Ep. 892: Ryan Callaghan on Public Lands and Conservation

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers President and CEO Ryan Callaghan. Topics discussed: Cal’s life as a new dad and new CEO; the BHA mission; creating coalitions, community, and giving a shit; how our natural resources are not guaranteed; politicians claiming to carry TR’s torch; throwing the baby out with the bathwater in regards to regulation; approaching rollbacks and management changes with clarity; motivation behind scrapping the Roadless Rule; the pitfalls of absolutism; corner crossing; being engaged in the minutiae; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:58Speaker 03

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• 1:07Steven Rinella?

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• 1:32Steven Rinella?

  Good Lord, it's Ryan Callahan, back from the dead.

• 1:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:36Steven Rinella?

  Or back from fatherhood. You had a baby.

• 1:39Speaker 05

  I assisted in having a baby.

• 1:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. How long ago?

• 1:44Speaker 05

  We, so Friday is the birthday, so it's very easy to keep track. Unless you're in between Fridays like we are right now.

• 1:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 05

  So it's, oh, two and a half weeks.

• 1:54Steven Rinella?

  Two and a half weeks?

• 1:55Speaker 05

  No, three weeks.

• 1:56Steven Rinella?

  First child ever.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  Three and a half weeks, yeah. First, first child ever. And baby boy came out seven pounds, five ounces, and...

• 2:06Steven Rinella?

  That, that's a stat that people share, but I don't think that that's...

• 2:12Speaker 05

  It's all relative.

• 2:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't know that that means a lot to people.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  Everything perfectly average, like the, the doc said, like perfectly average, big hands, big feet.

• 2:22Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 2:23Speaker 05

  But might grow into those type of thing.

• 2:25Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  And it was kinda hilarious.

• 2:27Steven Rinella?

  An average little baby.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah, perfectly average, but you're like, oh, kinda like clown hands and clown feet.

• 2:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Which is funny. And then definitely my hairline, which is a bummer for that kid.

• 2:38Steven Rinella?

  The baby has your hairline.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:40Steven Rinella?

  It's like high, high up.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Widow's peak comes back real far.

• 2:45Steven Rinella?

  Born with a widow's peak.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yep.

• 2:48Steven Rinella?

  What's your biggest takeaway so far being a dad?

• 2:53Speaker 05

  I, you know, like the biggest thing is, oh my, it's not that big of a deal. As like, I think we're blessed for the fact that it's not, we don't fall in any of like the horror story categories.

• 3:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  Um, it is a hands on thing.

• 3:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 3:15Speaker 05

  But the thing that I just keep coming back to is I'm like, oh my God, I cannot, paid parental leave? How did people manage this without paid parental leave?

• 3:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 3:27Speaker 05

  I'm like, that is such a, an, an, like, that is the thing that makes this thing doable.

• 3:33Steven Rinella?

  You know, you know, they give you in the military, the dad, three days.

• 3:38Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:38Steven Rinella?

  You have three days.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  I was talking to my buddy Kyler, who I used to build houses with, and he's like, two days per kid. That's what we do.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  You know, and I'm like, I'm just like so blown away by it. Like I get to focus on this as my job. And get through that initial learning curve. It's all a learning curve, but, and will be forever, I suppose. But I, I'm just blown away by that. I'm like, this is, and I, I just feel like it's gotta like make for better relationships with, you know, between the, the parent and child bond and all those things.

• 4:14Steven Rinella?

  Gets to be there and help a little bit at first.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 4:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:18Steven Rinella?

  Did, no, I took note that you somehow managed to.

• 4:23Steven Rinella?

  Get the baby out of the hospital without it having a name.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 4:29Steven Rinella?

  And when we had our kids, I felt that by the time we went away, they had a name.

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 4:36Steven Rinella?

  How, how did you, what did you have to say to say that I don't know the name yet?

• 4:41Speaker 05

  You know, the thing that I think got us out of there without the name is the fact that somebody was like, well, I thought you legally had to have a name. And I said, no, you don't. And the hospital admin person kind of pauses for a second.

• 4:55Steven Rinella?

  Are you serious? You, you guys discussed it.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Because we were fully being like, oh yeah, we're going to see the little nipper. This is how the whole thing's going to go. And by the time we leave, we'll have the name.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  Like, he looks like a Chucky.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Exactly. And you're just bugged nonstop to the point where I'm like, hey, Sam has got to get some rest. You know, but every shift change, there's vitals and then

• 5:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  All the, the things and, and so we just got to the point where we're like, we have got to get out of here. There's no rest. There's no time to actually just like sit with this and

• 5:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 05

  Figure things out. And then, yeah, I will tell you that we are still nameless. Here at three and a half weeks in, but we are very, very close to about three names right now.

• 5:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:52Steven Rinella?

  Now,

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  the, the mother.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 5:57Steven Rinella?

  Shared, I heard this secondhand. Sam shared with another friend of ours that she said it took Cal months to name his dog.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 6:07Steven Rinella?

  So I don't know, maybe it's going to take a while.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  Uh, a lot of, it might be a generational thing, or it might just be certain people, but I've, a lot of the folks in my extended friends and family have been like, oh yeah, none of my kids came home with a name.

• 6:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  I just felt like, I don't know why, I don't know where I got the idea, but I just came away thinking that it was like, like it was like an edict from God that you.

• 6:36Steven Rinella?

  Name before they come out.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Yep. Oh, yeah.

• 6:39Steven Rinella?

  Now, now that I'm learning, it's not, it's too late. They all got names.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  My grandpa passed away like three months before, um, he had like this, these series of complications that were like, you're gonna have to go in and get your chest drained and all these things in order to stay alive to meet this baby.

• 6:59Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Um, and he was in perfect mind and, and, you know, so it was a bummer 91. Um, or 92, 91 or 92 and, and, uh, and, you know, he's a James.

• 7:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 7:14Speaker 05

  And so I was like, you know, I can't get the name James out of my head because I was so excited for this, for Gramps to meet this kid. And then, you know, I was like, hey, you gotta stick around. And he's like, well, how long is that gonna be? It was like three months. And he's like, yeah.

• 7:31Steven Rinella?

  And didn't make it?

• 7:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. He's like, I'll see him later.

• 7:34Steven Rinella?

  Huh, no kidding.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, because yeah, he just was, he had, you know, he was an old doc and stuff, didn't, you know, had like do not resuscitate and all the things.

• 7:44Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  He had his plan laid out of like not wanting.

• 7:47Steven Rinella?

  I didn't know it. So he passed away.

• 7:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 7:50Steven Rinella?

  Maybe I can't, I don't think I knew that.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's like three and a half months ago now. Um,

• 7:56Speaker 05

  you know, so, but that was like, and I think James is still in the running.

• 8:02Steven Rinella?

  Uh.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  Uh, but now we're like so far down the name rabbit hole.

• 8:06Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  There's like the social pressure of being like, oh, you guys waited three months and you came up with Jim.

• 8:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, yeah, they're expecting some real razzle dazzle now, man. They're expecting like something crazy, you know?

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah. And a bunch of folks were like, um, Snort was such an awesome name for your dog. We're really, really can't wait to hear what you named the kid.

• 8:27Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 8:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:29Steven Rinella?

  Well, you could take snort, give that name to the kid and then think of a new name for the dog.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 8:34Steven Rinella?

  If you needed to do something like that.

• 8:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, but we also kind of already did that because I had gotten in a panic about getting a new puppy to give snort some backup prior to the kid showing up.

• 8:49Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:50Speaker 05

  That didn't happen, but the breeder that I got snort from her, the snort sister, the same litter, was having her last litter. And, uh, I was like, oh my God, I gotta have one of those dogs.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  And, um, I just, just got that dog yesterday.

• 9:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  So that dog got one of the kid names right away. So we named, named the puppy.

• 9:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you took a discard and gave it to the dog?

• 9:17Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep.

• 9:18Steven Rinella?

  Hold on, you, you have a two and a half week old baby and you went and brought a dog into the house?

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the dog's way more advanced than the kid is. Dog's eight weeks old.

• 9:27Steven Rinella?

  So because they're in, they're living in dog years?

• 9:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 9:31Steven Rinella?

  Well, man, much as I love babies, I want to talk about, um, your other big life change.

• 9:38Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 9:39Steven Rinella?

  So, uh, a lot, a lot of you listeners know Cal from Cal's Week in Review. And a lot of you know that Cal recently went over, not even, what, I don't know, a few months ago, six months ago?

• 9:50Speaker 05

  Six months now.

• 9:51Steven Rinella?

  Six months ago, Cal took over as, I believe like, is it CEO?

• 9:55Speaker 05

  It's president and CEO.

• 9:57Steven Rinella?

  President and CEO of the conservation organization, backcountry hunters and anglers.

• 10:06Steven Rinella?

  What's going on? How's that been?

• 10:09Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, it's been awesome. I, I mean, as you know, like, I found like every which way to make all my previous jobs harder than they needed to be.

• 10:21Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 10:21Speaker 05

  Cause I was always trying to find, uh, good conservation stories or angles or, or ways to make bigger impacts. And that gets, it's a way more complicated job.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  But it's also in a way more simple and focused.

• 10:41Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  Cause it's like, that's what I'm doing as my job every minute of the day.

• 10:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And you're, you're leading the team of how many people?

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Um, right now we are thirty six.

• 10:53Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. So, membership organization, um, active membership. You know, we got like a bunch of members that aren't active.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  Active membership, we're a little over thirty thousand right now.

• 11:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Uh, growing, which is great to see. And then, uh, forty-four chapters, active chapters across North America, you know, we have, they're not chapters anymore because they're officially standalone, uh, nonprofits in Canada.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Alberta and British Columbia. And, um, which is, you know, out here, we have a lot of cross-border issues.

• 11:36Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  Conservation issues. Um, and then, um,

• 11:44Speaker 05

  yeah, we have, everybody kind of works on everything, but it's like a stewardship. So like hands-on, dirt underneath fingernails, side of the house, um, policy. And, and I kind of break it down into like community building, right? So.

• 12:04Steven Rinella?

  I think people know, like, people that follow these things, people that support the org know that BHA, as, as it's commonly known, the BHA

• 12:16Steven Rinella?

  stands for public lands. But like, like, how do you describe, like, a layer deeper? How do you describe BHA to somebody? When you say like, our mission is to what?

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because.

• 12:34Speaker 05

  The scope of the organization, and I'm not beating up on anybody, right? But it's like trout unlimited.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  I got it.

• 12:42Speaker 05

  They're like, okay, general ideas. Yeah. Yeah. And then people are like, well, what does it at BHA? What is it that they actually do?

• 12:50Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Our MEF? Yep. Um, and intentionally, the, the scope of BHA was really broad because they wanted to fill all these gaps that were kind of getting left out of some of these species specific hook and bullet organizations. And oftentimes that would just be like Beal and Land.

• 13:17Steven Rinella?

  Good.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Uh, wilderness. Uh, and there's wilderness organizations out there, but there weren't any that were really like firmly pro hunt, pro fish.

• 13:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Um, they may have been at one point and they, they work on similar issues, but it's not like the masthead. And, uh, that idea is sound, but it makes the, the, the mission huge. I think the benefit is we can think a little more holistically, but the negative is we get spread really thin. So by and large, if we were a, like a for-profit business, building the widget, as they say in the business world, that widget would be conservation leaders. And it's like people who show up and want to do stuff.

• 14:09Speaker 05

  And that is advocate for their issues, um, which, you know, if you're working on behalf of BHA, it's, it's our issues too. But public land, public water, public wildlife, and the access word would be like access to those things.

• 14:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Um, and that can get kind of nuanced on, on the wildlife side of things. Um, but it makes the organization a little more swift and adaptable. And then on stewardship, it is literally coming out and augmenting landscapes. So habitat work, which for us would by and large be, um, trail improvements and, uh, juniper removal, um, some planting. Um, but our migration corridor work is.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Really, really significant. And again, because of our scope, nobody really knows about it, but we just got the Bureau of Land Management's Conservation Partner of the Year Award.

• 15:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Which, like, we just punched so far out of our weight class. There are a lot of really big organizations get this that have hundreds of employees and deal in many, many millions of dollars of federal grant work to do this stuff. And so, yeah, really incredible that we got this award. And we almost exclusively remove or augment fence within migration corridors.

• 15:41Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  Which, basically, you have your big grazing allotment.

• 15:48Steven Rinella?

  Doing like the physical work.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  The physical work.

• 15:50Steven Rinella?

  So people might use GPS collar data or car crash data to know that these are problematic areas along migration corridors and do the physical hands-on work of removing barriers.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, and oftentimes, it's your grazer on the ground who has their allotment. And they're like, you can't keep a fence up here.

• 16:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  Like, we build them in the spring, and winter migration comes and they all go down, type of thing.

• 16:20Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 16:20Speaker 05

  And so, we'll go in there, survey those fence lines. And so, you have like your allotment fences, which, kind of by design of the BLM, are always firm. Like, they're always a non-negotiable. And we'll go in and augment those fences to wildlife-friendly.

