The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 769: Can Conservation Be Non-Partisan?

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with Benji Backer, Ryan Callaghan, and Randall Williams. Topics discussed: How wilderness is (or should be) non-partisan; pulling a B&E at Doug’s place; the latest anti-hunting crusade over Florida’s bear hunt; knocking on doors for candidates at age 10 and starting a PAC at 18; becoming disillusioned and starting Nature Is Nonpartisan; what we define as a conservation “win”; politicians being the problem; creating space for a national conservation coalition; farmers mitigating climate change; not “shitting up” America; 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.

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You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light. When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer. No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. We're joined today by Benji Backer of Nature is Nonpartisan.

And we're going to talk about, can it be? You're just saying it is. It is. That's the title. I'm going to will it to existence. And we're going to say, is it? How, how it can it be? How does it become?

How does nature become nonpartisan, meaning wildlife conservation, wildlands conservation, can it rise above the vitriol, the culture wars? And the cycles. Yeah. I mean, it has to. I'm going to get off again. It has to. That's why I created nature as nonpartisan. Because you're saying it is.

It is. People just need to realize it is. People, yes, exactly. We've got to get out of our algorithms here and realize that it actually once was nonpartisan, right? You look at history, the biggest environmental achievements, conservation achievements throughout history were immensely bipartisan, nonpartisan. I've spent the last 10 years of my career. I'm 27, so I started when I was a freshman in college. I started a nonprofit by freshman year of college, like a normal freshman does, and went around the country and saw that.

that people actually wanted a lot of the same things. They want clean air. They want clean water. They want wildlife habitat to be concerned. They want to be able to hunt and fish. They also want to be able to hike and ski. They just want to be able to spend time outdoors. And you could be the Trumpiest voter in the world or you could be an AOC lover and anything in between and you want those same things.

And yet that's not reflected in our politics today. So we have to get this right. So by saying, I could say nature should be nonpartisan. That's a less compelling organization. There's four words there instead of three. ought to be ought to be uh the ns could be the nsbn is not a really compelling acronym it's just ESPN too similar too similar uh but yeah i mean we we feel like it should be and so we're going to make sure that it is that's the whole goal when we get into this um i want to talk

about some of my favorite little facts did uh the EPA well i mean all stuff that came in under nixon dude and not only that this guy yeah the will yeah and not only that, my other little favorite thing, Cal might remember the numbers on it. When they passed the Wilderness Act, wasn't like 99 to 1 in the Senate or like, it was like, not that.

Someone should look that up. Phil? Yeah, I mean. That's not something Phil's going to look up. Phil's back there trying to memorize his lines. I'm also switching cameras, making you look good, taking notes. I can look this up.

He's back there. a fathing I'm going to be thrilled when Steve learns another form of English currency Phil You ever hear of a felon named Bob Scratchett Nope

Bob Cratchett Yep I like that you didn't play along there You showed up in town at the wrong time If you'd have showed up in town months from now You'd be able to go see Phil and Christmas Carol Oh is he in it? Doing little dickens, yeah

Is he in that? Can he perform for us right now? He is. He's playing. Do a couple of, is that the halftime show? You know what? What?

Like, this is my nightmare. You know how every. It's not technically a one-man show. Okay. But he makes it seem as if it is. That's, he plays all the roles.

Yeah. You know how in movies there's like a big line that the actor's excited about. Like, when you think of Bob Cratchett in your role, what line are you like, What line are you most excited to just, eh? He's got a very emphatic, here, here, when Fred is trying to convince Scrooge of the joys of Christmas. I'll be watching for that. And the only reason I bring it up is because that's the only line I have memorized so far.

When I went to Phil's sound effect, you get a couple months. It feels like more of a sound effect than a line, but go ahead. And Phil's last play. he I didn't really know what his role was and I was reading the bill you know and he's like all the way at the end of the bill and then as the play goes on I'm like God he's got all the lines like he's got all the laughs he's the main character jammed him in the back and I'm like yeah and I'm like I was I was like growing as I realized how central his role was I was growing more and more offended at Phil's placement in the bill and it wasn't until two days

later and I told him this and he said it was alphabetized Phil the engineer yeah yeah He was under tea. But I thought it was like this grave injustice. Yeah, I'm excited for this one. Thank you. I'll tell you what it's... Watch this segue. You know what it ain't going to be as good as, Phil?

Let's hear it. The Christmas Tour. Ah, should have guessed. You like that? That was good. I don't know if you liked it. Not going to be as good as the Christmas Tour. Me Eater Live, the Christmas Tour, coming to the American South.

I wish I had all the cities in front of them Birmingham Memphis Nashville I want to do the dates and everything Gotcha How do I find that? Boca Raton Check

chat Not Boca Raton You go to the meat eater.com slash tour No, no No, no You can see all the day The meat eater

Christmas churn tight Hang tight Here it is We're coming on the road Brent Reeves will be there He's in for the full tour Clay Newcomb there Dr. Randall will be there.

Yanni full tour. Special guests at every stop. December 17th, we're going to be in Birmingham, Alabama. At the lyric. At that event, I will tell my story about taking a very paranoid two days I spent where I took a shotgun apart. And I was going on a Greyhound bus from Missoula, Montana,

to Auburn, Alabama to Duck Hunt. Very nervous about if they found out I had that gun. And we went into, and I'll tell my story about Birmingham. People are going to think they found the gun. They never found the gun. Wait and see. But the drama is.

But yeah, it's just worth it. At the lyric, December 17th, Birmingham, Alabama at the lyric, December 18th, Nashville, Tennessee. Marathon Music Works December 19th You'll notice these all They're just These are all just every night

Phil's up here Scrooge And we're down in these places Mm-hmm What's that line? Here here? You got it. December 19th

Did I do that yet? 18th, Nashville, Tennessee at Marathon Music Works December 19th Memphis, Tennessee Minglewood Hall I've been texting with Will Primos I believe that Will Primos is going to be

he's going to come to the Memphis show and he's going to give life advice that's delightful that will be delightful top pieces of life advice from a man that has earned a position of giving that advice December we've been kicking

around a couple things like Clay wants Brent Reeves does hold a fish fry on stage every night. But the minute you tell the venue, then they're going to have to be like, well, now we've got to get a fire marshal. That's hard. You know, we do the casting contest? We kind of want to do a blow gun

contest, but not tell the venue. Yeah. Because then they'll have to get a cop or, you know. But you just said it right now, so. They might get it. There'll be a fire marshal and a cop waiting. We should just find out if there's a beauty of our show is there's like zero

percent of stage hands that listen to it. So, except for Phil's press. Phil's friends listen. Yeah, no one from the venue. Oh, yeah, Phil's friends. Do your friends listen just to catch you on the show, Phil? Definitely not.

No. December 20, Fayetteville, Arkansas at Ozark Music Hall, which I believe is sold out. December 21, Dallas, Texas, Texas Theater. December 22, and I believe we got Jesse Griffiths coming out to hang out with this one, too. December 22. Austin, Texas at the Paramount. Tickets are all on sale now. That's a good week.

You're retired after that. I know. Yeah. You're going to need to have some Christmas after that. Mm-hmm. Gonna go see my ma. Mm. Where's she at?

Michigan. Hey, I'm a Midwestern boy myself. What state? Wisconsin. Oh, okay. We get two of the three best Midwest states covered. What part of Skani? Ohio was also at the table.

I don't know if it's build's kind of similar to Chester. When he said Wisconsin, I was like, huh. Yeah. Yeah. When I said it, you do look like little Chester. A little Chester chester. Yeah, a little Chester chester dress. I meant little Chester.

You look like a big Chester? Like if Chester had had better, uh, ate his witties and switched. Better like prenatal. I don't know. Yeah. Free. Exactly. I'm just thinking because we had that guy on the, the Mondeeth about Deere's mom,

yeah, the full expression of his jeans. Yeah. I'm going to take this as a compliment. I'm not quite sure yet, but. Like, everybody here loves Chesterner. buddies on Montana say I look like a big Chester I don't know what that means

near Green Bay Oh great Okay so we're just like right across the lake Yeah I could have shot over I could have shot over We used to cross And we'd land over at

Manitowoc Exactly god It's got noses great lakes Steve the Wilderness Act Passed 73 to 12 in the Senate But then That's what I'd like to say 99 to 1 Well here's a lot better

It passed the house 374 to 1 See, that's what you were thinking I was combining them I was combining the legislative bodies into one and finding a sort of average The only name being Joe Poole from Texas And I can't figure out why I've been looking up

Is he still alive? I feel that it might be This is lower I feel that he didn't feel it went far enough That's an optimist of you The spiel Yeah for sure I've talked about this a handful of times

I don't know if I have on the show or not. This is fitting because me and Randall been working on the hide hunters, our meat eaters audio original or sorry, meat eaters American history, the hide hunters, which tells the story of the beginning,

okay, let me back up. Me eaters, American history, the hide hunters tells the story of the Buffalo hide hunters. It covers from 1865, so the year of the Civil War ended. We explain why that's of, significance up to 1883 and it tells about the the the the men the motivations the skills the justifications the dangers the dangers the bloodshed the untimely deaths involved in the men

who killed the last 15 million buffalo off the american great plains uh ran it ran that number from 15 million down to less than 1,000 in the U.S. Today, we have about, there's about a half million in existence. Ninety-four percent are privately owned. That really needs to change. Maybe we'll touch on that. That's a non-partisan issue, but even that is partisan. We're covering Buffalo. Buffalo are non-partisan? They should be. But recovering Buffalo is a part of We're covering the buffalo as a partisan issue and it's not fair

because it's one of the few conservation achievements we could have by not it's like it's not by doing something it's by not doing something I'm getting out of the way like a lot of times you're like that's a lot of work

but with this it's like it's kind of like not doing something would help the animals yeah any else long winder way of saying we've been talking about this so we have a new jerkie out. We take our own jerky. So if you guys bought

our cookbooks, we always have jerky recipes in our cookbooks. And we have a new jerky out. Here's a package right here. Where we take our own recipes from our cookbooks and use them on American Buffalo. So bison jerky. You can go to, you can get it right now. It's been a lot of fun working on it.

You can get it, you can order your own at meateater snacks.com. 100% Buffalo. Fuel in the country for a long time. And then you can go read about Do you taste tests on set here? Well, you want some? We do a mega taste test on set.

You want classic pepper? Yeah, I think pepper. Classic pepper. Yeah. Classic, sorry. I'm having classic pepper. Not that new fangled pepper. Yeah.

Try it out. It's not normal pepper. But you know, when you start chewing on jerky, then you've got to talk. It gets hard. Just do it right into the microphone. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You enjoy them?

You enjoy them? It's a good morning jerky. regret taking that on. It's a good early morning. I just want this part to be clipped, and that's it. You guys can end it now. That's actually really good, though. No, it is good.

It's great. That is solid. No, I think it's fantastic. It turned out really well. Really, really good. That's not regular pepper right there. That is classic pepper right there. We had a lot of back and forth, but we finally got one that we love.

One last little thing. Whitetail Week is here right now. September 29 through October 5th, first slide. run their white tail sale up to 40% off all kinds of gear um oh look at this here's a kicker if you pick up a new white tail jacket and bibs first light will throw in a multery trail camera for free shop now at first light.com how could you say no to that well yeah it's not just a multery trail camera it's the first light camo mulchry trail camera that's what i got for free i got one I'm keeping an eye on my fish shack right now.

That's an interesting thing is like, the mulberry folks really just want you talking about hunting. And I'm like, the hunting stuff I don't worry about nearly as much as people, uh, breaking into stuff. Yeah. And that's a great,

great use of those trail cameras. That's an off label prescription. Doug has a sign coming into the buck shack, the farmhouse. Mm-hmm. And it reminds, it's like a sign telling you that if you're breaking in, he already has your picture on his phone.

Yeah, he's got, in typical Doug form, there's some cutiness about it too, like, like there's nothing in here worth the trouble. Yeah, nothing in here worth the trouble you're going to have. Yeah. And I'd argue that,

but, because he's got this, he's got this 12-pound, uh, sledgehammerhead. No handling. that he uses to hold the bathroom door and I kind of want that sledgehammer head

how much trouble do you get in for taking something like that it can't be like a lot so when you enter a window is it to the left or right as long as we're putting this out there go in I know I understand go like go in and it's just like just to the right gotcha there's a bathroom door does a 12 pound sledgehammer head there propping the door

that is just a waste of a beautiful sledgehammer head. Antique. I would tell people. Dog's going to have your picture. Don't start in the kitchen. The kitchen's like the width of the table. Bypass the kitchen.

