Ep. 664: The State of the Conservation Union

this serving. I'm gonna put a new loop in there through the pole thing and put the serving back on and it's like a little piece of copper pipe.

But that afternoon. I was like, oh, that's amazing.

grass circle which is all covered in snow. So my kids have taken the Like first it was like, we're just gonna ride the snowbill around the loop real quick, and then it became just riding d D ride and riding, and we were kind of laughing about when someone when someone would snap and come complain to them, yeah, you know, and sure enough they get flagged down by a couple of neighbors who after days of riding, flag down and

complain to them. And they come back just outraged. You know, he says he's going to take it up with you. To me, you know, no one has but uh, he said you can't ride on the road. I'm like, I mean, you can't ride on the road. I didn't mention that, but no, it's like a traditionally friendly neighbor like someone.

with Fosburg. But today we're premiering the new CEO of TRCP, Joel Peterson, and we're gonna run through a State of the Union, and I'm gonna do a giant caveat right. No one knows. No one knows. We're gonna talk about some things from the past. Yep, we're gonna go back a little bit. I think the furthest will stray back as we'll stray back about eight years ago. Maybe. Okay, we're going to touch on to Trump one. We're gonna

talk about Biden. We're gonna talk about the early days of Trump too, and and when we enter into the days of Trump too, there's a giant question mark because we're gonna be talking about some federal policy and a lot of federal policies up in the air. I had breakfast with Joel this morning, and I told him that he is not He does not need to be. He does not need to be a prophet or prophesize prophecy. What's the hell's the word prophecies? Can you see prophesies?

It's is that not a word? Prophesies? In DC right now, there's a there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty with the administration's changing over a lot of policy changes.

So with that, Joel, tell everybody what TRCP is.

But the challenge that was seen over two decades ago was that every single one of the conservation organizations were coming into Congress or coming into the administration and asking for their own little thing, and it wasn't a unified message. And so the power of the millions of sportsmen that are out there, that are represented individually by the various conservation organizations just wasn't being captured to help make the point about some of the big conservation issues. And so

fast forward to today. We now have sixty three organizations that we partner with and it's a willing partnership. It's not a pay to play. But we have tried to reach out to the groups like National Wild Turkey Federation, Mule Deer Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, the ones that everybody has

heard of. But we also have as part of our partnership groups like the Tall Timbers Association, which is down in South Georgia and they're really focused on prescribed fire and how that benefits in that case quail, but everything else that's out there. We also work in marine fisheries.

We've got groups like Bonefish and tarp and Trust and so it's a very diverse group that we have that brings a lot of important voices together to think about the conservation issues that the community, not just the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership is facing. So when we think about this, we've kind of broken the work that we do into five different areas. Public lands is one that I know this team is very well aware of. It's often at the center of a lot of the things that you're

interested in. We also have a Private Land Center that deals a lot with farm Bill we also have some of the work we're doing with chronic wasting disease in that area. We have our marine fisheries which deals largely we do a lot with forage fish, but it's also been a big focus on the Mississippi flood Plain, coastal Louisiana coastal restoration there, moving up the Mississippi River with

some of the work we're doing now. And then we have a water program as well that's largely been focused to date on the Colorado River, the Rio Grande River and the water issues that are there, but really that

entire watershed and what we can do about that. And then we also have a focus on climate or resiliency, if you will, and really thinking about how some of the changes we're seeing on the landscape impacts across all those other centers, the impacts that it's having on our public lands, private lands, wildlife in general, and integrating that work into those different centers, taking advantage of some of the opportunities that are out there.

pheasants was about the only thing. And I was actually grew up the dating myself, but after the real golden age of that, but before CRP really hit and kind of brought it back for a stretch of ten to twelve years in the eighties and early nineties, so I

did that. I was involved with Boy Scouts as well, and I was fortunate the troupe I was with we camped every month year round, and so really grew up with a love for the outdoors and a By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I realized there was a thing called a wildlife biologist that you could make a career out of. And so one of those few people that I think knew from a very young age, this is what I want to do, and

was was able to do that. So graduated with a degree in wildlife conservation from the University of Nebraska at Carney, spent a year at the University of Idaho on an exchange program during my undergraduate that I went on to graduate school at the University of Tennessee, where I got to live really a lifelong dream of being able to

study black bears. I'd been in love with black bears for a long time, and over the years my master's program, I trapped nearly two hundred black bears and pulled them out of the den and all that cool stuff that wildlife biologists get to do. And then I very quickly got into the reality of what a wildlife biologist is like when you work for a state agency or a

federal agency. Went to work for the State of Florida as a wildlife BIOLOGI spent most of my time dealing with people, so I was there for about four years. From there, I went to National Wild Turkey Federation. I worked with National Wild Turkey Federation in the Conservation Department for the majority of my twenty two years there, did just about everything you could do in conservation wise. And then when Becky Humphries, who I know has been on the show, actually was on about a year ago in

