Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I am joined by Hale Herring to discuss the return of the public land grab movement and other conservation related issues and threats that we're going to have to keep an eye on heading into the new year. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative. And today we're continuing our series looking forward into twenty twenty five and the new year, and the
focus today is public lands and conservation related issues. We talked the big beginning of the year, kind of looking back on twenty four and things that Tony and I have learned as we look towards planning our next year worth of projects. Last week, I think it was we talked with Jake about planning and looking forward to a
new year of habitat improvements. Now today we're going to go a little bit bigger picture, looking across the nation at the issues that are going to potentially impact all of us who enjoy hunting and fishing on wild public
places and also private land related places too. But today, unfortunately, we need to kind of turn back the clock to a set of issues that was talked a lot about here on the podcast you know, five, six, seven, eight years ago, and that being the land transfer movement, the public land grab movement, folks trying to get rid of our public lands, transfer them, sell them, degrade them, overutilize them for things that are not conducive to hunting and
fishing and healthy wildlife populations and clean air and clean water.
All that kind of good stuff.
This is a set of topics that has to be discussed again, and my guest today is someone who's perfectly suited to do that. It's Hail Hearing. Hell is the host of Backcountry and Hunters and Anglers podcast. He's also a long time outdoor writer and journalist. He's covered the conservation and environment related beats and kind of the intersection
of those topics with hunting and fishing. He's covered that for decades, I believe, and he's actually now working on a book exploring some of these topics, in particular the history of our public land. So Hell is a wealth of information and he's someone who has been tracking the latest iteration of these public land threats. And I think that's one of the key things that we need to understand now, is that maybe for a minute, we felt like we'd won the battle, we'd kind of stopped this
land transfer movement in its tracks. Back in eighteen nineteen twenty, there was a decent bit of good news on the public lands side of things, and over the last four years there has been a lot more of that positive changes when it comes to management of our public lands, expanding public lands again, increasing protections on our public lands again.
But it appears that new forces are ascending. New leaders, new influencers, new political think tanks and groups with different goals and different aims now are in a position to influence change for us in a not so good way.
And we've started to see the beginnings of that. And one of those ways has been what Hell has described as the slickest land grab attempt yet, which was this lawsuit that the State of Utah recently filed back at the end of twenty twenty for looking for the disposal, asking the Supreme Court for the disposal of eighteen point five million acres of public lands in Utah.
And then in.
Another like thirteen fourteen, maybe fifteen other states signed on in support of that lawsuit, states like Idaho, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska. These states were in support of this. So this is a new way. This is a new back door way to try to get folks to get folks hands on our public lands. And of course, as we've talked many times,
we got to keep public lands in public hands. So our discussion today is going to be about what this latest land grab attempt means and the good news on that front, which is just a couple days ago the lawsuit was struck down by the Supreme by the Supreme Court. So we're going to discuss what this lawsuit was about, why the Supreme Court shot it down, what that means for the future, what a all of this might point towards over the coming year or years, as far as
how the public land grab movement might be shifting. In what we need to do as hunters and anglers and outdoors people to make sure that we are ready for this and ready for some new challenges coming down the pipeline because it is now time to re engage. We're going to discuss this. We're going to discuss why twenty twenty five. In the next few years, we as a hunting and fishing community are going to have to kind
of get on it again. Maybe we've been sitting back on our laurels a bit recently, sitting pretty feeling comfortable. No longer we need to rally. We need to stand back up and get busy, because if we don't, we are once again faced with the very real threat of
losing places we really care about. Places like the Boundary Waters, places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, places like the Tongus National Forest, places like the hundreds of millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management across the American West. That's what we're discussing today. Hale is the perfect guy to discuss it with. I will give a
one quick soft plug. If this whole land transfer movement thing, if the history of how our public lands have been traded and managed and now are under threat, if that's kind of new to you, if you haven't been following this story over the last decade with us here on Wired Hunt, I gotta plug my book. You can see it behind me if you're watching the video. It's called That Wild Country and Epic Journey into the past, present,
and Future of America's Public Lands. That book was my my attempt to try to get the average person up to speed on what's going on and do it in a fun, adventurous, compelling way. So there's a bunch of stories about my adventures on public lands, hunting and fishing and backpacking and rafting and doing all that kind of stuff.
And along the way, I'm going to get you all up to speed on how we acquired six hundred and forty million acres of federal public lands, how we is America and have access to these things, and the crazy story that led to that, as well as the debates and controversies and concerning threats that we will be facing here in the future to make sure we maintain that access in these incredible places for us to go out there and camp and hunt and fish and have a
hell of a time. So check out That Wild Country. There are maybe autograph copies still on the media website. If not, going over to Amazon pick up a copy and lets.
You do that.
Tune into the rest of this podcast with hal Herring. It's a good one. It's an important one.
Thanks for being.
Here all right here with me now on the line is mister Hale Herring.
Welcome back to the show.
Hell thanks for really having me man man Mark.
Yeah, I always appreciate you making time to do this. These are some of my favorite chats. And that's for another reasons. One because you're just a wealth of information and second because you are someone who from afar gives me both hope and inspiration when it comes to the future of our wild places, public lands, wildlife through your podcast, through your words you have You've done that for a lot of people. Hell, so I want to thank you here at the outset for doing that.
I appreciate that. It ain't really I wasn't really trying to do that. That's how I feel. I've had it. If it comes through, it's just it's just the way I've lived it. Like my life has been so I've been so lucky, raised my kids and my family with the public lands and hunting and fishing Missouri River catfish and I mean I just and all the way back where I grew up in Alabama. It's like I've been lucky, so my passion for all this is kind of borne in and.
Yeah, it's hard to fake that when it's that deep in your bones and your history.
And same for me. It's uh, it's these things.
They have given us so much, So much of our lives have revolved around these places, these pursuits, these critters you can't help but want to make sure they're still wrong. I want to make sure that this this pumper can keep on ticking right, you know.
I feel like there's a there is kind of in my case, I've been so lucky with it. If there is a quid pro quo. Yeah, And then being a reporter like Field and Stream, I got to deep dive into like some of the things that can go wrong and some of the things that have gone right.
You know, and and and that's I guess why I wanted to have you back on here again. I wish we had good things that we maybe do have some
good things to talk about. But I think the major impetus for giving you a ring again is the fact that the boogeyman of six, seven, eight, nine years ago that we were talking about with the public land transfer movement, the divestment of public lands, the idea of selling or transferring public lands that was getting really concerning in twenty fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Somewhere in that window, we're starting to see that starting
to rear its ugly head again. I think for a minute there folks kind of felt like, all right, we've got it tamped down. We got this thing as a political poison pill. If you try to mess with our public lands, it's going to be political suicide for you, right. And in some of these recent years we felt pretty good about things. But there have been some recent changes, some recent attempts I think that are maybe forcing us to open our eyes again to a new series of threats.
In this lawsuit coming out of Utah is maybe the most glaring of those. And literally the day that we started record, the day that we're recording this, some big news has opened up on that front. Can you just give us a quick rundown of what this latest attempt to take our public lands was coming out of Utah, why that was so concerning, and then what happened today?