And it is so chocked full of junk from, you know, decades of people thinking, oh, you could use an extra sauce pan. But there's already nine different sauce pans jammed in the back of this thing.

Yeah. And any time you, go to put something away, there's just like this cascade of old aluminum and non-stick pans and tin and... People are like, they're holding it over their garbage can. And they're like, down, bring it to ducks.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, it's infuriating. Here's the interesting little fight brewing. We're only going to do like one or two. I think we've got one newsy thing we're going to do. One's just funny. I'm going to do the funny one first. So

oh, did you guys see... God damn it. The Mississippi Black Panther. Yeah, that's funny. I'm not going to get into it. A news story broke out in Maryland. I only caught it after it happened, but a woman got approached by a bear in Maryland.

Okay. She ran from the bear and fell and got hurt. The bear never touched her, but she fell and got hurt. So there was like a bear and an injury. So the news cycle, I guess, very quickly. was like attack and then it was

well self-inflicted she felt it was a self-inflicted bear injury related so you can go and find if you felt like you can go and kind of track the sort of evolution of like what the telephone game what exactly went down that day

the phantom bear attack here's one it's more interesting I'm bringing this up because we've covered this bunch over the years and our very own Jordan Siller's just wrote a piece about it. Florida is my favorite story in the world. Years ago, Florida ran a bear hunt.

Florida had many bears. If you go back historically, they over hunted them. They over poisoned them. They over predator controlled them to the point where they had very few bears. Bears have

really recovered in Florida. I think now over 50% of the state has good bear populations years ago they ran a bear hunt and they ran a bear hunt in florida do you mind pull up what year that was randall randall's always bragging about how fast he is that researching well um um i turn my wifi on years ago they opened a bear hunt and they did the management strategy of using a quota and when you use a quota hunt what it is is you'd go and say i'm trying think the best way the simplest way to put this you say to your you say to the

people in your state. You're like, hey, we're going to have a bear hunt. And the quota is 100 bears. So everybody could go, the whole state, you all go hunting. As soon as you get one, call our hotline. And then when we get to like 98, we're going to turn it off. Okay. And that's a that's how a quota system functions. So everybody goes and you just count, count, count, count, and then bang. Many things are managed by quota. There's caribou herds in Alaska that are quota hunts where they like you hit 200 in the region closes um in the state i'm in montana right now montana runs quotas on mountain lions they run quote big horn sheep where uh anyone anybody that wants can participate it turns off when you hit the quota and there's a little bit of a there's a lag

there's little art and science to it like you sort of watch your quota it's speed and then and then you usually have a little bit of a buffer to turn it off. Meaning if some guy is like drawn back on a on a big horn sheep and all of a sudden his phone dings and the quote is full, right? But he doesn't look at his phone and shoots the big orange sheep. He's not in trouble because they give a 48 hour buffer. So they go like they, the numbers climb and you're sort of watching the trajectory and you're watching your quota cap and, um, and you call it.

And you're like, okay, it's full. so in 48 hours, season's over. When Florida years ago tried this bear hunt. 2015, they tried a bear hunt. And they in some of their areas, they shot past the quota. Very, very fast.

It blew everybody away how fast the quota. Like, they had some units where they blew past the quota. And I just bring the speed up because I do think that's like a factor in the general reaction. Yeah, I don't think they had any idea. in two days the the statewide quota because this doesn't really this distorts like what actually

happened but the statewide quota was 320 and in two days they'd killed 300 but because of the regional distribution of that like some areas were way over and then you you call it and then I think that what happened in some of those areas is they called it but there's a 24 hour window and then during the 24 hours over the they shot over the quota not enough to be like biological significance, but plenty enough to be of social significance, because it was a very contentious issue. If you look at, if there's a theme in wildlife management, it would be that when you have a species that becomes imperiled and you stop hunting for that species because it comes

imperiled, and then over time, you recover it, you will naturally, like, you're going to have friction when you want to reinstate a hunt because people in their minds, for as far as they can remember back the bears they're not around like how can we be hunting i thought bears are imperiled and like they're not recovered and also now you're telling me we're going to hunt them i've known my whole life that that you can't hunt them because right so you're going to have friction um and that created a lot of friction so much so that they just it was the the agency was beat up on the whole thing again biologically insignificant but it was socially very significant that in some areas they went over the quota and then Florida just said okay we're done with bear hunting

they're trying again now um which I fully support they're trying to get in this time they're using the other way you do this the other way you do this is you say you say okay everybody can't go we're not going to do the everybody goes thing and the quota we're going to do where only some of you get to go. And I think they're probably doing a quota, too, right? On top of that? Yeah, they have an amount they want. They're issuing 187 bear permits.

So now they know how many people are going to be a field. They're going to issue 187 bear permits. And what do they look at it? I know they have some quotas in place. I can't find it here. Right. So you're providing like tons of opportunity for with the expectation that there's it's theoretical opportunity. The expectation of actual opportunity is much, much lower in that 2015 hunt, the state didn't properly estimate the actual opportunity in the field.

meaning that a lot more people who in theory wouldn't be successful were in a very short amount of time. And it's a great fundraising mechanism, right? Because you get to sell a ton of permits. And this is just exactly how like wolf tags in the state of Montana function. Everybody buys a wolf tag. Very, very, very few people put in any actual effort to target wolves. specifically it's like an animal of opportunity versus strict pursuit yeah i buy them sons bitches every year and never do anything different exactly yeah exactly yes this will this will

impact my behavior zero yeah but then there's that other group of people who are like i am specifically dedicating time in the pursuit of wolves cori calcans right yep colkins he's happy either way he knows what you mean hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart you got steep ground long distances and miles of crown land that aren't always easy to navigate that's why onex hunt just got a serious upgrade for hunters in canada now you can get nationwide coverage for less than the cost of a box of shells with major updates to crown land layers and new parcel boundaries where available scout access boundaries and terrain with confidence before you even lace up your boots whether you're

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So they're saying to 187 people hey, instead of letting everybody go you 187 going, it's going to be easier to monitor this whole thing and they have a thing. So you buy a, they're doing it through a lottery, Democratic allocation, $5 lottery ticket. You buy as many chances

as you want, five bucks. If you draw, though, then you've got to buy the permit so if you're so like you win well then to actually get your permit then you got to come up with more money so it's five bucks to get in and if you draw if you're a resident your permit is 100 bucks if you're a non-resident your permit is 300 bucks great deal now here's where it gets here's where it gets saucy the uh uh Sierra Club is pushing its members members, hey, save a bear, buy all these lottery tickets. Wow.

And then don't use them if you win. Okay. And they're like, that's how we're going to save bears. Florida's attitude about this is, you guys buy all the tickets you want. That's great for conservation. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're generating all this thing.

So they are a conservation organization again. And if we don't hit the quota, then we know next year, we're just, can release a lot more. Yeah. Right. So it's like, it's going to back the far. You know,

okay. This is a thing that's been tried before. Like, I don't know if you remember. Wyoming Grizzlies. Yeah. And the catch there, years ago when they moved to D-List grizzly bears in Wyoming,

they were going to do, do you remember 24? They were going to issue 24 permits. Yeah. I was a Idaho resident at the time. So I actually was in the drawing. Oh, you were in the draw for their one tag. For the one tag.

Yeah. And then in Wyoming, some guys. went out and there was a big push to get non-hunters to try to get the permit but they never did the draw so you never could wind up seeing it'll be interesting to

it'll be interesting to see I could picture that what they might do like if I was in Florida Fish and Games shoes the agency shoes for Florida Wildlife Commission I guess is who approved the bear hunt rule I would be wondering

should we make it a greater hurdle to enter meaning you got to go and let's say you got to be licensed you got to go and take an online bear identification class so you learn how to tell a female with

cubs or like would I like would I make it more of a pain in the ass to filter out the preservationists to filter out anti-hunters or would I just really be like no I want all those five dollars

so they've sold more they've sold more than 160,000 chances have they yeah Florida has for 187 tags good for them good for conservation someone could tell me a lot of change times five dollars is um it's about a million I would yeah you could grow anything in Florida literally if I was one of those bear tag holders that's what I would be concentrating I'd be like what mix of food do I want in the black bear

I'm going to target. Orange is? Yeah, we're the pineapple region. Right. Like, we're, yeah, they'd be exciting. Salonre.

Yeah, exactly. Yep. It's, yeah, it's a, it's a Cuban pig ready to go before you even have to. Yeah. My favorite word lately is, um, it's a, it's a situation that's gotten frothy. Frothy.

I heard that in the market, like in the markets. Listen to markets about the news. Frothy seeds. Like a lot of M&A, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of M&A activity out there you'd be like it's a frothy Can you, one of your snacks

you should have be a frothy something Yeah, frothy A frothy, classic frothy. Yeah, we'll make it out of lunch Frothy Jersey Is frothy. Yeah, I would say it's

25% frothy chew. Yeah. What? A final point on this that's like a little bit sticky I feel for Sierra Club is like how is it cool for

like is it cool for Sierra Club to be? be, is it cool for Sierra's club to be like, not only do we not support the state agency right? The state biologists and the state agency is doing this not only do we not support

their mission. We're promoting the idea that you try to like thwart the effort, which seems to me that's an aggressive play. They're always aggressive. You know, that's an aggressive play. Their whole thing is being aggressive. You think so? Oh yeah. Yeah.

I mean, they only raise money off of being aggressive. They're almost a billion dollar annual organization every year because they raise money off of being anti whatever the other groups are for. They actually want sort of this coverage even because- Really? Conflict sales. Conflict sales. They love that Donald Trump's president because they can raise all the money in the world of being against everything that he does. And when things are good and you're solving problems, it's harder to rile people up. They love riling people up.

They're the problem, in my opinion. It's funny to bring that up, because Randall and I were talking yesterday about, I don't even want to kind of get into this, but we're talking about. I'm glad you said that. Uh-oh. I'm just going to be real quick about it. We're talking about Tylenol. Ah. Because just.

Why are you talking about? As one does. As one does on a Wednesday. Good marketing. And Randall is trying to explain. And Randall was trying to capture, if I go on to social media and I want to find out. what people, how people feel about Tylenol, I will come away with a different impression of what people feel about Tylenol than I would if I was just going about my existence

in life. If you go to a coffee shop and hold up a newspaper and start eavesdropping, there are people pounding the table about Tylenol. I mean, at this point, we should start creating like pro-tylonal anti-tylonol swag. I know. Are you probably, I feel that a lot of people are actually out there thinking like, huh, that was kind of weird. What side are you on? Pick your, pick your fighter. When he takes the national temperature, he feels the national temperature, in spite of what was happening in the news, the national temperature was, huh, yeah. I guess I'll go to work today.

Well, our leaders are fighting about, what, Tylenol? Yeah, you didn't follow it. Yeah, I know, I know. Okay. No, I followed it, autism and I don't know. I will point. point out the tag buying strategy I know I've told you about this right back to the Bears

the buddy of mine drew the Upper Rock Crick Big Horn Cheap tag when it was still good and the jackasses who locked out all the public access in Upper Rock Creek weren't there the ran into two guys

father's son who had drawn the lower Rock Creek a couple of the U tags. Yeah. And this is back in the days and they were just standing along the road. Yes, exactly. Yep.

And we're chatting with them. And they're like, oh, we're non-hunters. We just bought, we apply for tags. And then we come out and like Wildlife Watch and this is how we save animals. And that was back in probably, I bet like 04, 05, maybe. They were pioneers.

Early adopters. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, it has been a strategy in the past. Yeah. It makes, I mean, it seems like you could take everyone on the planet and have them all forget everything and then have new people come. And I think those new people would quickly hit on the idea that this could be a thing one could do. Oh, yeah. For sure.

Yeah. You're like, uh-huh. Yeah. Well, I mean, we were just talking about this. I missed the big party last night because it was at the public land water access association. I was able to track your movements through a way that you would never anticipate. Oh, your next door neighbor? My neighbor is on the board.

Yeah. So I knew where you were before you knew where you were. That was great. Yeah, we chatted for a little bit. But you could, I brought up in my talk last night, I'm like, you know, this public lands fight. You know, these people fought this in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and people were like, where I thought we just won that. Oh, right? This has happened before.

It will happen again. It will happen again. It will happen again sooner than we'd like. Cal, it's on 10-year cycle, I think Cal thinks. Yeah, well, that's 10. 10.15. It's like snow shoe hairs plus three years. Yeah, it's going to happen soon.

sooner again. Oh, I know so, unfortunately. First off, man, give us some background. You're from Green Bay. Yep. Go pack, go. Yeah. Is it Benjamin?

