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Speaker 1: first light dot com. F I R S T L
Speaker 1: I t E dot com. Everybody's damn near your tax
Speaker 1: day and we're gonna do There's two things that are
Speaker 1: gonna happen on this episode. We're gonna get into two
Speaker 1: things you never want to bring up to anybody. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about finances, and we're gonna talk about politics.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna start with we're gonna talk about politics,
Speaker 1: kind of politics and the intersection of politics and conservation
Speaker 1: with Becky Humphries, who's been on the show a couple
Speaker 1: times before, and we're gonna we're gonna dig in with her.
Speaker 1: She's here in the studio, but joining us from not
Speaker 1: in the studio is Susie Orman, and she just was
Speaker 1: saying that we need to change start a podcast called
Speaker 1: money Eater and We wanted to catch up with her
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One because it's tax day
Speaker 1: and we want to get some financial advice. And two
Speaker 1: because there's some things I became aware of now. If
Speaker 1: you're wondering, or if you you know, you've been out
Speaker 1: of touch, or you're a little youngster.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Susie Orman is an American financial advisor, author of How
Speaker 1: Many Books, A Lot of Books?
Speaker 3: Ten ten ten, number one New York Times bestseller, and
Speaker 3: I am just not a financial advisor, sir. I am
Speaker 3: a financial icon of America. And you're young and you
Speaker 3: don't know about me. That's why you're financially screwed.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you don't, yeah, if you don't have a
Speaker 1: big old boat, If you don't have a big old
Speaker 1: boat yet, it's because you haven't been listening to Susie.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty seven, she founded the Susie Ormand
Speaker 1: Financial Group, and her work as a financial advisor gained
Speaker 1: notability notoriety with Susie Orman Show, which ran on CNBC
Speaker 1: and for thirteen years, and does.
Speaker 3: A podcast, I'll tell You My Brief History, which is
Speaker 3: two time Emmy Award winner, twice named by Time magazine
Speaker 3: as one hundred most influential person in the world. Recently
Speaker 3: just named as one of the fifty over fifty women
Speaker 3: who have changed this world.
Speaker 2: And I could go on and on, but who cares.
Speaker 4: About them over fifty?
Speaker 2: No, it's true.
Speaker 3: I actually said, well, it took you so long because
Speaker 3: I'm mopped to be seventy three?
Speaker 4: Are you really what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look it up, you google it.
Speaker 5: Why this is part of your research?
Speaker 1: Well, no, I might have known. I might have read
Speaker 1: that and then thought that's impossible because she looks too great.
Speaker 3: But that's why it happens when you have a lot
Speaker 3: of money. I haven't got any work done, but that's
Speaker 3: besides the point as well.
Speaker 1: Now, okay, you might be wondering, like, well, how why
Speaker 1: this show? Because I found now I've known once upon
Speaker 1: a time Susan and I for a brief period overlap
Speaker 1: with our book publishers. But she's the reason she's on
Speaker 1: the show right now is she's a mega fisherman, like
Speaker 1: I got photos here of her with a stack of
Speaker 1: wah who manages to live in Bahamas, which I need
Speaker 1: to ask how that goes down? And when I first
Speaker 1: reached out to her about coming on the show, I
Speaker 1: see a picture of her where she's standing next to
Speaker 1: a and electric reel, like a deep drop reel. Now,
Speaker 1: normally if you meet, like you know, when you're talking
Speaker 1: to a famous person in a fish and you get
Speaker 1: their fishing picture, you're gonna get a picture of them
Speaker 1: holding a fly rod with a rainbow trout in big
Speaker 1: sky Montana, with a guide holding the net, or.
Speaker 4: It's a marlin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But that was like old that she's standing with
Speaker 1: a deep drop rig, and I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a legit fisher person. Have you always fished?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 3: So when I was sixty five, many years ago now,
Speaker 3: I had decided what would Susie Orman be if she
Speaker 3: didn't have the number one show on CNBC for thirteen
Speaker 3: years or how many of her years it was. If
Speaker 3: she didn't have you know, standing ovations of fifty thousand
Speaker 3: people at a time, if she didn't have this, What
Speaker 3: would I be if all of that went away? So
Speaker 3: one day I decided to sell five homes, quit my show,
Speaker 3: stop writing for Oprah, stop being on TV BAM, and
Speaker 3: we got a boat. And then we started to go
Speaker 3: all around on the boat and our captain of the
Speaker 3: boat because the insurance company made sure that I had
Speaker 3: a captain. They wouldn't let me captain of myself I
Speaker 3: could have, which did not go well with me, but
Speaker 3: I didn't have a choice. Was an avid fisherman, and
Speaker 3: so he would sit on the dock with us and
Speaker 3: we'd have these little fishes, and that's all he thought
Speaker 3: these two women could do. So finally we fired him.
Speaker 3: We got him out of there right. I started to
Speaker 3: take over everything myself, and little by little we had
Speaker 3: moved to the Bahamas, this little tiny island where we
Speaker 3: would watch everybody bring in these big fish. We didn't
Speaker 3: know what they were because we wanted to also filley
Speaker 3: our fish ourselves. We were like, we are not going
Speaker 3: to be women who the help does this? The help
Speaker 3: does that. We're going to do it ourselves. We're going
Speaker 3: to fish, we're gonna captain our boat, we're going to
Speaker 3: clean our boat, and we're gonna, you know, clean our fish.
Speaker 2: And little by little we would.
Speaker 3: Be asking questions like how do you catch a wahoo?
Speaker 2: What's a wahoo?
Speaker 3: And before you know it, we got the equipment and
Speaker 3: we went out and we would try, and before you
Speaker 3: know it, we started to catch And at first we
Speaker 3: didn't know the difference between a barracuda and a wahoo,
Speaker 3: so we'd have to bring the fish in and ask
Speaker 3: somebody on the island is this.
Speaker 2: A barracuda or is this a wahoo?
Speaker 3: And little by little we got it down really well,
Speaker 3: and it was I think it was just a few
Speaker 3: years ago, maybe two thousand and eighteen, not whatever it was,
Speaker 3: but a few years ago there was a wahoo contest
Speaker 3: on the island and there were nine boats that went out,
Speaker 3: huge fishing vessels with captains and all these lines. And
Speaker 3: we had our little, you know, thirty two foot Boston
Speaker 3: wayler were just two poles.
Speaker 2: That was it, the two.
Speaker 3: LPs, and we won not only the contest, but we
Speaker 3: won the largest fish as well. Oh and now all
Speaker 3: the men were and who had been wahooing and everything
Speaker 3: for years, we became their targeters if they wanted to
Speaker 3: catch us.
Speaker 2: They never quite have, but we've.
Speaker 3: Now I'm no longer known as the money Lady, which
Speaker 3: was my nickname. We're now known on the island KT
Speaker 3: and myself as the fishing girls. And when we go out,
Speaker 3: you see the boats start to follow us because they
Speaker 3: want to know where are we going, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: And things like like the birds, Yeah right, they're watching
Speaker 3: for us. Or we'll be somewhere and they'll come up
Speaker 3: just to kind of say hi, and I know they're
Speaker 3: marking my spot. So I'm always like, really, you have
Speaker 3: to pretend you want my numbers, you can have it.
Speaker 2: You're still not going to catch here. I love them,
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: Right right, But anyway, and that's how it started, little
Speaker 3: by little. Now I have a massive lure collection, a
Speaker 3: massive rod in real collection, and we use them all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: How many reason are you good at cleaning fish?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually KT that cleans them, right, because that's
Speaker 3: what she wanted to do. I didn't care one way
Speaker 3: or the other, to tell you the truth. She is
Speaker 3: magnificent at it. She does like cleans. You hold up
Speaker 3: the thing and you.
Speaker 2: Could see through it. She's fabulous at.
Speaker 3: It, right, and she's and then we cry back it
Speaker 3: and then we also share it with all the other
Speaker 3: people on the island, the islanders that work there.
Speaker 1: Oh excellent, Now I got a question for you. You
Speaker 1: mentioned getting up to a position where you got a
Speaker 1: nice boat. Now, one of our colleagues Chester, we used
Speaker 1: call him Chester the Investor. His plan to get a
Speaker 1: walleye boat was to throw in on bitcoin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good, I hope he did.
Speaker 1: Well. He did, and he got out a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 3: Right, there's still a time for him to get in
Speaker 3: a little bit now because on April twentieth there will
Speaker 3: be a halving a bigcoin, so we should see it
Speaker 3: if the technical stay the same, for bitcoin to probably
Speaker 3: go up into the eighty thousand or so area. Obviously
Speaker 3: it's in the seventy thousand area now. It might be
Speaker 3: a little bit expensive to get in for a lot,
Speaker 3: but he can always buy the etf I bit ib
Speaker 3: it and make some money, not what he would have
Speaker 3: made if he had gone in when it was at
Speaker 3: its loan, not that long ago, at twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Well, I make sure he tunes in. Yeah, how do
Speaker 1: you what's your take if someone how do you advise
Speaker 1: someone like Karn had found a segment where a guy
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out if he could justify the
Speaker 1: purchase of a twenty thousand dollars fishing boat. When it
Speaker 1: comes to fishing boats, how do you instruct people to
Speaker 1: think about what's too much?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he should go on. I can't I afford it
Speaker 3: segment on the Women in Money podcast because it's the
Speaker 3: hand of every podcast we have that And I'll tell him,
Speaker 3: first of all, there is nothing that it's more expensive,
Speaker 3: and I don't care what size it is than a boat.
Speaker 3: Your engines are either breaking. Everything on a boat today
Speaker 3: has a three year lifespan.
Speaker 2: That is it.
Speaker 3: Your batteries will go, your your switches will go, your
Speaker 3: everything will go. And so it's hard to look at
Speaker 3: a boat with something not breaking on it as you're
Speaker 3: looking at it. So it's not can you afford to
Speaker 3: buy a boat? Can you afford the upkeep on the boat?
Speaker 3: Can you afford the insurance on the boat? Can you
Speaker 3: afford the gasoline on the boat to really do things?
Speaker 3: Because gasoline now is far more expensive than.
Speaker 2: It was years ago. So where you're going to house
Speaker 2: the boat?
Speaker 3: Are you living like in Florida or someplace that a
Speaker 3: hurricane could get the boat?
Speaker 2: So there's all these things that go into it.
Speaker 3: However, bottom line, you better have at least an eight
Speaker 3: to twelve month emergency fund of what it would cost
Speaker 3: you to live and pay your must pay expenses, your
Speaker 3: mortgage or your rent, you're in, whatever it is, so
Speaker 3: that if you got sick, you were in an accident,
Speaker 3: you got laid off, you would be able to pay
Speaker 3: those for eight months. You better not have any credit
Speaker 3: card debt whatsoever.
Speaker 2: You better be fully.
Speaker 3: Funding your retirement accounts to the max. You better be
Speaker 3: really so good when it comes to money. And then
Speaker 3: if you have that, you already bought a home, whatever
Speaker 3: it is, you can have a boat.
Speaker 1: Good luck, man. I don't know if there's a lot
Speaker 1: of boat owners list. It's always a good idea to
Speaker 1: roll the dice on a big boat, because you never.
Speaker 2: Know what's funny.
Speaker 3: You guys, We've had a thirty two foot boat now
Speaker 3: for since twenty sixteen. We are going on eight years
Speaker 3: with the same boat. The men on the island, and
Speaker 3: of course they would. They think bigger is better, all right.