Sure, and we can all be thankful that we live in a country with a you can argue with however you want, but with a functioning Supreme Court of the United States. You know, anyway, we can argue about its composition and all that, but the court did rule. It's not for me or for you. The court ruled on
the basis of the lawsuit. The lawsuit was the State of Utah filed a lawsuit against the United States federal government, our government claiming that and I'm not sure how they picked eighteen point five million acres of BLM Bureau of Land Management managed public lands in Utah had to be gotten rid of, had to be disposed of. They claimed that it was unconstitutional for the US government to maintain control or management of those lands under the good okay,
because they were unappropriated. And to try to get that short but make it understandable is like people, if you know about the homestead Acts. Right, So the United States government gave away, for a very small fee, starting in eighteen sixty two, parcels little land to settle the West. We had already given away huge amounts in the east, right, but in the West was opening up after the Civil War, and so those lands, they were unappropriated lands that were
given to homesteaders. The great piece of history. It's one of the reasons the United States is the way it is. You know, it was a Jeffersonian concept from the beginning. You know a lot about it, Mark and I. But I'm just trying to boil it down. But yeah, so Utah, nobody, nobody wanted these desert rock lands in Utah at that time, and so they remained a part of the federal lands. And Utah is claiming that they are unappropriated and so
they have to be gotten rid of. Okay, So the problem with that, there's a lot of problems with the lawsuit, which the Supreme Court found quickly this morning, was that these lands are appropriated. They are federal public lands managed for multiple use for the American.
People by the Bureau of Land Management.
By the Bureau of Land Management. In this case, the problem with the lawsuit was that if it had been successful, thirteen other states signed on to this boondoggle. And that's a problem of the American culture wars right now, I can tell you because the state of Alabama signed on to this, and I guess they figured it unappropriated. Bankhead National Forest, where some of the greatest public land in the Southeast was also they're going to get a hold
of that. I don't know what they're planning. What the concept was. I think it was a culture war thing. We're all against the federal government. We better prove that by signing on to this nutball lawsuit.
Yeah, because by signing this amicus brief, as I understand it, that was nothing more than kind of ceremonial, right, I mean, they're signing onto this would not in any way change the outcome of the lawsuit, right.
No, it would not, but it certainly threw a gauntlet down as to who what these people believe about our public lands and hunting and public hunting and fishing in the Southeast and there we've got a big We've got a big problem. This is this the amicus brief with the additional signings shows us that we have a big problem in amongst conservation, hunting and fishing and public lands users in the United States.
Basically fifteen or sixteen states with a government that is antagonistic towards our public lands.
Yes, was what that would show well? With with elected officials, Yeah, I would say, yeah, I mean, the governments, whatever we make it, we vote for these dudes.
Yeah, Wyoming, Yeah, Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Alabama.
I think one or two of the Dakota's. There was a long list of them.
Yeah, and I think a whole lot of our listeners live in those states. Yes, And I think that's a clear sign that we've got some talking to do to our representatives.
We do, and and so the so the the lawsuit was tossed out this morning, dismissed this morning by the Supreme Court, with this enormous list of case law behind it. Behind the dismissal that this this lawsuit is not valid. Right that those lands are appropriated and they are appropriated by That's not what this frime court said. They just said the lawsuit wasn't valid. But the fact is is that you know, the origins that we were talking before we get record that the origins of this were the
anger from the off road vehicle community. This is what I understand at the Bureau of Land Management for closing down and trying to recover some places that that had been become very overused by damaged right damage totally. Uh And like Labyrinthe Canyon and the mo Ebb. I mean, if you've ever gone to the Rock Crawler festival down there, you know it's pretty pretty big. It's huge are these are This is a huge industry.
I ended up down there once by accident at the same time as the Easter weekend GSA.
Festival or whatever.
Yeah, it was it was wild, that's for sure.
Wow. And and I don't share in rock hopping and you know, like like mad Max in on the on the desert, right, but it's cool that other people do.
And that was, you know, one of my big takeaways while I was down there. And what makes federal management of our public lands so special is that we have this multiple use mandate on them, right that stipulates that this land is not just for the cattle grazers, not just for the rock climbers, not just for the deer hunters, or the miners or the oil drillers or the loggers or the bird watchers. It's for all of us. And there has to be some compromise there to to manage for that.
Right. Yeah, nobody can get everything they want. I mean, it's just like living in a family or or sharing a house with people. But the what what made me amazed about this was that the impetus for this lawsuit, and this we talked about this is kind of this is like with the Bundies and all those other folks too that were in the in the more it advised Sagebrush rebel movement was if they got what they said they wanted, they would be the ones that would be
the first loss. They would have to pay to go rock hopping on the desert, and there would be huge places like like when you think about the Amungiri Resort down there just south of the Utah border in Arizona where they charge what thirty eight hundred dollars a night and they pick you up and fly you up in a helicopter to do sunrise yoga on the mesa and they have like, you know, little servants that come and bring you the dates or whatever and make sure that
you're hydrated in the h you're not going on like a good camera. But those people would be happy to buy another thirty forty fifty thousand acres of this, of course they would.
And so that's I mean, that's the same worry that we had back in twenty sixteen about the land transfer movement was basically, if federal public lands go to states, states have a mandate to have a positive ROI on those state lands. They have to make money off of them, and they simply would not be able to do that with this level of land and the management needed the risk of wildfires and a thousand other things that would just bankrupt a state inevitably leading them to have to
sell these lands. Right, isn't that still the case with this situation.
Yeah, that's for sure that case. I mean Idaho did a full study of that, and like they had to cut down every tree, all the timber immediately in order to p off like the management you know, costs. But this this lawsuit was even more kind of wild because if you look at the PR campaign for it, it was stand for our Land or something, you know. But the lawsuit actually said that the lands have to be
disposed of, that the federal government couldn't hold them. This one didn't say they had to be transferred right to the states. So this this was this was you're basically a taxpayer in Utah was basically paying a PR firm and a law firm to carry a lawsuit to take away the very place they hike, hunt, or ride their rock crawler. This one was like we're talking about the Overton window, the things that are acceptable. This one was throwing the Overton window over way off to right field
left field? And is that why?
I heard you say this on your on your podcast at one point that this was maybe the slickest attempt yet that you've seen for stealing our public lands. And and there's a little bit of I think one thing I worry about is issue fatigue over this thing. Right, we keep on talking about challenges to public lands, the threats to our public lands, and folks have been hearing this for years and years and years now, and there's
this worry that eventually folks will stop paying attention. But this one seemed like one that rose a lot more red.
Flags than usual. Why why was that?
Why did this one stand out as so concerning and and maybe pretending something even more concerning in the future.
Well, because it was an incredible propaganda campaign. This one was better. I was coming back we did uh we were working Bureau Land Management uh sagebrush planting job in October and we had one of them was in Colorado and we came back to the Utah cardor Wassat's cardor there, you know, and I saw those giant signs with these like super nice looking people standing on them with their kids, going stand for our land. And I thought it was I mean, did you see the billboards. No not, They're
very very high end. Uh. And then it would say go to stand for our land dot org. And then there would be a map of the United States which was like completely red west of the Mississippi, you know, like the federal government controls everything. And it was funny because they had even put all the Indian reservations on there. And it was a but it was a slick propaganda campaign, something like the Bundees and the the old Sagebrush rebel guys. They would have never they would have never done this.
This was the governor of Utah and using the taxpayer money to create a slick propaganda campaign to divest the American people of some of the greatest red rock country in the world.
This idea, though, that they're putting out there, the federal government owns all your land. The big bad boogeyman bureaucrats in DC are making horrible decisions. We the state, you, the people here close to these lands, you should have You should be able to control these places. The states should be managing these places, et cetera. That it first glance, might seem like an appealing message. Why And one other thing I'll add is that we often hear and sometimes
have seen real shortcomings with federal management sometimes of our lands. Right, it's not always perfect. There's a lot of challenges. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of issues, right, So it's not perfect over there. So people love to complain about federal management of everything. But in this case public lands. Sure, why I guess what would you say to someone with that set of critiques? Why is federal management actually a
good thing to continue? And why is it that this idea, this alluring idea of local control, Why is that a little bit of snake oil.