the interim role at TRCP. When she took over as CEO there, she asked me to grow a government affairs program for National Wild Turkey Federation and so I went to work directly for her, and I did that for about the last six years that I was at NWTF, and then almost right out four years ago now I had the opportunity to move west and ended up in Salt Lake and took over as CEO of the Meldair Foundation, and so I did that for about three years, and then fast forward to September first of last year, I

made another jump and back across the country to Northern Virginia in the DC area to take over as President and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which is

a great opportunity to come in and do this. Through my roles at Turkey Federation and at Mule Deer Foundation, I had the opportunity to work with TRCP as one of those partner organizations, and so I came in being somewhat familiar with the work that TRCP does, certainly on the private lands and public lands side of things more

than anything. So it's been a great career that has spen in a lot of years now, and never had it in mind to be a CEO, but that's kind of where things have led, and it's a great opportunity to be able to influence conservation in a different sort of way than just being the the dirt kicking biologists that I wanted to be for a long time.

tree was hollow clear down into the root mass. And so the bear had not only climbed up, but then climbed all the way back down and was you know, sixty feet below.

jump back. I said, we had to go back eight years. Hit me with a Hit me with a conservation recap on Trump administration. One, Like every administration has their areas where they focus. Right, there's things that their predecessor did that they kind of let go, you know that they let they let it drift away. There's new priorities. Uh, and Trump won? What did what did we see?

One of them had to do with access, for sure, and the work that he did through then Secretary Zinky at Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife Service and really looking at opportunities to open up hunting and fishing access on wildlife refuges. And people remember that part of it and the millions of acres that have then been opened up since and that is something that carried through to some extent into the Biden administration and will continue on,

I believe. But the other thing that that did which has gotten less attention is it it asked the Fish and Wildlife Service on their refuges to do the best job they could to align the regulations on the refuges with the regulations of the state so that you didn't have to have a different number of shells in a shotgun on a refuge versus public land and ammunition opening days things like that, and so I think that that was a good thing.

was one of them. Migration corridors. We've talked a lot about migration corridors over the last eight years, and Secretarial Order three three six two that again then Secretary Ryan Zink signed, really put attention on migration corridors and it led to a lot of the funding for research that we've had over the years for mapping those corridors, and we've seen great use come out of that for conservation measures as well as just having that body of information

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

et cetera that we've been able to use.

that needed help or needed protection or needed overpasses. And that came from being able to watch generations, right, you know, the generational turnovers quick, but to watch generations of deer moving across the landscape, you know, to find those things that are those those constants, right.

One of the programs that was stood up in that was a wildlife Crossing's pilot program through the Transfer Transfer Transportation Department. Actually, but because of the work that a lot of the Western States have, you can go now and look at that program and say this is where we need to put the crossing instead of just kind of guessing based upon where you'd see roadkill. Now they had some good data for that that helped to drive

the ability to implement that program. But I think really the ability or even the thought process of being able to put some money towards that program and have it be carried out successfully. But maybe an even more important example is as the BLM was looking at their solar program Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and really looking at how they were going to place solar over BLM lands per instruction from the Biden administration to make lands available for this.

One of the things that TRCP was very successful in doing, and it was dependent upon this data, was saying, hey, you've the first draft that you've put out here, you're not paying attention to migration corridors or winter range. And so we worked really hard to get comments in from the public from our partners raise their awareness that we

have really good data for this. And so the final rule that came out on that excluded known mapped migration corridors, winter range, and stopover range, but in addition also had language in there that said, and any future ones that get mapped within these areas, we're going to take that out as well. And so you know, the benefit from that s O three three six two eight almost you know, eight nine years ago now is really carried.

regulations already in place. So so that's one that is always there. I think development is another one. I think one I'm kind of fast forwarding to now, but one that's on everybody's mind is public lands and what's going to happen with public lands and Trump in the first administration was great on public lands, very strongly came out and said we shouldn't dispose of public lands, uh, and made sure that that didn't happen. And we think that'll continue.

But it's you know, there's also a different tenor around the country right now on that, and so that's something that we're being cognizant cognizant about as well, and in trying to watch that.

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

that time, we still haven't seen it. There wasn't a like wholesale effort that want up being successful and like reducing federal land management, you know, like it always gets talked about, but it hadn't happened, and probably for a handful of reasons. You could watch just in our recent state campaign here, all all candidates would would try to establish their public lands bona fides. All can't. It's like it's like saying you're pro American, Ye, you're gonna do it.

People are gonna say they're going to articulate being pro public lands, you know here, you know, in this state at least.

