Ep. 664: The State of the Conservation Union

Steven Rinella https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork talks with the CEO of TRCP Joel Pedersen https://www.trcp.org/2024/08/05/joel-pedersen-named-president-and-ceo-of-the-theodore-roosevelt-conservation-partnership/, Ryan Callaghan https://www.trcp.org/2024/08/05/joel-pedersen-named-president-and-ceo-of-the-theodore-roosevelt-conservation-partnership/, and Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/. Topics discussed: Steve’s hemp project; kids on snowmobiles bringing the neighborhood together; a good word -- prognosticate; bear dens inside tree cavities; what Trump did and didn't do well in his first term for hunters and anglers; how things faired under Biden; working with both sides of the aisle; wind power having a bigger footprint than solar; developing public hunting and fishing lands; how executive orders only go so far and energy still relies on supply and demand; delisting and re-listing wolves; what priority shifts we'll see with the new administration; and more. Connect with Steve 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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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 2:46Speaker 02

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• 2:55Steven Rinella?

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• 3:17Speaker 03

  You got a little hemp project going on? Making yourself a little necklace?

• 3:21Steven Rinella?

  I do. I'll explain it.

• 3:26Steven Rinella?

  Is the machine on Phil?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  It's on.

• 3:27Steven Rinella?

  Is it aiming at me?

• 3:29Speaker 03

  It's aiming right, you're front and center right now, yeah.

• 3:33Steven Rinella?

  Cal was asking about this hemp project. This, I think, I feel like this is 100 years old.

• 3:40Steven Rinella?

  So this is the pull mechanism on the punt gun.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Oh, sweet.

• 3:44Steven Rinella?

  And it had been pulled so many times that there was three strands over the eyelet and they had all failed. So I'm unwrapping this serving. I'm gonna put a new loop in there through the pull thing and put the serving back on.

• 4:03Steven Rinella?

  And it's like a little piece of copper pipe.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Very cool.

• 4:09Steven Rinella?

  That's the noise that punt gun.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  When are you guys gonna?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  That's exactly the noise it'll make.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  When are you guys gonna touch that thing off?

• 4:15Steven Rinella?

  Well, we were gonna touch it off the other day, but the weather was just too bad. So I don't know when we're gonna touch it off. It's just not like hanging out outside shooting a punt gun weather right now.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, like negative eighteen.

• 4:27Steven Rinella?

  Snow blowing everywhere.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:29Steven Rinella?

  It just wouldn't be any fun.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I will tell you, I went, it was one of my last pheasant hunts of the year, but

• 4:36Speaker 03

  I set a railroad tracks in Montana that I had no idea that were still in use. And it was super cold, not as cold as it is now, but it was down in the teens.

• 4:46Steven Rinella?

  You put your tongue on that track.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Well, it was like, what is it, Ives, who, the real Christmas he sees, but this train.

• 4:54Steven Rinella?

  Burl Ives?

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Burl Ives is the singer, right?

• 4:57Steven Rinella?

  Oh, Courier, oh.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Courier and Ives, there you go, yeah.

• 4:59Steven Rinella?

  Burl Ives is the, yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  But the sun's setting and this train comes around the tracks, you know, it's all the drift country, so all this snow had been dumped into the railroad tracks. That train came through and before the train even touched it, you know, it was like the vacuum effect of that freight coming through was blowing all that powder out. It was just like the most, I've never been in love with trains before, but that afternoon I was like, oh, that's amazing.

• 5:29Steven Rinella?

  My kids had been riding, they finally got in trouble for this. So we have like a road, it's not, it's like a road, but not really. Like the only reason you'd be on our little loop, you know, our house, like the only reason you're on that loop is if you live there.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 5:45Steven Rinella?

  And then there's like a big grass circle, which is all covered in snow. So my kids had taken to, like first it was like, we're just gonna ride the snowmobile around the loop real quick. And then it became just riding.

• 6:01Steven Rinella?

  Ride, ride, ride, ride, ride. And we were kind of laughing about when someone, when someone would snap and come complain to them.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:10Steven Rinella?

  You know, and sure enough, they get flagged down by a couple of neighbors who, after days of riding,

• 6:17Steven Rinella?

  flag them down and complain to them. And they come back just outraged, you know? He says he's gonna take it up with you, to me, you know, no one has. But, uh, he says you can't ride on the road. I'm like, I mean, you can't ride on the road.

• 6:35Steven Rinella?

  I didn't mention that, but no.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Is this like a traditionally friendly neighbor, like someone you guys, you know?

• 6:44Steven Rinella?

  I don't have anything to do with them. You, you got people that, you got people that see kids out playing outside.

• 6:50Speaker 04

  And then they're like.

• 6:50Steven Rinella?

  And it makes them happy. And you got people that see kids playing outside and it makes them mad. Yeah. There's two kinds of people in this world.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Those people are.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Snowmobiles, though, there's a tolerance level, I feel.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Like, the noise is, is, yeah.

• 7:08Steven Rinella?

  If it's a four-stroke, it's clean. Yeah, you have people that are like, oh, I'm gonna enforce the rules. I love the rules.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:18Steven Rinella?

  Hey, wait a minute, those kids are breaking the rules. Can't think of what it's hurting, but they're breaking the rules.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  It's the eight, uh, 8 a.m. Kids just got out of the house, you're having a chill cup of coffee and.

• 7:33Steven Rinella?

  They're not like that. They go very slow. It's more like in the distance.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 7:39Steven Rinella?

  When I'm watching, they, they got a trail that cuts through our yard. They go up on that berm.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:44Steven Rinella?

  If I'm standing there washing dishes, I only know they're coming by because of the headlight.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Oh, sweet. They're riding the snowmobile on the berm. I love it.

• 7:53Steven Rinella?

  They got loops all over the place. And all the neighbor kids are always riding with them.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  And they haven't contacted a fence yet?

• 7:59Steven Rinella?

  Bringing the community, it's bringing the community together. I was like, who could complain? Because everyone's kid rides on the snowmobiles.

• 8:09Steven Rinella?

  I got one neighbor offering me gas money.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  Keep my kid occupied. That's what you should have said. Did you offer them a ride when they stopped you?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:19Steven Rinella?

  My wife had a really funny idea to, um,

• 8:23Steven Rinella?

  she thought that we should act oblivious to what the issue was. And she said, let's ride the snowmobiles over to see what's going on.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Bring an extra helmet.

• 8:38Steven Rinella?

  So funny.

• 8:41Steven Rinella?

  Uh, we do a thing. How often do we do this? We do a thing every year.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Once a year.

• 8:44Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we do a thing every year. We do the State of the Union. Um, we stole that. I don't know if they trademarked State of the Union. I don't think they trademarked State of the Union.

• 8:56Steven Rinella?

  We do the State of the Union on, on, uh, conservation in the U.S. at the federal level.

• 9:02Steven Rinella?

  With the CEO of TRCP and, uh, historically a number of times we've had on the former CEO, Whit Fosberg, but today we're premiering the new CEO of TRCP, Joel Peterson, and we're going to run through a State of the Union and I'm going to do a giant caveat.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  All right.

• 9:20Steven Rinella?

  No one knows.

• 9:24Steven Rinella?

  No one knows. We're going to talk about some things from the past. We're going to go back a little bit. Um, I think the furthest we'll stray back is we'll stray back about eight years ago, maybe.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:38Steven Rinella?

  We're going to touch on to Trump one. We're going to talk about Biden. We're going to talk about the early days of Trump two. And, and when we enter into the days of Trump two, there's a giant question mark because we're going to be talking about some federal policy and a lot of federal policies up in the air. I had breakfast with Joel this morning and I told him that, uh, he is not, he does not need to be, um, he does not need to be a prophet or, uh, prophesize prophecy. What the hell's the word?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:09Steven Rinella?

  Prophesize. Can you say prophesize?

• 10:11Speaker 03

  It's.

• 10:12Steven Rinella?

  Is that not a word? Prophesize.

• 10:17Steven Rinella?

  In DC right now, there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty with the administration's changing over. A lot of policy changes.

• 10:24Speaker 05

  And a lot could change from the time we record this, in the whatever six days until it airs.

• 10:30Steven Rinella?

  Well, Joel's one step ahead of you. Joel wanted to speak, he had a specific question for Corinne, because he says, "We're running the risk of anything we saying, anything we say changing." So he wanted to understand what sort of timeline he's dealing with, and we shared him it's a tight as timeline as we can provide.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  Today's Tuesday, yeah, six days.

• 10:51Steven Rinella?

  So it's six days. So, a lot can change in six days, but it's different than if it was six months.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Steve, try this one on for size.

• 10:59Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Prognosticate.

• 11:01Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  Crystal ballish.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  That's a good one.

• 11:05Steven Rinella?

  I would think that you were making that word up. Prognosticating.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Well, the example's perfect. I won't prognosticate and say whether this will lead to other mainstream...

• 11:16Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:19Speaker 05

  Oh, it ends in an ellipsis?

• 11:23Speaker 03

  No, it doesn't. It rolls. But I'm sorry, it was perfect up until the last one.

• 11:27Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I see, I see.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Now, but if we were talking about a...

• 11:31Steven Rinella?

  Very vague.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  If we were talking about a current appointment, then this example would be perfect all the way through.

• 11:38Steven Rinella?

  Understood.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  I was thinking more about policy, not appointment.

• 11:43Steven Rinella?

  So, to recap in short, we're gonna, we're gonna hand it over to Joel here to talk about what TRCP does, what federal policy looks like, what his personal background is. But again, this is a, this is meant to be a quick crash course in the state of the conservation movement, particularly like conservation issues that impact American hunters and anglers, the state of the conservation union.

• 12:16Steven Rinella?

  As we enter into a new administration and embark on a new four years. So with that, Joel, tell everybody what TRCP is.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is a nonprofit organization. We've been around for 23 years now, and we were really brought together, like I said, 23 years ago to help unify and amplify the sportsman's voice. And what we do, our mission is guaranteeing all Americans quality places to hunt and fish. And so at the core of everything we do, we try to tie it back to that. But the challenge that was seen over two decades ago was that every single one of the conservation organizations were coming into Congress or coming into the administration and asking for their own little thing. And it wasn't a unified message. And so the power of the millions of sportsmen

• 13:06Speaker 06

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

• 13:47Speaker 06

  really focused on prescribed fire and how that benefits, in that case, quail, but everything else that's out there. We also work in marine fisheries. We've got groups like Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. And so it's a very diverse group that we have that brings a lot of important voices together to think about the conservation issues that, that the community, not just the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is facing. So when we think about this, we've kind of broken the work that we do into five different areas. Public lands is one that I know this team is very well aware of. It's often at the center of a lot of the things that this that you're interested in. We also have a

• 14:31Speaker 06

  private land center that deals a lot with farm bill. We also house some of the work we're doing with chronic wasting disease in that area. We have our marine fisheries, which deals largely, we do a lot with forage fish, but there's it's also been a big focus on the Mississippi floodplain coastal Louisiana coastal restoration there, moving up the Mississippi River with some of the work we're doing now. And then we have a water program as well that's largely been focused to date on the Colorado River, the Rio Grande River and the water issues that are there, but really that entire watershed and what we can do about that. And then we also have a focus on climate or resiliency, if you

• 15:16Speaker 06

  will, and really thinking about how some of the changes we're seeing on the landscape impacts across all those other centers, the impacts that it's having on our public lands, private lands, wildlife in general, and integrating that work into those different centers, taking advantage of some of the opportunities that are out there. Hit folks with your personal background, how you came to the work. Well, you know, I think like most people that have been involved in conservation, it started when I was young. I grew up in Nebraska hunting and fishing with my dad and my grandparents, more fishing than hunting because northeast Nebraska, there wasn't a whole lot to hunt back then. Pheasants was about the only thing. And I was actually

• 15:57Speaker 06

  grew up Dayton myself, but after the real golden age of that, but before CRP really hit and kind of brought it back for a stretch of 10 to 12 years in the 80s and early 90s. So I did that. I was involved with Boy Scouts as well, and I was fortunate, the troop I was with, we We camped every month year round. And so really grew up with a love for the outdoors. And by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I realized there was a thing called a wildlife biologist that you could make a career out of. And so I, one of those few people that I think knew from a very young age, this is what I want to do and was able to, was able to do that. So graduated with a degree in wildlife

• 16:41Speaker 06

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

• 17:25Speaker 06

  From there, I went to National Wild Turkey Federation. I worked with National Wild Turkey Federation in the conservation department for the majority of my 22 years there, did just about everything you could do in conservation wise. And then when Becky Humphries, who I know has been on the show, actually was on about a year ago in the interim role at TRCP.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  When she took over as CEO there, she asked me to grow a government affairs program for National Wild Turkey Federation. And so I went to work directly for her and I did that for about the last six years that I was at NWTF. And then almost right at four years ago now, I had the opportunity to, to move west and ended up in Salt Lake and took over as CEO of the Mule Deer Foundation. And so I did that for about three years. And then fast forward to September 1st of last year, I made another jump and back across the country to Northern Virginia and the DC area to take over as president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which is a great opportunity to come in and do this.

