00:00:02 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's weekend review, presented by Steel. Steel products are available only at authorized dealers. For more, go to Steel Dealers dot com. Now here's your host, Ryan cal Callahan. 00:00:22 Speaker 2: The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a new rule last week expanding hunting opportunities at three national Wildlife refuges while banning the use of lead ammunition and tackle at eight others. Outdoor folks are glad to see forty eight new hunting opportunities, but it would be an understatement to say that the lead ammalban is controversial. We'll cover this topic in more detail in the coming weeks. We've hit it before, but here are a few highlights. The rule calls for the eight wildlife refuges to phase out the use of lead tackle and ammunition by the year twenty twenty six. The Wildlife Service says, quote the best available side yants indicates that lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health. The rule does not call for lead ammo to be banned at any other refuges, but critics say this is just the first step to banning lead on all federal public land. Despite what the Service says in its rules, the science about the effects of lead ammunition on wildlife and human health is far from settled. Wildlife biologists Jim Heffelfinger covered this topic in an article last year for the medieater dot com. He points out that while lead exposure has harmed certain endangered bird populations like the California condor, there is little evidence that it has population level effects on many other kinds of animals. Opponents of the rule also point out that non lead ammunition is more expensive and less available, which could make hunting and fishing prohibitively expensive for some folks. Copper bullets are also less effective than bonded lead bullets at extended ranges. The National Shooting Sports Foundation said the Wildlife Service is quote cowtowing to anti hunting activists and Republicans in the US House are pushing a bill that would prohibit lead AMMO bands on all federal land. Backcountry hunters and anglers urged wildlife officials to make switching to non led ammunition optional. The advocacy group says that lead bands should only be implemented when justified by specific fish and wildlife population impacts. Comments are open at regulations dot gov and the public can weigh in until August twenty second. Whether you support or oppose this new rule, be sure to let your voice be heard. We'll leave a link at the meat eater dot com forward slash col. 00:02:39 Speaker 3: Holy Cats Pajamas. 00:02:41 Speaker 2: It's been a heck of a week. If you haven't already guessed, this week's format is going to be a little different because we have an interview with the director of the BLM, Tracy Stone Manning, and we are talking about the new BLM Management Plan proposal, specifically the concept of conservation easements. But first I'm going to tell you about and specifically why the upcoming audio is just not as good as we strive for. If you haven't guessed already, it's my fault, but I have a good reason. I was out looking at a new piece of property for the Meat Eater Land Access initiative. If you recall, we chose to donate to the Trust Republic Lands Forever Montana project in Northwest Montana last year. That project is still ongoing and absolutely worth your time and money. But we got to stay nimble in the land access game and help some smaller projects too. This new piece that I am going to ask for you to support pretty soon kind of has it all incredible natural history, river access, river bottom slews, Turkey's waterfowl, deer, upland birds like pheasants and sharp tail grouse, raptors, wide variety of fish, stickballs, pickpockets, cookie chris, a shaved line that looks like are YOUO? 00:04:00 Speaker 4: Metality? 00:04:02 Speaker 2: It's a dream and it is so close to getting over the public access finish line. How do things like this happen or even get to this point? You might ask, Well, in this particular case, you have awesome, dedicated people, heroes I would call them, on the ground looking for ways to expand public access to great hunting and fishing opportunity. And you have a landowner who would rather see their property that they love go to a lot of like minded people for well below market value than to just a few folks for top dollar. Mark my words. If we get this done, I'm going to find a way to build a statue for these people. It's amazing. Outside of that, I've been toiling in the kitchen. Antelope ribs, fresh deer and wild pig burgers out of the Western grinder, Octopus off the Big Island, poached in California, olive oil and Hawaiian sea salt, goose sausages, turkey wings, turkey thighs, and even the very last of the peacock, also in wing and thigh form. We're celebrating our nation's independence this weekend with wings and smash burgers to start, and a giant piea spread to wrap things up. If you learn one thing from the My Week section of this podcast, prep as much as possible at home so you can fish until dark when camping. Mosquitoes don't bother me when I'm throwing flies to cutthroat trout, but man, they suck when I'm chopping vegetables on a camp table, vegetables that could have been chopped at home. Be safe, courteous, and after the fishing is done, instead of fireworks, go to a safe and or authorized shooting range and shoot some guns. Dial in that rifle, plink that twenty two, bust some clays in advance a bird season. Your bird dog will thank you. And by celebrating America's independence in this fashion, you'll be pumping those Pittman robertson dollars and helping out wildlife and access and habitat for generals to come. 00:06:02 Speaker 3: Moving on again. 