Speaker 3: So they have to go from two engines to three
Speaker 3: engines to four engines. They have to go from a
Speaker 3: three hundred to a four point fifty to a six hundred.
Speaker 2: They're nuts. If one of them gets a.
Speaker 3: Bigger boat, the others all get a bigger boat. I
Speaker 3: have never seen anything like it. And then they say
Speaker 3: to me, why do you keep the same boat?
Speaker 2: What is wrong with you?
Speaker 3: One reason I keep the same boat is one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that I think that we are so successful
Speaker 3: in fishing, especially catching wahoo. Is the wahoo, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: like the wash off the engines of our boat, our engines.
Speaker 4: And you get to stay out of what we call
Speaker 4: a boat measuring contest, right.
Speaker 3: But you know, I also just love beating them in
Speaker 3: a smaller boat anyway, So what's the difference?
Speaker 4: Well, that brings up a great point though, like when
Speaker 4: you go to in vest in something recreationally, do you
Speaker 4: measure in the mental benefit of being able to go
Speaker 4: do something you love? Is that a factor?
Speaker 2: Yes? And no?
Speaker 3: It depends, Like obviously for somebody like me. I'm a
Speaker 3: seriously wealthy woman, and if I wasn't, I shouldn't be
Speaker 3: who I am.
Speaker 2: To this day.
Speaker 3: So I don't measure bigger necessarily being what can I
Speaker 3: cannot do. I like to buy exactly what I need,
Speaker 3: not what I can afford, because I can afford more
Speaker 3: than what I need. I don't need more than a
Speaker 3: thirty two foot boat, I don't, you know. It's just
Speaker 3: me and Kate. It's what I need it for. So
Speaker 3: just because I can afford it doesn't mean that I
Speaker 3: want to buy it.
Speaker 1: You used to be down. You used to advise people
Speaker 1: that eating dinner out was a real financial.
Speaker 2: Drain, such a drain it was.
Speaker 3: Actually in two thousand and nine, I came out with
Speaker 3: a book called the two thousand and nine Action Plan
Speaker 3: because the economy was a mess. I was on the
Speaker 3: Oprah Winfrey Show with it. We actually gave it away
Speaker 3: for free, millions of copies we gave away for free.
Speaker 3: But there were a few things that I asked everybody
Speaker 3: in there to do, and that was to stop eating
Speaker 3: out for at least six months. I thought the restaurant
Speaker 3: industry was going to explode. They could not believe that
Speaker 3: I said that. However, there was a white paper done
Speaker 3: from Mint, which was a finance app and the number
Speaker 3: one debt that people had when they had a lot
Speaker 3: of credit card debt, the number one thing they actually
Speaker 3: spent money on to be in debt was eating out.
Speaker 3: So that's when that started with me. For me myself, sure,
Speaker 3: I'll ead out if it's a business thing or we're
Speaker 3: away and I don't have whatever. But even when we travel,
Speaker 3: it's very funny. Maybe we'll go somewhere to do a
Speaker 3: speaking engagement and we go on a private plane. Okay,
Speaker 3: And now we bring our food with us and we
Speaker 3: check into the hotel, and even though the sponsor will
Speaker 3: pay for our food, we cook in our hotel room.
Speaker 2: So we have a little hot plate. We do this
Speaker 2: so I.
Speaker 3: Personally don't enjoy eating out at a restaurant just to
Speaker 3: go out and eat out only because I just I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the food's better at home and healthier.
Speaker 4: Well, you don't even have to use a hot plate.
Speaker 4: If you got wahoo with you all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we bring that as well because we love wahushashimi.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so a lot.
Speaker 3: But if you're there for a long time, because sometimes
Speaker 3: you're a place for a while, then we had a
Speaker 3: little hot plate. We had a little you know, fry pan,
Speaker 3: a little this in a that, and we go to
Speaker 3: the grocery store if we roun on.
Speaker 2: A food and bring it.
Speaker 3: So it was always people would always laugh at us as.
Speaker 2: They would see us checking into a hotel.
Speaker 1: Susie, I saw a photo where it looks like you
Speaker 1: I might be looking at it wrong, but I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a photo where you're sitting there with a
Speaker 1: rockfish with a link cod that looks like it came
Speaker 1: up with like you caught the rockfish, but landed a
Speaker 1: link caught and a rockfish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there we are because every year we also
Speaker 3: like to eat salmon, so we usually go to either
Speaker 3: Alaska or British.
Speaker 2: Columbia to catch our own salmon.
Speaker 3: Great, and so there we were and I was fishing,
Speaker 3: and I was actually fishing. I didn't even you know,
Speaker 3: we had caught our quota of salmon and halib it.
Speaker 3: So I was just kind of fishing and I caught
Speaker 3: something and I'm bringing it up, and I'm like saying
Speaker 3: to kt KT this is I don't know what I
Speaker 3: got here, but I don't think this is just a rockfish,
Speaker 3: because we wanted a rockfish in order to make tacos
Speaker 3: out of it. And all of a sudden, I bring
Speaker 3: it up and it's a link. God that bid it
Speaker 3: would not let go, and so we caught both and
Speaker 3: we bought growth homes.
Speaker 1: Okay, give us a couple, give people a couple we'll
Speaker 1: let you go after this, but give people a couple
Speaker 1: tips on how they should handle their tax refunds. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that you don't advise people to go with
Speaker 1: the play where you get the refund later as good
Speaker 1: as that field.
Speaker 3: Right, when interest rates were at zero percent and there
Speaker 3: was nobody was making any money on CDs or money
Speaker 3: market accounts or anything, then I didn't have a problem
Speaker 3: with people getting a refund because they really weren't losing
Speaker 3: any money that way, truthfully.
Speaker 2: However, now that.
Speaker 3: Interest rates in money market funds and this will change,
Speaker 3: are at about four and a half or five percent,
Speaker 3: or there's places that you can put money that are
Speaker 3: safe and down and get a high interest rate. Who
Speaker 3: wants to give the government an interest free loan over
Speaker 3: a year's period of time of about five percent?
Speaker 2: You have to be out of your mind. So you
Speaker 2: would be far better.
Speaker 3: Off now getting no refund, paying what you need to
Speaker 3: pay and not paying over it. So just come out
Speaker 3: so it's a zero, and in the long run you're
Speaker 3: actually making more money. So that's how you make more
Speaker 3: out of less, to tell you the truth. So it's
Speaker 3: less of a refund, but in the long run, that
Speaker 3: extra money.
Speaker 2: That they're keeping, you would just be able to take.
Speaker 3: That money and put it in an account for yourself,
Speaker 3: maybe buy some bitcoin with it.
Speaker 2: Just joking, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Susie Orman, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Good look on your next fission trip. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you joining us. And that's gonna get everybody really pepped
Speaker 1: up and ready to do their taxes.
Speaker 2: All right, talk to you.
Speaker 1: All right? Oh you know what's funny? So Becky, we're
Speaker 1: gonna how you doing.
Speaker 7: I'm good.
Speaker 1: Did you learn anything there?
Speaker 7: No, I don't own a big boat. I don't just
Speaker 7: little boats, and and I try and balance my taxes
Speaker 7: so it comes out even at the end of the year.
Speaker 7: But I do have advice for people that do get
Speaker 7: a refund and they need to donate it to conservation.
Speaker 1: Oh there you go, yep.
Speaker 7: And Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership would be a great place
Speaker 7: to put it too.
Speaker 1: That's excellent. We're going to talk about that a whole bunch,
Speaker 1: but I gotta run. I'm going to run a couple
Speaker 1: of Michigan things by it, and an a neighboring thing
Speaker 1: and a neighboring thing from a neighboring thing from Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Handful things we're gonna talk about. But just a funny
Speaker 1: letter that came in so Pat Dirk, and it comes
Speaker 1: on the show a lot the last Outdoor columnist. He
Speaker 1: wrote a newspaper column last week. This is a while ago.
Speaker 1: Now I'm looking at an old line. But uh, Dirkin
Speaker 1: wrote a piece about to continued decline in Wisconsin's deer
Speaker 1: hunting population, meaning the number of people buying deer licenses
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin is going down, down, down. You might be sitting, well,
Speaker 1: why isn't my why aren't my permissions going up up up?
Speaker 1: Which is a very long, complicated story, but those things
Speaker 1: do not walk in tandem. Anyways, he gets a letter
Speaker 1: from a guy who is of my favorite letters. And
Speaker 1: the reason I like this letter so much is just
Speaker 1: so happens that I'm leaving in two days to participate
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin's youth turkey season. But a guy writes in,
Speaker 1: Who's who write? In response to Dirkin's column, writes in,
Speaker 1: and it's signed Dave Michigan pissed hunter. He goes on
Speaker 1: to say, though, Wisconsin, just like Michigan, has the same problem.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what from a guy that has
Speaker 1: hunted all his life. When you turn over a gun
Speaker 1: to a kid and they're allowed to shoot any bucks
Speaker 1: that they want, and I've been hunting for the past
Speaker 1: forty years, and I have to settle for what's left over.
Speaker 1: And you wonder why people are quitting. You take all
Speaker 1: the hunt away before the season gets to the big
Speaker 1: hunt of the big opening day, most of the big
Speaker 1: bucks are already gone. You have so many hunts, kids,
Speaker 1: special hunts, ex bo regular bow. The regular opening day
Speaker 1: big hunt is a big flop. Kid hunts and they
Speaker 1: early hunts and stuff. Take the big bucks before the
Speaker 1: day gets here, and you might think the big day
Speaker 1: is just about the meat, and it's not. It's the racks.
Speaker 1: Michigan prove that with given dough tags twelve total, but
Speaker 1: at a cost, and hunters let them walk, want more
Speaker 1: hunter cut the bull crap. Give the big bucks back
Speaker 1: to the opening day big hunts. You might start to
Speaker 1: see some other people come back, if it might already
Speaker 1: be too late.
Speaker 8: Dave, that is one impassioned.
Speaker 1: That is one.
Speaker 5: I assume you read it as it was punctuated.
Speaker 1: I tried to pat was taken to be a great
Speaker 1: T shirt. I have this T shirt of the guy
Speaker 1: that wrote in Yeah, the guy that wrote in the
Speaker 1: story about the just some unseemly behavior he was seeing
Speaker 1: among turkeys in his neighborhood, and I think that that
Speaker 1: might be a great T shirt. You've met Dave.
Speaker 7: I'm sure I've met Dave all through your career through
Speaker 7: there are more than one Dave in Michigan family.
Speaker 1: I'll translate that. I'll translate that and be that they've
Speaker 1: done so much do I need to translate it?
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now you got the archery season, and you got the
Speaker 1: crossbow season, and you got the youth. See really the kids.
Speaker 1: And by the time it comes down to opening day
Speaker 1: in Michigan November fifteenth, the Big Hunt, I like he
Speaker 1: calls it the big Big Hunt.
Speaker 8: Ye.
Speaker 1: By the time the Big Hunt starts opening day of
Speaker 1: General Firearm, the kids have killed off all the big bucks.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to wonder what happened all the hunters,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 4: By providing special experiences for everyone, you may be diluting
Speaker 4: a singular experience that used to be for everybody. That
Speaker 4: was that saying, he who is a friend to all
Speaker 4: his friend to mine.