• 18:35Speaker 06

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

• 19:11Steven Rinella?

  Hey, let's scrap federal policy for a minute. What did you think about, I wasn't, before, I wasn't aware that you had worked on specifically on black bears in Florida?

• 19:23Speaker 06

  In Tennessee.

• 19:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, so you, okay, so.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  For my master's program at Tennessee.

• 19:28Steven Rinella?

  But when you went, you say, so you didn't wind up in Florida?

• 19:31Speaker 06

  I went to work for the State Wildlife Agency in Florida.

• 19:34Steven Rinella?

  But not with a black bear focus?

• 19:35Speaker 06

  Not with a black bear focus.

• 19:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Tennessee is like the place for a degree of with focusing on black bears, right? Like that is the, the school.

• 19:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. University of Tennessee through Dr. Mike Pelton had a program that spanned three decades there, looking at black bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and really across the southeast and then on into Minnesota. And it spanned other places as well. Virginia Tech was the other one at that time that was also had a very strong program with black bears.

• 20:09Steven Rinella?

  Tennessee was where those dudes were finding those black bears were denning like 30, 40 feet up in trees and stuff. And those, that was fascinating, man. Like how they even know those holes are up there?

• 20:18Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. They, they seek them out and they find them. It's definitely preferred for them in that area. And, you know, I had the opportunity to crawl up some of those trees and try to, to find them and, and see what you could do. And, you know, a couple, you never knew if the hole that you could see in the tree was just right there, or whether there was one I can remember. It was, you know, the hole was 50 feet up in the tree. But the whole tree was hollow clear down into the root mass. And so the bear had not only climbed up, but then climbed all the way back down and was, you know, 60 feet below.

• 20:55Steven Rinella?

  Coming down that hollow tree.

• 20:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. And then contrast that with, and you crawl up the next one and you're eye to eye two feet away with a mama bear that's looking at you, you know?

• 21:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I thought that was wild, man. Just thinking about how like unless, in some of those trees, unless he happened to be up there picking mast or something.

• 21:17Speaker 06

  Right.

• 21:17Steven Rinella?

  They must just go up there and scout them out.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  I think they do.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Well, then on the, on the 60 foot climb down, he's got to be pretty confident that he can turn around at the bottom, right? I mean, you'd think that there's quite a few trees that the hole just tapers off and you're going to find a bunch of bear bones down there.

• 21:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a good point. Like you get in there and can't get back up.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  Pretty confident.

• 21:36Speaker 06

  Right?

• 21:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  That's a great point.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  I think that it's a butt first descent, though.

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Is it?

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:42Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you know what? I asked this to Karl Malcolm. That's right. Karl Malcolm says, what dress? Do you know what Karl Malcolm said to me? I forgot.

• 21:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:49Steven Rinella?

  He said, what way do you go down a ladder?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  And you're like, damn it.

• 21:54Steven Rinella?

  So then I probably said head first, of course.

• 21:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's a good point. He just walks back up when things get tied on his butt. All right. So let's, let's jump back. I said, we're going to go back eight years.

• 22:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:08Steven Rinella?

  Um, hit me with a, hit me with a conservation recap on Trump administration one. Like every, every administration has their areas where they focus, right? There, there's things that their predecessor did that they kind of let go, you know, that they let, let, let, they let it drift away. There's new priorities. Uh, in, in Trump one, what did, what did we see? Like, what did he get right for hunters and anglers? And where do you feel that things could have gone better during Trump one?

• 22:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, so in the first Trump administration, we were definitely benefited with his son, Don Jr., who's an avid hunter and fisher and definitely has some influence over the president there. And so we always had a voice. And I think that we'll continue to have that voice in the current administration as well. But a couple of, I'd say, real wins out of the first Trump administration, one of them had to do with access, for sure. And the work that he did through then Secretary Zinke and Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service and really looking at opportunities to open up hunting and fishing access on wildlife refuges. And people remember that part of it, and the millions of acres

• 23:24Speaker 06

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

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, quite a few refuges would have a shell restriction, right? So it's like you can only have 12 shells on you on the refuge, whereas anybody outside the refuge, you can carry around as many shotgun shells as you're willing.

• 24:21Speaker 06

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 06

  So it was just trying to get some things like that that were out of the way and make it easier on hunters and fishermen to access. And so access was one of them, migration corridors. We've talked a lot about migration corridors over the last eight years. And Secretary Order 3362 that he and then Secretary Ryan Zinke signed, really put attention on migration corridors, and it led to a lot of the funding for research. That we've had over the years for mapping those corridors and and we've seen great use come out of that for conservation measures as well as just having that body of information and then funding there to know

• 25:02Speaker 06

  where to do the work to preserve these to preserve the corridors in the winter range, but then also the species that go with it. And then Trump was also.

• 25:13Steven Rinella?

  On that one, sorry, they put they put money there too, right?

• 25:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I forget exactly how much it was, but it was millions, low tens of millions, maybe on an annual basis. To really fund some of that research and a lot of what we know now from the GPS collars that are out there. They were around and being used some, but this really gave a push to that through that funding. To grow those programs and our understanding of of big game migration corridors and what they use, which then leads to wise use decisions about management, development, etc. that that we've been able to use.

• 25:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, we did a show some time ago now with Matt Kaufman and who's Kaufman work?

• 25:56Steven Rinella?

  Sorry, I'm mixing up two names. Monty, Kevin Monty, yeah, Kevin Monty. And we talked to them a lot about the ability from their collaring data on big game animals. Particularly in Wyoming, but allowing you to to get pretty focused and targeted on on on like specific points on a map.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 26:20Steven Rinella?

  You know, that when you're looking at when you're looking at migration corridors and things like narrowing down to very precise spots. That needed help or needed protection or needed overpasses. And that came from being able to watch generations.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 26:35Steven Rinella?

  You know, the generational turnover is pretty quick, but to watch generations of deer moving across the landscape.

• 26:42Speaker 06

  Right.

• 26:42Steven Rinella?

  You know, to find those things that are those those constants, right?

• 26:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so that's had some real practical uses kind of fast forward into the Biden administration on this point.

• 26:54Speaker 06

  Some of the bill and IRA money that came about was for.

• 26:57Steven Rinella?

  Explain that.

• 26:59Speaker 06

  Bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act. And that was what was passed during the first two years of the Biden administration that. It was the money that everybody's, it went to everything, but there was a couple trillion dollars that went towards conservation work. One of the programs that was stood up in that was a wildlife crossings pilot program through the transferred, transportation department, actually. But because of the work that a lot of the Western states have, you can go now and look at that program and say, this is where we need to put the crossing. Instead of just kind of guessing based upon where you'd see roadkill.

• 27:43Speaker 06

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

• 28:24Speaker 06

  data, was saying, hey, you've, the first draft that you've put out here, you're not paying attention to migration corridors or winter range. And so we worked really hard to get comments in from the public, from our partners, and raise their awareness that we have really good data for this. And so the final rule that came out on that excluded known mapped migration corridors, winter range and stopover range, but in addition also had language in there that said, and any future ones that get mapped within these areas, we're going to take that out as well. And so, you know, the benefit from that SO3362.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  Eight, almost, you know, eight, nine years ago now, it's really carried forward.

• 29:09Steven Rinella?

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• 31:14Steven Rinella?

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• 32:39Steven Rinella?

  Now, what are some things in Trump, one, that could have been better for Hunter's neighbors?

• 32:46Speaker 06

  There's, we're going to face this again, but energy development is certainly one of them. But we dealt with that in the Biden administration, as I just said, there it was.

• 32:57Steven Rinella?

  It was different.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  It was solar and wind. And here it's going to be back to oil and gas. And I guess one of the advantages that we have is oil and gas have been around for a lot longer. And so we better know how to deal with that, how to side it. And there's a lot more technology and there's a lot of regulations already in place. So that's one that is always there. I think development is another one.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  I think one, I'm kind of fast forwarding to now, but one that's on everybody's mind is public lands and what's going to happen with with public lands and Trump in the first administration was great on public lands. Very strongly came out and said, we shouldn't dispose of public lands and made sure that that didn't happen. And we think that'll continue, but it's, you know, there's also a different tenor around the country right now on that. And so that's something that we're being cognizant cognizant about as well in in trying to watch that.

• 33:59Steven Rinella?

  That's the thing. I've brought this up. I've told this story a hundred times, but the first time I saw, first and only time I actually saw Trump speak was very early in his campaign, his first campaign and a very conservative audience. Okay. At shot show.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 34:20Steven Rinella?

  Trump spoke and he got up and um, and he and I felt as though someone had just said, hey, I'll explain this later, but go out and say this. Just because it seemed like for for a guy like, you know, he's like from New York City, you know, he's a developer. But he got up and he said, um, I'm not gonna sell off your public lands.

• 34:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 34:42Steven Rinella?

  And I remember being like, just surprised that would have been that early in the campaign that that would have been on his radar.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  Right.

• 34:48Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 34:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:49Steven Rinella?

  To have brought that up. And then it kind of stayed, whatever the motivation on it was, stayed pretty true to that. And that there wasn't, you know, at that, at that time, we still haven't seen it. There wasn't a like wholesale effort that wound up being successful and like reducing federal land management, you know, like it always gets talked about, but it hadn't happened.

• 35:12Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:12Steven Rinella?

  And probably for a handful of reasons. You could watch just in our recent state campaign here. All, all candidates.

• 35:24Steven Rinella?

  Would would try to establish their public lands bona fides.

• 35:29Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:30Steven Rinella?

  All can it's like it's like saying you're pro American. Yet you're gonna do it. People are gonna say they're gonna articulate being pro public lands.

• 35:40Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:41Steven Rinella?

  You know, here and you know, in this state at least.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's definitely important in Montana and a lot of the other western states.

• 35:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like you have to give you have to articulate, you have to express that viewpoint.

• 35:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 35:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, but you know, I think I've met with members of your delegation many times over the years and I the ones that I know, they've been solid in that space for a long time because it's very personal to them. Right Congressman Zinke, Senator Danes, very personally both love their time out on the land. And so when they say it, I tend to believe them and there's a lot of others out west as well.

• 36:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Uh, you already touched on this a little bit, but let's track some of the primary issues that what are some of the things that that continued like when Biden came in after Trump won? Again, as we clarified earlier, Biden comes in with his own priorities, some things they're just going to get ignored, some things are going to be pushed forward. What was sort of the conservation continuity?

• 36:43Steven Rinella?

  Or conversely, like the lack of continuity we saw when Biden came in. In what ways did he have a unique focus?

• 36:52Steven Rinella?

  And what sorts of things died on the vine? What sorts of things kept going? What new ideas were brought forward?

• 36:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, so you know, we touched on a couple of these that that were around and and they they continued. The migrations work that started with SO 3362. The Biden administration kept that program around. Um, and because it was a secretarial order uh, from the Trump administration, it would have been very easy for them to just slice and dice that one. And we're getting rid of it just because of where it came from.

• 37:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 06

  But they kept it around because they they heard about it from the sportsman community for sure. They heard about it from sportsmen, but they also saw the value of it. But it didn't get the same level of funding. It didn't get the same level of focus that it did in Trump one. They they kept it there and and things continued. By that token, what we talked about with access and opening up the the fish and wildlife refuges to more hunting and fishing access is another one that they they kept around. But just absolutely not at the same level. I forget the exact number here, the but the last last year they did it. It was a couple

• 38:03Speaker 06

  hundred, 300,000 acres that were opened up as opposed to millions in the first several years. And they also, you know, started putting some additional restrictions and looking at some of this in terms of we're going to open it up, but there's not going to be any lead ammunition allowed regardless of what you're hunting for or fishing for. It wasn't just tied to to waterfowl and some things like that, that that made it a little more challenging in those regards.

• 38:31Speaker 06

  You know, the Biden administration and I think Democratic administrations in general, they're they're always good about conservation funding. So we talked about the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act and the nearly $2 trillion that came towards conservation through that.

• 38:52Speaker 06

  So the the funding there was great. We'll probably see a reduction in some of that funding with a Republican administration and a Republican Congress coming in. And so it's kind of hard to to weave apart. Is it just the administration? Because there's also Congress in there as well?