• 16:40Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  And then you have your interior fences that basically create pastures within that allotment. Those ones are negotiable. So if they, there's a lot.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  The US used to produce a lot of sheep, right? And there's a lot of that, um, you know, uh, square fencing out there on the landscape.

• 17:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I always call it hog wire. I don't know what they, yeah, I don't know what they're supposed to call it.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  Um, and

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  Like just for people listening, like a man, everybody can picture a barbed wire fence.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:18Steven Rinella?

  And, and you'll talk about whether it's three strand or four strand, whatever. And, and for wildlife friendly fencing, there's considerations about how low the bottom strand is, meaning can pronghorn or whatever get under it. There's considerations about how high the top strand is. Like can it, will it stop stuff from being able to jump it, right? Does that have barbs on it that could hang stuff up? Then there's this other question of when you put these, these panels in that have like eight inch squares.

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 17:56Steven Rinella?

  Which no big game's getting, no big game's getting through that.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:01Steven Rinella?

  By going under, right?

• 18:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and it's a, a small game thing too, right? And they're hell on sage grouse and, um, and like,

• 18:12Speaker 05

  if you can picture, uh, an animal on the landscape, you can find it dead in one of those fences somehow, some way. Mountain lions, bobcats, uh, everything. But, um, so go in, cut that stuff down, roll it up, pack it out. Um, also, uh, installing virtual fence. So there's, yeah, there's big grants out there for the, the actual producer to, um, trial, virtual fencing, right? So we'll put up the, and then it's vents is the, the working term, right?

• 18:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  Um, put up towers for, that creates the connectivity for each individual collar.

• 18:52Steven Rinella?

  No kidding. Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, and so there's a bunch of cool stuff happening out there. Um, and the, the BLM uses, um,

• 19:05Speaker 05

  Their own math to like measure impact on on there and and depending on where you are in those migration corridors, you can, you know, it's all hard. But we had one project last year that was a one day fence pole, 2.1 miles and the impact because of the the location was over 30,000 miles of of positive impact within that migration corridor.

• 19:33Steven Rinella?

  Help me understand that.

• 19:35Speaker 05

  It's, I think it's because of bottlenecks that animals are moving through.

• 19:39Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  And dispersing too.

• 19:41Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  Um, and then, and then some of them are six miles and way less.

• 19:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Too. So our job, the stewardship ship team's job is to look at these projects and then because most of what we do, and this is like the doing things the hard way, but I think but in the long run, the better way is we're trying to empower whoever wants to show up to do the work. So volunteers, because we want people to have that sense of ownership in their public lands and resources.

• 20:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  So, and then they're all mixed groups. So you have a lot of people who will, because we'll, we'll, we'll put up signage at like REIs and and try to get people from all slices of the pie.

• 20:35Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  To show up and they're in this mixed group. And we try to get people to camp out on a Friday night. So you leave work with your car camp and stuff.

• 20:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  Ideally, show up Friday night. Oftentimes, we try to have some sort of wild game food there.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  For the volunteers. And then we get to talk about. Wild food and where it comes from and and. Everybody gets a taste of that. The next morning you get a brief on what we're gonna do that day. You get tools, you get team leads, you get lots and lots of repeat volunteers on these things. So they get, you know, you kind of have like. Uh, crew chiefs that are volunteers too. Um, and then you're out there rubbing shoulders with hunters, non hunters.

• 21:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  Birders, whatever, you know, people who just thought it was was neat. Um, and and certainly people. All across the skill level spectrum. And then you have this sweat equity in your in your public lands. You have um Bureau of Land Management professionals out there. Um, oftentimes you have the grazers out there too. And. It's really the secret sauce, right? Cause you have people who are like, nobody gives a shit about this stuff. And then they kind of get blown away by like, oh.

• 22:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, man.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  These really random people.

• 22:02Steven Rinella?

  People showing up and doing it.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Care about this stuff.

• 22:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Um, so we've gotten 2,000. Volunteers out on the landscape right now and you know, the idea, right? Is like, there'll be like a little ripple effect.

• 22:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 05

  Um. Within those communities and and they get to be like, oh, my gosh, this is really hard stuff. And but it has an outsized impact.

• 22:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  And rub shoulders with new people, tried wild game for the first time. And um. So our our stewardship coordinators have a really hard job. Uh, cause they're handling a lot of logistics and trying to find these projects where you can conceivably. Draw from a bunch of population centers to get people out. Um. And then make sure that you have people on the ground too, that are supportive of the work, right?

• 22:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 05

  Because you have a lot of burned out folks on the landscape who are like.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Because these contracts, some of these contracts don't get bid on. Some of these contracts get picked up by um groups that are well intentioned, but just can't. Get things done on the landscape and we want to have. A stellar reputation, right? Um, and so far it's working, right? So we got got that award, which is amazing.

• 23:18Steven Rinella?

  Get like, if you say you're gonna do it, you're gonna do it.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Now you guys. Here, you brought me this shirt. Phil, can you see this good? Oh, yeah. Cal brought me this shirt.

• 23:31Steven Rinella?

  So Michigan says this land is my land, but it's like the MI Michigan. And it shows in orange. It shows public land.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Thank you, buddy.

• 23:43Steven Rinella?

  Phil, tell me when you can best see this sucker. It looks great right now. Okay. Here's Michigan. It shows public land in orange. Okay. This is all public land in Michigan. And you were saying the point of the shirt is to show. Here's a stick. We oftentimes a lot of guys, especially people out West, associate public land with out West. And even just talking to you, you mentioned big grain migrations, juniper encroachment. Okay, these are like, these are sort of like Western things.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:12Steven Rinella?

  But then you got forty-four.

• 24:15Steven Rinella?

  Forty-four chapters.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:16Steven Rinella?

  All over in the east. Right?

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:19Steven Rinella?

  What, like, help me understand that. So Michigan, I get it. Like, man, there's a boatload of public land in Michigan. But what, but if you go south of there, Ohio, Indiana, right, much less.

• 24:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 24:34Steven Rinella?

  Right? You get up in the Northeast, you get more, but you got these pockets where there's not much.

• 24:40Steven Rinella?

  But you got chapters there and you got volunteers there. If, what is the, what is the eastern equivalent of pulling fences? What is the eastern equivalent of improving grasslands by removing junipers? In areas where junipers are encroaching on Western grasslands? Like, what does that look like somewhere else?

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Well, um, the juniper, like the green glacier thing that I know we've covered on, on Meat Eater before, that juniper encroachment into our grasslands is a major issue throughout the whole prairie states. Um, and, and we'll do some of that work in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa.

• 25:19Speaker 05

  And and then there's, there's a lot of burning, you know, out, out in those states too. And then just low barrier to entry, right? Like what BHA has been doing well. And, and really my dream, right, is, is to have an accessible conservation group. To where it's like, if you don't have a bunch of money, we still got plenty of things for you to do. If, if you don't, um, want to go to a banquet, we got stuff for you to do if, you know. I want the whole political spectrum, the whole, uh, working class spectrum. To be invested in their public land, public water and public wildlife.

• 26:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Even if you never step foot or interact with those things, I got lots of arguments as to why they should matter.

• 26:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 05

  Um, but if you show up to these community events, you get to meet these people firsthand. And you may not have a thing in common, other than the fact that you appreciate this stuff, but. Turns out that's a lot, right? So, um, stewardship in some areas may never get beyond. A public land trash pickup.

• 26:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  And but oftentimes we'll, we'll make them, you know, it's like what we talk about a lot, right? It's like you can have a really strong message, message as long as it's like 80% fun.

• 26:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  So, um, we'll have, uh, biologists come out and talk about turkeys. Uh, and why, what you're doing, picking up trash in this area is a good thing for that resource. Or, um, talk about burning ecology, stuff like that, um, have giveaways. But make it like a family friendly event.

• 27:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  Cause you know, one of the things that I'm very convinced on is like, we got to get this stewardship. Ownership mindset, like indoctrinated into people in, in, as young as we can get them.

• 27:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  Because, you know.

• 27:21Steven Rinella?

  That's some Aldo Leopold stuff, man. Like.

• 27:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:25Steven Rinella?

  That.

• 27:27Steven Rinella?

  Being an active participant.

• 27:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:30Steven Rinella?

  Out on the landscape, man, like his thing of like the, you know, the,

• 27:36Steven Rinella?

  the person wielding the, the person wielding the axe or whatever, you know, like, like the, the person out working on the landscape as, as a conservationist, you know?

• 27:44Speaker 05

  And, and, and I would ask.

• 27:46Steven Rinella?

  I mean, I love going down and winning. I love going down and bidding on auction items at the banquet as much as the next guy, but like, there's more to it.

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• 29:24Speaker 05

  There's this thing that I think's gotten us in trouble over the years, which is like, somebody else will do it for us. Hmm. And that, that is part of the benefit of a membership organization. Like, we have people at the State House, at the Capitol, because you have a job and, and you cannot be there. Hmm. Um, but we, we work our asses off to empower volunteers to be there too, and, and get that feeling of, of, of empowerment and, and ownership of, I get to represent myself and my community at the Fish and Game Committee, or at, in front of Congress even, right?

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Um, but I, I feel really strongly that we kind of got in this like, oh, the Ranger will come by and pick that up. Yeah. Type of mindset. The government's gonna do it for me. And it's like, now we're in this crazy political football age, where you can take whole programs of the government doing it for you, and they're gone in the blink of an eye, right? Yeah. And then it's like, okay, well, is everybody gonna get so pissed that we're gonna be like, okay, sell it? Right? Well, there's all sorts of ways that we can try to prevent that through working within, uh, the political spectrum. Hmm.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  But the surefire way to prevent that is if everybody just gives a shit. Yeah. And is like, oh my God, this is ours. It's a national treasure. We're invested in this. Um, and I learned about this in kindergarten and grade school and, you know, we are invested as Americans in our natural resources. Yep. And so much so that they go on beyond the next, uh, administration. Yep. Right? We're talking about these things in perpetuity. And that's part of the, what community building will do is you go, oh, the burden's not just mine.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  It's Steve Rennellis and Phil the Engineer and all these people from across the spectrum. Like, we all are invested in this. It is ours. It's our American right. And it's, you get away from some of this, this kind of politics stuff, this choosing side stuff, because this stuff is squarely in the middle.

• 31:55Steven Rinella?

  There's a level of

• 31:59Steven Rinella?

  realizing about public lands and public land resources and in a personal responsibility to them. There's a level of maturity that is required to see those places that way. And I say this from my own experience and, and I've mentioned, I've talked about this a bunch before. I grew up near what was that Manistee National Forest. I think it's got a slightly more complicated name now, but that's kind of the southern end of Manistee National Forest.

• 32:29Steven Rinella?

  We hunted on it, hunted rabbits on it, trapped it, recreated on it, had BB gun wars on it. It was like,

• 32:37Steven Rinella?

  we viewed it and treated it as though it fell from the sky. It was just that it was there, always had been there, always would be there. And there was no sense of personal ownership. Right? And it would be that you'd go to kegger parties and the kegger parties would be on the national forest. And you'd burn tires and burn pallets and, you know, 10th grade, whatever. And then walk away because it's just here.

• 33:12Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:12Steven Rinella?

  Someone will get it. Do you know what I mean?

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 33:14Steven Rinella?

  And it was like, it took, and I don't know if I, even if I had someone telling me.

• 33:23Steven Rinella?

  The conservation history of those spaces and someone telling me what is required to maintain these places and the deliberate actions that took place to make them here and to make them available and make them public, even if you told me that, it might not have clicked that I was a certain age anyway.

• 33:40Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 33:40Steven Rinella?

  But I think that it would have definitely helped if someone had articulated it to me. But I don't think it was really even known or recognized by our elders.

• 33:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:54Steven Rinella?

  Like, people didn't, the turn, like, this is in Michigan, the vocabulary wasn't there.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 34:04Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? No one, even the grownups, if I'd have said, why is this here? No one would have said, oh, it was because of this act of Congress or the actions of this president. And like, here's all the deliberate steps that took place to make it what it is. And here's the management strategy and here's what does happen and doesn't happen. And here's the work that goes into it. It was absent.

• 34:28Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 34:29Steven Rinella?

  It was absent. Um, I don't know what I'm telling you. I'm telling you something you already know, but when you go out in the woods, you see where people like just decided to like shoot trees down for target practice and like trash a place. It is, it's because it's like, they view it like a, like a guarantee.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 34:48Steven Rinella?

  Do you follow me?

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Oh, and there's that and there, there is just what you said, like, they don't know.

• 34:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  Like when we, um, we're, yeah, I'm having a lot of conversations with, with landowners here in the state of Montana, like, like mid leveled, a bit large landowners in the state of Montana and, um, there's a lot of just like for sure and certain things that come out and, and it's like the percentage of folks who display poor behavior on private and public land.

• 35:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 05

  The vast, vast, vast majority just do not have a fricking clue at this point.