Speaker 7: Oh and our memory gets a little cloudy too. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, I have a deer on the wall of
Speaker 7: one of the bedrooms in my home that my dad's
Speaker 7: first buck my dad shot in Michigan and it was
Speaker 7: a huge buck by his standards, it was a nine
Speaker 7: point about this big, you know, and the and the
Speaker 7: success rate back at that time when he shot that
Speaker 7: for firearm deer hunting in Michigan is about it was
Speaker 7: below thirty percent for the entire deer season. You know,
Speaker 7: Michigan has been over forty percent for quite a while
Speaker 7: now for firearm hunters in terms of success. So and
Speaker 7: our deer heard. You know, the antler size has also
Speaker 7: gone up. But you know, the majority of bucks out there,
Speaker 7: you guys know this, or young bucks. I mean, we
Speaker 7: exploit deer pretty heavily in this country, especially in the
Speaker 7: Midwest where you have an open entry system, so people
Speaker 7: take a lot of deer, there's no doubt about it.
Speaker 7: But the majority of your deer are those younger deer.
Speaker 7: And I think sometimes our memory gets a little feaded
Speaker 7: on the glory years and what it looks like, not
Speaker 7: that that happened to Dave or anything. But you know,
Speaker 7: the other part of it is we are losing more
Speaker 7: and more hunters as a percentage of the population. And
Speaker 7: you guys know this, and you know it threatens our
Speaker 7: our acceptance out there. It threatens our clout as in
Speaker 7: politics and voting and regulations, and quite frankly, I you know,
Speaker 7: I'm more than willing to give up that big buck
Speaker 7: for a youngster. You know, by the time you get
Speaker 7: to Dave's age, hopefully he's taken a few nice bucks.
Speaker 7: I don't know if Dave has either, but you know,
Speaker 7: hopefully you have and you've had that opportunity. But it
Speaker 7: is about maximizing opportunity out there for a lot of folks.
Speaker 7: And Michigan during those glory years, Michigan had over a
Speaker 7: million hunters. They're down under a half million now what.
Speaker 7: And so with that, your you know, your competition out
Speaker 7: on the landscape overall is down from what it had been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 4: Think greater fragmentation of the landscape right which is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a greater fragmentation we used to see in Michigan.
Speaker 7: Michigan carried most of their deer herd in the Upper
Speaker 7: Peninsula and the northern Lower Peninsula and everybody had their
Speaker 7: little hunting camps and the rest of it. Now the
Speaker 7: majority we kill more deer in southern Michigan than the
Speaker 7: up and Northern Michigan combined. It's just you know, we've
Speaker 7: seen this, you know, and not only Michigan. You see
Speaker 7: a lot of deer down in Indiana, Illinois. The deer population,
Speaker 7: quite frankly, is much higher than it had been fifty
Speaker 7: years ago.
Speaker 1: Beg, you adn't do a good job. I introduce you. Yep,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that right now. Becky Humphreys is a
Speaker 1: long time biole. Just started her career at the US
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service, then worked her way up through
Speaker 1: the Michigan DNR too, became the director the Michigan Department
Speaker 1: of Natural Resources, spent time at Ducks Unlimited, ran National
Speaker 1: Ran an NWTF as the CEO for how many years?
Speaker 7: CEO for five years?
Speaker 1: So five years heading the National Wild Turkey Federation, and
Speaker 1: then right now and I owe you big thanks on
Speaker 1: this has stepped in as the interim CEO of the
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and there's a permanent search underway,
Speaker 1: but you, very graciously, at very short notice, came on
Speaker 1: board to run the organization during the interim. So oh,
Speaker 1: your huge thanks there.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you. It's a great organization. As you know,
Speaker 7: we both sit on the board and you know when
Speaker 7: we lost our CEO and pretty you know, short order
Speaker 7: last last winter. It's one of those organizations you don't
Speaker 7: want to see flounder. You want them to have a
Speaker 7: great CEO and you want to to have great leadership.
Speaker 7: So it was an honor to be asked and ain't
Speaker 7: quite Frankly, I was feeling retirement pretty much. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: try again, Try try.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll get to retire again. The last last call
Speaker 1: on Live tour tickets. So the live tour starts next week.
Speaker 1: You're listening to this right around tax Day. The live
Speaker 1: tour starts on on the twenty third. Live Tour starts
Speaker 1: on the twenty third. Hang on second, me pull this up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: who's got the who's got the dates? Hand here? I
Speaker 1: got it? One minute? One minute, damn it? Okay, ready
Speaker 1: April twenty third, we're gonna be in Mesa, Arizona, free people.
Speaker 1: Not from Arizona. That means Phoenix but not. April twenty four,
Speaker 1: San Diego, California, April twenty five, Anaheim, California, April twenty seven,
Speaker 1: Sacramento twenty nine, Salt Lake City April thirty, Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 1: Then May one, Missoula, Montana, May two Spokane, Washington, May
Speaker 1: for Portland, Oregon, and then closing out the show Sinco Tomayo.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yes, those trees Sinco to Mio. May fifth, Tacoma, Washington.
Speaker 4: Yeah. A couple of things for folks searching for tickets,
Speaker 4: be sure to either go through the meteater dot com
Speaker 4: events page yep and hit those links, or the venues
Speaker 4: the venues only those two places. If you just type
Speaker 4: in these shows in the Google machine.
Speaker 1: You'll want you want the resellers, and it.
Speaker 4: Is grossly expensive. Yeah, so go go through the media
Speaker 4: dot com events page or directly to the theater that
Speaker 4: is hosting the show. And then, on top of that,
Speaker 4: if you want to try to win some tickets, there
Speaker 4: are pint nights hosted by b HI that proceed all
Speaker 4: of these shows where you can actually participate in meat
Speaker 4: Eater trivia. You can win a bunch of free stuff,
Speaker 4: including seats to the show.
Speaker 1: And including a seat on stage playing the game right.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, but we got to find did we finalize
Speaker 4: the game?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, get on stage, match your wits.
Speaker 1: Uh oh. Also, when you buy a ticket, here here's
Speaker 1: the here's the ur Tidbut I'll throw in the last
Speaker 1: little thing. You can see it both ways, but when
Speaker 1: you buy tickets it comes bundled with the Meat Eater
Speaker 1: Outdoor Cookbook Wild Game Recipes for the Grill, smoke or
Speaker 1: camp stoven, Campfire Brand Spicketty new outdoor cookbook that we
Speaker 1: have out right now, And I've been struggle a little
Speaker 1: bituse I'm starting to put some pictures from the book
Speaker 1: up on Instagram, and I'm like, I put one up
Speaker 1: about I'm putting one up about. In the beginning of
Speaker 1: the book, we talk about like all this ancient cooking
Speaker 1: methods stuff dating back to the Ice Age and ways
Speaker 1: people dissingc So when you open the book, I realized
Speaker 1: that one of the first things you see is a
Speaker 1: marmot who's had all of his hair burned off, which
Speaker 1: is like how small. It's like how small game was
Speaker 1: cooked at a time. You'd burn all his hair off
Speaker 1: and roast it whole, and then its skin would turn
Speaker 1: like a case. Then you open it up and the
Speaker 1: meat inside was steamed. And I wonder when people see that,
Speaker 1: if they can picture that, they're also going to eventually
Speaker 1: wind up later in the book reading about a charred
Speaker 1: lemon gin and tonic, So they think they're like.
Speaker 6: What the hell.
Speaker 5: Don't judge your book by its covering. Don't judge your
Speaker 5: book by the first spread.
Speaker 1: Don't judge a book by the intro photos. Don't judge
Speaker 1: a book by the singed marmint.
Speaker 5: I've been thinking about I've been waking up in the
Speaker 5: middle of the night and think about those fish cakes
Speaker 5: we made last week from the cookbook. And now I
Speaker 5: think I'm gonna wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 5: night and have this vision of a charred marmot.
Speaker 1: Well, think about charred lemon gen and Tonics washing that
Speaker 1: charred marmot. Back, Becky, what you take on the gray
Speaker 1: wolf that just got killed in southern Michigan? How that transition?
Speaker 7: That's a quick view turn. I don't you know, I
Speaker 7: don't know enough about that particular animal to speak to you.
Speaker 7: Just yeah, But I mean it wouldn't surprise me we
Speaker 7: wound up having a gray wolf that we had collared
Speaker 7: the Upper Peninsula that walked to Missouri.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So I mean we'll.
Speaker 1: That suck across the Mississippi.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it crossed a hell of a lot
Speaker 7: of territory between.
Speaker 1: Do you think it ran on a bridge ice swim.
Speaker 1: That's a big swim.
Speaker 7: It could be a big swim, but you know, who knows,
Speaker 7: you know, whether it probably you know they can swim, well,
Speaker 7: we know that, and we know they cross ice bridges
Speaker 7: whenever they're ice dams, and we know we know they'll
Speaker 7: cross bridges too, you know, when they when it's low
Speaker 7: activity and the rest of us.
Speaker 1: So, but.
Speaker 7: We've had we've had wolf sightings in the Northern Lower
Speaker 7: Peninsula during heavy freeze over you know, across across the ice.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so they come across the ice. We just
Speaker 7: haven't been able to see find a dinner or anything,
Speaker 7: you know, in the Northern Lower while I was still there.
Speaker 7: So it doesn't surprise me. I mean, we've had black
Speaker 7: bear in southern Michigan for well thirty years now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got a lot of black bears in central
Speaker 1: and northern Michigan.
Speaker 7: You know, we do, we do.
Speaker 1: The wolf was killed by a.
Speaker 7: U.
Speaker 1: The wolve's killed by a This is odd. Was killed
Speaker 1: by a guided coyote hunter. There was a guy on
Speaker 1: a guided coyote hunt killed an eighty seven pound gray wolf.
Speaker 1: They're holding the body. You know, grey wolves are federally
Speaker 1: protected Yeah, in there and they're holding the body for
Speaker 1: ANEE cropsy, and I think someone said, I think that
Speaker 1: we'll find that it was shot, but also checking its
Speaker 1: parasite load and maybe try to get some idea where
Speaker 1: it came from.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they'll probably do DNA testing on.
Speaker 4: It too, I'm sure DNA database, right, so they can
Speaker 4: tell who's breeding with who and where the kids go.
Speaker 1: Before the show started, you and I talked about another
Speaker 1: Michigan thing I'd like you to speak to, and you
Speaker 1: said you were disappointed on it. I've communicated with folks
Speaker 1: from Michigan Nited conservation clubs on this. Is that that
Speaker 1: explain how coyote management just changed in Michigan?
Speaker 7: Well, the Commission Natural Resources Commission just voted to close
Speaker 7: down the coyote season for several months of the year.
Speaker 7: Up until now, coyotes have been legal to be taken
Speaker 7: at any time.
Speaker 1: But how far back does that go?
Speaker 7: Oh, let's see. I probably we probably made that change
Speaker 7: in the eighties or nineties as coyotes moved into southern
Speaker 7: Michigan and populations, we really saw a big increase across
Speaker 7: you know, most of Michigan and across most of the
Speaker 7: Midwest coyote populations took off and people were seeing damage
Speaker 7: from them, depredation, and so with that we opened up,
Speaker 7: you know, the ability to take coyotes just about any time,
Speaker 7: all year round, and so this shuts it down for
Speaker 7: a period of the year.
Speaker 1: Now here's let me give you my two different ways
Speaker 1: of looking at it. One hand. On one hand, I
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting worked up about it the
Speaker 1: change because I was sinking to myself. They are at
Speaker 1: they are pursued as a fur bear by travers, okay,
Speaker 1: travers and hunters, and if you go back any length
Speaker 1: of time, I mean before the real biggest population explosion
Speaker 1: in the South, I mean they were just like a
Speaker 1: state people for bear and we're viewed as such.
