bit on the flip side there. Brooke Rollins is the, um the new secretary of AG there. She was in the first Trump administration, but in a very different role, had nothing to do with AG. She's got a degree from Texas A&M, so she's an Aggie in that regard. But she's been in the interim since the last

administration, she's been part of the American First Policy Institute, or she's been in the interim since the last administration. She's been part of the American first policy Institute or she was CEO of that, which is a conservative think tank. And in her first role, you know, she was really about, um, it was, what was it? It was ran the domestic policy council during the first term, which basically is, uh, his cabinet and helps to set the presidential agenda. And so it's been, you know, she, she's not a known entity in the ag space and we don't know who she's going

to bring in. She hasn't worked in that space. So she doesn't have a bench of people that she can pull from, but you know, they've named a few more people over there. Richard Fordyce is one of the undersecretaries. I think there's three undersecretaries over there. Two of them we care about. One is for farm production and conservation, which oversees Farm Services Agency and the NRCS. Farm Services Agency implements CRP, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, implements the rest of the conservation programs in the farm bill.

So that's an important one for us. He's a farmer out of Missouri. He was administrator of Farm Service Agency in the first Trump administration. So he understands some of the ag policy and things like that. Um, and apparently does a lot of conservation work on his own farm back in, in, uh, Missouri. We had talked as well about, uh, the idea of reconciliation, which is something I hadn't given much thought to, meaning we're hearing a lot about cuts, right? Like we have, I mean, we have like an existential problem in the country about, about a budget deficit and debt.

Like all the money we're talking about, right? All this money we're talking about that we're, that we could spend on conservation. Um, if you were going to compare that to the amount of money that this country spends servicing its debt, it's nothing. It's nothing. We spend country spends servicing its debt. It's nothing. It's nothing. We spend far more servicing our debt than we do on conservation by probably like some factor of hundreds. I don't know exactly what that number is, but the amount of money of, um,

I forgot, I lost the term I'm looking for, but 1% of the non-obligated federal budget goes to conservation. Okay. 1%? Non-obligated, yeah. Yeah, it's non-mandatory discretionary is the word I'm looking for. 1% of the discretionary budget goes to the conservation issues. So if you rolled in the total federal budget, it'd be a much smaller fraction.

So, uh, we have a problem with like, with debt, no remedy, like any remedy is going to have a bunch of people pissed off. It's like, that's what's created the problem. We have. We have it and so far we've just generally seen administration after administration after administration. Um, people can't stomach what it would take to fix it. Trump's in a similar bind. He's in a similar bind because, um, he can't go after not can't'd be politically detrimental to go after social security, Medicare,

and Medicaid. Right? So you wind up needing to fidget around, to fidget around in these much smaller things when like 70% of the money is going to these things that are, it's political suicide to talk about entitlement spending. It's political suicide. So you need to go after the less the areas with less friction, right? You wind up talking about little little chunks of money here and there because you just can't talk about the big chunks of money. I'll tell you I watched an interview with with Steve Bannon who was in the early first Trump administration was a hugely impactful person and and so here's Bannon who was in the early first Trump administration was a hugely impactful person and and so here's Bannon saying you know he was like a naval commander right he was in the Navy he's got kids in the military he's like establishing

how hawkish he is but he goes and this is coming from me we need to talk about the defense budget down the road when you talk about the social safety net budget because we're not going to get there with the kinds of things we're talking about. But to get back to the original point I was gonna make is we keep talking about places to save money but you also the administration also needs to look at how you make money. Right. Right. There's a there's like you can cut outgoing but what do you do to bring it in? And one of the ways you can bring money in is leasing. Right.

And, and probably some other issues, right? Right. Yeah, for sure. And so, yeah, when it comes to reconciliation, that's something that I don't know how much the sportsman's community is paying attention to, but it is certainly something that we're watching for a couple of reasons. One is, and we've talked about it several times, the slug of money that came out through Bill and IRA that goes to conservation. That is from day one, been a target because of how it came about, because it has the climate connotations, because

it was a Biden administration priority. That's an area they're going to cut. And anything that at least that hasn't been obligated right now is on the blocks to come back. The 10, 12, 14 million that I talked about with the Farm Bill program earlier is part of that, that is the chance of getting rescissioned back out to decrease spending. So that's one part of it. But then another part of it, as you said, is increasing the revenue. And so we've heard, and I don't know how serious it is. So with reconciliation, it has to tie right back to the budget. And so some of this may be a stretch, but if they can tie it back to revenues, it may