• 39:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 06

  And how they're giving the funding out?

• 39:13Speaker 06

  When it came to kind of some of the direct hunting related

• 39:19Speaker 06

  legislation and and policies, certainly, we saw a drop off with that in the in the Biden administration. Access was important. Access specific for hunting and fishing, less important.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Second Amendment issues, absolutely less important within a Democratic administration than I think what we than what we saw and what we'll see again in a Republican administration.

• 39:46Speaker 06

  Energy development was still important for both, but in a different in a different manner, as we talked about a minute ago. And so I think those are some of the the differences that we'll see.

• 39:57Steven Rinella?

  If you had to if you had to look at the energy part of the question. With Biden administration talking about doing renewables, so solar arrays and, and, uh, wind farms, what do you call, what do you actually call a wind farm?

• 40:11Speaker 06

  That's what I call them.

• 40:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you can use that term? Solar arrays and wind farms. And when it first came out, um, when it first came up for comment, it was kind of like a, felt like a staggering amount of acreage being considered, right? And then, and then it got debated and as you pointed out, people brought in issues like wildlife corridors and, and, and it shrank, the, the, the proposed footprint shrank.

• 40:37Speaker 06

  Right.

• 40:37Steven Rinella?

  And I think part of setting that policy is you come out with a big ask, knowing that your ask will get whittled down. Okay. Um, and now with like energy dominance.

• 40:49Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 40:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay. And, and looking back at fossil fuels and, and the current administration pushing for like, um, a real concentrated focus on domestic fossil fuel energy production. Which of those things do you think, which of those plans is going to lead to like the, the highest net acreage of public hunting and fishing lands being developed? Like is the footprint on Trump's fossil fuel plan, will it wind up being bigger than the biggest ask from the Biden administration on the footprint of renewables?

• 41:26Speaker 06

  It's hard for me to prognosticate this.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  I had to use that word after you threw it out. It's too early to tell.

• 41:36Speaker 06

  Uh, no, I, like I said before, we've got a lot of history with oil and gas development, right? Um, and we know that what that footprint is and with directional drilling and everything else, it's, um, they'll take up less of a footprint. You know, one of the big problems with, with solar is the arrays go in and then they put an eight foot chain link fence around it to keep everyone and everything out. And with oil and gas, you don't necessarily have to do that and you can leave some open space between them. There's also some emerging technology that um that the companies have have started talking about where they can check their pumps, they can check the flows more remotely than they

• 42:19Speaker 06

  ever used to because even though you've got a reduced footprint with oil and gas, you still typically have historically had vehicles driving those roads every day, year round, checking on everything.

• 42:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 06

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

• 43:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 06

  Out there on the landscape. And it surprised me, but wind had a bigger footprint even than solar when it came to the number of acres per kilowatt hour that were being generated on that.

• 43:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, for sure. And it was not, well, maybe it's better understood now than it was, but the, for lack of a better term, um, the psychological impact to wildlife of that, those blades?

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:42Steven Rinella?

  Rolling in the sky and how that affects the noise and the blades, how it affects what goes on down on the ground.

• 43:48Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:49Steven Rinella?

  Cause you could look underneath one of those suckers and see a bunch of grass.

• 43:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:53Steven Rinella?

  But then, and I just have had anecdotal conversations with people who've taken ranch land and put it into that, and they'll come back and say like, by and large, uh, stuff avoids that part of the ranch now, you know, like, like pronghorn, particularly about pronghorn, just never getting comfortable with it.

• 44:08Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:09Steven Rinella?

  So you wind up, it's like the footprint winds up being different than the footprint.

• 44:14Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:15Steven Rinella?

  You know.

• 44:15Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 44:16Steven Rinella?

  Which I think is what you're referring to, the amount of traffic that accompanies oil and gas.

• 44:20Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 44:21Steven Rinella?

  All the, the vehicle traffic, right?

• 44:22Speaker 06

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

• 45:04Speaker 06

  I wonder if we were seeing more of that go on the ground because of the subsidies that were out there.

• 45:09Steven Rinella?

  It was a little bit divorced from free market economy.

• 45:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 05

  I also, I also think the, uh, like what's, one of the interesting things in terms of just beyond the physical impact is just leasing out. Cause most leases don't get developed.

• 45:24Speaker 06

  Right.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  Right? And so I think like, if I recall, once that land is leased, it creates all sorts of hurdles for trying to do other projects on that ground, like habitat improvement. So one of the concerns is not necessarily like, oh, the administration's going to sell a bunch of leases. Even if they go undeveloped, it still creates hurdles for doing things for wildlife on those lands, even if those areas are never drilled, right?

• 45:53Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 45:53Speaker 05

  That's, that's another concern.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Well, the conservation lease program is under review, so that doesn't actually factor in at this point. Right? So that's, that's part of the secretarial orders that just came out, or sorry, executive orders that just came out.

• 46:10Speaker 05

  I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but like.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Even outside of that, like aside from just leasing public ground for wildlife.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Oh, so could you not like overlap grazing allotment on that?

• 46:23Speaker 05

  I mean, I can't speak to the technicalities, but I know that's one concern is like if you have a massive lease sale, even if they say, we're not going to drill this for a hundred years. There are immediate consequences in terms of like wanting to do wildlife on that land because they could drill it at any time. So there's like, there's.

• 46:43Speaker 06

  It's kind of a primacy of use.

• 46:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:46Speaker 06

  So it gets better consideration. I mean, it's that way with grazing as well. When you get a grazing allotment on public lands, there's some deferment that goes to that rancher that's got it because he's paying for that. And while there's still can be habitat work that can be done, you got to take into consideration what's that going to do to the, to the forage for the cattle that are out there, the sheep that are out there, right? And while there's, there's still hunting access, there may be areas within that that get excluded because it's important to the rancher's operations and things like that.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I can see like on the flip side, if you're operating under a grant to go out and do improvements on the landscape, are you going to prioritize land that may at some point be developed? Should kind of be like throwing your, your grant money away.

• 47:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:38Steven Rinella?

  It's a Joel's interesting point you brought up that I hadn't really thought too much about is you can do executive orders, but it's all going to be a little bit at the whim of the industry as they watch the, the, the price of a barrel of oil. You know, like, like there's certain places that are very expensive to operate in and until the market is such that it makes sense, you can ask them to do it, but they might not pull the trigger on it.

• 48:07Speaker 06

  Right. That, no, that's exactly right. And I think what the executive orders do is they, they create the framework to be able to do more in the future, but it's still going to be up to the markets.

• 48:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And I think you're right in that, that a lot of renewables were being like highly incentivized, meaning the.

• 48:27Steven Rinella?

  Wadded or however you measure the output of places, you'd get a premium price for depending on how that was generated.

• 48:34Speaker 06

  Right.

• 48:35Steven Rinella?

  Or you'd be, you'd operate at a deficit depending on how it was generated.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:39Steven Rinella?

  There's a lot of parallels with how the New York Times bestseller list works.

• 48:44Speaker 05

  And you happen to be thinking about that, why?

• 48:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like a book sold in some places is worth a lot more to their algorithm than a book sold in other places.

• 48:56Speaker 06

  Interesting.

• 48:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so to play this game we played, we looked at Trump won and coming out of Trump won, what are some things that, what were some areas where we saw Biden's focus change?

• 49:12Steven Rinella?

  So if we look at some areas of focus that Biden had, what are some places where we might see some continuity? I think, I'll tee this up about something that you and I discussed at breakfast as well, is I can tell you one area where there will not be continuity is so far is conversations around climate. And it, and it puts, it creates a particular pickle for people. And I'll recap a discussion we had over breakfast.

• 49:46Steven Rinella?

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

• 50:18Steven Rinella?

  Four years ago, there was a dramatic paradigm shift. You had to then say, well, how is what I'm already doing? How can I frame this as being a discussion about climate? Or you work on wildfire mitigation generally, you work on wildfire issues. To keep doing your work, you had to say, oh, and by the way, it's a climate project. Because that would enable you to get funding. That would enable you to be published academically. Because if you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get published. If you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get funding. And now there's this, this reality

• 51:00Steven Rinella?

  that you need to expunge that language from your project. And you had people whose arms were bent in creating that language.

• 51:07Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 51:09Steven Rinella?

  Everything had to flow through that lens. And now you have to retract from that. And demonstrate back to the old way you would, you would highlight your work or seek grants.

• 51:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:21Steven Rinella?

  And it's like, it feels to me, and this is me talking. I want to be very clear. This is not Joel talking. This is me talking. It feels like, um, if I was a wildlife researcher, I would, I would feel, uh, disheartened about, disheartened about this. Because I'd be like, dude, I was overplaying it. I don't want to admit it now, but I was overplaying that shit to get funding. Now I gotta turn around and dial it back.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  I, I, I do think this is just like the same game that gets played every four years or eight, eight years though. It's like, oh, your emphasis is on this? Awesome. I work on grizzly bears and I'm going to make grizzly bears a, a climate thing.

• 52:05Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  Right? I work on grizzly bears. I'm going to make it, uh, I'm going to try to determine how grizzly bears love oil and gas withdrawal. You know, like, but I'm going to still work on grizzly bears.

• 52:17Steven Rinella?

  Exactly. Yeah, like, oh no, it's the same work. But now it has to do with how I can mitigate risk to the livestock industry by better understanding how bears live and where they go.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:30Steven Rinella?

  And before I wanted to find out how they live and where they go. Because it could have something to do with climate.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, as a precursor to how the temperature is changing on the ground, something, yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. No, I, I think you're, you're both absolutely correct on that and, and it is frustrating. I mean, it's the fact of the matter is I, I, so I think back to my, my Mule Deer Foundation days when we were, while I was there, Mule Deer Foundation was a benefactor of a large, tens of millions of dollars commitment from Forest Service and BLM to go out and help implement in the eyes of the Mule Deer Foundation, great habitat restoration work for Mule Deer, to save Mule Deer, uh, make sure they had the best quality habitat out there on winter range, summer range, wherever it was. Um, but it was coming through a lens of this money

• 53:22Speaker 06

  is coming on the ground to help us mitigate climate change, to help us mitigate the wildfire crisis and all of that. The work that Mule Deer Foundation and those contractors are doing is exactly the same three years ago as it will be next year.

• 53:38Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:39Speaker 06

  It's just in the name of however you want to frame it up. And so that's-

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Probably overlaps a lot with what Tall Timbers has been doing for like 70 years now.

• 53:49Speaker 06

  Exactly, exactly.

• 53:52Speaker 05

  Great point.

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so you get this and, and when we come in with just the broad brush that it said climate, it must be bad. I don't, you know, I, it's just too broad stroke and it just politicizes the issues. Like everything is politicized now in Congress and conservation and everything else, which is, is really unfortunate because the work that we do is nonpartisan, right? And we can do good things for whatever you care about with this money being done or the research being done. Um, it's just, it's unfortunate that the word climate gets caught up in all of this.

• 54:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:37Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of

• 55:21Steven Rinella?

  a set. Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today. I used to think that like your mattress was like your shoe size. I mean, there's nothing you're going to do to change it. But man, was I wrong. That was before I ever like had an actual good new mattress. And once I had one, I couldn't believe I'd spent my whole life sleeping on dished out junky old mattresses. Well, Helix, check this out. They got over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect model for you. Nothing to be embarrassed about getting yourself a new mattress. Helix has cooling upgrades too, so you can get the best rest even on hot nights. A good night's rest sets you up for a great day. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. And you

• 56:04Steven Rinella?

  can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix Guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Here's what you do. Go to helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. helixsleep.com/meateater.

• 56:40Steven Rinella?

  A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail camera for a spot that's heating up, warmer layers for a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods. Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com.

• 57:12Steven Rinella?

  What are some other areas where you think we'll see, so we talked about oil and gas, like a fundamental change of perspective on what kind of energy. Like, but both administrations agreed that we wanted to do energy work.

• 57:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:26Steven Rinella?

  But a real difference, and we're talking about renewables v fossil fuel.

• 57:32Speaker 06

  Right.

• 57:33Steven Rinella?

  And I think within that, you can't really separate that conversation from the climate conversation, because the climate conversation was driven by an idea that renewables, great, good. You're bad if you talk, you know, you must not love the environment if you bring up questions about renewables. To being renewables, bad, fossil fuels, good. That's a major shift. Are there some other, like, just like ideological shifts that you think we'll see? I mean, only as it pertains to conservation, though. I'm not gonna make you go down some, you know, we don't have to start talking about the A word or anything. But what are some fundamental shifts that you think we're gonna see in terms of, in terms of attitude and focus?

• 58:19Speaker 06

  You know, I think that's probably the biggest one. I think how conservation gets funded is probably the other one that, that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about, and my counterparts and the organizations have.