Benjamin Packer? Benjamin. So when you shorten, most guys go all the way down to Ben. To Ben, yeah. No, but I wanted to. You kept some. Yeah, I kept a little extra, a little tail there called G. Ben G.

Ben G, yeah. I, uh, second grade woke up into set. I don't want to be Ben, Benjman's too long. So Benji, it is. But, uh... I like it. Thanks. Yeah, I grew up in, uh, in Green Bay.

And I watched John McCain and Barack Obama debate in 2008 and said, I want to be part of that. How old were you? 10. You weren't like, I want to be a detective. Right, or a sports announcer or a, you know, an NFL player. NFL player. I'm 5'9. There's no way I'm becoming an NFL player.

But yeah, it was like, I really want to be part of the civic process. And so I started, I asked my parents who were not political at all, can we go, can I go door knocking for John McCain? and they were like that is the weirdest thing that you could ask us to do and my parents were not political at all and they did not want to have signs in their yard or bumper stickers in their cars or any of that stuff and I just was like allured by the process and so I became super active in high school in conservative politics and spoke at CPAC my freshman year of high school was on Fox News for the first time my freshman year of high school I had a really good Bieber hair Hair cut. My Wisconsin accent was really intense. And I knew nothing about what I was doing, obviously. And I, but I cared a lot about America. It was really what it came down to. And like, I wanted to be a part of solving complex problems. But I have since grown more and more disillusion with politics. And I hate the two-party system. I hate the political system that we're working within. And I hate how it's impacted the environment. conservation because at the same time that I was strangely volunteering for John McKay and Mitt Romney I also was an avid hiker avid skier was fishing every weekend in the summer with my grandpa my parents were vegan so oh wow yeah so I was the only meat eater in my family so I'm like the resident meat eater in my family so it's nice to be in a room full of meat eaters were your parents

right leaning my parents were just I think like most people were just like whoever has the best ideas they're going to vote for like they're like they're physical conservatives they're practical fiscal conservatives they voted for mccane and romney but like they were definitely like independent voters um and my sisters are liberal and i i grew up in a very like politically diverse family but we all got along and we all loved each other and i so i i was frustrated with politics i loved the environment and i also realized that people could actually get along and that the country that I was seeing crumble politically, and it's still getting worse, was not representative of the people itself. Like, the people themselves don't want that to happen. They're not as polarized.

They're not putting each other in such boxes. And so that's kind of how I got to being more of, you know, trying to bridge the divide on conservation and the environment, because if there's one issue that should transcend party lines, that should get action, regardless of who wins, it should be conservation in the environment like it used to. So I transition. transition to that, my freshman year of college, uh, tweeted out that I was going to start a nonprofit to, to get this going. As a freshman in college. Yeah. I knew, I knew, I knew when you did it that you were young, but I hadn't thought about the fact that you're like, like, like also being in college. 18, yeah. Because normally it's like, well, I'm in freshman college and I have to drink a lot. And then that's kind of my schedule. Girls drinking, you know, I got to have time to hang out. Pretty standard.

Smoking weed. I'm having a hard time finding hangout time. I was starting environmental policy nonprofits instead. Where were you at school? University of Washington. So I searched the best business school, best business schools in America and went down the list to the first one that was in a place that I could hike and ski on the weekends. And the University of Washington was probably like 40th on the list of best business schools, but it was the closest to where I wanted to recreate. So the Cascades, obviously beautiful national parks out there. and that's really why it went there.

Wow. So then I started it out there and I started, you know. And like registered a nonprofit. Yeah, I first started a pack because I had no idea what I was doing. We've all done that. Just me 18 looking up.

So what's the quickest way to start a nonprofit? Well, a pack gets approved right away. Classic freshman year mistake. Oh, yeah. You wake up and you look at all the texts that you sent out that you don't remember and then you're like, oh my God,

political action committee. one of those nights that I said I want to call you guys How is your weekend, Benji? Did we start a pack last night? I highly recommend because there's basically zero barriers of entry to starting a pack. I didn't know this. I mean, I know what it is,

but I didn't know that is it designed to be fast? It shouldn't be, but like if you want to start, if you want an 18-year-old accidentally starts a pack and then suddenly is the owner of a pack, and then there's no, like, Like, the IRS checks 501C3s, traditional nonprofits. It takes like a year to approve that. A pack gets approved literally overnight.

Help people. I mostly know what you're talking about, but just help people understand what you mean. So there's different designations. What is the political action committee? Yeah, there's different designations. They're ephemeral. Right. Because you can, they're very responsive to, you know, like a race heats up.

You get a nominee, and then all of a sudden there's all these packs. Right. And some of them are meant to dissolve. That's because there's a lot of 18-year-olds starting packs. Most visibility, right, for the normal person is that fine print that says paid for by... Concerned citizens for Montana. Victory, 2024. Yeah.

Yeah, no one knows who it is. In this case, it was me, but, you know, it's basically a political action committee, there's a super PAC and a PAC, but it's a government designation of what you can do with the money when someone donates it. And so, like, a 5-1c3, which is, like, the Red Cross and, like, all the big nonprofits that you're aware of, that's tax deductible to a donor. they can't do any political activity at all. A PAC, you do not get a tax deduction when you donate, and it strictly is going to be to support candidates. Like, you're supporting political candidates. There's no educational part of it.

It's a political organization. And so I was like, wait a second, I'm trying to, like, bridge the divide on the environment. I'm not trying to, like, donate to candidates. So then I quickly shuddered the weekend mistake. But a PAC is a 501C4, right? So that's very complicated, but no, because the 501C4, this is like, This is like, 0.100 of the things that you don't wish you knew at age 27, the difference between the C4 and the PAC, but a C4 is a non-tax deductible organization that can lobby,

but they don't really donate. You can donate to candidates, but it's like a certain percentage. A PAC is strictly to get people elected, and that was not my goal. God, it's a money funnel. It's a money funnel. And it's basically so people can't trace the money to. Dark money. It is honestly dark money.

And it's like anyone can donate, and then it's not trace. race back to them and no one knows where the money came from. So the whole nonprofit space is very complicated and I think it probably is designed partially that way. The money in politics thing is its own really big issue. What was your pack? Conservatives for environmental reform. Okay. And basically my original goal was to get conservatives back to the table on the environment because I watched Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate and Hillary Clinton had a radical plan for the environment that I didn't agree with that was like shut down industry very preservationist wasn't about hunting or fishing or anything with the outdoors it was largely just

climate climate climate but on the extreme end and then Donald Trump was like none of these problems exist and we shouldn't do anything about them and he had no plan and I was like what the hell am I supposed to do and I leaned right so I was like I got to get conservatives back to the table oh so that's kind of the origin story of what became the American conservation coalition which I still started freshman year just after the pack mistake second semester you always turn things around turn it to the 5-1c3 and that organization now is 100,000 members across the country has big staff does a lot of work in DC and is strictly focused on getting conservatives active on the environment but to me that wasn't far enough because

to me it's not about the labels like the rational majority of Americans across the political spectrum as I opened saying want the same things and I don't care if it's Martin Heinrich or Tim Sheehe or Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, we got to figure out how to get shit done to matter who's in office and what the political wins are in that moment. And we have to show politicians that Americans want this, not just conservatives and not just liberals. We need to show them that Americans across the spectrum want action. So I thought getting conservatives at the table is helpful, but there's no organization in this country right now that has an impact no matter who wins. The Sierra Club, even the Nature Conservancy, any of these traditional environmental

groups, they're only relevant when Democrats win. And the organization I started in college is only relevant when Republicans win. What about an organization that's just trying to move consistent conservation through no matter what? And no matter who you are politically, you want to be a part of that movement. And that's the vision of nature's nonpartisan. So it kind of went from a PAC mistake to a conservative group to now building upon that to try to build, nonpartisan movement in America again. Hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart. You got steep ground, long distances, and miles of crown land

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So what year was it, the 2016, I guess 2015? Yep, that was my senior year of high school, freshman year of college. Where you had two visions, one, one being a vision of denial, one being a vision of offering a fix that isn't going to get widespread buying. I could picture that if you were, I could picture, I could picture, picture that if you were a staunch Democrat because of all their other planks and their platform, that you might say, man, I need to go get my party to start getting more in line with middle America.

Right. So that we can win and I can get my other policy pieces at play. Right. Like we're losing on the same way you might say in 20. in the last election cycle like if you were if you were if you're sitting there thinking

man the tax structure in America is whacked corporations should be paying way more taxes the poor should be paying way less taxes but that's never going to happen because our party is going to continue to get slammed on DEI issues

I need them to stop it about that so we can stick to the things that that most the country like that's our Achilles heel Right right Like I can picture that But what I what's hard for me to picture is The process of saying

That like to be like I'm a conservative I want bigger environmental presence within my party Yeah I want them to come around In my way of thinking I feel that that would be like very private For the politicians

For you Oh for me I feel like that's you having meetings with politicians. Yeah, because you can't burn them. See, but the thing is... Like, you can't publicly burn them. Well, now...

The same way if I was doing my whole thing, I might go and say, hey, listen, tone it down. Tone it down on like, like, who plays on what team? See, but I could do that. I could do that. But that's not morally right to me. I could be in the Trump administration right now or have some really high up position if I just played the game. I don't care about playing the game. Okay. I want to get conservation outcomes. And so I'm willing to be bolder because of that. And I'm willing to

take on both sides because of- And shine a spotlight. Right. Like, hey, you guys are a freaking weak here. Yeah. And you're losing people. And by the way, I'm not afraid to say you should lose people because you don't have an environmental plan. You should lose people because you don't care about conservation. You should lose people because you don't have any plan for clean air, clean water, but yet you use those terms in your speeches. Right. Like you say you want clean air and clean water, but yet you're rolling back some of the most important regulations and policies in American history. I'm not afraid to say that because I don't care about who. I actually don't care about who wins. In high school, I might have cared. I spoke

with CPAC and stuff. But I do not care who wins. I'm an environmentalist, conservationist, nature lover, person who wants to protect wild places and allow people to go hunt, fish, recreate in them so that we can also have a healthy livelihood more than I care about any political identity. And I think most people, when they think about this issue, do think about it that way. So people think, I mean, in the last couple weeks, I've, this famous EPA transition guy for Trump just wrote a big hit piece on me that I was like this Trojan horse at Climate Week, just trying to promote the Green New Deal.

And I get told that I'm all the time, some like MAGA guy. It's because I don't really care. We're quite familiar with this. Yeah, you guys definitely get that. We're quite familiar with that you're like everyone like you get in the box and I don't want to be in the box. Yeah. So don't you say anything. Just get in the box.

And just say what we want you to say. But that would work. I mean, so I've been starting to talk about this a little bit more because of the light of recent events. I co-founded, and I've never said this on a podcast before, but I co-founded Turning Point USA with Charlie Kerr. Oh, okay. in 2012 i was 14 years old so just it was a lot long time ago the organization was supposed to be about young people standing up to the government to prevent the national debt from getting worse that was the turning point yes that was the founding origin of turning point like you guys are

going to really stick it to you're really sticking it to us right our generation yeah later like at some point we're going to have to tackle this yeah at some point yeah at some point you're creating a real headache for us. So please make my future not so tenuous. Exactly. So Charlie and I had this vision for that. Charlie, that was a very tragic event and it was a very perfect opportunity to see how divided our country is becoming, which is a huge problem. But what Charlie saw was that there is an opportunity in playing into the political culture war, right?

If I wanted to be a part of the culture war for the sake of telling people how to win voters or how to get people a part of our team or box, I'd be doing things so much differently than I am. And I could have many times. But it is ruining our country and it's ruining conservation as well. and so for me when I wake up every morning I think of how much progress can I make given the political shit that we're in because for the first time in a long time our environment is getting worse in America again

we actually solved a lot of big problems for a very long time we funded public lands we had the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act take care of really bad problems in our cities and in our rivers we had the Endangered Species Act which was effective for a couple of years there is so sorely ineffective, wildfires are getting worse, public lands are getting worse, the management of our ecosystems is getting so much worse, our water quality is getting worse,

and you know what the byproduct of all that is, is because it is the byproduct of the division that we're saying, because no one actually has an incentive to solve problems. They have an incentive to feed the culture wars. And until we change that incentive, at least on this, I can't promise that we can change it on every issue. But until we create a movement that just says, we expect you to get shit done and we're not going to vote for you if you don't prioritize conservation, that's actually the part that we should be saying out loud.