Biden came in and what way is it. Did he have a unique focus, and what sorts of things died on the vine, what sorts of things kept going, What new ideas were brought forward?

because of where it came from. But they kept it around because they they heard about it from the sportsman community. For sure, they heard about it from sportsman, but they also saw the value of it. But it didn't get the same level of funding, it didn't get the same level of focus that it did in Trump won. They

kept it there and things continued by that token. What we talked about with access and opening up the fish and wildlife refuges to more hunting and fishing access is another one that they kept around, but just absolutely not at the same level. I forget the exact number here, but the last last year they did it, it was a couple hundred three hundre thousand acres that were opened up as a post of millions in the first several years.

And they also you know, started putting some additional restrictions and looking at some of this in terms of we're going to open it up, but there's not going to be any lead ammunition allowed, regardless of what you're hunting for fishing for. It wasn't just tied to waterfowl and some things like that. That that made it a little more challenging in those regards. You know, the Biden administration and I think democratic administrations in general there they're always

good about conservation funding. So we talked about the bipart as an Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act and the nearly two trillion dollars that came towards conservation through that. So the funding there was great. We'll probably see a reduction in some of that funding with a Republican administration and a Republican Congress coming in, and so it's kind

of hard to weave apart. Was it just the administration because there's also Congress in there as well, and how they're given the funding out when it came to kind of some of the direct hunting related legislation and policies, certainly we saw a drop off with that. And in the Biden administration, access was important, access specific for hunting

and fishing less important. Second Amendment issues absolutely less important within a democratic administration, and I think what we than what we saw and what we'll see again in a Republican administration. Energy development was still important for both, but in a different in a different manner. As we talked about a minute ago. And so I think those are some of the differences that.

And now with like energy dominance okay, and looking back at fossil fuels and in the current administration pushing for like a real concentrated focus on domestic fossil fuel energy production. Which of those things do you think which of those plans is going to lead to like the highest net acreage of public hunting and fishing lands being developed. Like

is the footprint on Trump's fossil fuel plan? Will it wind up being bigger than the biggest ask from the buy An administration on the footprint of renewables.

One of the big problems with with solar is the arrays go in and then they put an eight foot chain link fence around it to keep everyone and everything out, And with oil and gas you don't necessarily have to do that, and you can leave some open space between them. There's also some emerging technology that the companies have started

talking about where they can check their pumps. They can check the flows more remotely than they ever used to, because even though you've got a reduced footprint with oil and gas, you still typically have historically had vehicles driving those roads every day year round checking on everything. And that disturbance just causes problems for the wildlife there, particularly in the winter range right where you're getting that constant

disturbance on them. And so I think there's we've learned more about how to mitigate those factors over the years through oil and gas, where we're still learning it now

with solar and wind. And I forget the acreages now, but TRCP and some of our partners put together a document looking at at the surface area impact of the various forms of energy to get this away from how many killowat hours are we talking about generating to what's the disturbance out there on the landscape, And it surprised me the wind had a bigger footprint even than solar when it came to the number of acres per kilowatt hour that we're being generated on.

But then and I just have had anecdotal conversations with people who've taken ranch land and put it into that and they'll come back and say, like buy and large stuff avoids that part of the ranch now, like prong Horn, particularly about prong Horn, just never getting comfortable with it, right, So you wind up it's like the footprint winds up being different than the footprint.

going to go so far. It'll open it up for the future, but it's probably not going to have an immediate impact right now because it's all supply and demand, right. And so we've got that aspect where with the subsidies, the the solar and wind we're getting to try to develop these technologies. I wonder if we were seeing more of that go on the ground because of the subsidies around.

sheep that are out there. Right and while there's there's still hunting access, there may be areas within that that get excluded because it's important to the ranchers operations and things like that.

depending on how it was generated. Yeah, there's a lot of parallels with how the New York Times bestseller list works, and you happen to be thinking that, Yeah, like a book sold in some places is worth a lot more to their algorithm than a book sold in other places.

as breakfast as well as I can tell you. One area where there will not be continuity is so far is conversations around climate and it puts it creates a particular pickle for people. And I'll recap a discussion we

had over breakfast. The Biden administration was so focused on climate issues that researchers needed to change the language they used when talking about wildlife conservation to get funding or to stay at the top of the heap, meaning You could be an individual who say, maps salmon runs, describes salmon runs, looks at the relative strength of particular salmon runs, what's going on with king salmon? Right? And this might be your focus. Four years ago there was a dramatic

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

you weren't talking about climate, you wouldn't get funding. And now there's this this reality that you need to expunge that language from your project. We had people whose arms were bent and creating that language correct, Everything had to flow through that lens. And now you have to retract from that and demonstrate back to the old way you would you would highlight your work or seek grants. Yeah, and it's like it feels to me and this is me talking. I want to be very clear This is