• 58:33Speaker 06

  I've brought up the bill and IRA funding a couple of times, but there's a big slug of money there.

• 58:39Speaker 06

  What's going to happen with that money? Those, again, those, that money was going to programs that people care about. Right? There was, so one example I can use goes to private lands in the farm bill. There was about twenty billion, twenty billion dollars through the Inflation Reduction Act. That went to the farm bill to help farmers and ranchers do projects on their land that had conservation benefits and water quality benefits.

• 59:10Speaker 06

  They were programs that existed before this money passed. Landowners like it. There was more landowners that wanted funding than there was funding available for. And a number I saw recently, about eighty percent of that funding that's gone out the door has gone to Republican congressional districts. And so even the people that voted for this administration, they're the ones that are benefiting from this and they like it. Well, what's going to happen with that funding as we go forward and we're thinking about reconciliation and reducing the size of the government? Those programs are still there. They're still going to do great things for conservation and for agriculture.

• 59:54Speaker 06

  I'd argue they need to stay, but where's the priority going to be between reducing the size of government, reducing the amount of money going out the door and the conservation issues that are really important to us? To the point, and this is where I'll tie it back to climate here a little bit. At the end of last Congress, there was a recognition that there was an opportunity here to take ten, twelve, fourteen million bill, um, billion dollars that had not yet been spent through those programs and roll it into the baseline of the next farm bill. And the Republican and Democrat leadership for both the House and Senate Ag Committees

• 1:00:35Speaker 06

  were in favor of doing this. They saw it as an opportunity to increase funding to do private land conservation work down the road. But there was a faction of individuals out there that just could not live with the fact that we might take climate out of the equation and say, and, and just remove the word that this money has to be spent for climate work. Even though it was going to do exactly the same work. And so it didn't happen at the end of last Congress and we don't know if it'll happen again now. So.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, because we're on our, our second farm bill extension.

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  Right now, whereas technically we shouldn't have an extension. We should have a, a new farm bill.

• 1:01:13Speaker 06

  Should have had a new farm bill two years ago, right? But, but this was just an attempt at the end of, end of Congress to get this rolled in. So when they did work on the next extension, it went on into the baseline, right? And.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  And some of that's referencing like the climate credits uh, for uh, soil conservation, um, through things that a lot of, uh, ranchers want to do anyway, which is grow native grasses that have deeper root structures. They sequester more carbon, but they're also super drought and fire tolerant and they're just really good forage for those landscapes because that's what was there long before, uh, they were there. So.

• 1:01:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Steven Rinella?

  You know, President Trump has overwhelming support. I, I think it's fair to say like overwhelming support from the agricultural industry. Right?

• 1:02:02Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:02Steven Rinella?

  Farmers, ranchers. I mean, if you're going to poll farmers and ranchers, he's got their support.

• 1:02:07Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:02:07Steven Rinella?

  Um, not without exception, but overwhelmingly.

• 1:02:10Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:02:11Steven Rinella?

  Um,

• 1:02:13Steven Rinella?

  when you look at like, like over your career and over your time of conservation, when you look at that, do you find that and like we remove it just from a conversation about Trump, but any administration, do you find that they'll wind up looking at that, that constituency is supportive? Here's some federal spending that aids that constituency. And that gets a level of favoritism. I don't mean to be cynical, but I mean, that has to be a thing that plays out in the. Of any president.

• 1:02:45Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I mean, we can talk about conservation and we talk about all those other programs that we're not going to talk about today. Right. But, but absolutely it's there and.

• 1:02:57Speaker 06

  Ultimately, it boils down to how can I get those votes and then how can I follow through on those votes I got with the, the promises that I made to, to get them there. And so.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, definitely is a factor.

• 1:03:11Steven Rinella?

  What does need to happen?

• 1:03:14Steven Rinella?

  What does need to happen with the farm bill? And, and is it fair to say too, is my understanding is correct?

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  That's a simple, simple layout for you there.

• 1:03:21Steven Rinella?

  But isn't the main like, if, if, maybe I'm, maybe I'm, don't have a sophisticated understanding here. And I know it's like, it's Byzantine, right? But it, but one of the main issues of the farm bill is having CRP lands. I mean, i- i- is that under, is that like, um, underselling other initiatives in the farm bill? Or is that kind of like one of the primary points? And from conserv-, not from everything else, but in the conservation part of the question is CRP land, CRP lands?

• 1:03:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. So CRP is extremely important as a program in there. It's, uh, for those that may not be familiar, it's basically a short-term lease on that land to put it into, to, um, native, hopefully native grasses, but at least into some sort of cover. So it's not in, in row agr- agriculture and it's supposed to marginalize lands. Uh, but it's, you know, 20 to 30 million acres, depending upon the year and where that cap has been over the years. Uh, that's of marginal land that's being set aside that ends up creating great wildlife habitat. And so it is absolutely an, an anchor of the CRP, of the, uh, farm bill program.

• 1:04:32Speaker 06

  There's a lot of other good programs in there through some of the wetland reserve program, which been, has been through several different iterations and names over the year. The environmental quality incentive program is another one. It's about 600 million a year that comes out through that, uh, that encourages private landowners to do conservation-related practices to help with water quality, fencing issues, um.

• 1:04:56Speaker 06

  Water issues, et cetera, on, on, on their properties. And so there's all sorts of really good programs under there that, that need to happen. And then, so Congress passes the farm bill and you ask what needs to happen? Well, that's it. They need to actually pass one instead of continuing to go on the extension after extension after extension.

• 1:05:18Steven Rinella?

  What has been the greatest obstacle to getting it passed?

• 1:05:21Speaker 06

  It's a hell of a question. I don't, it's hard to put my finger on it. Just, um, I think it's become like everything else. It just kind of became politicized and trying to come up with the baseline numbers. But you can't just look at the conservation aspect of the farm bill and focus on that because what a lot of people don't understand is the conservation title within the farm bill is small compared to the insurance programs, the, um, the food stamp programs and everything else that's tied in. And so that's where the real, that's where the real rub comes is there's a, there's a lot of, uh, programs there that help urban communities

• 1:06:05Speaker 06

  and help underserved communities to go along with the conservation and, and the farm subsidies and all of that. And so you've got all of these great things. And so we can look at, you know, the little bit of quote infighting that might happen within the conservation organizations about whether it ought to be grasslands or whether we need to pay more attention to forestry or do we need more for easements and all of that. But all of that pales in comparison to the broader fight about that really comes down to political sides over where this money should go.

• 1:06:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. So, so those issues in a way are held hostage by these much more expensive, much more contentious issues.

• 1:06:44Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if you go like all the way back to like waters of the United States.

• 1:06:50Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Right? So you got a lot of farmers who were like, oh my God, government overreach. We can't do anything. Uh, as far as like water that they can manage on their private property. Um, Trump won big rollback of, of WOTUS and, uh, we see, uh, a pretty drastic increase in, in, um, drain tile.

• 1:07:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Right? So we're losing intermittent wetlands.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  In the farm bill, there's a lot of programs that are, are kind of like the carrot, not the stick approach to, hey, not great to tile that farm for a bunch of different reasons. Here's a bunch of incentives that you have access to in the farm bill that would prevent

• 1:07:39Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  That practice, that particular farming practice.

• 1:07:42Steven Rinella?

  That would, that can help you make the right choice for conservation without an economic, without as much of an economic cost.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:07:49Steven Rinella?

  To your operation.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, or without the feeling of like, being held against your will, I guess.

• 1:07:54Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  Depending on who's, who's coming at it from what angle.

• 1:07:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Uh.

• 1:08:03Steven Rinella?

  We talk about wolves for a minute?

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  Everybody's favorite topic, right?

• 1:08:07Steven Rinella?

  I love, it's my, it is my favorite topic.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Just a minute though.

• 1:08:10Steven Rinella?

  Should be able to cover it.

• 1:08:12Steven Rinella?

  Uh, well, no, it's more of like a, it's more like a how, how does stuff work in Washington? Question.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so I have a question I wrote up. So I was gonna say, moving to the lower 48. So we're gonna talk about Alaska.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  Transition.

• 1:08:27Steven Rinella?

  And we still might talk about Alaska. We're gonna talk about Alaska. I was gonna say, moving to the lower 48. Um, my beloved colleague, Brody Henderson, just alerted me that there's a bill right now. I have no idea where it sits. There's a bill right now, once again, moving to de-list wolves across the lower 48, which would have big implications for, uh, right now, Colorado. Wouldn't have implications for Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, have implications for Colorado, potential implications for Utah, other states.

• 1:09:01Steven Rinella?

  How likely is something like that to advance? Meaning, um,

• 1:09:07Steven Rinella?

  I've had people explain to me that, that questions around listings and de-listings are somewhat insulated from admin, from presidential administrations. Meaning, these are things that move slow, they move at department levels. And it's not like presidents come in and are able to, um, they don't come in and manipulate or push directly, like Endangered Species Act discussions. That might not even be true. I don't know. But if you have, if you have a Republican Senate, a Republican Congress.

• 1:09:45Steven Rinella?

  Republican president, all the appointees going along, is there a power play? Is there a power play that can happen that would be, we're gonna begin the delisting of grizzly bears and we're gonna delist wolves in the upper Great Lakes or across the lower 48, or is that just completely outside of how the election just went?

• 1:10:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Steven Rinella?

  Does that make any sense? That was not a very well articulated question. Try to say what I'm saying, Randall.

• 1:10:15Speaker 06

  I'm tracking.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  What do you think?

• 1:10:17Speaker 06

  Yeah. So you're correct that this is supposed to be insulated. I mean, it's all through the Endangered Species Act. When a species is listed, you're supposed to eventually, typically it's supposed to happen when it gets listed, but it usually takes a little more time to get a recovery plan. And within that recovery plan, there are goals about the number of individuals or the number of breeding pairs that you have to hit before it would be delisted. The Endangered Species Act was never written and designed to house a species forever. It was designed to, let's identify what it is, let's identify how we recover it and

• 1:10:59Speaker 06

  let's get it off the books and let's put the management of that species back to the state, just like they're managing for the game species right now, right? And so when you look at wolves and over the years, I mean, it's been going back and forth since the Biden administration, I think was the Biden administration with wolves or we can overcomplicate this and get into all the distinct population segments and all of that other stuff. But the bottom line is, they said, the Biden administration, this mother, this her, said they've met recovery, let's get it off the books.

• 1:11:32Steven Rinella?

  That came from the Biden administration.

• 1:11:34Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, the Obama administration.

• 1:11:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah. Going way back.

• 1:11:38Speaker 06

  Going way back, the Obama administration.

• 1:11:43Speaker 06

  People didn't like that, so they took it to court. The court overruled, I forget the reasons. Oftentimes, it's a technicality. It's not based upon how many are out there on the landscape. It's, did you follow the rules to the letter of the law? Right? And so we've been back and forth on this with wolves on several occasions. Listed, delisted, listed, delisted. And so, does Congress have an influence on this? They can. They, you know, they certainly can. They get together and pass something. So what you mentioned now, I think it's called the, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, and it's been introduced to get wolves off.

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  Um, I don't know much about it, other than it's got thirty Republican cosponsors. No Democratic cosponsors on this. That's in the House. I think it is in the House right now. Right? Well, it passed the House on a slim margin party line, yeah. But this is not something, this is something that in the Senate, unless they do away with the filibuster, they're gonna have to get sixty votes for. There's no way they get to sixty votes. So I don't think you're gonna legislate it. Um, can it be influenced by the administration? It absolutely can be, because all of those rules not only go through the agency, but then they go through the Council on Environment Quality, the CEQ, which is, um, an office

• 1:13:09Speaker 06

  of the White House that all of this, um, environmental-related, wildlife-related stuff goes through. And so there's a filter there, and there's direction coming from there about, you know, this is the, where the administration would like to go. Ultimately, they still have to base it upon the merits. Right? And so with the recent grizzly bear decision that the Biden administration did, they, in a way, they kind of changed the, the goalpost, because this was about distinct population segments, and they said, well, no, let's look at this across the whole landscape. Yeah. And what those numbers are. So you get all of those things going on. Ultimately, what's gonna happen, I think it's gonna continue to be a political ping pong ball, which is a shame.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  And when I think about the influence on this, and, and think about legislation to try to get us out of this quagmire. I can't say that I'm a real fan because I started thinking about ballot box initiatives that happened at the states, right? It's not that, look, wolves in most cases should be delisted based upon the merits of recovery. And it shouldn't be going back and forth between the politicians and the courts and the special interest groups in the courts and all of that. We ought to just be able to get it back to nonpartisan, science-based decisions like it was designed to be. And how we get there, I don't know. If I ever figure it out, I'm, you know, I'm not going to be doing this job anymore.