Well, because you have way more input into federally controlled public lands. Federally manages public lands, and you ever will under SITTLA. If you look at this, that SITTLA is a state Land Board of Utah and they've been selling off state lands at a great clip. Now, this that state transfer movement will tell you right away that well, we're not letting these aren't school trust lands. We're taking over huge sections of federally managed public lands and we're
not going to make them school trust lands. So we can do whatever we want with them. But the fact is, what do they want to do. Do you think you would have more local control over Sittla lands. You can't even you can't even camp on state lands in Colorado without permission, if I if I understand that right. Montana fought a huge lawsuit in the nineteen eighties over public
access to state land Section. I mean, it's just let me tell you, I think there is a lot of mismanagement of every kind in America all the time, and in Sudan and in Brazil and in Finland. Human beings do good things and they do bad things, and federal management of public lands is always in conflict, and it should be. If you and I are inherit a great, big mansion with our twelve siblings, we're going to argue over whether the bathroom fixtures ought to be gold, how
steep the steps ought to be. When Grandma comes, we're gonna argue over that, and we're gonna make mistakes, and somebody's gonna paint the living room, you know, purple, and you're gonna be furious about that. But that doesn't mean that you give the mansion away to some dude from Norway and everybody in the family live out on the streets looking back at the mansion and going like, oh, man, remember when I had that bedroom upstairs and we.
Played chess, and wasn't that nice?
Wasn't it great? And so I'm a big fan one. I think that if we look at public land management since eighteen ninety one when we had the first forest reserve signed by President Harrison, you will find missteps, and you will find all kinds of all kinds of things. You will find good mostly good people working very hard to try to do the right thing as they understand it at that time, and you will see one of the greatest success stories that Aldo Leopold. Aldo Leopold would
approve of seventy percent right. Sixty percent even Aldo Leopold, the great conservation thinker of his time, who worked for the Soil Conservation Service during the dust Bowl and was the proponent of the first wilderness area, he would approve about sixty percent right. And dude, when you have this wonderful thing, you got to argue over the management. And that's what we do. And this is good. It's good to argue over. It's good for the OHV people to say,
bolm is stepping on my toes. I want to do this, I want to do that, and people argue over that, and they go out and look at Labyrinth Canyon and they look at the places and they say, ah, this is too much impact for me. And then somebody else goes, ain't no impact here. This is wonderful. I love this. Shooting on public lands is always going to be a big It's going to be a big issue going forward.
Of course, can you take your refrigerator out there, you blow it up with the ak and you drive off, and somebody else goes like, oh my god, look at this horrible thing. Right, and so you can't really do that if you want to keep on acting that way. Yeah, so we but it's not just compromise either. It's bringing people. This is the great unifier the United States. Public land unifies right left, Republican, Democrat, Independent. This is the last of the great commons in this country.
And I think a key thing to remember is despite the fact that we can point to plenty of things that aren't just raight, we're plenty of things that we personally aren't quite happy with we have. We are the envy of the world in many cases with what we have, with this imperfect yet still really damn good system. To carefully manage these lands as best as possible for the
greatest number of people. With this multiple use mandate, we have built in a set of people hate bureaucracy, but sometimes when you have something as precious as this public land estate, we should have a lot of guardrails in place. We should have a lot of process in place, We should have a lot of public input opportunities. But yeah, it slows things down sometimes. Yes, it causes some speed bumps and challenges, but it's that important. If you if the states had this, none of that's.
There, no no, and and people, you know they the nineteen seventies were the environmental decade, you know, when we set a lot of that federal policy and law in place.
Flipmu for instance, in nineteen seventy six, the need for process, a National Environmental Policy Act. Night was that seventy six, I.
Think somewhere in the ballpark.
Yeah, And these are onerous and they're difficult to deal with, and sometimes we we'll go back and look at them and say do we need this? And that's the beauty of having the mansion, having the land. We can figure out and we'll make mistakes, and you know, if the bureaucracy has gotten so overwhelming and bloated that it's not working for public land management anymore. We have the voting power, we have the citizen power to change that.
Well.
I think a great example of that was, you know, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty whenever.
That was when.
As we moved through this land transfer movement, we were able we as a collective outdoor collection of communities, hunters and anglers and climbers and mountain bikers and outdoor enthusias of all stripes, really stood up and rallied around public lands and said, hey, this is not okay to transfer these to states, this is not oka to to dispose
of them. And it got to a point where where to get re elected in twenty twenty as a senator, several Republican senators had to really make strong stands on public lands and get the president at the time to sign, for example, the Great American out Doors Act into law, things that would show a win on the public lands side of things. To help get the support of hunters and anglers and other people who care about these things.
We were able to make it a political necessity. We were able to influence change, and that that was just for me a very encouraging sign that when we come together on some of these things, we can steer the ship that's right.
And I mean I envision a day when, you know, never it's never going to stop people trying to get a hold of the Utah pubbet lands, when somebody will buy them or you know, and there's money to be made off of getting rid of our public lands. I mean, you can imagine what somebody would pay for the Talladega National Forest in Alabama for instance, like like it would be a lot, you know. So you have to choose. The people have to choose to keep this institution that
we've inherited. You gotta choose. You gotta choose every and kind of it's kind of like being on a personal level of self discipline. You gotta choose every day today, I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna I'm gonna get up early, I'm gonna get to work. I'm gonna make my things happen. You got to choose this every day because the world, if you just let this slide, you'll lose the public lands. It's just they're too valuable.
Well, and the thing about other people, it's it's an unfortunate imbalance. We have to show up for every single fight, and we've got to win as many of them as we can. And even if we win one of these fights, like you just said, there's gonna be another one next month or next year, five years down the road, are fifty years down the road. These will continue over and over and over again. On the flip side, if we lose one of these battles, we lose some piece of
land or some classification of whatever it is. You lose one of these battles, you lose these places forever in many cases. So it's it's it's it's something we can't take lately.
No, and for one of the dangers of living in a functioning country is that you become incredibly complacent. I mean it's like I would I often I oftn ask people to imagine what the United States would be like. Say you're raising your grandchildren in a place where the public lands have been that whole idea has been lost, and maybe you kept the national parks where you can go if you you know you can't take your dog.
You gotta obey all the rules because everybody's there. You know, you can't go out on the Blm Lands and walk for a week. You can't go out in the Missouri Breaks of Montana and and go illk hunting without paying or getting permission. You know, you can't float the Missouri River in camp I just ask people. You can't go to the Sipsy Wilderness in Alabama or the Bienville National Forest in Mississippi and just go down to the creek with the kids. You gotta either pay or you got
to own it. I ask people all the time, what would that would your country? How would that affect you? Well, for a growing number of people, mark they don't care. They don't go outside. They're own their game boys or whatever you call it. And you know, and they don't care. But for us, for the people who know, and the people who know what our country, the beauty of our country, American dirt, right, American water, American mountains. This is how you get to experience this. This is where the rich
and the poor they all get the same. This is America to me, and it's not just to me.
