WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Hillsdale Interview: Craig Springer

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Craig Springer is a fish biologist and writer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and former editor of the agency's Eddies magazine. He's the editor of America's Bountiful Waters: 150 Years of Fisheries Conservation and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. His writings on conservation, nature, and history haveappeared in the New York Times, ESPN Outdoors, Farmers' Almanac, and elsewhere. He also provides content for the newsletter produced by Hillsale's College's Nimrod Education Center. He lives in northern New Mexico.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Scott Bertram. We're joined today by Craig Springer. He's a fish biologist, a writer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You might have seen his writings elsewhere like in the New York Times and ESPN Outdoors. He provides content for Hillsdale College's Nimrod Center newsletter. It also is the author of America's Bountiful Waters, 150 years of fisheries, conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Craig, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Scott. Glad to be here. And thanks to Alan Stewart and the Nimrodh Education Center for arranging the interview. Really appreciate it. You can find more about Craig 2 at Craig Springer.com. Tell us first, Craig, we've talked to a few different people here in connection with the Nimrod Education Center on the show, on the station. But your connection with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If you can give us a thumbnail history about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, what does it do? What are its goals? And how do you, assist? Well, the Fish and Wildlife Service was created actually in 1940 in the SDR administration, and it was formed by joining the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey. And the Biological Survey was more on the terrestrial side, and it was created, I think about 1885, somewhere in that vicinity, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries actually goes back to the formation of the U.S. Fish Commission under the Grant administration in 1871.

And so those two agencies combined, the Bureau of Fisheries Biological Survey in 1940. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has charge over federal trust species. The division that I work in, we oversee grants funding wildlife and wildlife and fisheries funding under the Pittman-Robertson Act, the Dingle-Johnson Act. And there's some Michigan hooks there. Dingle is, the Dingle Johnson Act is, was authored partly by John Dingell from the Detroit area, your congressman from Detroit. So definitely some, some Michigan hooks into some of what the U.S. Fish and Life Service does. This book that you wrote a couple of years ago now, it's available many places, but including a

Craig Springer.com. America's Bountiful Waters, 150 years of fisheries, conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There are just dozens of essays in this book and beautiful pictures. And what comes through all of it is this great passion for the waters and for fishing and fish. What brings out this passion from those people who are very committed to the outdoors to wildlife and your contributors in America's Bonoful Waters. Why are people so passionate about this?

Yeah, I can say with 100, 100% certainty, that are the contributors that I share what they possess, and that is just a lifelong interest in hunting and fishing, outdoors, nature. I worked with, there were 43 contributors, all of them, fisheries biologists and the Fish and Wildlife Service. And they ranged from folks that were very new in their career to some gentlemen that were retired, including a former director, Dale Hall, had been director under George W. Bush,

director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. And all of them have just this deep passion and abiding interest in the outdoors and nature. And by and large, all of them are associated with early childhood. young adult experiences, fishing, hunting, discovering, discovering the wonders of nature. And most all of the contributions, the book is really a mixture of memoir, natural history, cultural history, geography. It's really fascinating. And these biologists, they're used to writing scientific papers and technical papers, reports, that sort of thing. But just gave them an opportunity to put their passion on their sleeve.

And I was able to coach them and coax them and encourage them to be expressive about the work that they do and the why of what they do. What makes the fish stock in America so unique? How is it different than what you might find, heck, even just door north in Canada? Canada, Europe. What is so interesting about America's fish stock? The biodiversity. Definitely the biodiversity. In Alabama, for example, there are, let me think here, make sure I get the number right, but I think almost 400 different species of fish live in Alabama waters. And as you go farther north, that diversity decreases. I don't know how many fish species exist in Michigan, for example. but the number decreases. And going east to west,

the diversity of fishes in the eastern waters. It's more diverse, more robust, than the farther west you go. There are fewer. And I think here in New Mexico, where I live, there are 20, 52 species of fishes in New Mexico. And, you know, they range from lowland waters, warm Gulf Coast streams in, say, Alabama or Florida, small, small darters, little fish called