That's the part that we should be saying out loud because it's not just about killing animals for recreation and hiking and skiing and all the things that we all love, right? It's not just about that. The health of our environment is about the health of us too. And right now we are failing miserably. And the left doesn't care.

and the right doesn't care. They care about winning the next election. And that is where the root of our environmental problems comes from. And so I say that to say, I could go down this path of playing into the culture wars, but I wouldn't be sitting at this table right now. And I absolutely wouldn't be fighting for our environment because it's way easier to make a name for yourself and get power and get, you know, influence right now off of doing things completely differently. But at some point, at some point Americans are going to wake up and realize that the system right now is screwing us all and it's also

screwing up our environment. I just want to back up comment on the thing you brought up with just how hot like how he did the how he did the online I always want to point this out how he did the online

experiences right now. Oh totally. Now for Charlie Kirk it wasn't an online experience. No. that was a way that online like became a bullet in real life yeah and like killed a man right do you know what I'm saying I have this thing and I brought it up I brought it up to 10 guests talking about various things um I think I was most recently talking about was Sebastian younger

where I'm like there's what I understand to be true about the climate in America from social media the news and then there's what I understand to be true about America from being an American. Yes. From going about my business in America. There's a major disconnect there. Right? I met someone for breakfast this morning.

Yeah. The conversations we had on the street with people, the interactions we had with the people that were working there. Like, the whole picture, I would never come out of my morning. Right. Being like, good Lord. Everyone's horrible. The country's falling apart.

I'd be like, this seems like a wonderful country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This America, this is awesome being an American. But then I go and look about what it is and it's red hot. And with Charlie Kirk, I was like, man, in many other examples. This one is because it's fresh. With Charlie Kirk, it was like, man, they collide. They are.

They collide. And then I were manifesting it to become, it used to just be an online thing. I used to get, I got death threats in high school for what I was doing politically. Yeah. I had, I could picture that. Yeah. Because people don't like, because it's too unexpected. Right.

It's too unexpected. It's like when I see a woman that killed a lion in Africa. Totally. That. That's going to go viral for the, more than a, more than a, more than a, even more than, making phone calls. And my voice hadn't even changed yet, okay? I was just a little boy. But yeah, they're, the chronically online world, which is so disconnected from reality.

I mean, I had breakfast with Van Jones yesterday in New York City, the big social justice liberal commentator. Okay. CNN guy. I didn't recognize that name. CNN host, yeah. But he's black social justice guy. We don't, he's one of my best friends. I don't talk to him about politics.

I just love him as a human, you know? Like, and my mom's like, oh, you know, what issues did you guys talk about? I'm like, we literally didn't. He was just giving me advice on how to be a better leader and we were just talking about life and his girlfriend, his fiance and all that stuff. That is how most of America actually operates. on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. But then you look online and you see what,

but we're becoming a chronically online nation. I mean, you look at the average screen time in this country. And it's not people looking at candy crush, right? It's people looking at Twitter and Instagram and feeding themselves the worst information. And we are convincing ourselves

that everyone else is actually evil. Like, Hitler level evil for both sides to think about the other side. So it is colliding now. For a while, it was just like, oh, yeah, just turn off the social media. It's just, it's not that bad in real life. Well, it's become.

that bad in real life because we're manifesting it because there's some dude on a roof of the gun right and people are... It only takes one it only takes one to to bring it out of the Twitter, yeah, yeah, right, yeah. And man it has a it, yeah, it's been

I brought that up as a preamble to say I got a 15 year old the insanity that he comes home and he's you know he comes home and just like and dad he's like dad here's some solid facts

i know just it's not even that it's more like what do you he kind of comes home with like what do i make of this right and just the insane things the insane things that are being spun out of that it just this is a long preamble led me to like i hit a point a week like some time ago a week ago I hit a point where I'm like, dude, I am, I was like, I am ready at my age, I'm ready to just, I'm, I'm going to step away from discourse. Yeah. Do I mean, I'm not, but for a minute, I, for the first time of my life, I was like, I just don't want to talk to anybody anymore. Like, I don't want to participate in the discourse anymore. I just want to be the guy that only knows about who he runs into.

at the hardware store it's like I'll go to the hardware store because that's going to be cool we have to bring that back I'll go wherever I'll go to my buddy's party because that's going to be cool but I can't do anything

it didn't last and it's not for real but I just had a point where I'm like I'm just done man like I'm done because that style of that style of debating

or that style of exploring ideas is like it's rational conversation hey like i i understand what you're saying but don't agree yeah is passe yeah yeah that's it's absolutely not the norm anymore and and i feel like do you give up no i'm saying like i think we got to play the game okay what's the game the game is let's let's talk about the environment what's how do you play the game we have to create a similar movement around culture shifting for conservation that that is in people's social media networks, it's in their communities, it's around them, because we are not going to beat the algorithm. We're not going to change people's tendencies to log on to social

media whenever there's a break in their day, at least not any time soon, and see the worst news imaginable. We have to figure out how to meet people where they're at and help people understand that there's something they can advocate for, right? Instead of just being like, oh my god I hate this person I hate this person I hate this person that was me oh no that was me sorry guy I thought I was that's his song wow you got you got a little tune to that it bleeds over sometimes that

you know what I guarantee I guarantee he goes in and takes that out of the show just to prove you wrong it's not gonna happen I'm on do not disturb but my one person I let through is my wife and so wow throw her on bill how dare she just breaks the whole flow during the show

Sorry. Yeah, kind of piggyback a little bit off of what Steve said, but also just the, there is a need, I see, well, it's going to be complicated. I push back on the fact that like, established conservation groups aren't making stuff happen under every administration. I mean, they are. maybe like the is the win that we're getting not an actual win a lot of times i believe that for sure like i think if we are looking in terms of like oh my gosh the democrats did this that's such a win uh that's not a win if we're looking in terms of like okay the republicans did this i agree

that's a win that's not a win i agree the win is when it's there's certain things like the health of our natural resources are just this non-starter for every political party. Like, it's assumed that these things have got to have a certain level of health and management because it does tie into national defense, the health of individuals within our country, mental and physical, and our food production and all the things. It does. But I would say the groups that are currently out there have, there are so many good organizations, many of whom we both work with. But it's not getting the job done.

And what I mean by that is there is no cultural movement in America that's telling politicians they should take the environment seriously as America, like as Americans. Like the human rights campaign, for example, you might disagree with gay marriage or you might love gay marriage. They showed politicians. They had a national campaign. their bumper stickers are still on people's cars all over the country, that it was an expectation for almost all Americans that equality was important. That's how they got it done. And obviously this is a different issue because it's not just like one landmark thing that we need to get accomplished. We need continuous.

But there was a national unified expectation of conservation 30 years ago. That does not exist right now. So, and that is not the failure of these organizations, but it's not working. that the current movement is not working and the vast majority of people who do reach out for conservation in the environment are left of center people whether we want to admit that or not

and until we make it left, center, and right, until we show, no matter if you're a Republican or a Democrat, this was an expectation of Americans, that we're going to continue going on this trajectory where we don't get the policies that we need and actually, even worse, we get the policies that none of us want, which is what we've been getting over the last year.

and it's because there's not an expectation of pushback. The only time that I've seen it since I became active in this space where it's actually worked is this public land sell-off, where you had people from across the political spectrum saying, no, over my dead body, you're going to sell this land, right? But we haven't had a unified front like that on the environment for decades. And we can try to push behind the scenes and, you know, like I love TRCP and TU and I know, you know, Chris and Joel and all these are great people running great organizations, but there's no national movement that represents what they believe.

Is you're, as far as like what you're doing that's not that groups like T or CIP aren't are doing currently, you're talking about a coalition that expands beyond the, the hunter, because I think the hunter angler space has that is unique in that it's, it has that bipartisan angle to it. It's expanding that. If I think beyond the hook and bullet, I am having a hard time thinking beyond the hook and bullet groups, what,

um, like environmental policy groups have that same bipartisan influence. Because like I'll give you an example, right? Like, uh, I believe very strongly in the work that, uh,

pheasns forever coil forever does. Right. And it's like, not super sexy. working on the farm bill right right those groups are already there right and they do great stuff but the culture in america is not there and here's the example right is like uh it's getting late in the election cycle yeah uh all the sudden it's announced all over media that uh both parties need hunters yeah hunters are underrepresented in their demographics their research we need hunters

at the polls and here's this push from the Biden campaign at that point right um with Tim Waltz it was it was the Biden campaign at that point yeah and and then um so it was like Biden Harris for hunters and then and then the Trump campaign was pushing out a hunter specific language as well and then um there's the annual governor's hunt yep in Minnesota uh that pheasms for is always a part of. Doesn't matter what political affiliation the standing governor or current governor has. And that got kind of turned into like a Biden-Harris

hunter moment. Right. That had nothing to do with Fethms Forever. Right. And they just got absolutely shalach. They still are. And still are. Yep.

And they're made to like, be the enemy now. Swallow this right. Yeah. Rhetoric in order to quote unquote be in the room when it's like our history, our track record says we will work with anybody in order to fulfill the mission

and the mission benefits everybody by the way. Yep. And the pushbacks on the organization that has this established track record of non-partisanship the pushback's not on the politicians that manifested all this BS.

That's true. But the political tenor of the conversation, hitching your wagon to anybody politically right now is risky, right? I mean, Fessons Forever saw that, and they shouldn't have been taken, you know, to the court for that. They should have had Tim Walts there,

and that's not a big deal. Like, it shouldn't be seen that way. But I go back to the fact that, like, the public land sell-off was almost a godsend in terms of giving an example of what I'm trying to build which is you had millions of people for the first time in years

like you did when there were smog in the cities across the country like we did when there were rivers on fire in Ohio right you had millions of people saying I don't give a shit with my political belief is and honestly I voted for you Mike Lee but I'm not for this

that's the cultural movement that we need and so I don't know how to change that specific pheasants forever situation because that's a very unfortunate and they don't deserve that. I guess succinctly right, I'm like the issues with the politicians. Right, the issue is with the politicians. Because they're the ones who are hitting the

clickbait button over and over and over again. We're also falling for that, right, as a populace. Yeah. And that's part of the problem too. And so how do you break up that cycle? Well, the issue is like Tim, the environment right now, if you ask the average person on the street,

who owns the environmental issue? Almost Almost everyone would say Democrats. Oh, yeah, man. Everyone. So we like that is that word. Right. But even conservation, people associate, we've done polling and focus grouping.

People associate these words, conservation, environmentalist, environment, stewardship, anything related to the environment as liberal coded, as Democrat coded words. And so. Yes, some more than others. Right. I completely agree. But we've got to change that because like, like, a. all these words are being weaponized intentionally and unintentionally for people's gains,

whether that be quickbait or for campaigning. And, you know, in the same way that like stand up for cancer or stand up to cancer or the human rights campaign or the Got Milk campaign, like, we need to show politicians that there is a cultural movement to help create space for the pheasants forever and the Ducks and Limitids and the TRCPs and the great organizations that are out there to do the work that they need to do. Because right now, it's basically Republicans are fearful. of associating with any conservation groupies they are scared of being seen as liberal and the left is scared of the far left coming at them for not going far enough on like climate stuff yeah and so again it's creating the cultural space and we and there's so many great local organizations out there already there are they're already there there's so many great topical based organizations out there they're already there but in the way that like the sierra club or nr dc or these groups could have been like the face of america's environmental movement conservation

movement rally people together for common sense conservation but didn't we need to create that and i would say i don't have every way of getting there yet but someone's got to try because the current environmental culture is not working for us and there's no space for politicians to see that they have to get something done except for the public land sell off as like literally the first example in like a decade yeah i i see um And I see this within the environmental space, within the nonprofit space of a real disconnect with the end consumer. Mm-hmm. Just as I see it in the political realm, the week of land sell-off language going into the house, right?

We're up on Capitol Hill talking with everybody we could, super PAC schedule. Yep. And it was like, hey, don't worry. It's not going to happen. but you heard over and over again the exact same lines from everybody and by the way, we're not going to sell national parks, don't worry, right?