Speaker 7: Right, that's true?
Speaker 1: Uh, Red Fox, Oh, what season opens October fifteenth, whatever
Speaker 1: the hell it is. There's a season raccoon. Depending on
Speaker 1: where you're at in the state, you might have a
Speaker 1: November one opener on raccoon.
Speaker 4: Quick content, Well, we have a beaver, beautiful coyote hide
Speaker 4: oh in in prime condition at like seven hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty bucks on the auction house oddities.
Speaker 1: Right now, yep, right off this wall.
Speaker 4: But to the point that you were making. It's taken
Speaker 4: during a season where that hide is prime prime, it's
Speaker 4: it's full of for because it's cold out December January.
Speaker 9: Is that yours from Montana?
Speaker 1: It's mine from Montana, from the winter season, from the
Speaker 1: wall to the studio.
Speaker 9: It makes you realize that one of those is seven
Speaker 9: to fifty.
Speaker 1: Good chunk of money.
Speaker 5: Right now they're one, But there's there's are there?
Speaker 1: Crianzy canna start now?
Speaker 7: I'm going to start.
Speaker 4: There's a time in the season where that high does
Speaker 4: not prime because it's warm and it's much more thin,
Speaker 4: and it would not command the same amount of value
Speaker 4: on like an open fur market.
Speaker 7: Yes, and so I won't argue with you there. You
Speaker 7: don't want two points, Okay, all right? Number one?
Speaker 1: That's the number one point. I couldn't get worked up
Speaker 1: about it because of that. But here's what I do
Speaker 1: get worked up about, because I do get worked out
Speaker 1: about it of when when they start, when people start
Speaker 1: changing rules, and I don't necessarily agree with why they
Speaker 1: changed it, Meaning if it had been the trappers or
Speaker 1: hunters or the fur people saying what gives why are
Speaker 1: you guys killing kyot's in the spring when it's with
Speaker 1: pop season and then they're not worth anything than anyone anyways,
Speaker 1: why not leave them for people that that that wanna
Speaker 1: you lie or make a few bucks on them later
Speaker 1: in the year. But so in your explanation of this,
Speaker 1: who was pushing for the change, like was it coming
Speaker 1: from them or no?
Speaker 7: It was not coming from the hunters and the trappers,
Speaker 7: So you know it was coming from individuals who do
Speaker 7: not like the idea of year round killing of coyotes,
Speaker 7: and I think the commission was uncomfortable with that. But
Speaker 7: like you said, you held the same opinion I do.
Speaker 7: It's not coming from the segment that wants to have
Speaker 7: that population managed for maximum value out there. It's being
Speaker 7: taken because we don't like the thought of taking coyotes
Speaker 7: at that time of year. So what's happening now is
Speaker 7: for individuals who have chickens or individuals who who are
Speaker 7: out there and have deprivation issues. Now they've got to
Speaker 7: go through getting a permit in order to take those
Speaker 7: animals out of season, and I assume they'll be able
Speaker 7: to do it. But every time you do that, you're
Speaker 7: you're tying up a biologist time and energy to issue
Speaker 7: a permit for what had been going on where they
Speaker 7: could be actively managing some habitat so that you would
Speaker 7: have better habitat on the landscape, you'd have better population management.
Speaker 4: You know, it's and it's a species that we really
Speaker 4: can't Yeah, it's put a dent down.
Speaker 7: No, it's super abundant, and so you know, let's be
Speaker 7: realistic about it. You know, it's it's one of those
Speaker 7: situations where people might not like the thought of it,
Speaker 7: but it's it's part of reality that coyotes do get
Speaker 7: in trouble, they do cause depredation issues for people out there.
Speaker 4: Doug Durren points out correctly, so that the pro argument
Speaker 4: for year round coyote hunting is it's a superabundant resource,
Speaker 4: and the anti argument it overlaps with that also where
Speaker 4: it's like it's a superabundant resource and hunting hasn't been
Speaker 4: proven to dent that resource, So why are you hunting it?
Speaker 4: Because hunting isn't managing the population.
Speaker 1: Whatever you're doing is not working, right, I can see
Speaker 1: that are Yeah, Yeah, that's one of the that's like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a tongue twister when it comes
Speaker 1: to coyotes is you'll often have people point out that
Speaker 1: that with when you're hunting coyotes, you'll offset pack dynamics
Speaker 1: and it'll actually lead to fragmentation and more put production,
Speaker 1: meaning you'd have this this hierarchy that had some sort
Speaker 1: of limit on who's reproducing. And then as you if
Speaker 1: you kill dominant animals, you cause these like splintering factions
Speaker 1: and it generates more put production. So kind of being
Speaker 1: a smart ass, you might say, well, if you love coyotes,
Speaker 1: why would you not want kyote hunting because you love
Speaker 1: coyotes and it seems to be really making a lot
Speaker 1: more of them, you know, meaning I love deer. If
Speaker 1: I found that there was some thing hunters were doing
Speaker 1: that was like producing tons of giant bucks, I would
Speaker 1: be like, please continue, let's continue this because I love
Speaker 1: these giant bucks. But they're saying, like I love kyotes,
Speaker 1: don't kill kyos because it just makes more coyotes, which is,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's an intellectual tongue twister.
Speaker 5: I think it's less they love coyotes and they don't
Speaker 5: love the idea of killing.
Speaker 7: K Yeah, I think so too. And it's not just coyotes,
Speaker 7: it's canines. I mean we see it with the wolf
Speaker 7: population too. We've listed in d lifts listed wolves over
Speaker 7: and over again in Michigan and the western Great Lakes population.
Speaker 7: And you know, the solution when we had depredating or
Speaker 7: when we had problem wolves that were getting in and
Speaker 7: causing problems, when we couldn't do lethal take, and there
Speaker 7: was a time when we couldn't, was to trap those
Speaker 7: wolves and move them. And where are you.
Speaker 5: Moving them, Colorado?
Speaker 7: You're moving them into the territory of another pack where.
Speaker 4: They're going to get brutally.
Speaker 7: It's a brutal death sentence.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think, what interesting thing we just just saw it
Speaker 4: with this uh wolf that that got killed in southern
Speaker 4: Michigan is the success of the anti killing of wolf
Speaker 4: party is the death of an individual animal is a
Speaker 4: paper thin degree away from the extirpation of the species
Speaker 4: as a whole. So when you talk to somebody, well
Speaker 4: they just killed the wolf, they're going to kill all
Speaker 4: the wolves. Where it's like you just whacked a white
Speaker 4: tailed deer with your bumper for the seventh time this year.
Speaker 4: That doesn't equate to killing all the white tails.
Speaker 7: No, And those charismatic species are special.
Speaker 1: So who you going to vote for for president?
Speaker 5: When you when you were at when you were Charisma,
Speaker 5: when you were at when you ran the the.
Speaker 1: Fishing Game Department in Michigan. In a role like that,
Speaker 1: how do you grab like in a role like that,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you how do you got
Speaker 1: to handle partisan politics?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, first of all, is a as a
Speaker 7: state employee, which I was. You've got to be real careful.
Speaker 7: You can't get engaged in partisan politics. You can't do
Speaker 7: you know, you can't do partisan fundraisers that tie your
Speaker 7: name into you know, advocating for one party or one
Speaker 7: candidate or another. You've got to be really careful with
Speaker 7: the Hatch Act that you don't engage in in advocating
Speaker 7: for certain issues that go to the public.
Speaker 1: Do you stop did you just do you stop voting?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: You still vote?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 7: I still vote, Yeah, And I vote. I vote primaries
Speaker 7: the whole nine yards and always have always will. You know,
Speaker 7: it's it's my right to help decide who gets elected.
Speaker 7: And I think everybody should engage and vote how they
Speaker 7: feel most you know, the candidates that best represent their views.
Speaker 1: But you keep quiet about it. Yeah, you know when
Speaker 1: you're in when you're in wildlife management at the state level.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you really can't. You know, well, I'll be honest
Speaker 7: with you. I worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations,
Speaker 7: and you know, it's tough because there's a lot of
Speaker 7: fundraising that goes on as you get into campaigns and
Speaker 7: get ready for election years, and you and you wind
Speaker 7: up happening to be very careful. I was. I was lucky.
Speaker 7: I had a commission that helped do fundraising, you know,
Speaker 7: for gubernatorial elections when it was expected that cabinet members
Speaker 7: would do that, which I was a cabinet member. But
Speaker 7: as you know, as an employee, I can't do that.
Speaker 7: I can't get into the partisan so very much bipartisan
Speaker 7: you try and work with both parties. Unfortunately, that middle
Speaker 7: ground is disappearing and it's it's hard. And I tend
Speaker 7: to be a moderate in my political views, you know,
Speaker 7: I step on both sides of the aisle. I tend
Speaker 7: to be fiscally conservative and a little more liberal on
Speaker 7: some of the social issues, and so between those trying
Speaker 7: to find that common ground. You know, it's really hard
Speaker 7: because the parties have We've lost the we've lost the
Speaker 7: conservative Democrats and the and the more liberal Republicans. They're
Speaker 7: just fading away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted something spicier in that, Steve.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: not frustrating anything you're saying. I just I feel that
Speaker 1: they're faded away. They're faded away from the areas where
Speaker 1: you hear from people.
Speaker 7: I think they're faded away in our elected representation because
Speaker 7: you know, yeah, I don't think you know. And I
Speaker 7: think we hang with people that tend to share our views.
Speaker 7: You know, they share our activities. So I agree with you.
Speaker 7: I think there are a lot of folks out there
Speaker 7: that are like me. You know, when I talk to folks,
Speaker 7: they they express similar views. And I don't think it's
Speaker 7: just because they're trying to impress me that we're so
Speaker 7: much alike. I think they probably do. But both parties
Speaker 7: have taken over so such non overlapping issues. It makes
Speaker 7: it really difficult.
Speaker 1: I hang with people that share my activities, but then
Speaker 1: not the views.
Speaker 7: Oh, I will agree with you there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of my dear dear friends I feel have
Speaker 1: some just ridiculous viewpoints. I forgive him it because they
Speaker 1: like to fish. Well.
Speaker 7: It mixed for interesting conversations.
Speaker 1: And the older I get them more Now when I
Speaker 1: hear one, I don't even like I used to be
Speaker 1: like I'd want to argue it. No, No, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: that's funny.
Speaker 7: Once you start that argument, it's ending the argument that
Speaker 7: becomes the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I look for I look for. I sort
Speaker 1: of am running this thing in my head. I was like,
Speaker 1: when you cut all the bullshit out, I think a
Speaker 1: good person, and you know, I'm like, yeah, man, they're
Speaker 1: a great person.
Speaker 7: Well do I trust them? Do I trust them to
Speaker 7: leave the country or the state, or to make to
Speaker 7: make wise decisions?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But then am I going to go ask them
Speaker 1: where I think where they think COVID came from or whatever?
Speaker 1: Now like I might ask where that fish they call
Speaker 1: came from? So in the so now right like you
Speaker 1: you've ran, you ran a big national conservation organization which
Speaker 1: everybody's heard of, Nation Wild Turkey Federation. You're at the
Speaker 1: helm right now of another federal policy conservation group TRCP.
Speaker 1: Yep uh, How does an organization? How do these organizations
Speaker 1: handle the partisan question? Meaning, here we are, we're coming
Speaker 1: up on an election cycle, which I feel like it's
Speaker 1: already been going on for three years, but it's it's
Speaker 1: I guess starting, it started starting. It's gonna heat up,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be the most well, we're gonna have the
Speaker 1: most expensive.