darters that are related to walleye and saugers, which anglers in Michigan are very well familiar with, the walleye. And these are finger-sized fish that swim through these streams in the southeast. And as you go out west to where I live, and I live near Santa Fe, and if we go up into the high country at 8,000, 10,000 feet, we come into cut-throat trout, which, are found only in the west. And there's 13 different strains of cutthroat that range from the Rio Grande cutthroat trout trout trout in New Mexico. And as you go north all the way to Juneau, there's the coastal cutthroat trout. And even among those 13 strains of trout, they are very, very interesting and biologically diverse. Talking with Craig Springer, he's a author, writer,

America's Bountiful Waters is his recent book, 150 years of fisheries, conservation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There's a specific essay, a particular essay, inside America's Bountiful Waters, that has a bit of a Michigan connection, the Montana Arctic grayling fish. Can you tell us a bit about that story? Yeah, sure. So there were two kinds of grayling. There was the Michigan Grayling, the Arctic Greenling, Michigan Arctic Grayling and the Montana Arctic Grayling. And there was a gentleman by the name of James Henshaw. He was a medical doctor.

And to give this, you know, a time hook, a time frame, he was a civil war surgeon. And he actually doctored soldiers that were, he was a doctor in Kentucky in Kentucky. and he during the Civil War, and he was on the Union side, but he had doctored soldiers both in the Confederacy and the Union. And he had an interest in natural history, as many medical doctors did back in the day. And he eventually moved up to Cincinnati and had a practice in Cincinnati

and went to work for the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History, it was. And he was interested. in fish conservation, fish culture, hatching fish, and he eventually went to work for the U.S. Fish Commission. And he had an interest in Arctic Grayling, both in Michigan, because they had suffered, in his lifetime, they began to suffer a demise from habitat loss from logging and sedimentation. And he had the opportunity to go to a fish culture station in Bozeman, Montana, which is today's Bozeman National Fish Hatchery.

And he was the first superintendent of that facility. I forget the exact date when it opened, maybe about 1890, something like that. And he innovated the culture of Arctic Grayling. And he's been considered both the father of Arctic Grayling and also the father of Black Bass because James Hinshaw was a prodigious writer. And he published a number of books. and one of them, which is still in print all these years later, it's called The Book of the Black Bass.

He was very interested, very interested in black basses. In fact, he caught his first smallmouth bass, which is a member of the Black Bass family. He caught his first smallmouth bass just a little bit east of Cincinnati when he was in medical school in 1855. He was quite an accomplished person. He put together when there was the World's Fair in Chicago, I think it was, he put together a very large display for the U.S. Fish Commission

and put that together and shepherded that through. Quite an interesting fellow. Indeed. Craig, you mentioned two things earlier, and I want to perhaps take them one by one. Pittman Robertson Act of 1937, Dingle Johnson in 1950, and both contribute mightily to conservation, and outdoors here in the U.S. The Pittman-Robertson Act sets up a tax, and usually people are not so happy about paying taxes. This seems to be one generally that outdoorsmen support

and recognize the value in. Tell us more about Pittman-Robertson and how it affects the outdoors and conservation. Sure, Scott, the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Dingell-Johnson Act are probably the two most profound, most profound conservation laws in history. The Pittman-Robertson Act was named after T. Pittman and Willis Robertson. Pittman was a senator from Nevada, Robertson, a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia.

But the actual law was authored by Carl Shoemaker, who was, this is almost a Michigan hook. He grew up in a county just south of Hillsdale in Ohio, and he went to law school at Ohio State. and moved out west and remade himself, became a publisher of a newspaper in Oregon, and was heavily involved in politics. He worked for the, I think he was the state game warden eventually in Oregon, got involved in politics, eventually ended up being on a Senate committee at Washington, D.C. for natural resources. And he actually authored the Pittman-Robinson Act.