not be a huge stretch. And so some big wins that the conservation community and TRCP have has had over the course of the last four and eight years Having to do with mining the Biden administration Decided that they weren't gonna permit a critical minerals mine up in the boundary waters canoe area of northern, Minnesota That's been something that's been going on for a long time. Well in the headwaters the headwaters. Yeah. Thank you That has specifically been mentioned that maybe we need to bring that back online. So the royalties we get from that pebble mine, which Trump won when he was president before came out strongly against and said, no, we're not going to do this. We need to protect Bristol Bay.

That one has specifically been brought up by Congress as another one where let's bring that back on and get the royalties out of that. To bring money in. To bring money in because of the royalties that eventually would come from that. And then another issue that TRCP and its partners have worked on here over the course of the last four years that the Biden administration was a champion on

was the Ambler Road in the Brooks Range. They're a 211 mile road that would have 3,000 stream crossings and bisect the West Alaska Caribou herd and just all of the negative things that come from that in this largely undeveloped kind of the last bastion of wildness that this country has. The BLM decided they weren't going to permit that. That's something else that not only came up in the executive order about unleashing Alaska's greatness, but it's also been mentioned as potentially coming in through reconciliation because we can open up that mine, right?

Well, that mine, if it, depending on how good it is, one of the documents from one of the companies doing it said, yeah, we want to do this so we can send it all overseas to be developed, right? So it's not even going to come back to our critical menus, but it would create some royalties. So we're watching it for that. There's also a positive on this as well with reconciliation. So there is a loophole in the federal excise tax around archery equipment and fishing tackle that is being exploited right now by direct-to-consumer sales largely over the internet for products that are starting outside of the country.

Whereas we all know that through the Pittman RobertsRobertson Act and Dingell-Johnson Act, there's an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, fishing tackle, et cetera. But what's happening right now is that direct to consumer is not being taxed when it's purchased online and it's being shipped from outside of the country into the country because it's the first point of sale in the country is where that's collected. Oh, really? Yeah.

And so that's about a $17 million bump that we think we could see for fish and wildlife conservation that is when you buy a fishing reel or you buy a fishing tackle that's developed in China or arrow shafts is another big one And you buy them online and it gets shipped directly to your home. Nobody's collecting that tax. You're the one, Steve, that should be paying that

because you're the first point of purchase on that. So there's legislation that's been in the talks and I think it's going to get introduced. There was talks that would be introduced last week or this week that would close that loophole. Um, and that would have a direct tie to reconciliation. Pretty hard for some blue sky there, Joel. Uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's great.

I think we could crowdsource $17 million, um, if we really needed to, uh, against Ambler road, right. Pebble mine, uh, boundary waters, right. Uh, but I guess the efficiency part of this, right. Is, um, I respect you well enough to bust your, your, your chops a little fair. So, um, the, because we have seen, so to go back to the farm bill, right? Like farm bill is a big thing. And that's why I was joking on this is a layup deal, right?

And it's a big complex package to the point where it needs like a lot of physical people on the ground to facilitate that, just the use of a lot of the programs within the farm bill. facilitate that just the use of a lot of the programs within the farm bill. So you have a lot of users on the ground who are working outside. They're doing non-techie things and there's a system in place that is very onerous for these people to in their spare time, try to access some of these programs that are, that will greatly benefit them in their bottom line and for generations to come sometimes.

And that's a big barrier to entry. So there's a lot of people involved in the farm bill that work on the farm bill. My understanding is all these people just got a notice that said, hey, if you want to retire early, you can hit the easy button and go right now. In regards to... Which has not had widespread adoption. No. It went out to 2.5 million and I think they're up to 60, 65 thousand. Secretary Burgum, all of his people in Interior got the same notice. Um, and at the same time, um, the, what we were just talking about, right. And wants to review, officially review every national monument, going back to president Theodore Roosevelt 1906.