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

on that, and and it is frustrating. I mean, it's the fact of the matter, is I I So I think back to my my Milder Foundation days when we were While I was there, Meal Deer Foundation was a benefactor of large tens of millions of dollars commitment from for a service and BLM to go out and help implement, in the eyes of the Mule Deer Foundation, great habitat restoration work for mule deer to save mule deer, make sure they had the best quality habitat out there on

winter range, summer range, wherever it was. But it was coming through a lens of this money is coming on the ground to help us mitigate climate change, to help us mitigate the wildfire crisis, and all of that. The work the Mule Deer Foundation and those contractors are doing is exactly the same three years ago as it will be next year. It's just in the name of however you want to frame it up.

money being done or the research being done. It's just it's unfortunate that the word climate gets caught up in all of this.

renewables great good. You're bad. If you talk, you know, you're you're you must not love the environment. If you bring up questions about renewables to being renewables bad, fossil

fuels good, that's a major shift. Are there some other like just like ideological shifts that you think will see I mean only as it pertains the conservation though, I'm not going to make you go down some you know, you don't talking about the A word or anything, but what are some fundamental shifts that you think we're going to see in terms of in terms of attitude and focus.

before this money passed. Landowners like it. There was more landowners that wanted funding than there was funding available for and a number I saw recently about eighty percent of that funding that's gone out the door has gone to Republican congressional districts. And so even the people that voted for this administration, they're the ones that are benefiting from this, and they like it. Well, what's going to happen with that funding as we go forward and we're thinking about

reconciliation and reducing the size of the government. Those programs are still there. They're still going to do great things for conservation and for agriculture. I'd argue they need to stay. But where's the priority going to be between reducing the size of government, reducing the amount of money going out the door, and the conservation issues that are really important to us. To the point, and this is where I'll

tie it back to climate here a little bit. At the end of last Congress, there was a recognition that there was an opportunity here to take ten twelve, fourteen million billion dollars that had not yet been spent through those programs and roll it into the baseline of the next Farm bill. And the Republican and Democrat leadership for both the House and Senate agg committees were in favor of doing this. They saw it as an opportunit need to increase funding to do private land conservation work down

the road. But there was a faction of individuals out there that just could not live with the fact that we might take climate out of the equation and say and just remove the word that this money has to be spent for climate work, even though it was going to do exactly the same work. And so it didn't happen at the end of last Congress, and we don't know if it'll happen again now.

gonna pull farmers and ranchers, he's got their support. Yes, not without exception, but overwhelmingly correct When you look at like like over your career and over your time of conservation, when you look at that, do you find that, like we remove it just from a conversation about Trump, at any administration, do you find that they'll wind up looking at that that constituency is supportive, here's some federal spending that aids that constituency, and that gets a level of favoritism.

I don't mean to be cynical, but I mean that has to be a thing that plays out in the psychology of any president.

great wildlife habitat. And so it is absolutely an anchor of the of the Farm Bill program. There's a lot of other good programs in there through some of the Wetland Reserve Program, which has been through several different iterations and names over the year. The Environmental Quality and Sentence Program is another one that's about six hundred million a year that comes out through that that encourages private landowners to do conservation related practices to help with water quality,

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

stamp programs, and everything else that's tied in. And so that's where the real that's where the real rub comes is. There's a lot of programs there that help urban communities and help underserved communities to go along with the conservation

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

In the Farm Bill, there's a lot of programs that are kind of like the carrot not the stick approach to Hey, not great to tile that farm for a bunch of different reasons. Here's a bunch of incentives that you have access to in the farm that would prevent got that pract that particular farming practice.

was gonna say moving to the lower forty eight. My beloved colleague Brody Henderson just alerted me that there's a bill right now. I have no idea where it sits. There's a bill right now once again, moving to delist wolves across the lower forty eight, which would have big implications for right now Colorado, wouldn't have implications for Idaho, Montana and Wow have implications for Colorado, potential implications for Utah other states. How likely is something like that to advance?

Meaning I've had people explain to me that that questions around listings and d listings are somewhat insulated from from presidential administrations. Meaning these are things that move slow. They move at department levels, and it's not like presidents come in and are able to. They don't come in and manipulate or push directly like Endangered Species Act discussions, that

might not even be true. I don't know. But if you have, if you have a Republican Senate, a Republican Congress, Republican president, all the appointees going along, is there a power play? Is there a power play that can happen? That would be we're gonna begin the delisting of grizzly bears and we're gonna delist wolves in the Upper Great Lakes or across the lower forty eight Or is that just completely outside of how the election just went? Yeah, does that make any sense? That was not a very

well articulated question. Try to say what I'm saying, Randall.

you have to hit before it would be delisted. The Endangered Species Act was never written and designed to house a species forever. It was designed to let's identify what it is, let's identify how we recover it, and let's get it off the books, and let's put the management of that species back to the state, just like they're managing for the game species right now. Right. And so when you look at wolves and over the years, I mean, it's been going back and forth since the Biden administration,

I think was the Biden administration with wolves? Or we can overcomplicate this and get into all the distinct population segments and all that other stuff. But the bottom line is they said the Biden administration, this novisser has said they've met recovery. Let's get it off the books.

