Ep. 769: Can Conservation Be Non-Partisan?

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Benji Backer, https://natureisnonpartisan.org/benji-bio Ryan Callaghan https://www.instagram.com/olcal406/, and Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/. Topics discussed: How wilderness is (or should be) non-partisan; pulling a B&E at Doug’s place; the latest anti-hunting crusade over Florida’s bear hunt https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/wildlife-management/anti-hunter-campaign-to-ruin-florida-bear-hunt-might-backfire; knocking on doors for candidates at age 10 and starting a PAC at 18; becoming disillusioned and starting Nature Is Nonpartisan https://natureisnonpartisan.org; what we define as a conservation “win”; politicians being the problem; creating space for a national conservation coalition; farmers mitigating climate change; not “shitting up” America; and more. Connect with Steve 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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• 1:30Steven Rinella?

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• 2:14Steven Rinella?

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• 2:41Steven Rinella?

  This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

• 2:51Steven Rinella?

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• 3:16Steven Rinella?

  We're joined today by Benji Backer of Nature is Nonpartisan. And we're going to talk about can it be? You're just saying it is.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  It is.

• 3:24Steven Rinella?

  You're just, that's the title.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  I'm going to will it to existence.

• 3:28Steven Rinella?

  And we're going to say, is it? How, how, can it be? How does it become? How does nature become nonpartisan? Meaning wildlife conservation, wildlands conservation? Can it, can it rise above the?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Vitriol.

• 3:46Steven Rinella?

  The, the, the.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  The culture wars.

• 3:48Steven Rinella?

  And the, and the, the cycles.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean.

• 3:52Steven Rinella?

  On again, off again.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  It has to. That's why I created Nature is Nonpartisan.

• 3:57Steven Rinella?

  I mean. Cause you just, you're saying it is.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  It is because.

• 4:00Steven Rinella?

  People just need to realize it is.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  People, yes, exactly. We got to get out of our algorithms here and realize that it actually once was nonpartisan. Right? You look at history, the biggest environmental achievements, conservation achievements throughout history were immensely bipartisan, nonpartisan. I spent the last 10 years of my career, I'm 27, so I was started when I was a freshman in college. I, I started a nonprofit my freshman year of college, like a normal freshman does, and went around the country and saw that people actually wanted a lot of the same things. They want clean air, they want clean water, they want wildlife habitat to be concerned. They want to be able to hunt and fish, they also want to be able to hike and ski. They just want to be able to spend time outdoors. And you could be the Trumpiest voter in the world, or you could be an AOC lover, and anything in between, and you want those same

• 4:44Speaker 03

  things. And yet, that's not reflected in our politics today. So we have to get this right. So by saying, I could say nature should be nonpartisan, that's a less compelling organization. There's four, four words there, instead of three.

• 4:56Steven Rinella?

  ought to be?

• 4:57Speaker 03

  ought to be.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  The NSBN is not a really compelling acronym.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  It's ESPN, too similar, too similar. But yeah, I mean, we, we feel like it should be, and so we're gonna make sure that it is. That's the whole goal.

• 5:13Steven Rinella?

  When, when we get into this, I want to talk about some of my favorite little facts that, the EPA, all the stuff that came in under Nixon, dude.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:24Steven Rinella?

  And not only that, yeah, and not only that, my other little favorite thing, Cal might remember the numbers on it. When they passed the Wilderness Act, wasn't it like 99 to 1 in the Senate, or like, it was like, not that. Someone should look that up.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Phil?

• 5:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean,

• 5:44Steven Rinella?

  Phil, that's not something Phil's gonna look up.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  I can try.

• 5:47Steven Rinella?

  Phil's back there trying to memorize his lines.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  I'm also switching cameras, making you look good, taking notes. I can look this up.

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  He's back there.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  A fa-thing.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  I'm gonna be thrilled when Steve learns another form of English currency.

• 6:05Steven Rinella?

  Phil, you ever hear of a fellow named Bob Scratchit?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 6:10Steven Rinella?

  Bob Cratchit?

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  I like that you didn't play along there. Yeah.

• 6:18Steven Rinella?

  You showed up in town at the wrong time. If you'd have showed up in town months from now, you'd be able to go see Phil and Christmas Carol.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Oh, is he in it?

• 6:25Steven Rinella?

  Doing Little Dickens, yeah.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Is he in it? Can he perform for us right now?

• 6:28Steven Rinella?

  He is it. He's playing. Do a couple.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Is that the halftime show?

• 6:32Steven Rinella?

  You know what? What? What? Like.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  This is my nightmare.

• 6:34Steven Rinella?

  You know how every.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  It's not technically a one man show.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  But he makes it seem as if it is.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  That's.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  He plays all the roles?

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:42Steven Rinella?

  You know how in movies there's like a big line that an actor's excited about? Like, when you think of Bob Cratchit in your role, what line are you like? What line are you most excited to just?

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Uh, he's got a very emphatic, here, here, when.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  When, when, when Fred is, is trying to convince, convince Scrooge of the joys of Christmas.

• 7:12Steven Rinella?

  I'll be watching for that.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  And the only, the only reason I bring it up is because that's the only line I have memorized so far.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  When I went to Phil's.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  You get some time. You get a couple of months.

• 7:21Steven Rinella?

  When I went to Phil's. More of a sound effect than a line, but go ahead.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  At Phil's last play, uh, he, I didn't really know what his role was. And I was reading the bill, you know, and, and he's like all the way at the end of the bill. And then as the play goes on, I'm like, God, he's got all the lines. Like he's got all the laughs. He's the main character.

• 7:39Steven Rinella?

  But they jammed him in the back of the bill.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I'm like, I was, I was like growing as I realized how central his role was. I was growing more and more offended at Phil's placement in the bill. And it wasn't until two days later, and I told him this, and he said, well, it was alphabetized.

• 7:53Steven Rinella?

  Phil the engineer?

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:55Steven Rinella?

  So he was under T?

• 7:58Speaker 04

  But I thought it was like this grave injustice. Uh, yeah, I'm excited for this one.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 8:05Steven Rinella?

  I'll tell you what it's, watch this segue. You know what? You know what? It ain't gonna be as good as Phil?

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Let's hear it.

• 8:10Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  The Christmas tour?

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Ah, should have guessed.

• 8:16Steven Rinella?

  You like that?

• 8:17Speaker 05

  That was good.

• 8:18Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if they liked it. Not gonna be as good as the Christmas tour. Uh, Meat Eater Live, the Christmas tour coming to the American South. Hmm. I wish they had all the cities in front of them.

• 8:30Steven Rinella?

  Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  I want to do the dates and everything.

• 8:34Steven Rinella?

  Gotcha. How do I find that?

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Boca Raton. Chat, chat.

• 8:37Steven Rinella?

  Not Boca Raton.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  You go, if you go to the meat eater dot com slash tour.

• 8:41Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  You can see all the dates.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  Christmas tour.

• 8:43Steven Rinella?

  Hang tight, here it is. We're coming out, we're, we're coming on the road. Uh, Brent Reeves will be there.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:52Steven Rinella?

  He's in for the full tour. Clay Newcomb there, Dr. Randall will be there, Yanni.

• 8:59Steven Rinella?

  Full tour.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:00Steven Rinella?

  Special guests at every stop.

• 9:03Steven Rinella?

  December 17th, we're gonna be in Birmingham, Alabama. At the Lyric. At that event, I will tell my story about taking a, a, a very paranoid two days I spent.

• 9:18Steven Rinella?

  Where I took a shotgun apart and I was going from, on a Greyhound bus. From Azula, Montana to Auburn, Alabama. To duck hunt. Very nervous about if they found out I had that gun.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 9:33Steven Rinella?

  And we went into, and I'll tell my story about Birmingham. People are gonna think they found the gun.

• 9:42Steven Rinella?

  They never found it.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Wait and see, wait and see.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  But the drama is.

• 9:46Steven Rinella?

  But yeah, it's just worth it. Uh, at the Lyric, December 17th, Birmingham, Alabama, at the Lyric. December 18th, Nashville, Tennessee. Marathon Music Works.

• 9:58Steven Rinella?

  December 19th, you'll notice these all are just, these are all just every night fills up here. Scrooge. And we're down in these places.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:09Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 10:11Steven Rinella?

  What's that line here, here? Here, here.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  You got it.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Here, here.

• 10:15Steven Rinella?

  December 19th, or did I do that yet? 18th, Nashville, Tennessee at Marathon Music Works. December 19th, Memphis, Tennessee. Minglewood Hall.

• 10:27Steven Rinella?

  I've been texting with Will Primos. I believe that Will Primos is gonna be, he's gonna come to the Memphis show and he's gonna give life advice.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  That's delightful.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  That will be delightful.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  Top pieces of life advice from, from a man that has earned a position.

• 10:44Steven Rinella?

  Of giving that advice. December, uh, we've been kicking around a couple of things like, Clay wants Brent Reeves to hold a fish fry onstage every night, but the minute you tell the venue, then they, then they're gonna have to be like, well, now we gotta get a fire marshal. That's hard. You know, we do the casting contest. We kinda wanna do a blowgun contest, but not tell the venue.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:06Steven Rinella?

  Cause then they'll have to get a cop or, you know.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  But you just said it right now, so.

• 11:11Steven Rinella?

  They might get it. There'll be a fire marshal and a cop waiting.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  We should just find out if there's.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  The beauty of our show is, uh, there's like zero percent of stagehands that listen to it, so.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Except for Phil's friends. Phil's friends listen.

• 11:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no one from the venue. Oh, yeah, Phil's friends. Do your friends listen just to catch you on the show, Phil?

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Definitely not, no.

• 11:32Steven Rinella?

  Uh, December 20, Fayetteville, Arkansas, at Ozark Music Hall, which I believe is sold out. December 21, Dallas, Texas, Texas Theater.

• 11:46Steven Rinella?

  December 22, and I believe, uh, we got Jesse Griffiths coming out to hang out with this one, too. December 22, Austin, Texas, at the Paramount. Tickets are all on sale now.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  That's a good week. You're retired after that.

• 12:00Steven Rinella?

  I know.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. You're gonna need to have some Christmas after that.

• 12:02Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm. Gonna go see my ma.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Where's she at?

• 12:06Steven Rinella?

  Michigan.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm a Midwestern boy myself.

• 12:09Steven Rinella?

  What state?

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Wisconsin.

• 12:10Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  We got two of the three best Midwest states covered.

• 12:14Steven Rinella?

  What part of Skony are you from?

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Ohio is also at the table. Benji's build's kinda similar to Chester. When he said Wisconsin, I was like huh.

• 12:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  When I said it.

• 12:23Steven Rinella?

  You do look like little Chester.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Little Chester.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, like a big Chester.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Big Chester.

• 12:29Steven Rinella?

  I meant little Chester. You look like.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  A big Chester?

• 12:32Steven Rinella?

  Like if Chester had had better.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  Ate his Wheaties and spinach?

• 12:36Steven Rinella?

  Better like prenatal, I don't know.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 12:41Steven Rinella?

  I'm just thinking, cause we had that guy on the the Mont teeth about when deer's mom.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, the full expression. The full expression of his genes.

• 12:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  I'm gonna take this as a compliment. I'm not quite sure yet, but.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Like, everybody here loves Chester.

• 12:53Steven Rinella?

  My buddies out in Montana say I look like a big Chester.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  And they're like, I don't know what that means. Uh, near, uh, Green Bay.

• 12:59Steven Rinella?

  Oh, great. Okay. So we're just, we're just like right across the lake.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:02Steven Rinella?

  I could have shot over. I could have shot over.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  The SS Badger.

• 13:05Steven Rinella?

  We used to cross and we'd land over at, uh.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Manitowoc.

• 13:09Steven Rinella?

  Exactly. God, God knows his Great Lakes.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Steve, the Wilderness Act passed seventy-three to twelve in the Senate, but then.

• 13:16Steven Rinella?

  That's why I like to say ninety-nine to one.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Sounds a lot better.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  In today's world. It passed the House three seventy-four to one.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  See, that's what you were thinking of.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  That's even better.

• 13:25Steven Rinella?

  I was combining them.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:27Steven Rinella?

  I was combining the legislative bodies into one and finding a sort of average.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  The only name being Joe Poole from Texas, and I can't figure out why. I've been looking up, but.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Is he still alive?

• 13:37Steven Rinella?

  I feel that it might be. This is lore. I feel that he didn't feel it went far enough.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  That's part of the.

• 13:47Steven Rinella?

  Lore.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  The spiel.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  Yep, for sure.

• 13:49Steven Rinella?

  Lore. Uh, I've talked about this a handful of times. I don't know if I have on the show or not. Um. This is fitting, cause me and Randall have been working on our, our, uh, The Hyde Hunters. Our Meat Eaters Audio Original. Or, sorry. Meat Eaters American History, The Hyde Hunters, which tells the story of the.

• 14:10Steven Rinella?

  Begin, okay, let me back up. Meat Eaters American History, The Hyde Hunters, tells the story of the buffalo hide hunters. It covers from 1865, so the year the Civil War ended. We explain why that's of significance up to 1883. And it tells about the, the, the, the, the men, the motivations, the skills, the justifications.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  The dangers.

• 14:34Steven Rinella?

  The dangers, the bloodshed, the untimely deaths involved in the men who killed the last 15 million buffalo off the American Great Plains. Uh, ran it, ran that number from 15 million down to less than a thousand in the U.S. Um, today, we have about, there's about a half million in existence. 94% are privately owned. Um, that really needs to change. Maybe we'll touch on that. That's a non, that should be a nonpartisan issue, but even that is partisan.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Buffalo.

• 15:08Steven Rinella?

  Recovering buffalo.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Buffalo or nonpartisan?

• 15:11Steven Rinella?

  They should be, but recovering buffalo.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  New organization.

• 15:14Steven Rinella?

  Recovering the buffalo is a partisan issue. And it's not fair because it's one of the few conservation achievements we could have by not, it's like, it's not by doing something, it's by not doing something.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Getting out of the way.

• 15:30Steven Rinella?

  Like a lot of times you're like, oh, that's a lot of work. But with this, it's like, it's kind of like not doing something would help the animals.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:38Steven Rinella?

  Um, any else long-winded way of saying, we, we've been talking about this. So we have a new jerky out. We take our own jerky. So if you guys bought our cookbooks, um, we always have jerky recipes in our cookbooks and we have a new jerky out. Here's a package right here where we take our own recipes from our cookbooks and use them on American buffalo. So bison jerky, you can get it, you can go to, you can get it right now. Um, it's been a lot of fun working on it. You get it, you can, you can order your own at meat eaters snacks.com. 100% buffalo. Fueling the country for a long time. Um, and then you can go read about.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Do you taste tests on, on set here or?

• 16:17Steven Rinella?

  Well, you want some? We did a mega taste test on set. You want classic pepper?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think pepper.

• 16:23Steven Rinella?

  Classic pepper.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Classic, sorry. I'm having classic pepper.

• 16:27Steven Rinella?

  New fangled pepper.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:29Steven Rinella?

  Try it out.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  It's not normal pepper.

• 16:32Steven Rinella?

  But you know, when you start chewing on jerky, then you got to talk, it gets hard.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Just do it right.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  End of the microphone.

• 16:38Steven Rinella?

  Enjoying? You enjoying?

• 16:42Speaker 04

  It's a good morning jerky.

• 16:47Speaker 03

  I just want this part to be clipped and that's it. You guys can end it now.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  That's actually really good, though.

• 16:54Steven Rinella?

  No, it is good. It's great.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  That is solid.

• 16:56Steven Rinella?

  No, I think it's fantastic. It turned out really well.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Really, really good. That's not, that's not regular pepper right there. That is classic pepper right there.

• 17:01Steven Rinella?

  We had a lot of back and forth. We finally got one that we love. Uh, one last little thing. Uh, whitetail week is here right now. September 29th through October 5th, uh, first lights run their whitetail sale up to 40% off. All kinds of gear.

• 17:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, look at this. Here's a kicker. If you pick up a new whitetail jacket and bibs, first light will throw in a mulch tree trail camera for free. Shop now at firstlight.com.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  How could you say no to that?

• 17:34Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, it's not just a mulch tree trail camera. It's the first light camo mulch tree. Trail camera.

• 17:41Steven Rinella?

  That's what I got. I got one keeping an eye on my fish shack right now.

• 17:47Speaker 06

  That, that's an interesting thing is like, um, the mulch tree folks really just want you talking about hunting. And I'm like. The hunting stuff I don't worry about nearly as much as people, uh, breaking into stuff. And that's a great, great use of those trail cameras.

• 18:06Steven Rinella?

  Doug has a sign coming into the buck shack, the farmhouse. And it reminds, it's like a sign telling you that if you're breaking in, he already has your picture on his phone.

• 18:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's got in typical Doug form. There's some cutesiness about it too, like. Like there's nothing in here worth the trouble.

• 18:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, nothing in here worth the trouble you're gonna have. And I'd argue that, but.

• 18:35Steven Rinella?

  Cause he's got this, he's got this 12 pound, uh. Sledgehammer head.