• 35:26Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Right? They have no idea about agriculture. They have no idea about, um, a lot of.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  Whether it's in the regulation book or not, the uh, kinda like the hunter's code, the ethics of certain things, the stuff that we talk about a lot, like just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right in all cases type of thing. And um, and then there's a percentage that are just doing bad stuff.

• 35:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 05

  Right?

• 35:53Steven Rinella?

  But if I had, man, I feel like, I feel like when I was a kid, if it had been that my old man dragged us out to go do a stream project on the national forest, or in some way instilled this idea that like, this is sweet, and it's here because people, it's not here by accident.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 36:18Steven Rinella?

  Right? It's here because people work for it and cherish it. It might've set me off in a different direction earlier. But I think a lot of places it's absent, man. It's absent. So what I'm getting at with that is that like, that kinda work of just, it results, like, the labor that you're talking about results in a good result, or sorry, it yields a good result, moving a fence, improving migration, but it's more than that, because it probably is very eye-opening for people to, to all of a sudden understand like, oh,

• 36:53Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 36:54Steven Rinella?

  What this is.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 36:55Steven Rinella?

  You know, I understand now what this is, man. This is like a thing we fight for.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  And that's like, we can use that cash to go, that grant money, we can, it's in our power to use that cash to go pay contractors.

• 37:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Right? And just third-party the whole deal.

• 37:14Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  But what's the, the long-term effect of that?

• 37:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Right? It's like, I would say not much in comparison, so.

• 37:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, to make it, yeah, to be able to build a generation of people who kind, who just are invited to see it as a thing that you labor for.

• 37:34Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's a thing that people labor for and is a thing that took deliberate actions to create for you would make it a lot harder to go shit it up.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  And I think we've had as a nation, as a by and large, like an ethos of um, serious reverence for uh, public wildlife, for instance, right? Like, there's all, you can research all sorts of articles that were in papers of like, saw a deer today, right? Whitetail deer. Was spotted on so and so's place, out by whatever. That was in the, in the newspaper.

• 38:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like it was noteworthy.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, it was a really big deal. And so there's this era of extreme scarcity that came on the back end of an era of, um, I would say like abundance to, um,

• 38:35Speaker 05

  greed, which led into, oh my God, I better get it before it's gone. It's going to be gone anyway.

• 38:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  And then here comes this overwhelming surge of, uh, again reverence and, and what we call conservation today. And then I think your dad's era, right? It was like, I really don't want to think about anything by and large. I've been through a lot. I'm more out here for, um, a level of independence and, and therapy of some sort. Um, and now I can point to like many, many examples across Western states that are seeing a lot of, um, hunter pressure relative to the history of those states.

• 39:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 05

  Or, um, uh, dull sheep in Alaska, um, where hunter behavior anecdotally is really changed around that resource. Where it used to just be like, you'd get laughed out of town if you shot a legal ram. But now it's like a legal RAM is what you're after because by God, if I don't get it now.

• 39:47Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  It's going away anyway, type of mindset, right? Um, and throughout all of these changes in history, our federal workforce peaked in the 1970s. And the demands on that public ground are have only increased and that workforce hasn't increased along with those demands. And now we're dropping way back down. And my only point here is that at the beginning of the national park system or the forest system, um, the refuge system, there was never a point in time where there were so many wardens on the landscape that you were going to get caught.

• 40:30Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Right? It was a social contract out there that was like, by God, you better respect this stuff. And it was the other users on the landscape that were really enforcing these things. Plus the idea of the super sneaky woods wise game warden that was going to pop out of nowhere type of thing, right?

• 40:51Steven Rinella?

  You know what's funny about that, man? I, uh, we hunted and fished all the time since I was a very little kid. I never got checked by a game warden until I was 20 years old.

• 40:59Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. Yep. I believe it.

• 41:01Steven Rinella?

  20 years old, never laid, I'm not, not that I didn't lay eyes on one, never got checked by one. You're right. I mean, it really is like, um, like speeding, you know?

• 41:12Steven Rinella?

  You kind of don't speed because you don't want a ticket.

• 41:15Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 41:16Steven Rinella?

  But in fishing game law, there is, there's a social contract, right? You don't go like, I better get a license because I'll get checked today. You're just like, you feel this moral obligation to get your license.

• 41:27Speaker 05

  Right. The math does not add up on getting checked.

• 41:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do it out of some like, because you do it because you believe in the system.

• 41:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:36Steven Rinella?

  To some degree.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, we were relatively small conservation group, right? But, um, I mean, if, if that is the goal, it will never end, but I would sure like it to, right? Like if we had a nationalistic pride in these resources, um, and they are resources. Extraction is, is part of who we are as well, but there's been many times throughout our history where we were like, oh my God. We need to self-regulate and that self-regulation turns into a whole system of regulations because it is just got to happen.

• 42:19Speaker 05

  And what's really interesting right now is like, I know through conversations, um, you know, from, from the White House throughout the Senate and the House. There, there is a drive right now for deregulation.

• 42:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 05

  And a lot of the people who are pushing for deregulation are not connected to these resources at all. There, there are many degrees of separation.

• 42:48Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 42:50Speaker 05

  But they are running off of, well, that's what the people want. Right? And our job, as is the job of a TRCP and, and many other conservation groups is to say like, yeah, there's changes that can be made. And there's antiquated things out there that don't make sense. But the reason that we're having this conversation right now is only because of regulation and the adherence to those.

• 43:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that there's anything left to argue about.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. On the hunting fishing side of things, we just wouldn't be having this conversation.

• 43:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Right? It's like,

• 43:26Steven Rinella?

  I mean, you're, you're, yeah.

• 43:29Steven Rinella?

  You're bringing up a huge point.

• 43:36Steven Rinella?

  I, I always like to bring up this point that, um, there's not a politician alive today that wouldn't like to be favorably compared to Theodore Roosevelt. Right? Anyone would be like, oh, if you're going to favorably compare me to TR, please, I'll accept. Not only that, there are politicians that claim the mantle of TR that are undeserving of, of that, but they, they want it so bad. They'll just take it for themselves.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 44:05Steven Rinella?

  They'll draw comparisons.

• 44:08Steven Rinella?

  It's like, I'm sorry, he was a regulation guy. He was a regulation guy because lack of regulation had brought us into the dark ages of American wildlife. And so when we applaud, when anyone applauds the North American model, when they applaud TR or TR being up on Mount Rushmore, what you're applauding is you're applauding someone saying, we are going to put limits. We are going to regulate harvest. We're going to regulate sale of wildlife. We're going to regulate timber extraction. It to then land

• 44:47Steven Rinella?

  in a spot to land then land in the luxury of saying that the American way is to deregulate. It's, it's mind boggling. Memories are so short.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Memories are so short. Um, you know, obviously there's an opportunity here right now, too.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  But one of the things that is certainly part of our mission at BHA is like, we have got to get, um, if, if you love doing anything on public lands or seeing anything on public lands,

• 45:24Speaker 05

  or seeing migratory birds, songbirds, whatever it is, like you have got to get active here and you got to start associating with other groups and finding these big common themes, right? So, um, obviously I know you guys have covered like roadless rule, a bunch, the executive order on OHB use, um, oil and gas, uh, lease sales, uh, deregulation through the big beautiful bill. Um, list really does go on and on. Um, that is the theme that is happening here is, is broad deregulation because that's what the American people want,

• 46:06Speaker 05

  right? And we have got to be like, wait, wait, wait, not that. And not that. And this could, can be done better. Um, and

• 46:16Steven Rinella?

  But there's a model of, there's a model of pointing to

• 46:22Steven Rinella?

  There's sort of a rhetorical strategy where you go find examples of regulations that are antiquated.

• 46:29Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 46:29Steven Rinella?

  Or regulations that don't work, or regulations that are just goofy. And maybe you always have been goofy, right? Or excessive. And you go, because of that, let's just ditch the whole thing.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 46:43Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's a point I bring up.

• 46:47Steven Rinella?

  Like a way I think about it is, is if you look, if you go back to COVID. COVID restrictions. You could look and say, and I saw people do it, I did it. The minute someone's like, man, you shouldn't, you need to be scared of the boxes that were delivered.

• 47:06Steven Rinella?

  In your yard, like leave them out there for a couple of days, you know? And then you hear someone say like, well, that's, that's ridiculous. And you're like, you get fixated on how dumb that was.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 47:16Steven Rinella?

  And then you get to where like, I'm not listening to any of this stuff. Right? You know what I mean?

• 47:21Speaker 05

  Like, yeah, remember the box thing?

• 47:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like the boxing dude.

• 47:23Speaker 05

  Pretty far off.

• 47:24Steven Rinella?

  I'm done washing my hands. The boxing was crazy.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:27Steven Rinella?

  That's like a human way where you, you find, you, you sort of see this category of things. One of those things seems crazy. And instead of isolating out the crazy one, you get where you're just done.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:41Steven Rinella?

  You're done. You see it in friendships. You have a great friendship with someone and they do a thing a couple of times. Eventually you're just like, I know, I know. He's got some nice things. I'm done.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 47:52Steven Rinella?

  You know, I think that there is, we hit these in, in like regulatory stuff where you'll hear about a crazy thing. And then people get like, bah.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:02Steven Rinella?

  Let's just go back to the old way, you know? And you kind of go like, you want to be like, well, let's, let's, let's address the real problems. But let's keep our eyes on what the goal is here.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 48:13Steven Rinella?

  Like, like, we agree that we want clean air and clean water and healthy wildlife populations. Like, we agree on that. And sure, let's talk about these things that are off. But we don't, we just, we, we jump to a radical. We jump to a radical thing.

• 48:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 48:30Steven Rinella?

  There's some government waste. Kill the whole thing, you know?

• 48:36Speaker 05

  insanely diverse landscape that we have, right? Like blessed as an American with unbelievable opportunities that can be so wildly different from an edge of one state to another state, or the end of a watershed to the top end of a watershed. The people on the ground understand that you can't like blanket manage all of this stuff. Like it is complicated and it does take time and it takes real on the ground knowledge to inform how that stuff needs to be managed.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  And that complicated, you know, time consuming approach to something that we will never be able to recreate ever, gets wrapped up in this like, well, see the government can't do anything, right?

• 49:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Right? What? This might be hard to answer. What? When you're talking about like, you're talking about doing work on BLM land, right? So you're coming in and doing like, you're coming in on there's federal property and you're coming in and doing work on federal property. So you have private people coming in and doing work on federal property. Or you could have private people, a private organization coming in and helping clear trails on federal land. So there's jobs that need to be done.

• 50:09Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 50:10Steven Rinella?

  On public lands that aren't getting done, aren't getting done all the way. And so there's a need for private people to come in and do it. Have you seen, like in your time in your role, and you've been involved in BHA for a very long time as a board member.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:25Steven Rinella?

  But so in your time there, particularly in your time in the leadership position, have you seen like literal situations where Doge cuts?

• 50:39Steven Rinella?

  Have left things undone that then that then private organizations have found a way to go in and get taken care of, or is it not, or is it not that literal?

• 50:53Speaker 05

  Um, there's certain like staffing is a huge issue because like it's not and like there was a time where there just literally wasn't a person in the office who could physically handle the check.

• 51:12Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 51:12Speaker 05

  Couldn't write the check, sign it, put it in a mailbox.

• 51:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 05

  Um, you just, that has to get done somehow. And there wasn't a backup mechanism for that.

• 51:25Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  Um, when we talk about inventorying a, a fence line, for example, um, you know, there, there's a lot of communication on the ground with, with the people on the ground, would be at a Rangeland ecologist, um, or, you know, on the Forest Service side, uh, any, any number of, of people, right? Um,

• 51:54Speaker 05

  they get stretched thin on a, on a bunch of things because they're not going out there to address problem A, and they run across problem B and they just ignore it.

• 52:03Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  Um, so there's gaps that I think the, the private sector is, is very capable of filling in, but oftentimes it's that, um, historical knowledge on a landscape.

• 52:21Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 52:22Speaker 05

  That is the real conduit to making that private sector work anywhere near efficient.

• 52:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you guys can't just roll up in a truck and decide what fence you want to start working on. I mean, it's gotta go, yeah.

• 52:34Speaker 05

  Oh, you're gonna come in on what road?

• 52:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:38Steven Rinella?

  I see that, yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 05

  You need to drive 300 miles around and come in on this road and it'll be faster and way less wear and tear on your equipment than trying to come in on the road that's 50 miles.

• 52:51Steven Rinella?

  So you find places where like just those, there's gaps in those pieces?

• 52:56Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 52:57Steven Rinella?

  Like like pass through individuals, aren't there?

• 52:59Speaker 05

  Yep, yep, for sure.

• 53:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 05

  For sure.

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• 54:33Steven Rinella?

  Can you think of anything from the last? Let's go back to the beginning of the current administration. What are things that happened in in like Trump two? And a lot of things get, I want to preface that a little bit. A lot of things get plugged to like the administration that are probably well outside of the way the view of the White House. Right? Like you'll hear like, you know, Trump is doing X or the administration is doing X. It'd be like, yes, the administration, but many layers removed from the White House, meaning in the White House, they're probably not aware of this. It's coming from downstream. Right?