00:06:04 Speaker 2: As a brief caveat, yes, the audio on my end is a little rough, and I apologize. You'll also hear at the end the very, very fantastic Jordan Sillers, who crushes writing and research on this podcast, as well as many of our hit articles at the meat eater dot com. As a refresher, the Bureau of Land Management the BLM manages one in every ten acres of land in the United States and approximately thirty percent of the nation's minerals. These lands and minerals are found in every state in the country and encompass forests, mountains, range lands, Arctic tundra, and deserts. That's roughly two hundred and forty five million acres, thirty six million acres of which are under oil and gas development leases, with about twelve point six million acres actually producing. Thank you to the Wilderness Society for those stats. The BLM's mission statement is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. As you can imagine, that is a big task with a lot of stakeholders, which is why we periodically see these management plans coming out for public comment, which I hope you did, you know, comment publicly anyway. Tracy stone Manning, Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy stone Manning, thank you so much for coming back. 00:07:30 Speaker 4: It is my pleasure. 00:07:32 Speaker 2: So there's this big BLM planning project going on right now, management plan. And the thing that our community is concerned about and certainly a buzz about, are the conservation leases and what those could mean and what the function of those would be amongst the BLM. So if you wouldn't mind, I think a great way to a would be what would be an example of a conservation lease and how would it function? 00:08:08 Speaker 4: You bet cal And I'm going to back up two steps first and just give you the kind of overarching goal of the public Lands rule, right. The goal is to improve landscape health so that we can ensure our multiple use mission into the future. We want to focus on protecting the best wildlife habitat that we've got, restoring a whole bunch of wildlife habitat and making smart management decisions. And you know, in short, I'm really interested in putting wildlife habitat back on the board. Right, We're not creating any more land, So we've got to make sure that the land we've got is as robust as possible to support wildlife and clean water. So conservation leases are one of the tools that we talk about in the rule, and their sole purpose is for two things, one restoration and two to provide mitigation for companies who are doing business elsewhere on public lands. So let me be hyper clear for you and your readers right off the top, these leases would not shut down public access. Their whole reason for being is to improve habitat, but they don't shut down access. Excellent. 00:09:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely a hot topic, one of the major concerns that came out of the gate. And I think it would be great if you could expand on the word landscape in regards to these leases, as well as what type of enhancement would be allowed. I know, I know, we're dealing with a lot of acres and they're very diverse, but would we be talking about, oh, native grasses, water projects, either fire mitigation or just enhanced use of fire on the landscape as a management tool that could be implemented by a group who could obtain a conservation lease. 00:10:18 Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, that's sort of the gist of it. So let's let's do a hypothetical. Say somebody's interested in restoring some field deer habitat on a chunk of ground that has been degraded over time through history. They would come to the BLM and say, hey, we've raised these private dollars or fill in the blank, Hey we got you know, we raised these private dollars, or we have money for the from the Inflation Reduction Act. Or we're working with a company that is doing some mitigation because of degradation to mule deer habitat over in one place, and we want to restore habitat on this place on the map. Let's just say hypothetically, say it's ten thousand acres literally making this up. It's hypothetical. We want to restore these ten thousand acres. We've got this funding to do it. We want to make sure that that restoration that our investment literally has time to take root. So we'd like to put a conservation lease onto the ground. Would you do that at BLM? The field manager would say, well, let's go walk the ground together. Let's take a look. Field manager will reach out to any other entities that have existing valid rights on that piece of ground. Let's say it's a rancher has gotten allotment there. Step one would be going to the rancher to say, hey, we're