• 18:43Steven Rinella?

  No handle in it. That he uses to hold the bathroom door. And I kinda want that sledgehammer head.

• 18:52Steven Rinella?

  How much trouble do you get in for taking something like that? It can't be like a lot.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  So when you enter a window, is it to the left or right? As long as we're putting this out there.

• 19:01Steven Rinella?

  Go in, go in, go like, go in, is it just like, like, just to the right?

• 19:08Speaker 04

  Gotcha.

• 19:08Steven Rinella?

  There's a bathroom door, there's a 12 pound sledgehammer head there. Propping the door that I, is just a waste of a beautiful sledgehammer head. Antique.

• 19:18Speaker 06

  I would tell people.

• 19:19Steven Rinella?

  Doug's gonna have your picture.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. Don't start in the kitchen. The kitchen's like the width of the table.

• 19:25Steven Rinella?

  Bypass the kitchen.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  And it is so chock full of junk from, you know, decades of people thinking, oh,

• 19:36Speaker 06

  you could use an extra saucepan, but there's already nine different saucepans jammed in the back of this thing.

• 19:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 06

  And anytime you go to put something away, there's just like this cascade of old aluminum and nonstick pans and tin and.

• 19:50Steven Rinella?

  People are like, they're, they're holding it over their garbage can and they're like, down, bring it to Doug's.

• 19:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, it's infuriating.

• 19:59Steven Rinella?

  Uh, here's the, here's the interesting little fight brewing. We're only gonna do like one or two. I think we got one newsy thing we're gonna do. One's just funny. I'm gonna do the funny one first. So.

• 20:12Steven Rinella?

  Oh, did you guys see, ah, damn it.

• 20:15Steven Rinella?

  The, the Mississippi Black Panther?

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:19Steven Rinella?

  That's funny. I'm not even gonna get into it. A news story broke out in Maryland.

• 20:25Steven Rinella?

  I only caught it after it happened, but a, a woman got approached by a bear in Maryland. Okay. She ran from the bear and fell and got hurt. The bear never touched her, but she fell and got hurt. So there was like a bear and an injury. So the news cycle, I guess, very quickly was like, attack.

• 20:46Steven Rinella?

  And then it was, well.

• 20:48Speaker 06

  Self inflicted.

• 20:49Steven Rinella?

  She felt.

• 20:51Speaker 06

  There's a self inflicted bear injury related.

• 20:54Steven Rinella?

  So you could go and find if you felt like you can go and kind of track the sort of evolution of of like, what exactly.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  The telephone game.

• 21:02Steven Rinella?

  The what exactly went down that. The phantom bear attack. Um, here's one that's more interesting. We, I'm bringing this up because we've covered this bunch over the years and our very own Jordan Sillers just wrote a piece about it. Florida, this is my favorite story in the, on the world. Years ago, Florida ran a bear hunt. Um, Florida had many bears. If you go back historically, they over hunted them. They over poisoned them. They over predator controlled them to the point where they had very few bears. Bears have really recovered in Florida. I think now like, you know, over 50% of

• 21:40Steven Rinella?

  the state has, uh, good bear populations. Years ago, they ran a bear hunt and they ran a bear hunt in Florida. Do you mind pulling up what year that was? Randall Randall's always bragging about how fast he is at researching.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Well.

• 21:54Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Turn my wifi on.

• 21:57Steven Rinella?

  Years ago, they opened a bear hunt and they did the management strategy of using a quota. And when you use a quota hunt, what it is, is you'd go and say, trying to think of the best way, the simplest way to put this, you say to your, you say to the people in your state, you're like, hey, we're going to have a bear hunt and the quota is 100 bears. So everybody could go, the whole state, you all go hunting. As soon as you get one, call our hotline and then when we get to like 98, we're going to turn it off. Okay. And it's a quote, that's how a quota system functions. So everybody goes and you just count, count, count, count, count, and then bang. Many things are managed by quota. There's, um, caribou herds in Alaska that are quota hunts

• 22:42Steven Rinella?

  where they like, you hit 200 in the region closes. Um, in the state, I'm in Montana right now. Montana runs quotas on mountain lions. They run. Big horn sheep. Big horn sheep where, uh, anyone, anybody that wants can participate. It turns off when you hit the quota. And there's a little bit of a.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  There's a lag.

• 23:03Steven Rinella?

  There's little art and science to it. Like you sort of watch your quota, it's speed. And then, and then you usually have a little bit of a buffer to turn it off. Meaning if some guy is like drawn back on a, on a bighorn sheep. And all of a sudden his phone dings and the quota is full, right? But he doesn't look at his phone and shoots the bighorn sheep. He's not troubled because they give a 48 hour buffer. So they go like they, the numbers climb and you're sort of watching the trajectory and you're watching your quota cap. And, um, and you call it and you're like, okay, it's full. So in 48 hours, season's over. Uh, when Florida years ago tried this bear hunt.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  2015.

• 23:46Steven Rinella?

  2015, they tried a bear hunt and they, i- i- in some of their areas, they shot past the quota.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Very, very fast.

• 23:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it blew everybody away how fast the quota like.

• 24:00Steven Rinella?

  They had some units where they blew past the quota.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  I just bring the speed up because I do think that's like a factor in the general reaction.

• 24:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I don't think they had any idea.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  In two days, the, the statewide quota, because this doesn't really, this distorts like what actually happened. But the statewide quota was 320 and in two days they'd killed 300. But because of the regional.

• 24:22Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Distribution of that, like some areas were way.

• 24:24Steven Rinella?

  Shot past.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:26Steven Rinella?

  And then you, you call it and then I think that what happened is some of those areas is they called it, but there's a 24 hour window. And then during the 24 hours over the, they shot over the quota. Not enough to be of like biological significance, but plenty enough to be of social significance.

• 24:44Steven Rinella?

  Because it was a very contentious issue. It, it like, i- if you look at, there's a theme in wildlife management. It would be that when you have a species that becomes imperiled and you stop hunting for that species because it comes imperiled. And then over time you recover it. You will naturally like, you're gonna have friction when you want to reinstate a hunt. Because people in their minds, for as far as they can remember back, the bears, they're not around. Like, how can we be hunting? I thought bears are imperiled and like, they're not recovered. And also now you're telling me we're gonna hunt them. I've known my whole life that, that you can't hunt them because, right? So you're gonna have friction. Um, and that created a lot of friction, so much so that they just, it was the,

• 25:28Steven Rinella?

  the agency was beat up on the whole thing. Again, biologically insignificant, but it was socially very significant that in some areas they went over the quota. And then Florida just said, okay, we're done with bear hunting.

• 25:41Steven Rinella?

  They're, they're trying again now, um, which I fully support. They're trying again, and this time they're using the other way you do this. The other way you do this is you say,

• 25:54Steven Rinella?

  you say, okay, everybody can't go. We're not gonna do the everybody goes thing. And the quota, we're gonna do, uh, where only some of you get to go. And I think they're probably doing a quota too, right? On top of that?

• 26:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they have, they have an amount they want. They're issuing 187 bear permits. So now they know how many people are gonna be a field. They're gonna issue 187 bear permits. And what are they looking at? I know they have some quotas in place. I can't find it here.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  It's a, right, so you're

• 26:31Steven Rinella?

  What is it?

• 26:32Speaker 06

  Providing like, tons of opportunity for, with the expectation that there's, it's theoretical opportunity. The expectation of actual opportunity is much, much lower. In that 2015 hunt, the state, um, didn't properly estimate the actual opportunity in the field. Um, meaning that a lot more people who in theory wouldn't be successful were, in a very short amount of time. Um, and it's a great fundraising mechanism, right?

• 27:10Speaker 06

  Cause you get to sell a ton of permits, and this is just exactly how like wolf tags in the state of Montana function. Everybody buys a wolf tag. Very, very, very few people put in any actual effort to target wolves specifically. It's like a, a animal of opportunity versus strict pursuit.

• 27:32Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I buy them sons of bitches every year and never do anything different.

• 27:35Speaker 06

  Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

• 27:37Steven Rinella?

  This will, this will impact my behavior zero.

• 27:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, but then there's that other group of people who are like, I am specifically dedicating time in the pursuit of wolves.

• 27:47Steven Rinella?

  Corey Calkins.

• 27:48Speaker 06

  Right. Yep.

• 27:50Steven Rinella?

  Calkins.

• 27:52Speaker 06

  He's happy either way.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  He knows what you mean.

• 27:57Steven Rinella?

  This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Holiday season is damn near upon us. In my house, you know, we've been talking about Thanksgiving at pretty soon. We're going to start talking about Christmas and it could bring on a lot of stress. Also, holidays could bring on a lot of family issues and sometimes when it comes to family issues, it might be smart for you to go and find someone you can talk to about it and to help make sense out of it all. Well, insurance options may now be available nationwide with BetterHelp. With insurance, many members pay $15 or less. Some pay nothing. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 10-plus

• 28:41Steven Rinella?

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• 29:26Steven Rinella?

  at my house. And now I've never slept better. What I really love is arriving home after a long hunt where I've been sleeping on a cot or the ground and crashing on my Helix mattress. It's one of the things I miss the most when I'm out chasing deer. Helix has over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect one for you and they deliver right to your door with free shipping in the US. There's a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Plus they make it easy to return or exchange your mattress. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand, tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Go to helixsleep.com/MeDeater for 30% off. That's helixsleep.com/MeDeater for 30% off.

• 30:11Steven Rinella?

  Helixsleep.com/MeDeater. Warning: This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Black Buffalo products are intended for adults aged 21 and older who are consumers of nicotine or tobacco. Now you know how long it takes to build something that actually holds up? Well, Black Buffalo spent 20,000 hours on it. 20,000 hours working alongside American farmers, growing and barn curing leafy greens to mimic the taste and texture of real dip without the tobacco leaf or stem. That's not a shortcut. That's a commitment.

• 30:52Steven Rinella?

  They started this thing in 2015, right here in America, and they got it right. In wintergreen, mint and straight, the taste you already know. And long cut and pouches. It dips like the real thing because they refuse to settle for less. Check out your local gas station or convenience store. Chances are it's already on a shelf near you. Or head to blackbuffalo.com and use code MEAT for 30% off your first order. Black Buffalo Tobacco Alternative. It's everything you love about dip, nothing you don't. So they're saying to 187 people, hey, instead of letting everybody go, you 187 going, it's going to be easier to monitor this whole thing.

• 31:37Steven Rinella?

  And they have a thing. So you buy a, they're doing it through a lottery, democratic allocation, $5 lottery ticket. You buy as many chances as you want, five bucks. If you draw though, then you gotta buy the permit. So if you're, so like you win, well then to actually get your permit, then you gotta come up with more money. So it's five bucks to get in. And if you draw, if you're a resident, your permit is a hundred bucks. If you're a non-resident, your permit is 300 bucks.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Great deal.

• 32:08Steven Rinella?

  Now, here's where it gets, here's where it gets saucy. The uh uh Sierra Club is pushing its members. Hey, save a bear. Buy all these lottery tickets.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 32:29Steven Rinella?

  And then don't use them if you win. Okay. And they're like, that's how we're gonna save bears. Florida's attitude about this is you guys can buy all the tickets you want. That's great for conservation.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 32:42Steven Rinella?

  You're generating, you're generating all this thing.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  So they are a conservation organization again.

• 32:46Steven Rinella?

  And if we don't hit the quota, then we know next year, we're just gonna release a lot more.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:52Steven Rinella?

  So it's like, okay, you know, okay. This is a thing that's been tried before. Like, I don't know if you remember.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Wyoming Grizzlies.

• 33:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and it the catch there, years ago, when they moved to D-list grizzly bears in Wyoming, they were gonna do, do you remember 24? They were gonna issue 24 permits?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was a Idaho resident at the time, so I actually was in the drawing.

• 33:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh, you were in the draw for their one tag?

• 33:17Speaker 03

  For the one tag, yeah.

• 33:18Steven Rinella?

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

• 33:30Steven Rinella?

  It'll be, it'll be interesting to, it'll be interesting to see, I could picture that what they might do. Like, if I was in Florida Fish and Games shoes, the agency shoes for Florida Wildlife Commission, I guess, is who approved the bear hunt rule. I would be wondering, should we, should we make it a greater hurdle to enter? Meaning you gotta go and let's say you gotta be licensed, fully licensed. You gotta go and take an online bear identification class, so you learn how to tell a female with cubs or like, would I like?

• 34:05Speaker 04

  Tag money.

• 34:06Steven Rinella?

  Would I make it more of a pain in the ass?

• 34:08Speaker 03

  To filter out the preservationists?

• 34:09Steven Rinella?

  To filter out anti-hunters? Or would I just really be like, no, I want all those $5?

• 34:16Speaker 04

  So they've sold more, they've sold more than 160,000 chances.

• 34:21Steven Rinella?

  Have they?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Florida has?

• 34:23Speaker 04

  For 187 tags.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Good for them. Good for conservation.

• 34:27Steven Rinella?

  Someone could tell me what that times $5 is.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  It's about a million. I would.

• 34:39Speaker 06

  You could grow anything in Florida.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Literally.

• 34:42Speaker 06

  If I was one of those bear tag holders, that's what I would be concentrating. I'd be like, what mix of food do I want in the black bear I'm going to target?

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, where's the pineapple region?

• 34:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Like, where?

• 34:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  They'd be exciting.

• 35:00Steven Rinella?

  Salamone.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:03Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  It's, yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  Have a Cuban pig ready to go before you even have to.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:07Steven Rinella?

  My favorite word lately is, um, it's, it's a situation that's gotten frothy. I heard that in the market, like in the markets, listening to markets about the news.

• 35:17Speaker 06

  Frothy.

• 35:17Steven Rinella?

  When there's like a lot of M and A, a lot of M and A activity out there, you'd be like, it's a frothy.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Can you, one of your snacks you should have be a frothy something?

• 35:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, frothy. Classic frothy.

• 35:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, we'll make it out.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Describe that classic pepper as frothy?

• 35:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say it's 25%.

• 35:34Steven Rinella?

  It's a frothy chew.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:36Steven Rinella?

  What? A, a, a final point on this, that's like a little bit sticky, I feel for Sierra Club is like, how, is it cool for, like, is it cool for Sierra Club to be, is it cool for Sierra's club to be like, not only do we not support the state agency? Right? The state biologists and the state agency is doing this. Not only do we not support their mission, we're, we're promoting the idea that you try to like thwart.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. The effort, which seems to me like, that's a, that's aggressive play.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  They're always aggressive.

• 36:12Steven Rinella?

  You know, that's an aggressive play.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Their, their whole thing is being aggressive.

• 36:15Steven Rinella?

  You think so?

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  I mean, they only raise money off of being aggressive. They're almost a billion dollar annual organization every year because they raise money off of being anti whatever the other groups are for. That's, they actually want sort of this, this coverage even because.

• 36:30Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:30Steven Rinella?

  Conflict. Cut this, Phil.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  Conflict sells. They, they love that Donald Trump's president because they can raise all the money in the world of being against everything that he does.

• 36:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  And, and when things are good and you're solving problems, it's harder to rile people up. They love riling people up. They're the problem, in my opinion.

• 36:49Steven Rinella?

  It's funny you bring that up because Randall and I were talking yesterday about, I don't even want to kind of get into this, but we were talking about.

• 36:54Speaker 06

  Please don't.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  I'm glad you said that.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Uh oh.

• 36:59Steven Rinella?

  I'm just gonna be real quick about it. We were talking about Tylenol.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 37:03Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 37:05Speaker 06

  Why would you be talking about?

• 37:06Steven Rinella?

  As one does, as one does on a Wednesday.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Good marketing.

• 37:10Steven Rinella?

  Randall was trying to explain and Randall was trying to capture, if I go onto social media and I want to find out what people, how people feel about Tylenol, I will come away with a different impression of what people feel about Tylenol than I would if I was just going about my existence in life.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  If you go to a coffee shop and hold up a newspaper and start eavesdropping, there are people pounding the table about Tylenol.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  I mean, at this point, we should start creating like pro Tylenol, anti Tylenol swag.

• 37:42Steven Rinella?

  I know.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Are you?

• 37:43Steven Rinella?

  Randall's like, I feel that a lot of people are actually out there thinking like, huh, that's kind of weird.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  What side are you on? Pick your, pick your fighter.

• 37:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, he felt that when he takes the national temperature, he feels the national temperature in spite of what was happening in the news, the national temperature was, huh, yeah.

• 38:06Steven Rinella?

  I guess I'll go to work today.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  While our leaders are fighting about, uh, what? Tylenol?

• 38:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, you follow it.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 38:15Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  No, I followed it. Autism and.

• 38:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Speaker 06

  I will point out the tag buying strategy. I know I've told you about this.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Back to the bears.

• 38:23Speaker 06

  Um, the, a buddy of mine drew the Upper Rock Creek Bighorn Sheep tag.

• 38:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 38:31Speaker 06

  Um, when it was still good and, and the, um, jackasses who locked out all the public access in Upper Rock Creek, weren't there?