• 1:14:32Steven Rinella?

  I think I might have been sitting next to you when I heard this. I believe I was sitting next to you and I, and the, uh, uh, the governor of Utah was addressing the audience and the governor of Utah pledged, um, the wolves aren't coming into Utah. And I remember thinking to myself, I don't know if that's up to you.

• 1:14:52Speaker 06

  Right?

• 1:14:53Steven Rinella?

  I mean, I'd be like, careful what you promise.

• 1:14:58Speaker 06

  Well, right. I mean, they do have legs.

• 1:15:00Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:01Speaker 06

  Kind of like they got to Colorado before a ballot initiative there said, let's put them back. They were already there.

• 1:15:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I'd be like, if you're looking at a map and you just have that figured out based on the map you're looking at, that's one thing. But if you mean politically, I don't think that's, that's not your call right now.

• 1:15:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Steven Rinella?

  Like if they walk in, they walk in.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  Well, the pro wolf people were like, there's no way with the way Wyoming manages wolves, that a wolf will ever walk from Wyoming into Colorado.

• 1:15:27Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  Like, well, really?

• 1:15:30Steven Rinella?

  They'd be incentivized, dude.

• 1:15:33Speaker 06

  They're sprinting, they're not walking.

• 1:15:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's like the, you know, yeah, we like the equivalent of the Southern Railroad. Uh, yeah. Good answer on that one. Um, it is a ping pong ball, man.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  It's crazy.

• 1:15:52Steven Rinella?

  It is a ping pong ball. I, I feel that, uh, I, I feel that the, if I had to look at it, um, if I was going to crystal ball it, what's the word? Prognosticate? If I was going to prognosticate and I was going to come up with like a realistic, a realistic goal, um, for the next four years, when it comes to the, when it comes to the delisting issue, I think that saying, declaring delisted across the lower 48, I think that kind of winds up.

• 1:16:23Steven Rinella?

  Like I wouldn't be a po-, I wouldn't really get worked up about it in a negative way. But I think it kind of goes against a lot of the work we've done about distinct population segments. And, and I think that if the distinct population segment, if, if that idea was being used the way it was intended to be used, that'd be a quicker path forward. So I think that to throw your hands up in the air and be like, we're going to de-list across the entirety of the lower 48 is kind of like me telling my kids, I'm going to take all their iPads and run them over with my truck. Well, they're like, they're thinking like, he's not really going to do that, but he is pissed. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:17:04Steven Rinella?

  So I think that realistically, doing Northern Great Lakes on wolves, right? Finding some clarity, because that's been a ping pong, back and forth, back and forth. We're doing, doing wolves in the Northern Great Lakes back to state management. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, right? That's like a realistic goal. And this is my opinion, and again, this is me talking, not Joel talking. That's a realistic goal. And I think doing, um, to do grizzly bears in one or two of the distinct population segments, starting with the Yellowstone DPS and maybe the Northern Continental Divide DPS, that seems to me like on that issue, that would, I would view that as a success.

• 1:17:47Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:18:27Speaker 06

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

• 1:18:44Steven Rinella?

  Someone will sue.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'd ask them like this. I'd say, find the areas that have the most grizzly bears hit by cars or lethally removed. And let's just look at those. And all the ones that don't have shockingly high numbers, we'll set those areas aside for further review.

• 1:19:03Steven Rinella?

  Now.

• 1:19:04Speaker 03

  But right now, let's just look.

• 1:19:05Steven Rinella?

  Here's Cal introducing like a whole new metric into the thing when I just made a plea for sticking with the conversation. Now it's going to be a vehicle collision conversation.

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. I want people to be like, oh, holy shit. A hundred and some grizzly bears get killed.

• 1:19:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  Every, every single year?

• 1:19:21Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  I thought there were no grizzly bears.

• 1:19:24Steven Rinella?

  How they have any left?

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set.

• 1:20:12Steven Rinella?

  Visit weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today. I used to think that like your mattress was like your shoe size. I mean, there's nothing you're going to do to change it, but man, was I wrong. That was before I ever like had an actual good new mattress. And once I had one, I couldn't believe I'd spent my whole life sleeping on dished out junky old mattresses. Well, Helix, check this out. They got over 20 mattress models. Models so you can find the perfect model for you. Nothing to be embarrassed about getting yourself a new mattress. Helix has cooling upgrades too, so you can get the best rest even on hot nights. Good night's rest sets you up for a great day. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. And you can rest easy with seamless

• 1:20:57Steven Rinella?

  returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Here's what you do. Go to helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site-wide. helixsleep.com/meateater. A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail

• 1:21:41Steven Rinella?

  camera for a spot that's heating up, warmer layers for a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods. Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com. I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you've got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered.

• 1:22:25Steven Rinella?

  I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean, and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit weatherTech.com for your holiday shopping today. I used to think that like your mattress was like your shoe size. I mean, there's nothing you're going to do to change it. But man, was I wrong. That was before I ever like had an actual good new mattress. And once I had one, I couldn't believe I'd spent my whole life sleeping on dished out junky old mattresses. Well, Helix, check this out. They got over 20 mattress models.

• 1:23:10Steven Rinella?

  So you can find the perfect model for you. Nothing to be embarrassed about getting yourself a new mattress. Helix has cooling upgrades too, so you can get the best rest even on hot nights. Good night's rest sets you up for a great day. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. And you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk free, customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Here's what you do. Go to helixsleep.com/MeatEater for 20% off site wide.

• 1:23:55Steven Rinella?

  That's helixsleep.com/MeatEater for 20% off site wide. helixsleep.com/MeatEater. A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail cam or for a spot that's heating up. Warmer layers for a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods. Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop TractorSupply.com.

• 1:24:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay, Trump appointees.

• 1:24:38Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:24:40Steven Rinella?

  As far as I'm aware, the of his appointees, only one is withdrawn. So they've been having some good, they've been having good success moving appointees through. Um, the Interior Department, Doug Burgum, um, he's a hunter.

• 1:24:56Speaker 06

  He is.

• 1:24:56Steven Rinella?

  Right? He's a successful businessman.

• 1:24:58Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:24:58Steven Rinella?

  He was a pretty popular governor.

• 1:25:00Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:25:00Steven Rinella?

  What's your, uh, what's your take on what it's gonna be like working with the Department of Interior going forward? And any other, and any other kind of news or opinions you have about other appointees? And who are people gonna be, what names are people gonna be hearing a lot in the next four years?

• 1:25:15Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. Um, a lot of questions there. We'll see if I can remember them all and get to them. Um, first off, Burgum, I think, I think he's gonna be really good to work with. Um, I don't have a lot of personal experience with him, but some of our staff has worked with him through Western Governors Association and some of those, um, uh, some of the, the groups through that. And it's been a positive experience and we're hearing some names, it's probably too early to say, of people that, uh, worked with him in North Dakota, uh, that were in the first Trump administration that'll likely be coming back in. So I think there'll be some, some known entities there. As you said, he, uh, he is

• 1:26:00Speaker 06

  a hunter and fisherman. I actually was at a reception last week, a celebration of the Explore Act and, uh, Secretary Burgum showed up as his first public appearance since being confirmed, uh, and was there. And he talked personally about hunting and fishing and growing up and shared some personal stories. And you can tell it's, it's not just words with him in that regard. Um, you know, he, he touched on at that a little bit about, um, oil and gas and, uh, the mandate from the president for energy dominance. And he's also the energy czar. Uh, so he's gonna play a role in that. But what he highlighted

• 1:26:41Speaker 06

  there, uh, in this group of conservation minded folks, was that in North Dakota, uh, they grew to be the number three producer of oil and gas in the country during his administration. And they did that while only impacting 1% of the surface area. And so he's about technological advances to move these things forward. He's about finding the balance and I truly, I think he's got the track record to show that on the energy side of things. Within the Department of Interior, another name that's out there is Kate McGregor as Deputy Secretary. She's not been confirmed yet, but that's who they've put up.

• 1:27:22Speaker 06

  They'll start going to these second tier confirmations here in the coming weeks, once they get the main ones done. Kate served in the same or similar role under the first Trump administration. So she knows how the department works and she's going to be able to bring some of that knowledge there into how it operates. And it's somebody that TRCP and the other organizations worked with in the first Trump administration. So a known entity there.

• 1:27:51Steven Rinella?

  You know, let me wet something in there just from a conversation you and I had this morning is with so much upheaval in the federal workforce right now.

• 1:27:59Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:28:00Steven Rinella?

  We had talked about, you know, with the federal buyout, reducing agencies. We had talked about a loss of institutional knowledge.

• 1:28:10Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:28:11Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:28:49Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:28:50Steven Rinella?

  And that's just something I guess we'll just have to wait and see on some of those issues, right?

• 1:28:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, we will have to wait and see. I think Kate in her first time around, she generally was good on her issues. Like I said, she understands it. She left the administration and she went to work for.

• 1:29:06Speaker 06

  An energy company, um, which incidentally was actually more based on wind and solar than it was oil and gas.

• 1:29:13Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  Uh, but so she's coming back in. So she understands the energy side of things and, you know, that's a huge mandate within Department of Interior. It's a huge agency. Mining, minerals, all of that stuff, water reclamation bureau of reclamation is in there. We always think about it from the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service, but there's a whole bunch of other things that that secretary and that deputy secretary have to think about, um, on top of that.

• 1:29:39Steven Rinella?

  You, you know, a thing that your predecessor at TRCP said to me about Secretary Bernhardt that always stuck with me.

• 1:29:47Steven Rinella?

  He had said, he, he was talking about liking working with Bernhardt.

• 1:29:50Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:53Steven Rinella?

  And he had an interesting thing he liked about him is he's like, he doesn't waste your time.

• 1:29:58Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:29:59Steven Rinella?

  Meaning when he tells you something, he, he tells you what he's going to do. And he doesn't pull the carpet out from under you. So it'll allow you to be pretty focused.

• 1:30:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:11Steven Rinella?

  And your ass where you didn't get like grinned along.

• 1:30:15Steven Rinella?

  And then later realized that he was having a totally separate conversation and just leading you along. He said, it allowed for a certain efficiency.

• 1:30:22Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  Where he'd be like, you're not going to get anywhere on this, but if you'd like to talk about this, I'm all ears.

• 1:30:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:30:29Steven Rinella?

  Right. It'll let you be, it let you sort of understand the, the landscape, right?

• 1:30:33Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:33Steven Rinella?

  Which I thought was just an interesting way to look at someone who is an ally, an adversary and like, how efficient are you in figuring out where you line up and don't line up?

• 1:30:43Speaker 06

  Right. Well, and that's a lot of what we're spending our time, not only TRCP, but everybody that works up there right now is trying to figure out as much as we can about these appointees and where they're going to land on that. And, you know, there's a, a level of excitement when a known entity goes in there so that you don't have to build the time, um, creating the relationship and you kind of know what their track record is.

• 1:31:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:03Speaker 06

  Somebody like Burgum. You know, we know a little bit about his track record. Beyond Burgum and McGregor that I've mentioned, we're not hearing a lot of names for the next level down and the agency directors at this time. It's still a little early to tell. In Department of Ag, it's a, you know, a little bit on the, the flip side there. Brooke Rollins is the, um, new Secretary of Ag there. She was in the first Trump administration, but in a very different role, um, had nothing to do with Ag. She's got a degree from Texas A&M. So she's an Aggie, uh, in that regard. Um, but she's been in the interim since the last

• 1:31:45Speaker 06

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

• 1:32:14Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:32:14Speaker 06

  And we don't know who she's going to bring in. She hasn't worked in that space. So she doesn't have a, a bench of people that she can pull from. But, you know, they've named a few more people over there. Richard Fordice is one of the under secretaries. I think there's three under secretaries over there. Two of them we care about. One is for farm production and conservation, which oversees, uh, Farm Services Agency and the NRCS. Farm Services Agency implements CRP, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, implements the rest of the conservation programs in the farm bill. So that's an important one for us. He's a farmer out of Missouri. He was administrator of Farm Service Agency

• 1:32:59Speaker 06

  in the first Trump administration. So he understands some of the Ag policy and things like that. Um, and apparently does a lot of conservation work on his own farm back in, in, uh, Missouri.

• 1:33:11Steven Rinella?

  We talked as well about, uh, the idea of reconciliation, which is something I hadn't given much thought to, meaning we're hearing a lot about cuts.

• 1:33:21Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:33:22Steven Rinella?

  Right? Like we have, I mean,

• 1:33:26Steven Rinella?