Yeah, And you know, I think there's a lot of different parts of our American society, government, political system that feel very out of our hands, that fear feel out of our control, that feel so far above us and
what well, yes, yes that is true. But my point being, I personally don't feel like I have much influence over or could really change something when it comes to let's say, artificial intelligence policy and how that's going to impact the future of our government and defense system and privacy matters, let's say, but public lands and wildlife. Actually, we have
some pretty strong tangible means to influence decisions there. There are there are systems in place, and it's it's really I mean, it's still huge, but it's still relatively approachable enough that our voice is actually mattered. There are clear, simple things we can do that can help, Like, we can change this. This is a part of our country that we should not feel nihilistic about because we actually can change the narrative.
And we have since eighteen ninety one podcast I was looked up. They had this guy, I think it was in the twenties. They were the Week's Act had been passed nineteen eleven, which allowed the federal government to buy like logged out and abandoned lands in the East. Right, they wanted their own national forests, and they had this guy,
Uncle Joe Kennon. He was a Senator from Illinois, and every time anybody brought up in Congress that you know, to purchase like the Apalachical and National forests, he would say, not one cent for scenery. And he would yell the same thing over and over, rope and uh. And so we have we have had this. We have had Uncle
Joe Cannon with us since eighteen ninety one. At least we had him with the robber barons in Montana, you know, who said those who follow us can damn well take care of themselves and then like drink some kind of like super good liquor, you know, and while making fun of all the people like working in the mine. But we've had these people forever, and I think of Uncle Joe Cannon. They still set up the Bankhead National Forest in Alabama, Appalachian in Florida, the White Mountains National Forest.
He was yelling not one ship for trainery while we while the rest of us were getting all this beautiful stuff done. Right. Yeah. So what's happened more recently that I really want to see changed is that we have thrown public lands and conservation and clean water and the future of our hunting vision in a culture war basket where somehow it landed on the left side when it couldn't be no more.
The most destructive environmental regimes on earth have been communists have been leftists, true, and like Pinochet, and Chili was a right winger and he was pretty bad.
Rady gave away the really sold their rivers. But the trick was authoritarian regimes on right or left have been terrible for people's freedom and for the environment. But we have got to get conservation in the public lands out of the culture wars basket. And we it's not in there for me, it's not in there for you, But we've got to get them out, and we've got to bring them in front of the two political parties and say this is what we're gonna do, buddy, little little feller.
We're keeping the National Forest Bureau of Land Management lands. We're keeping all of our public lands and our National Wildlife refuges, which are unbelievable crown jewels. We're keeping all that stuff. We're gonna have clean water to fish in and drink and big, strong, healthy kids raised on big clean air because this is America. And now you can argue over how to achieve that yeah, boys and girls
in Congress. But that goal is one that is going to be outside of your political like grooviness, whatever it is you're doing with the big signs where you're taking the tax payer money and making big signs in Utah. Yeah, and with that action.
And rather than this being an argument over is this a goal that you know one party is going to pursue and one's not. How about we argue over the solutions rather than like doesn't matter, because it matters. We have to make it known to both parties that this matters to us. And then yeah, let's get the right side and the left side to then debate and argue and you know, butt heads over the right ways to get there. But when it's all on one side, we're in trouble.
We're in trouble. And it's not I mean, I just don't think, well, I know people, people who know if you fish or hunt, particularly, you know that you can't do that without clean water and public lands and public access. I mean, it's not like some kind of theory. It's not abstract. And the other problem is is we inherited this. I'm older than you are, but you and I have come up in a time where we had these things based on the work and hard fault battles of our forebears.
I mean, the same kind of way we fought King George, like we got this, we don't really have the right to go, like, ah, it's just too much, you know, like Beavis and butthead that thing where they were going to save the people in the burning airplane but they couldn't get the door opened, and he goes, he go Beavis says, a, this is too hard, and the other guy goes, yes, something's hard, it's not worth doing, and they just leave and the planet bloods up. It's like
we inherited something wonderful, yeah, and we just can't. It ain't gonna go on my watch.
No, so so it I'm I'm happy that our conversation today is one that has some good news, which is that this lawsuit that was still concerning for a lot of people has been thrown out, so that battle was won. We got you know, that gopher was knocked on the head.
That's yeah, that gopher. There's many other gophers coming.
Yeah, some more gophers coming, right. It seems like this is a sign of more to come. Can you can you can you elaborate a little bit of what you think might be coming next or what we need to be keeping an eye out, because it seems like this is not an anomaly, right right.
So the the problem with politics in the United States right now is that it's become oversimplified, you know, And that's true, and in this public land so that the public land thing should not be a political issue, but it is. So what I think is coming is that we are going to see more and more defunding of the agencies that manage these lands. I know that the wildlife refuges are kind of in funding crisis now, and
you're gonna see more and more. It's it's there's actually a strategy here that's been going on since the seventies eighties,
where it's called defund and decry. So Congress doesn't allogate the money to the to the say the US Forest Service or the Forest Service has to spend all its money on fires that doesn't get any more, and then there's no trail work done, and then there's no there's no creek restoration work done, there's no logging clean up done, and people go like the the campground isn't clean enough, and people go, this is ridiculous. I didn't bring my family out here to look at a turned over outhouse.
And then you say, then somebody goes, you know, what would really be good is if they didn't have this far service stuff anyway, because they're not doing the job, are they so? And that's what is that. I see that coming big time, and and I see overcrowding of public lands. I thought it was gonna bring more constituents in just to celebrate public lands. But in places overcrowded on public lands, like during the COVID years year or whatever that was, uh, people are going, man, this is awful.
There's too many people. And so I see that people the ones who want to divest us of the public lands, they're gonna be getting working the budgets down and they're gonna be pointing out every instance of mismanagement and then going, wouldn't it be good if like you didn't even have this mansion?
Yeah? Well, you know, like you said, politics has unfortunately gotten I guess I don't know how to describe it.
But politics are tribal.
They raise a lot of emotions that you get these like team kind of ideas where if you identify as a Republican or identify as a Democrat, you feel like you're kind of you have to take everything in that bucket, right.
But if you were to look at the administration coming in here next week and set everything else aside, everything else that might that they're doing good, every decision that we might be in supportive and if you look simply at what happened last time around when it comes to public lands, there are a series of trends which I
think fall in line with what you just said. I mean, for example, last time the guy put in charge of the Bureau of Land Management was one of the most prominent folks speaking out against public lands, speaking out about disposing of public lands, and that guy was put in
charge of the public lands last time. The playbook was written by this guy again for the upcoming administration on how to get rid of public lands, how to like you said, defund, decry, etc. There was this death of a thousand cuts that was taking place over the course of that four years, where you saw many of our national monuments significantly reduced in size, like Bear's Ears, where I know you spend a bunch of time recently, Ascalante, you saw some of some very special places, there's been
a lot of conversation around whether they are the right place for really risky mining projects, things like you know the Boundary Waters area where that was opened up possibly for leases, and then most recently that was a moratorium was put in place, but there we might see that
opened up again. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an incredible iconic landscape of America, has been debated for many decades, and whether or not that's to be opened up for drilling never was opened up until this last administration. The Roadless Rule something that's protected these last roadless areas across our national forests that was rescinded in the areas
such as the Tongest National Forest. So there's there's all of these different examples where public lands and healthy wild places were kind of slashed away at, picked away at, picked away at, picked away at, defunded, et cetera. Everything else aside in this one arena, there's a lot of sign for concern based on what happened last time around.
Yes, do you expect a.
That to continue as it was? Do you think it's going to accelerate given the fact that there's not a second time around they're shooting for.
This is like, this is it?
Do you have any other thoughts predictions on as far as what we need to be keeping tabs on, prepared to fight back on anything like that.