• 38:40Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 38:43Speaker 06

  The, uh, they ran into two guys, father, son, who had drawn the lower rock creek, uh, a couple of the U tags.

• 38:54Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 38:56Speaker 06

  And.

• 38:56Steven Rinella?

  This is back in the days, they were just standing along the road.

• 38:59Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly. Yep. And, um, we're chatting with them and they're like, oh, we're non hunters. We just bought, we, we apply for tags and then we come out and like wildlife watch and this is how we save animals. And that was back in probably, I bet like oh, four, oh, five, maybe.

• 39:19Steven Rinella?

  They were pioneers.

• 39:21Speaker 06

  Early adopters. Yeah. So, I mean, it was, it, it has been a strategy in the past. Yeah.

• 39:27Steven Rinella?

  It makes, I mean, it seems like you could take everyone on the planet and have them all forget everything. And then have new people come. And I think those new people would quickly hit on the idea that this could be a thing one could do.

• 39:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. For sure.

• 39:42Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You're like, uh huh.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, I mean, we were just talking about this. I missed the big party last night because it was at the Public Land Water Access.

• 39:51Steven Rinella?

  I was able to track your movements through a way that you would never anticipate.

• 39:55Speaker 06

  Uh, your next door neighbor?

• 39:56Steven Rinella?

  My neighbor is on the board.

• 39:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:00Steven Rinella?

  So I knew where you were before you knew where you were.

• 40:02Speaker 06

  Uh, that was great. Yeah. We, we chatted for a little bit, but, um, you could, I, I brought up in my talk last night, I'm like, you know, this public lands fight. You know, these people fought this in the thirties, forties, fifties. And people were like,

• 40:25Speaker 06

  well, I thought we just won that.

• 40:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, right.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  This has happened before. It will happen again. It will happen again.

• 40:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  It will happen again sooner than we'd like.

• 40:36Steven Rinella?

  Cal, the Cal, it's on 10 year cycle, I think Cal thinks.

• 40:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, that's.

• 40:40Steven Rinella?

  It's like snowshoe hairs, plus three years.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna happen sooner again.

• 40:45Steven Rinella?

  There you go.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Oh, I know so, unfortunately.

• 40:47Steven Rinella?

  All right, first off, man, give, give, give us some background. You're from Green Bay?

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Yep, go pack.

• 40:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, is it Benjamin?

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Benjamin Packer.

• 40:55Steven Rinella?

  Benjamin, but so, so when you shorten, most guys go all the way down to Ben.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, but I wanted.

• 41:00Steven Rinella?

  You kept some.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I kept a little extra, a little tail there, uh, called G, uh, Ben G, yeah. I, uh, second grade woke up and said, I don't want to be Ben. Benjamin's too long, so Ben G it is, but, uh.

• 41:11Steven Rinella?

  I like it.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Thanks. Yeah, I grew up in, uh, in Green Bay and I watched John McCain and Barack Obama debate in 2008 and said, I want to be part of that.

• 41:20Steven Rinella?

  How old were you?

• 41:21Speaker 03

  10.

• 41:23Steven Rinella?

  You weren't like, I want to be a detective.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Right, or a sports announcer, or a.

• 41:28Steven Rinella?

  You know, an NFL player.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  An NFL player. Yeah, I'm five, I'm five nine. There's no way I'm becoming an NFL player.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  But yeah, I was like, I really want to be part of the civic process. And so I started, I asked my parents who were not political at all, can we go, can I go door knocking for, for John McCain?

• 41:45Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  And they were like, that is the weirdest thing that you could ask us to do. And my parents were not political at all, and they did not want to have signs in their yard or bumper stickers in their cars or any of that stuff. And I just was like allured by the process and so I became super active in high school in conservative politics. And spoke at CPAC my freshman year of high school, was on Fox News for the first time my freshman year of high school.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Uh, I had a really good Bieber haircut. My, my Wisconsin accent was really intense. Um, and I knew nothing about what I was doing, obviously, and I, but I cared a lot about America. It was really what it came down to and like, I wanted to be a part of solving complex problems. But I have since grown more and more disillusioned with politics.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  And I hate the two-party system. I hate the political system that we're working within. And I hate how it's impacted the environment and conservation. Because at the same time that I was strangely volunteering for John McCain and Mitt Romney, I also was an avid hiker, avid skier, was fishing every weekend in the summer with my grandpa. Uh, my parents were vegan, so.

• 43:00Steven Rinella?

  Oh, wow.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I was the only meat eater in my family. So I'm like the resident meat eater in my family. So it's nice to be in a room full of meat eaters.

• 43:07Steven Rinella?

  Were your parents right-leaning?

• 43:09Speaker 03

  My parents were just, I think like most people, they're just like whoever has the best ideas, they're gonna vote for, like, they're fiscal conservatives.

• 43:17Steven Rinella?

  They were practical.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Practical fiscal conservatives. They voted for McCain and Romney, but like they were definitely like independent voters. Um, and my sisters are liberal and I grew up in a very like politically diverse family. But we all got along and we all loved each other. And I, so I was frustrated with politics. I loved the environment and I also realized that people could actually get along and that the country that I was seeing crumble politically, and it's still getting worse, was not representative of the people itself. Like, the people themselves don't want that to happen. They're not as polarized. They're not putting each other in such boxes. And, uh, so that's kind of how I got to being more of, you know, uh, trying to bridge the divide on conservation and the environment.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Because if there's one issue that should transcend party lines, that should get action regardless of who wins, it should be conservation of the environment, like it used to. So I transitioned to that my freshman year of college. Uh, tweeted out that I was gonna start a nonprofit to get this going.

• 44:15Steven Rinella?

  As a freshman in college?

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:17Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I knew, I knew when you did it that you were young, but I hadn't thought about the fact that you're like, like also being in college.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Eighteen, yeah.

• 44:25Steven Rinella?

  Cause normally it's like, well, I'm in freshman college and I have to drink a lot. And then that's kind of my schedule.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Girls drinking, you know.

• 44:34Steven Rinella?

  I gotta have time to hang out.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Pretty standard. Smoking weed.

• 44:38Steven Rinella?

  I'm having a hard time finding hangout time.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  Right. I was starting environmental policy nonprofits uh instead.

• 44:45Steven Rinella?

  Where were you at school?

• 44:46Speaker 03

  University of Washington. So I searched the best business school, best business schools in America and went down the list to the first one that was in a place that I could hike and ski on the weekends. And the University of Washington was like probably like 40th on the list of best business schools, but it was the closest to where I wanted to to recreate. So the Cascades, uh, obviously beautiful national parks out there and that's really why I went there.

• 45:10Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  So then I started it out there and I started, you know.

• 45:14Steven Rinella?

  And like registered a nonprofit.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I first started a PAC because I didn't know what I was doing. Um, and I.

• 45:20Steven Rinella?

  We've all done that.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Just me 18 looking up. So what's the quickest way to start a nonprofit? Well, a PAC gets approved right away.

• 45:28Steven Rinella?

  Classic freshman year mistake.

• 45:30Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. You look, wake up and you look at all the texts that you sent out that you don't remember and then you're like, oh, my God.

• 45:39Speaker 06

  One of those nights that I.

• 45:43Steven Rinella?

  Did we start a PAC last night?

• 45:47Speaker 03

  I highly recommend it because there's basically zero barriers of entry to starting a PAC.

• 45:52Steven Rinella?

  Know this. I mean, I know, I know what it is, but I didn't know that. Is it designed to be fast?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  It shouldn't be, but like if you want to start, if you want, an 18 year old accidentally starts a PAC and then suddenly is the owner of a PAC. And then there's no like, like the IRS checks 501(c)(3) is traditional nonprofits. It takes like a year to approve that. A PAC gets approved literally overnight.

• 46:14Steven Rinella?

  What, what, to help people, I mostly know what you're talking about, but just help people understand like what you mean.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  So there's different designations.

• 46:21Steven Rinella?

  Political Action Committee.

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's different designations.

• 46:22Steven Rinella?

  They, they, they're ephemeral.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:25Steven Rinella?

  Like, because you can, they're, they're very responsive to, I mean, like, like a race heats up, you get a nominee and then all of a sudden there's all these PACs.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:33Steven Rinella?

  And some of them are meant to dissolve.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  That's because there's a lot of 18 year olds starting PACs.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  Most visibility, right, for the normal person is that fine print that says paid for by.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:43Speaker 06

  Concerned citizens for.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Montana.

• 46:45Steven Rinella?

  Victory 2024.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, no one knows who it is. In this case, it was me, but you know, it's, it's basically a political action committee. There's a super PAC and a PAC, but it's, it's a government designation of what you can do with the money when someone donates it. And so, uh, like a 501(c)(3), which is like the Red Cross and like all the big nonprofits that you're aware of, that's tax deductible to a donor. They can't do any political activity at all. A PAC. You do not get a tax deduction when you donate and it strictly is going to be to support candidates. Like you're supporting political candidates. There's no educational part of it. It's, it's, it's a political organization. And so I was like, wait a second, I'm trying to like, bridge the divide on the environment. I'm not trying to like donate to candidates. So then I quickly shuttered the, uh, weekend mistake. But a PAC is a, it would be, is a 501(c)(4), right?

• 47:32Speaker 03

  So that's very complicated, but no, because if I want to see four, this is like, this is like, point 100 of the things that you don't wish you knew at age 27. Um, the difference between the C4 and the PAC. But a C4 is a non-tax deductible organization that can lobby, but they don't really donate. You can donate to candidates, but it's like a certain percentage. A PAC is strictly to get people elected. And that was not my goal. God, it's a money funnel. It's a money funnel and, and it's basically so people can't trace the money to. Dark money. It is honestly dark money and it's like, anyone can donate and then it's not traced back to them and no one knows where the money came from. So the whole nonprofit space is very complicated and I think it probably is designed partially that way.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  The money in politics thing is its own really big issue. But what was your PAC? Conservatives for Environmental Reform. Okay. And basically my original goal was to get conservatives back to the table on the environment. Because I watched Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton debate and Hillary Clinton had a radical plan for the environment that I didn't agree with. That was like shutdown industry, very preservationist, wasn't about hunting or fishing or anything with the outdoors. It was largely just climate, climate, climate, but on the extreme end. And then Donald Trump was like, none of these problems exist and we shouldn't do anything about them. And he had no plan. I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do? And I leaned right. So I was like, I gotta get conservatives back to the table. Oh.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  So that's kind of the origin story of what became the American Conservation Coalition, which I still started my freshman year just after the PAC mistake. Second semester, you always turn things around. Turned it to the 501(c)(3). Um, and that organization now has 100,000 members across the country, has big staff, does a lot of work in DC. And is strictly focused on getting conservatives active on the environment. But to me, that wasn't far enough because to me, it's not about the labels, like. The rational majority of Americans across the political spectrum, as I opened, saying, want the same things. And I don't care if it's Martin Heinrich, or Tim Sheehy, or Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris. We gotta figure out how to get shit done, no matter who's

• 49:43Speaker 03

  in office, and what the political winds are in that moment. And we have to show politicians that Americans want this, not just conservatives and not just liberals. We need to show them that Americans across the spectrum want action. So I thought getting conservatives to the table was helpful, but there's no organization in this country right now that has an impact, no matter who wins. The Sierra Club, even the Nature Conservancy, any of these traditional environmental groups, they're only relevant when Democrats win. And the organization I started in college is only relevant when Republicans win. What about an organization that's just trying to move consistent conservation through, no matter what, and no matter who you are politically, you want to be a part of that movement? And that's the vision of

• 50:27Speaker 03

  nature is nonpartisan. So it kind of went from a PAC mistake, to a conservative group, to now building upon that, to try to build a nonpartisan movement in America again.

• 50:36Speaker 05

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• 53:17Steven Rinella?

  Let's start with the, let's start with the polar opposite. So what year was it? 2016, 20, I guess 2015?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Yep, that was my senior year of high school, freshman year of college.

• 53:26Steven Rinella?

  Where you had two visions?

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 53:28Steven Rinella?

  One, one being a vision of denial.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 53:31Steven Rinella?

  One being a vision of offering a fix that isn't going to get widespread by.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:37Steven Rinella?

  I could picture that if you were, I could picture that if you were a staunch Democrat.

• 53:46Steven Rinella?

  Because of all their other planks in their platform. That you might say, man, I need to go get my party.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 53:55Steven Rinella?

  To start getting more in line. With. Middle America.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:01Steven Rinella?

  So that we can win and I can get my other policy. Pieces.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:06Steven Rinella?

  At play.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:07Steven Rinella?

  Like, we're losing on. The same way you might say in 20, in the last election cycle, like if you were. If you were, um, if you're sitting there thinking, man, the tax structure in America is whacked. Corporations should be paying way more taxes. The poor should be paying way less taxes. But that's never going to happen. Cause our party is going to continue to get slammed.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:33Steven Rinella?

  On DEI issues.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 54:35Steven Rinella?

  I need them to stop it about that so we can stick to the things that, that, that most of the country. Like, that's our Achilles heel.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:43Steven Rinella?

  Right? Like, I can picture that, but what I, what's hard for me to picture is. The process of saying. That like, to be like, I'm a conservative. I want bigger environmental presence within my party.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:00Steven Rinella?

  Um, I want them to come around in my way of thinking. I feel that that would be like very private.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  For the politicians?

• 55:07Steven Rinella?

  For you.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Oh, for me.

• 55:08Steven Rinella?

  I feel like that's you having meetings.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  With politicians?

• 55:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because you can't burn them.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  See, but.

• 55:15Steven Rinella?

  Or you feel that you, like, you can't publicly burn them.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Well, now.

• 55:18Steven Rinella?

  Same way if I was doing my whole thing, I might go and say, hey, listen. Tone it down. Tone it down. I'm like. Athlete, like, who plays on what team?

• 55:30Speaker 03

  See, but I, I could do, I could do that. I could do that. But that's not morally right to me. I, I could be in the Trump administration right now or have some really high up position if I just played the game. I don't care about playing the game.

• 55:42Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  I want to get conservation outcomes. And so I'm willing to be bolder because of that. And I'm willing to take on both sides because of-

• 55:49Steven Rinella?

  And shine a spotlight.

• 55:50Speaker 03

  Right, like, hey, you guys are fricking weak here.

• 55:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  And you're losing people. And by the way, I'm not afraid to say you should lose people because you don't have an environmental plan. You should lose people because you don't care about conservation. You shouldn't lose people because you don't have any plan for clean air, clean water. But yet you use those terms in your speeches, right? Like, you say you want clean air and clean water, but yet you're rolling back some of the most important regulations and, and policies in American history. I'm not afraid to say that because I don't care about who, I actually don't care about who wins. In high school, I might have cared. I spoke at C-PAC and stuff. But I do not care who wins. I'm an environmentalist, conservationist, nature lover, person who wants to protect wild places and allow people to go hunt, fish, recreate in them so that we can also have a healthy livelihood,

• 56:37Speaker 03

  more than I care about any political identity. And I think most people, when they think about this issue, do think about it that way. So people think, I mean, in the last couple of weeks, I've, the wa, uh, this famous EPA transition guy for Trump just wrote a big hit piece on me that I was like this Trojan horse at Climate Week, just trying to promote the Green New Deal. And I get told that I'm all the time some like MAGA guy. It's because I don't really care.

• 57:02Steven Rinella?

  Like, we're, we're quite familiar with this.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, you guys, you guys definitely get that.

• 57:06Steven Rinella?

  We're quite familiar with the, you're like, everyone, like, you-

• 57:11Speaker 06

  Get in the box.

• 57:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 06

  Get in the box.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  And I don't want to be in the box.

• 57:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  So-

• 57:17Steven Rinella?

  Don't you say anything, just get in the box.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  And just say what we want you to say. But that would work. I mean, so I've been starting to talk about this a little bit more because of the light of recent events. I co-founded, and I've never said this on a podcast before, but I, I co-founded Turning Point USA with Charlie Gurr.

• 57:35Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  In 2012. I was 14 years old, so just, it was a long, long time ago. The organization was supposed to be about young people standing up to the government to prevent the national debt from getting worse.

• 57:49Steven Rinella?

  That was the Turning Point?

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Yes. That was the founding origin of Turning Point.

• 57:54Steven Rinella?

  Like you guys are gonna really stick it to, you're really sticking it to us.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Right, our generation.

• 58:02Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, later, like at some point.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  We're gonna have to tackle this.

• 58:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, at some point, you're creating a real headache for us.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:07Steven Rinella?

  So please, make my future not so tenuous.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Exactly. So Charlie and I had this vision for that. Charlie, that was a very tragic event, and it was a very perfect opportunity to see how divided our country is becoming, which is a huge problem. But what Charlie saw was that there is an opportunity in playing into the political culture war, right? If I wanted to be a part of the culture war for the sake of telling people how to win voters, or how to get people a part of our team or box, I'd be doing things so much differently than I am. And I could have, many times.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  But it is ruining our country, and it's ruining conservation as well. And so, for me, when I wake up every morning, I think of how much progress can I make, given the political shit that we're in? Because, for the first time in a long time, our environment is getting worse in America again. We actually solved a lot of big problems for a very long time. We funded public lands, we had the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act take care of really bad problems in our cities and in our rivers. We had the Endangered Species Act, which was effective for a couple of years there, is sorely ineffective. Wildfires are getting worse, public lands are getting worse, the management of our ecosystems is getting so much worse, our water quality is getting worse.