Oh, thank God. As just as it as an example. I remember here that like, oh, we're not talking about national parks. Yeah, trust me, I didn't think you were. Thanks for confirming what I already do. And the, you know, it's frustrating, but eye opening too, where you're like,

okay something is going on right because everybody seems to have the exact same talking points and they have no knowledge of the fact that the people that are starting to push back right now have no interest in the national parks or very little interest uh not because they don't care but the assumption is parks are going to be safe right i mean i had a senior official in the trouble administration tell me hey like americans won't get upset about this because americans just care about national parks and national park health and i was like do you realize that's bad bit of intel have you like a quick chat chbt or a quick you know you're good research it sounds like very quickly uh you could have you could have helped you could help you could help them with this

you know there's more recreationists in us forest service land and BLM land than there are in national parks every year so they were missing the boat but there is again a real disconnect between the politics and the public on conservation right now i mean it was but it was really uplifting to see like far right militia leaders and far left climate activists literally stand together and and but the

I don't usually think of the word uplifting to be with either one of those either one of those groups that's replicable though yeah that is replicable though because it's not just about public lands

and hunting and fishing it's also about clean water and more efficient agriculture and forest health and wildlife conservation and like clean air like we could rally people in a similar diverse coalition and that's what i'm saying hasn't existed in a while and so there's it would create it create it created space to kill the bill or that part of the bill and it but it also could create space to do the right thing too and that's the vision that i have hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart you got steep ground long distances and miles of crown land that aren't always easy to

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Let me hit you with one. I had three questions pop up my head, but I'm forgetting them as fast as I'm thinking. This was the first one that I wanted to ask you about. If what is the, let's say you, you're talking to a neighbor, okay? Yep. You're talking to a neighbor. And you know that you're taught a new neighbor who is. My parents.

Fiscally, you're talking to a fiscally conservative neighbor. Sure. Okay. Single issue voter, maybe, a little bit. But, like, likes the fiscally conservative, economy, efficiency, not like an ideologue. Right. And he says to you, Benji, why should I give a shit about any of the stuff you're talking about? Like, sell me on it.

There is no country that we love without the resources and the beauty that we have, right? Like, the resources that we develop largely on public land in a lot of ways, the resources that we develop, the water that we have, the agricultural industry that we have, our entire country relies on the environment to survive. So we could extract everything over the next five or ten years and probably rake in a lot of money, but then we'd be destroyed after that. And you can't take care of the economy if you don't take care of the environment. You can't take care of the country without taking care of conservation. And it is not only an economic driver to take care of our country, I mean, recreation statistics, we had the most recreationists in American history generating, you know, billions, tens of billions of dollars of revenue for the government.

It not only generates an economic value, but it also generates the value that our communities depend on to survive. And I'd argue what is a more important issue? Like, I live in Arizona right now. So if we're talking to a neighbor in Arizona, what issue is more important than water quality in Arizona? I mean, in water availability. Like, I can't think of one because if we have no water, we don't have a city, right? Like, so this is this is all interconnected with people's lives in a way that we've kind of forgotten about because we've just developed so many resources and we're so technologically driven that we kind of forget about the natural world, but we have to, we have a symbiotic relationship with the natural world that we've completely forgotten about. And we're one of the last frontiers in the world that's actually taking care of our land by and large. Like, yes, we've got issues and yes, this like public land sell off was a huge threat. But if you look around the world, Africa is getting destroyed by the Chinese. government and other countries going in and saying we're going to just mine everything and destroy

it with slave labor, South America is getting deforested continually at a crazy rate and its wildlife habitats continually being encroached upon. We are one of the last places in the world, Canada, a couple other places where we actually are investing in this. And it's one of the best values and assets that our country has is our environment. So if we aren't thinking about that from a national perspective, then we're completely missing one of the most important parts of our country. Okay. I buy that. I would hope you do.

Will my neighbor buy it? I don't know. But, you know, I think the, we have become so digitized that we've kind of forgotten about the natural world around us. And that's, that's, like, it's not the, the, I heard a quote the other day that was like so simple, but it's so true. The environment isn't ours to, you know, extract resources from. The environment is ours to care for and develop and work with and conserve so that future generations can also exist. So, yes, we need to develop resources, and yes, we need to, you know, manage these places. But we also have to care for them because we're not the only people that are going to inherit this.

And I think we've just become such a selfish society that that neighbor who's worried about fiscal policy isn't, they're not seeing the forest through the trees. literally right they're just literally thinking about their own vanguard account and the national debt which of course is important both are important but we've also got to think about you know our children and grandchildren um and you know i'm 27 i've got you know i was working with with charlie on the national debt when i was 12 right but i still got hopefully 70 more years on this planet yeah and then i'm going to have kids someday and then i'm going to have grandkids someday and I need to have a world that's worth bringing them into right and it's not about like kumbaya like protect nature because we just care about the wildlife it's like it's so much bigger than that right it's literally about us and that's lost in a lot of this if you look at there's a couple of movements that I'm that I'm always stunned by how effective they were and so we're going to look at the push for the legalization to gay marriage and then the legalization of weed okay now those are long running

those are long running disputes but something happened and but something happened and they hit like a they hit like a moment and just poof it be like they hit a moment where it became kind of bipartisan yep that's what i'm hoping for yeah but here's the rub i want to talk about those movements for a little bit then i want to tell you why i think that what you're engaging is more complicated It definitely is. Because these were, these were like fairly simple asks. Right.

Okay. The way, the way gay marriage got over the threshold was it wasn't like, this isn't about special privilege. Right. Right. This isn't about, this isn't like part of some zero-sum thing.

We're going to take away something from someone to give it to somebody else. This isn't like, we're not really asking the government to bend over backward on too much. here. It's just there's a thing. It's like this symbolic gesture that we feel should be kind of applied to all Americans and like and then to the right on the right you'd say and really remember what business is it of years? What business is it of the government's who I decide to marry? Like do you really think the government should tell you who to marry? And eventually you got where you had the you had this kind of leftist.

idea and the right merged on to it they had an easy way to merge on right because it was like if you'd gone back my dad was very conservative you'd go back and asked my dad he would have said but it's none of my business

right what that guy's going to do in his house nothing to do with me right I don't have to love it right it's not my business that that became a thing and like and that's when that went legal weed a long running left issue you. And it eventually became, it's kind of even hard to get to it, but it kind of became like a little bit of a, this is a plant that goes out of the ground.

Yeah. I mean, can you really have a bunch of rules about a plant that grows into your garden? Right. And a, um, what that guy is doing is, you know, what he's doing in his own house? Is it really my business? And no one can really demonstrate to me that it's more destructive than alcohol. It seems like when you look at the stats, like domestic disputes, vehicle crafts. like booze ain't the best thing in the world no is it really like there's less that goes into making weed than booze there's also a safety argument right like wouldn't you rather have it be monitored by the government not have it be illegally coming in i mean i had a friend in high school who had like fentanyl in the weed because it was illegal and he died okay so so that that you know that's the argument that people make too so yeah there's plenty of arguments to morph people together there but these things these things that i've marveled at like in my lifetime.

Yep. In the end, we're real clean, and they were like an issue. Public lands becomes like a clean issue. But to call for a sort of, um, expansive kind of umbrella of environmental concern is,

is bigger because people would say like, well, what's the ask? And you'd be like, it's a lot of asks all the time. That's a great way of putting it. You know, and it's harder. It is way harder, but I think it's worth it because you're going to have different stakeholders engaging on different parts of it.

Like the water stakeholders might be different than the forest stakeholders. Exactly. But very similar to those issues, there is an easy on-ramp for every political identity to care, whether that be for national security or for jobs or for moral high ground or for just caring about your local community or for caring about national identity and legacy and heritage, like protecting, conserving, taking care of our environment, intersects with everyone's political views in a very similar way to those issues, because that's not actually true on immigration as easily.

It's not as easy on guns, right? Like, those are core parts. And what on-ramp are you going to create between those issues from both sides? I don't know how we solve those, right? But the environment might have more variables to it because it's not just one policy that you're trying to get to legal. legalize it, legalize it. Yeah, it's not like you can go like, okay, we did it in that state.

Then we're going to do it in that state. Right. And eventually it'll be that we got like 49 states. Right. This is not a one-trick pony movement that we're trying to create. And you look, this approach needs to be applied to situations, applied to the public land sell-off. And we were three months old, and obviously so many great organizations worked on that. We showed that it was at least possible on that, applied to that.

but if you apply that same group of people to restore in Utah to restoring the Great Salt Lake I think we'd do a lot better of a job at restoring the Great Salt Lake but right now there's no knowledge but everyone in Salt Lake vicinity wants to restore the Great Salt Lake yet nothing is really being done about it

because everyone's focused on other political culture war issues and there's no mobilized cultural movement across the party lines to get something done so you apply it to that or you apply it to oh my God wildfires are getting worse and worse. Megafires are getting worse every summer, not only in the United States, but around the world, apply that to that issue. And so some stakeholders might drop off, some might come on, but it's the same on-ramp where people have different whys, different reasons

for caring, but they care about the same end goal. And they have the exact same end goal. Less wildfires. Who wants to create a policy that creates more wildfires in this country? I don't know anybody. So, and the way of getting there, the vast majority of people, actually would agree on if we actually had the chance to debate it. But right now, we're not. So it's, I agree it's way harder, but it's worth it. And I think it's worth it to pursue that rather than having a disjointed movement where the pendulum swings back and forth every four years on a subject. Like Biden puts in all these massive conservation preservation, preservation restrictions and public land deals and all this stuff. Then Trump undoes it. People are like, oh, it's just a Trump

problem no we need durable durable conservation solutions in five years and 10 years and 15 years no matter where the country heads we don't know it could be advance it could be a new summit could be nobody that we've even been talking about right but at some point we have to have some consistency because the lack of consistency is killing our environment and it's and it's refusing it's we are deferring any policy from getting done because of that disconnect so It is harder, but I think it's worth it. Let me... And I don't have all the answers today,

but hopefully in 10 years, we'll have this conversation. We'll have made a lot of progress there. Let me offer a, um, probably a poor analogy, and you can tell me how accurate it is. Can I rate it to? Absolutely. Five stars. Absolutely.

Like when you're talking about building cultural momentum and, and having something where people in both sides can approach it from their own angle, I'm wondering if you're and I don't this might sound stupid and maybe dismissive but you're trying to like you're essentially saying I want to make caring for the environment like support the troops

yes like no that is not dismissive that's exactly right because like five stars there's because every every politician is is going to say that they support the troops and they're going to lean into it as as sort of part of their mantle of legitimacy

Democrat who supports the troops might vote for mental health counseling for veterans and research on on you know like PTSD things like that maybe they are pushing for greater equality in different like you know combat roles whatever a Republican who supports the troops might vote for funding for extra you know like like make sure the troops have what they need to fight the wars we send them to things like armored doors on their home v armor doors on their humvies right and like Like, obviously, I mean, I feel like there's part of, there's part of me that when I hear someone say, I support the troops, I'm kind of like, well, that's brave of you, you know, like, but it's good politics. And it's created space where both sides are expected to support the troops.

Because Nixon, I mean, Nixon has this huge environmental legacy, and you could read it one way and say like, God, I didn't know he cared so much about the environment. but really Nixon didn't give he didn't care about the environment he just was like boy this is a powerful horse to to hitch to my wagon right very positive that's that's that's sort of the analogy that occurred to me as you're talking it's it's making this sort of a cultural plank of America that everybody's got to have that feather in their hat if they want to throw their throw said hat into the arena uh to make this a really messy metaphor five stars No, I like the metaphor, but I think that And I get the point

Supporting the troops, you can say, oh no, I support the troops, we should bring them home Right, and some guys like, oh, no, no, no, I support the troops We should send them... Got to give them what they need to win. We should send them advanced munitions. Yeah, right? Like, and you both get to carry it around. But I agree with that, but But the troops are one of the few topics where both sides actually sit down and have a conversation now, though. Even though it's not pretty and they don't always agree. And I'm not expecting that. This is not some kumbaya shit. But 80% of the time, there's actually a lot of

agreement. So, but that's not being facilitated. If there's agreement on troops and our military, they're at least having that conversation because they feel like it's part of the American national identity. Yeah. And of course, there's extraneous times where they totally see differently, right? And that's going to happen. And that did happen when Richard Nixon was president, right? There are people who thought Richard Nixon didn't go far enough, and there people who thought of you went too far. Sure. But stuff got done. And that was- Farmers Feed America would be the platform that I think is the most applicable is like, everybody loves farmers. And that is the thing that feeds us and large part secures our country.

We don't have to import stuff from all these other countries if we really focused on farmers feeding America. But those ecosystems are the most rapidly dissipating. appearing ecosystems on the planet, let alone in the United States. Here in Montana, we lost a million acres of farm and ranch ground over the last year, sorry, over the last three years. And like if you take a chunk of grazing ground in Oklahoma and look at the interests that want that grazing ground, despite the fact that every freaking politician is like, Farmers feed America.