I do so. One the last one twenty sixteen through we saw the rescinding of the monuments in Utah, right, so there was a weird quid pro quo there where Utah kind of delivered for President Trump and so they got these things in return. And that's a big can of worms. It's really interesting. I think people should that are listening to this should be looking at that, like, you know, you deliver so x number the majority of
the vote and you'll get this. You know, did the American people want the reduction of Bears, Ears or Grand Staircase Escalante? They did not, and they said that repeatedly, but they got that. That's what happened to us anyway. So in a sense that was a but in a sense that was a quid pro quo to the Utah. So I think that's really repulsive and I don't think
that the American people are going to accept that. But like the appointment of William Parker Penley as head of the BLM, who is this fossil from the early Reagan years who was so scandal ridden even then as a young man that he went out with James Watt back in those days. Right, But so so there was this fossil there that they found because they were, as President Trump said, the first time, we were highly unprepared to win.
We were really not prepared. We didn't understand so much of what we wanted to do during those four years. Whether you agree with that or not. Right, So, on this administration this time, as my wife said this the other day, the American people voted to kick over the apple cart for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, and a lot of apples have spilled out, and we're going to determine. Now, this is way different than the first administration,
although it's so similar in that it is radically pro business. Okay, so if you can make money mining out right outside the boundary waters, that's going to be on the table, and the America people will be asked to engage deeply to say we're pro business as well, we understand these things. To have a multinational global company come and put in jeopardy to boundary waters, it's not our dear idea of
good business. We're not going to do that, Okay. Ambler Road in Alaska probably not good business to open that up again. I would ask anybody to listen to the podcast I did with John Leshie about the eighteen seventy two mining law. We're talking about expanding mining on public lands in the United States East and West under a law written in eighteen seventy two to encourage a guy with a pickaxe and a burrow to go grab public land to make it his own and dig a hole
and find something that we needed. That law has to be reformed, repealed, rescinded before we can do mining in America in a in a sensible fashion of good business. So the fact that that law is not on the table here, that's very concerning. People should be working on that now. The American people should demand that American minerals are used for by American companies to produce American jobs
and American resources. All right. So there's going to be a radical pro business emphasis in the Trump administration, Okay, but I myself am not afraid. I think that we should be wary, and we should say that's good business and that's not good business, and we will stand for this, and we will not stand for this, and we're going
to be able to do that. And for instance, the government efficiency or whatever, the department of whatever that extraining this extracurricular thing is, we could use that mark, We could use that, We could use that in public lands management. How do we make public lands management better, more efficient? How do we get local communities employed finn and timber in the Tongus? How do we get local communities employed restoring creeks in the bitter Root after those fires? Right?
Because we are not doing that right now and it's not good.
Doesn't that come back though, to the budget issues?
So much of it we don't on prioritization of the budget. I noticed that we have lots of budget for certain things that I don't particularly think are healthy. I'm saying, like the American people are going to have to say, you know, creek restoration on public lands is a priority for me, and you can do whatever you want with this money, but we would like to see it allocated in this way more efficiently as well. You know, I'm not sure that that building new RV parks is really
a great use of the money. For instance, Yeah, when you have areas where you could, you could fence off rapoia in places and create incredible fisheries in clean water down Street when you have just all of this work that we could be do with. So I just I'm
not afraid of this. I may turn out to be a Pollyanna or overly optimistic, but I believe that when the American people decided to upset the apple cart here that it doesn't mean that we want filthier water and no public lands and and all of us to have our all our rare earth materials stolen by some company from Chili.
Would you would you say, though, given what seems to be a pretty clear, as you said, probi business emphasis for the next four years, very pro business, if we were to grow complacent and bury our heads and our phones and our Netflix shows, and or just being out in the woods by ourselves, hunting and fishing and just doing our own thing, if we were to do that and not engage, whether it's going to come up in the next four years with this radical, very pro business agenda,
would it be fair to say that we could.
Expect to see a lot of these special places.
In danger if we don't make sure we're in it.
One hundred and Not only that, but they're the the the powers that wont to take over public lands and sell them to their wealthy friends. Our ascendant right now, Yeah, I mean, I mean the I mean, we have probably the most billionaires making policy that we've ever had, and the few is like normal people. So you're gonna have to counter that. But there's three hun undred and forty something million Americans. Let me, I have a quote that
I always use, and it's perfect for this thing. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but there will be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never did. Will find out just what any people will quietly submit to, And you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will continue until they're resisted with words or blows or both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. That was Frederick Douglass talking about slavery in the South. Wow. So that's what I think. If you are not willing to stand up, or if you're watching and the running on the treadmill at the gym watching Fox News. They're making you think there's only two kinds of Americans and they hate each other and
they won't ever agree on anything. And I don't know why the other side does it too, I guess, but I don't know why they're what motive we have for dividing the American people, But if we remain this divided, we'll lose the public lands and the conservation that supports hunting and fishing. We shouldn't be divided over that.
We have talked about various permutations of this issue, you know, at least over the last decade. You and I I know what You've talked about many many other people over many decades. So now in twenty twenty five, we're quarter of the way through this new millennia.
I guess it'd be or sorry century. What can we do now?
What are the most positive productive means for not just enduring what might be coming, but also influencing in a positive way. What's the battle cry? What's the game plan here of these coming years?
I think we're going to have to So the energy is on the right wing at the moment, and we as conservatives or whatever you political label you want to put on most hunters and fishermen are going to have to get through to the elected people, the people we vote for, that these things are priorities and that they will not be thrown in some basket of culture war topics. That these are the wildlife refuge system. It's so wonderful,
like it is such a crown jewel of America. The national forests are so important to us, our us as as Americans, our identity, our freedom. Okay, these are not political footballs. And so we're going to have to get through into this pro business community that we that there are certain things we will not be, we will not accept,
you know. I mean this is another topic. But we we have huge success stories all the way back to eighteen ninety one on conservation in America, and huge the dextervation of the bison, the loss of almost all the waterfowl that you know. So we we had these huge failures and these enormous successes, and we're doing both right now again. But we're like we're failing with clean water
throughout the Midwest, really failing. And we let the Clean Water Act be trimmed back to its original definition in nineteen seventy two to the point where we're failing to protect the clean water that supports fishing and swimming and all that. So we have these huge failures, and the folks that we just elected are not the ideal people to address that. Let's say that I'm going to be very objective here. The folks that we just object elected.
Donald Trump, for instance, will tell you that he doesn't know anything about that. That's what he told the Farm Bureau when they rescinded the Waters of the US rule last time. He said, I don't even know what it is, but it's terrible, and you folks told me that we don't want it, and so I'm getting rid of it. He said the same thing about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He said, nobody cares about this. It's open, right. So obviously people didn't speak up and say that's not true.
We do care about it. And you may not support the Waters of the US rule, but I'll bet you don't support eating drinking blue green algae in de moins. So these folks, I see this as an opportunity, mark totally. I don't think somebody like Elon Musk is so focused on Mars or Venus or whatever that planet they want to go to, which is fine with me. I'm like, have at it, man, little rockets, you know, like I
like smart people. Sure, right, But here's the thing. A guy who's spending a lot of time thinking about Mars and stuff, he's probably not thinking about the water fishing in Des Moines, yes, or in Sioux Falls. And that's
our business and that's what we know. And so but I would say this, I doubt that President Trump or Elon Musk or vvak Ramus, I bet none of them actually are going like, you know, what I really want to do is get rid of the Talladega National Forest, right, you know, you know what I bet i'd like to do. I'd like to pollute mobile base so nobody can fish in it or have a nice house on it. They're
not doing that. And these are jd Vance for instance, when to Yale whatever, the guy has some education, he's not gonna say that clean water is not important. So it's up to us now to put some apples back in this apple cart and say this apple's really important. Don't let that one go down the hill. And I honestly think that we're in a place where we could have, We could effect positive change in the United States right now that to me, we've been a little too complacent
to do. We've kind of rested on the laurels of the nineteen seventies and a Wilderness Act of sixty four and the dust bowl stuff. You know, that's what I think. I'm pretty excited. Actually. I think it's a very dangerous time for all the reasons you mentioned, and I think that times of danger kind of make me feel better.