• 59:36Speaker 03

  And you know what the byproduct of all that is? Is because, it is the byproduct of the division that we're seeing, because no one actually has an incentive to solve problems. They have an incentive to feed the culture wars.

• 59:47Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  And until we change that incentive, at least on this, I can't promise that we can change it on every issue, but until we create a movement that just says, "We expect you to get shit done, and we're not gonna vote for you if you don't prioritize conservation." That's actually the part that we should be saying out loud. That's the part that we should be saying out loud because it's not just about killing animals for recreation and hiking and skiing and all the things that we all love, right? It's not just about that. The health of our environment is about the health of us, too. And right now, we are failing miserably. And the left doesn't care and the right doesn't care. They care about winning the next election. And that is where the root of our environmental problems comes from. And so I say that to say, I could go down this path of playing into the culture wars,

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  but I wouldn't be sitting at this table right now. And I absolutely wouldn't be fighting for our environment because it's way easier to make a name for yourself and get power and get, you know, influence right now off of doing things completely differently. But at some point, at some point, Americans are going to wake up and realize that the system right now is screwing us all and it's also screwing up our environment.

• 1:00:58Steven Rinella?

  I just want to back up and comment on a thing you brought up with just how hot, like how heated the, the, how heated the onl- I always want to point this out. How heated the online experiences right now.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  Oh, totally.

• 1:01:15Steven Rinella?

  Now, for Charlie Kirk.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Steven Rinella?

  It wasn't an online experience.

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:21Steven Rinella?

  That was a way that online, like, became a bullet.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  In real life, yeah.

• 1:01:25Steven Rinella?

  And like, killed a man.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:27Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I'm saying? I have this thing and I brought it up, I brought it up to 10 guests, talking about various things. I think I was most recently talking about with Sebastian Younger, where I'm like, there's what I understand to be true about the climate in America.

• 1:01:43Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:44Steven Rinella?

  From social media, the news. And then there's what I understand to be true about America from being an American.

• 1:01:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:53Steven Rinella?

  From going about my business in America.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  There's a major disconnect there.

• 1:01:56Steven Rinella?

  Right? I had, I met someone for breakfast this morning.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Steven Rinella?

  The, the conversations we had on the street with people, the interactions we had with the people that were working there, like, the whole picture. I would never come out of my morning.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:13Steven Rinella?

  Being like, good lord.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Everyone's

• 1:02:15Steven Rinella?

  The country's falling apart. I'd be like, this seems like a wonderful country.

• 1:02:20Steven Rinella?

  This is, this America, this is awesome, being an American. Um, but then I go and look about

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Steven Rinella?

  What it is, and it's red hot. And, and, and with, with Charlie Kirk, it like, I was like, man. And many other examples.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Steven Rinella?

  This, this one's, it's, it's fresh.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:40Steven Rinella?

  With Charlie Kirk, I was like, man, they collide.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  They are.

• 1:02:44Steven Rinella?

  They collide. And then

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  And we're manifesting it to become, it used to just be an online thing. I used to get, I got death threats in high school for what I was doing politically.

• 1:02:52Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  I had

• 1:02:53Steven Rinella?

  I can picture that.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Steven Rinella?

  Cause people don't like, because it's, it's too unexpected.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Right. It's too unexpected.

• 1:02:58Steven Rinella?

  It's like, when I see a woman that killed a lion in Africa. That

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  That's gonna go viral.

• 1:03:04Steven Rinella?

  More than a, more than A 10 year old conservative.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Making phone calls and my voice hadn't even changed yet. Okay. I was just a little boy, but yeah, I mean, they're The chronically online world, which is so disconnected from reality. I mean, I had, I had breakfast with Van Jones yesterday in New York City, the big social justice liberal commentator.

• 1:03:24Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  CNN guy.

• 1:03:25Steven Rinella?

  I didn't recognize that name.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  CNN host. Yeah. But he's black, social justice guy. We don't, he's one of my best friends. I don't talk to him about politics. I just love him as a human, you know, like, and, and my mom's like, oh, what, you know, what, what issues did you guys talk about? I'm like, we literally didn't. He was just giving me advice on how to be a better leader. And we were just talking about life and his girlfriend, his fiance and all that stuff.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  That is how most of America actually operates on a day to day basis.

• 1:03:50Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  But then you look online and you see what, but we're becoming a chronically online nation. I mean, you look at the average screen time in this country and it's not people looking at Candy Crush, right? It's people looking at Twitter and Instagram and feeding themselves the worst information. And we are convincing ourselves that everyone else is actually evil, like Hitler level evil for both sides to think about the other side. So it is colliding now. For a while it was just like, oh yeah, just turn off the social media. It's just, it's not that bad in real life. Well, it's becoming that bad in real life because we're manifesting it.

• 1:04:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Cause there's some dude on a roof with a gun.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:04:23Steven Rinella?

  And it only takes one. It only takes one to, to, to

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  Bring it out of the

• 1:04:28Steven Rinella?

  Bleed over. Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Right.

• 1:04:30Steven Rinella?

  And man, it has a It, it, yeah, it like, it's been I'll, I'll, I brought that up as a preamble to say, um, I got a 15 year old.

• 1:04:42Steven Rinella?

  The insanity.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:04:45Steven Rinella?

  That he

• 1:04:48Steven Rinella?

  comes home and he's, you know, he comes home and just like.

• 1:04:52Speaker 03

  And then it's like, dad, here's some solid facts I know.

• 1:04:55Steven Rinella?

  Just, it's not even that. It's more like a, what do you? He kind of comes home with like, what do I make of this?

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:02Steven Rinella?

  And just the insane things.

• 1:05:07Steven Rinella?

  The insane things that are being spun out of that, it just, this is a long preamble. Led me to like, I hit a point a week, like some time ago, a week ago. I hit a point where I'm like, dude, uh, I am like, I was like, I am ready at my age. I'm ready to just, I, I, I'm, I'm going to step away from discourse.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Steven Rinella?

  Do you mean, I'm not, but for a minute, I, for the first time in my life, I was like, I just don't want to talk to anybody anymore. Like, I don't want to participate in the discourse anymore. I just want to be the guy that only knows about who he runs into.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  I, I.

• 1:05:45Steven Rinella?

  At the hardware store.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:05:46Steven Rinella?

  It's like, I'll go to the hardware store because that's going to be cool.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  We have to bring that back.

• 1:05:51Steven Rinella?

  I'll, I'll go, uh, wherever. I'll go to my buddy's party because that's going to be cool.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:56Steven Rinella?

  But I can't do anything. It didn't last and it's not for real, but I just, I had a point where I'm like, I'm just done, man. Like I'm done because that style of, of that style of, uh,

• 1:06:12Steven Rinella?

  debating or that style of like exploring ideas is like, it's rational conversation. Hey, like I, I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Steven Rinella?

  Is passe.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's, it's absolutely not the norm anymore. And, and I feel like.

• 1:06:26Steven Rinella?

  So like, do you give up?

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:06:27Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I'm saying? Like.

• 1:06:28Speaker 03

  I think we got to play the game.

• 1:06:30Steven Rinella?

  Okay. What's the game?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  The game is.

• 1:06:32Steven Rinella?

  Let's, let's talk about the environment. What's, how do you play the game?

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  We have to create a similar movement. Around culture shifting for conservation that that is in people's social media networks. It's it's in their communities. It's around them because the we are not going to beat the algorithm. We're not going to change people's tendencies to log on to social media whenever there's a break in their day.

• 1:06:57Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  At least not anytime soon and see the worst news imaginable. We have to figure out how to meet people where they're at and help people understand that there's something they can advocate for. Right? Instead of just being like, oh, my God, I hate this person. I hate this person. I hate this person.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  That me?

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  No, that was me. Sorry, guys. Thought it was a.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  Phil, that was you.

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  That's a song.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  You got you got a little tune to that?

• 1:07:21Speaker 04

  It bleeds over sometimes. That.

• 1:07:23Steven Rinella?

  You know what? I guarantee I guarantee he goes in and takes that out of the show.

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  Just to prove you wrong is not gonna happen. I'm on Do Not Disturb. But my one person I let through is my wife. And so I'll throw her.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:07:35Speaker 05

  How dare she?

• 1:07:37Steven Rinella?

  Just breaks the whole flow.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  During the show.

• 1:07:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, kind of piggyback a little bit off of what Steve said, but also just the there is a need I see. Well, it's it's gonna be complicated. I I push back on the fact that like concert established conservation groups aren't making stuff happen under every administration. I mean, they are.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 1:08:11Speaker 06

  Like, the is the win that we're getting not an actual win. A lot of times, I believe that for sure. Like, I think if we are looking in terms of like, oh, my gosh, the Democrats did this. That's such a win. That's not a win. If we're looking in terms of like, OK, the Republicans did this.

• 1:08:30Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:08:31Speaker 06

  That's a win. That's not a win.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:08:33Speaker 06

  The win is when it's there's certain things, like the health of our natural resources are just this.

• 1:08:45Speaker 06

  Nonstarter for every political party. Like, it's assumed that these things have got to have a certain level of health and management because it does tie into national defense, the health of individuals within our country, uh, mental and physical, and our food production and, and all the things. Like.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  It does, but I, I would say the groups that are currently out there have, there are so many good organizations, many of whom we both work with. But it's not getting the job done. And what I mean by that is there is no cultural movement in America that's telling politicians they should take the environment seriously as, as, as America, like, as Americans. Like, the Human Rights Campaign, for example, you might disagree with gay marriage, or you might love gay marriage, they showed politicians, they had a national campaign, their bumper stickers are still on people's cars all over the country, that it was an expectation for almost all Americans that equality was important. There, that's how they got it done. And obviously, this is a different issue because it's not just like one landmark thing that we need to get accomplished, we need continuous.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  But there was, there was a national unified expectation of conservation 30 years ago. That does not exist right now. So, and that is not the failure of these organizations, but it's not working. The, the current movement is not working, and the vast majority of people who do reach out for conservation of the environment are left of center people, whether we want to admit that or not. And until we make it left, center, and right, until we show, no matter if you're Republican or a Democrat, this was an expectation of Americans, that we're going to continue going down this trajectory where we don't get the policies that we need, and actually, even worse, we get the policies that none of us want, which is what we've been getting over the last year.

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

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

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Is your, as far as like what you're doing, that's not that groups like TRCP aren't, aren't doing currently, you're talking about a coalition that expands beyond the Hunter. Cause I think the Hunter Angler space

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Has that.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  Is unique in that it's, it has that bipartisan angle to it.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's expanding that.

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  If I think beyond the hook and bull, I am, I am having a hard time thinking beyond the hook and bullet groups, what like environmental policy groups have that same bipartisan influence.

• 1:11:49Speaker 06

  Because like, I'll, I'll give you an example, right? Like, I, I believe very strongly in the work that Pheasants Forever Quail Forever does.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:11:58Speaker 06

  Right? And, and it's like, not super sexy, working on the farm bill, right?

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  Right. Those groups are already there, right? And they do great stuff, but the culture in America is not there.

• 1:12:08Speaker 06

  And, and here's the example, right? Is like, uh, it's getting late in the election cycle.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:12:15Speaker 06

  Uh, all of a sudden it's announced all over media that, uh, both parties need hunters.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Speaker 06

  Hunters are underrepresented in their demographics, their research. We need hunters at the polls. And here's this push from, uh,

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  Both.

• 1:12:31Speaker 06

  The Biden campaign at that point.

• 1:12:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:12:34Speaker 06

  Um,

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  With Tim Walz.

• 1:12:35Speaker 06

  It was, it was the Biden campaign at that point. Yeah. And, and then, um, so it was like Biden, Harris for hunters. And then, and then, uh, the Trump campaign was pushing out, uh, hunter specific language as well. And then, um, there's the annual governor's hunt.

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:12:55Speaker 06

  In Minnesota, that Pheasants Forever is always a part of, doesn't matter what

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  Uh, political affiliation, the, the standing governor or current governor has. And, um, that got kind of turned into like a Biden Harris.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 06

  Hunter moment.

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  Um, that had nothing to do with Pheasants Forever.

• 1:13:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:18Speaker 06

  And they just got absolutely shellacked.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  They still are.

• 1:13:22Speaker 06

  And still are. Yep. Um, and they're, they're made to like.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  Be the enemy now.

• 1:13:28Speaker 06

  Swallow this.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Speaker 06

  Rhetoric in order to quote unquote, be in the room when it's like, our history, our track record says we will work with anybody in order to fulfill the mission and the mission benefits everybody, by the way.

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:13:48Speaker 06

  Um, and the, the pushbacks on the organization that has this established track record of non-partisanship, um, the pushback's not on the politicians that manifested all this BS.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:14:02Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:03Speaker 03

  That's true. And, but I, the, the political tenor of the conversation, hitching your wagon to anybody politically right now is, is risky, right? I mean, Pheasants Forever saw that and they shouldn't have been taken, you know, to, to the, to the court for that. They should have had Tim Walz there and that's not a big deal. Like it shouldn't be seen that way. But I go back to the fact that like, uh, this public land sell-off was almost a godsend in terms of giving an example of what I'm trying to build, which is you had millions of people for the first time in years, like you did when there were smog in the cities across the country, like we did when there were rivers on fire in Ohio, right? You had millions of people saying, I don't give a shit what my political belief is. And honestly,

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  I don't, I voted for you, Mike Lee, but I'm not for this. That's the cultural movement that we need. And so I don't know how to change that specific Pheasants Forever situation because that's very unfortunate and they don't deserve that.

• 1:14:58Speaker 06

  I guess succinctly, right? I'm like, the, the issues with the politicians.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  Right. The issue is with the politicians, but they're also.

• 1:15:03Speaker 06

  They're the ones who are hitting the, the clickbait button over and over and over again.

• 1:15:08Speaker 03

  We're also falling for that, right? As a populace.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  And that's part of the problem too.

• 1:15:13Speaker 06

  And so how, how do you break up that cycle?

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Well, the, the issue is like, Tim, the environment right now, if you ask the average person on the street, who owns the environmental issue? Almost everyone would say Democrats.

• 1:15:26Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Everyone. So we like that is-

• 1:15:30Steven Rinella?

  If you use that word.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  Right. But even conservation, people associate, we've done polling and focus grouping, people associate these words, conservation, environmentalist, environment, stewardship, anything related to the environment, as liberal-coded, as Democrat-coded words. And so-

• 1:15:48Steven Rinella?

  Yes, some more than others.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  Right. I completely agree. But we've got to change that because like, all these words are being weaponized intentionally and unintentionally for people's gains, whether that be clickbait, or for campaigning. And, you know, in the same way that like, stand up for cancer, or stand up to cancer, or the Human Rights Campaign, or the Got Milk Campaign, like, we need to show politicians that there is a cultural movement to help create space for the pheasants forever, and the ducks unlimiteds, and the TRCPs, and the great organizations that are out there to do the work that they need to do. Because right now, it's basically Republicans are fearful of associating with any conservation groupies, they are scared of being seen as liberal. And the left is scared of the far-left coming at them for not going far enough on like, climate stuff.

• 1:16:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  And so, again, it's creating the cultural space, and we, and there's so many great local organizations out there already. They're already there. There's so many great topical-based organizations out there. They're already there. But in the way that like, the Sierra Club, or NRDC, or these groups could have been like, the face of America's environmental movement, conservation movement, rally people together for common sense conservation, but didn't. We need to create that. And, and I would say, I don't have every way of getting there yet, but someone's got to try, because the current environmental culture is not working for us. And there's no space for politicians to see that they have to get something done, except for the public land sell-off as like, literally the first example in like, a decade.

• 1:17:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I see- Um, and I see this within the environmental space, within the nonprofit space of a real disconnect with the end consumer.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:32Speaker 06

  Uh, just as I see it in the political realm. Um, the week of, um, land sell off language going into the house, right? We're up on, on Capitol Hill, uh, talking with everybody we could, super pack schedule.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:17:47Speaker 06

  And it was like, hey, don't worry, it's not gonna happen. Um, but you heard over and over again, the exact same lines from everybody. And by the way, we're not gonna sell national parks, don't worry, right?

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  Oh, thank God.

• 1:18:01Speaker 06

  As just as just as an example.

• 1:18:04Steven Rinella?

  I've ever heard that, like, oh, we're not talking about national parks.

• 1:18:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Steven Rinella?

  I didn't, trust me, I didn't think you were.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Thanks for confirming what I already knew.

• 1:18:13Speaker 06

  Yep, and the, you know, it's frustrating, but eye opening too, where you're like, okay, something is going on here. Because everybody seems to have the exact same talking points. And they have no knowledge of the fact that the people that are starting to push back right now have no interest in the national parks or very little interest. Uh, not because they don't care, but the assumption is parks are gonna be safe.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  Right. I mean, I had a senior official in the Trump administration tell me, hey, like, Americans won't get upset about this because Americans just care about national parks and national park health. And I was like, do you realize?