So basically anything that was used in the, um, the antiquities act, right. Um, every mineral withdrawal, which obviously is what we just talked about and every BLM resource management plan, which ties into Ambly road, I mean, pick one of those. And I can't imagine how many physical people it would take to accomplish a full review of just one, right? So like,

do we know that the right hand is talking to the left hand in Washington, right? No, I think it's unclear and I and on the federal employee thing when I looked at I saw someone put in line with normal annual turnover is I can't remember what it was, in excess of a hundred thousand. Normal annual turnover at the federal, of that 2.5 million federal employees, normal annual turnover is 115. I'm looking at random. I don't know. Yeah. You're looking at 118, I think, last I checked. But I mean, I think that the point being, I just think that it was like, um, you can see it as a positive, like this, they're more loyal.

Well, I don't view it as a positive or negative. I just viewed it as, I thought that number would be way the hell higher, especially when I looked at what normal turnover is. Yeah. Then it'll wind up being as much as that's gotten a lot of media attention, it'll wind up being kind of like a non-event. Well, it's also, it's all, there's nothing behind it. I mean, they just got an email.

There's no, there's no promise, right? Like there's nothing. I mean, I think that's the thing is it's sort of an IOU. Yeah, I'd be scared. Yeah, I mean, there's no- I mean, I'd like to take the deal. I'd be like, can I get my money upfront? It's not exactly a pat on the back either, right?

You know, it's like we all, the, you know, the federal government gets summed up just like that. All the feds, right? Yeah. And, um, the more time you spend outside, the more interaction you have with, uh, federal employees and holy cow, are there's like some phenomenally good, dedicated federal employees that deal with a lot of sometimes literal human shit. Yeah. And there's a lot of the opposite. For sure. How many of the good ones go, oh boy, these guys don't have our back.

It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? I think that one thing, the one way you got to hand it to the administration is they're moving so fast that it leaves you stuttering, right? You're like, oh, you can't tell what's going on. So in looking at trying to understand executive orders, right, and other things, I find myself waiting for the dust to settle a little bit to see like, you know, I'm opposed to the Ambler Road project, just take in Alaska, I'm opposed to the Pe Road project. Um, just taking Alaska.

I'm opposed to the Pebble Mine project. I don't think that they should drill Anwar. So you see the executive orders coming and I kind of just wind up mentally hitting pause a minute to understand. How much of this is like, what is symbolism? What's really going on? Where is there industry? Where is there even industry buy-in, industry possibility

at the state level? What's the political mood? What is the permitting process? No administration lasts forever. Some things just take forever. What happens in two years? Like depending on how the midterms go, how much of this stuff unravels if the normal thing plays out where you normally, you know, it's a majority of times a president in

the midterms loses, loses whatever their existing majorities are in the house and Senate. So like all of this stuff happening and I'm, I, I catch myself being like, just, just hold on a sec. I'm trying to understand what's going on. Yes. If you care about the words coming out of your mouth being true, that is a smart thing to do. Yes. And, but then I also sit there thinking, um, I also sit there thinking to myself, there are things that, there's things the administration is doing that I applaud

and there's things the administration is doing that I'm very nervous about. And I don't want to find that I'm so, on the things that I'm uneasy with or the things that I oppose, I don't want it to be that like everyone waits too long to try to get their bearings and then realize that you missed your chance to go, Hey, wait a minute. Yeah. I guarantee you the, I guarantee you the Ambler road people

and the pebble mine. People are not waiting for the dust to settle. You know, they're not waiting to see what happens in two years. Their foot on the gas right now. Yeah, like how color it'd be like Colorado on the wolf thing. Yeah, they get the votes and wham wolves. Yeah. I will say like hats off to the administration for for the strategy. Right. Like it is an effective strategy. We're going to throw so much stuff out there. Yeah. That everybody is going to be like,, Oh my God, that's illegal. Wait, is it illegal?

Let's be sure about that. Can somebody look that up? Let's, let's make sure. Oh, there's another thing today. Oh, there's another thing at 2am today. This tweet just went out. We got to make sure what we can do, what our actions are. And some of this stuff is going to stick.

I think a lot of it is not going to stick, but it's a hell of a good strategy. Right. And I think from a conservation point of view, um, you gotta, you can't say everything's on fire all the time because you can't get people to show up. All the time for everything. Like you got to choose your fires and say, gang, this one's the real one. And we got to show up for this. And, and, you know, yeah, some groups are drawing some lines in the sand already.