• 55:12Steven Rinella?

  But can you think of many cases or any cases of things that have come out in the last year and a half?

• 55:21Steven Rinella?

  That uh that you can applaud. Jimmy, like, what are you looking at?

• 55:29Steven Rinella?

  That excites you?

• 55:31Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I do.

• 55:32Steven Rinella?

  And I'm not saying you have to provide something because I see I've I've seen some things.

• 55:37Speaker 05

  Oh, for sure.

• 55:38Steven Rinella?

  But but.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Well, I do.

• 55:40Steven Rinella?

  I haven't seen as many things to excite me as I've seen to depress me.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  That, uh, as you know, right? Like if you're you're in a leadership position, you have a lot of people providing you with with information. Um, and and some of those people um may or may not have agendas, but they they do want uh typically to make things go well and they're probably outsourcing information too. And we've come across many things here recently where we've heard directly from high level officials. Conversations like, well, we were told that everybody wanted this.

• 56:20Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  And you're telling me that that's not true. And why are we getting so much negative feedback on this thing that was overwhelmingly positive?

• 56:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  And you have the feeling in the back of your mind of like, oh, you were misinformed.

• 56:34Steven Rinella?

  Give me, give me an example.

• 56:35Speaker 05

  So.

• 56:37Steven Rinella?

  I don't want to leave you. I don't want to like leave you trying to struggle to understand my intents. Let me let me ask it a little bit differently.

• 56:46Steven Rinella?

  Um, our our organization, like like at media, we've talked a lot about we covered in Trump one, we covered a little bit during the Biden administration, we covered again in Trump two of the move in Trump two being the biggest move in this direction was like freeing up hunting and fishing opportunities. On.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Refuges.

• 57:10Steven Rinella?

  Refuges.

• 57:10Speaker 05

  Fish hatchery.

• 57:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, in some areas administered by the National Parks Service.

• 57:14Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:15Steven Rinella?

  And we've explained it, applauded it.

• 57:19Steven Rinella?

  Defended the rationale. Okay. The other day, someone sends me a op ed of someone saying like, a lot of media organizations, he doesn't name names. He's like, a lot of media organizations, a lot of wildlife organizations, a lot of conservation organizations refuse to acknowledge any of the positives. You know?

• 57:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:41Steven Rinella?

  And I looked at that and I'm like, man, that doesn't ring true to me.

• 57:48Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 57:48Steven Rinella?

  I've, I've read about this refuge system all over. The, the, the expanded hunting and fishing access on refuge systems. The New York Times attacked it unfairly and I addressed why I thought it was an unfair attack. We applauded it when it happened the first time, applauded it now, like no one's ignoring this. But it, but there has been a.

• 58:15Steven Rinella?

  In my mind, there's been an undeniable feeling of, of, of cascading bad news.

• 58:25Steven Rinella?

  And so I just wanna, I wanna ask you from like in your position.

• 58:32Steven Rinella?

  To not be guilty of what the op ed was saying, like from your position, yeah. What have you seen this ma- like, like what are you seeing lately at the federal level? That you're applauding or that you're liking?

• 58:44Speaker 05

  You know, I mean, several executive orders, uh, and I brought up the OHV one. It's a good example. It's having negative consequences right now, unfortunately, but, um, many of the executive orders are, are big statements that do at the end say like, unless there's currently a travel management plan in place.

• 59:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 05

  Right?

• 59:06Steven Rinella?

  Yep. Like I see, you know, I, I was putting the other day, I was putting like this, like if I said, let's say I said to my kids, I'm like, don't even ask me. Don't even ask me if you can spend the night at your friend's house. I don't want to hear any requests about that. It's done. And then later I'm like, I say.

• 59:26Steven Rinella?

  I don't know what the answer will be on an individual basis, but I'm okay to field requests now. But I don't know what I'll say, but you can at least bring the request to me. So some of these things have this like this, and it gets put into press like, um, oh, it's all open now. You can drive anywhere you want now.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 59:46Steven Rinella?

  You know, but you're looking to be like, if you read it in the fine print, it just says, we'll see. Case by case basis, right? But, but something shifts.

• 59:55Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah. And, and when it comes time to have a new travel management plan, it's going to be, these things are going to be considered.

• 1:00:01Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:02Speaker 05

  Right? But for the time being, if there's a travel management plan in place, that is the law.

• 1:00:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 05

  Um, and yeah, a lot of, a lot of media because of this need want for hyperbole have really, really put a ding on our public lands because they're saying, oh, all this stuff's open now.

• 1:00:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 05

  And that is not the case.

• 1:00:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  Um, and I can go into a bunch of work that we're doing right now to try to help some positive messaging around that.

• 1:00:36Steven Rinella?

  So, but what really is in the, what really is, everybody saw the headlines or not everybody, but there's a lot of headlines like, um, help me, help me describe the general headline about off-road use. Like what would be the general headline you saw about off-road use?

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Oh, the general, it would be like Trump rolls back bedrock travel. Uh, management plans that opens the, paves the way for, uh, off-road use.

• 1:01:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  Would probably be the, the thing, right?

• 1:01:12Steven Rinella?

  But what is happening there? Well, let's take this example, like what is happening there?

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  Well, so.

• 1:01:18Steven Rinella?

  When I saw it, I didn't get a, I didn't get a feeling without, you know, my, my knee jerk reaction was to be like, oh.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:01:26Steven Rinella?

  Yep. I don't like the sounds of that.

• 1:01:28Speaker 05

  Um, first of all, off-road on BLM and Forest Service land is kind of a misnomer because you can go off-road on these designated roads and trails.

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  Not cross-country travel.

• 1:01:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they all, they, when they say off-road, they mean off of pavement.

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Steven Rinella?

  Off of designated highways, off of county roads.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, big thoroughfare or main artery type of thing. And then that's broken into a single track motorized. Of, of course, there's a single track, non-motorized.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  Wilderness, no, no bicycles.

• 1:02:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  Right? Um, and then you have your, um, 50-inch or less width restriction four-wheel.

• 1:02:21Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  Um, and then you have your, your full-size like Jeep Trail, high clearance vehicle roads. And that's like, that's where you do your off-roading. And then there's certain areas where there is a designated spot for ripping around wherever you want. And it is visually the place to do that.

• 1:02:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Speaker 05

  Hard to mistake it for anything.

• 1:02:48Steven Rinella?

  Like Baja on some big sand dune or something.

• 1:02:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  Yep. Um, and then, so what the OHV order did was it said this Nixon-era uh, executive order, and then I want to say it's Carter, I'm a little sleep deprived right now. Carter era, uh, OHV executive order, we're going to rescind those. Um, they were, you know, I would say like very forward-thinking.

• 1:03:17Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  As far as like, hey, as this user group and technology expands, um, the impacts that we're seeing today are only going to be uh, exacerbated on the landscape.

• 1:03:30Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:03:31Speaker 05

  We have a lot of industry out, and this is something that gets lost a lot, right? Is we have a lot of extractive use industry that's out there.

• 1:03:40Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  And it will be a danger to individuals and an impediment to those industries if people are riding wherever.

• 1:03:49Speaker 05

  Helen gone, uh, and it will, uh, impact the return that we have on our growing forests for the timber industry. Um, and it's, it's a bad look. It causes, uh, erosion, which impacts our road systems and our culverts and our, uh, spawning habitats and our streams and you know, the, the typical cascading of effects, right?

• 1:04:16Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:04:17Speaker 05

  Um, and, and then the thing that most people saw was can, uh, the switch from a de facto closed unless posted open.

• 1:04:30Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:30Speaker 05

  Um, to open unless posted closed.

• 1:04:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:04:36Speaker 05

  And the way that that works is, uh, every district has a MVUM, a motor vehicle use map, which I always thought was a really sweet idea. It's, you know, you can go get an armload of them if you want, and they're typically at gas stations that are selling off-road gas and, uh, they're at your Ranger district offices and stuff like that. But you have that map in your possession. It shows you exactly what's open to what.

• 1:05:06Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:05:06Speaker 05

  And then it's supposed to work is kind of like an affidavit in your pocket too, to be like, oh, I know the rules.

• 1:05:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Speaker 05

  Um, and then, you know, be, because of like years and years and years of litigation, um, the way those things are posted and signed, they all have open dates and closed dates.

• 1:05:27Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  And, um, if you want to color outside the lines on those, if, for trail condition closures or whatever, if it's not within the dates, you're not going to get ticketed. You might get a talking to.

• 1:05:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Speaker 05

  But, um, that's, that's how that whole system works. And the implication of those headlines being like, oh my God, it's all.

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  Doom and gloom, Armageddon, it's all over.

• 1:05:53Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:54Speaker 05

  Um, a lot of people were like, oh, okay.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  And it more.

• 1:06:00Steven Rinella?

  What do you mean when you say, okay, what do you mean?

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  So we've just been getting a lot of reports from, uh,

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  districts all across North America saying like, we're seeing rampant cross-country travel, motorized cross-country travel and the destruction of signs and gates.

• 1:06:19Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  And as well as, um, the promotion of, of essentially fake news, like that everything's open now.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 05

  Versus, hey, travel management plans, ride responsibly.

• 1:06:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:06:37Steven Rinella?

  Like any changes that actually occur are forthcoming.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:06:42Steven Rinella?

  As they consider rule changes, but it wasn't something that all of a sudden announced from now on, unless if it doesn't say you can't go there, you can go wherever you want.

• 1:06:51Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep. And, um, you know, there's all sorts of implications there. But to go back to like the, the broader scale of management, when, um, you kind of get into the nuances of all the tools in it, in the toolbox of management, where you, you get really ticked that is like, well, why is this Forest Service road buttery smooth? And at the end of it, there's a big maintained campground and nice toilets and, and potable water or, uh, you know, frost-free taps that you can

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  get instant water at your campsite, while as this camp, this road is full of potholes. You gotta go really slow, especially if you're towing a camper.

• 1:07:39Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:40Speaker 05

  And then there's primitive sites at the end of that. And it's like, well, they don't know what they're doing. Well, a lot of times. Your travel management plan, your maintenance plan, those are all ways to disperse the amount of pressure that you get within your forest or BLM area, right? So you're like, yep, this one is, you know, way more conducive to bringing in big pump trucks to hit the pit toilets and, and, and maintaining at a larger scale. And it's very family friendly. We're going to divert a lot of people here.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  This road over here is more of a pain in the butt. The site's more remote. It's actually more sensitive to, so we actually want a little less human pressure up there. So that is the reason that the road's a pain in the ass.

• 1:08:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like no one's trying to make it a high traffic area.

• 1:08:45Speaker 05

  Exactly. And we also don't have the staff to maintain that one on a every single day basis like we do down here, which is why we're diverting more traffic down here.

• 1:09:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 05

  Type of thing.

• 1:09:01Steven Rinella?

  What do you think, what on, on the, on that OHV, on the off-road rule change? Or paving the way for

• 1:09:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Steven Rinella?

  rule changes going forward? What is the real deep down motivating factor? Like, what is someone after?

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  I, I think it is another case of just like the pendulum swinging really hard. I think, uh, roadless rule is, is also a case of this, the pendulum swinging really hard where, um, and, and we've gotten direct feedback.

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  As to, I just want to say like our communication at BHA has changed a lot. And I'm adamant that we take an issue, we break it down in a nonpartisan fashion. Take it or leave it. It is just what's happening. There's a page break. Here's BHA's position and why?

• 1:09:58Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  Uh, and we're a membership organization, which is awesome because I gotta say like this is what the membership wants. Um, and we actually, yeah, we just, we've had some high level meetings because people have been paying attention to our communications. And saying like, hey, thank you for not raking us over the coals on this.

• 1:10:18Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  We were told, everybody wants this.

• 1:10:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 05

  Like we were told that. Why is it that we're getting beat up here, here, here, here, and here? And I say, well, we represent a bunch of people who actually love this. And it is not always congruous with that. And the reason that we're in this situation is because, you know, certain, we kind of divert certain people up certain trails. And we divert other people up other trails. And when you're riding really fast on a dirt bike, you don't really want to be stopping for backpackers all the time. And that's kind of how we have this system.

• 1:11:03Speaker 05

  And conversely, you got a string of mules. You don't want mountain bikes or, or motorbikes ripping really fast. Um, especially in spots where there's no place to divert. Right? So capital W wilderness and, um, and some WSA ground and stuff like that. Right? So there's just a huge burden of education that has to happen here. And, and within the first Trump administration, this Trump administration.

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  They move incredibly fast.

• 1:11:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  Incredibly fast. And there's a bunch of catch up that's happening. And, and I posted when this OHV order came out, said, listen, I'm not worried about the motorized use community at large.

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  I'm not aware of any motorized groups that want to see habitat destruction, that want to see a decrease in wildlife populations.

• 1:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  That, you know?

• 1:12:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no one has that policy.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  They don't, they don't, that's not part of the mission statement.

• 1:12:06Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  But every single user group out there has people that are more than willing to color outside the lines. And I am worried that because of the way that this is messaged, that we're going to see those people out there representing the outdoor community.