• 1:18:52Steven Rinella?

  It's bad, but until.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Have you, like, a quick chat GPT? Or a quick, you know, you're good research, it sounds like, very quickly. Uh, you could have, you could have helped, you could have helped them with this. You know, there's more recreationists in US Forest Service land and BLM land than there are in national parks every year. So they were missing the boat, but there is again, a real disconnect between the politics and the public on conservation right now. I mean, it was, but it was really uplifting to see like far right militia leaders and far left climate activists.

• 1:19:23Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Speaker 03

  Literally stand together and, and, but the.

• 1:19:27Steven Rinella?

  I don't usually think of the word uplifting to be.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  With either one of those, either one of those groups.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  That's replicable though. That is replicable, though, because it's not just about public lands and hunting and fishing. It's also about clean water and more efficient agriculture and forest health and wildlife conservation. And like clean air, like we could rally people in a similar diverse coalition. And that's what I'm saying hasn't existed in a while. And so there's, it would create, it create, it created space to kill the bill or that part of the bill. And it, but it also could create space to do the right thing, too. And that's the vision that I have.

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• 1:22:48Steven Rinella?

  Let me hit you with one. Uh, I had three questions pop up my head. I'm forgetting them as fast as I'm thinking. This was the first one that I wanted to ask you about. If.

• 1:23:02Steven Rinella?

  What is the, let's say you, you're talking to a neighbor. Okay.

• 1:23:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:23:06Steven Rinella?

  You're talking to a neighbor and you know that you're talking to a neighbor who is.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  My parents.

• 1:23:10Steven Rinella?

  Fiscally, you're talking to a fiscally conservative neighbor.

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:23:14Steven Rinella?

  Okay. Um, single issue voter, maybe a little bit like likes the fiscally conservative economy, efficiency.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Steven Rinella?

  Not like an ideologue.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:27Steven Rinella?

  And he says to you, Benji, why should I give a shit about any of the stuff you're talking about? Like sell me on it.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  There is no country that we love without the resources and the beauty that we have. Right? Like the resources that we develop largely on public land in a lot of ways. The resources that we develop, the water that we have, the agricultural industry that we have. Our entire country relies on the environment to survive. So we could extract everything over the next five or 10 years and probably rake in a lot of money. But then we'd be destroyed after that and. You can't take care of the economy if you don't take care of the environment. You can't take care of the country without taking care of conservation. And it is not only an economic driver to take care of our country. I mean, recreation statistics, we have the most recreationists in in American history generating,

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  you know, billions, tens of billions of dollars of revenue for the government. It not only generates an economic value, but it also generates the value that our communities depend on to survive. And I'd argue, what is a more important issue? Like, I live in Arizona right now, so if we're talking to a neighbor in Arizona, what issue is more important than water quality in Arizona? I mean, and water and water availability. Like, I can't think of one, because if we have no water, we don't have a city, right? Like, so this is this is all interconnected with people's lives in a way that we've kind of forgotten about, because we've just developed so many resources and we're so technologically driven that we kind of forget about the natural world. But but we have to, we have a symbiotic relationship with the natural world that we've completely forgotten about. And we're one of the last frontiers in the world that's actually taking care of our land, by and large.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  Like, yes, we've got issues, and yes, this like, public land sale off was a huge threat. But if you look around the world, Africa's getting destroyed by the Chinese government and other countries going in and saying, we're gonna just mine everything and destroy it with slave labor. South America is getting deforested continually at a crazy rate, and its wildlife habitat's continually being encroached upon. We are one of the last places in the world, Canada, a couple other places, where we actually are investing in this. And it's one of the best values and assets that our country has, is our environment. So if we aren't thinking about that from a national perspective, then we're completely missing one of the most important parts of our country.

• 1:25:45Steven Rinella?

  Okay. I buy that.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  I would hope you do. Will my neighbor buy it? I don't know. But, you know, I think the, we have become so digitized that we've kind of forgotten about the natural world around us, and

• 1:26:02Steven Rinella?

  Yes.

• 1:26:02Speaker 03

  That's, that's the fit, like, it's not, the, I heard a quote the other day that was like, so simple, but it's so true. Like, the environment isn't ours to You extract resources from. The environment is ours to care for and develop and work with and conserve so that future generations can also exist. So, yes, we need to develop resources and yes, we need to, you know, manage these places. But we also have to care for them because we're not the only people that are going to inherit this. And I think we've just become such a selfish society that that neighbor who's worried about fiscal policy isn't, they're not seeing the forest through the trees, literally, right? They're just literally thinking about their own vanguard account and the national debt,

• 1:26:46Speaker 03

  which of course is important, both are important, but we've also got to think about, you know, our children and grandchildren. And, you know, I'm 27, I've got, you know, I was working with Charlie on the national debt when I was 12, right? But I still got hopefully 70 more years on this planet. And then I'm gonna have kids someday, and then I'm gonna have grandkids someday, and I need to have a world that's worth bringing them into, right? And it's not about like kumbaya, like protect nature because we just care about the wildlife. It's like, it's so much bigger than that, right? It's literally about us, and that's lost in a lot of this.

• 1:27:23Steven Rinella?

  If you look at, there's a couple of movements that I'm always stunned by how effective they were. And so, we're gonna look at the push for the legalization of gay marriage. And then the legalization of weed. Okay. Now, those are long-running, those are long-running disputes, but something happened, but something happened and they hit like a, they hit like a moment and just, like, they hit a moment where it became kind of bipartisan.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  Yep. That's what I'm hoping for.

• 1:27:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but here's the rub. I want to talk about those movements for a little bit, then I want to tell you why I think that what you're engaging is more complicated.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  It definitely is.

• 1:28:08Steven Rinella?

  Because these were, these were like fairly simple asks.

• 1:28:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:12Steven Rinella?

  Okay, the way, the way gay marriage got over the threshold was it wasn't like, this isn't about special privilege.

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:28:23Steven Rinella?

  This isn't about, this isn't like part of some zero sum thing. We're gonna take away something from someone to give it to somebody else. Uh, this isn't like, we're not really asking the government to bend over backward on too much here. It's just, there's a thing, there's like this symbolic gesture that, that we feel should be kind of applied to all Americans and like, and then to the right, on the right, you'd say, and really remember, uh, what business is it of yours? What business is it of the government's who I decide to marry?

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:28:58Steven Rinella?

  Like, do you really think the government should tell you who to marry?

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:02Steven Rinella?

  And eventually you got where you had the, the, you had this kind of leftist idea and the right merged onto it.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:12Steven Rinella?

  They had an easy way to merge on.

• 1:29:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:14Steven Rinella?

  Because it was like, i- i- if you'd gone back, my dad was very conservative. You go back, ask my dad, he would have said, but it's none of my business.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:23Steven Rinella?

  What are, you know, what, what, what that guy's gonna do in his house? Oh, nothing to do with me.

• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:28Steven Rinella?

  I don't have to love it. It's not my business. That, that became a thing and like, and that's when that went legal weed, a long-running left issue. And it eventually became, it's kind of even hard to get to it, but it kind of became like a little bit of a, it's a plant that goes out of the ground.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:46Steven Rinella?

  I mean, can you really have a bunch of rules about a plant that grows in your garden?

• 1:29:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:29:50Steven Rinella?

  And a, um, hey, what that guy's doing is, you know, what he's doing in his own house, is it really my business? And no one can really demonstrate to me that it's more destructive than alcohol. It seems like when you look at the stats, like domestic disputes, vehicle crashes, like booze ain't the best thing in the world.

• 1:30:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:30:09Steven Rinella?

  Is it really? Like, there's less that goes into making weed than booze.

• 1:30:13Speaker 03

  There's also a safety argument, right? Like, wouldn't you rather have it be monitored by the government, not have it be illegally coming in? I mean, I had a friend in high school who had like fentanyl in the weed because it was illegal and he died.

• 1:30:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:30:25Speaker 03

  So, so that, that, you know, that's the argument that people make too. So, yeah, there's plenty of arguments to morph people together there.

• 1:30:33Steven Rinella?

  But these things, these things that I've marveled at, like in my lifetime.

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:30:38Steven Rinella?

  In the end, we're real clean.

• 1:30:39Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:30:40Steven Rinella?

  And they were like, an issue. Public lands becomes like a clean issue. But to call for a sort of, um, expansive kind of umbrella of environmental concern

• 1:30:57Steven Rinella?

  is, is, is bigger because people would say like, well, what's the ask? And you'd be like, it's a lot of asks all the time.

• 1:31:06Speaker 03

  That's a great way of putting it.

• 1:31:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, and it's harder.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  It is way harder, but I think it's worth it because you're going to have different stakeholders engaging in different parts of it. Like the water stakeholders might be different than the forest stakeholders.

• 1:31:16Steven Rinella?

  Exactly.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  But, but very similar to those issues. There is an easy on-ramp for every political identity to care.

• 1:31:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  Whether that be for national security or for jobs or for moral high ground or for just caring about your local community or for caring about nationals, you know, our national identity and legacy and heritage. Like protecting, conserving, taking care of our environment intersects with everyone's political views in a very similar way to those issues. Because that's not actually true on immigration as easily. It's not as easy on it, on guns, right? Like those are core parts and that you, what on-ramp are you going to create between those issues from both sides? I don't know how we solve those, right? But the environment might have more variables to it because you're, it's not just one policy that you're trying to get to legalize it, legalize it.

• 1:32:07Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's not like you can go like, okay, we did it in that state. Then we're going to do it in that state.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:32:11Steven Rinella?

  And eventually it'll be that we got like 49 states.

• 1:32:14Speaker 03

  Right. This is not a one trick pony.

• 1:32:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Speaker 03

  Movement that we're trying to create.

• 1:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Speaker 03

  And you look, this approach needs to be applied to situations.

• 1:32:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Speaker 03

  Applied to the public land sell-off. And we were three months old and obviously so many great organizations worked on that. We showed that it was at least possible on that, applied to that. But if you apply that same group of people to restore it in Utah, to restoring the Great Salt Lake. I think we'd do a lot better of a job at restoring the Great Salt Lake.

• 1:32:44Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  But right now, there's no. Knowledge, but everyone in Salt Lake vicinity wants to restore the Great Salt Lake. Yet nothing is really being done about it because everyone's focused on other political culture war issues and there's no mobilized cultural movement across the party lines to get something done. So you apply it to that. Or you apply it to, oh my God wildfires are getting worse and worse. Mega fires are getting worse every summer, not only in the United States, but around the world. Apply that to that issue. And so this, some stakeholders might drop off, some might come on, but it's the same on-ramp where people have different whys, different reasons for caring, but they care about the same end goal and they have the exact same end goal. Less wildfires. Who wants to create a policy that creates more wildfires in this country?

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  I don't know anybody. So, and the way of getting there, the vast majority of people actually would agree on if we actually had the chance to debate it, but right now we're not. So it's, it, I agree it's way harder, but it's worth it. And I think it's worth it to pursue that rather than having a disjointed movement where the pendulum swings back and forth every four years on a subject. Like Biden puts in all these massive conservation, preservation restrictions and public land deals and all this stuff, then Trump undoes it. People are like, oh, it's just a Trump problem. No, we need durable, durable conservation solutions in five years and 10 years and 15 years, no matter where the country heads. We don't know. It could be events, it could be a new summit, it could be nobody that we've even been talking

• 1:34:14Speaker 03

  about, right? But at some point, we have to have some consistency because the lack of consistency is killing our environment. And it's, and it's refusing, it's, we are deferring any policy from getting done because of that disconnect. So it is harder, but I think it's worth it.

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  Let me.

• 1:34:34Speaker 03

  And I don't have all the answers today, but hopefully in 10 years, we'll have this conversation, we'll have made a lot of progress there.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  Let me, uh, offer a, um, probably a poor analogy and you can tell me how.

• 1:34:47Speaker 04

  Accurate it is.

• 1:34:48Steven Rinella?

  Can I, can I rate it too?

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Five stars.

• 1:34:52Speaker 04

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

• 1:35:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:35:14Speaker 04

  Like.

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  No, that is not dismissive. That is exactly right.

• 1:35:17Speaker 04

  Cause like.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  Five stars.

• 1:35:18Speaker 04

  There's, cause every, every politician is, is gonna say that they support the troops.

• 1:35:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:35:24Speaker 04

  And they're gonna lean into it as, as sort of part of their mantle of, of legitimacy. A Democrat who supports the troops might vote for mental health counseling for veterans and, and research on, on, you know, like PTSD, things like that. Uh, maybe they are pushing for greater equality in different, like, you know, combat roles, whatever. A Republican who supports the troops, uh, might vote for funding for extra, you know, like, like make sure the troops have what they need to fight the wars we send them to.

• 1:35:57Steven Rinella?

  Armored, armored doors on their Humvees.

• 1:35:59Speaker 04

  Armored doors on their Humvees, right? And like,

• 1:36:03Speaker 04

  obviously, I mean, I, I feel like there's part of, there's part of me that when I hear someone say, I support the troops, I'm kind of like, well, that's brave of you, you know, like, but it's good politics.

• 1:36:15Speaker 03

  And it's created space where both sides are expected to support the troops.

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  Cause Nixon, I mean, Nixon has all this huge environmental legacy and, and you could read it one way and say like, God, I didn't know he cared so much about the environment. But really Nixon didn't give.

• 1:36:32Speaker 03

  He didn't.

• 1:36:33Speaker 04

  He didn't care about the environment. He just was like, boy, this is a powerful horse to, to hitch to my wagon, right?

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  Very positive.

• 1:36:40Speaker 04

  That's, that's sort of the analogy that occurred to me. As you're talking, it's, it's making this sort of a cultural plank.

• 1:36:49Speaker 03

  Of America.

• 1:36:50Speaker 04

  That everybody's got to have that feather in their hat if they want to throw their, throw said hat into the arena. Uh, to make this a really messy metaphor.

• 1:36:59Speaker 03

  Five star.

• 1:37:00Steven Rinella?

  No, I, I like the metaphor, but I think that.

• 1:37:05Steven Rinella?

  And I get the point, supporting the troops, you could say, oh, no, I support the troops. We should bring them home.

• 1:37:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:37:10Steven Rinella?

  And some guys like, oh, no, no, I support the troops. We should send them.

• 1:37:13Speaker 04

  Got to give them what they need to win.

• 1:37:15Steven Rinella?

  Send them advanced munitions.

• 1:37:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:37:16Steven Rinella?

  Right, like, and you both get to carry it around.

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  But, but I, I agree with that, but, but the troops are one of the few topics where both sides actually sit down and have a conversation now, though. Even though it's not pretty, and they don't always agree, and I'm not expecting that. This is not some kumbaya shit, but 80% of the time, there's actually a lot of agreement. So, but that's not being facilitated. If there's agreement on troops and our military, they're at least having that conversation because they feel like it's part of the American national identity.

• 1:37:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Speaker 03

  And of course, there's extraneous times where they totally see differently, right? And that's going to happen. And that did happen when Richard Nixon was president, right? There are people who thought Richard Nixon didn't go far enough, and there are people who thought he went too far. Sure. But, stuff got done. And that was-

• 1:38:01Speaker 06

  Farmers feed America would be the platform that I think is the most applicable. Is like, everybody loves farmers, and that is the thing that feeds us and in large part secures our country. Um, we don't have to import stuff from all these other countries if we really focused on farmers feeding America. But those ecosystems are the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems on the planet, let alone in the United States. Uh, here in Montana, we lost a million acres of farm and ranch ground over the last year, or, I'm sorry, over the last three years. Um, and, like, if you take

• 1:38:44Speaker 06

  a chunk of grazing ground in Oklahoma and look at the interests that want that grazing ground.

• 1:38:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:38:50Speaker 06

  Despite the fact that every frickin politician is like, farmers feed America, God bless the farmers. Right? It's like, unless we can, uh, put-

• 1:39:00Speaker 04

  Let me, but let me push back on that. There's, there's probably elected officials from urban boroughs in New York that don't get questions about farmers.

• 1:39:10Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:39:12Speaker 04

  Like

• 1:39:12Speaker 03

  Yet they're eating their food.

• 1:39:13Speaker 04

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

• 1:39:27Speaker 06

  Name one.

• 1:39:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm just not involved in that, you know, like, everybody's like, yes, absolutely.

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  Name one.

• 1:39:35Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:39:36Speaker 03

  Name one troop.

• 1:39:39Speaker 04

  Like, like, that, that's an issue, I feel like, where, where no one can, no politician can sort of step out of line, and no one can ignore it, or say like, it's, I'm focused on this, I'm focused on this, and they're like, no one would respond, did you support the troops? They'd be like, well, really, I'm focused on transportation and infrastructure.