I think a lot of folks are trying to be patient. It's, it's tough though, cause it, it's scary. Like there's a lot going on right now. And one of those Ambler road boundary waters, it's scary. Like there's a lot going on right now. And one of those Ambler road, boundary waters, pebble mine. I mean, we've already had generation of conservation minded people work the majority of their lives on some of this stuff. Yeah. To give, uh, we're gonna turn it back over to Joel and me cause it's

gonna be his job. Joel's job is going to be sorting all this out, but you know, earlier I was making the point and I don't want to clarify this very much me talking and not Joel talking earlier. Every time you say that, I'm just making you wait. I'm not gonna say anything incendiary. I'm just talking about like in, in trying to understand the admins. Is any of this putting you in a bad position?

No. Not yet. Earlier I was talking. No, no, no. It won't. It won't at all. Remember earlier I was making the joke about, I was talking about when I tell my kids like,

listen, I'm gonna run over, I'm gonna take everyone's iPads and run them over in the driveway. And it's meant to be that they go like, well, he's not gonna do that, but he's serious. Something, some lesser version is gonna happen right now. Like they're going in the gun safe. It's probably what's gonna happen.

It's probably what they're thinking. The iPads, not the kids. No, no, yeah. Like I say, I'm gonna run them over in their head. They're like, this is gonna settle out where my iPad's in the gun safe for like two weeks. Like I can see where this is going. So with a lot of things that trying to get in,

like a lot of things that trying to understand how president Trump operates and how he thinks is when is he doing the, I'm gonna run over all the iPads? When Trump said, I'm gonna empty, we're straining away from conservation by making a conservation point. When Trump says, I'm going to empty Gaza. I'm going to empty Gaza and we're going to build a resort.

I think it's like, I'm going to run over all the iPads. That's about where I'm at. Right? And anyone that has a stake in that is listening and being like, um, at a minimum, the iPads are going to the gun safe, right? It's a way of sort of like, it's a, it's a way of communicating of saying I'm at a point where I'm going to do something major, right? So that's part of the thing is like him saying energy dot, like if we look at like energy extraction, you know, if we look at like energy dominance, such as, and you just throw out like such as

Ambler, Pebble Mine, Boundary Waters, is that running shit over in the driveway? Or does that wind up being that they're going into the gun safe? Yeah. They're going to the gun safe. That's what's so bewildering to me personally. It is. But you know, there's another twist on this because when I'm talking about pebble mine and boundary waters and Ambler in reconciliation, that's congressional.

So now you've got not just the administration saying, we ought to think about this, but you've got Congress doing it. And you start getting that synergy there, it's going to be even harder. And so we're trying to be measured in our approach right now. We're trying to be measured in what we say. We've had several of our partners that have wanted to be very vocal against some things that have come out already. And it's like, let's just hold on.

Not waiting too long to your point. We can't do that, but you know, we haven't even had a sit down with secretary Burgum as a community to say, here's the things that we really care about. Here's our top 10 issues, right? Yeah. Where are you on these?

We shouldn't go in there and say, we don't like this, don't do it now before we even know what the lay of the land is. Yeah. Cause it might backfire. Right. And you know, just thinking about Alaska and unleashing Alaska's energy dominance, whatever the title of that one was, it's like. Really dramatic title. Yeah. I I've got it somewhere.

It's spectacular. It is. Yeah. I, I've got it somewhere. It's, it's spectacular. It is. Yeah. Um, but there's like 30 different things that he identifies in there. Well, which ones of those are going to filter to the top, which ones will TRCP's voice make a difference in, because if we're not going to move the needle on it, there's probably no sense in wasting the political capital on it and save it for those things like Pebble Mine and Ambler Road that TRCP

and our broader community have worked so hard on for so long to really try to put the stake in the ground on those when the time is right. But I think one aspect of working for TRCP that I hadn't really appreciated as an outsider is like, you have to work with both sides of the aisle. And it doesn't do it. That's the literal job. Yeah. You can't. No, I mean like, No, it's a good point. Joel's like, got it.