• 1:12:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  And it is, it's a burden on all of us, right? It's like, if you get, if you don't have folks who are out there using public lands frequently, even just on like, uh, this is what I do most weekends type of basis.

• 1:12:39Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  You show up and you're like, oh my God, the people that come out to these places are total pigs.

• 1:12:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 05

  Right? Just as I've been reaching out to a lot of, uh, motorized industry folks and a lot of athletes right now to say like, hey, let's work on some messaging that's on responsible use.

• 1:12:59Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:12:59Speaker 05

  And the response has been like, oh, absolutely.

• 1:13:02Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Steven Rinella?

  Now, take the, the, the, the role this rule, and you mentioned earlier, and the role this rule, in very simple terms for, for listeners to understand, the role this rule,

• 1:13:20Steven Rinella?

  it's, it's one of those political ping pongs that bounce back and forth, but it'll be like, Are we cutting new roads on the national forest lands?

• 1:13:29Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:30Steven Rinella?

  It became especially relevant to Tongass National Forest, where there was, is, remains a desire to cut in roads on national forests that would lead to old growth timber cuts, cut in roads where the government would cut in roads on national forest land to facilitate mining activities and other things. The roadless rule came out and said that not constructing large scale roads in areas that are through some formula designated to be like without roads.

• 1:14:06Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:06Steven Rinella?

  So not tapping into areas that are, that are of enough of a size to be regarded as an area that has, that is roadless, right? Doesn't prevent you from cutting a little whatever driveway somewhere or something, but from building roads to access new areas. And it would go in under an administration and then it would get revoked.

• 1:14:28Steven Rinella?

  Or people would attempt to revoke it.

• 1:14:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:14:31Steven Rinella?

  Right now, we're in process again of undoing the roadless ruling, okay? So going back to the time of being able to cut in roads to facilitate mining, to cut in roads to facilitate timber cuts. In some cases, the cut in roads to facilitate timber improvement. That isn't even related to mining, but just to do timber improvement work.

• 1:14:59Steven Rinella?

  When I asked you on the OHV thing, I asked you like, what, what is someone really driving at there? Like, are they pursuing a particular end? And you said, it's just kind of a pendulum swing of trying to do a large scale reversal of a, of a, of a restriction that was in place. With the roadless rule, is it like, is undoing the roadless rule meant to drive a particular project somewhere?

• 1:15:31Steven Rinella?

  Or do you, do you accept it as just a more general movement?

• 1:15:37Steven Rinella?

  Or is it tied to some like distinct thing that someone wants to do somewhere, but in order for them to do it, they have to undo the roadless rule?

• 1:15:46Speaker 05

  I, you know, I think it's both, um, that there's some, you know, real specific projects in mind. I really don't think it's timber. Um, I think it would be like mineral extraction. Um, and it is just part of this theme of like broad deregulation.

• 1:16:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Speaker 05

  Um, I think there's parts of the roadless rule that need to be like greatly reformed.

• 1:16:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:16:15Speaker 05

  Um, we're talking, so every state could have had their own version of the roadless rule. Idaho and Colorado are the only states that did that.

• 1:16:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  So we're really talking about like 45 million acres. And we've said from the very beginning, it's like, well, tell us what you really want because the timber industry says this isn't about timber.

• 1:16:38Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  Um, it's not going to be 45 million acres. Like, like we're talking a few thousand.

• 1:16:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 05

  Here and here and here and, and maybe a couple of hundred miles of road.

• 1:16:51Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  Like, let's talk about that.

• 1:16:53Steven Rinella?

  Like inviting the conversation to get down to like, if, if this is about a thing, let's talk about the thing.

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:17:01Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:17:01Speaker 05

  And, and we haven't gotten there yet. Um, I will tell you that there's legitimate gripes on the roadless rule. Uh, because it is open to, um, a little bit of interpretation and, um, there's been areas, districts, forests where, um, the managers decided that they wanted like a little extra buffer around their roadless, their categorized roadless areas.

• 1:17:32Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:17:32Speaker 05

  Right? And it's like, I mean, just think of all the conversations we've had about like the national park has got to end somewhere.

• 1:17:39Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:40Speaker 05

  You don't get a buffer or else just call it park?

• 1:17:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Speaker 05

  Or don't.

• 1:17:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah.

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:17:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Just for listeners, what Cal's referring to is you might have, I mean, everybody in the world has sort of Yellowstone National Park. Um, oftentimes there's wildlife management issues.

• 1:18:01Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's wildlife management decisions that are made along the border. Where the, where the park has a gray area, right? There's like, if the, if you imagine the park is, is black on a map. And out of the park is white on a map, they create certain gray areas for wildlife management and for other management practices. To, to create, like you said, a buffer.

• 1:18:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Steven Rinella?

  A buffer zone, meaning it won't be, um. Uh, that it wouldn't be that cities get built up to the wall. To the line, because you're trying to, you're trying to mitigate impacts on the edge that might affect the interior.

• 1:18:38Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep. Um, and then from a wildlife perspective, right? It's like, we have like wolf management zones in Montana that are right against the park.

• 1:18:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 05

  Because, um. Socially. It was decided like, well, if wolves are going to leave the park. They're probably going to get really beat up right on the edge of the park. And then there's going to be a little, uh, education curve. And the further they get away, the more wary they're going to be. Their survivability is going to be higher.

• 1:19:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So some wolf pack that spends 75% of the time in the park. And they tend to wander over to some little area. There might be some extra regulation where they wander over. In order to protect the integrity of the, of a popular.

• 1:19:27Speaker 05

  Pack.

• 1:19:27Steven Rinella?

  Wildlife viewing pack in the park.

• 1:19:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, on the, the roadless side of things, you know, there's like viable sold timber. Uh, projects that, um. Were tied up in a lot of red tape because they were adjacent to.

• 1:19:45Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Okay.

• 1:19:46Speaker 05

  Right? Um, and then.

• 1:19:49Steven Rinella?

  And that, and that causes frustration.

• 1:19:51Speaker 05

  Big time frustration, right? And it, and it, like, I can see how that leads to, like. It's totally flawed through the whole thing out.

• 1:19:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like someone saying, no, I get it. We can't, we're not going to cut in the park, but you're saying I can't cut by the park.

• 1:20:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. And not only not by the park, but how far away from the park?

• 1:20:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. No, yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. And then, um.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  The roadless rule as it's written, you can build roads or reopen roads temporarily to go in and do wildfire mitigation. You can go in and do like habitat work.

• 1:20:28Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  And oftentimes that stuff gets litigated to death and tied up. And sometimes it's just not even a conversation that people are willing to have because it will get litigated and tied up.

• 1:20:41Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  And so the the proper implementation, and this is where I think conservation has a real, all of us groups have a real failure is we work like hell to build something like the roadless rule. And then the implementation part, like we're in it for the sanctuary areas. You're like, by God,

• 1:21:10Speaker 05

  we got some areas carved out here where there's not going to be roads. It's human powered only. It's going to exclude folks who aren't willing to do that. I'm going to have a little honey hole and that's our our focus. Or we protected, like really protected these zones from anything but natural erosion. We're going to have great Chinook, sockeye salmon, bull trout spawning there forever type of thing.

• 1:21:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:39Speaker 05

  Well, we don't show up when the litigation groups show up and say, oh, no, you guys can't do a habitat improvement project. You guys can't go in there and do wildfire mitigation as it's outlined within the roadless rule.

• 1:21:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  Right? And so, you know, I haven't put my money where the mouth is yet, but I've had a lot of conversations to see like, how it would be feasible for a group like backcountry hunters and anglers to weigh in on those on behalf of proactive management?

• 1:22:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:15Speaker 05

  Not because I think that's exactly why we're here, but I do want to take that argument out of the quiver, right? And be like, yeah, we came to the table, we signed the dotted line. We agree that this is how the roadless rule should function.

• 1:22:29Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  So shouldn't we have some skin in making it function that way?

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• 1:24:10Steven Rinella?

  It's so interesting you bring that up because I was discussing this with a friend of mine a couple of days ago, and we were talking about

• 1:24:19Steven Rinella?

  the way the conservation community will get activated around certain marquee, very high value, around the protection of certain marquee, very high value areas and resist development on those places. We saw it with a coalition of people.

• 1:24:45Steven Rinella?

  From across the sporting and outdoor and birding and commercial fishing spectrum in opposition to developing a mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, right? We saw, everybody saw that. We saw not nearly as dramatic, but a coming together around protecting the headwaters leading into the, the boundary waters wilderness area.

• 1:25:11Steven Rinella?

  Maybe even less than that, but seeing a coalition of people questioning the idea, pushing back against the idea of building a 250 mile industrial corridor into the Brooks Range called Ambler Road. And what we were talking about is, is like, when it's a no, we come out to say no. Right?

• 1:25:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:25:35Steven Rinella?

  And if someone came to me and said, okay, then, okay, I get it. You don't like that. You don't like that. You don't like that. What is okay?

• 1:25:43Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:25:44Steven Rinella?

  What is okay?

• 1:25:49Steven Rinella?

  It's a fault. It's like a negative about me. It's a fault that I would say, I don't know. I'll have to tell you when I hear. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:25:58Speaker 05

  Cause that's the argument that we use on the roadless rule, right? Is like, okay, if you're talking about timber, what about all this high alpine terrain? Where it's so highly erodable, you can't build a road? And there happens to be no timber. Can we still call that inventory roadless?

• 1:26:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 05

  If you want the timber, right? Like, so it's the same argument.

• 1:26:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:26:21Steven Rinella?

  But, but I mean, like, but I, I sometimes wonder is if you, if, if you are, if you're going to come and you're going to be in opposition to some things, at what point do you have an obligation to go and say, but here is what's okay?

• 1:26:35Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:26:36Steven Rinella?

  Or is it morally okay to just be like, no, I'm the guy that tells you when it's no. I don't know the guy. I don't know the yes guy.

• 1:26:45Speaker 05

  I, I don't think it is. I think the answer though, is like, it is just complicated. We have a insanely diverse landscape. A tree faller. Back when those were the dudes really doing the work on the landscape and there still are, are plenty, but it's a dying breed. They will tell you like, you can't cut the same tree twice, meaning that the aspect matters. Uh, the slope.

• 1:27:13Speaker 05

  The pitch of the, all the things. It is a tree by tree calculation.

• 1:27:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  Um, which is why it's, it's hard and it takes skilled people with lots of, lots of knowledge, lots of practice. So, um, I think people are capable of being the yes person. When it comes to a renewable project such as, you know, a good timber project, right? Good timber project pays lots of dividends on the wildlife side of things. Um, but you're gonna have to wait.

• 1:27:50Speaker 05

  But it, you know, it will come back. Right? You're gonna eat that cow elk tag for, for that zone, maybe this year.

• 1:27:58Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:59Speaker 05

  But there's gonna be parts of it next year you can hunt. And then there's more of it the following year.

• 1:28:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:06Speaker 05

  Right? And then it's probably gonna suck for a while as once in 15 years down the road, depending on where you are.

• 1:28:12Steven Rinella?

  It'll be sweet for 10 years after the cut and then lame for a year, then like increasingly better, then eventually.

• 1:28:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:28:19Steven Rinella?

  Go away and you, you look forward to that.

• 1:28:21Speaker 05

  But those areas also do their own job of spreading out the pressure on public land, right? Because we all have those spots where it takes us years to be like, you know what? This place used to be sweet.

• 1:28:38Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:38Speaker 05

  But I've just been coming here and it sucked the last three years.

• 1:28:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  Time to go find a new spot. Well, you've been sitting there pounding your head against, you know, a dense mat of trees. Um, somebody else is being like, oh my gosh, this place is sweet. There's nobody here.

• 1:28:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Speaker 05

  You know, on the other side of that block, right?

• 1:28:58Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:58Speaker 05

  Um, and so those changes in the landscape are always a negative and a positive. Uh, for all, for all of us out there. It's just like the game.

• 1:29:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:10Speaker 05

  So yeah, I do think it is, it is possible to be the yes person, but you gotta be involved enough to be like, oh, this project's proposed.

• 1:29:22Speaker 05

  Is there a mechanism for us to weigh in on that?

• 1:29:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I think that, that probab-, I, I think that it would be a good.

• 1:29:33Steven Rinella?

  Pressure relief valve. If the, for the conservation community to maybe get more involved in what's oh, more involved in pointing out and facilitating what's okay. But a lot of it is, there's just absolutism.

• 1:29:52Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:29:53Steven Rinella?

  And, and, and, and there's been a lot of absolutists that are very celebrated.

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:29:59Steven Rinella?

  And regarded as effective. You know, like, like, like Edward Abbey was a desert absolutist.

• 1:30:08Steven Rinella?

  To the point where he sort of, um, to the point where he, not even tacitly, to the point where through fiction, he like glorified eco-terrorism.

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:30:17Steven Rinella?

  Like he was an absolutist and a lot of people would look and say like absolutism. Anything else is, you know, anything else is your weak. Anything else is you have cracks in the, you know, you have cracks in the fence. But I do wonder about being more like, like, if, and I don't even know the answer to this. That if

• 1:30:44Steven Rinella?

  there had been a greater effort toward negotiating certain things. We would not be in the situation of talking about repealing the, like of repealing the role in this rule.