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  Right, you can pivot easier with that, but I think it's like, if you're AOC, as an extreme example, there are serious environmental issues in New York City and with Hudson River. You know, if you're a Wisconsin senator, the water, you know, aquifers sinking and having the Mississippi get destroyed by runoff is an issue, but that doesn't really matter to New York, but like, it's, I think that's where we've lost it, is it's like, the environmental movement in general, has also hurt the, the hunting and angling community, because it's always been about, for the last 20 years, polar bears, climate change,

• 1:40:39Speaker 03

  energy, like, things that don't really impact the local community, that every local community has really their own environmental issue. And they truly don't care too much, like, in Arizona, in Scottsdale, where I live, they truly could not care less about farmers. Should they care? Probably, but like, they don't, they care about water quality and access, and they care about the smog that's getting worse. So.

• 1:41:05Speaker 03

  As but as a country, we share a different reason for caring, but we all share the caring part because we know we rely on it. So I agree that like tagging farmers in is is part of it, but it needs to be a part of like local community ownership. And people feel like there's no way to get involved because it's like this issue is too big, climate change, polar bears, that's not like my thing. What if everyone was able to activate and advocate for the issues that they cared about in their own local community in a better way that felt more tangible, that felt more realistic. And you know, the vision that I have is for if you live in the Great Salt Lake area, you can advocate for that across

• 1:41:48Speaker 03

  party lines and actually get something done for that because that's what that's what's affecting you. If you're a big part of the country that has agriculture and farming, and you're worried about water quality and the lack of crops that you can get now because the substance in the soil is so bad, like, then you can advocate for that. But right now, there's nothing kind of that holistic view like there would be on troops. Like troops is very complex, too, actually, right? There's so many different variables there. But there's a culture around it that kind of forces people to figure some sort of solution out. And that's that's kind of the vision.

• 1:42:20Steven Rinella?

  A difference between you and me is that you thought about something and then did it. And I thought about this and never did it. But I'll share with you what I thought.

• 1:42:30Speaker 03

  I'm gonna eat another piece of jerky.

• 1:42:33Steven Rinella?

  At a point, please, at a point, I realized that there's like a way I think about the environment that isn't shared by the environmental movement. And I realize that this way I think about it is actually shared by a lot of friends of mine, is that I have a sort of there's a bit of a like a nationalism and a patriotism.

• 1:43:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:43:01Steven Rinella?

  To a view on the American landscape.

• 1:43:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, like a friend of mine was like, whatever, he's going fishing with his kid. He's like, you think they're doing this in Tehran? You know, just joking.

• 1:43:15Steven Rinella?

  Perhaps they are, but just joking, meaning he like, it's like, uh, he kind of views it like, America the beautiful.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:43:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Do you follow me?

• 1:43:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:43:27Steven Rinella?

  And there was, uh, there was times, I think it was like, maybe like the last election cycle, whatever. There was times I was like, man, I should find some better way of articulating this thing that I think is kind of widely held, where people have a sense of American pride about the American environment.

• 1:43:47Speaker 03

  That is exactly right.

• 1:43:48Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  And you look at like Yellowstone, the show, right? People didn't watch that because the show was just good. It was because it evoked an emotional connection to Americana in a way, where it's like, I'm proud of the fact that we have places that look that beautiful. And every, if you go into a member of Congress's office, no matter if it's Marjorie Taylor Greene or AOC, the first pictures on the walls are of their natural beauty in their districts, right? Like, there is an immense pride that Americans have in, in our environment. This fall, we're going to launch a campaign called United by Nature. United by Nature.

• 1:44:25Steven Rinella?

  Can you call it, don't shit up America?

• 1:44:27Speaker 03

  Don't shit, that'll be our secondary, that'll be the secondary slogan. Um, and we'll let people use which one they like more. But we have America's 250th anniversary next year. I would argue that America and our conservation legacy is the best in the world. I would also argue that it's incredibly at risk right now, for the first time, at least to this severity, in a very long time.

• 1:44:52Steven Rinella?

  Can you, when you get a minute, can you touch on a couple of those points?

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  About what I'm worried about?

• 1:44:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Americans are so proud of the natural environment, we have to step into that. So what I'm worried about, national parks earn massive maintenance debt. We're having conversations constantly about selling off public lands for development, which doesn't solve affordability at all.

• 1:45:17Speaker 03

  And people, the people who are perpetuating that know that. Wildlife issues are becoming worse. Chronic wasting disease, endangered species, like these things are not getting better necessarily, especially invasive species. I mean, water quality is going down. Microplastics are in 94% of tested water that we drink. And the water quality in our rivers is getting infinitely worse every single year. Mega fires are on the rise in this country. And things like the Great Salt Lake, the watersheds, the aquifers below the farms, these are all problems that are getting infinitely worse, too. And at some, we are already starting to see the impacts of this, right?

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

  Air quality issues in the summer with the fires, farmers having tons of issues, flooding getting worse, not just because of clinical climate change, but also because of the fact that the ecosystems that help prevent a lot of like hurricanes and stuff, the damage from the hurricanes have now been destroyed. So there's not these natural barriers. So we have massive problems. And yet, the government, the Biden administration, didn't focus on this at all. They focused on like climate and energy and infrastructure and EVs. But until kind of the final hour, they didn't even really talk about this conservation or preservation or anything with the natural landscape.

• 1:46:40Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:42Speaker 03

  And Trump's whole approach is, I will undo everything because it's gone too far and it's wrong and whatever, but we're not going to replace it with anything better.

• 1:46:49Steven Rinella?

  Because I never liked that guy.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  Right, I never liked that guy. But he's not just doing stuff that Biden did. He's not just undoing stuff Biden did, he's undoing stuff that Nixon did, and George W. Bush did, and Clinton did.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

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• 1:49:39Speaker 06

  What I point out to people often, right, is I'm like, there's always the other side.

• 1:49:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:49:45Speaker 06

  Participating in this.

• 1:49:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:49:47Speaker 06

  Like, even when there's a super majority.

• 1:49:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Speaker 06

  Pick your super majority, right, but there's, right now, there's Democrats in the room. They're, they're, they're not going home.

• 1:49:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:49:59Speaker 06

  They're not like, okay, well, we'll see you in four years.

• 1:50:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:50:02Speaker 06

  There's always that nonpartisan aspect in there.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  One side's ultimately gonna have like a final say.

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:08Speaker 06

  But, you know, it's like.

• 1:50:10Speaker 03

  People are trying.

• 1:50:12Speaker 06

  And, and on the public lands issue too, it's like, well, thanks for calling, but we defer to the 11 western states.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:50:20Speaker 06

  Hmm. You know, they're, be it Democrat or Republican, they're the ones that have the, the knowledge. And so we're gonna listen to them, right? Um, and that's just like, something that people need to be reminded of.

• 1:50:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:50:34Speaker 06

  Because it all gets shackled on to, you know, kinda who's in power at that time.

• 1:50:39Speaker 03

  Yes, and I, but I think, a quick diversion, I just wanna say thank you to you guys. Because, first of all, I think between you and me and a couple of others in the non-elected space, we are blamed for killing that horrible idea to sell off the 3 million acres. It didn't matter that Patagonia took a stance against the public lands at all, the sell-off. Didn't matter that Sierra Club did. That didn't move the needle at all, in fact, it probably hurt that they weren't engaged. It mattered because center-left, center, and center-right voters, who were largely in your communities, Joe Rogan's community, Cam Haynes' community, and in our community, were saying, no, hands off.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Because that's the broad coal, that's the power of a broad coalition. Because no matter what the moment is, you're meeting it then, right? You're meeting the moment because you have the broad coalition. And it's nice that the people in California were saying things, and it's nice that the people in Washington, like, they should. But that didn't move the needle on that one. But maybe it'll move the needle on a different one, right?

• 1:51:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so if I tell my family something, and my kids get real mad, and then all of a sudden, my wife's mad.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  Now I gotta pay attention.

• 1:51:47Steven Rinella?

  She's mad? I don't know. I knew the kids would be pissed, but now she's mad, okay, never mind.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  Exactly. Exactly. So I want to thank you for that.

• 1:51:55Speaker 06

  In the areas where, you know, quote, unquote, didn't make an impact, right? Like the, the rosy picture, the idea, right, is it's building equity.

• 1:52:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:52:04Speaker 06

  Right? And there's going to be this like, alarm bells went off.

• 1:52:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:52:09Speaker 06

  Why is that? What's the deal with this issue?

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  No, it's all very important.

• 1:52:13Speaker 06

  I already said I support the troops.

• 1:52:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:52:16Speaker 06

  People are still looking at me weird. What's going on?

• 1:52:20Speaker 03

  But that's, that's the power of this broad coalition. So I just say that to say, also, that's how, like, i- in the future, it will be different states that are relevant for different environmental initiatives and we'll need those people there too. So. But, you know, there's some really good people there, like Martin Heinrich and Tim Sheehy and, you know, Crapo and Danes and who, who care about conservation and there's overlap with this idea. But they also don't have a lot of space to work within. Like, they, they, they all actually, whether they want to publicly acknowledge this or not, they really were happy about the pushback because it gave them the ability to do what they actually wanted to do.

• 1:52:58Speaker 03

  Right? Like, especially for a Republican. A lot of Republicans, I know for a fact that there were about 16 other Republican senators who wanted to stand up against the public land sell-off. But they didn't feel like it was politically, politically helpful to do so. And until they feel like there's that space to step out and say, actually, this is not only what I don't want, but it's also what my voters don't want. They're going to be more gun shy. And you look at the senators who spoke out, we all knew that they didn't want this to happen from the get-go. But because there were so many voters saying they didn't want it too, then they're like, well, now I can justify speaking out. That's kind of American democracy at work in a time when people just aren't really speaking out about things other than the radical extremes.

• 1:53:42Speaker 03

  So that's where like the rational middle is standing together to say, oh, we support the troops, oh, we support the environment and conservation. It gives space for not just the Heinrichs and the ones who are always going to be willing to put their, like, Martin Heinrich, who we all love, I think, maybe, I don't know. I love him.

• 1:53:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, I, I like him, I like him personally.

• 1:54:01Speaker 03

  Yes. He's a rare.

• 1:54:03Steven Rinella?

  I like him personally.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:54:05Steven Rinella?

  And I appreciate his constant advocacy on behalf of public lands.

• 1:54:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:54:09Steven Rinella?

  And I, and I appreciate that he, um.

• 1:54:15Steven Rinella?

  Of many things I appreciate, appreciate that he is willing to be like a very outspoken hunter.

• 1:54:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:54:20Steven Rinella?

  Um.

• 1:54:21Speaker 03

  He goes against the grain.

• 1:54:22Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, in a, in a, in a, on a, in a political party where that's not always the most, uh, it's not always the most welcome identity to have.

• 1:54:30Speaker 03

  And Tim Sheehy, when I've had conversations with him, will be like, Montana cares more about conservation in the outdoors than, you know, any other place, you know, arguably. And so I, I have to lead on this, but I also want to. Both of those two gentlemen go against the grain in a lot of ways of what they're quote unquote supposed to do.

• 1:54:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49Speaker 03

  There's very few leaders like that in DC, right? Like that's the world that I'm, you know, really unfortunately familiar with. And we need to give space, not just for those guys who are always gonna try to stick their neck out as much as possible, but also the kind of the cowards, to be honest, there are always gonna be cowards in the Senate and the House who actually do wanna do the right thing though. And they just don't feel like they have the space to do it. And that's the power of the movement that I think we could build. Because there's an underbelly there. If you talk to those 16 Republican senators who wanted to speak out about it, I guarantee you, if I said, there's gonna be a million people in your state, right and left, who are speaking out about this in your favor, they would have been like, okay, then, then I can too. And that's, that's, that's the power we need to build.

• 1:55:30Steven Rinella?

  Let's, let's change subject a teeny bit, or change focus a teeny bit. Um.

• 1:55:37Steven Rinella?

  If, if, if you're sitting there as a guy that, that grew up and you had conservative principles, right? And you felt that like, the party I kind of instinctively want to align myself with, like, they just are not representing my environmental concerns. And I need them to, I wanna change that position.

• 1:55:56Steven Rinella?

  From your perspective, like, what do you have to say if you had a private audience? So you have a private?

• 1:56:01Speaker 03

  This is a private audience, right?

• 1:56:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, very, so, so the, the, the.

• 1:56:07Steven Rinella?

  The houses, the Democrats in the House and Senate.

• 1:56:09Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:10Steven Rinella?

  They come to you and say, hey, what could we be, what could we be doing different?

• 1:56:14Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:56:14Steven Rinella?

  What could we be doing different?

• 1:56:15Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:56:16Steven Rinella?

  Um, what to them? Cause it can't be that like they got it just right.

• 1:56:22Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:56:22Steven Rinella?

  And you just want, you just want the Republicans to adopt.

• 1:56:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:56:26Steven Rinella?

  Their approach.

• 1:56:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:27Steven Rinella?

  Like, where are they missing? Where are they losing people? Where are they missing? Where could they be more effective? When I say I think like a big they, like.

• 1:56:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35Steven Rinella?

  Like the Democrats.

• 1:56:36Speaker 03

  On average, yeah.

• 1:56:36Steven Rinella?

  Like the, the, the party of the Democrats, where do they miss?

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  Well, I think I, I'll reiterate, I think both sides are failing almost pretty equally on this issue. And, and the way that the left has failed is it has been so much about climate and kind of this hysteria around like, I, I believe in climate change and I, you know, I'm not afraid to say that, but like when you're just talking about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, like climate change doesn't matter if we destroy all the wild places that we have left.

• 1:57:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:04Speaker 03

  Right? Like it's like a distant priority. If you destroy the Amazon and you destroy all the wild places that we all love to recreate in, then we might as well just keep eating up the climate. Because we're all screwed. So they, they've kind of forgotten to work on conservation.

• 1:57:19Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:20Speaker 03

  Because they've been so focused on this other issue.

• 1:57:21Steven Rinella?

  Technical solutions.

• 1:57:23Speaker 03

  Right. Green New Deal, you know, was, is an oversimplified way to give the analogy, but it's basically, you know, that was their whole environmental platform. And you were like, well, if you look at the Green New Deal, it had nothing to do with public lands, private land conservation, sustainable ag, forestry, water quality. It just only had to do with energy and EVs and technical infrastructure. So that's, that's where they've really failed. And it's also been a race to the left. What's the most that you can do to be as radical as you can to out, to say you care more than the other person? But it's all about grandstanding and it's all about like these pledges and these goals, but there's nothing behind them. Like I went to COP, the UN Climate Conference for three years in a row.

• 1:58:07Speaker 03

  And it was the most abysmal time of my life because it was just like, well, if we have this pledge to be a hundred percent renewable by 2030, that would be better than this company's pledge or this country's pledge, or, you know, whoever the stakeholder was. And it was like, what are you actually going to do? Right? Like there was, there's no, it's all about the messaging and it's not about the details. And the last thing that I think that they failed at. Is it has been, you know, this, this age old conservation versus preservation is like the debate, right? It's been going on for centuries and in America, specifically in the last century, they've been hinging very closely to just working on preservation rather than conservation and restricting access for hunting and angling and getting outdoors.

• 1:58:49Speaker 03

  And like, people are so scared of like, resource development and using public lands for other reasons than just like, the Sierra Club saying they want to watch the bears or the wolves and not hunt, you know, hunt them. Like, that's kind of been the mindset, has been the Sierra Club mindset. And so, in a similar way that the right has completely failed and is failing right now, and we're seeing it.

• 1:59:10Steven Rinella?

  It's their turn to fail.

• 1:59:11Speaker 03

  It's their turn to fail. The left has been failing too. And at some point, one of the parties will get it right, or hopefully, ideally, both of them get it right. But right now, neither one of them is.

• 1:59:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, the, um, use, right? Like, we were both in New York City.

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:27Speaker 06

  And, man, the riot that would ensue, uh, if somebody was like, "Yeah, we're just gonna, uh, make Central Park off limits." Right? Just, I was up with this Upper West Side crowd.

• 1:59:40Steven Rinella?

  Because it's gonna be a solar array?

• 1:59:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, holy cow, man.

• 1:59:44Speaker 04

  Or, we don't want, you know, we don't want people to interfere with the squirrel movement, right?

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  The squirrel movement?

• 1:59:48Speaker 04

  Squirrel migration.

• 1:59:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Speaker 06

  Uh, couple, like, quick anecdotes for, so, rip over their brutal, uh, travel, uh, and get, um, on the island of Manhattan. As soon as you get into Manhattan, there's this guy, uh, who does not look like me, probably has very different ideas about a lot of things, on a electric scooter, um, flying through traffic, and he's got two fishing rods strapped to his back.

• 2:00:19Speaker 03

  No way.

• 2:00:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, coming off the Hudson. And I was just like, "Okay."

• 2:00:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 06

  This guy and I, like, we can have a conversation, I guarantee it.

• 2:00:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:00:29Speaker 06

  I thought that was just super awesome to see. And then, um, yeah, the conversations that I had about like the parks, because I was blown away by how many dogs are on the

• 2:00:39Speaker 03

  So many dogs.

• 2:00:41Speaker 06

  And people like they do whatever it takes to maintain a dog friendly lifestyle.