  We have like an existential problem in the country about about a budget deficit and debt. Like, all the money we're talking about, right? All this money we're talking about that we're that we could spend on conservation. If you were gonna compare that to the amount of money that this country spends servicing its debt, it's nothing. It's nothing. We spend far more servicing our debt than we do on conservation by probably like some factor of hundreds.

• 1:33:55Speaker 06

  I don't know exactly what that number is, but the amount of money of,

• 1:34:03Speaker 06

  I forgot, I've lost the term I'm looking for, but 1% of the non-obligated federal budget goes to conservation.

• 1:34:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Not of non-obligated, yeah.

• 1:34:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's not non-mandatory discretionary is the word I'm looking for. 1% of the discretionary budget goes to the conservation issues.

• 1:34:24Steven Rinella?

  So if you rolled in the total federal budget, it'd be a much smaller fraction.

• 1:34:29Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:34:29Steven Rinella?

  So we have a problem with like with debt.

• 1:34:35Steven Rinella?

  No remedy, like, like, any remedy is gonna have a bunch of people pissed off.

• 1:34:43Steven Rinella?

  It's like, that's what's created the problem. We have it and and we so far, we've just generally seen administration after administration after administration.

• 1:34:54Steven Rinella?

  People can't stomach what it would take to fix it. Trump's in a similar bind. He's in a similar bind because he can't go after, not can't. It'd be politically detrimental to go after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Right? So you wind up needing to fidget around, to fidget around in these much smaller things when like 70% of the money. Is going to these things that are, it's political suicide.

• 1:35:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:35:23Steven Rinella?

  To talk about entitlement spending. It's political suicide. So you need to go after the less, the areas with less friction. Right. And you wind up talking about little, little chunks of money here and there. Because you just can't talk about the big chunks of money. I'll tell you, I watched an interview with, with Steve Bannon, who was in the early first Trump administration, was a hugely impactful person. And, and, and so here's Bannon saying, you know, he was like a naval commander, right? He was in the Navy. He's got kids in the military. He's like establishing how hawkish he is. But he goes, and this is coming from me. We need to talk about the defense budget. Down the road, we need to talk about the social safety net budget because we're not going to get there.

• 1:36:07Steven Rinella?

  With the kinds of things we're talking about. But to, to get back to the original point I was going to make is we keep talking about places to save money. But you also, the administration also needs to look at how you make money.

• 1:36:19Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:36:20Steven Rinella?

  Right. There's, there's like, you can cut outgoing, but what do you do to bring it in? And one of the ways you can bring money in is leasing.

• 1:36:28Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:36:29Steven Rinella?

  And, and probably some other issues, right?

• 1:36:31Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah, for sure. And so, yeah, when it comes to reconciliation, that's something that I don't know how much the sportsman's community is paying attention to, but it is certainly something that we're watching for a couple of reasons. One is, and we've talked about it several times, the slug of money that came out through Bill and IRA that goes to conservation. That is from day one been a target because of how it came about, because it has the climate connotations, because it was a Biden administration priority. That's an area they're going to cut. And anything that, at least that hasn't been obligated right now is on the blocks to, to come back. The 10, 12, 14 million that I talked about with the farm bill program earlier is part of that. That is the chance of getting rescissioned back out to, to.

• 1:37:18Speaker 06

  Decrease spending. So, so that's one part of it. But then another part of it, as you said, is increasing the revenue. And so we're, we've heard, and I don't know how serious it is. And so with reconciliation, it has to tie right back to the budget. And so some of this may be a stretch, but if they can tie it back to revenues, it may not be a huge stretch. And so some big wins that the conservation community and TRCP have, has had over the course of the last four and eight years, having to do with mining. The Biden administration decided that they weren't going to permit a, a critical minerals mine up in the Boundary Waters canoe area of northern Minnesota. That's been something that's been going on for a long time.

• 1:38:01Steven Rinella?

  Well, in the headwaters.

• 1:38:03Speaker 06

  The headwaters. Yeah. Thank you. That has specifically been mentioned that maybe we need to bring that back online. So the royalties we get from that Pebble Mine, which Trump won when he was president before, came out strongly against and said, no, we're not going to do this. We need to protect Bristol Bay. That one has specifically been brought up by Congress as another one where let's bring that back on and get the royalties.

• 1:38:28Steven Rinella?

  To bring money in.

• 1:38:29Speaker 06

  To bring money in because of the royalties that eventually would come from that. And then another issue that TRCP and its partners have worked on here over the course of the last four years that the Biden administration was a, a champion on was the Ambler Road in the Brooks Range. There are 211 mile road that would have 3,000 stream crossings and bisect the West Alaska Caribou herd and just all of the, the negative things that come from that in this largely undeveloped, kind of the last bastion of wildness that this country has. The BLM decided they weren't going to permit that. That's something else that not only came up in the executive order about unleashing Alaska's greatness, but it's also been mentioned

• 1:39:13Speaker 06

  as potentially coming in through.

• 1:39:19Speaker 06

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

• 1:40:02Speaker 06

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

• 1:40:28Steven Rinella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:40:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so that's about a $17 million bump that we think we could see for fish and wildlife conservation that is when you buy a fishing reel or you buy a fishing tackle that's developed in China or arrow shafts is another big one.

• 1:40:46Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:40:47Speaker 06

  And you buy them online and it gets shipped directly to your home. Nobody's collecting that tax. You're the one, Steve, that should be paying that because you're the first point of purchase on that. So there's legislation that's been in the talks and I think it's going to get introduced. There was talks of it being introduced last week or this week that would close that loophole.

• 1:41:04Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you got WeatherTech. You're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean and they'll get years and years of

• 1:41:48Steven Rinella?

  use out of a set. Visit weatherTech.com for your holiday shopping today. I used to think that like your mattress was like your shoe size. I mean, there's nothing you're going to do to change it. But man, was I wrong. That was before I ever like had an actual good new mattress. And once I had one, I couldn't believe I'd spent my whole life sleeping on dished out junky old mattresses. Well, Helix, check this out. They got over 20 mattress models. So you can find the perfect model for you. Nothing to be embarrassed about getting yourself a new mattress. Helix has cooling upgrades too. So you can get the best rest even on hot nights. Good night's rest sets you up for a great day. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping

• 1:42:31Steven Rinella?

  in the US. And you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk free, customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Here's what you do. Go to helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/meateater for 20% off site wide. helixsleep.com/meateater. A few weeks into hunting season, you usually have a pretty good idea of what gear is working

• 1:43:13Steven Rinella?

  and what you wish you had. That's where Tractor Supply comes in. Maybe you need another trail camera for a spot that's heating up, warmer layers for a cold front rolling in, or a cooler for when everything finally comes together. Whatever the season throws at you, Tractor Supply has the gear to keep you in the woods. Stop by your local Tractor Supply or shop tractorsupply.com.

• 1:43:39Speaker 06

  And that would have a

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  Talk.

• 1:43:41Speaker 06

  Direct tie to reconciliation.

• 1:43:44Speaker 03

  I think you're digging pretty hard for some blue sky there, Joel. Uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's great. I think we could crowdsource 17 million dollars. Um, if we really needed to, uh, against Amblin Road.

• 1:44:00Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:44:00Speaker 03

  Pebble Mine.

• 1:44:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 03

  Boundary Waters, right? Uh, but I guess the efficiency part of this, right, is, um, I respect you well enough to bust your, your, your chops a little bit.

• 1:44:14Steven Rinella?

  Fair.

• 1:44:14Speaker 03

  Um.

• 1:44:17Speaker 03

  The, because we have seen, so to go back to the farm bill, right? Like farm bill is a big thing. And that's why I was joking. Oh, this is a layup deal, right? And it's a big, complex package to the point where it needs like a lot of physical people on the ground to facilitate the, just the use of a lot of the programs within the farm bill.

• 1:44:39Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:40Speaker 03

  So you have a lot of users on the ground who are working outside. They're doing non-techy things. And there's a system in place that is very onerous for these people to, in their spare time, try to access some of these programs that are, that will greatly benefit them and their bottom line. Um, and, and for generations to come sometimes. Um, and that's a big barrier to entry. So there's a lot of people involved in the farm bill that work on the farm bill.

• 1:45:12Speaker 03

  My understanding is all these people just got a notice that said, hey, if you want to retire early, you can hit the easy button and, and go right now. Um, in regards to.

• 1:45:22Steven Rinella?

  Which has not had widespread adoption.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:45:25Steven Rinella?

  It went out to 2.5 million and I think they're up to 60, 65,000.

• 1:45:29Speaker 03

  Um, Secretary Burgum, all of his people in the interior got the same notice. Um, and at the same time, um, the, what we were just talking about, right? Wants to review, officially review every national monument, going back to President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906. So basically anything that was used in the, um, the Antiquities Act, right? Um, every mineral withdrawal, which obviously is what we, we just talked about. And every BLM resource management plan, which ties into Amblin Road, I mean.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Pick one of those and I can't imagine how many physical people it would take to accomplish a full review of just one, right? So like, do we know that the right hand is talking to the left hand in Washington, right?

• 1:46:27Steven Rinella?

  No, I think it's unclear. And I, and on the federal employee thing, when I looked at, um, I saw someone put it in line with normal annual turnover is, I can't remember what it was, in excess of 100,000. Normal annual turnover at the federal, of that 2.5 million federal employees, normal annual turnover is 115? I'm looking at random.

• 1:46:49Speaker 05

  I don't know. Yeah. 118, I think, last I checked, but.

• 1:46:54Speaker 03

  I mean, I think that.

• 1:46:55Steven Rinella?

  Point being, I just think that it was like, um.

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  You can see it as a positive, like this, they're more loyal.

• 1:47:00Steven Rinella?

  Well, I didn't view it as a positive or negative. I just viewed it as, I thought that number would be way the hell higher, especially when I looked at what normal turnover is.

• 1:47:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Steven Rinella?

  That it'll wind up being, as much as that's gotten a lot of media attention, it'll wind up being kind of like a non-event.

• 1:47:14Speaker 05

  Or it's also, it's all, there's nothing behind it. I mean, they just got an email. There's no, there's no promise, right? Like, there's nothing, I mean, I think that's the thing, is it's sort of an IOU.

• 1:47:25Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Yeah, I'd be scared.

• 1:47:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, there's no.

• 1:47:30Steven Rinella?

  I mean, to like, to take the deal, I'd be like, can I get my money up front?

• 1:47:33Speaker 03

  It's not exactly a pat on the back either, right? You know? It's like we all, the, you know, the, the federal government gets summed up just like that. All the feds, right?

• 1:47:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:44Speaker 03

  And, um, the more time you spend outside, the more interaction you have with, uh, federal employees and holy cow, there's like some phenomenally good, dedicated federal employees that deal with a lot of sometimes literal human shit.

• 1:48:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. And there's a lot of the opposite.

• 1:48:05Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 1:48:07Steven Rinella?

  There's a lot of the opposite.

• 1:48:08Speaker 03

  How many of the good ones go, oh, boy? These guys don't have our back.

• 1:48:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:15Speaker 03

  It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

• 1:48:20Steven Rinella?

  I think that one, one thing, the, one way you gotta hand it to the administration is they're moving so fast that it, it, um, it leaves you stuttering, right? You're like, oh, you can't tell what's going on. So, in looking at, trying to understand executive orders, right? And other things, um, I, I, I find myself waiting for the dust to settle a little bit, to see like, like, you know, I'm opposed to Amber Road project, um, just taking Alaska. I'm opposed to the Pebble Mine project. I don't think that they should drill Anwar.

• 1:49:04Steven Rinella?

  So you see the executive orders coming and I, I kinda just wind up mentally hitting pause a minute to understand how much of this is like, what is symbolism? What's really going on? Where is their industry? Where is there even industry buy-in, industry possibility at the state level? What's the political mood? What is the permitting process? No administration lasts forever. Some things just take forever. Uh, what happens in two years? Like depending on how the midterms go? How much of this stuff unravels if the normal thing plays out where you normally, you know,

• 1:49:48Steven Rinella?

  it's a majority of times, a president in the midterms loses, loses whatever their existing majorities are in the House and Senate. So like, all of this stuff happening and I, I catch myself being like, just, just hold on a sec. I'm trying to understand what's going on.

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  Yes. If you care about the words coming out of your mouth being true, that is a smart thing to do.

• 1:50:14Steven Rinella?

  Yes. And, but then I also sit there thinking, um, I also sit there thinking to myself, there are things that, um,

• 1:50:25Steven Rinella?

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

• 1:50:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guarantee you the, I guarantee you the Ambler Road people and the Pebble Mine people are not waiting for the dust to settle. You know, they're not waiting to see what happens in two years. They're foot on the gas right now.