• 1:30:59Steven Rinella?

  You know, I don't know. Another case of absolutism gone wrong. In, in a different direction, the Wild Horse and Borough Protection Act.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:31:09Steven Rinella?

  Is, there was a time when there weren't that many wild horses around. People thought they were being abused and thought they were going to vanish. They made a absolutism case. And now it has generated enormous friction.

• 1:31:25Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  With wildlife managers. Where you're like, they just left no room. There was, they left no room for, for logical, meaningful corrections to a problem.

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  It, well, yeah, cause you kind of get to this trap. Like we said in the beginning, right? Like we got to think beyond this administration, right? And so this OHV deal.

• 1:31:51Speaker 05

  Like I I spent a lot of time like I I feel like everybody knows that I gravitate towards human powered. Love my wilderness areas. Love big backpacking trips.

• 1:32:03Speaker 05

  You know, it just not like certainly not a proficient motorized guy. But I'm like, listen, every single trip I take starts with a four wheel drive truck getting me to the trailhead. Right? So I can't be anti-motorized use.

• 1:32:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:22Speaker 05

  Right? Like, that is the thing that facilitates everything.

• 1:32:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  You know, 99 times out of 100 for me. And so when these headlines come out and it's like, oh, all the motorized people want this. And I was like, no, they really don't. I I know that. Or it's all the motorized folks are slobs and they're tearing the things up. And I'm like, well, there's lots of different groups out there that preach hard, responsible use. All across the landscape. And they are policing their own, their own community. And, you know, that's like something that we have always done is like, is that social contract. If

• 1:33:08Speaker 05

  you're going to represent single track dirt bikes, do it in this manner. Don't do it like this.

• 1:33:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Speaker 05

  Right? Because there is the pendulum swinging the other way. It's like, oh, you lose access to all of this stuff.

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  And access can be weaponized. Like, it was the first thing that I saw on this job, right? Is like, everybody, you know, day six or seven on the job, I I went and testified in the House Natural Resources Committee.

• 1:33:44Speaker 05

  Which is pretty wild, you know, because I did have like a moment of

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  Like, oh, I could tank the entire organization right now. Live on C spam.

• 1:33:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's stressful.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could just say whatever and it would probably just be done. Uh, no coming back.

• 1:34:04Speaker 05

  But, you know, everybody there was talking was like access, access, access, access. I was like, well, wait a minute.

• 1:34:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:12Speaker 05

  What do you mean?

• 1:34:13Steven Rinella?

  I've run into this.

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:34:14Steven Rinella?

  It means different things to different people.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  It means different things to different people.

• 1:34:18Steven Rinella?

  You're like, oh, if we're gonna, if that's good. I'm gonna define it how I want and know that everyone thinks it's good.

• 1:34:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:26Steven Rinella?

  Because the word is good.

• 1:34:27Speaker 05

  Yep. And, and, and then we have to have this more in-depth conversation of being like, listen. The thing that you're after is only going to survive for so long. If that's where we punch a big road in.

• 1:34:47Speaker 05

  If we remove the, the seasonal closures that exist for wintering range or calving areas. Like, the reason that those regulations are in place are so, you can go have that experience. It's just, it's only going to be there if you do it in this way.

• 1:35:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a great point.

• 1:35:08Steven Rinella?

  What you want to, what you're so dying to get to. Is there because you can't?

• 1:35:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, in these fashions, right?

• 1:35:18Steven Rinella?

  At this time of year or whatever, right?

• 1:35:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Steven Rinella?

  What you're wanting is you're wanting to, yeah, you're wanting to drive to a thing that wouldn't be there if you could.

• 1:35:27Speaker 05

  And like, I, uh, high country mule deer, right? Like, I used to just love spending so much time.

• 1:35:36Speaker 05

  Early season scouting for mule deer and, and then, uh, archery hunting that high country, big basin. Mule deer, right? And it's like. If they see you one time. They're just gone.

• 1:35:50Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  Right? And it can take them weeks to come back to that spot.

• 1:35:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55Speaker 05

  And yeah, you can go find them again somewhere, but having this notion that.

• 1:36:00Speaker 05

  You can create access as defined by whatever. Like there's some things that just are not going to tolerate.

• 1:36:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:36:07Steven Rinella?

  If I could just drive in there and finally get them big old bucks that are hiding back in there.

• 1:36:11Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. And it's like, well, you can drive a ways in there and then get really, really sneaky. And hike off trail and, you know, play the wind and do all the things.

• 1:36:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Speaker 05

  That you pick up over the years. And then if you really have the mental fortitude at the end of a long day, drop all your stuff and slide on your stomach up there and peek your head over. Like you'll, good chance like you're going to see one.

• 1:36:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  Unless some jackass was there before you and stood up on the ridge. Right? So, um, and those are tough conversations to have because there, you know, there's a lot of folks out there too. Who are like, well, man, I'm a disabled veteran. Are you against me having that experience?

• 1:36:55Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 1:36:56Speaker 05

  And it's like, no, I want you to have that experience. I would love to help facilitate that. But as a guy who's had that experience a lot, you just gotta trust me that like that you can't, just can't get in there that way and have that experience.

• 1:37:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 05

  Like, and we pick and choose all the time. And so if we go back to roadless or this OHV executive order, like I, I can be a big enough person to be like, okay, well, what are we going to open up? But what are we going to close?

• 1:37:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 05

  Because we, we have to have that because there's just, there's too many of us doing too many of the things. To, you know, point, literally like point that gun of impact at these areas.

• 1:37:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  Cause it, we know through our history that it will have this adverse effect that we just can't think about when we're so gung ho on the opportunity. Right?

• 1:38:01Steven Rinella?

  Sure. Let, let's jump subjects and, and, and talk about the ongoing corner crossing debate and I'll put it to you this way.

• 1:38:11Steven Rinella?

  Well, just, I hate doing the back. We, we talk about this so much and it's such an important issue. We've covered it so many times. It's always, it's always changing. But just a very quick, very, very quick recap. Corner crossing. If you're just kind of joining our sort of universe of shows right now. Corner crossing has to do with imagine that you're looking at a checkerboard and the black squares are public land. Are they black and white? I don't know.

• 1:38:36Speaker 05

  Black and red.

• 1:38:37Steven Rinella?

  Black and red.

• 1:38:37Speaker 05

  On the checkerboard.

• 1:38:38Steven Rinella?

  Got a checkerboard, the black squares are sections of miles, mile by mile, sections of public land. The red squares are mile by mile, mile by mile, sections of private land. When we refer to corner crossing, we refer to whether it is legal or not to step from the corner of a black square to the corner of another black square. That's corner crossing. And so that your shoulder, your feet are never leaving the black, but your body's passing over the red. And this is a, this has been a debate that's playing out for a long time. Particularly in the American West where you have what we call checkerboarded landscapes that are, that are laid out in that same fashion.

• 1:39:21Steven Rinella?

  Through the courts, through federal court. Corner crossing was made legal in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. Help me out here.

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, the 10th Circuit.

• 1:39:37Steven Rinella?

  10th Circuit.

• 1:39:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, the whole, the whole 10th Circuit. So, and I wouldn't say made legal, I would say confirmed legal.

• 1:39:45Steven Rinella?

  Confirmed legal. Yeah, okay. Not ma- yeah, like, yeah, that's a great point.

• 1:39:50Speaker 05

  Question was.

• 1:39:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it was, there was, there was a, a debate. It was never, it wasn't like a change in the law. It was just defining the existing law and clarifying the existing law because there was, there was confusion about it.

• 1:40:01Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:40:01Steven Rinella?

  Um, but there's still a big swath of the American West where it's up in the air.

• 1:40:05Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:40:06Steven Rinella?

  Um, and different states have different interpretations, different states open, interpret, you know, put out different guidelines. If you had to crystal ball it.

• 1:40:17Steven Rinella?

  A year, two years.

• 1:40:20Steven Rinella?

  Where do you think things are gonna, where do you think things are gonna land? Do you think that we'll see more confusion, more obfuscation of whether you're, you're allowed to do this? Or do you think that it'll, that we'll see more clarity about what really is allowed and what's not allowed when it comes to corner crossing?

• 1:40:41Speaker 05

  Well, I, I, I think the reason that we're seeing this debate get more and more intense. Uh, cause it used to just never, never, it was a question. Um, certainly here in the state of Montana, it was never an intense debate. There's many areas within the state where it was just what people did.

• 1:41:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. For a long time, it was a question that rolled around in the back of a small number of people's heads.

• 1:41:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:41:07Steven Rinella?

  And then it became a question that was in the front of many people's minds.

• 1:41:12Speaker 05

  Yes. Yeah. And, uh, you know, the reason that that is right is because like we are just developing more and more of the West and people are, are planting their flag, um, permanently in, in places that were seasonal at most. Right? Um, and

• 1:41:35Speaker 05

  you know, I, I think there is absolutely no question whatsoever as to the legality. Um, I think there's many, many questions right now that are getting played out. So for instance, back in the 10th circuit in Wyoming, there's a, a push to provide, uh, landowner compensation to people adjacent to corners.

• 1:41:58Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:41:59Speaker 05

  So there's people walking from public ground to public ground without ever touching private property. Can we monetarily compensate the landowners who own the private lands that touch those corners?

• 1:42:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:42:17Speaker 05

  There's.

• 1:42:19Steven Rinella?

  But that's not, but that's not, that would just be.

• 1:42:24Steven Rinella?

  Help me, help me understand that.

• 1:42:26Speaker 05

  That state question that's coming up.

• 1:42:28Steven Rinella?

  But, but the state would be doing it as a goodwill gesture. That they're not doing it out, they're not, they're not being legally forced to do.

• 1:42:36Speaker 05

  They're not being legally forced to do it. There's an ask as to like a real legal one. Would be, can you corner cross from federal to state?

• 1:42:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  Right? In states where we have a kind of a de facto public access, we use state ground as public ground. Well, this was a federal decision.

• 1:43:04Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:43:05Speaker 05

  Not a state decision.

• 1:43:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:09Speaker 05

  That needs to be figured out.

• 1:43:11Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you, it's, it's interesting you bring that up. I would have never considered that. Like if I was in a clarified corner crossing legal state and I saw where federal land and state land were connected by corners, I would never even question whether you were allowed to hop that corner.

• 1:43:29Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. And that, that is like one of the, the things, right? Like the huge broad general public. You give them a pop quiz on this. It is just pure confusion. They're like, why in the hell would that not be legal? Right? You're not touching private property.

• 1:43:48Speaker 05

  And then you get in circles where people have really, really gone through the grinder on this and they've looked at case law and it gets overly complicated. Like you, you start, start getting into these conversations where you've kind of lost the, the on the ground fact.

• 1:44:09Speaker 05

  A long time ago, where it's like you're, you're just walking from here to there.

• 1:44:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Speaker 05

  Um, so no question in my mind as to, uh, if it's legal, it is legal.

• 1:44:25Speaker 05

  I think because kind of like we talked about on your, your motorized community or not non-motorized community, I, I remind people all the time, like if you're on the private side of that fence, you're a public landowner too. And you also have way better access to that square that you're, you're trying to get to.

• 1:44:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:44Speaker 05

  Um, so it behooves all of us to come up with common language assurances that clearly define the private property, the public property and the access, right?

• 1:45:02Steven Rinella?

  But, but there is, and I guess I can speak to, to Montana where we're sitting right now. I can't speak to other places.

• 1:45:12Steven Rinella?

  There, there is like an uncertainty.

• 1:45:17Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:17Steven Rinella?

  Here where

• 1:45:21Steven Rinella?

  the, if you go and get your hunting regulation, there's not a part of the hunting regulation that clarifies corner crossing is okay.

• 1:45:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:45:31Steven Rinella?

  Right. You get a mixed, am I wrong?

• 1:45:34Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:45:34Steven Rinella?

  You get a mixed signal.

• 1:45:36Speaker 05

  Yep. Yeah. It used to be, um, if like ours are, um, not suggestion, different word are what Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks would like you to do is to contact the adjacent landowner for permission to corner cross.

• 1:45:55Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:45:55Speaker 05

  That was, and then if, um,

• 1:46:01Speaker 05

  If somebody were to try to get a warden out there to cite you, the warden would then have to contact the county prosecutor in order to issue that citation.

• 1:46:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:46:13Speaker 05

  And then, you know, that language ramped up to the point where the state was implying, like, this is illegal. If you write the governor, you get a response back that says it's illegal and always has been.

• 1:46:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:46:34Speaker 05

  Um, the secretary, not the secretary of state, the lieutenant governor, um, you know, offered her opinion. Um, a couple of our state senators said, there it is. That's the law. It's illegal, uh, which is not how we create laws in, in the-

• 1:46:52Steven Rinella?

  They offered the opinion that it was forbidden.

• 1:46:54Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep. Based off of, of case law, you know, um-

• 1:47:00Steven Rinella?