Speaker 7: It's just going to be a wonderful year.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have the most expensive presidential election ever. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if that really says anything about that
Speaker 1: just might say something about the fact that every four
Speaker 1: years it's more expensive. I don't know, most expensive, hotly contested.
Speaker 5: There are some records that I don't really pay much
Speaker 5: at times too, and when everything is like the most
Speaker 5: expensive we've had yet, I think that's sort of a function.
Speaker 1: Of advertising expensive. In four years, it'll be the most expensive.
Speaker 1: It's every everyone has been the most expensed.
Speaker 5: I don't think we're going get to a point in
Speaker 5: my adult life where we're like, man, this election is
Speaker 5: half the cost of last one, the least expensive election
Speaker 5: we ever had.
Speaker 4: I think though, in state politics, especially some of these
Speaker 4: western states that do not have large populations comparatively, that's
Speaker 4: where those those numbers matter. Like I look at the
Speaker 4: amount of cash that's going to be spent and is
Speaker 4: being spent on the governatorial race right now relative to
Speaker 4: our size, Like the dollars per person, the dollars per person,
Speaker 4: and it's and they're going to spend it. Yeah, it's dollars, yes,
Speaker 4: not proportions, not fractions of dollars. And they're going to
Speaker 4: spend it, which means we are going to get robo calls,
Speaker 4: texts in you know, just like those political ads are
Speaker 4: going to be served to us every which way possible
Speaker 4: for in an increasing manner like it does not bode
Speaker 4: well for the mental health of Montana's Now.
Speaker 1: No, when Davy Crockett was running for Congress, he would
Speaker 1: do a little thing where if you came down and
Speaker 1: voted for him, you'd get a shot of whiskey. You
Speaker 1: could with the money they're spending, you could they could
Speaker 1: hand out bottles of whiskey.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 7: Expensive, and and elections and campaigns have gone to micro targeting,
Speaker 7: so they've segmented.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: They can tell now how you vote. You know, even
Speaker 7: if you're in a state that you don't have to
Speaker 7: declare your party, they can tell by your voting record
Speaker 7: what you when you vote, which party you're most likely
Speaker 7: to vote for, and they know, you know, is it
Speaker 7: you know, are you a big fan of police protection
Speaker 7: or not? Are you where do you stand on right
Speaker 7: to life. They have all that information. So when they
Speaker 7: go out and start walking for candidates, knocking doors, which
Speaker 7: they do in hotly contested areas, they're pulling literature that
Speaker 7: pertains to your interest.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting you bring it up because the other
Speaker 1: day one of the we had a Senate a representative
Speaker 1: from a Senate candidate knock on the door wanting to
Speaker 1: speak to my wife. And when I informed him that
Speaker 1: she wasn't there, I thought, well, now I'm going to
Speaker 1: get the pitch. He just walked off.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: He knew, he knew who he.
Speaker 7: Was there, he knew who he was there to talk to.
Speaker 6: That's right.
Speaker 1: So as you look at this, as you look at
Speaker 1: the landscape, like, how do you guys, how does the
Speaker 1: game work? Because here at TRCP yep uh speak from
Speaker 1: that seat or the NWTF seat whatever, no matter what
Speaker 1: administration comes in, you need to come. You're gonna need
Speaker 1: to go to the administration, right or to appointees or however,
Speaker 1: you're going to need to go there and and and say, uh,
Speaker 1: let's work together.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 1: So uh, but you can't you can't make a big
Speaker 1: bet in one direction and then when they lose you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I guess we're out of the game for
Speaker 1: four years.
Speaker 7: Well you can't.
Speaker 1: So you're what are you doing? Like, how are you?
Speaker 1: How are you doing this?
Speaker 7: Well, a couple of things.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 7: First, we and others in the conservation community, we being TRCP,
Speaker 7: sit down and identify our policy objectives. What are real
Speaker 7: priorities for us, you know, for the next administration, be
Speaker 7: it Biden to be at Trump too, and write those
Speaker 7: up so that we can share those with those those campaigns,
Speaker 7: because you're this next year is they're campaigning, they're forming
Speaker 7: their policy planks for their administration. By the time they
Speaker 7: they have identified candidates for those cabinet posts, they will
Speaker 7: identify people based on some of the objectives they want
Speaker 7: to achieve. So we want to get into them before
Speaker 7: they're elected, and we do that with both parties. We
Speaker 7: share those information. We try and go over that information
Speaker 7: with those campaigns so they understand why why it's important
Speaker 7: to us. And then as we move forward and you
Speaker 7: have an election and administration comes on board, you need
Speaker 7: to get in there and build relationships. You won't always
Speaker 7: agree with everything. It doesn't matter what the administration is,
Speaker 7: you're going to disagree on certain things. But you need
Speaker 7: to have a working relationship and you build that trust
Speaker 7: that they will share information on what's coming out so
Speaker 7: that you can prepare for it. You can look for it.
Speaker 7: You can let them know where you see that's going
Speaker 7: to be problematic, that it hasn't been well thought out.
Speaker 7: You can ask them to hold it over for more
Speaker 7: comment so that you can they can get a more
Speaker 7: robust view on some of the issues that you think
Speaker 7: are have been not taken into consideration, or even hold
Speaker 7: off on a rule or piece of legislation that you
Speaker 7: think is bad for it. And by doing that, you
Speaker 7: try and build that working relationship and trust with that administration,
Speaker 7: and then you know you're careful in terms of being
Speaker 7: true to your positions, so that if you disagree with something,
Speaker 7: you do it in a manner where you don't surprise them.
Speaker 7: You know, it's okay to disagree on stuff, but nobody
Speaker 7: likes being surprised, So let them know why you don't
Speaker 7: like it, and bring the information on why you think
Speaker 7: it hasn't been well thought out. Make the ask, and
Speaker 7: then if you have to do editorials or sign on
Speaker 7: letters or you know, come out strongly on it, they
Speaker 7: know they know that you don't agree with it.
Speaker 1: They knew it was going to happen. New to thinking
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: What do you run? You talk about like you have
Speaker 1: your plan for the next administration. You have to run
Speaker 1: like parallel two paths, right, because you might be looking
Speaker 1: at like let's say you're looking at you're talking about
Speaker 1: Biden too, Okay with that, you'd say, well, there's a
Speaker 1: clearer pathway to climate issues, there's a clearer pathway to
Speaker 1: wildlife overpasses through infrastructure spending, right yep.
Speaker 7: But there was in the Trump administration too, Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Trump administration was very supportive of those migration corridors and
Speaker 7: they actually dedicated some funding to it. So both administrations
Speaker 7: are on that. But like Biden, we're looking at alternative energy.
Speaker 7: But the BLM solar plan, this is one that we
Speaker 7: have an editorial coming out on Joel's Gutten editorial on it.
Speaker 7: We're a bit concerned with Church with what they're identifying
Speaker 7: in terms of placement in those migration corridors for solar do.
Speaker 4: You might talk to a lot of Idaho folks who
Speaker 4: are real, real fire out because the BLM plan in
Speaker 4: Southwest Idaho uy he downwhere Snort got bit. But there's
Speaker 4: also California big horn sheep super like the genetics for
Speaker 4: like that really wide ass mule deer buck that down
Speaker 4: in that country, and big old pronghorn sage grouse. It's
Speaker 4: a very sensitive area.
Speaker 7: We're not opposed to alternative energy by any stretch of
Speaker 7: the imagination. I mean, we need to move into alternative energy.
Speaker 7: We just want it to be carefully thought out. You know,
Speaker 7: we need we need working landscapes that provide great habitat
Speaker 7: but also provide you know, clean water, clean air, food
Speaker 7: that we like to enjoy an energy and so, but
Speaker 7: it's about doing the pre work to make sure it's
Speaker 7: being placed in the appropriate locations that aren't going to
Speaker 7: have big, big ramifications for some of the species that
Speaker 7: we hold near and dear.
Speaker 5: And I think there's a huge misconception that if you're
Speaker 5: supportive of alternative energy, that you're supportive of it anywhere.
Speaker 5: And I think, like from someone who as a former
Speaker 5: TIERCP staffer, like the some of the like the sessions
Speaker 5: I remember of people really hand ringing and pulling their
Speaker 5: hair out or looking at maps of solar placement, and
Speaker 5: like there's people on the ground working for you know
Speaker 5: that we're supportive of alternative energy, but recognize the threat
Speaker 5: and the danger of citing it improperly. And so I
Speaker 5: think like there's a lot of back and forth. If
Speaker 5: you follow the discourse about you know, it's either one
Speaker 5: way or the other way, and there's people on the
Speaker 5: ground that are really diligently thinking about how do we
Speaker 5: stop this in places where it's going to have a
Speaker 5: huge impact on wildlife and how do we do it responsibly?
Speaker 7: And we can have both. I mean that's the thing
Speaker 7: when you look at the acreage requirements, we have more
Speaker 7: enough acreage outside those corridors. Now there might be other
Speaker 7: species and concerns or landscape characteristics, historical significance, you know,
Speaker 7: a range of issues, but nonetheless we need to take
Speaker 7: into account these really critical areas. We saw the same
Speaker 7: thing in Michigan with wind power. You know, when we
Speaker 7: were putting up wind turbines the areas they had the
Speaker 7: greatest wind potential where right where birds migrated, and it
Speaker 7: was that's going to be problematic. I mean, if you're
Speaker 7: killing birds like crazy when they're and we got wind
Speaker 7: turbines located all down on the east side of the state,
Speaker 7: which is a major flyway corridor for migratory birds. That's
Speaker 7: a problem, you know, so we you know, in that situation,
Speaker 7: it was about pulling the right expertise together, mapping it
Speaker 7: out and looking at those wind maps and looking at
Speaker 7: that where those migration corridors were, and finding solutions to it.
Speaker 7: So you're placing alternative energy where it's going to be
Speaker 7: beneficial and not harmful to those species.
Speaker 1: Let me back up on the thing, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to drive you to give a drive you to
Speaker 1: give an answer you're not comfortable with, but I'm just
Speaker 1: not clear on it. Yeah, we talk about this this
Speaker 1: like administration planning. Do do you develop two or do
Speaker 1: you develop one? And like you develop one plan for
Speaker 1: the next four years and you're presenting it to each campaign.
Speaker 7: No, we do two. I mean, for one thing, parties
Speaker 7: talk different language, They use different phraseology, even though they
Speaker 7: might have the same issue, but they talk about it
Speaker 7: in different terms. And so you want you want the
Speaker 7: particular party that you're going towards to embrace this and
Speaker 7: use it. I mean, you want it to be their
Speaker 7: recipe book coming out, So you want it to be
Speaker 7: put in terms that resonate with other parts of that
Speaker 7: party plank and what they're doing, and so and there,
Speaker 7: there's and elements are going to be more attractive to
Speaker 7: one party over the other.
Speaker 4: They just are.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, by and large, you'll see more
Speaker 7: emphasis put on renewables with the Democratic Party, and security
Speaker 7: with oil security that's talked about more in Republican Now.
Speaker 7: In reality, we just we've produced more oil and gas
Speaker 7: in this country with each administration despite the party, in
Speaker 7: recent years, is that right, Yep, it's been ramping up.
Speaker 5: I get a record high, right, yeah, in terms of
Speaker 5: oil produced in the US.