So what are some specific tactics or actions that we as individuals can take to help make sure that we grab this apple, put it back in the cart, and say, hey, folks, this one's really important. Do not screw this one up, give this one some tender love and care. Listen to us.
How do we actually do that?
Hell?
Because I it's an idea and it's a sentiment that makes a lot of sense, But I think a lot of folks then still wonder, like, well, what does that mean to my daily life, or what does that mean for me this week? Or how do why is an individual in Des Moines, Iowa actually do that?
Well, I've decided and it's I do handle the podcast or back undrenders and anglers. So maybe I have a conflict of interest there, but I decided in the last ten years looking, I've been writing this book for five and a lot of the research was on how did we get like how did you get the Clean Water Act passed? You know? And one as a as a as an individual, read books and listen to podcasts and and and really concentrate on what it is that you
think is important in life. I'm this is kind of like, like, like what this is. I wrote a piece for Field and Stream years ago and it was in response to unfettered energy development on their own plateau which I went to see and I thought, this is not good, right this We can get the energy without doing this right? And uh, I wrote a piece called what do you really believe in? And so number one, I'm going to answer this as quickly as I can. What do I
really believe in? You know, like clean water and having kids swimming and catching crawdads and a creek that doesn't poison them, having public lands where I can go, like a person can go hunting for a week or even a day, or you could just take a six pack of beer out and sit on the river, you know, right, so I think that the hunters and fishermen are listening to your podcast are going to say, I do believe
in these things. I believe in them strongly. And the second thing, which it took me a while because I'm kind of highly individualistic, was that old Hemingway thing from to have and have not, where the guy says a man alone just ain't got no chance. And the truth is is Trout Unlimited backcountry hunters and anglers, Isaac Walton League Ducks Unlimited to the Mix is probably the greatest wetlands conservation group in the world. They all have problems.
They're running by human beings, and human beings are fallible, yes, but Americans in large teams have really driven the positive changes that we're talking about. And that I hate. I don't hate to say it, I just it took me a long time to get to this is you gotta join with like minded brothers and sisters. And those numbers equate to a politician going like sending the staff. We
got to meet these folks. Sorry, I don't want to hear about clean water in Iowa, but there's like twenty five thousand people who might not vote for me next time. And then one of the old time politicians. I think a guy told me this once in DC. He said, yeah, it's a good idea, Now make me do it. That's it. Yeah, And it's tough because used to be sportsman. In the nineteen thirties, they had all of these local sportsmen groups
and Montana was full of them. I don't know about where you grew up, if it was or not, but Montana was full of them. Or Valley County Sportsmen, great prickly pair of sportsmen, Hellgate hunters and anglers in Missoula, and they were incredibly politically active on a statewide and
local level. And those they got older and older. I would go to the meetings, you know, and everybody got older and older, and then they just kind of they're still around, some of them, but they've they've waned in power, and so I would like to see that again. But I don't think we're gonna see that because people are so busy, man, Like you got little kids. My kids are grown and I'm still like like college tuition. Oh,
and everybody's busy, but it's not. You're not too busy really to join like back huntry hunters and anglers or or Trout Unlimited or something. Yeah, and they're thereby amplify your voice, multiply your voice. That's my answer. I guess. Yeah, what is the public lands equivalent to that? Like National Forest Foundation?
Yeah, I mean, like you said, BHA is about as good of a modern day version of these sportsman's clubs too, right with Pine Knights and things like that. Like that's that's the best example I've seen of the younger crowd activating as a community.
Yeah. I would let me add this to And you've done some of this, I've done some I've done some of it, But I would like to do more volunteering with like these BHA things and in meeting people of like mind. Ye. I gotta tell you. I was. I was feeling very beat down the other day, and I was working on a chapter in my book which involved Alabama.
And I called a young guy there who's a biologist and a fanatical hunting and fision guy, and he was on his way to waterfowl hunting up in North Alabama, and it happened to be in a place that I
went to in high school. And we got it on Google Earth and we looked at it, and I felt better for three days after just talking with Joe Jenkins and his enthusiasm for going hunting down there, and I realized that there's all these people who love the same things I do and are are really motivated to fight for them, and that you meet those It's like those fence removal things they had in Colorado and in eastern
Montana while wetlands restoration planting projects. It's, yeah, we gotta we gotta seek out people of like mind and begin to form tribe.
Yeah, get that snowball rolling and those little local volunteer efforts might not save the world today, but those are those start points. And like you said, you bring community together, you establish new connections, you build energy off of each other, you gain your tank is refueled by being around other like minded people. Yeah, so such a great example.
You know, stories and then and I just saw it like if I were, if I were really young now, I'd be volunteering on a lot of those to try to find people of like mine. Man.
Yeah, yeah, that was such a great You know, I've done ten of those over the last twenty four months or so for the Working for Wildlife tour, and that was my biggest takeaway from that was just the power of bringing these people together that all care about this stuff, and so many signs of hope just by being around each other and hearing stories and doing something actual, tangible, positive right here and now you're making a positi difference.
Right now, you are regaining agency. We talked earlier about how so much feels outside of our control. But when you're out there on the ground planting a tree alongside another guy or girl who also loves hunting or fishing in the outdoors, you can't help but feel a little bit better, and you can't help but be inspired to do a little bit better the next time too.
I mean that's how we've been doing it since cave man days, right, Yeah, Like get that mammoth and then everybody think happy everybody was when you got the mammoth, and like you're clapping him on the back. You might hate this guy, you know when you're not hunting, but you're going like, man, what a good shot with that at laddle, right, Like this is community and the and the ladies are all happy. They're like hauling the meat back, you know, and it's like this is community, this is tribe.
It's something in us. It's as old as human beings, right, yeah, And I was I was following y'all when you were doing that. We were actually and see, I've been doing this big planting job, but that's a paid job with the Mule Deer Foundation. It's it's a beautiful job, but it's not the same. Everybody's there to you know, it's work. Everybody's with a huge gold but it's work. And those volunteer things. We rolled fence, and dude, it was so I know you've been doing this, but it was so
it is actionable, quantifiable yep. Right, we were taking they were dead. There was hair and dead mule deer at this crossing and that fence was completely useless. It was just left there from after a forest fire like twenty years ago. And we rolled that fence right out of that mule deer trail that came from the high country to the to the winter room.
You did it.
Yeah, Observable, actionable, quantifiable. That's that's what I kept asking people, like with the climate chain stuff and all that that I got so dis engaged from because I was like, I was like, I just need to see something actionable, quantifiable, and observable, and that's you know, planting, restoring wetlands, restoring grassland, clanton trees, burning fuels reduction yep. I was like, I won't add actionable, quantifiable, observable, and those volunteer projects are all of that.