Yeah. No, I mean, but like, there's people that when Biden's in office, they're saying, you know, TRCP is working with Biden and doing X, Y, and Z. And if you don't like Biden, you don't like what TRCP is doing. And then if this administration comes in and you work on priorities that you have with this new administration, say, oh, they're just bending over to, to Trump. You know? And so I think like, it's, if you're not trying to get access to the secretary of the interior,

it's easy to sort of sit back in the cheap seats and, you know, take a flame throat or whatever you don't like coming out of DC. But I, having worked for TRCP, I appreciate the position that you're in because you need to have influence no matter who's sitting behind that desk, right? And so it's a matter of aligning your priorities with with their priorities and finding where you can work on things and and then that

cooperation is what gives you the the leverage to in turn say actually Pebble Mine is a red line for us, you know, and so it's like you have to pick those those battles strategically. Yeah, no, that's? And so it's like, you have to pick those, those battles strategically. Yeah. No, that's, that's exactly where we are, where we've been for a long time. And, you know, there's groups out there, not so much in the direct conservation space, but there are groups out there that we're just going to refuse to work with Trump because he's Trump and they're not going to see any of their priorities.

Go anywhere for the next four years. And well, potentially eight. I mean, I'm not saying with Trump, but I mean, if, if, if, if Trump, you know, if Trump can put some policies in place, yeah. Oh, that are long last bells even saying like, you know, it's, it's, it's fairly common for an administration to continue on under a new, you know, under new leadership over the priorities to continue. So, you know, it's not, no one really knows, but you could have, you know, basically, you know, presuming as JD Vance, you'd have like basically a Trump 3.0, and if you're gonna go and cry in the corner because

you don't want to deal with the right, you might be sitting in that corner a very long time right now. And I have, I mean I I have like memories of when I was working at TRCP talking to somebody like at a bar not who's not working in conservation space but they're like you you guys are working with this individual or you're sending out a press release with this individual's office. Like, I thought they were against conservation. It's like, well, on this bill,

they're in the right space, you know? And so it's like, you can't close too many doors and still be effective. So I don't know, I don't know who I'm talking to there. Maybe just the last- Talk to me, Randall. Yeah, no, but I mean, it's like, it's like there's, when everything is political, when everything's political, if you work with somebody on one side, like there's a large part of the public that turns you into a bad guy. And that's if you want to be effective in

Washington, that's just not like an option. So I don't know. All that to say, I respect the work that DRCP does. Well, it puts you in an uncomfortable position a lot of times. I'll put it like, I want to add to what you're saying a little bit because the focus is so broad. Yeah. When we're talking about conservation, like the focus is huge. There's things that live under conservation that, you know, are sort of like cousins to conservation, but it's a huge area, right? If you're an organization, let's just say you're a gun rights organization, there's not going to be really any way, like you're not going to go, if you're focused singularly on defending Second Amendment rights, you're not going to have the conversation with the Biden administration. There's kind

of like nothing to talk about. You're going to be like just resistance. You're going to be fundraising. Yeah, you're like fundraising and resistance because you have a small area of focus. In conservation, there's so many different aspects to it. In servicing American hunters and anglers, there's so many different aspects to it, and servicing American hunters and anglers, there's so many different aspects to it. You need to at any given time be able to be push and pull, because there's going to be things within a right-leaning administration that are going to be like easy wins for you, you know, access on refuges. It's not technically conservation, but it fits into

that. It fits into the interests of hunters and anglers, right? So you got, you always gotta be ready to, there's so many issues. You gotta be ready to like pick your moment and find the allies where you find them and then do like a push pull thing because it's not, I don't think you can really afford to just burn stuff down. You become irrelevant for too long. Right. Or you're relevant for a few years and then you're either fundraising or you're just totally irrelevant, right? But TRCP's

track record over the last two plus decades has been able to get stuff done no matter who's in there. And that's something that I'm really proud of. It's something that drew me to this organization, the ability to do that and have that kind of influence and work on the variety of issues that we do. I think that draws me to TRCP and there's a lot of ways to push conservation but I think it draws me to the way TRCP handles conservation is you guys have this every year you have a capital conservation awards dinner and and it's like I mean it's admittedly somewhat symbolic but intentionally so where it's you guys honor someone from each side of the aisle

so you honor a Republican you honor Democrat you honor someone from that typically someone from the house some from Senate. I've seen it go where it was two Western governors. And applaud them on where areas where they were able to do conservation wins. Right? Right. And the areas where they were able to do conservation wins is often where they had political cover within their party, but not looking at it, singling it out,

and applauding it in a bipartisan way. And that, like I said, it's symbolic, it's impactful, but it like puts a stake in the ground about how we're approaching this and how we're looking at it. Like we're going to partner with whoever is in power wherever they can help us get conservation wins of which there are many. Right. You know? Well, those awards also give us the chance to show the bipartisanship, even by those

members, right? Because those things don't get passed. Those things don't get done if there's not bipartisanship on that. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got that coming up again this year, April 30th. I imagine, yeah, I'll be there.