God bless the farmers. Right? It's like, unless we can, uh, let me, but let me push back on that. There's,

there's probably elected officials from urban boroughs in New York that don't get questions about farmers. Totally. Like, yet they're eating their food. Right. Like, like,

it's, that's something where people would be like, oh, sure, but that's not really what my constituents sent me here for. There's nobody who's like, do support the troops and they're like

it's not really name one yeah I'm just not involved in that you know like everybody's like yes absolutely name one right

name one true right name one true like that that's an issue I feel like where where no one can no politician can sort of step out of line

and no one can ignore it or say like it's I'm focused on this I'm focused on this and they're like no would respond. Did you support the troops? They'd be like, well, really, I'm focused on transportation and infrastructure.

Right, you can pivot easier with that. But I think it's like, if you're AOC, as an extreme example, there are serious environmental issues in New York City and with the Hudson River. You know, if you're a Wisconsin senator, the water, you know, aquifers sinking and having the Mississippi get destroyed by runoff is an issue. But that doesn't really matter to New York. But like, it's, I think that's where we've lost it is it's like the environmental movement in general has also hurt the hunting and angling community. Because it's always been about for the last 20 years, polar bears, climate change, energy, like things that don't really impact the local community that every local community has really their own environmental issue. And they truly don't care too much. Like, in Arizona, in Scottsdale, where I live, they truly could not care less about farmers.

Should they care? Probably. But, like, they don't. They care about water quality and access, and they care about the smog that's getting worse. So, but as a country, we share a different reason for caring, but we all share the caring part because we know we rely on it. So I agree that, like, tagging farmers in is part of it. but it needs to be a part of like local community ownership and people feel like there's no way to get involved because it's like this issue is too big climate change polar bears that's

not like my thing what if everyone was able to activate and advocate for the issues that they cared about and their own local community in a better way that felt more tangible that felt more realistic and you know the vision that I have is is for if you're living in the great salt lake area, you can advocate for that across party lines and actually get something done for that because that's what's affecting you. If you're a big part of the country that has agriculture and farming and you're worried about water quality and the lack of crops that you can get now because the substance and the soil is so bad, then you can advocate for that. But right now there's nothing kind of that holistic view like there would be on troops. Like troops is very

complex too actually, right? There's so many different variables there. But there's a culture around it. It kind of forces people to figure some sort of solution out. And that's that's kind of the vision. A difference between you and me is that you thought about something and then did it and I thought about this and never did it. But I'll share with you what I thought. I'm going to eat another piece of jerky. At a point, please. At a point, I realize that there's like a way I think about the environment that isn't shared by the environmental movement.

and I realize that this way I think about it is actually shared by a lot of friends of mine is that I have a sort of there's a bit of like a nationalism and a patriotism to a view on

the American landscape. Yeah. You know, like a friend of mine was like whatever, he's going fishing with his kid. He's like, you think they're doing this in Tehran? You know, just joking. Perhaps they are but just joking meaning he like it's like uh he kind of views it like america the beautiful yes

yeah do you follow me yes and there was there was times i think it was like maybe like the last election cycle whatever there was times i was like man i should find some better way of articulating this thing that i think is kind of widely held where people have a sense of American pride about the American environment That is exactly right. And you look at like Yellowstone the show, right? People didn't watch that

because the show was just good. It was because it evoked an emotional connection to Americana in a way where it was like, I'm proud of the fact that we have places that look that beautiful. And if you go into a member of Congress's office,

no matter if it's Marjorie Taylor Green or AOC, the first picture is on walls are of their natural beauty in their districts right like there is an immense pride that americans have and in our environment this fall we're going to launch a campaign called united by nature united by nature can you call it don't shit up america don't shit that'll be our secondary that'll be the secondary slogan um and we'll let people use which one they like more but we have america's 250th anniversary next year i would argue that america and our conservation like a is the best in the world.

I would also argue that it's incredibly at risk right now for the first time, at least to this severity, in a very long time. When you get a minute, can you touch on a couple of those points? About what I'm worried about. Yeah. Americans are so proud of the natural environment we have to step into that.

So what I'm worried about, national parks earn massive maintenance debt. We're having conversations constantly about selling off public lands for development. which doesn't solve affordability at all. And the people who are perpetuating that know that. Wildlife issues are becoming worse. Chronic wasting disease, endangered species.

Like, these things are not getting better necessarily, especially invasive species. I mean, water quality is going down. Microplastics are in 94% of tested water that we drink. And the water quality in our rivers is getting infinitely worse every single year. mega fires are on the rise in this country and things like the great salt lake um the watersheds the aquifers below the farms these are all problems that are getting infinitely worse too and at some we are already starting to see the impacts of this right air quality issues in the

summer with the fires farmers having tons of issues um flooding getting worse not just because of quote climate change, but also because of the fact that the ecosystems that help prevent a lot of like hurricanes and stuff, the damage from the hurricanes have now been destroyed, so there's not these natural barriers. So we have massive problems.

And yet the government, the Biden administration didn't focus on this at all. They focused on like climate and energy and infrastructure and EVs, but until kind of the final hour, they didn't even really talk about this conservation or preservation or

preservation or anything with the natural landscape. Yeah, yeah. And Trump's whole approach is, I want to undo everything because it's gone too far and it's wrong and whatever, but we're not going to replace it with anything better. Because I never like that guy. Right, because I never liked that guy. But he's not just doing stuff that Biden did. He's not just undoing stuff Biden

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What I point out to people often, right, is I'm like, there's always the other side participating in this. Right. Like, even when there's a super majority, pick your super majority, right? But there's, right now there's Democrats in the room. They're not going home. They're not like, okay, well, we'll see you in four years. Right. There's always that nonpartisan aspect in there. One side's ultimately, going to have like a final say but you know it's like people are trying and on the public lands issue too it's like well thanks for calling but we defer to the 11 western states right you know there be a democrat or republican they're the ones that have the the knowledge and so we're going to listen to

them right um and that's just like something that people need to be reminded of right because it all gets shackled on to you know kind of who's in power at that time yes and i but i think a quick diversion i just want to say thank you to you guys because first of all i think between you and me and a couple of others in the non-elected space we are blamed for killing that uh horrible idea to sell off the three million acres it didn't matter that patagonia took a stance against the public lands at all the sell-off didn't matter that sierra club did that didn't move the needle at all In fact, it probably hurt that they weren't engaged. It mattered because center-left, center, and center-right voters who were largely in your communities, Joe Rogan's community, Cam Haynes community, and in our community, we're saying, no, hands-off.

Because that's the power of a broad coalition, because no matter what the moment is, you're meeting it then, right? You're meeting the moment because you have the broad coalition. And it's nice that the people in California were saying things, and it's nice that the people in Washington, like, they should. but that didn't move the needle on that one but maybe it'll move the needle on a different one right maybe if I tell my family something and my kids get real mad and then also my wife's mad

I'm like now I got to pay attention she's mad I don't know I knew the kids would be pissed but now she's mad okay never mind exactly exactly so I want to thank you for that in the areas where you know quote unquote didn't make an impact right like the the rosy picture

the idea right is it's building equity yes right and there's going to be this like alarm bells went off right why is that what's the deal with this issue no and it's all very important i already said i support the troops right people are still looking at me weird what's what's going on but that's that's the power of this broad coalition so i just say that to say also that's how like in the future it will be different states that are relevant for different environmental initiatives and we'll need those people there too so but you know there's some really good people there like martin heinrich and

and Tim Sheehe and, you know, Crapo and Danes and who care about conservation and there's overlap with this idea. But they also don't have a lot of space to work within. Like they all actually, whether they want to publicly acknowledge this or not, they really were happy about the pushback because it gave them the ability to do what they actually wanted to do, right?

Like, especially for a Republican. A lot of Republicans, I know for a fact that there were about 16 other Republicans senators who wanted to stand up against the public man sell off. But they didn't feel like it was politically helpful to do so. And until they feel like there's that space to step out and say, actually, this is not only what I don't want, but it's also what my voters don't want, they're going to be more gun-shy. And you look at the senators who spoke out, we all knew that they didn't want this to happen from the get-go. But because there were so many voters saying

they didn't want it to, then they're like, well, now I can justify speaking. out. That's kind of American democracy at work in a time when people just aren't really speaking out about things other than the radical extremes. So that's where like the rational middle standing together to say, oh, we support the troops, or we support the environment and conservation. It gives

space for not just the Heinrichs and the ones who are always going to be willing to put their, like Martin Heinrich who we all love, I think, maybe, I don't know. I love him. No, no. I like him personally. Yes. He's a rare person. I like him personally.

Yes. And I appreciate his constant advocacy on behalf of public lands. And I appreciate that he, of many things I appreciate him, I appreciate that he is willing to be like a very outspoken hunter. Right. He goes against the grain. Yeah. In a political party where that's not always the most, it's not always the most welcome identity to have. And Tim Sheehe, when I've had conversations with him, will be like, Montana cares.

more about conservation and the outdoors than, you know, any other place, you know, arguably. And so I have to lead on this, but I also want to. Both of those two gentlemen go against the grain in a lot of ways of what they're, quote, unquote, supposed to do. There's very few leaders like that in D.C., right? Like, that's the world that I'm, you know, really, unfortunately familiar with. And we need to give space not just for those guys who are always going to try to stick their neck out as much as possible, but also the kind of the cowards, to be honest, always going to be cowards in the Senate in the House who actually do want to do the right thing, though, and they just don't feel like they have a space to do it. And that's the power of the movement that I think we could build because there's an underbelly there. If you talk to those 16 Republican senators who wanted to speak out about it, I can't guarantee you, if I said, there's going to be a million people in your state right and left who are speaking out about this in your favor. They would have been like, okay, then I can too. And that's that's the power we need to build. Let's, let's change subject a teeny bit or change focus a teeny bit. Um, if you're sitting there as a guy that grew up and you had conservative principles,

right? And you felt that like the party I kind of instinctively want to align myself with like they just are not representing my environmental concerns. Right. And I need them to, I want to change that position. From your perspective, like, what do you have to say? If you had a private audience, so you have a private, this is a private audience, right? Yeah. very pretty so so the the the the houses the democrats in the house and senate

they come to you and say hey what could we be what could be doing different what could we be doing different um what to them because it can't be that like they got it just right now and you just want you just want the republicans to adopt right their approach like where are they missing where are they losing people where are they missing where could they be more effective? When I say I mean like a big they, like the Democrats. On average, yeah. Like the party of the Democrats, where do they miss? Well, I think I'll reiterate, I think both sides are failing almost pretty equally on this issue. And the way that the left has failed is it has been so much about climate and kind of this hysteria around like, I believe in climate change.

And I, you know, I'm not afraid to say that. But like, when you're just talking about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like, climate change doesn't matter if we destroy all the wild places that we have left, right? Like, it's like a distant priority. If you destroy the Amazon and you destroy all the wild places that we all love to recreate in, then we might as well just keep heating up the climate because we're all screwed. So they've kind of forgotten to work on conservation because they've been so focused on this other issue.

Technical solutions. Right. Green New Deal, you know, is an oversimplified way to give the analogy, but it's basically basically, you know, that was their whole environmental platform. And you were like, well, if you look at the Green New Deal, it had nothing to do with public lands, private land, conservation, sustainable ag, forestry, water quality. It just only had to do with energy and EVs and technical infrastructure. So that's where they've really failed. And it's also been a race to the left. What's the most that you can do to be as radical as you can to out, to say you care more than the other person. But it's all about grandstanding. And it's all about grandstanding. And it's also. It's all about, like, these pledges and these goals, but there's nothing behind them. Like, I went to cop the UN climate conference for three years in a row, and it was the most abysmal time of my life because it was just like, well, if we have this pledge to be 100% renewable by 2030, that would be better than this company's pledged or this country's pledge or, you know, whoever the stakeholder was. And it was like, what are you actually going to do, right? Like, there's no, it's all about the messaging and it's not about the details.

And the last thing that I think that they've failed at is it has been, you know, this age old conservation versus preservation is like the debate, right? It's been going on for centuries and in America specifically in the last century. They've been hinging very closely to just working on preservation rather than conservation and restricting access for hunting and angling and getting outdoors and like people are so scared of like resource development and using public lands for other reasons than just like the Sierra Club saying they want to walk. watch the bears or the wolves and not hunt, you know, hunt them. Like that's kind of been the mindset has been the Sierra Club mindset. And so in a similar way that the right has completely failed and is failing right now. And we're seeing it.