Yeah, yeah, such a great example. So I was going to ask you a question which you just already answered mostly, but I will give you an opportunity to add anything else to it. The question being, you know, one of the first things you said that we should do entering this era is to get educated, right, to pay attention to this stuff. And so I think this is something I've brought up to you maybe every time we've talked
some version of this. But you know, there's the famous Leopold quote the curse of an ecological education is discovering that you live in a world of wounds, something along
those lines. He said, Basically, the more we educate ourselves on these issues, the more we pay attention to the news about the environment and public lands and wildlife, the more you're going to realize there's a lot of stuff in danger, there's a lot of stuff getting you know, there's a lot of stuff that's not doing great right. So what I'm always looking for are ways to maintain hope, ways not to feel like, man, this whole thing's going
to the shit or eventually. You mentioned a couple of great examples ways to do that, getting involved community volunteering. You mentioned just talking to someone who's going on hunting and being.
Reinvigorated through that.
Do you have any other things in your life that help you stay positive, because sometimes when you zoom out and you look at the long term trajectory of our natural world and the environment and clean air and wildlife across the world and all that kind of stuff, it can get a little dark and dreary.
How do you stay hopeful?
Boy? I hope you don't edit that. You may have to edit this out. But uh So, the all species go through population overshoots, and not all of them, but most, and they fill up their ecological niche and then they decline in numbers. They don't go extinct. It's not like
apocalypse and fire and that you right. So, human population on our planet is supposed to peak at like nine point eight ten billion, maybe twelve, I'm not sure, but it peaks at about two hundred and fifty years much less probably, and at that point, the children, our great great grandchildren are going to be living in a world that is in recovering from all of the things that people did to get insatiable resource demand. Right. So here's my point, and I call this carry in the fire.
Those of us who understand how powerful the rivers and the forests and the wildlife are have a unique moment in history. What we prioritize, conserve, protect, steward now is what's going to be in that recovering world in one
hundred and fifty years. And so there has never been a time where it was more important to teach your children to hunt and shoot and how beautiful it is to hunt squirrels and to take food from the land and fish from the water, and know that that water is clean enough that it's going to make you strong and healthy so you can run one hundred yard dash tomorrow.
It is or this is physicality too, like to teach children and to keep ourselves fit right to be powerful and strong, and to teach our children like health and connections to nature. Because this is the fire that we're going to carry through what this population overshoot into a future where maybe there's one billion people on earth and there are incredible numbers of wildlife and fish and oceans pouring around without big plastic garbage patches and stuff. Right
but right now is the moment. And I think about that, and I think about Doug Talamy's Homegrown National Park stuff where they're saying, man, you don't have to have twenty acres. You can plant a pollinator belt of native plants in your yard and those pollinators are going to drive in that place. Like my own backyard garden has so much diversity in it now of these insects that I've just never seen before, and it's kind of like it's not very big, and they came from somewhere and they came
there because I planted these pollinators. And it's a microcosm. But what is the microcosm except for these made up of these small things. So I'm I'm actually and it's my bias, right, Like I already wanted to teach my kid how to pike fish. And my daughter is a fisherman and and a hunter, and my son is a hunter and a fisherman, and and they they know the power of these things because my wife and I taught
it to them. But it's they're carrying this fire and they're young they're not like in big conservation groups going to d C advocating with that. That's our business, right, but they know what they know where the bread's buttered, they know what's powerful. Yeah, and it's our it's our business to carry that fire through this time and so that that making sure that it goes on.
It's a hell of an obligation. But we're awfully we're awfully fortunate to be able to do it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful obligation because for me it involves doing what I already want to do.
True, it's a there's a lot worth fighting for still, that's for sure.
Oh my, so much, there is so much left to not left. There's just so much there. Like I mean, I live near the Lewis in Clark National Forest, and I don't know where you're at on this, but like this morning I went, I was going to the dump and the wolf. It's called the wolf moon, this moon, this January moon, and I don't know if it's an optical illusion or not, but it was like five feet it was the biggest moon I've ever seen going down over the mountains.
Wow.
And I thought, just how lucky I was one to have the Bob Marshall wilderness out there west of my house, and two to see this moon and had gotten up, you know, before you've got light. So I got to see this and it was it was a thing where I just felt lucky. And to who much is given, much is expected. I think.
Yep, so so true and perfect, perfect sentiments to kind of send us out here. Can can you tell us how you've you've alluded to this book project you've been working on for a few years now. Are you at a point you can tell us anything about that yet? Can you tease it? Can you give us anything as far as what to look forward to or when to look forward to it?
Yeah, I'm I'm gonna finish this year.
I don't know that.
I guess it'll be out next year. I'm a but uh, it's a public lands book, and it's a lot of it is profiles of and of trips like on national forests and part of it. I mean I read your book early, and you and I are how many years ago is that we talked about these projects?
Well like seven, yeah, something like that, because my book came out at the end of twenty nineteen, right, so I.
Think seven years ago you told me. I said, well, I got this contract, I'm working on this book, and you're like, I'm working on one too, and you'd been at it for a couple of years. But it's and your book is also experiential. You know, are talking about this before we hit the record, I wanted to do a it did turn out to be brief, but a history of how we got public lands and an understanding of all the issues regard to that. But I wanted the second part of the book to be journeys, just trips,
and so I've done some incredible trips. Mostly I've sat here, as you know, as a writer, sat here like a limpet glued to this chair. But the it's like places
like the Tuskegee National Forests in Alabama. It's kind of a deep dive into the history and what's there, and based around a trip there on the Bartram Trail, which if anybody's listening to this, you know, go like as the winter gets went towards spring, man, go go look at the Bartram Trail, And that's James Bartram, the naturalists who went to the Creek Nation back in seventeen nineties, I think, and recorded all the plants and all the
stuff he saw. It was William Bartram, and he he wrote a book called The Travels with William Bartram, which you should people should read like this is like and that was that. That's Alabama. There's another one apple a Chicola Forests where you go through the Bradwell Bay Wilderness, which's like the strangest likes. It's water up to your waist for miles and miles. Should shone National Forests, first national forest in America, right with the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve,
that very first natural forest. We do about a forty mile trip through that nice So that's where I've been man for all the last you know, three years really and it's it's like I said, I've been glued. You're glue. You get to do the trips, but then you're glued to your you really got to be glued.
To the You're you're living vicariously through your own words for a while there you're wishing you could be out there adventuring again, but you're just you gotta get it on the page.
I'm definitely in that.
I'm in that phase right now for the new project. And uh, it takes some takes some discipline that's for sure.
It's not always the easiest.
Are there days where you don't get it?
Are there days?
Yeah?
Sure, there are some days. I I've really tried to stick to a little bit. Every day has been my mantra this time around, because the first time around, I had a lot of days I couldn't do it because I couldn't do it quite right. And so my new my new method this year, not this year, this project has been a little bit of progress every single day of the work week at least, and so that it's just kind of you're slowly chipping away at it, and it's always in the back of your mind, even when
you're not the computer. You're in the shower, on a walk or something, and an idea hits you. So that's that's been my approach this time, and so far, so good. But you ask me in five.
More months and I'll tell you whether or not it's worked or not.
Right for sure, Well, I just I mean, I'm very impressed with your work, and to some extent, like I was when I was talking to you just then, I'm listening because I mean, I've been doing this forever and I still don't know really, I have never gotten to the point where I wake up at eight o'clock, I walk in the office at eight o'clock, and I produce words until twelve o'clock, and then I go out and go fishing. Yeah, or take the kids doing that. I
never I've never done that. At it's it's always been a struggle to figure out where it starts, how to I don't know so, but it is a life we've chosen.
You know.