I hope you will since you're going to MC it. I'm going to MC it. So you'll be spending a lot of time in your future having cups of coffee getting introduced to people. There's been a lot of that already and I think that's going to be a lot of this first year. A lot of new faces around town. Yeah, there is. You know, we've focused a lot on the administration, but there's big changes in Congress too. A lot of new members there. I think about the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee where we had Manchin and

Barrasso that have led that for a long time. We've got a new leader and a new chair and a new minority leader in there and a lot of staff turnover that we've worked with for a long time. Myself and the rest of the team have a lot of work to do we've worked with for a long time. And so myself and the rest of the team have a lot of work to do just to get to know the new players in Congress as well as in the administration. Have they offered to buy out the Congressman? We'll pay you through September.

I wonder if anyone would take it if they did. Let's talk about, so we have the annual awards dinner coming up. Yep. But that's not, you can't like Joe blow off the street. Can't come in. Right? Absolutely. They can.

Really? Yeah. Explain that. Um, yeah. So, you know, this is largely driven by our sponsors and our partners that we invite. We'll get a number of members of Congress. A lot of staffers will come to that event because it is an opportunity to to celebrate our conservation achievements as you highlighted and will recognize a

Democrat and a Republican from Congress. We also typically recognize Someone from the outside world communications are supporting. I think last year's award winner might be sitting next to me here. Two years ago, I stepped in and MC'd. I think you got recognized at one point too. Did you not? I don't think he got the big award. I don't know. You did the once.

Yep. It's like people from the private sector and give yourself an award. Cal. No, you missed your opportunity, man. Man. I got a lot of stories like that. Randy Newberg got the communicators award. That's it.

Yeah. Yep. And I got to make fun of them a little bit on stage, which is always fun. Yeah. So, so we use it for that. Um, and a lot of our corporate sponsors come and celebrate the night as well as our partners on the conservation side. But we do have individual tickets for people that want to come and be part of this and

help to celebrate. www.trcp.org slash CCAD 2025 is where you can buy the, find those tickets. And as we get closer to the event, towards the end of March, our auction items, we do an online auction related to this and that's available to everybody, whether you're there or not. And the auction items will be on that same website as well. Is our dinner, I got a little lost because we're doing two things. We're doing a wild game dinner. That'll be auctioned.

Correct. And that will be part of that auction. Yes. I know we debated this, but I can't remember where we landed. That will be part of the auction. So that, so you'll be able to come to our headquarters here. We just remodeled our remodeled kitchen. We finished, uh, we built it and then immediately tore it apart and redid it.

That kitchen will be ready. And it's a dinner. I can't, did we say four or eight? I think you said eight. Yeah, we did, it was a lot. Yeah. We're auctioning off a dinner for eight at Meat Eater headquarters. And it'll be, Randall will be there. He doesn't even know. I hope so. I'm going to say Cal will be there. He doesn't know. I'll be there for damn sure.

And we're gonna do a big, a big many course dinner in that kitchen. Eight people. You're adopting Trump speak already. The biggest dinner. It'll be a big, many, many. It'll be the biggest, the best dinner.

I heard it was the best dinner ever. People are saying. A lot of people I heard it was the best dinner ever. People are saying, a lot of people are saying, I would love to help with the dinner for sure. Having a big dinner and we're going to auction that off. And then we have our like seventh annual or so, many time annual hunt sweepstakes. It used to be an elk hunt sweepstakes. And then we turned it into a turkey hunt sweepstakes, right? Where, uh, a winner and a guest have all their expenses paid. So we cover everything airfare lodging. We've even provided shotgun, shotgun, ammo, camo. We clean your turkeys for you. All everything taken care of.