  Like they offered an interpretation, which was then received as someone as the giving of the law.

• 1:47:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. And it is, I mean, it is tricky. Uh, it's not tricky to read this stuff. It's not tricky to come up with your own interpretations, but if you were to listen to, um, the lieutenant governor's, um, uh, kind of case that she made, she's using all the same cases that you would use to say it's legal. She's just using a different excerpt of those cases and a narrower, narrower, um, uh, interpretation, which also is like how the law works a lot of times.

• 1:47:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:47Speaker 05

  Right? So I'm not like bad, bad mouthing the lieutenant governor at all, but it is just been very, very interesting.

• 1:48:09Steven Rinella?

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• 1:49:30Steven Rinella?

  What do you think will happen?

• 1:49:32Speaker 05

  Well, ideally, we have a legislative session coming up that we're going to see some some legislation that comes up to clarify this at a state level.

• 1:49:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:49:46Speaker 05

  Backcountry hunters and anglers, we entered into a lawsuit with the state of Montana after hitting this wall that, you know, we were just told flat out, said, hey, even if this went back to the previous memo, where it's like corner crossing is a gray area.

• 1:50:05Speaker 05

  That's okay for right now until we can get legislation through. Um, because the people that want to do it, do it. And the people who don't, don't. And, you know, ranchers don't want to see a bunch of people piled up at corners. Hunters don't want to see a bunch of people piled up at corners. We want this to be quiet.

• 1:50:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Speaker 05

  Um, is the best thing for everybody.

• 1:50:27Steven Rinella?

  But if, if the state, okay.

• 1:50:33Steven Rinella?

  In Wyoming, you had a case where, um, it got moved to

• 1:50:37Speaker 05

  Federal court.

• 1:50:37Steven Rinella?

  Federal court.

• 1:50:38Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:50:40Steven Rinella?

  If the state, if state legislators were to come in and say, it's illegal.

• 1:50:47Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:50:48Steven Rinella?

  Wouldn't that then open a pathway for someone to say, um, your prohibition is in violation of federal law.

• 1:50:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:59Steven Rinella?

  And that's a no-no.

• 1:51:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, that, that is a thing. And that's why by and large, we're talking about broad acceptance of

• 1:51:15Speaker 05

  legal access through the corners.

• 1:51:16Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:17Speaker 05

  Um, we're talking about extremely broad acceptance of if you enter or damage private property, that's, that's trespass.

• 1:51:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Speaker 05

  Um, so there's a ton of middle ground here. And

• 1:51:36Speaker 05

  I, I think that we're capable of coming up with a state solution that, you know, prevents a, a federal case.

• 1:51:46Steven Rinella?

  That prevents an escalation.

• 1:51:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, and part of this is, is totally out of our hands. Like that, that could happen anyway. Um, but

• 1:51:54Steven Rinella?

  You know, it's a question I never thought to one, that I never thought to ask.

• 1:51:59Steven Rinella?

  Do you have any sense, if you went to Wyoming, let's say there had been a ballot initiative.

• 1:52:05Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:52:05Steven Rinella?

  And it was just very clear on everyone's, on everyone's ballot during a presidential election year, it just said like, um, corner, like, should corner crossing be legal? Yes, no. And you put it out to the voters.

• 1:52:20Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:52:23Steven Rinella?

  In Wyoming, before all this happened, what do you think the answer would have been?

• 1:52:28Speaker 05

  Like overwhelmingly, yes.

• 1:52:29Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 1:52:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, you know, TRCP and BHA hosted listening sessions across the state. Obviously, not everybody shows up to those things.

• 1:52:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:41Speaker 05

  Um, but I drove over and, and sat in on a few. And I was really shocked by how few people actually wanted to talk about corner crossing. Um, because it was just like a given. They're like, oh yeah, this is something everybody else is talking about. Uh, it's something we do and will continue to do kinda regardless of what everybody else.

• 1:53:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:03Speaker 05

  Comes to the conclusion of, um, so yeah, I, and then, yeah, I mean, there's a long, there's more paper history of corner crossing in Wyoming than there is in Montana.

• 1:53:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:53:16Speaker 05

  Um, there's, there's a decent amount of cases that apply in the state. Um, there's, you know, no actual, um, you know, anything that's really specifically corner crossing in Montana has always been thrown out. It's never made it to a judge's decision.

• 1:53:38Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. That, that's what, that, that blows my mind.

• 1:53:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. For something that's always been illegal.

• 1:53:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Yeah. That there are not people out there sitting in jail or whatever, who, who got in trouble for it.

• 1:53:52Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep. Um,

• 1:53:56Speaker 05

  but we do have, um, you know, several state programs. We have a lot of money sitting in the Habitat Montana Fund, which was, you know, part of the marijuana tax money.

• 1:54:07Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:07Speaker 05

  Forty-one million bucks and counting. Um, that has to be used for access programs.

• 1:54:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:54:14Speaker 05

  Or, or acquiring land, you know, it, it's a little, little broad on what, but it can be used for habitat, building boat ramps, um, acquiring a new ground, stuff like that, or else, um, that cash sunsets and it can go into the general fund.

• 1:54:30Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:31Speaker 05

  Uh, and some people speculate that it's not being used because.

• 1:54:35Steven Rinella?

  They wanted to go into the general.

• 1:54:36Speaker 05

  They wanted to go into the general fund.

• 1:54:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:37Speaker 05

  Um, but I mean, there's a lot of tools in our tool belt, um, that, uh,

• 1:54:45Speaker 05

  Can make this a state-led initiative. I've talked to a lot of folks long before we entered into this lawsuit and then after we've entered into this lawsuit who are both,

• 1:55:02Speaker 05

  all of them landowners, both for and against corner crossing. The folks that are against corner crossing and willing to talk to me, or asking me to call them more accurately.

• 1:55:17Steven Rinella?

  Do you make those calls?

• 1:55:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, I love talking to old ranchers. So, but they get fed up with bad hunter behavior,

• 1:55:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:29Speaker 05

  which I totally get. And most of them have been working for years to do land swaps with the BLM. And can't get them through.

• 1:55:41Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:55:43Speaker 05

  And you know, so that's something that where we've offered to help. And you know, I just talked with

• 1:55:51Speaker 05

  one fellow just like this and did some due diligence on whether or not this was like an actual good land swap. And it sounds like it really is. So we're trying to help accelerate that process.

• 1:56:07Steven Rinella?

  That's great work, man.

• 1:56:09Speaker 05

  And then we have a program where you can identify corners and we can come out and mark those. So people have no excuse.

• 1:56:18Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:56:18Speaker 05

  This is public, this is private. We can augment fence. So you can have an access point there that as one old Goddard pointed out to me, he's like, you know, I get that the land's public, but that fence isn't.

• 1:56:35Speaker 05

  So we can augment that private fence and keep it in good working shape.

• 1:56:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:41Speaker 05

  And allow legal access. And then there are these corners typically called problem corners where there's just no way to

• 1:56:55Speaker 05

  legally access public to public without stepping on private.

• 1:56:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like just for people listening, picture that, the pictures that, I don't know, just it's a tree.

• 1:57:06Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:57:06Steven Rinella?

  Picture there's a, there's a 12 inch tree at the corner.

• 1:57:10Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:57:10Steven Rinella?

  Right? And you gotta.

• 1:57:13Speaker 05

  And you're supposed to do the right thing.

• 1:57:15Steven Rinella?

  Wiggle around that tree, you're off where you're not supposed to be. So.

• 1:57:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, so identifying those and, and we're the only

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  entity of any kind out there. Uh, we use ArcGIS on the BHA website. So you can just punch in your lat long of where that corner is. Um, and then, uh, we have some surveyors that have reached out that do this work professionally.

• 1:57:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:57:43Speaker 05

  Um, that have offered their services to, to come out and, and mark corners. And these are folks who have actually like worked with the BLM to adjust corners to where they're truly supposed to be.

• 1:57:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 05

  Um, cause some of them do migrate over the years. Cause they, you know, people have moved pins or the pins never existed. Um, so they were going off landmarks and those change generationally sometimes. Um, and then, uh, you know, we can augment that, that fence at the same time to wildlife friendly fencing and, and, and do it at no cost to the landowner as again, kind of like our stewardship project idea is I'm like, man, if you're fed up with bad hunter behavior, I can't say I'm going to fix all that, but I will bring a crew of people out there that you're going to be really impressed with that really do give a crap.

• 1:58:39Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:58:39Speaker 05

  And at minimum, it's going to give you a little bit of fuel back in the tank that hopefully lasts you until your next bad encounter.

• 1:58:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:47Speaker 05

  And then, um, which I typically do get a chuckle out of that. Um, and then I'm, I'm working like hell trying to get some funding and. Some folks together to put together a hunting around agriculture program.

• 1:59:05Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:59:06Speaker 05

  That ideally states will want to adopt.

• 1:59:11Speaker 05

  Because we hear all the time that something's got to be done. Because people don't know how to behave around working farms and ranches anymore.

• 1:59:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:22Speaker 05

  And they're drawn like flies to them for hunting purposes. And just the basic stuff. Etiquette. Where to park, where not to park, how to operate gates.

• 1:59:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, driving on wet roads you shouldn't be driving on.

• 1:59:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:37Steven Rinella?

  Driving across freshly planted fields, leaving gates, not the way you found them.

• 1:59:41Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:59:42Steven Rinella?

  Spooking, spooking the hell out of cows.

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, recognizing where you got a bunch of cow calf pairs that just got moved in from the range. They're super scared.

• 1:59:52Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:59:54Speaker 05

  Probably just leave it alone.

• 1:59:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:55Speaker 05

  You know, so not, not hard stuff at all, but something that everybody is getting direct asks for.

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Speaker 05

  And it's not being addressed, unfortunately. And we can put together the, the program that is built off of producer feedback, right? The farmers and the ranchers are going to tell us what they want. And then, you know, Meat Eater will hopefully distribute that out. But we really need states to adopt this as well. And, and use it in a fashion where people have to pay attention, right? So I want like, hey, you just bought your big game combo license. In order to complete purchase, take this five minute

• 2:00:48Speaker 05

  tutorial.

• 2:00:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49Speaker 05

  Right? And, and, you know, people want to hunt in

• 2:00:54Speaker 05

  these places so bad. I don't think that that's going to be a barrier to entry at all.

• 2:00:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Speaker 05

  Hunters being hunters, we're going to complain. But I think we're going to take the test and, and I really do believe like if, if we can just educate.

• 2:01:10Speaker 05

  A big group, right? Like 40,000 hunters hunt in Montana every year.

• 2:01:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:01:14Speaker 05

  If we can educate them a one and a half percent more, that's going to be a big impact on, on the landscape. And if we're not working hard to kind of hold up our side of the social contract, we're going to lose access on the front range and everybody's going to be in the back country.

• 2:01:35Steven Rinella?

  Man, yeah, I, I like a lot of what you're saying. I, I like and really rings true to me and, and, you know, congratulations on, on viewing it this way, but I appreciate

• 2:01:49Steven Rinella?

  the way you're willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for

• 2:01:57Steven Rinella?

  ways that your own community could be working against their own better interests. Meaning, you know, let's talk about bad, uh, bad hunter behavior. Let's talk about people kind of exploiting this corner crossing thing to feel that they can just get on that land however they want to get on it. Right? And kind of holding your own community up to like a certain standard and acknowledging to the people that are offended by bad behavior that yes, this is true. What you're seeing is true. I want to make that go away. Right?

• 2:02:31Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, what other choice do we have too, right? Like it's gonna go away.

• 2:02:36Steven Rinella?

  Just ignore it.

• 2:02:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02:37Steven Rinella?

  Ignore it and let the tensions faster.

• 2:02:40Speaker 05

  Let the tensions faster and then what everybody's feeling. The state agencies, the agricultural producers, the hunters in areas where we're seeing this really big increase in, in hunting pressure and demand on the resource is like that scarcity mindset creeps in.

• 2:03:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:01Speaker 05

  And it's like,

• 2:03:04Speaker 05

  I don't care. I gotta get mine before somebody else does.

• 2:03:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Speaker 05

  Right? Versus.

• 2:03:10Speaker 05

  You know, so many times, you know, I had great hunting mentors, uh, growing up and it really, it was like, oh, well, pard, let's leave that one for another day. Somebody else is already on it. Type of thing, right? And looking back at those scenarios then, like, it'd be hard to talk some people into being like, well, there's only one truck at the trailhead. Why wouldn't we go type of thing, right? It's like, well, somebody beat us to it. Let them have it. We'll go down to the next trailhead, you know?

• 2:03:46Steven Rinella?

  What do you imagine? We, we've talked about a bunch of things that are in the news now, being talked about right now. Um, kind of hot, hot button issues, right? That are on everybody's mind. What, if, if we're having this conversation a year from now, or this conversation two years from now, what do you think, what, what do you think we'll be talking about? Like, what do you see kind of lurking that's going to be jumping into the, that's going to be jumping to the front of the line in terms of, of hot button issues?