The best thing that has ever happened in my writing life might be some of the best advice we could give anyone when it comes to trying to tackle some of these issues we're talking about, which has been that I have given myself permission should just do a little something, even if it's not very good, even if it's not perfect, even if it's not going to be the best book in the world. This is not the best sentence, this is not the best paragraph. It's just a little something.
But I did something, and I gave my self permission to just do a little bit of something, even though it's not great. And by doing that, it gets the ball rolling. And if I can just give myself permission to write a few shitty words and not feel bad about that it usually leads to me writing a bunch of okay words, which then maybe someday I can turn into some.
Page is worth of good words.
And I think that might be a little bit of the trick to making a difference when it comes to stewarding our public lands and standing up for wild places. It's you know what, you can do a little something today. It might not fix it all, but you could sign that petition today or maybe next week. You know, you could call your representative of your senator and yeah, that's
not going to fix it all. And maybe you don't come across super eloquently on the phone, maybe you're not the best speaker, whatever it is, But but do the little bit you can today, because all of this stuff, little bit by little bit, one crappy paragraph at a time. You write a book, or you stand up for your public lands, or you save the damn world.
That is so, that is so you're get on, man. I'm glad I know you. One thing, when when you finished that, I was thinking about the what the real death the doom right is to think that if I think about the book all of a sudden, and you think about like saving the public lands. Oh and or Daunte. Oh my lord, You're like, like, is there going to be any fishing in twenty twenty five? You go, I
don't know. To that is to do small, actionable, quantifiable and deserrable things today and and do them while you're thinking about it, and then if the rest of the day goes the hell you did that? Ye yeah, what's that?
You had a win, You had.
To win a small victory. But yeah, I think that's right. It's like and that's so much of our conservation world has gotten to be this like abstract thing. Oh no, like the garbage gyre in the ocean or something. You go, ah, no, what am I gonna do? Well, the answer is you're not gonna do anything about that today. You know, maybe you you good? You go over to the tap and drink a glass of water instead of buying a plastic bottle.
Yeah, do every little tiny thing we can is a starting point.
It's the next step.
It's it's progress because perfect perfect the attempt to reach perfection leads to a lot of paralysis at least never starting, least never doing anything.
And uh right, yeah, we gotta fight that temptation. We gotta we gotta.
Don't you think there's a there's a terrible human tendency too to go like to go to the macrocosm immediately go, well, there nothing I can do about that, and that lets you off the hook, yep, and you just like go grab the grab the coke and the funions and kick back and watch another YouTube. You know.
There's a lot of people that have fallen into that trap.
Myself. Yeah, I mean I kind of I work against that trap, like all the time I was. I remember back when uh I used to really I was into jiu jitsu for like twenty years, you know, and still am. But I'm I've aged out of like doing it too too hard on as hard as I want to. Uh. But people would come to class, you know, and they would be all excited and they're go, I'm gonna like be a blue belt in three months. You know, I'm
gonna I'm gonna win the butte, you know. Uh intra murals like in like Christmas, and those are the people who never came They never came back to class.
Yeah, And the and the people who go like, wow, man, that's a really interesting move, show me that again, and then and then they would go up the next night and the next night, you know.
Uh, and it was it was very much of what we're talking about. Yeah, the people who wanted to be great now were the ones who ended up not coming back.
Yeah, what's one small step you can take? What's one How can you get one percent better tomorrow? How can you make some small tangible difference this week?
I think, Uh, have you got one that you could think of right now, Like on the on the public lands thing. I think it would be to tell your friends about the Supreme Court decision this morning.
Yeah, yeah, right, I think so.
I think that passed along the fact that hey, this is a thing that reared its ugly head again and we're fortunate that it got shot down. But hey, I think I think for me, the overwhelming takeaway from this conversation and from just kind of the moment is that it's time to re engage.
I think that.
There's been a little bit of sitting back on our laurels the last handful of years. It kind of felt like we we you know, won the battle there for a moment, and I think it's time to to rally. It's time to re engage, start to start really paying attention again, because uh, like you said, if we don't engage, if we don't stand up on this stuff, there's there's folks that have other incentives and other goals in mind that are very motivated and in the right position to do so.
They are very motivated and at the moment, if you don't don't challenge you, if you don't stand up for what you want, those people are definitely ascendant at the moment. I mean, like the right wing think tanks like Heritage Foundation from the they have an ALEC American Legislatory Exchange Council American Lands Council ALC. These people have been deeply involved in the in the long term movement to take away the American public lands from the as long as
I can my all my adult life. And these are think tanks that are mostly you know there they call themselves conservative. It's not conservative to take away the American public lands, let me tell you that. Yeah, that's about as radical an idea divesting the people of their own land as I've ever heard. But they those the planks of these think tanks. I'm doing air quotes. They think best when somebody's given them money to chair, you pick information and prove something that they want, but that they
already want to get. But they are ascendant at the moment. And it is it is. It is our job as American citizens and people who know what is at stake to say no to the worst impulses. And even if we voted for these folks, especially if people say no to the especially if we vote right, yeah, I mean, you didn't vote to divest yourself of the of your hunting ground.
And I think that that makes us that much more influential and powerful in our ability to influence change, because we can call these folks up and say, hey, buddy, I voted for you, I'm voting for you. I support this, this, and this, but on this one, you got it wrong. And if you want my support the next time around, or for your buddy who's running the next time or whatever it is, you gotta change this. I'm on your team.
We're on your team. We want to support you. But this is a deal, and we have the ear of these people. They might not listen at all to the left side of the aisle, but they will listen to us, So we have a we have a huge opportunity there.
I think that's true. You gotta be careful that they're they're taking us for granted at this moment, and the elections and stuff have kind of given people, the politicians a complacent view of of of what will stand for. Really. I mean they that that privatizing the public lands deal was in the Republican platform in twenty sixteen.
Yep, I remember, and.
You know, everybody I know still voted, and I don't know what they thought, right, Like you know Ryan Sinky in Montwna, I actually did not support that.
Yep.
Whatever you think of representatives thinking, he didn't support that, and and that was really good, I thought, And I thought that was courageous of him to make that stand. Yeah, So I think let's have more of that.
Yeah, I think that's that's the rally and cry I think for us leaving here today is get ready to get ready to re engage, get ready to stand up, get ready to be that squeaky wheel and uh not be complacent. So hell, I don't know when it will be, but when whenever your book comes out next year, you have a guaranteed appointment here on the wire Hunt podcast to talk all about your book. I'll be recommending every one of our listeners to pick up a copy. I
can't wait to read it myself. And uh, I thank you for for everything you've shared with us here today and all the all the wisdom and inspiration over the years.
Thank you.
Hell it's a great, great time. Man. I've told you I was. I feel like you're the voice of your particular generation at this moment on this subject, and you're coming straight out of the hunting world, which is you couldn't have a stronger base. Yeah, I mean, hunter controvationist is a large part of why we have what we have.
We got a hell of a legacy that we had to hold up.
Yeah, well finding dude, thank you hell yeah.
And that's going to do it for us today.
Appreciate you joining me here on the Wired to Hunt podcast. Thanks for tuning in here as hell and I discussed what is the beginning I think of an important set of conversations that we are going to be continuing this year and over the next handful of years, because we are going to have some work to do, and I believe and I trust that you're going to be joining me in doing that work. So thanks for being here.
Thanks for checking out that Wild Country. If you have not already read that book that I wrote a handful of years ago.
It is the perfect way to get you.
Up to speed on what's happening now and what we might need to be preparing for in the future. So thank you, appreciate you being a part of this community, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.