Um, and that we're gonna do... That we're gonna do it later in the summer. Later in summer. Yep. One of the things that the team identified is that trying to promote the sweepstakes while promoting the dinner and all of the auctions kind of got lost. Yeah. So we're gonna separate it a little bit. I think we're talking about, um, promoting that during June and July. And that, that turkey hunt sweepstakes, that's a raffle. And that was interesting to find out years ago. We did it a first couple of times. We did it, we did it as an auction.

And then when we moved it to a raffle, it made a lot more money as a raffle. And then we just had a guest out who explained all the ways in which that does not hold true when you're trying to distribute big go horn sheep tags. Raffles can't touch an auction. Right. But in the case of our hunts, going to turkey hunting with Steve, and the case of have the same allure as a big, yeah. And the case of going turkey hunting, on a, on a, on a all expense paid turkey, raffles are way better.

So we'll do the raffle. We'll do the raffle in the summertime for the turkey hunt. And we're going to auction to the highest bidder dinner for eight. At our headquarters here. And it'll be a many course wild game dinner and we'll pair it with drinks. Sounds like it'll be a beautiful thing. Pair it with drinks. I'll be there. Yeah. Travis Barton at Barton Fabrication is, as we speak, making the table that you will sit at while eating the dinner. And

you'll look at this steel bar dividing these two large wooden slabs and you'll think that it was an aesthetic consideration and you won't know that it had to do with the wood slabs not being big enough. You'll think, what an awesome touch. What an awesome touch. Yeah. That steel running down the middle of the table. Not Travis's fault, not Travis's fault. Um, so we got that.

Thanks for coming out, man. Appreciate you. Anything you want to wedge in there? Man, we've covered a lot of ground. I don't really think so. I appreciate, uh, I just want to close with saying, I appreciate that, um, you're in a real, like, like you're in a, you're in a spot right now. You're in, you're in a, you're in a spot right now. You're, you're in a, you're coming into a new role, um, for an organization.

So it's been humming along for a long time and then getting your feet under you on that. And then at the same time dealing with a, um, as the free press puts it, a major vibe shift in DC, the vibe is just different there right now. And it's like, that's got to be a daunting thing. It is. Yeah, for sure. Just getting your feet under you at a new org and then getting your feet under you with the new administration and a very fast moving group of people. Yeah. So I appreciate you taking your time to come talk to us about all that's going on. And I asked people to, you know,

I did an interview yesterday and with one of the podcasts by the Navy Seals Foundation. And he was just saying, if you could change one thing about hunting, what would you change? And I said, that's a great question. And I thought about it and I couldn't really think of a good one.

And I said,'s a great question and I thought about it and I couldn't really think of a good one. I said I guess it would be that a greater percentage of the people who like to hunt and fish increased their involvement in conservation, increased their involvement in conversations about funding for and just demonstrated greater awareness about the issues at stake and how to be impactful and you can do it at a broad scale like at the federal level like the conversations we've been having here today with TRCP or you can do it small scale local about animals and fish that you like that live in places where you

love to hang out as represented by the huge partnership that TRCP has with a lot of organizations that are more singularly focused on specific issues surrounding specific animals. You can take your pick. You can find the kind of thing that fits with how you view the world. And when considering that, consider TRCP and know that they have their work cut out for them in the coming years in trying to make sure that conservation stays front and center in the minds of the lawmakers in DC? Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Steve.

I think that's a good point. I think about all the partners we have and there's great partners that are getting the work out there on the ground. It's very tangible to see what they're doing. One of the challenges I think TRCP has always had is that we work largely behind the scenes. We're up there on Capitol Hill every day and we are facilitating the funding, the rulemaking, the legislating that's happening.

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

and they helped to do that. And, and we're an organization where, as we've talked for the last couple of hours, we're nonpartisan, we're in there all the time, every year, working on both sides of the aisle to get done. What's important to the sportsmen that are out there. Okay. And for ADU specialists out there, we're getting dinner going now. You just got to win the auction and we'll do something we've never done before. We'll tell, I'll take requests.

You can send in like, it'll be round rough. You can give me rough. Nope. Don't have that. Yeah. You're like, I've always wanted to try, you know, elephant and I'll be like, yeah, you ever had possum? All right, thanks man. Appreciate it. Thank you. you