And so does Congress have an influence on this? They can they you know, they certainly can they get together and pass something. So what you mentioned now, I think it's called the pet and Livestock Protection Act, and it's been introduced to get wolves off. I don't know much about it other than it's got thirty Republican co sponsors, no Democratic co sponsors on this, So.

you're going to legislate it. Can it be influenced by the administration, It absolutely can be, because all of those rules not only go through the Agency, but then they go through the Council on Environmental Quality the CEQ, which is an office of the White House that all of this environmental related, wildlife related stuff goes through. And so there's a filter there, and there's direction coming from there about you know, this is where the administration would like

to go. Ultimately, they still have to base it upon the merits right, and so with the recent Grizzly Bear decision that the Biden administration did, they in a way they kind of changed the goalpost because this was about distinct population segments and they said, well, no, let's look at this across the whole landscape and what those numbers are. So you get all of those things going on. Ultimately,

what's going to happen. I think it's going to continue to be a political ping pong ball, which is a shame. And when I think about the influence on this and think about legislation to try to get us out of this quagmire, I can't say that I'm a real fan because I start thinking about ballot box initiatives that happened

at the states, right, It's not that. Look, wolves in most cases should be delisted based upon the merits of recovery, and it shouldn't be going back and forth between the politicians and the courts, and the special interest groups and the courts and all of that. We ought to just be able to get it back to nonpartisan, science based decisions like as it was designed to be, and how we get there. I don't know if I ever figure it out. I'm you know, I'm not going to be doing this job anymore.

negative way. But I think it kind of goes against a lot of the work we've done about distinct population segments. And I think that if the distinct population segment, if that idea was being used the way it was intended to be used, that'd be a quicker path forward. So I think that to throw your hands up in the air and be like, we're going to delist across the entirety of the Lower forty eight. Is kind of like me telling my kids, I'm gonna take all their iPads

and run them over with my truck. Well, they're like, they're thinking, like, he's not really gonna do that, but he is pissed, do you know what I mean? So I think that realistically doing Northern Great Lakes on wolves right, finding some clarity because that's been a ping pong back and forth, back and forth. We're doing doing wolves in the Northern Great Lakes back to state management, so Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. Right, that's like a realistic goal. And this is my opinion,

and again this is me talking, not Joel talking. That's a realistic goal. And I think doing to do grizzly bears in one or two of the distinct population segments, starting with the Yellowstone DPS and maybe the Northern Continental Divide DPS, that seems to me like on that issue, that would I would view that as a success. I think it's starting to talk about the whole Lower forty eight is just it's you're you're you're kind of reintroducing an old paradigm that got us in trouble in the

first place. Was the problem was listing them in the lower forty eight didn't give you any sort of nuanced control. So to go back to talking about lower forty eight, you're almost repeating like an old you know, it's kind of you're repeating an old mistake. And I'm just talking about I'm just talking about being strategic, like I'm talking

about getting making some progress. I feel that it'd be much better to focus on these these pre existing sets of rules that we've been operating under and like try to be impactful there.

a successful businessman. He's a pretty popular governor. What's your what's your take on what it's going to be like working with the Department of Interior going forward, and any other and any other kind of news or opinions to have about other appointees and who are people going to be what names are people going to be hearing a lot in the next four years?

a positive experience. And we're hearing some names. It's probably too early to say of people that UH worked with him in North Dakota that were in the first Trump administration that will likely be coming back in So I think there'll be some some known entities there. As you said,

he he is a hunter and fisherman. I actually was at a reception last week celebration of the Explorer Act and Secretary Bergham showed up as his first public appearance since being confirmed UH and was there and he talked personally about hunting and fishing and growing up and shared some personal stories and you can tell it's it's not

just words with him in that regard, you know. He he touched on at that a little bit about oil and gas and the mandate from the President for energy dominance, and he's also the energies are so he's going to play a role in that but what he highlighted there in this group of conservation minded folks in North Dakota, they grew to be the number three producer of oil and gas in the country during his administration, and they did that while only impacting one percent of the surface area.

And so he's about technological advances to move these things forward. He's about finding the balance, and I truly I think he's got the track record to show that on the energy side of things. Within the Department of Interior, another name that's out there is Kate McGregor is Deputy Secretary. She's not been confirmed yet, but that's who they've put up. They'll start going to these second tier confirmations here in the coming weeks once they get the main ones done.