Speaker 7: And people don't recognize that, but it's true. We have
Speaker 7: as part of our national security plan.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, I understand what you're saying with tailoring it in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there also and there's probably cases where you're gonna
Speaker 1: there's probably cases where you're going to drive at there's
Speaker 1: probably cases where you're you're asking for the same thing,
Speaker 1: but you're phrasing it as a different priority.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: There was also issues you know, we tend to the
Speaker 7: Republican Party tends to be a little more states rights.
Speaker 7: Then the Democratic Party looks for national solutions on those issues.
Speaker 7: So you know, that's another way that you're taking a
Speaker 7: look at it. You know, during the Trump administration, we
Speaker 7: saw a nice expansion and hunting and fishing on national
Speaker 7: refuge lands. And not only did they do that, but
Speaker 7: speaking as a state director, one of the things I
Speaker 7: really liked is they put out a mandate with that
Speaker 7: the regulations were going to be as close to the
Speaker 7: state regulations as they could be. So before you had
Speaker 7: if you were going to hunt on you know, refuge land,
Speaker 7: you might have different shell limits, you might have different
Speaker 7: days of the week that there was hunting, you might
Speaker 7: have all kinds of different requirements that were a little
Speaker 7: different season requirements than what you had at the state
Speaker 7: on the state land. And that just gets complex, you
Speaker 7: know that, I know that, and so they tried to
Speaker 7: simplify that bring the federal lands closer in alignment with
Speaker 7: the state regulations.
Speaker 1: Do you feel is there any rumor or anything around
Speaker 1: would Trump return to Barnhardt as his Interior secretary? Barnhart Bernhart, Sorry,
Speaker 1: it was David?
Speaker 10: Is that David?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 7: Hey, I do know that David has stayed very engaged
Speaker 7: in natural resource issues, and you know, he was very
Speaker 7: loyal to Trump throughout the administration and even afterwards. So
Speaker 7: you know, I I don't know, but I would assume
Speaker 7: he'll have some role in the administration.
Speaker 1: I heard a a person very involved in conservation. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be like, you know, secret about someone,
Speaker 1: Uh take a private conversation and apply it to someone,
Speaker 1: but someone very involved in conservation had said to me
Speaker 1: that what they what they liked about Trump's Interior secretary
Speaker 1: Part two, the second Interior Secretary, was that he would
Speaker 1: save you a lot of time by saying, uh, buddy,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get anywhere on this with me,
Speaker 1: and it would allow you to focus on the areas
Speaker 1: where he said, let's have a conversation and would tell
Speaker 1: you what's going to happen. Yeah, and then and then
Speaker 1: stick with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he said it was it just was. It was efficient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to to to spend time and resource there
Speaker 1: because you never wound up being that you wasted a
Speaker 1: bunch of time on something that you didn't know that
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you're gonna read the newspaper that
Speaker 1: things went in the direction you didn't anticipate.
Speaker 7: He was an honest broker in terms of telling you
Speaker 7: where issues were going if there was already a thought
Speaker 7: on it, so and and he he had researched issues also,
Speaker 7: so he had a pretty good handle on a lot
Speaker 7: of the conservation issues out there in that administration. You know,
Speaker 7: one of the things people probably don't realize is a
Speaker 7: lot of the staff support that comes in are the
Speaker 7: same folks. So you'll have administrations where you know a
Speaker 7: particular individuals in the administration they're a staff person, and
Speaker 7: you might switch parties for four years or eight years,
Speaker 7: but then you'll bring back a lot of those people
Speaker 7: that had worked during the previous Republican or Democratic administration
Speaker 7: because they kind of know the party priorities. And also
Speaker 7: they are very helpful in getting new candidates and new
Speaker 7: administrations in place and off to an effective start to
Speaker 7: move that agenda forward, because it's it's hard, especially if
Speaker 7: somebody comes in from outside government. You've got to make
Speaker 7: an awful lot of appointments, You've got an awful lot
Speaker 7: to do, to have executive orders written, and we've all
Speaker 7: seen there are more and more things being done by
Speaker 7: executive authority now and administrations kind of flip flop and
Speaker 7: reverse each other's executive order right out of the gate.
Speaker 7: And they do that by bringing back people who are knowledgeable,
Speaker 7: know how to write executive orders, and are familiar with
Speaker 7: the topic and have experience in it.
Speaker 1: We recently had a guest on talking about offshore wind
Speaker 1: offshore when you know electriacy generation, how do you yeah,
Speaker 1: wind power, wind power. At the end of the interview,
Speaker 1: I said, so, you know, when Trump wins in November,
Speaker 1: where is all this sit And he didn't have a
Speaker 1: great answer, but I felt like you could spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time working on something if you weren't being shrewd.
Speaker 1: You spend a lot of time working on something and
Speaker 1: then just have the rug ripped out from underneath you
Speaker 1: every four years.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah. And that's why administrations work so hard to
Speaker 7: get re elected and have at least an eight year runway,
Speaker 7: because it takes, you know, it takes really a couple
Speaker 7: of years to get administration in and rolling, to get
Speaker 7: all your your appointments confirmed and in there, and start
Speaker 7: to implement that policy direction, and by then you're into
Speaker 7: the next election cycle. In your campaigning, the administration is
Speaker 7: and so you know, and and quite often what we'll
Speaker 7: also see is at the end of the administration that's
Speaker 7: when the promises that were made when they came into
Speaker 7: office get run through, and some of those, quite frankly,
Speaker 7: can be quite ugly.
Speaker 4: That's what I was going to ask is when, because
Speaker 4: both candidates would be their their last term, last four yep, right,
Speaker 4: So that's typically when, as you just said, like you
Speaker 4: get to capitalize on the earth promises, some of the
Speaker 4: campaign promises they got them elected in the first place,
Speaker 4: that's right, or one that independent constituency. Right, We're like,
Speaker 4: is there going to be such a restart if Trump
Speaker 4: were to win? Would it hinder that last four years
Speaker 4: of getting ship done?
Speaker 11: Oh?
Speaker 1: Like as yours? Yeah? With does the does the break?
Speaker 1: Does the four year vacation sabbatical interrupt the momentum that
Speaker 1: you would have had your second term momentum?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Because what we saw right was like I think,
Speaker 4: like clean Water Act is always a great ping pong ball, right,
Speaker 4: Like God forbid we have somebody be like, yeah, some
Speaker 4: of that was okay, so we're just gonna return the
Speaker 4: pendulum to the middle, But instead you watch that pendulum
Speaker 4: go yeah, and it's it's.
Speaker 7: We're seeing more more of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So like that's what I'm I'm wondering, right,
Speaker 4: is like the first two years are just going to
Speaker 4: be like knocking those ping pong balls all the way
Speaker 4: back over to one side.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, yes, and no, I mean they're gonna
Speaker 7: if a new administration comes in, or even the current administration,
Speaker 7: they're going to have some individuals who do not you know,
Speaker 7: cabinet members and other appointees under secretaries who will not
Speaker 7: persist through the second term of the administration or with
Speaker 7: a new administration, they'll have to name a whole new
Speaker 7: cabinet and all those other appointed positions, and quite frankly,
Speaker 7: that takes a lot of time and energy.
Speaker 4: So they'll or, as we've seen in the past, not
Speaker 4: appointing positions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's right, right, that's right. Not appointing positions is
Speaker 7: also a tactic out there, having interim folks and acting folks.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting tactic when you have divisions.
Speaker 7: When you can't get somebody confirmed.
Speaker 1: Well no, no, I mean that also, but when you
Speaker 1: just have areas in which you're not that interested, I
Speaker 1: think you'd like to see downsize it's just the appointment,
Speaker 1: that's right, and.
Speaker 7: Leave lots of vacancies in the organization. Is there.
Speaker 9: Is there an area potentially with say renewables or energy
Speaker 9: production nationally. UH that that both administrations kind of have
Speaker 9: more of an intersection or similar thinking on that you'd
Speaker 9: see as that uh as that issue might have national
Speaker 9: security concerns for example with solar or offshore or well.
Speaker 7: Both administrations have been ramping up, you know, hydrocarbon production
Speaker 7: in the United States, so we're more self sufficient there.
Speaker 7: So that has been an ongoing trend as we talked about.
Speaker 7: You know, I think yes and no think. I think
Speaker 7: you're gonna see both administrations wanting to get into market
Speaker 7: based incentives that are out there. I mean, we've got
Speaker 7: to be able to make carbon part of the economy
Speaker 7: in order to treat it effectively. This is my two cents.
Speaker 7: I mean, it doesn't make any sense to have national
Speaker 7: forests that are going up in flames and burning fiber
Speaker 7: and causing tremendous degradation of habitats out there, rather than
Speaker 7: removing some of that fiber, mimicking natural processes and using
Speaker 7: that fiber and actually storing that carbon. So we've got
Speaker 7: to find ways that we can rebuild these local economies
Speaker 7: to have working landscapes. And we've lost a lot of
Speaker 7: that local rural economy. I mean, we don't have mills
Speaker 7: in much United States anymore in order to to even
Speaker 7: handle that fiber. Part of our problem with you know,
Speaker 7: there's been concerns with prescribed fire on the landscape because
Speaker 7: there have been a couple of fires that have gotten
Speaker 7: away from the Forest Service or state agencies that have
Speaker 7: been using it. But are we're using prescribed fire sometimes
Speaker 7: in cases where it's very different today than it used
Speaker 7: to be, where you know, you might run fire through
Speaker 7: an oak savanna or a pine savannah and one day,
Speaker 7: you know what the conditions are going to be, we
Speaker 7: can go out there and see what the humidity is.
Speaker 7: We have good weather satellite data. Now we've got big
Speaker 7: piles of logs that we have no mill to run
Speaker 7: it to. We've got no log haulers to haul it too.
Speaker 7: So you've got this huge pile of logs that are
Speaker 7: been cut and they're just stacked on the landscape, and
Speaker 7: we're using prescribed fire then to burn that pile of logs.
Speaker 7: What happens to that prescribe fire window? You know, anybody's
Speaker 7: had bomb fire, you know, it goes from a one
Speaker 7: day fire.
Speaker 4: Eventually you're standing around being like, oh my gosh, it's.
Speaker 7: A multi day fire, and then your chance of having
Speaker 7: fire escape from that. You know, you have winds come
Speaker 7: up in unexpected weather situations. When you have a big,
Speaker 7: big inferno going like that, you can't just kill it,
Speaker 7: you know, and so it's very difficult.
Speaker 1: You're talking about disposing of of stuff from thinning operations
Speaker 1: because there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to use, there's
Speaker 1: no way to use it economically. Yeah, it might be
Speaker 1: to you, so it just has to get torched.
Speaker 7: It might be a salvage cut that goes in. You
Speaker 7: might have a severe ice storm that comes in and
Speaker 7: closes roads and closes trails. You need to get that
Speaker 7: down material out of there. It might be win throw.
Speaker 7: I mean, we have tremendous areas in the Upper Peninsula
Speaker 7: and Lower Peninsula Michigan where winds race across those lakes
Speaker 7: and they will you know, certain events will throw trees down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like an avalanche path on relative you know.
Speaker 7: Or it could be a thinning operation where you're degrading
Speaker 7: that forest. You're getting so much fiber and so much
Speaker 7: ladder fuel that's creating fire damage, you know, fire hazard
Speaker 7: and damage for the future of that forest. So at
Speaker 7: that point you want to remove it, but you know,
Speaker 7: you want to remove it and be able to use
Speaker 7: that product if possible, And that's where we need to
Speaker 7: rebuild that infrastructure in some manner.