• 2:00:47Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:00:48Speaker 06

  Um, and I thought that, and it, you know, it obviously like connects to these park systems, right? And I thought that was uh, just a good example of like, here's this very this, this group of people that I would put in a very nature disconnected category.

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:06Speaker 06

  Who have totally changed their lives in order to have that connection with that version of nature.

• 2:01:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:01:15Speaker 06

  Right? And they're like bird watchers. Holy cow.

• 2:01:17Speaker 03

  So many bird watchers in New York City.

• 2:01:19Speaker 06

  I was amazed. I, I was pretty, pretty amazed with that. And then, um, but the kind of to go back to the, like the farm ranch community. Um, and where a lot of environmental groups have just like, again, lost connection with the end consumer.

• 2:01:36Speaker 03

  Another good example.

• 2:01:37Speaker 06

  Um, man, the majority of farmer rancher folks that I know address climate change every single day.

• 2:01:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:01:48Speaker 06

  It is part of their, their business. It is part of their, their business plan.

• 2:01:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:01:52Speaker 06

  Um, and

• 2:01:53Speaker 03

  In real life.

• 2:01:53Speaker 06

  They are so aware of the changes and the effects of climate change. Uh, the only way that they're going to be viable is by

• 2:02:03Speaker 03

  Adapting, mitigating all of the above.

• 2:02:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. And they are doing it.

• 2:02:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:02:06Speaker 06

  And they do not

• 2:02:09Speaker 06

  want to be associated with the climate change crowd.

• 2:02:11Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:02:12Speaker 06

  Hmm. Right? But they're doing it every single day.

• 2:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're doing more for the climate than the climate change crowd.

• 2:02:16Speaker 04

  They don't want anybody to think they're a weirdo.

• 2:02:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:02:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:02:19Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:02:20Speaker 03

  A liberal hippie. Yeah.

• 2:02:21Speaker 06

  And

• 2:02:22Steven Rinella?

  It was like when my calves hit the ground, when I plant this, when I pick that, what I'm going to do about water.

• 2:02:27Speaker 06

  How am I going to change what I plant? What, you know, what is worth it now versus was worth it 10 years ago as far as like field cultivation or not field cultivation? Um, bringing what crops to market, the whole, the whole thing, water use, right? Fertilizer use, all of it. Um, And if you're not doing these things, like you're, you're not going to be around.

• 2:02:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're going out of business.

• 2:02:51Steven Rinella?

  That's an interesting point.

• 2:02:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, and.

• 2:02:54Speaker 03

  And then they, they. Lecture to them, the environmentalist lecture to them, even though they're the ones doing.

• 2:03:01Speaker 06

  And in a lot, in some hook and bullet organizations too, like they, they use what I would call at this point, like boilerplate conservation speak.

• 2:03:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:03:11Speaker 06

  And it's in, it's the same version, slightly tweaked, uh, for the last 20 years, right? That's going out to everybody. And they're like, well, this resonates. I'm like, well, it doesn't resonate with people with the dirt under their fingernails doing it.

• 2:03:24Speaker 03

  But the problem is philanthropy. So I, that, that.

• 2:03:27Speaker 06

  There's money tied.

• 2:03:28Speaker 03

  There's so much money tied to it. And that's, that's where I, that's another world that I have to work in is the philanthropic world where, you know, and probably shouldn't even be talking about this because they probably don't like that I'd be saying this, but it's like, they are so out of touch, but they have so much money and they're funding these campaigns. They're funding the Sierra Clubs of the World when they're doing this anti bear thing for sure. Um, they're also funding these very preachy, condescending, like rural people are screwed up and dumb and like, are doing the wrong thing all the time. And we need to take it back because farming and ag and, uh, industry, they are the bane of our existence and we have to basically ban them from society if we're gonna keep going. And it's, it's like.

• 2:04:13Speaker 06

  And don't even get into the nuance of like the definition of rural, if you're standing in Manhattan. The philanthropists. Definition of rural, if you're standing in cold foot Alaska.

• 2:04:22Speaker 03

  The philanthropists are only, the philanthropists would not survive a literally 10 minutes there. They, they live in San Francisco, they live in New York, and they live in Chicago. Those are kind of the, and a little bit of LA. Those are the four places. They don't leave there and they are in the biggest bubble. If you think like DC, the swamp is a bubble which people want to drain. Philanthropy needs to be drained. Like it, it's, it's crazy what I have to put up with, with philanthropists and how disconnected they are. And they actually don't understand what's going on in America at all. And yet they are funding tens of billions of dollars of nonprofits to dominate the narrative. And so that's also part of my plan, right, is to represent an environmental movement.

• 2:05:08Speaker 03

  America, actually, because the environmentalist groups can't do that. They literally can't. That's why I have such an advantage here. They can't even, they can't even, they can't even try to do what we're doing. Because they're funded to not do that. And they are, and philanthropy is so screwed up. Because a nonprofit only exists if they get the money. And you only raise money if there are problems. And so what's the, is there an incentive to solve the problem then? No, because if you solve the problem, you lose your job.

• 2:05:39Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:39Speaker 03

  So, so, so there's, there's, there's, you know, there, that's where the disconnected messaging comes from. Because the people who are dominating that from a financial perspective, who are donating to these groups, have no idea how real America lives.

• 2:05:50Steven Rinella?

  I'm gonna give you a very weird petty example of what you're talking about. I remember, uh, when, I remember watching just in the news, when, when Michael Bloomberg, no, not Bloomberg, uh, who's the guy, the tall guy? Kind of left in a little bit of a scandal, mayor of New York City?

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  De Blasio?

• 2:06:08Steven Rinella?

  De Blasio.

• 2:06:09Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:06:10Steven Rinella?

  I remember right away when De Blasio got elected.

• 2:06:13Speaker 06

  I haven't thought about Bill de Blasio in a while. And scandal, I was like, is there still a lot of options?

• 2:06:21Steven Rinella?

  Bloomberg's short, De Blasio's tall.

• 2:06:23Speaker 04

  Phil, can you pull that up on the screen, please?

• 2:06:25Steven Rinella?

  Their height, pull up their heights, please.

• 2:06:26Speaker 03

  Can you put up all the Michaels?

• 2:06:28Steven Rinella?

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

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:06:45Steven Rinella?

  The whole carriages.

• 2:06:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, Central Park horses.

• 2:06:47Steven Rinella?

  And I remember being like, if that is not an example

• 2:06:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:06:50Steven Rinella?

  of someone giving that guy money and saying, listen, you know? And he's like, okay, got it. Yeah, I'll try to remember, like, you gave me a bunch of money and some shit about the horses, got it. Like, it was so transactional.

• 2:07:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:05Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 2:07:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:07:06Steven Rinella?

  And that, like, I imagine, well, not that magic, because I've seen it, like, I've, you know, I've had exposure to the nonprofit space where I see where, um, donors

• 2:07:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:07:17Steven Rinella?

  philanthropy can come in and manipulate a nonprofit agenda with a big carrot.

• 2:07:27Speaker 03

  That's, that's really how this, this all works.

• 2:07:29Steven Rinella?

  And they're like.

• 2:07:30Speaker 04

  But let me play devil's advocate here though, there, cause there's also ways in which like a group,

• 2:07:36Speaker 04

  the people as part of an NGO have issues that they care about, like they want to work on wildlife. They want to work on public lands. They want to do this and, and they see grants available. And they sort of go, oh, we can tie this to that by framing it this way. They're still trying to solve that problem, you know, like, like I don't, I don't believe that people at BHA don't want, I, I don't believe that people at BHA want the public lands issue to still, to just be a constant football. Cause they actually care about it.

• 2:08:11Steven Rinella?

  No, that's true. They, they, yeah, they're not, they're not like, they're definitely not thinking, well, we want to win, but not all the way.

• 2:08:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. And, and then like when they look at a, I mean,

• 2:08:23Speaker 04

  the philanthropy thing is complicated and I think, I think it exists on sort of like a spectrum or it's like a tug of war. It's like, well, we could get into this pot of money if we sort of frame our work in this way. And we can use that money to do what we really want to do. And it's sometimes you can get too tugged too far outside of your core issues. But there's also a lot of ways in which they're using that money strategically to get, to, to sort of pour more gas on the fire and what they really want to work on.

• 2:08:54Speaker 03

  I agree, but I think, I think a lot of it's subconsciously going in the wrong direction. So what I mean by this is during the public land sell off, the Senator Mike, Mike Lee, if you remember on Twitter was going after me largely because of what I was saying on social media. And his whole conspiracy is that I was funded to go against him. I will be transparent. I raised $50,000 after it happened.

• 2:09:19Speaker 03

  $50,000. I know that there are so many massive environmental NGOs who took this massive public stand, again, not moving the needle at all, but they were like, you know, screw you, President Trump, screw you, Mike Lee, screw you, whatever.

• 2:09:33Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  They raised tens of millions of dollars off of that. Because they tried to make a name for themselves in a time where they weren't actually doing anything.

• 2:09:42Steven Rinella?

  Probably were not impactful because they weren't talking to anybody new.

• 2:09:45Speaker 03

  Right. So Mike, Mike Lee had actually, in a strange way, the right thought process there, which is like, Benji's probably using this to raise a ton of money. And I didn't, because I didn't even plan on getting involved in that, because I didn't know it was coming down the pike. Like, there was like, you couldn't even plan for it, right? We all found out pretty last minute, and we all just did what we needed to do. So there wasn't some coordinated effort. But these groups are incentivized to make it seem like they are doing more than they actually are, and to take harder stances than what actually would move the needle, because they know that that's where philanthropy is like, oh, thank God. You know, this group is taking such a hard stand, but there's not actually like an outcome thought of it. And so I think that you're right, but a lot of groups raise money when they don't actually do anything with it.

• 2:10:28Speaker 03

  And I'm not saying BHA specifically, I don't know enough about that, but.

• 2:10:31Speaker 06

  Well, I'll give you an example to your point. So, uh, roadless rule, right? Um, I'm working with a bunch of different groups and, and talking about roadless rule. And, and this kind of ties in a couple of points that have been made today is, right? Like, we're not even at the actual conversation about roadless rule, because it's not about timber, it's not about, uh, public access to these areas. Um, it's not, in my opinion, actually about wildfire mitigation. Um, so just tell me what the reason is.

• 2:11:03Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:04Speaker 06

  That you want to roll back protections on 44 million acres? That, that would be like the chunk that is actually going to get affected?

• 2:11:12Steven Rinella?

  You're not, you mean, you're not buying, it's just general?

• 2:11:16Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:11:16Steven Rinella?

  It's a thing.

• 2:11:16Speaker 06

  No. Like, just tell me the thing.

• 2:11:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:11:19Speaker 06

  So we can talk about the thing.

• 2:11:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:11:20Speaker 06

  Like adults.

• 2:11:21Steven Rinella?

  Earlier we talked about the debate, like, the buffalo thing. And there's all these red herrings, brucellosis, whatever. In the end, you're like, oh, I get it. This is about whose, what animals eat what grass.

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  It's about grass, yeah.

• 2:11:35Steven Rinella?

  Do you know what I mean? And then with the sell off, with the public land sell off, it was about like, this is about increasing new lands for developers to develop.

• 2:11:44Speaker 03

  Right. And decreasing the federal state and trying to achieve for their goal of reducing the federal budget deficit.

• 2:11:53Steven Rinella?

  No, that, that's a red herring.

• 2:11:55Speaker 03

  It might, it might be.

• 2:11:56Steven Rinella?

  I don't believe that part. I believe it was one thing. It was one thing.

• 2:11:58Speaker 03

  Well, either way, it's definitely not affordable housing. We can agree on that.

• 2:12:01Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, it's not affordable housing. I don't think they worry about the debt. There's a lot better ways to figure out the debt.

• 2:12:06Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 2:12:06Speaker 06

  But on this roadless deal, I, you know, I have, um, good, good idea, come upper. Uh, and I was like, well, why don't we, um, all these groups that have resources? Why don't we spend some time? Get the list of the, uh, green groups that sue the most on some of these mitigation efforts that are, that are technically included in the wording of the roadless rule.

• 2:12:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:12:39Speaker 06

  And we at least get them to a table where we can have a discussion on what they're going to sue on and what they're not.

• 2:12:49Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:12:50Speaker 06

  Right? And then we're going to have this letter and this coalition that says, hey, all these groups, including these ones that are screwing everything up for everybody because they just sue all the time. They just try to grind things to a halt.

• 2:13:02Speaker 03

  They are.

• 2:13:03Speaker 06

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

• 2:13:26Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:13:26Speaker 06

  Right? And the response is like, bam, it's a great idea.

• 2:13:31Steven Rinella?

  But like many great ideas.

• 2:13:33Speaker 03

  We can't do it.

• 2:13:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. And they're like, are you, I mean, are you going to go to these law firms and be like, uh, 100% of your business is going to be.

• 2:13:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:13:43Speaker 06

  And they're going to be like, hey, that's a good idea.

• 2:13:45Steven Rinella?

  Go to those law firms, be like, you familiar with the whole like Doge complex?

• 2:13:50Steven Rinella?

  That's what you're going to have to apply something different because work's drying up.

• 2:13:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're not going to say yes to that.

• 2:13:55Speaker 06

  Right.

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• 2:16:39Speaker 03

  April of 2025.

• 2:16:42Steven Rinella?

  April 2025. Layout for me like, um, how do you think? How do you approach things? Do you approach things like quarters in your mind, years in your mind, 10 years in your mind?

• 2:16:52Speaker 03

  Quarters, because the world changes every quarter.

• 2:16:55Steven Rinella?

  Hit me with a couple of quarters. What's come? What like, what like, where's your head at?

• 2:16:58Speaker 03

  We're going to launch a national narrative shifting campaign with a lot of the coalition partners that we've been working with, including a lot of the groups that you work with, you know, the TRCPs of the world. We're going to include everybody who's in this broad coalition in a campaign called United by Nature. We're going to have concerts, we're going to have community events, we're going to have calls to action, we're going to have national ad campaigns. We're going to try to make this United by Nature, the calling card for support the troops, right? We are united by nature, whether that nature is your Salt Lake or it's your Everglades or it's your, you know, Bear Tooth Mountains, right? So it's, it's trying to create that national identity. We're going to launch it in the, in the next quarter. We're also going to launch a bipartisan caucus in the Senate, um, focused on conservation and try to create the space for that to get done.

• 2:17:43Steven Rinella?

  Is it going to be called the Level Headed Caucus?

• 2:17:45Speaker 03

  Uh, the level-headed caucus, what was the notion, what was your secondary slogan for United?

• 2:17:49Steven Rinella?

  Don't shit up America caucus.

• 2:17:52Speaker 03

  Uh, I'll ask, uh,

• 2:17:53Steven Rinella?

  The DSUA.

• 2:17:55Speaker 03

  That's great. Um, and then, you know, we're really gonna focus on-

• 2:17:59Steven Rinella?

  Tell people what a caucus is.

• 2:18:00Speaker 03

  A caucus is like a little, um, little family of, uh, senators that wanna do the same to- action on the same topic.

• 2:18:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:08Speaker 03

  And so there are cau- there's like the Congressional Sportsman's Caucus, which is a great group, focused on, you know, sportsmen's issues and trying to build support in the senate just on those issues. So-

• 2:18:19Speaker 06

  And we saw the Public Lands Caucus get launched.

• 2:18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And so it'll be very complimentary to that in the senate. Uh, but on more than just public lands, it'll be about private land, wildlife, water, um, and a little bit of a wider suite.

• 2:18:31Steven Rinella?

  And you imagine pulling in, um, you imagine this pulling in centrists from both parties or?

• 2:18:37Speaker 03

  We actually want pretty hardcore Republicans and hardcore Democrats, but it's gonna be a one-for-one membership. So for every Republican, we get a Democrat.

• 2:18:44Steven Rinella?

  Is that normal for a caucus?

• 2:18:45Speaker 03

  No, there are a few that are modeled that way, um, but very rare.

• 2:18:48Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, cuz, yeah, obviously.

• 2:18:50Speaker 03

  And, and our, our organization is structured-

• 2:18:53Steven Rinella?

  Tea party.

• 2:18:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Our, our organization is structured that way, too. We have, half our staff is liberal, half it's conservative. Half our board's liberal, half, half it's conservative, and we're intentional for everybody that we add, we are-

• 2:19:05Steven Rinella?

  Do you have non, do you have non-binary?

• 2:19:07Speaker 03

  Everyone's got a leaning.

• 2:19:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:09Speaker 03

  Uh, somewhere, um-

• 2:19:11Steven Rinella?

  Cuz I'd be, I'd be like, ah, put me down for both.

• 2:19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. We do actually, if you look at it-

• 2:19:17Steven Rinella?

  Get it in the box!

• 2:19:19Speaker 03

  You have to figure it out. Um, no, we, we, we have, on our board, we have got a few people who I actually have no idea who they are for.

• 2:19:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's good, yeah.

• 2:19:26Speaker 03

  But if there's a pretty active conservative person, we're definitely gonna have an active one.

• 2:19:29Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I understand.