Kate served in the same or similar role under the first Trump administration, so she knows how the department works and she's going to be able to bring some of that knowledge there into how it operates. And it's somebody the TRC and the other organizations worked with in the first Trump administration, So a known entity there.

are they familiar? Are they with the agency? Do they have a generally positive attitude toward conservation work within that agency? Or in some cases, are they like complete outsiders who are there more or to reduce and dismantle rather than make more efficient and effective. Right, And that's just something I guess we'll just have to wait and see on some of those issues, right.

mandate with the Department of Interior. It's a huge agency, mining, minerals, all of that stuff, water reclamation, Bureau of Reclamations in there. We always think about it from the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service, but there's a whole bunch of other things that that secretary and that Deputy secretary have to think about on top of that.

So it will allow you to be pretty focused in your ass where you didn't get like grinned along and then later realized that he was having a totally separate

conversation and just leading you along. He said it allowed for a certain efficiency where he'd be like, you're not going to get anywhere on this, but if you'd like to talk about this, I'm all ears, yeah, right, it let you be, let you sort of understand the landscape, right which I thought was just an interesting way to look at someone who is an ally and adversary and like, how efficient are you in figuring out where you line up and don't line up right? Well?

bit about his track record. Beyond Bergham and McGregor that I mentioned, we're not hearing a lot of names for the next level down and the agency directors at this time. It's still a little early to tell. In Department of ag it's you know, a little bit on the flip side there Brooke Rawlins is the new Secretary of AG there. She was in the first Trump administration, but in a very different role, had nothing to do with AG. She's got a degree from Texas A and M, so she's

an aggie in that regard. But she's been in the interim since last ministration. She's been part of the American First Policy Institute, or she was CEO of that, which is a conservative think tank. And in her first role, you know, she was really about what was it it was ran the Domestic Policy Council during the first term, which basically is his cabinet and helps to set the presidential agenda. And so it's been you know, she's not a known entity in the AG space, and we don't

know who she's going to bring in. She hasn't worked in that space, so she doesn't have a bunch of people that she can pull from. But you know, they've named a few more people over there. Richard Fordyce is one of the under secretaries. I think there's three under secretaries over there. Two of them we care about. One is for Farm Production and Conservation, which oversees Farm Services

Agency and the NRCS. Farm Services Agency implements CRP, the Natural Resources Concertvation Service or in our CS, implements the rest of the conservation programs in the farm bill, So that's an important one for us. He's a farmer out of Missouri. He was administrator of Farm Service Agency in the first Trump administration, so he understands some of the egg policy and things like that, and apparently does a lot of conservation work on his own farm back in Missouri.

country spends servicing its debt, it's not it's nothing. We spend far more servicing our debt than we do on conservation by probably like some factor of hundreds.

It'd be politically detrimental to go after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, right, So you wind up needing to fidget around, to fidget around in these much smaller things when like seventy percent of the money is going to these things that it's political suicide to talk about entitlement spending. It's

political suicide. So you need to go after the less the areas with less friction, right, and you wind up talking about little little chunks of money here and there because you just can't talk about the big chunks of money. I'll tell you I watched an interview with Steve Bannon, who was in the early first Trump administration, was a huge, the impactful person. And so here's Bannon saying, you know, he was like a naval commander, right, he was in the navy, He's got kids in the military. He's like

establishing how hawkish he is. But he goes, and this is coming from me, we need to talk about the defense budget down the road. We need to talk about the social safety in that budget, because we're not going to get there with the kinds of things we're talking about.

But to get back to the original point I was going to make is we can talk about places to save money, but you also the administration also needs to look at how you make money, right, Right, There's like you can cut out going, but what do you do to bring it in? And one of the ways you can bring money in is leasing, right, and probably some other issues right.

One is, and we've talked about it several times, the slug of money that came out through Bill and IRA that goes to conservation, that is from day one, been a target because of how it came about, because it has the climate connotations, because it was a Biden administration priority, that's an area they're going to cut in. Anything that at least that hasn't been obligated right now is on

the blocks to come back. The ten twelve, fourteen million that I talked about with the farm bill program earlier is part of that. That is the chance of getting recisioned back out to decrease spending. So that's one part of it. But then another part of it, as you said, is increasing the revenue. And so we've heard and I

don't know how serious it is. And so with reconciliation, it has to tie right back to the budget, and so some of this may be a stretch, but if they can tie it back to revenues, it may not be a huge stretch. And so some big wins that the conservation community and TARRASEPA has had over the course of the last four and eight years having to do with mining. The Biden administration decided that they weren't going to permit a critical mineral's mind up in the Boundary

Waters Canoe area of northern Minnesota. That's been something that's been going on for a long time, well in the headwaters the headwaters, Yeah, thank you. That has specifically been mentioned that maybe we need to bring that back online so the royalties we get from that Pebble mine, which Trump won when he was president before came out strongly against and said no, we're not going to do this.