interested in doing some restoration on this allotment. It's going to require some partnership with you. Are you gained for it? And if the rancher says, boy, it hasn't been meeting landscape health standards under my permit, I'd love to work with you, then we work with them. If the rancher says, I don't have time for this, go somewhere else, we likely would go somewhere else. Right, there's plenty of land out there that needs our attention, and we want to work with folks who have valid existing rights that want to work with us. So let's say we work together. It might be getting rid of cheat grass, it might be doing some restoration and sage habitat. It might be planting native vegetation, you know, sort of fill in the blank. The landscape itself would dictate what was needed there, and the lease would be for ten years, and it requires monitoring during those ten years to make sure that the restoration is going the way it needs to go. And at the end, of ten years. If everybody's happy, the lease is done. If the landscape requires a little more time from mother nature, we would talk about renewing the lease, but throughout that the lands stay open to what the law calls casual use. And you and I col have done a lot of casual use on BOM grounds. That means, you know, hikers and bikers and hunters and sort of non commercial, non permanent use. 00:13:12 Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am, that is that is the truth. I've also been out there commercially back in my guiding days as well, so you know that was my first intro to overlapping leases where just just like in the hypothetical situation, you would have multiple ranchers that would have grazing a lot months on BLM ground that they are paying for, but at the same time, we had applied for and gotten and paid for the ability to commercially operate our outfitting business on that exact same ground. 00:13:51 Speaker 5: Yep. 00:13:52 Speaker 4: And you can see how if the focus is on restoration, there's a great marriage there between all those interests, right, the folks who want to restore the landscaping, the guy who's outfitting on it, and the and the guy who's running cattle on it. Right that an improved you know, a restored landscape helps helps everyone in that scenario. 00:14:15 Speaker 3: Tall grass makes fat cattle. 00:14:17 Speaker 4: And yes, indeed, and then in that in that. 00:14:21 Speaker 2: Same scenario that I had personal experience with, of course, neither the rancher nor US as as guides and outfitters could in any way impede the public from being out on that ground. 00:14:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:14:36 Speaker 2: The only situations that that I have seen on BLM and some forest service would be some extractive industry logging, mining operations that you know, I had signage that said you know this is dangerous work area. 00:14:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, that blocked access to Yeah. 00:15:01 Speaker 4: Play that hypothetical out a little further and say, say there's some riparian work that needs to be done, and that people might see some fencing around willows. They might see some fencing off the ripe perion area with some ability for cattle to water off the riparian area to ensure that the restoration can take hold. You know, they might see things like that, but you know, a big old fence around the lease that says stay out absolutely not. 00:15:34 Speaker 2: Who could apply for these leases? And I imagine since it's the US government we're talking about anybody can apply for the leases, but who, in your perspective would be the parties that would be most likely to obtain a lease. 00:15:52 Speaker 4: I think it's going to be folks who are sort of in the restoration business already. Right, There's a bunch of nonprofits out there from you know, all the wildlife groups tend to do restoration, from Trout Unlimited to Mule Deer Foundation to the All Foundation. Right that there are folks doing restoration on the landscape on private ground already that could easily may want to step in and do and partner with us on this work. I think that conservation districts could take a great interest in this because they're already in the business of improvements to rangeland for example, we ask specifically in the preamble to this proposed rule if we got it right on the kind of entities that would want to step in and do this work. So, for your listeners, the comment period is open until July fifth, and we welcome your thoughts on fine tuning this tool, which is again really about two things. It's about providing the ability to do focused restoration on the ground, and it's about providing the ability for mitigation from damage elsewhere. That's it. There's only two reasons for these conservation leases. Restoration mitigation excellent. 00:17:06 Speaker 2: So more than likely if you're gonna have a shoe in for a conservation lease, if you have some history of doing that type of work. 00:17:17 Speaker 4: Yeah right, I mean there's just proven an example, you know, over and over and over again, of people making the land better off than they found it, and we just want to put them to work doing that more so on public thanks. 00:17:32 Speaker 3: That's great. 