Speaker 1: How do you as a as a federal policy organization
Speaker 1: or you know, or a conservation group with federal scope, national,
Speaker 1: national level scope, how do you guys come in and uh,
Speaker 1: is it okay to come in and weigh in on appointments?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're talking about like interior secretary like
Speaker 1: that that an administration when they when when when a
Speaker 1: when an administration picks it's it's secretary of the Interior.
Speaker 1: You're sort of like looking at just this hugely impactful appointment.
Speaker 1: It's going to be that's going to be your enemy,
Speaker 1: that's going to be your ally. Right? Is it Is
Speaker 1: there a pathway to come in and say, hey, that
Speaker 1: that choice ain't gonna work.
Speaker 7: Yes, there have been in the past with the going
Speaker 7: in and saying, you know, this is just not an
Speaker 7: appropriate appointment given you know what this person has done
Speaker 7: previously or what they are saying publicly on it, or
Speaker 7: we have concerns about working with it. But typically what
Speaker 7: we try and do is way in early in terms
Speaker 7: of the types of expertise or major issues that we
Speaker 7: think are coming up that that the administration should look
Speaker 7: at and consider for appointments out there. And quite frankly,
Speaker 7: most administrations coming in they ask key partner groups out there,
Speaker 7: who do you know good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you get a chance, you could like slide
Speaker 1: a resume over. Yeah, are you are you up for
Speaker 1: that job?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 2: No, you're not.
Speaker 7: No, But you know, I went in and interviewed for
Speaker 7: Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service years ago, and
Speaker 7: that's how it was. I kept saying I wasn't interested
Speaker 7: in it, and it was like, we really want to
Speaker 7: talk to you, just come in and talk to us.
Speaker 7: So I flew in, talked to him for a day
Speaker 7: and told him who I thought would be really good,
Speaker 7: But it wasn't me. You know, we needed to make
Speaker 7: deep cultural change in that organization at that time, and
Speaker 7: I really thought it needed to come from somebody within
Speaker 7: the organization, and and they did. That person came in.
Speaker 7: Sam Hamilton came in and was very effective while he
Speaker 7: was there. Unfortunately he died of a heart attack lead
Speaker 7: too early in life.
Speaker 1: Uh, before we start recording you're talking about we were
Speaker 1: talking about when you hit you uh, you ran the
Speaker 1: you ran the DNR in Michigan. And then later we're
Speaker 1: asked would you like to be a commissioner, and you
Speaker 1: felt that that was inappropriate to have like a former,
Speaker 1: like a former department head sitting on the commission and
Speaker 1: having I don't know, what's a confused power dynamic.
Speaker 7: Well, I think it's difficult. I think it's difficult for
Speaker 7: private organizations or nonprofits to have their past CEO sit
Speaker 7: on their border directors. Your border directors is your boss,
Speaker 7: and to have your predecessor be your boss puts you
Speaker 7: in an uncomfortable situation when you know there are key
Speaker 7: initiatives or changes that person made and you're recommending something different.
Speaker 7: I didn't have to deal with that when I was director.
Speaker 7: I didn't have any past directors. In fact, there haven't
Speaker 7: been past directors on the commission before until the person
Speaker 7: that followed me was named on the commission for a
Speaker 7: short time. And quite frankly I talked to him about it.
Speaker 7: He said it was awful. Oh okay, you know, and
Speaker 7: the groups try and use you also, you know, I
Speaker 7: get called now on issues where the sportsman's groups don't
Speaker 7: necessarily agree with the decision, and they want me to
Speaker 7: come out and publicly weigh in on it. Oh and
Speaker 7: you know, I'm not so sure my opinion at this
Speaker 7: point is any more important than anybody else's opinion out there.
Speaker 7: But the other part of it is, you know, I
Speaker 7: think those jobs are really tough, and I don't want
Speaker 7: to make it tougher that person that.
Speaker 1: I was more bringing that up to tea up to
Speaker 1: another thing, is you would said before we started recording
Speaker 1: to day, you're talking about what you're seeing in general.
Speaker 1: I'll have you put in your own words, but like
Speaker 1: a general erosion of commission authority? Can can you explain?
Speaker 1: Can you real quick tell people, you know, speaking from
Speaker 1: that you got fifty of these things like what are
Speaker 1: commissions and what do you mean by commission authority?
Speaker 7: Well, commissions natural resources commissions, and they sometimes are called
Speaker 7: fishing game commissions, but typically they are appointed positions appointed
Speaker 7: by the governor and then they are the body that
Speaker 7: either hires the director of the Department Natural Resources or
Speaker 7: fishing Game or whatever it's called in that state, or
Speaker 7: they are the decision maker on hunting and fishing regulations.
Speaker 7: So you've got this this public commission with appointed people
Speaker 7: to help help insulate the departments directly from the governor's office.
Speaker 7: So even though you're part of the executive branch, you
Speaker 7: know you don't. You have a little bit of buffer
Speaker 7: in there. And they also provide some real transparency because
Speaker 7: typically those commissions don't pass regulations, they don't hire directors
Speaker 7: without public input. When I was hired, my interview was televised,
Speaker 7: so it was you know, it was a very public
Speaker 7: process that went through in terms of selection.
Speaker 1: Did they ask what your spirit animal was?
Speaker 7: No, they didn't ask what my spirit animal was. They
Speaker 7: asked an awful lot of other questions, So I got
Speaker 7: to tell you. And but you know, that process of
Speaker 7: gathering public input on various regulations is really important, and
Speaker 7: we are seeing now more and more directors are selected
Speaker 7: not by the commission but by the governor. They become
Speaker 7: gubernatorial appointments, which occurred in Michigan when I was there.
Speaker 7: I was the last commission appointed and the first gubernatorial
Speaker 7: appointed director. So the commission of the director, the governor
Speaker 7: in the state passed an executive order that made that
Speaker 7: appointment her appointment rather than the commissions.
Speaker 1: Because they just didn't like what they were getting from
Speaker 1: the Commission because they wanted to be just like more
Speaker 1: an instrument of the administration.
Speaker 7: Like, what is the push I think, you know, I
Speaker 7: think they you know, what I heard was you want
Speaker 7: direct accountability of your cabinet members. But I really think
Speaker 7: when you get into office and you name your cabinet,
Speaker 7: you want to be able to name those cabinet members
Speaker 7: so that they're all people that are affiliated in helping
Speaker 7: move your agenda forward. And what the second thing that
Speaker 7: has happened with that, though, is the tenure of agency
Speaker 7: directors has shortened. Now the average tenures less than three years. Well,
Speaker 7: it's hard to manage natural resources that have you know,
Speaker 7: long history lifespan, scientific the whole nine yards on really
Speaker 7: short rotation. So yes, I hear governors want that direct accountability.
Speaker 7: But having some some transition and having directors span various parties,
Speaker 7: it's not all bad. It's good, I mean in my opinion,
Speaker 7: and I think having the Commission in there and most
Speaker 7: of your commissions are required to be bipartisan, so they
Speaker 7: have the call for in various states. You know, commissioners
Speaker 7: either represent a geographic location or they represent political party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or or uh in or factions of industry meaning
Speaker 1: commercial guides and guides and outfitters, commercial interests, agriculture.
Speaker 4: You need where you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to strive for some level. And I think that
Speaker 1: and I've heard and maybe it's just a tradition in Washington,
Speaker 1: but regionality, Yeah, I think you see specified regionality as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because so many from the you know, west of the Cascades,
Speaker 1: East of the Cascades, that's right.
Speaker 7: Sorry, But with that, what we're seeing is those commissions
Speaker 7: are both their authorities getting nit back, you know, sometimes
Speaker 7: through state law that you know, legislators are trying to
Speaker 7: enact laws on taking of game and fish species or
Speaker 7: the method of take, and then the other way is
Speaker 7: they're losing their authority to a point, also a point
Speaker 7: a point your director.
Speaker 1: The director, Yeah, got him? And you generally are uneasy
Speaker 1: with this, I am.
Speaker 7: I think it creates more partisan politics into the natural
Speaker 7: resource arena, and I think it creates more of these shifts.
Speaker 7: And just like we talked about with executive orders that
Speaker 7: swing so far one way and then the other way,
Speaker 7: you know, that's that you waste a lot of time
Speaker 7: and energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like ladies and gentlemen, we're all in on renewables.
Speaker 1: Then ladies and gentlemen, we're all in on high.
Speaker 5: Slow down the pendulum a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, just I got a last question for you that's
Speaker 1: a little more oplicated, but uh, just an observation about
Speaker 1: the wild pendulum swings on. I mean, people like the
Speaker 1: bitch about gridlock, but I always like to remind folks
Speaker 1: that this is quite intentional. You know, we could be
Speaker 1: like Venezuela. You know, hey we're communists, and then like
Speaker 1: a couple months later, hey we're ultra right, Hey we're
Speaker 1: back to communists. I mean, those are you know, when
Speaker 1: people bitch about gridlock, I can have a.
Speaker 4: Little effect on your bank account.
Speaker 1: When people bitch about gridlock and all this, it's like
Speaker 1: it's this is intentionally constructed that we don't go down
Speaker 1: wild ass that you can't harness the moment and going
Speaker 1: wild directions all the time. Right, And so I don't like,
Speaker 1: I get aggravated about the things that I want to
Speaker 1: happen that don't happen quickly. But in general, it's like
Speaker 1: it's as some stability.
Speaker 5: The other people's stuff is going just as slow.
Speaker 1: It's better. Yeah, So if I don't get what I
Speaker 1: want and they don't get what they want, I feel
Speaker 1: okay about it.
Speaker 7: Our issues tend to do really well though, during gridlock.
Speaker 7: So you know, here's the other part of it is,
Speaker 7: we might get frustrated, but we are usually highly effective
Speaker 7: when Congress or state legislatures cannot agree on issues. Our
Speaker 7: conservation issues usually do really well because.
Speaker 4: You can be the awesome person who says, hey, I
Speaker 4: got something that everybody like, Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: There's no like hot button social issue wrapped up into it.
Speaker 7: Well, that's right. I mean in DNR, we used to
Speaker 7: call ourselves the Department of Fun that doesn't want to
Speaker 7: support the Department of Fun. I mean, you have hunting,
Speaker 7: you have camping, you've got timber industry, you've got fishing
Speaker 7: and hunting and wildlife viewing. So I mean, but most
Speaker 7: of our legislation we work in a bipartisan manner. Anyhow
Speaker 7: to try and get things so that you have both
Speaker 7: sponsors of bills on the right and the left, and
Speaker 7: and introduce thos and try and keep them fairly evenly matched.
Speaker 7: So those we tend to be highly successful during periods
Speaker 7: of gridlock when Congress can't deal with the other stuff, and.
Speaker 1: They need to have something that they need to bring you.
Speaker 1: I supported this bill.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 1: Uh, here's the one is here's one. It's more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's not complicated. Answers is complicated to ask.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: Everyone loves to talk to Gripe about ballot box biology,
Speaker 1: ballot box initiatives. And also I find this is an
Speaker 1: area that really accentuates a lot of hypocrisy. Meaning I'm
Speaker 1: very supportive of the ballot initiatives that guarantee the right
Speaker 1: to hunt trap and fish. Okay, So I'll be like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: vote yes, this is November for your states right to
Speaker 1: hunt fish. Okay. Then the next time some a ballot
Speaker 1: initiative comes up that I don't like, I'll be like,
Speaker 1: there you go, damn it, ballot box biology, right, putting
Speaker 1: it to the voters. That's not how you do it.