And what it is, Pittman-Robertson Act was passed in 1937 and had the four, the full, full-throated support of the firearms industry. I mean, there's few people in this world that enjoy paying taxes. And, you know, if you and I want to pay more taxes, we're welcome to write a check to U.S. Treasury anytime we want. Sure. But the firearms industry wanted to be taxed. There was an excise tax on firearms and ammunition that already existed.

And I think that dated back to maybe the Benjamin Harrison administration. So they were already paying excise. taxes on firearms and ammunition to U.S. Treasury. But the Pittman-Robertson Act and the firearms industry fully supported this, they wanted that excise tax to go to conservation. So Pitman-Robertson directed excise taxes to go to U.S. Treasury that would then help be held in trust by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And those monies would then on an annual basis be a portion out to the state fish and wildlife agents. He's like the Michigan Department of Batcher Resources, where Mr. Stewart, by the way, spent a 50-year career. And those monies are steady,

reliable sources. They are the lifeblood of wildlife conservation. And the Dingell Johnson Act, named partly for Dingle Johnson from Michigan, that came about in 1950. And that is an excise tax on fishing tackle, rods and reels, some accoutrements. And then in 1984, an excise tax was levied on motorboat fuel that also goes to fisheries conservation. And so those two laws are, you know, they fund, they put gas in the tank for a wildlife biologist. They pay for the tools they need. They pay for data analysis. They pay their salaries.

They are the lifeblood of fish and wildlife conservation in the United States. They fund hunter education courses. So people that want to go hunting, not just youth, but adults take these classes. They learn safe handling of firearms, not just in the field, but in the home. There's on the sportfish restoration side, the Dingle Johnson side, those monies go for boating access, angler access. It's really, really phenomenal what these two laws have done. I really have an affinity for history. And I've collected some old hunting and fishing licenses and some hunting proclamations.

They have one from New Mexico from 1915 and another one from Ohio from 1931. And what's interesting is not just what's on them, but what is not on them. And in some of these, like the one in Ohio in 1930 or 1931, white-tailed deer aren't on there. wild turkey aren't on there. Rough grouse aren't on the hunting proclamations because you couldn't hunt them. There weren't any deer. And Putnamarson and Dingle Johnson

have been so useful in promoting the restoration of really important wildlife and fisheries. Here in New Mexico, pronghorn, antelope were almost entirely extirpated from New Mexico. And that's not the case anymore. I can drive not too far from my home and I can see pronghorn bounding across the prairie. It's really, really beautiful. Craig Springer is with us, fish biologist, writer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

is book America's Bountiful Waters. You're involved with an organization called Partner with a Pair. People can find it at partner with a payer.org. What does the organization do and how does it help advance the efforts of things like Pittman Robertson and Dingle Johnson? Yeah, partner with a pair.org is it's not really an organization. It's just a website where we park stories that I've published and videos that are produced headed up by my supervisor, Tom Decker, who happens to be very good friends with Al Stewart. Partnering with a pair. There's some overlap, you might say, between partnering with a pair, what we are endeavoring to do and what the Nimrod education endeavors to do while the Nimrod are more on the general public side, partnering with a payer. What we're endeavoring to do is communicate better with the payer being the industries. The industries are the writing the quarterly

checks to Treasury to fund Dingell Johnson and Pittman Robertson. So a partner with a pair. dot org. And I encourage listeners to check it out, partner with a pair.org. You can see some really crisp, wonderfully produced videos about how the work done in the factories at Smith and Wesson, Sig Sour Firearms, St. Croy and, I think it's in Michigan. I hope I got there, not Michigan, Wisconsin, the rodmakers, how these folks, how these craftsmen and women, how what they do, things they create are actually the currency of conservation. You know, when they're building a shaft for an arrow, there's a little bit of money that goes from that sale of that item.

And at its first sale, there's a little bit of that money that goes to U.S. Treasury. So that is the currency of conservation. And you can learn about how those monies are put to use in some videos. You can see some really great videos on folks that are, they've gone. out to bear dens. And while the bears are hibernating, they just minorly disrupt them, collect important data on the bears and take blood samples and other measurements of the cubs and provides really essential information and the biological information.