00:17:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, so an example, right MULD your foundation, NWTF, Pheasants Forever Quail Forever organization have that habitat history, are. 00:17:45 Speaker 3: More than likely going to be a little bit ahead of me. 00:17:50 Speaker 2: If I'm just there with my wallet and a shovel saying trust my I can do it. 00:17:54 Speaker 4: I think that's probably an accurate portrayal. However, even one of our permitees, for example, a grazing permittee, might want to work with us to do some restoration and might want to put a lease on top of their grazing permit to ensure that other uses don't come in as that restoration takes hold. 00:18:17 Speaker 2: In a scenario like that, what an active conservation lease would open up an individual or entity for more federal dollars or even state dollars for restoration work. 00:18:32 Speaker 4: Good. There's been a terrific investment through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Congress wisely saw the need to invest in natural infrastructure through restoration, you know, So just a couple of weeks ago, we announced one hundred and sixty one million dollars of spending that's going to get to the ground in some priority restoration landscapes across the West. That investment could leverage private investment. You can see a great marriage between folks who can bring some private money to bear and leverage off the federal dollars to do even more for work on the ground. So there's just a lot of opportunity out there, and where the Public Lands Rule is helping to put some structure around how that money could be invested. 00:19:25 Speaker 2: And since we're on the topic of money, has that flow changed with the recent debt ceiling compromise? 00:19:36 Speaker 4: It did not. So the debt ceiling compromise that passed did not revisit the Inflation Reduction Act or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Those investments are still coming. 00:19:48 Speaker 3: Fantastic. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: Fantastic is there an idea for rollout once we get through the comment period, when could we see, you know, in theory the first conservation Lisa's applications opening. 00:20:03 Speaker 4: I guess, oh, cal that's a good question. I'm focused on the public comment period and diving into what the public had to say to ensure that we get this as as good as can be in its final state. So I think that's a stay tuned proposition. We expect, you know, probably a year from now, maybe ten months from now, to come back out with a final role, presuming that we can wag through the all that the public had to say. I mean, that's the great thing about rulemakings, they're really really public process. We've been thrilled by the level of public engagement around this, So we need to dig in and see what the public has to say to figure out what it's going to look like on the back end. 00:20:53 Speaker 2: And are there specific areas in mind that kind of started this this idea conservation leases. 00:21:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, we have we have some work to do on our public lands. They've been degraded over time climate Now climate change is making it even tougher out on the landscape. More invasives coming in after fires. So part of what the Public Lands Rule calls for is for the BLM to do an assessment of where we should focus specifically on restoration. So folks in state offices and in field offices are going to be figuring out where in the future we need to really focus our restoration efforts, and that will be part of our planning process, again, a really public process in each of the states. And conversely, the rule also asks folks in the field to protect intact landscapes. Right. You know, your audience understands that the fragmentation of landscapes can negatively impact wildlife, habitat migration corridors, can really negatively impact the ability of an ecosystem to provide services like habitatic thin water. Right. So one of the best things we can do is protect the best right, protect the intact landscapes that we've got. And so the Public Lands Rule also calls for doing an assessment of where those landscapes are to make sure that we continue to make wise decisions to keep them that way excellent. 00:22:28 Speaker 2: So there could be where you have, you know, a good virgin prairie native native grasses that is intact, that could also be eligible for conservation lease, or that would not ideally be eligible for a conservation lease because we want to focus that lease program on areas that needs need some boots on the ground help. 00:22:53 Speaker 4: You know, it could, right, So the one of the reasons that you know, again coming back to there are two reasons we envisioned for these leases, one for restoration, the other for mitigation. So you could lease intact ground prairie to ensure that it stays that way to mitigate against damages done elsewhere. Right, So we say to a company, hey, you need to do some mitigation because your solar field over here or your oil and gas field over here has had impact. So therefore we need to ensure that we make up for that impact, and certainly protecting some habitat that's already in place is a good way to do that. 00:23:36 Speaker 2: Sure, So, like Conico, Phillips could apply for conservation leases on some great like sage brush step ecosystem as a way to offset the impacts on active oil and gas lease sites yep, or. 00:23:56 Speaker 4: Pay into a mitigation bank, and that mitigation then goes out and holds those leases. Yep. 00:24:03 Speaker 3: Got it. 00:24:04 Speaker 2: And then you know, in a scenario like that would in existing conservation lease prevent another lease application for something more intrusive a development scenario. 