• 1:50:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it'd be like how Colorado, it'd be like Colorado and the wolf thing.

• 1:51:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:03Steven Rinella?

  They get the votes and wham, wolves.

• 1:51:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I will say like hats off to the administration for, for the strategy, right? Like it is an effective strategy. We're going to throw so much stuff out there.

• 1:51:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:16Speaker 03

  That everybody is going to be like, oh my God, that's illegal. Wait. Is it illegal? Let's be sure about that. Can somebody look that up? Let's, let's make sure. Oh, there's another thing today. Oh, there's another thing at 2 a.m. today. This tweet just went out. We got to make sure what we can do, what our actions are. And some of this stuff is going to stick. I think a lot of it is not going to stick.

• 1:51:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:38Speaker 03

  But it's a hell of a good strategy, right? And I think from a conservation point of view, um, you gotta, you can't say everything's on fire all the time. Because you can't get people to show up

• 1:51:55Speaker 03

  all the time for everything.

• 1:51:57Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 03

  Like you gotta choose your fires and say, gang, this one's the real one.

• 1:52:04Speaker 03

  And we got to show up for this and, and you know, yeah, some groups are drawing some lines in the sand already. I think a lot of folks are trying to be patient. It's, it's tough though, because it, it's scary. Like there's a lot going on right now and one of those Ambler Road, Boundary Waters, Pebble Mine. I mean, we've already had generation of conservation minded people work the majority of their lives on some of this stuff.

• 1:52:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. To give, uh, we're going to turn it back over to Joel and make, because it's going to be his job. Joel's job is going to be sorting all this out.

• 1:52:42Steven Rinella?

  But you know, earlier I was making the point, and I don't want to clarify, this is very much me talking and not Joel talking. Every time you say that, I just can't wait. I'm not gonna say anything incendiary, I'm just talking about like, in trying to understand the administration, is any of this putting you in a bad position? No. Not yet. Earlier I was talking, no, no, it won't.

• 1:53:04Steven Rinella?

  It won't at all. But remember earlier I was making the joke about, I was talking about, when I tell my kids, like, listen, I'm gonna run, I'm gonna take everyone's iPads and run them over in the driveway? And, um, and it's meant to be that they go like, oh, he's not gonna do that, but he's serious. Something, some lesser version is gonna happen right now, like, they're going in the gun safe, is probably what's gonna happen. It's probably what they're thinking. The iPads, not the kids. No, no, yeah, like, I say I'm gonna run them over, and they're like, this is gonna settle out where my iPad's in the gun safe. Right. For like, two weeks. Like, I can see where this is going. So, with a lot of things of trying to get in, like, a lot of things of trying to understand

• 1:53:44Steven Rinella?

  how President Trump operates and how he thinks, is, when is he doing the, I'm gonna run over all the iPads?

• 1:53:55Steven Rinella?

  When Trump said, I'm gonna empty, we're straying way away from conservation, I'm making a conservation point, when Trump says, I'm gonna empty Gaza, I'm gonna empty Gaza, and we're gonna build a resort, he, I think it's like, I'm gonna run over all the iPads, that's about where I'm at. Right? And anyone that has a stake in that is listening and being like, man, um, at a minimum, the iPads are going in the gun safe. Right? It's a way of, sort of like, it's a way of communicating of saying, I'm at a point where I'm gonna do something major.

• 1:54:33Steven Rinella?

  Right?

• 1:54:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:34Steven Rinella?

  So that's part of the thing is like him saying, energy dot like if we look at like energy extraction, you know, if we look like it like energy dominance such as and you just throw out like such as, Ambler Pebble Mine, Boundary Waters. Is that running shit over in the driveway? Or does that wind up being that they're going into the gun safe?

• 1:54:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:54:59Steven Rinella?

  They're going to the gun safe. And that's what's so bewildering to me personally.

• 1:55:04Speaker 06

  It is, but you know, there's another twist on this because when I'm talking about, Pebble Mine and Boundary Waters and Ambler in reconciliation, that's congressional. So now you've got not just the administration saying, we ought to think about this, but you've got Congress doing it and you start getting that synergy there. It's going to be even harder. Right? And so we're trying to be measured in our approach right now. We're trying to be measured in what we say. We've had several, several of our partners that have wanted to be very vocal against some things that have come out already. And it's like, you know, let's just hold on, not waiting too long to your point. We can't do that.

• 1:55:44Speaker 06

  But you know, we haven't even had a sit down with Secretary Burgum as a community to say, here's the things that we really care about. Here's our top 10 issues, right?

• 1:55:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:54Speaker 06

  Where are you on these? We shouldn't go in there and say, we don't like this. Don't do it now before we even know what the lay of the land is.

• 1:56:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because it might backfire.

• 1:56:04Speaker 06

  Right? And you know, just thinking about Alaska and unleashing Alaska's energy dominance, whatever the title of that one was, it's like.

• 1:56:14Steven Rinella?

  They had a really dramatic title.

• 1:56:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. I've got it somewhere.

• 1:56:18Steven Rinella?

  It's spectacular.

• 1:56:20Speaker 06

  It is. Yeah. But there's like 30 different things that he identifies in there. Well, which ones of those are going to filter to the top? Which ones will TRCP's voice make a difference in? Because if we're not going to move the needle on it, there's probably no sense in wasting the political capital on it.

• 1:56:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:39Speaker 06

  And save it for those things like Pebble Mine and Ambler Road that. TRCP and our broader community have worked so hard on for so long to really try to put the stake in the ground on those when the time is right.

• 1:56:54Speaker 05

  And I think one aspect of working for TRCP that I hadn't really appreciated as an outsider is like, you have to work with both sides of the aisle and it doesn't do-

• 1:57:09Speaker 03

  That's the literal job.

• 1:57:10Speaker 05

  You, yeah, you can't, no, I mean, like, like-

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  No, it's a good point.

• 1:57:14Steven Rinella?

  Joel's like, got it.

• 1:57:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I mean, but, but like, there's people that when Biden's in office, they're saying, you know, TRCP's working with Biden and doing X, Y, and Z. And if you don't like Biden, you don't like what TRCP's doing. And then if this administration comes in and you work on priorities that you have with this new administration, say, oh, they're just bending over to, to Trump, you know? And so I think like, it's easy, if you're not trying to get access to the Secretary of the Interior, it's easy to sort of sit back in the cheap seats and, you know, take a flamethrower or whatever you don't like coming out of DC. But I, having worked for TRCP, I appreciate the position that you're in because you need to have influence no matter who's sitting behind that desk, right?

• 1:58:00Speaker 05

  And so it's a matter of aligning your priorities with, with their priorities and finding where you can work on things. And, and then that cooperation is what gives you the, the leverage to in turn say, actually, Pebble Mine is a red line for us, you know? And so it's like, you have to pick those, those battles strategically.

• 1:58:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly where we are, where we've been for a long time. And, you know, there's groups out there, not so much in the direct conservation space, but there are groups out there that we're just going to refuse to work with Trump because he's Trump. And they're not going to see any of their priorities go anywhere for the next four years.

• 1:58:40Steven Rinella?

  Well, potentially eight. I mean, I'm not saying with Trump, but I mean, if, if, if Trump, you know-

• 1:58:47Steven Rinella?

  If Trump-

• 1:58:47Speaker 03

  He can put some policies in place.

• 1:58:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Or that are long lasting. But I was even saying like, you know, it's, it's, it's fairly common for an administration to continue on under a new, you know, under new leadership with the priorities to continue. So, you know, it's not, no one really knows. Um, but you could have, you know, basically, you know, presuming it's J D Vance, you'd have like basically a, a Trump 3.0. And if you're gonna go and cry in the corner, because you don't want to deal with the right, uh, you might be sitting in that corner a very long time. Right. Right now.

• 1:59:23Speaker 05

  And I have, I mean, I, I have like memories of when I was working at TRCP, talking to somebody like at a bar, not, who's not working in conservation space, but they're like, you, you guys are working with this individual or you're sending out a press release with, with this individual's office? Like, I thought they were against conservation. It's like, well, on this bill, they're in the right space, you know? And so it's like, you, you can't close too many doors and still be effective. So, I, I don't know. I, I don't know who I'm talking to there. Maybe just the-

• 2:00:00Steven Rinella?

  Talk, talk to me, Randall.

• 2:00:01Speaker 05

  Yeah. No, but I mean, it's like, it's like, there's-

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  I understand.

• 2:00:04Speaker 05

  When everything is political, when everything's political, if you work with somebody on one side, like, there's a large part of the public that's, turns you into a bad guy. And that's, if you want to be effective in Washington, that's just not like an option. So, I don't know. All that to say, I respect the work that the RCP does.

• 2:00:23Steven Rinella?

  Well-

• 2:00:23Speaker 05

  It puts you in an uncomfortable position a lot of times.

• 2:00:26Steven Rinella?

  I'll, I'll put it like, I, I want to add to what you're saying a little bit because, um, the focus is so broad. Yeah. When we're talking about conservation, like, the, the focus is huge. There, there's things that live under conservation that- You know, are sort of like cousins to conservation, but it's a huge area. Right? If you're, if you're an organization, let's just say you're a gun rights organization. There's not going to be really any way, like, you're not going to go, if you're focused singularly on defending second amendment rights, you're not going to have the conversation with the Biden administration. There's kind of like nothing to talk about. You're going to be like just resistance.

• 2:01:05Speaker 06

  You're going to be fundraising.

• 2:01:06Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you're like fundraising and resistance because you have a, a, a, a small area of focus. In conservation, there's so many different aspects to it. And servicing American hunters and anglers, there's so many different aspects to it. You need to, at any given time, be able to be push and pull. Because there's going to be things within a, a, a right-leaning administration that are going to be like easy wins for you, you know? Access on refuges. It's not technically conservation, but it fits into that. It fits into the interests of hunters and anglers, right? So you got, you always got to be ready to, there's so many issues. You got to be ready to like, pick your moment and find the allies where you find them.

• 2:01:51Steven Rinella?

  And then do like a push-pull thing because it's not, I don't think you can really afford to just burn stuff down.

• 2:01:56Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:01:56Steven Rinella?

  You become irrelevant for too long.

• 2:01:59Speaker 06

  Right. Or you're relevant for a few years and then you're either fundraising or you're just totally irrelevant. Right? And, but TRCP's track record over the last two-plus decades has been able to get stuff done, no matter who's in there. And that's something that I'm really proud of. It's something that drew me to this organization was the ability to do that and have that kind of influence and, and work on the variety of issues that we do.

• 2:02:23Steven Rinella?

  Uh, uh, a thing that draws me to TRCP and

• 2:02:29Steven Rinella?

  there's a lot of ways to, to push conservation, but I think it draws me to the way TRCP handles conservation is you guys have this, uh, uh, every year you have a Capitol Conservation Awards Dinner. And, um, and it's like, I mean, it's admittedly somewhat symbolic, but intentionally so where it's, you guys honor someone from, uh, each side of the aisle. So you honor a Republican, you honor Democrat, you honor someone from the, typically someone from the House, someone from the Senate. I've seen it go where it was two Western governors.

• 2:03:02Steven Rinella?

  And applaud them on where areas where they were able to do conservation wins.

• 2:03:08Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:03:08Steven Rinella?

  Right. And the areas where they were able to do conservation wins is often where they had political cover within their party, but not looking at it, singling it out and applauding it in a bipartisan way. And that, like, like I said, it's, it's symbolic, it's impactful, but it like puts a stake in the ground about how we're approaching this and how we're looking at it. Like, we're going to partner with whoever is in power, wherever they can help us get conservation wins, of which there are many.

• 2:03:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:03:35Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 2:03:36Speaker 06

  Well, those awards also give us the chance to, to show the bipartisanship even by those members, right? Because those things don't get passed. Those things don't get done if there's not bipartisanship on that. So, yeah.

• 2:03:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. We got that coming up again this year, April 30th.

• 2:03:55Steven Rinella?

  I imagine, yeah, I'll be there.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  I, I hope you will, since you're going to emcee it.

• 2:03:58Steven Rinella?

  I'm going to emcee it. Uh, so you'll, you'll be spending a lot of time in your future having cups of coffee, getting, uh, getting introduced to people.

• 2:04:09Speaker 06

  There's been a lot of that already, and I think that's going to be a lot of this first year.

• 2:04:12Steven Rinella?

  Lot of new faces around town.

• 2:04:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, there is. You know, we focused a lot on the administration, but, um, there's big changes in Congress, too. A lot of new members there. Uh, but, you know, I think about the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee where we had, um, Manchin and Barasso that have led that for a long time. And we've got a, a new, uh, leader and a new, uh, a new chair and a new minority leader in there. And a lot of staff turnover that we've worked with for a long time. And so myself and, and the rest of the team have a lot of work to do just to get to know the new players in Congress as well as in the administration.