It's their turn to fail. It's their turn to fail. The left has been failing too. And at some point, one of the parties will get it right or hopefully, ideally both of them get it right. But right now neither one of them is. Yeah, the use, right? Like, we were both in New York City. Yeah.

And, man, the riot that would ensue if somebody was like, yeah, we're just going to make Central Park off limits, right? Just, I was up with this upper west side crowd. Because it's going to be a solar array. Yeah. I mean, holy. Oh, we don't want, we know, we don't want people to interfere with the squirrel movement, right? The squirrel movement. Squirrel migration.

Yeah. A couple of, like, quick anecdotes for it. So a rip over their brutal travel and get on the island of Manhattan. As soon as they get into Manhattan, there's this guy who does not look like me, probably has very different ideas about a lot of things on an electric scooter, flying through traffic, and he's got two fishing rod strapped to his back. No way. Yeah, coming off the Hudson.

And I was just like, okay. this guy and I we can have a conversation I guarantee you and I thought that was just super awesome to see and then yeah the conversations that I had about like the parks because I was blown away by how many dogs are on the upper west side and people like they do whatever it takes to maintain a dog friendly lifestyle and I thought that and it you know it obviously like connects to these

park systems, right? And I thought that was just a good example of like, here's this very, this group of people that I would put in a very nature disconnected category who have totally changed their lives in order to have that connection

with that version of nature. Right. Right. And they were like birdwatchers, holy cow. So many birdwatchers in New York City. Yeah, I was amazed. I was pretty, pretty amazed with that and then but kind of to go back to the like

the farm ranch community and where a lot of environmental groups have just like again lost connection with the end consumer another good example man the majority of farmer

rancher folks that I know address climate change every single day right it is part of their business it is part of their business it is part is their business plan. Yep. And in real life, they are so aware of the changes and the effects of climate change. The only way that they're going to be viable is by adapting, mitigating, all the above.

Yeah. And they are doing it. Yep. And they do not want to be associated with the climate change crowd. No. Right? But they're doing it every single day. Yeah, they're hyperware than the climate change crowd.

Yes. They don't want anybody to think they're a weirdo. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. A liberal hippie. Yeah. And it was like, when my calves hit the ground, when I plant this, when I pick that, what I'm going to do about water.

How am I going to change what I plant? What, you know, what is worth it now versus was worth it 10 years ago as far as like field cultivation or not field cultivation? Um, bringing what crops to market the whole, the whole thing, water use, right, fertilizer use, all of it. Um, and if you're not doing these things, like, you're, you're not going to be around. Yeah, you're going out of business. That's an interesting point. Yeah. And then they hear the lecture to them.

The environmentalist lecture to them, even though they're the ones doing. And some hook and bullet organizations too. Like they use what I would call at this point, like boilerplate conservation speak. Right. And it's in, it's the same version slightly tweaked for the last 20 years, right? That's going out to everybody. And they're like, well, this resonates. I'm like, well, it doesn't resonate with people with the dirt under their fingernails doing it. But the problem is philanthropy.

So that there's money tied to it. There's so much money tied to it. And that's where I, that's another world that I have to work in is the philanthropic world where, you know, and probably shouldn't even be talking about this because they probably don't like that I'd be saying this. But it's like they are so out of touch, but they have so much money. And they're funding these campaigns, they're funding the Sierra clubs of the world when they're doing this anti-bearer. for sure. They're also funding these very preachy, condescending, like, rural people are screwed up

and dumb and, like, are doing the wrong thing all the time, and we need to take it back because farming and ag and industry, they are the bane of our existence, and we have to basically ban them from society if we're going to keep going, and it's like... And don't even get into the nuance of, like, the definition of rural if you're standing in Manhattan. versus the definition of rural if you're standing in Coldfoot Alaska. The philanthropists are only, the philanthropists would not survive

a literally 10 minutes there. They live in San Francisco. They live in New York and they live in Chicago. Those are kind of the, and a little bit of L.A. Those are the four places. They don't leave there

and they are in the biggest bubble. If you think like D.C., the swamp is a bubble which people want to drain, philanthropy needs to be drained. Like it's crazy what I have to put up with with philanthropists and how disconnected they are.

And they actually don't understand what's going on in America at all. And yet they are funding tens of billions of dollars of non-profits to dominate the narrative. And so that's also part of my plan, right, is to represent an environmental movement America, actually, because the environmentalist groups can't do that. They literally can't. That's why I have such an advantage here. They can't even try to do what we're doing. because they're funded to not do that and they are and in philanthropy is so screwed up because a

non-profit only exists if they get the money and you only graze money if there are problems and so what's the is there an incentive to solve the problem then no because if you solve the problem you lose your job yeah so so so there's there's there's you know there that's where the disconnected messaging comes from because the people who are dominating that from a financial perspective who are donating to these groups have no idea how Real America lives. I'm going to give you a very weird, petty example of what you're talking about.

I remember when I remember watching just in the news when Michael Bloomberg, no not Bloomberg, who's the guy, tall guy, kind of left in a little bit of a scandal, mayor of New York City? DeBlasio? DeBlasio.

I remember right away when de Blasio got elected. I haven't thought about Bill de Blasio in a while. and scammed I was like Is there still a lot of options? Bloomberg. No, Bloomberg's real short, Jordan?

Bloomberg short. The Blasio's tall. Phil, can you pull that up on the screen? Please. Their height, pull up their heights, please. Can you put up all the Michaels? Yeah. I was better when he,

when he came in with, like, a thing he did very early was this, like, thing about, uh, we laughed about it on the show, but he came in and very early had this thing about the rules about the horses. Mm.

Yeah, Central Park horses. And I remember being like, if that is not an example of someone giving that guy money and saying, listen, you know, and he's like, okay, got it. Yeah, I'll try to remember. Like, you gave me a bunch of money and some shit about the horses. Got it. Like, it was so transactional. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Right. And that, like, I imagine, like, not that magic, because I've seen it. Like, you know, I've had exposure to the nonprofit space where I see where, um, you know, donors philanthropy can come in and manipulate a nonprofit

agenda with a big carrot that's that's really how this all works and they're like let me play devil's advocate here though because there's also ways

in which like a group the people as part of an NGO have issues that they care about like they want to work on wildlife they want to work on public lands they want to do this and and they see grants available and they sort of go,

oh, we can tie this to that by framing it this way. They're still trying to solve that problem. You know, like, like I don't, I don't believe that people at BHA don't want, I don't believe that people at BHA want the public lands issue to still, to just be a constant football because they actually care about it. No, that's true. Yeah, they're not, they're not like. They're definitely not thinking well, we want to win but not all the way and and then like when they look at a I mean

The philanthropy thing is complicated and I think I think it exists on sort of like a spectrum or it's like a tug of war It's like well we could get into this pot of money if we sort of frame our work in this way and we can use that money to do what we really want to do And it's sometimes you can get to tugged too far outside of your core issue and But there's also a lot of ways in which they're using that money strategically to get to sort of pour more gas on the fire and what they really want to work on. I agree, but I think I think a lot of it's subconsciously going in the wrong direction. So what I mean by this is during the public land sell-off, the senator, Mike Lee, if you remember on Twitter, was going after me largely because of what I was saying on social media. And his whole conspiracy is that I was funded to go against him. I will be transparent

I raised $50,000 after it happened $50,000 I know that there are so many massive environmental NGOs who took this massive public stand

again not moving the needle at all but they were like you know screw you President Trump screw you Mike Lee screw you whatever they raised tens of millions of dollars off of that because they tried to make a name for themselves

in a time where they weren't actually doing anything probably were not impactful because they weren't talking to anybody new right so mike mike lee had actually in a strange way the right thought process there which is like benjy's probably using this to raise a ton of money and i didn't because i didn't even plan on getting involved in that because i didn't know it was coming down the pike like there was like you couldn't even plan for it right we all found out pretty last minute and we all just did what we needed to do so there wasn't some coordinated effort but these groups are incentivized to make it seem like they are doing more than they actually are and to take harder stances than what i actually would move the needle because they know that that's where philanthropy is like, oh, thank God, you know, this group is taking such a hard stand, but there's not actually like an outcome thought of it. And so I think that you're right, but a lot of groups raise money when they don't actually do anything with it. And I'm not saying BHA specifically. I don't know enough about that. Well, I'll give you an example to your point. So roadless rule, right? I'm working with a bunch of different groups and talking about roadless rule and and this kind of ties in a couple

of points I've been made today is right like we're not even at the actual conversation about roadless rule because it's not about timber it's not about public access to these areas um it's not in my opinion actually about wildfire mitigation um so just tell me what the reason is that you want to roll back protections on 44 million acres. that that would be like the chunk that is actually going to get affected? You're not, you mean you're not buying, it's just general.

No, it's a thing. Like, just tell me the thing. Right. So we can talk about the thing. Right. Like adults. Earlier we talked about the debate, like the Buffalo thing. And there's all these red herrings, bruselosis, whatever. In the end, you're like, oh, I get it. This is about who's, what animals eat what grass. It's about grass. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? And then with the sell-off. With the public land sell off, it was about like, this is about increasing new lands for developers to develop. Right. And decreasing the federal estate and trying to achieve for their goal of reducing the federal budget deficit. That's a red herring. It might be. I don't believe it was one thing.

It was one thing. Well, either way, it's definitely not an affordable housing. We can agree in that. Yeah, it's not informal housing. I don't think they worry about the debt. There's a lot better ways to figure out the debt. Totally. But on this road list deal, you know, I have a good, good idea, come or upper.

And I was like, well, why don't we, all these groups that have resources, why don't we spend some time get the list of the green groups that sue the most on some of these mitigation efforts that are technically included in. the wording of the road list rule. Right. And we at least get them to a table where we can have a discussion on what they're going to sue on and what they're not. Right? And then we're going to have this letter and this coalition that says, hey, all these groups, including these ones that are screwing everything up for everybody because they just sue all the time. They just try to grind things to a halt. Yeah, they are.

Say, this is our line. If you guys outline where you need the work done, we will not sue on this. And if they don't, we'll just make this big, huge coalition out here, say there is no working with these groups. And we'll make it as public as possible. We'll make them prize. And that'll be the tactic here. Right? And the response is like, bam, it's a great idea.

But like many great ideas. We can't do it. Yeah. And they're like, are you, I mean, are you going to go to these law firms and be like, 100% of your business is going to be, right? And they're going to be like, hey, that's a good idea. Go to those law firms, be like, you're familiar with the whole like Doge complex concept. That's what you're going to have to apply something different because works drying up. Yeah, they're not going to say yes to that. Right. Hunting big country isn't for the faint of heart. You got steep ground, long distances, and miles of crown land that. aren't always easy to navigate. That's why Anex Hunt just got a serious upgrade for hunters in Canada.

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April of 2020, 25. April 2025. Layout for me, like, how do you think? How do you approach things? Do you approach things like quarters in your mind, years in your mind, 10 years in your mind? Quarters, because the world changes every quarter. Hit me a couple quarters. What's come?

Like, what's your head at? We're going to launch a national narrative shifting campaign with a lot of the coalition partners that we've been working with, including a lot of the groups that you work with, you know, the TRC of the world. We're going to include everybody who's in this broad coalition in a campaign called United by Nature. We're going to have concerts. We're going to have community events. We're going to have calls to action. We're going to have national ad campaigns. We're going to try to make this United by Nature the calling card for support the troops, right? We are united by nature, whether that nature is your Salt Lake or it's your, you know, Everglades or it's your, you know,

Beartooth Mountains, right? So it's trying to create that national identity. We're going to launch it in the in the next quarter. We're also going to launch a bipartisan caucus in the Senate, focused on conservation, and try to create the space for that to get done. Is it going to be called the level-headed caucus? The level-headed caucus. What was the notion? What was your secondary slogan for United? Don't shit up America, Caucus.

I'll ask the DSUA. That's great. And then, you know, we're really going to focus on. Tell people what a caucus is. A caucus is like a little family of senators that want to do. the same action on the same topic. And so there's like the Congressional Sportsman's Caucus, which is a great group, focus on, you know, sportsmen's issues and trying to build support in the Senate just

on those issues. And we saw the public lands caucus in the House. Yep. Yeah. And so it'll be very complimentary to that in the Senate. But on more than just public lands, it'll be about private land, wildlife, water, and a little bit of a wider. And you imagine pulling in, you imagine this pulling in centrist from. both parties or we actually want pretty hardcore republicans and hardcore democrats but it's going to be

one for one membership so for every republican we get a democrat is that normal for a caucus no there are a few that are modeled that way um but very rare oh yeah because yeah obviously and our our organization is structured tea parties yeah yeah our our organization is structured that way too we have half our staff is liberal half it's conservative half our board's liberal half of it's conservative and we're intentional for everybody that we add we are make do you have non do you have non-binary? Everyone's got a leaning. Yeah.