We need to protect Bristol Bay. That one has specifically been brought up by Congress as another one where let's bring that back on and get the royalties to bring money in, to bring money in because of the royalties

that eventually would come from that. And then another issue that TRCP and it's partners have worked on here over the course of the last four years that the Biden administration was a champion on was the Ambler Road and the Brooks Range ere a two hundred and eleven mile road that would have three thousand stream crossings and bisect the West Alaska Cariboo herd and just all of the negative things that come from that in this largely undeveloped

kind of the last bastion of wildness that this country has. The BLM decided they weren't going to permit that. That's something else that not only came up in the executive Order about unleashing Alaska's greatness, but it's also been mentioned as potentially coming in through reconciliation because we can open up that mine right well, that mine if it depending

on how good it is. One of the documents from one of the companies doing it said, yeah, we want to do this so week and send it all overseas to be developed. Right So it's not even going to come back to our critical menus, but it would create some royalties, so we're watching it for that. There's also

a positive on this as well with reconciliation. So there is a loophole in the federal excise tax around archery equipment and fishing tackle that is being exploited right now by direct to consumer sales largely over the internet for products that are starting outside of the country. Whereas we all know that through the Pittman Robertson Act and Daniel Johnson Act. There's an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, fishing tackle,

et cetera. But what's happening right now is with that direct to consumer is not being taxed when it's purchased online and it's being shipped from outside of the country into the country because it's the first first point of sale in the country. Is where that's collected. Oh really, yeah, And so that's about a seventeen million dollar bump that we think we could see for fish and wildlife conservation.

That is, when you buy a fishing reel, or you buy a fishing tackle that's developed in China or arrow shafts is another big one, and you buy them online and it gets shipped directly to your home. Nobody's collecting that tax. You're the one Steve that should be paying that because you're the first point of purchase on that. So there's legislation that's been in the talks, and I

think it's going to get introduced. There was talks that would be introduced last week or this week that would close that loophole and that would have a talk direct tie.

I was joking on. This is a layup deal, right, and it's a big complex package to the point where it needs like a lot of physical people on the ground to facilitate that just the use of a lot

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

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

And I can't imagine how many physical people it would take to accomplish a full review of just one.

drill Anmar. So you see the executive orders coming and I kind of just wind up mentally hitting pause a minute to understand how much of this is, Like how what is symbolism? What's really going on? Where is their industry? Where is there even industry buy in industry possibility at the state level, what's the political mood, what is the permitting process? No administration lasts forever. Some things just take forever.

What happens in two years, Like depending on how the midterms go, how much of this stuff unravels if the normal thing plays out where you normally, you know, it's a majority of times a president in the midterms loses, loses whatever their existing majorities are in the House and Senate. So like, all of this stuff happening, and I catch myself being like, oh, just just hold on a sec. I'm trying to understand what's going on. Yeah, like, what do you.

things that I oppose. I don't want it to be that like everyone waits too long to try to get their bearings and then realize that you missed your chance to go Hey, wait a minute.

of this stuff is going to stick. I think a lot of it is not going to stick. But it's a hell of a good strategy, right. And I think from a conservation point of view, you gotta you can't say everything's on fire all the time, because you can't get people to show up all the time for everything, Like you got to choose your fires and say, gang, this one's the real one, and we got to show up for this and and you know, yeah, some groups are drawing some lines in the sand already. I think

a lot of folks are trying to be patient. It's it's tough though, because it it's scary, Like there's a lot going on on right now, and one of those ambler road boundary waters pebble mind. I mean, we've already had generation of conservation minded people work the majority of their lives on some of this stuff.

not yet. Earlier it won't at all. But remember earlier I was making the joke about I was talking about when I tell my kids, like listen, I'm gonna run I'm gonna take everyone's iPads and run them over the driveway. And and it's meant to be that. They go like, well, he's not gonna do that, but he's here something some some lesser version is gonna happen right now, Like they're going in the gun safe is probably what's gonna happen.