• 2:04:48Steven Rinella?

  Have they offered a buyout to congressmen?

• 2:04:51Steven Rinella?

  We'll pay you through September.

• 2:04:56Steven Rinella?

  I wonder if anyone would take it if they did. Let's talk about, let's talk about, so we have the annual awards dinner coming up.

• 2:05:04Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:05:05Steven Rinella?

  But that's not, you can't, like Joe Blow off the street can't come in, right?

• 2:05:08Speaker 06

  Absolutely, they can.

• 2:05:09Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 2:05:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:05:10Steven Rinella?

  Explain that.

• 2:05:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, you know, this is largely driven by our sponsors and our partners that we invite. We'll get a number of members of Congress, a lot of staffers will come to that event because it is an opportunity to, to celebrate our conservation achievements, as you highlighted. And we'll recognize a, a Democrat and a Republican from Congress. We also typically recognize, um, someone from the outside world, communications or supporting, I think, uh, last year's award winner might be sitting next to me here.

• 2:05:41Speaker 03

  No, I stepped in and emceed.

• 2:05:44Speaker 06

  I thought you got recognized at one point, too, did you not?

• 2:05:48Steven Rinella?

  I don't think you got the big award. I did, I did once. You did the once.

• 2:05:52Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:05:52Steven Rinella?

  It's like people from the private sector. You didn't give yourself an award, Cal?

• 2:05:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:05:56Speaker 06

  You missed your opportunity, man.

• 2:05:58Speaker 03

  Man, I got a lot of stories like that.

• 2:06:02Speaker 03

  Randy Newberg got the, the communicators award.

• 2:06:04Steven Rinella?

  That's it.

• 2:06:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  And I got to make fun of him a little bit on, on stage, which is always fun.

• 2:06:10Steven Rinella?

  There you go.

• 2:06:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, so we use it for that, um, and a lot of our corporate sponsors come and celebrate the night, as well as our partners on the conservation side, uh, but we do have individual tickets, uh, for people that want to come and be part of this and help to celebrate. Uh, www.trcp.org slash CCAD 2025 is where you can buy the, find those tickets. And as we get closer to the event, towards the end of March, our auction items, we do a, an online auction related to this, and, uh, that's available to everybody, whether you're there or not, and the auction items will be on that same website, uh, as well.

• 2:06:53Steven Rinella?

  Is, is our dinner, I'm, I got, I got a little lost, because we're doing two things. We're doing a wild game dinner that'll be auctioned.

• 2:07:00Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 2:07:01Steven Rinella?

  And that will be part of that auction?

• 2:07:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:07:03Steven Rinella?

  I know we, we debated this, but I can't remember where we landed.

• 2:07:06Speaker 06

  That will be part of the auction.

• 2:07:07Steven Rinella?

  So that, so you'll be able to come to our headquarters here. We just remodeled our remodeled kitchen. We finished, uh, we built it and then immediately tore it apart and redid it. That kitchen will be ready and it's a dinner. I can't, did we say four or eight?

• 2:07:24Speaker 06

  I think you said eight.

• 2:07:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it was a lot.

• 2:07:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:07:27Steven Rinella?

  We're auctioning off a dinner for eight at Meat Eater headquarters. And it'll be, Randall will be there. He doesn't even know.

• 2:07:34Speaker 06

  I, I hope so.

• 2:07:36Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna say Cal will be there. He doesn't know. I'll be there for damn sure.

• 2:07:40Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:07:40Steven Rinella?

  And we're gonna do a big, uh, a big many course dinner. Um, in that kitchen.

• 2:07:48Speaker 03

  You're, you're adopting Trump speak already.

• 2:07:52Steven Rinella?

  The biggest dinner.

• 2:07:52Speaker 03

  It'll be a big many, many.

• 2:07:55Steven Rinella?

  It'll be the biggest, best dinner. I heard it was the best dinner ever.

• 2:07:59Speaker 06

  People are saying.

• 2:08:00Steven Rinella?

  A lot of people are saying it was the best dinner ever.

• 2:08:02Speaker 03

  Love to help with the dinner for sure.

• 2:08:04Steven Rinella?

  Uh, having a big dinner and we're gonna auction that off. And then we have our like seventh annual or so.

• 2:08:12Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:08:12Steven Rinella?

  Many time annual hunt sweepstakes.

• 2:08:15Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 2:08:15Steven Rinella?

  It used to be an elk hunt sweepstakes and then we turned it into a turkey hunt sweepstakes.

• 2:08:19Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:08:20Steven Rinella?

  Where, uh, a winner and a guest have all their expenses paid. So we cover everything. Airfare, lodging, we've even provided shotgun, shotgun ammo, camo. We clean your turkeys for you. All, everything taken care of. Um, and that we're gonna do.

• 2:08:44Speaker 06

  That we're gonna do it later in the summer.

• 2:08:46Steven Rinella?

  Later in summer.

• 2:08:46Speaker 06

  Yep. Um, one of the things the team identified is that trying to promote the sweepstakes while promoting the dinner and all of the auctions kinda got lost.

• 2:08:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:56Speaker 06

  So we're gonna separate it a little bit. I think we're talking about, um, promoting that during June and July.

• 2:09:01Steven Rinella?

  Yep. And that, that turkey hunt sweepstakes, that's a raffle. And that was interesting to find out years ago. We did it, our first couple of times we did it, we did it as an auction. And then when we moved it to a raffle.

• 2:09:15Steven Rinella?

  It made a lot more money as a raffle. And then we just had a guest on who explained all the ways in which that does not hold true. When you're trying to distribute Big Go Horn sheep tags.

• 2:09:27Steven Rinella?

  Raffles can't touch an auction.

• 2:09:28Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:09:29Steven Rinella?

  But in the case of our hunts.

• 2:09:31Speaker 06

  Going turkey hunting with Steve.

• 2:09:34Speaker 06

  It just doesn't have the same allure as a big.

• 2:09:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, in the case of going turkey hunting, uh, on a, on a, on a all expense paid turkey hunt, raffles are way better. So we'll do the raffle, we'll do the raffle in the summertime for the turkey hunt.

• 2:09:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:09:46Steven Rinella?

  And we're going to auction to the highest bidder dinner for eight. At our headquarters here and it'll be a many course wild game dinner. And we'll pair it with drinks.

• 2:09:57Speaker 06

  Sounds like it'll be a beautiful thing.

• 2:09:59Steven Rinella?

  Paired with drinks.

• 2:10:00Speaker 06

  I'll be there.

• 2:10:01Steven Rinella?

  Um, Travis Barton at Barton fabrication is as we speak, making the table that you will sit at. While eating the dinner. And you'll look at this steel bar dividing these two large wooden slabs and you'll think that it was an aesthetic consideration. And you won't know that it had to do with the wood slabs not being big enough.

• 2:10:26Steven Rinella?

  You'll think what an awesome touch. What an awesome touch. Yeah, that steel running down the middle of the table.

• 2:10:36Steven Rinella?

  Not Travis's fault, not Travis's fault.

• 2:10:40Steven Rinella?

  Um, so we got that. Thanks for coming on, man.

• 2:10:42Speaker 06

  Appreciate you.

• 2:10:43Steven Rinella?

  Is there anything you want to wedge in there?

• 2:10:46Speaker 06

  Man, we've covered a lot of ground. I don't really think so.

• 2:10:50Steven Rinella?

  I appreciate, uh, I just want to close to saying, I appreciate that, um.

• 2:10:56Steven Rinella?

  You're in a real, like, like you're in a, you're in a spot right now. You're, you're in a, you're coming into a new role. Um, for an organization that's been humming along for a long time. And then getting your feet under you on that. And then at the same time, dealing with a, um, as the free press puts it, a major vibe shift in DC.

• 2:11:19Steven Rinella?

  The vibe is just different there right now. And it's like, uh, it, that's gotta be a daunting thing.

• 2:11:26Speaker 06

  It is. Yeah, for sure.

• 2:11:28Steven Rinella?

  Just get, getting, getting your feet under you at a new org and then, and then getting your feet under you with, with the new administration and a very fast moving group of people.

• 2:11:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:37Steven Rinella?

  So, uh, I appreciate you taking your time to come talk to us.

• 2:11:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:11:40Steven Rinella?

  While all that's going on. And I ask people to, um, you know, I did an interview yesterday and, and, um, with the, one of the podcasts by the Navy SEALs Foundation. And he was just saying, if you could change one thing about hunting, what would you change? And I said, it's a great question. And I thought about it and I couldn't really think of a good one. And I said, I guess it would be that, um, a greater percentage of the people who like and hunt, like to hunt and fish, um, increased their involvement and increased their involvement in conservation, increased their involvement in cons, conversations about funding for, and just demonstrated greater awareness about the issues at stake and how to be impactful.

• 2:12:24Steven Rinella?

  And, uh, you can do it at a broad scale, like at the federal level, like the conversations we've been having here today with TRCP, or you can do it small scale, local about animals and fish that you like, that live in places where you love to hang out, as represented by the huge partnership that TRCP has, um, with a lot of organizations that are more singularly focused on specific issues surrounding specific animals. You can take your pick. You can find the kind of thing that fits with how you view the world. Um, and, and when you consider that, consider TRCP and, and know that, uh, they have their work cut out for them in the coming years in trying to make sure that conservation stays front and center in the minds of, of the lawmakers in DC.

• 2:13:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Steve. And I think that's a good point. You know, I think about, um, all the partners we have and, and there's great partners that are getting the work out there on the ground. It's very tangible to see what they're doing. One of the challenges I think TRCP has always had is that we work largely behind the scenes. We're up there on Capitol Hill every day and we are. Facilitating the funding, the rulemaking, the legislating that's happening. We're working side by side with our partner groups. I don't want to discount the work that they're doing, but those groups, they're doing the advocacy on the hill and they're doing the implementation and they're putting on all of the local banquets. So they're, they're

• 2:13:51Speaker 06

  doing all of those things. We're just looking at the policy side of this.

• 2:13:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:55Speaker 06

  And so fundraising is very important to us and they help to do that. And, and we're an organization where, as we've talked for the last couple of hours, we're nonpartisan, we're in there all the time, every year, working on both sides of the aisle to get done what's important to the sportsmen that are out there.

• 2:14:13Steven Rinella?

  Okay. And for 80 you special listeners out there, we're getting dinner going now. You just got to win the auction and we'll do something we've never done before. We'll tell, I'll take requests.

• 2:14:22Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 2:14:23Steven Rinella?

  You can send in like, it'll be round, rough. You can give me rough requests.

• 2:14:27Speaker 03

  Nope, don't have that.

• 2:14:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Like I've always wanted to try, you know, elephant. And I'll be like, yeah. You ever had possum?

• 2:14:38Steven Rinella?

  All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 2:14:40Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 2:15:08Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you one thing that binds together all of the vehicles in the Rinella fleet at my house. They all have WeatherTech floor liners. When we get a new car, the first thing we do, out with the junky factory carpet mats, in with WeatherTech. They really are the best. They're indestructible. You can pull them out, hose them off. It doesn't matter what happens on the floor of your rig. If you got WeatherTech, you're going to be covered. I love these things. If you're looking to get a great gift for someone, especially if they're a big time outdoors kind of person, like if you really want to do them a favor, get them some WeatherTech floor liners for their truck or car. They'll have a way easier time keeping their rig nice and clean and they'll get years and years of use out of a set. Visit

• 2:15:53Steven Rinella?

  weathertech.com for your holiday shopping today.

• 2:15:58Steven Rinella?

  Hey, let me tell you, when the hunt is over, the work isn't over. You've still got all the grinding, stuffing, slicing and sealing. Turning your harvest into meals takes the right tools. L E M Products offers grinders, stuffers, slicers, dehydrators, vacuum sealers, and more for hunters and home meat processors. For more than 30 years, L E M has been helping people bring their harvest from field to table. Visit L E M products.com and use promo code STEVE15 to receive 15% off plus free shipping. That's STEVE15 at L E M products.com.

• 2:16:41Steven Rinella?

  The new Dual Threat Pro SD Climber is the ultimate companion for both bow and rifle hunters, thanks to its adjustable dual-threat front bar. This innovative feature allows you to tailor the climber based on your preferred hunting method. So you can choose between two climbing modes and two hunting modes. So I like having something that's got this level of versatility. Get 20% off all tree stands by using the code MEATEATER at summitstands.com. That's a phenomenal deal. That's summitstands.com.

• 2:17:11Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.