00:24:21 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly how That's exactly what the rule envisions, right, that for that period of time ten years, and whether or not it would be reauthorized after another after ten years an open question on how long the mitigation needs to run. Mitigation typically happens for the length of the of the project. So the idea would be that you would prevent similar activity on that conservation lease, right, And this has been used over and over and over again on private land. Mitigation is a concept that the industry is super used to because it happens a lot on on private ground, and we're creating a tool to ensure that it can happen sort of consistently on our public lands too. 00:25:08 Speaker 3: Got it. 00:25:08 Speaker 2: So this isn't a brand new, out of the box idea that we're going to just test out. 00:25:13 Speaker 4: No, we're just taking good ideas from other folks, and I mean sort of joking aside. It's something that for years internally BLM has been looking for a mechanism to do this, and our partners on the ground have said, you need a mechanism in order to do this. We'd love to come spend our mitigation dollars with you, but we need a mechanism to ensure that those dollars are going to be that investment is going to be protected. 00:25:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, I understood there. 00:25:44 Speaker 2: Jordan. Do you do you have anything you'd like to add here? 00:25:48 Speaker 5: Yeah, just going back to what we talked about at the beginning, the idea of access. The rule talks about how, in general, casual use won't be your strict did but it does mention that the leases could be temporarily closed to public access. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit? That's that's a question that we received. 00:26:11 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:26:12 Speaker 4: Sure. Again, let's play out a hypothetical. Say some serious work needs to be done. Say there's some serious, right Perry work needs to be done. You got back hos in there. You can for public safety reasons, you might want to close the site while big equipment's in there doing its thing. Right, That's what we were envisioning in the rule, you know, just basic pragmatic steps that we take in all of the work we do, whether it's you know, a solar field or an oil and gas well pad. Right when there's big construction going around. We want to keep people safe. 00:26:47 Speaker 5: Thank you. Yeah, that's that was my only question. 00:26:49 Speaker 3: That's great, Tracy. 00:26:51 Speaker 2: Have you had any hard hitting questions thrown out you that you'd love to hit here on this podcast for a different audience segment. 00:27:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, cal thanks for that question. My ask of your listeners is to so if they want to know more about this rule, google BLM and public Lands Rule, and that's going to take you to BLM's website that has a bunch of frequently asked questions, it's got links to the rule itself and a comment period again runs through July fifth. And my ask is that folks read the words on the page and not maybe between the lions. I think there's been a lot of reading between alliance in this effort that we didn't intend at all. So I would ask folks to see what it is we're trying intending to do, which is to ensure that we pass along healthy landscapes to future hunters and fishers out there. And if we miss that mark, we need to hear it right. But the intention behind the kind of role is simply protect our best intact landscapes, restore as much habitat out there as we can and use science and data make smart development decisions so that we can continue on with our mission for decades to come. And we live in kind of funny times and folks are maybe seeing some things on the page that aren't there. So I asked ask folks to read the words on the page and let us hope we got it right. 00:28:18 Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent. Well, I think that's a great call to action and we'll leave it just as that. All right, that's all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening. Remember right in to ask c Al that's ask Cal at the Meat Eater dot com. Let me know what you thought of this interview as well as what's going on in your neck of the woods. You know, I love to hear it. On top of that, head down to www dot steel Dealers dot com to find a local, knowledgeable steel dealer near you. They're going to get you set up with what you need and they won't try to send you home with what you don't. Thanks again, and I'll talk to you next week. 00:29:00 Speaker 4: The n sen at very sure