It's probably what they're thinking, the iPads, not the kids. No, no, yeah, Like I say I'm gonna run them over. In their head, they're like, this is gonna settle out where my iPad's in the gun safe right for like two weeks, like I can see where this is going. So with a lot of things and trying to get in like a lot of things, are trying to understand how President Trump operates and how he thinks is when is he doing

that I'm gonna run over all the iPads. When Trump said I'm gonna empty we're straying way away from conservation. I'm making up a conservation point. When Trump says I'm gonna empty Gaza, I'm gonna empty Gaza and we're gonna build a resort. He I think it's like I'm gonna run over all the iPads. That's about where I'm at, right, and anyone that has a stake in that is listening and being like, man, a minimum, the iPads are going

in the gun safe. Right. It's a way of sort of like it's a it's a way of communicating of saying I'm at a point where I'm gonna do something major, right, Yeah, So that's part of the thing is like him saying energy like if we look at like energy extraction, you know, if we look like like energy dominance such as and you just throw out like such as ambler, pebble mind, boundary waters. Is that running shit over in the driveway or does that wind up being that they're going into

the gun set. Yeah, they're going to the gun safe. And that's what's so bewildering to me personally.

We've had several of our partners that have wanted to be very vocal against some things that have come out already, and it's like, you know, let's just hold on not waiting too long. To your point, we can't do that. But you know, we haven't even had to sit down with Secretary Burgham as a community to say, here's the things that we really care about. Here's our top ten issues.

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

There's probably no sense in wasting the political capital on it and save it for those things like Pebble Mind and Ambler Road that TRCP and our broader community have worked so hard on for so long to really try to put the stake in the ground on those when the time is right.

to Trump, you know. And so I think, like it's easy if you're not trying to get access to the Secretary of the Interior, it's easy to sort of sit back in the cheap seats and you know, take a flamethroat or whatever you don't like coming out of DC. But I having worked for TIERCP, I appreciate the position that you're in because you need to have influence no matter who's sitting behind that desk, right, And so it's a matter of aligning your priorities with their priorities and

finding where you can work on things. And then that cooperation is what gives you the leverage to in turn say, actually, pebblemind is a red line for us, you know, and so it's like you have to pick those those battles strategically.

basically a Trump three point zero. And if you're going to go and cry in the corner because you don't want to deal with the right, uh, you might be sitting in that corner a very long time right right now.

So I don't know all that to say. I respect the way that the RCP does well, it puts you in an uncomfortable position a lot of times.

huge area. Right. If you're if you're an organization, let's just say you're a gun rights organization, there's not going to be really any way, Like you're not going to go if you're focus singularly on defending Second Amendment rights, you're not going to have the conversation with the Biden administration. There's kind of like nothing to talk about. You're gonna be like just resistance.

wins for you. You know, access on refuges and it's not technically conservation, but it fits into that, it fits into the interests of hunters and anglers, right, So you got you always got to be ready to there's so many issues you've got to be ready to, like pick your moment and find the allies where you find them and then do like a push poll thing because it's not I don't think you can really afford to just burn stuff down now. You become irrelevant for too long.

from the House, someone from the Senate. I've seen it go where it's too Western governors and applaud them on where areas where they were able to do conservation wins right right, and the areas where they were able to do conservation wins is often where they had political cover within their party but not looking at it, singling it

out and applauding it in a bipartisan way. And that like I said, it's it's symbolic, it's impactful, but it like puts a stake in the ground about how we're approaching this and how we're looking at it like we're gonna partner with whoever is in power wherever they can help us get conservation wins, of which there are many, right.

lot of new members there. But you know, I think about the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, where we had Mansion and Brosso that have led that for a long time, and we've got a new leader and a new chair and a new minority leader in there, and a lot of staff turnover that we've worked with for a long time, and so myself and the rest of the team have a lot of work to do just to get to know the new players in Congress as well as in the administration.

communications or supporting. I think last year's award winner might be sitting next to me here.

end of March, our auction items. We do an online auction related to this and that's available to everybody, whether you're there or not, and the auction items will be on that same website as well is our dinner.

change one thing about hunting, what would you change? And I said, it's a great question, and I thought about it, and I couldn't really think of a good one, and I said, I guess it would be that a greater percentage of the people who like and un like to hunt and fish increase their involvement and increase their involvement and conservation, increase their involvement and conversations about funding for and just demonstrated greater awareness about the issues at stake

and how to be impactful. And you can do it at a broad scale like at the federal level, like the conversations we've been having here today with TRCP, or you can do it small scale, local about animals and fish that you like that live in places where you love to hang out, as represented by the huge partnership the TRCP has with a lot of organizations that are more singularly focused on specific issues surrounding specific animals. You

can take your pick. You can find the kind of thing that fits with how you view the world, and when consider that, consider TRCP and know that they have their work cut out for them in the coming years, and trying to make sure that conservation stays front and centered in the minds of the lawmakers in DC.

working side by side with our partner groups. I don't want to discount the work that they're doing, but those groups, they're doing the advocacy on the hill, and they're doing the implementation, and they're putting on all of the local banquets. So they're doing all those things. We're just looking at the policy side of this, and so fundraising is very

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