• 2:04:18Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's just two broad themes that are possible, right? And it's kind of like what you said about like, being the, the, no, no, no, I'm just the no guy. I point out the things that that's wrong and the solution I don't want any part of. Um, that person is real and they exist. And if everybody turns into that person, or the majority of us turn into that person, who are like, I don't want the hard work of being at the table. I just want to sit back and throw stones and tell you what's wrong as I see it. Um, that's, it's very possible that

• 2:04:58Speaker 05

  there's a bunch of those people who go, holy cow. I wish I would have drug myself to the table because I never, ever thought the end result would be something like this.

• 2:05:08Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 2:05:09Speaker 05

  Um, or there's the opposite of like, I dropped a bunch of partisan BS.

• 2:05:16Speaker 05

  Um, I really focused on the things that I, I really value and I know I want other people to see because they will value it as well. And I kicked, screamed, clawed, drug myself to the table and I was consistent until like we turned the tide. And people saw the middle ground because what I'm seeing, and there, there's all sorts of people who get ticked me for this is like, I, I do see a lot of people, there's some people who just want their thing and they don't care about anything. But I do see a lot of people who really want to do the right thing and they're just grossly misinformed. And it takes big moments right now.

• 2:06:02Speaker 05

  Like we saw during the public land sell off, budget reconciliation, where it was just like every user group was getting to the table. And, and coming together and being like, yes, this is valuable. We want this, we don't want it to go away. How dare you sell it?

• 2:06:19Speaker 05

  And being engaged even in the minutia in broad coalitions are, are the things that's gonna turn this thing around, right? So, um, that example, and I'm, no, I'm kind of beating it to death here is like, um, I can talk about, uh, motorized groups all day, and I know there's tons and tons of good representatives out there. But the thing that's gonna turn the tide for motorized groups to be like, oh, hey, travel management's plans are in place. Practice responsible use, ride responsibly are people within the motorized community saying, hey,

• 2:06:59Speaker 05

  I want this cross-country moto experience that we do every year because of the fact that it's pristine and the solitude and the gorgeous views and all this, and the limited use it gets. I don't want to turn this experience into, uh, that true.

• 2:07:21Speaker 05

  Uh, your sand dune experience or like there's this event every year called King of the Hammers. Where it's like, you know, you gotta really show off what you can do on, on off-road, no road. Um, it's like that stuff can exist and this stuff can exist. And because we like both, doesn't mean we have to turn this into that.

• 2:07:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I understand. Yeah.

• 2:07:42Speaker 05

  So, um.

• 2:07:46Speaker 05

  But again, like I think a good step is acknowledging, like even though I am not a representative of the motorized community. I drive a four-wheel drive truck to every trailhead. Right? And some of those roads are really long.

• 2:07:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:58Speaker 05

  They're real bumpy.

• 2:08:01Speaker 05

  Right? Uh, but that, that is my, uh. I don't know, my vector for backcountry travel, right? For the human powered stuff too, so.

• 2:08:10Steven Rinella?

  What else has come? What other kind of issues are coming down that you're catching wind of?

• 2:08:14Speaker 05

  Um, I, I am very concerned about Ambler Road.

• 2:08:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:21Speaker 05

  Um, that seems to be making progress. Um, there's a lot of, a lot of the typical things that we've been seeing where like big broad statements of like. Everybody in Alaska is for this.

• 2:08:36Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:08:36Speaker 05

  All the Alaska tribes are for this. Um, all the communities, you know, I, I have a lot of calls every week from guide outfitter communities. Saying like, I don't care if they say this road's not public. It is going to create a huge impact on. You know, caribou, moose, trapping, all, all the things.

• 2:09:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:04Speaker 05

  Uh, the fisheries components and, um. And then there's the side of like, that road's not supposed to be for us. It's a haul road. They're super dangerous. People aren't going out there. Why is public, why are our public dollars being spent on this thing that the public isn't going to use?

• 2:09:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:25Speaker 05

  Um.

• 2:09:27Speaker 05

  And then there, there's just like all the, like the real biological science things there. And the fact that like, I don't care what type of mitigation we do out there, like it is not coming back.

• 2:09:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:39Speaker 05

  That scar is there forever. Right? Like you fly over the Arctic, um, the coastal plain up there. And where they were doing that seismic testing, like in the seventies.

• 2:09:51Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:09:51Speaker 05

  Like those wheel, wheel routes are still there.

• 2:09:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:53Speaker 05

  You know, and it's, I think we're big enough to say like, we have to have some carb outs for what always has been and can always be. And like having that baseline, that through line should be again, like of national importance to Americans.

• 2:10:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I think we remain, I think our country remains in, in a strong enough position where we can continue to afford to have wild places in this country. You know?

• 2:10:29Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 2:10:29Steven Rinella?

  We're in, we're in, we're in a, we're in a strong enough position where we can continue to in, in, invest in that and practice restraint. And some of our biggest contiguous pieces of wilderness. And by saying that, I'm, I'm trying to do is I'm trying to recognize that like that stuff's a luxury. It's there because we decided to let it be there. And we have restrained ourselves from certain activities and that's why we have it. Uh, like you, you look at, for a long time, we had wilderness because we hadn't wilderness, wild places, wildlife was there because we hadn't gotten around to destroying it yet. And then there's a switch.

• 2:11:04Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:11:04Steven Rinella?

  And we crossed like this threshold and it became, it's around because we choose it to be around.

• 2:11:10Speaker 05

  I mean, and that's what every single person needs to understand. Like none of this is luck.

• 2:11:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:11:15Speaker 05

  Right? It is all here because people for us made real choices, sometimes very unpopular.

• 2:11:21Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:11:22Speaker 05

  And that is why we have the luxuries that we have. Being able to float fish, um, you know, camp on public lands, hunt game, uh, and take it home. Like that is an absolute luxury and you know, the world is full of examples uh, of places that went the opposite way. Right? And it's like, I definitely like picking and choosing there, right? But like if you look at Australia and the battles that that they've had just to have legal, regulated hunting in that country.

• 2:11:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:59Speaker 05

  Because it's like, it just got social, got turned in such a way to where so few people did it, what did it matter?

• 2:12:09Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:10Speaker 05

  Gun rights in the UK. So few, so few people, what does it matter?

• 2:12:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 2:12:15Speaker 05

  Right? Access to wildlife in the UK for the purposes of hunting, you know, it was always this thing that was for somebody else and it was very exclusive. So what does it really matter?

• 2:12:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:28Speaker 05

  And, you know, for the folks who are on the private side of the fence and they might be thinking this, another public lands conversation, what does it matter? It's like, well, maybe not too much to you right now, but if you just look at the history of every other place on this planet.

• 2:12:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:47Speaker 05

  It's coming for you.

• 2:12:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Speaker 05

  So you better, you better keep other folks involved, you know, have a little equitable access to wild places and wild things, or else it's going to cross the fence and get you too.

• 2:13:01Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Yeah. You see that expressed, um, like in the case of Washington state, I've seen it expressed where people actually say, they'll point out so few people engage in spring bear hunting, they shouldn't even be allowed to, where it's like, they pointed out.

• 2:13:25Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:13:25Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 2:13:26Speaker 05

  Yep. I always, uh, this is all to extractive use, but you know, we come up with fun arguments, right? It's like, by and large, we all agree that sex is a good thing. Like, we need to have sex. It's how people are on the planet. It's how we reproduce. It's just an accepted thing. At the exact same time, we all kind of agree that sex shouldn't happen wherever, whenever.

• 2:13:56Speaker 05

  Right? It's just like socially, we're like, yeah, not on the city bus, you know?

• 2:14:01Steven Rinella?

  We're open to nuance when it comes to sex, yeah.

• 2:14:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:05Steven Rinella?

  We take a nuanced approach.

• 2:14:07Speaker 05

  But when it comes to, like in the case of the Boundary Waters, right? By God, we need copper, we need mineral extraction. Like, you're either for it, or you're against it.

• 2:14:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:19Speaker 05

  I was like, well, no, not necessarily. It's like, yeah, I am a consumer of goods. But you're telling me that I have to blanket before this type of operation in all landscapes at all times.

• 2:14:36Steven Rinella?

  I gotta support sex in the airport.

• 2:14:38Speaker 05

  Right. Yep.

• 2:14:41Steven Rinella?

  To remain consistent, yeah.

• 2:14:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know?

• 2:14:44Steven Rinella?

  Tell people how to, tell people how to get involved with BHA and like, and what you need most. You guys want members, I'm sure, but what do you guys need most?

• 2:14:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, membership is, is the absolute lifeblood, right? Like, if, if you want an independent organization, membership is the key, right? Like, if you don't want to be beholden to the changing tides, a membership organization is a really nice thing to be a part of, because those membership dollars give you that independence.

• 2:15:21Speaker 05

  Meaning that you're not subject to giant government grants, and you may hold off on certain programs.

• 2:15:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you don't, you're not, you don't need to curry political favor, favor at all times. And also, your whole program doesn't get shut down when, when a grant doesn't come through.

• 2:15:42Speaker 05

  Yep. Yeah, so members, membership's huge. And, and that's, that's really my biggest ask. I'm so, the reason that I'm in this position is because I have always just been so blown away by the, the rank and file member of the organization and how impressive BHA members are because they are there to be proactive and do something. And at this point, having been around the organization for 10 years, we have

• 2:16:15Speaker 05

  members that are.

• 2:16:18Speaker 05

  In the senate, in congress, they are fish and game commissioners in many states. They are community leaders for stewardship projects, water keepers. They're out really doing good work and they literally started because they showed up at a pint night, very low barrier to entry. Have a beer, talk about conservation. Here's a couple of the issues that we're working on. And, you know, we got people in the door and they were like, oh, my God. I'm not just a fundraiser. I'm a doer. I want to go out and do stuff and, and, and those are the, the,

• 2:16:59Speaker 05

  that's what we want, want to make more of and we're, and we want to enable and empower those people to step up and represent at that commission meeting or go pull a couple miles of fence that benefits 30,000 miles in a migration corridor. And we can give you the straight dope, the nonpartisan dope on what's happening. And really, we need to get to this point where we're really providing the, the proactive legislation, right? Like the proactive policy that prevents some of these things from being political footballs.

• 2:17:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:45Speaker 05

  So lots of ways to be involved. We'll give you the tools to do it and you'll be a part of an awesome community and the ripple effects of that community are gonna turn everybody into stewards from this, this tall on up, ideal, so.

• 2:18:01Steven Rinella?

  I don't get to see as much now and I don't get to have as many laughs with you. But man, I'm glad you're in that. I'm glad you're in that role, man. I think it's great.

• 2:18:12Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 2:18:12Steven Rinella?

  To see you over there.

• 2:18:14Speaker 05

  Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's consuming and now with the, the little nipper at the house, it's a. It's more powerful in a lot of ways.

• 2:18:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:18:27Speaker 05

  Cause I'm like, oh, man, I all the talking ad nauseam about like doing this for my kid. Certainly is a little more impactful.

• 2:18:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Speaker 05

  Uh, and I'm like, I'm like, can I get? He's, you know, almost four weeks old now. Can I get this guy? Up to the Arctic in August, like?

• 2:18:53Speaker 05

  Is it like, he's going to be able to see something, right?

• 2:18:56Steven Rinella?

  I remember all, yeah, I remember all those. I, I find that it's generally.

• 2:19:01Steven Rinella?

  You can generally get a, you can generally pull off more than most people think you can pull off. But I also have my ass handed to me a couple of times. Taking kids to do stuff. You'll figure it out. All right, ladies and gentlemen, uh, again, Ryan Callaghan, chief executive officer at Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a membership based organization. You can just go to bh a dot org.

• 2:19:23Speaker 05

  Backcountryhunters.org.

• 2:19:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, sorry. Backcountryhunters.org. See what they're up to. You can sign up for, uh, I find them quite helpful. You can sign up for email.

• 2:19:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:19:34Steven Rinella?

  Keep you apprised on stuff. You'll get like Cal's take on things and, and other issues. Um, and stay educated in what's going on, follow along and then hopefully. Hopefully find any to, uh, support the organization, support the great work they do. Thanks, Cal.

• 2:19:48Speaker 05

  And the action alerts will, will, um. You'll get the information, hit the action alert. Um, it puts you directly in touch with your representative or, or member. Um, and it's just makes it easy. Um, you can use the, the form letter, but we want you to do it on your own. So use the info. Say where you're from and what you want. Cal's Weekend Review. Your podcast.

• 2:20:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, don't forget Cal's Week in Review.

• 2:20:17Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. Cal's Week in Review. Lots of good info there, and it's it's

• 2:20:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, see, I'm looking at you like I'm looking at you totally like the the the BHA CEO right now. Yeah.

• 2:20:29Speaker 05

  Man, life's not worth doing if you're just doing one thing. You gotta spin those plates.

• 2:20:33Steven Rinella?

  Also, hear Cal's hot take on everything conservation related gets and also get some of those laughs I was talking about by tuning in Cal's Week in Review right here on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. Thanks, man.

• 2:20:45Speaker 05

  Thank you.

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