Speaker 1: But a minute ago, I was just avid, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. A minute ago, I was just saying, Oh, you.
Speaker 4: Can get the uninformed mass to vote your way. It's
Speaker 4: a great thing.
Speaker 1: So people love right, like everybody complains about it, But
Speaker 1: they complain about it only when there's a ballot box
Speaker 1: initiative that they hate. And when there's ones they support,
Speaker 1: they're getting out the vote.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like people don't really complain about judicial activism
Speaker 5: when the courts are finding in their favor.
Speaker 1: Sure, you know. Yeah, So here's the question that's that
Speaker 1: was just the observation. Is it really is there more
Speaker 1: of this now than there was? Or is it just
Speaker 1: always been this way? I mean, is it really more
Speaker 1: ballot box biology and ballot box?
Speaker 9: What what?
Speaker 4: Wildlife?
Speaker 9: Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I think we go through waves, to be honest with you,
Speaker 7: I think there are periods. You know, when I think
Speaker 7: back through my career, there were periods where we had
Speaker 7: ballad initiatives that we fought and that we supported, and
Speaker 7: then you'll have a quiet period for a while, and
Speaker 7: then it creeps back up again. So it's usually when
Speaker 7: there's an action and a reaction that's out there and.
Speaker 1: Oh, like, I'll show you that's right, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a ball.
Speaker 7: But we have seen some of the national challenges towards
Speaker 7: hunting and fishing. We have seen those been direct campaigns
Speaker 7: that are now being fought at the state level. So
Speaker 7: I think you see more activity to try and restrict
Speaker 7: and also promote hunting and fishing at that state level
Speaker 7: than we used to do. Where it used to be,
Speaker 7: you know, we had more national legislation and the rest
Speaker 7: of it, and so there's more activism at that state level.
Speaker 1: So that is thing. Yeah, I think so, because you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier that big box, all the giant big
Speaker 1: box and no one after him might have been a
Speaker 1: bat might be faulty, memory might be faulty. But the
Speaker 1: days back when they weren't ballot box initiating wildlife decisions
Speaker 1: is new ish. Yeah, I you know, it's expanded.
Speaker 7: You know, I remember we had we had some back
Speaker 7: in the seventies, but then really in the nineties it
Speaker 7: really came alive and then we've kind of seen it
Speaker 7: dining down and now it's you know, we had periods
Speaker 7: across the country where there was a big push to
Speaker 7: to do ballot initiatives to protect the right to hunt
Speaker 7: and fish, and now you're seeing challenges again.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 7: So and we're seeing a big push right now in
Speaker 7: several states for trying to advocate for these commissions to
Speaker 7: have appointments that are non hunters and even anti hunters,
Speaker 7: an angler.
Speaker 1: Zoo keepers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got a uh, everybody's got an test in
Speaker 4: the state's wildlife, so we need to have those interests
Speaker 4: represented on the board. Unfortunately, like that, never you never
Speaker 4: get to ask the question, well are there interests not
Speaker 4: being represented currently by our current management plan? We never
Speaker 4: get to ask that. So what what is the impetus?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 10: M hm?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean they're managing far more species that
Speaker 1: aren't one hundred and fished than are and have been
Speaker 1: for quite some time. Yeah, let me give you one
Speaker 1: last question, and then these guys might have a last question.
Speaker 1: You're not going to do the who are you voting for? Again?
Speaker 1: How do you handle that?
Speaker 7: I'm voting for my daughter, she's running for county commissioner?
Speaker 4: Nepotism?
Speaker 1: How do you handle that question? Let let let's let's
Speaker 1: roll play for a minute. I'm uh okay, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: uh running for president okay. And and some we're having
Speaker 1: a meeting about agenda. He said, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: hear from the big conservation groups about what you guys
Speaker 1: are thinking. And I'm crafting my thing. And we finished
Speaker 1: out the meeting, and and like you and I meet
Speaker 1: in the hallway and I'm like, well, can I plan
Speaker 1: on your support this November? Becky? Now you do your part.
Speaker 1: I just did my part. Can I plan on your
Speaker 1: support this November?
Speaker 7: If it's a candidate that I was already planning to
Speaker 7: support and I felt was the best candidate, I would
Speaker 7: probably let that individual know that I was going to
Speaker 7: support them personally.
Speaker 1: First, I don't have your vote. I don't have your
Speaker 1: votes to do that.
Speaker 7: No, I'm still deciding, but at this point I'm not
Speaker 7: leaning towards this.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's what you'd say.
Speaker 7: It depends on the situation. If I was in representing
Speaker 7: TRCP at the meeting, I wouldn't answer it at all.
Speaker 1: But how how okay, how do you answer it? That's
Speaker 1: why I'm trying to the role play here. We are,
Speaker 1: You're representing TRCP, and I say I'd like to know
Speaker 1: that I could count on your support this November. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, how do you do it?
Speaker 7: I'm interim CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which
Speaker 7: is a nonprofit. Legally, we cannot support partisan candidates.
Speaker 1: Hard argu trap me. Okay, that's good, that's good. I'm
Speaker 1: just helping you rehearse because this might happen to you. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, here's the last one. The last one I
Speaker 1: got from you, Where should people Where should people be
Speaker 1: paying the most attention in the next four years If
Speaker 1: we're talking about just conservation with a big c right
Speaker 1: like not not local, not necessarily local issues like oh
Speaker 1: they messed with our elk management plan, but like big
Speaker 1: picture your kids are going to feel the impacts of this.
Speaker 1: Where should people be paying attention?
Speaker 7: Well, a couple of things I think they really need
Speaker 7: to pay attention to. Number one one is we talked
Speaker 7: about it earlier, those working landscapes. As this country moves
Speaker 7: into renewables and we have more and more pressure on
Speaker 7: the landscape, livestock and close proximity to wildlife in the
Speaker 7: whole nine yards, we need to make sure that we
Speaker 7: are planning for that and putting together good overall policy
Speaker 7: and policy direction that accommodates both both renewable energy, people, livestock,
Speaker 7: food and wildlife, and great hunting access out on the
Speaker 7: landscape and fishing. The other part of it is, I
Speaker 7: would say, on the accessibility issues to making sure that
Speaker 7: our public lands remain public and that the tools that
Speaker 7: we have in the toolbox for incentivizing private land management
Speaker 7: remain there and remain effective. We're trying to get a
Speaker 7: farm bill through. You guys know, the last farm bill
Speaker 7: expired in September of twenty three as one your extension.
Speaker 7: It's going to expire again in twenty four later this year.
Speaker 7: And that is the biggest piece of conservation legislation usually
Speaker 7: that we ever pass. It's huge. Sixty percent of these
Speaker 7: country is in private land, and you know that farm
Speaker 7: bell provides tremendous incentives for people to farm the best
Speaker 7: and leave the rest. You know, it's kind of one
Speaker 7: of the catchphrases that we say out there, but really
Speaker 7: helps people steward that landscape and wildlife. They don't recognize
Speaker 7: property boundaries. I mean, the bottom line is we need
Speaker 7: great public land management and we need great private land management.
Speaker 7: And I personally believe we need very good active management.
Speaker 7: We can't just draw a line around it, leave it
Speaker 7: alone and call it good unless we're willing to wait
Speaker 7: centuries for you know, restoration after major wildfires or you know,
Speaker 7: for big storms and you know the huge blowdowns and
Speaker 7: and you can't even use that particular land for a while.
Speaker 1: Got it all right? So thank you for sharing. You
Speaker 1: want to ask vote for me November. I will tell
Speaker 1: you you know what you wouldn't do it for me.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna tell you right now you can count
Speaker 1: on my support, all right.
Speaker 7: All right, I hope Terry's support.
Speaker 5: Anything else, guys, thanks for thanks for coming on and
Speaker 5: thanks for all the work that you're doing.
Speaker 7: My pleasure. We've got a great team at t r
Speaker 7: c P, which you certainly know and and all of
Speaker 7: you do, and they do great work, and they and
Speaker 7: they tackle the big problems, you know. I think that's
Speaker 7: the thing that tr CP I feel most strongly about.
Speaker 7: A lot of organizations play offense or defense on law
Speaker 7: some policies, but TRCP really builds this think tank model
Speaker 7: where they pull all the groups together and do the
Speaker 7: energy to try and build good policy direction and then
Speaker 7: build that campaign from the ground up. That's pretty special
Speaker 7: and it takes lots of time and effort.
Speaker 4: Well, what, sorry, what do we gain by supporting a
Speaker 4: group like TRCP, Because it's not a membership organization.
Speaker 6: No, it's not.
Speaker 7: It's not a membership organization. Most of our funding, about
Speaker 7: two thirds of it comes through grants and foundations and
Speaker 7: then personal donors and family foundations that donate on restricted revenue.
Speaker 7: But what you're bringin from it I think is the
Speaker 7: coalition pulling the organizations together around common ideas, big picture ideas,
Speaker 7: and then doing the legwork to really invest and figure
Speaker 7: out how we're going to solve those problems.
Speaker 1: Well, I appreciate the life you've spent in conservation, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you're measured, rational, well articulated perspectives on things.
Speaker 7: And then well thank you sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh that'll that'll. This will inoculate us from some
Speaker 1: of the nonsense that we're going to hear between now,
Speaker 1: from all directions it's between.
Speaker 7: I know, I know it's it's going to be a
Speaker 7: tough year in that regard. It really is going to
Speaker 7: be a tough year.
Speaker 1: Well, hang in there. Well, maybe after the election you
Speaker 1: can come back and then tell us what you think.
Speaker 7: No, I'm I'm hopeful after the election, I'm going to
Speaker 7: be retired. That's right, you re retired, retired, retired, I
Speaker 7: get it right.
Speaker 4: This time we'll pipe you in like Susie or from.
Speaker 1: Your thirty five football that's right, all right, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, beg you special.
Speaker 6: Lot of hard praise the seand pattern. Hey, they they
Speaker 6: always chant to love me all throughout the fall.
Speaker 11: When it comes to springtime, they start dropping luck.
Speaker 6: They they only want for my hunt, and they only
Speaker 6: want before a fish.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 6: They only want before the mouth. It's they come around and.
Speaker 11: They only want fort and they only want before the
Speaker 11: sand tail crank. They want before the lactail buck, sandering neck,
Speaker 11: the real grand They only want forma hunt in.
Speaker 6: Only end hunt and seize me. They always found a
Speaker 6: reason to love me and leave me for the next.
Speaker 6: In love, they'll say that they're sorry that you just
Speaker 6: don't have time.
Speaker 10: Oh, it's kind of funny, I guess if I, Oh,
Speaker 10: we shot the book, have been waiting for my time.
Speaker 11: They only want forma hunt. They only want for a fish.
Speaker 11: They only want before.
Speaker 6: Oh, there's bot they come around Acra.
Speaker 11: They only want before night. They only want before the
Speaker 11: same to print. They only won't before the oct up.
Speaker 6: By sound green maccas prints. They only want for fight.
Speaker 6: I know it took me a while to find leach
Speaker 6: after they tagged out that they.
Speaker 2: But now I know.
Speaker 6: They're gone on and Smile.
Speaker 11: They're gone on Smile, shallow wolves, they're gone on.
Speaker 6: Stove smut.
Speaker 11: There's pups come around Everca.
Speaker 6: They're going on in smile family. They're gone on the stove,
Speaker 6: Santo cran Bocco. They're gone, snow waped.
Speaker 11: Down Samarineck spoery of gran So they're going.
Speaker 6: On the smile over my honey,