Somewhere. Because I'd be like, yeah, put me down for both. We do actually, if you look at it in the box. You have to figure it out. No, we have out of our board. We have got a few people who I actually have no idea who they have for it. But if there's a pretty active, conservative person, we're definitely going to have an

active living person. So that's the vision that we see because when you have it structured that way, and this is why a lot of environmental organizations, their staff is 100% liberal or the other board's 100% liberal and so of course they're going to lean that way just like if it was the other way so we're going to launch this caucus we're going to launch the national narrative shifting campaign united by nature we're probably going to do a big event uh yellowstone here in the spring um to rally people around public lands and bring in like an a list uh celebrity a list music so we're trying to make this a culturally relevant thing and can i come can you speak no just bring my kids this is when i hang out what if they want to watch their dad on stage age. They won't. What if your wife wants to? Yeah, that's a cute thought.

They're united by their desire not to listen to Dad by a microphone. I was kind of looking forward to this. Yeah, we wanted to go, Dad, but we're actually going to stay home in this one. We heard this speech at dinner last. But yeah, it's kind of what the next few months look like. And, you know, we're really excited because we're seeing, especially in the wake of just like the political division, people are one. something positive in politics right now. If there's one issue that could help democracy

kind of move forward and also bring our priorities to the table, the environment's probably the best one, in my opinion. So we're seeing a lot of natural support and, you know, people from across the spectrum, I mean, we have drag queens and militant activists who are all believing in this same model. And it's really kind of incredible what people are. are looking for on this right now how will you decide going forward um how will you decide like where with the public land sell off okay there's like a specific thing yeah there's a known party that that's pushing it there's a known not even not even party there's a known individual who's pushing it yep right and so you got to like create friction yeah like you're gonna you're like

whatever you do however positive you keep it you will create for right um how how are you deciding on what issues where you're like i'm going to create friction on this one i'm going to create friction on this one i mean specific bills right specific measures do i mean like is it just your moral compass like like what what goes into going like this is going to get ugly i think it's when we know that the vast majority that there's a winning coalition that's willing to be like active on something uh because we mostly want to be four things. So what I mean by that is like we don't want to always be the group that's standing against whatever is bad. That's what a lot of environmental groups do. We want to show

that there is a political constituency to put forward funding for national parks, to put forward funding for wildlife conservation, right? Like show that there's an appetite for that in a positive way because I'm so sick of like politicians only being afraid of people instead of like being like, oh, I'm doing this because people actually want me to do it. Right. So but when there's this example like the public land sell-off where we have to take a stance against it, we are going to be very intentional about picking and choosing. I've already gotten so much shit for not taking a stance against absolutely everything that's been happening over the last eight months. And I'm like, I can't die on every hill, right? And our organization can't die on every hill. And no organization

can die on every hill. But if there's an overwhelming winning coalition of Americans where the politicians are so out of touch with America like they were on the public land sell-off, we're going to show them that they're out of touch and so it will depend on really where is the american populace at where's the winning coalition at and can we actually mobilize them because if we can't then we're trying to you know stick a square peg into a round hole and a lot of times that's what happens and it doesn't actually do anything so if we're going to really lean in and be against something we better be damn sure that it's going to be impactful before we do it yeah that's that's that's i i like that a pro yeah i'm at a loss of words i love

that approach. I like that approach because I think another way that groups would look and they'll say this is, we're going to lose bad, but this is going to be good for fundraising. And this is going to be good for press. Yeah. If I want to do that. If PETA if PETA says, hey, we're going to have it be that you don't say a whole hog anymore.

You know, they're like, we're probably going to lose. People are still going to say a whole hog, but it's going to get a lot of media. Exactly. But, you know, we're not going to win this one. And that's exactly. I mean, I'm at the point where it's like I care about the outcomes and if that if that comes at the cost of fundraising

I'm willing to take that if it comes at the cost of media that's fine if it comes at the cost of people thinking that I have some ulterior motive because I'm not taking a stance on everything because I think that I'm like trying to shy away from every issue then that's fine too but I think people have gotten so used to like oh you're not taking a stance on absolutely everything that's bad therefore you must have some ulterior motive it's like no it's actually the opposite right Like, I could raise so much money opposing everything that Donald Trump does. I could raise so much money off of that. And if I wanted to, I would do it.

Or if I wanted to defend everything he was doing, I could also raise a lot of money off of that. But I think over time, people's demand is going to be for trying to actually create good outcomes. At least that's my optimistic view of the world, that people actually want that. And over time, people will see, man, this is, if you want to take a legitimate stance on something that will actually move the needle, this is the organization. to work with. That's the goal. You know what a good analogy could be for you? Like, think about how the military would look at battles. They're not like, all the guys are going to die. But think about what this is going to mean from a publicity standpoint. Right. Right. They're kind of like, no, no, no, I think we should go on Wednesday night because we're going to win.

On Wednesday night. Are you guys just, you guys have the same analogy here. We're going to go when there's we're going to go on spending too much time together. Steve, uh, Steve and I were playing phone. tag all day, and I happened to be on a Gettysburg tour. And we finally connected while I'm sitting there looking at Pickett's Charge from the viewpoint of the union lines. And Steve's like, well, what do you think? I'm like, this was so stupid. I'm like, you cannot tell me.

You cannot, like, I'm at odds with our historical tour guide right now because I'm like, yeah, I'm not buying this at all. This is ego-driven stupid ideas. pick it, being like, can I get a quick, quick word? Just kind of looking down, looking around here. That is the perfect analogy, though. That is the perfect analogy. And I think the conservation movement could really use that.

But also, to your point earlier, there are so many incredible groups out there in the hook and bullet crowd, but also in the conservation crowd. But they're not trying to do what I'm trying to do. And so we can work really well together to get. things done because they do have a they do have science behind them they do have resources they do have research they do have some grassroots right and they have a brand and they have really good ideas but we need to facilitate the space for those ideas and create the national identity around those ideas and so um you know i think for for most of america like we hope to be the national

movement but then we want to help accelerate the priorities of all these other great groups that are out there that just haven't had the space like TRCP has so many great policy ideas all these groups have so many great policy ideas but if the political space isn't there to move them then they're just ideas right and the roadless rule or anything that we're against you know being rescinded like we might be right about that but if they still decide to go forward with it because americans didn't speak up enough about it then then it doesn't matter how right we were so that i'm a big t rCP supporter cal does a lot of work with bha but i think that um i'm sure there are people that fall into a trap of being competitive yes uh but i would say like speaking

for the people at this table i would say like we'll take the wins we can get them yep and uh we just need wins yeah like you know i love to see the groups i love and the people i love thrive and do well but um i'm not uh i'd rather see environmental wins than organization wins i agree with that you know and and honestly if nature is not God's speed Thank you God speed And you know

It really doesn't matter Who gets the credit We just need good conservation wins Like I People ask me all the time Why am I doing this And I think you'll find out In 20 years as we look back

40 years as we look back I just care about Conservation wins And if nature's nonpartisan Isn't needed Then that's great But if it's also the most important culturally relevant organization

That's great too But like There is no motive other than getting wins on the board. But I like that approach because it also means that we are being so collaborative with all these other groups that largely have seen each other as like competitive enemies in a lot of ways. But they could be moving together. And I do believe that it's more powerful if they do. And I know that that's kind of breaking the mold of like the nonprofit model. It's breaking the mold of like the political model. People want to be against each other to find competition.

But like this to me is bigger than that. It's bigger than politics. It's bigger than who has the money. It's bigger than who gets the money. It's bigger than who gets the win. It's who and how did we get the best outcomes for conservation? Because we need like a 21st century infusion of conservation progress like Teddy Roosevelt created. We need to have that legacy recreated in this country. And we're not going to do it with the typical political bullshit that we've been dealing with over the last few years. I appreciate taking so much time to talk, man.

This is really fun. I even got to eat jerky on air, got to lick my chops a little bit. Mmm, frothy. Should we all do that? And you just go, oh, Phil. There's some jerky where you feel like they should have put one of those little flossers

in the bag with it. Right. But that doesn't give any problems. No, I mean, has it like, has a like. He doesn't have any, like, threads. Yeah. When I was a kid, when we made,

we made jerky, my dad would just like take the shank and just slice it thin, you know? I remember, like, every piece of jerky you ate, you'd have, like, a cut. Yeah. You'd have a cut. and after an hour of jerky eating you'd take this white ball it's like a piece of chewing gum

it was sinew and you'd eventually take that and flick it and it's full of little jerky pieces debate whether or not you should swallow it yeah you just be like after your wife you'd be like yeah it's probably and you open the window and off into the side of the road this does not do that no I don't need that little white ball

there's no connective tissue yeah there's no cut But I do want to, again, you guys have a lot of incredible influence and impact that you've made both of you specifically on getting people rallied around these ideas across party lines. So you're living in the nature's nonpartisan mantra every single day. And I look up to you guys a lot and just the way that you've led. Cal's tenacious, man. You are. Well, it helps when you're right. That's the good thing we have at our side is we are right.

It's being right to get him up in the morning. Well, when it's authentic, you fight harder, right? And you can tell that you mean it. And you can tell that you mean it. And hopefully you can tell that I mean it. And that just makes it easier because you wake up every day and you actually want to do it. And you're not trying to put someone in a box. Because the thing is, the thing that we have against these screw ups in politics today is that they are putting themselves in boxes that they don't even think are authentically real.

And at some point, this authenticity of fighting for what we actually believe in will win because we actually have the passion and we actually care. And that will win. I keep reminding people, I'm like, we are right. And if you don't think you are, bring this, bring your viewpoint of public lands and the value of them to somebody who doesn't have that viewpoint. And you can just watch the mental gymnastics happen. Exactly. And how they have to like try to re-center themselves on their argument. They're like, well, have you considered?

It's like, yeah, yeah, we got it. but I feel like you're not feeling that you get a sense that that's not an authentic view you have right right right they're like well I've never been but right that's true I think some of those guys they look like they've never been in the outdoors before and they look like you know maybe we could help them so yeah that's something we should think about at some point

little sun a little sun a little mountain little tree A little dirt. Not to sidetrack it, but summer. I was going to wrap up. Another allergy. Summer in Yellowstone, you see all these people pouring through Livingston. They look like they've never spent a day outdoor in their lives. And there's a lot of eye rolling about it.

But when I see that, I actually think it's really cool that somebody who lives in Florida or New York or wherever is like, you know what we need to do this year. we need to go see Montana and Wyoming. Because you're a big-hearted person. No, I mean, the traffic gets old. I don't like waiting for tables at restaurants, but like it's why. I don't want to peel the curtain back too much, but Randall and his wife have both told me that if they ever went on a murder spree, it would be to target people who do illegal things in national parks. Okay, but that's a different argument. Again, all of my darkest secrets are coming out.

No, but I Those are not, those are not contradicting. They're not. Just to put a opinion on it. Like, I think it's, I think it's so cool that people are like, that people in this country are like, I have to see this. This is part of my American. This is part of being an adult as an American.

It's like sharing this with my kids. Even if they never come back like another day or they don't hunt or they don't fish, they're like, you know what? We're going to load up the station wagon and go look at rocks and water. No, that's true. Phil, you should take that. clip and send that to Venmo and see if they'll let Randall back on.

Yeah. I'm on it. Look at this guy. Come on. Look at this guy. Not such a bad guy. Let him do and let him transact. Let him buy what he needs to buy. He saw we. Let him buy what he needs to buy from estate sales.

This episode is sponsored by Fenmo. Man, Benji Backer. Nature is nonpartisan. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun. And I'd love to have you back on. And let's get out there together at some point, too.

Yeah, I would. That's where I'd rather be. Hit us up in a year. That's kind of a year later. We got a lot of people to come back every year. Well, hopefully we made a lot of progress. I'll put it on my calendar. One year.

Unless things change a whole bunch. Unless all of a sudden you win all the environmental battles, then come back on. That's the incentive right there. All right. Let's do it. You do an update. We won them all. It's over.

I'll see you in a year. That's no way that's happening. All right, thanks, man. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Ah, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon,

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