• 2:19:30Speaker 03

  So, that's the vision that we see, because when you have it structured that way, and this is why, you know, a lot of environmental organizations, their staff is 100% liberal, or, you know, their board's 100% liberal, and so of course, they're gonna lean that way, just like if it was the other way. So, um, so we're gonna launch this caucus, we're gonna launch, uh, the National Nerd of Shifting Campaign, United by Nature. We're probably gonna do a big event, uh, at Yellowstone here in the spring, um, to rally people around public lands and bring in like an A-list, uh, celebrity, A-list music. So we're trying to make this a culturally relevant thing, and-

• 2:20:00Steven Rinella?

  Can I come?

• 2:20:01Speaker 03

  Can you speak?

• 2:20:02Steven Rinella?

  No, just bring my kids, we just wanna hang out.

• 2:20:04Speaker 03

  What if they wanna watch their dad on stage?

• 2:20:06Steven Rinella?

  They won't.

• 2:20:09Speaker 03

  What if your wife wants to?

• 2:20:13Speaker 04

  They're united by their desire not to listen to dad by a microphone.

• 2:20:16Steven Rinella?

  Looking forward to this.

• 2:20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, we wanted to go dad, but we're actually gonna stay home on this one.

• 2:20:21Speaker 06

  We heard this speech at dinner last night.

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  But, uh, but yeah, it's kinda what the next few months look like and, um, you know, we're, we're really excited because we're seeing, especially in the wake of just like the political division, people are wanting something positive in politics right now. If there's one issue that could help democracy kinda move forward, uh, and also bring our priorities to the table, the environment's probably the best one, in my opinion. Um, so we're seeing a lot of natural support and, you know, people from across the spectrum, I mean, we have drag queens and militant activists who are all believing in this same model and it's, it's, it's really kind of incredible what people are looking for on this right now.

• 2:21:07Steven Rinella?

  How will you decide going forward?

• 2:21:12Steven Rinella?

  How will you decide like?

• 2:21:15Steven Rinella?

  Where?

• 2:21:18Steven Rinella?

  With the public land sell-off, kinda? There's like a specific thing.

• 2:21:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:21:22Steven Rinella?

  There's a known party that's pushing it. There's a known, not even, not even party. There's a known individual who's pushing it.

• 2:21:28Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:21:29Steven Rinella?

  Right? And so you gotta like create friction.

• 2:21:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:21:31Steven Rinella?

  Like you're gonna, you're like, whatever you do, however positive you keep it, you will create friction.

• 2:21:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:21:37Steven Rinella?

  Um, how, how are you deciding on what issues where you're like, I'm gonna create friction on this one? I'm gonna create friction on this one. I mean, specific bills.

• 2:21:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:21:47Steven Rinella?

  Specific measures. Do you know what I mean? Like, is it just your moral compass? Like, like what, what goes into going like, this is gonna get ugly?

• 2:21:56Speaker 03

  I think it's when we know that the vast majority, that there's a winning coalition that's willing to be like, Active on something, uh, because we mostly want to be for things. So what I mean by that is like, we don't want to always be the group that's standing against whatever is bad.

• 2:22:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:12Speaker 03

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

• 2:22:54Speaker 03

  But if there's an overwhelming winning coalition of Americans where the politicians are so out of touch with America, like they were on the public land sell off, we're going to show them that they're out of touch.

• 2:23:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:05Speaker 03

  And so it will depend on really where is the American populace at? Where's the winning coalition at? And can we actually mobilize them? Because if we can't, then we're trying to, you know, stick a square peg into a round hole. And a lot of times that's what happens and it doesn't actually do anything. So if we're going to really lean in and be against something, we better be damn sure that it's going to be impactful before we do it.

• 2:23:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, that's, that's, I, I like that approach. Yeah, I'm, I'm at a loss words. I love that approach. I like that approach because I think another way that groups would look and they'll say, this is, we're going to lose bad, but this is going to be good for fundraising.

• 2:23:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:23:42Steven Rinella?

  And this is going to be good for press.

• 2:23:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:43Steven Rinella?

  I mean, like, if PETA, if PETA says, hey, we're going to have it be that you don't say whole hog anymore. You know, they're like, we're probably going to lose. People are still going to say whole hog, but it's going to get a lot of media.

• 2:23:57Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:23:58Steven Rinella?

  But, you know, we're not going to win this one.

• 2:24:02Speaker 03

  And that's exact, I mean, what I, I, I'm at the point where it's like, I care about the outcomes. And if that, if that comes at the cost of fund, fundraising, I'm willing to take that. If it comes at the cost of media, that's fine. If it comes at the cost of people thinking that I have some ulterior motive because I'm not taking a stance on everything, because they think that I'm like trying to shy away from every issue, then that's fine, too. But I think people have gotten so used to like, oh, you're not taking a stance on absolutely everything that's bad, therefore you must have some ulterior motive. It's like, no, it's actually the opposite, right? Like, I could raise so much money opposing everything that Donald Trump does. I could raise so much money off of that. And if I wanted to, I would do it. Or if I wanted to defend everything he was doing, I could also raise a lot of money off of that. But I think over time, people's demand is going to be for trying to actually create

• 2:24:47Speaker 03

  good outcomes. At least that's my optimistic view of the world, that people actually want that. And over time, people will see, man, this is, if you want to take a legitimate stance on something that will actually move the needle, this is the organization to work with. That's the goal.

• 2:25:01Steven Rinella?

  You know, the good analogy could be for you? Like, think about how the military would look at battles. They're not like, all the guys are gonna die. But think about what this is gonna mean from a publicity standpoint.

• 2:25:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:25:15Steven Rinella?

  They're kinda like, no, no, no, I think we should go on Wednesday night because we're gonna win. On Wednesday night.

• 2:25:21Speaker 03

  Are you guys just, you guys have the same analogies here?

• 2:25:24Steven Rinella?

  We're gonna go, we're gonna go on a new moon.

• 2:25:27Speaker 06

  Steve, uh, Steve and I were playing phone tag all day and I happened to be on a Gettysburg tour. And we finally connected, uh, while I'm sitting there looking at, at Pickett's Charge from the viewpoint of the Union lines. And Steve's like, well, what do you think? I'm like, this is so stupid. I'm like, you cannot tell me. You cannot, like, I'm at odds with our historical tour guide right now. Because I'm like, yeah, I'm not buying this. This is ego-driven, stupid idea.

• 2:26:00Steven Rinella?

  Some dude going to Pickett being like, can I get a quick word?

• 2:26:06Steven Rinella?

  Just kinda looking down, looking around here.

• 2:26:09Speaker 03

  That is the perfect analogy, though. That is the perfect analogy.

• 2:26:13Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:13Speaker 03

  And I think the conservation movement could really use that, but, but also like there, to your point earlier, there are so many incredible groups out there in the hunt, you know, in the hook and bolt crowd, but also in the conservation crowd. But they're not trying to do what I'm trying to do. And so we can work really well together to get things done because they do have a, they do have science behind them. They do have resources, they do have research, they do have some grassroots, right? And they have a brand and they have really good ideas. But we need to facilitate the space for those ideas and create the national identity around those ideas. And so, um, you know, I think for, for most of America, like we hope to be the national movement, but then we want to help accelerate the priorities of all these other great groups that are out there that just haven't had the space.

• 2:26:56Speaker 03

  Like TRCP has so many great policy ideas. All these groups have so many great policy ideas, but if the political space isn't there to move them, then they're just ideas, right? And the roadless rule or anything that we're against, you know, being rescinded, like, we might be right about that, but if they still decide to go forward with it because Americans didn't speak up enough about it, then, then it doesn't matter how right we were. So that's.

• 2:27:25Steven Rinella?

  I'm, I'm a big TRCP supporter. Cal does a lot of work with BHA, but I think that, um, I'm sure there are people that fall into a trap of being competitive.

• 2:27:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:27:38Steven Rinella?

  Uh, but I would say like, speaking for the people at this table, I would say like, we'll take the wins where we can get them.

• 2:27:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:27:44Steven Rinella?

  And, uh.

• 2:27:44Speaker 03

  We just need wins.

• 2:27:45Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, like, you know, I, I love to see the groups I love and the people I love thrive and do well, but, um, I'm not, uh, I'd rather see environmental wins than organization wins.

• 2:27:56Speaker 03

  I agree with that.

• 2:27:56Steven Rinella?

  You know?

• 2:27:57Speaker 03

  And, and honestly. If nature is not

• 2:28:00Steven Rinella?

  Godspeed.

• 2:28:01Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:28:01Steven Rinella?

  Godspeed.

• 2:28:03Speaker 03

  And, you know, I, it, it really doesn't matter about who gets the credit. We just need good conservation wins. Like, I, people ask me all the time, why am I doing this? And I, I think you'll find out in 20 years as we look back, 40 years as we look back. I just care about conservation wins. And if nature's nonpartisan isn't, isn't needed, then that's, then that's great. But if it's also the most important culturally relevant organization, that's great too. But like, there is no motive other than getting wins on the board. So, but I like that approach because it also means that we are being so collaborative with all these other groups that largely have seen each other as like competitive enemies in a lot of ways. But they could be moving together. And I do believe that it's more powerful if they do. And I, I know that's kind of breaking the mold of like the nonprofit model. It's breaking the mold of like the political model.

• 2:28:49Speaker 03

  People want to be against each other to find competition. But like this to me is bigger than that. It's bigger than politics. It's bigger than who has the money. It's bigger than who gets the money. It's bigger than who gets the win. It's who and how did we get the best outcomes for conservation? Because we need like a 21st century infusion of conservation progress like Teddy Roosevelt created. We need to have that legacy recreated in this country. And we're not going to do it with the typical political bullshit that we've been dealing with over the last few years.

• 2:29:18Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Appreciate you taking so much time to talk, man.

• 2:29:22Speaker 03

  This is really fun. I even got to eat jerky on air. Got to lick my chops a little bit.

• 2:29:26Steven Rinella?

  Hmm. Frothy.

• 2:29:29Speaker 03

  Should we all do that? And you just go, oh, Phil.

• 2:29:32Steven Rinella?

  There's, there's some jerky where you feel like they should have put one of those little flossers in the bag with it.

• 2:29:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:29:36Steven Rinella?

  But that doesn't give you problems.

• 2:29:37Speaker 03

  No, I, I mean, has it like, has like

• 2:29:40Steven Rinella?

  Doesn't have any like threads.

• 2:29:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29:43Steven Rinella?

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

• 2:30:01Steven Rinella?

  It like a piece of chewing gum, a sinew. And you'd eventually take that and flick it.

• 2:30:08Speaker 03

  And it's full of little jerky pieces?

• 2:30:09Speaker 06

  Debate whether or not you swallow.

• 2:30:12Steven Rinella?

  You just be like, yeah, it's probably, and you open the window and

• 2:30:17Steven Rinella?

  off into the side of the road.

• 2:30:19Speaker 03

  This does not do that.

• 2:30:21Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 2:30:21Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't need that little white ball.

• 2:30:22Steven Rinella?

  Connective tissue.

• 2:30:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:30:24Steven Rinella?

  There's no cud. There's no cud to choose.

• 2:30:26Speaker 03

  But I do want to, again, you guys have a lot of incredible influence and impact that you've made, uh, both of you specifically on, on getting people rallied around these ideas across party lines. So you're living the nature's nonpartisan mantra every single day and, uh, I look up to you guys a lot and, and just the way that you've led.

• 2:30:44Steven Rinella?

  Cal's tenacious, man.

• 2:30:46Speaker 03

  You are.

• 2:30:47Speaker 06

  Well, it helps when you're right.

• 2:30:51Speaker 03

  That's the good thing we have on our side is we are right.

• 2:30:53Steven Rinella?

  It gets him up in the morning.

• 2:30:56Speaker 03

  Well, when it's, when it's authentic, you fight harder.

• 2:30:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:59Speaker 03

  Right? And, and, and you can tell that you mean it and you can tell that you mean it and hopefully you can tell that I mean it. And that just makes it easier because you wake up every day and you actually want to do it. And you're not trying to put someone in a box because the thing is, the thing that we have against these, these screw ups in politics today is that they are putting themselves in boxes that they don't even think are authentically real. And at some point, this authenticity of fighting for what we actually believe in will win because we actually have the passion and we actually care. And that will win.

• 2:31:25Speaker 06

  I, I, I keep reminding people, I'm like, we are right. And if you don't think you are, bring this, bring your viewpoint of public lands and the value of them to somebody who doesn't have that viewpoint and you can just watch the mental gymnastics happen.

• 2:31:41Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 2:31:42Speaker 06

  And how they have to like, try to re-center themselves on their argument. They're like, well, have you considered? It's like, yeah, we, yeah, we got it.

• 2:31:54Steven Rinella?

  But I feel like you're not feeling that.

• 2:31:58Speaker 03

  You get a sense that that's not an authentic view you have.

• 2:32:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, right, right. They're like, well, I've never been.

• 2:32:05Speaker 04

  But.

• 2:32:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:32:09Speaker 03

  That's true. I think some of, some of those guys we could really, they, they look like they've never been in the outdoors before. And they look like, you know, maybe we could help them. Um, so, you know, that's something we should think about at some point.

• 2:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Little sun.

• 2:32:19Speaker 03

  Little sun, a little, little mountain, little tree.

• 2:32:22Speaker 06

  Little dirt.

• 2:32:22Speaker 03

  Little dirt.

• 2:32:23Speaker 04

  Not to sidetrack it, but summer.

• 2:32:25Steven Rinella?

  I was gonna wrap up.

• 2:32:28Speaker 03

  Another analogy.

• 2:32:30Speaker 04

  Summer in Yellowstone, you see all these people pouring through Livingston. They look like they've never spent a day outdoor in their lives. And there's a lot of eye rolling about it, but when I see that, I actually think it's really cool that, that somebody who lives in Florida. Or, or New York or wherever is like, you know, we need to do this year. We need to go see Montana and Wyoming.

• 2:32:53Steven Rinella?

  Cause you're a big hearted person.

• 2:32:54Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I, I.

• 2:32:56Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 2:32:56Speaker 04

  The traffic gets old. I don't like waiting for tables at restaurants, but like it's.

• 2:33:00Speaker 06

  I don't wanna peel the curtain back too much, but, uh, Randall and his wife have both told me. That if they ever went on a murder spree.

• 2:33:10Steven Rinella?

  Who'd be these people?

• 2:33:11Speaker 06

  It would be to target people who do illegal things in national parks.

• 2:33:15Speaker 03

  Okay, that's, but that's a different argument.

• 2:33:17Speaker 04

  Again, all of my darkest secrets are coming out. No, but I.

• 2:33:21Speaker 03

  Those are not, those are not contradicting.

• 2:33:23Speaker 04

  To put a pin on it, like, I, I think it's, I think it's so cool that people are like, that people in this country are like, I have to see this. This is part of my.

• 2:33:31Speaker 03

  American.

• 2:33:32Speaker 04

  This is part of being an adult as an American. Uh, there's like sharing this with my kids. Even if they never come back, uh, like another day, or they don't hunt, or they don't fish. They're like. You know what? We're gonna load up the station wagon and go look at rocks and water.

• 2:33:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, that's true. Phil, you should take that clip and send that to Venmo. And see if they'll let Randall back on.

• 2:33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:33:54Speaker 06

  I'm on it.

• 2:33:59Steven Rinella?

  Look at this guy. Come on.

• 2:34:00Speaker 04

  Not such a bad guy.

• 2:34:02Steven Rinella?

  Let him do, let him transact. Let him buy what he needs to buy.

• 2:34:07Speaker 03

  He saw we.

• 2:34:07Steven Rinella?

  Let him buy what he needs to buy from a state sale.

• 2:34:09Speaker 03

  This episode sponsored by Fenmo.

• 2:34:13Steven Rinella?

  Man, Benji Backer, nature is nonpartisan. Thanks, man.

• 2:34:18Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun and hope to come back.

• 2:34:21Steven Rinella?

  No, I'd love to have you back on.

• 2:34:24Speaker 03

  And let's get out there together at some point, too.

• 2:34:26Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I would.

• 2:34:26Speaker 03

  That's where I'd rather be.

• 2:34:27Steven Rinella?

  Hit us up in a year. It's kind of a year later.

• 2:34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:34:31Steven Rinella?

  We got a lot of people to come back.

• 2:34:33Speaker 03

  I'll put her, well, hopefully we made a lot of progress. I'll put it on my calendar.

• 2:34:36Steven Rinella?

  One year.

• 2:34:36Speaker 03

  One year.

• 2:34:37Steven Rinella?

  Unless things change a whole bunch. Unless all of a sudden you win all the environmental battles, then come back on.

• 2:34:43Speaker 03

  Is that, that's the incentive right there? All right.

• 2:34:47Steven Rinella?

  You do an update. We won them all.

• 2:34:51Speaker 03

  I'll see you in a year. There's no way that's happening.

• 2:34:55Steven Rinella?

  All right. Thanks, man.

• 2:34:55Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 2:34:56Steven Rinella?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:35:23Speaker 02

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