And folks from the manufacturers like Colt and Sig Sauer, they've had the opportunity to go out and see how the monies that they pay U.S. Treasury, how the state agencies, state fishmolife agencies are using these monies. I'm guessing while... So check out partner with a pair.org. I'm guessing while hibernating is, in fact, the best time to visit a bear den, correct? That's correct. And it is my only...

Yeah, it's the safest. Let's put it that way. Craig, I mentioned earlier that you do some writing for us here at Hillsdale College in connection with the newsletter that the Nimrod Education Center produces. you can find more about the Nimrod Education Center at Hillsdale.edu. How do your passions and your work dovetail with the mission of the Nimrod Education Center here at Hillsdale? Well, actually, Scott, what I've done is the things that I've produced for Partner with a Perey.org for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I am a U.S. Fishman Life Service employee.

Just to be clear, I've just shared those with Al Stewart and the Nimrod Education Center. But the overlap, as I touched upon earlier, is that we want folks to understand the model for conservation, how conservation is funded. And if it weren't for those that hunted and fished bought those things that are necessary for those lifestyle choices, conservation wouldn't be funded. And when biologists, let's say with the Michigan DNR are managing. habitat, you know, essentially funded by and the interest for white-tailed deer, there's other things that are benefiting by rabbits, warblers, songbirds, that sort of thing. In fact, I just, where I live just near Santa Fe, we're having spring migrants, migrating birds is coming through, and there's a bird called Audubon's Warbler.

He's black and he's got some yellow on him. In fact, a nickname for it as a butterbutt because he's got like this little yellow tab right on his rump. And they're moving through. And I was watching some of them the other day, a little water source I have out. And it just really put a kick in my step, if you will, a little lift in my heart thinking about these birds and how they benefit by all the conservation work that's been done. So these conservation funding sources, they benefit more than just, you know, bears and deer and antelope and that sort of thing. It's, the benefit is much broader.

And Craig Springer, before we let you go, I know there's also a family connection that you have to some Hillsdale charter schools as well. How is your family been involved? Well, I had been familiar with Hillsdale College since I was a boy. My mother got in primus in the mail, gosh, going back 50 years. So I was about 10 years old when I first remember seeing it. So I've been familiar with Hillsdale for a long time. And about 10, 12 years ago, I saw a newspaper story in a local paper that Hillsdale College was planning a charter school.

nearby. And I was like, no, not that Hillsdale. And sure enough, I thought it might have been a typo, but no, it was. And a Hillsdale member school was planted near, near us. It is literally within walking distance of my home. And that school, a few years after it got its legs underneath it, we enrolled, we have three children and we enrolled all three of them. And two graduated from, a member school. I have a daughter graduated. The son graduated in 2018. And he's since graduated from New Mexico State University. He earned a degree in history. And a daughter graduated in 2021. And in about two weeks, she's headed off to the medical school at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. And I still have a daughter that the school unfortunately changed to a curriculum school last year. And I have a daughter who is soon to be a high school senior. And the experience has just been wonderful. The teachers are excellent.

And I told my kids I was going to do this interview, and they said, oh, you got to give a shout out to Tim and Terry Theory. Terry Theory was a master teacher. She has since moved on to another member school in Gallup, New Mexico. But Tim and Terry Theory, husband and wife, they moved from North – East Indiana to come and teach here in New Mexico. Excellent people, excellent teachers. In fact, my daughter gives much credit to Terry Theory for encouraging her to pursue science.

And David Drury is one of the history teachers. David Knuckles teaches civics. Wonderful, a lot of great teachers there. Fantastic. Craig Springer is a fish biologist or writer with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Also helps with content for the Nimrod Center newsletter here at Hillsdale College and his book, America's Bountiful Waters, 150 years of fisheries, conservation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You can find it and more at craigspringer.com.

Craig, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, so much. More of our interviews and conversations at our website, Radiofreehillsdale.com. Click on student shows and features. And I'm Scott Bertram. on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.