00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cow's Week in Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Here's Cal, Hey, welcome to Cal's Week Interview. This is your host, Ryan cal Callahan. I'm sitting here with Jordan Sillers, and we have a special guest on this week for a special drop interview episode, Doug Austin, who is a fellow at American Fisheries Society. What is American Fishery Society, you may ask, Well, that's why we have Doug on to inform us the root of our interview, I guess the impetus. The reason why is we are trying to figure out for selfish reasons. Jordan's going fishing tomorrow. I love spring fishing, from big trout to walleye that start moving around in our rivers, and you know, they're just in more accessible spots for me, who is not a good walleye fisherman, but I like to eat them. And we're trying to figure out for us our selfish reasons and for all of you what all of these government funding freezes federal layoffs mean for us for our selfish outdoor recreation and the idea that if you are a conservationist in America. You want your fish right now, but you also have signed up to ensure that those fish and those fishing opportunities as you know them, are around, not just for the next generation, but the generation after that and after that. So please welcome Doug Austin of American Fishery Society. Doug, would you mind letting us know who you are and why you're here? 00:02:19 Speaker 2: Great, Well, Callen Jordan, thanks for the opportunity to visit with you guys and your audience here. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this topic. AFS the American Fishery Society, which I just retired from a little bit ago, so I'm a retiree and I'm going fishing tomorrow too. 00:02:34 Speaker 1: I'll have you know. 00:02:37 Speaker 2: It's a society of professional fishery scientists, managers, people who are involved in the fisheries process. So we're about seven thousand members international, but most in the US. It's all the state agency people, federal people, researchers at universities, nonprofits, all those folks that get together to talk about how to manage fisheries and keep this profession alive. It's a group of people that has a national conference. We met in Honolulu, LESSI, We're meeting San Antonio this fall. We have chapters. I live in Pennsylvania, there's a Pennsylvania chapter, the chapters in almost every state. And this is where those biologists who work for you, all the licensed buyers and others joined together to talk about how to do their job better, the cutting edge science managem approaches all those sorts of things. We published journals, books, a lot of professional development things like that to help ensure that fishing, quatic resources, freshwater, and marine are the best they possibly can be. And the US, as you guys know, we have a pretty darn good system here, one of the best, if not the best, in the world for managing our natural resources. And it's because of all the work that you and many others have been doing for decades to build this system. And that's what we want to talk about today, is what's happening to the system that's going to affect you all absolutely. 00:04:04 Speaker 1: And I think what folks really want to know right off the bat is, you know, are our tax dollars just going to places where you academics can stay in school and write papers, or are they actually providing us opportunities. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well that's that's a good question. And you know the thing that the way fisheries is funded. But let me let me just step back a second here. You know this, you mentioned this whole issue right now. Conservation has always been a bipartisan issue. You know, Republicans and Democrats like to fish and hunt as much as anybody else. People with the mega hats love to get on the outdoors and fish just as much as tree tree hugging liberals do. I mean so, And most of the bills that have been passed over the years have been bipartisan bills. So this isn't a Republican a Democrat issue. This is a unique situation that we're in right now that we've never seen. I've been in this profession for forty years. I've talked to people been in there longer than I have, and nobody can recall a situation like this. But you know, by the money, so state agencies, when you got a fishing tomorrow, you know, you get on the waters. And when I'm out most of the fishing recreation side of things, most of that is done by the state agencies in my case is fish and boat Commission. I used to be the director of that agency fifteen years ago. Wherever you're fishing, state asans, they're the ones who generally do the stocking, They're the ones that put up the regulations, They're the ones that do that sort of work that gets you on the water, unless it's on federal lands. What's happening in the federal government now is part of the system at the larger level. If you're fishing out west or in the National forest in the east, which a lot of us do, that's on national forest land, but it's the fisheries itself is managed generally by the state agency, so as a partnership between the two, and you knock off the feet of one of those partners and the other one is going to eventually fall down. It's the way we work together with the state agencies, the federal agencies, and the many nonprofits that do have an interest in this that work collectively to ensure that we have good fishing and good hunting and good aquatic resources, those sorts of things. So what's happening at the federal level as a huge impact, and I can talk a little bit about that, but it has ramifications at the state agency level and nonprofits in major ways. That's going to impact maybe not right away you're fishing tomorrow, but it will impact down the line what your access you know, potential will be impacts of diseases and danger species have to that all sorts of things that are intertwined in this whole sort of conservation program that we have in the US. 00:06:50 Speaker 1: And I definitely want to get into some examples because you know, it's it's like you take something really big, well, it's the national debt. National debt doesn't mean a darn thing to anybody. It's not it's not household debt. How do we take an example like that and and bring it down to a tangible level for the American hunter and angler? Right? And so okay, go ahead. 00:07:23 Speaker 2: You guys all have heard about silver carp right, the fish that jump in the air and boats and all that sort of crap. 00:07:29 Speaker 1: I mean, shot them, I've eaten them. Yeah, I've seen some pretty high numbers. 00:07:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're incredibly invasive species. And they're in the Illinois River, the Kentucky Ohio, Ohio. They're knocking on the door of getting the Great Lakes, you know, right up in Illinois or other in Illinois, they're also working the way up the Hillo River to eventually in Pennsylvania. When these fish get into these systems, the rest of the fishery collapses because they take over the population. The work being done to respond to these fisheries, a lot of the primary research and funding is coming through the federal government, the US Fish and Walleye Service, US Geological Survey of the corp of Engineers. The states themselves are involved in this definitely, but without the partnership with the federal agencies who are developing things like potential toxins, genetic issues, things like that, helping to work a trans state across state boundaries. Without that role, those those invasive species are can continue to roll out into other places where we don't want them. When they get there. Yeah, you can shoot them with an air bow and arrow and have all sorts of cool things like that. But your walleye fishery, your best fishery, everything else, it's decimated because those fish take over such a high abundance in those systems. Another example, if you guys ever fish in the Great Lacery, remember see lamp rays. It used to be that lamp rays would attach to the lake trout and the other salmonids, and they would both make an ugly scar but they'd also kill a lot of them. For the last couple of decades, the federal government has been using a lamp recide called TFM. They put it in the tributary streams of the Great Lakes to kill the young, young lamp rays. One fifth of that program was laid off right away, right up front. Two offices in Michigan closed or almost closed. If we can't have people out there doing that work, those lamp ray populations are going to come back up, and people fish in the Gray Lakes and start seeing lamp rays attached to their salmonids, both as you know, dead salmon as a result of that, and as scarredfish that they'll pull in on their lines. So those are two, you know, right up front examples. There's a number of others that will show people how this will impact them immediately within the next year or two in terms of these programs being diminished and as a result of them, things happening that we're not gonna be able to do anything about. 00:10:06 Speaker 1: And yeah, two good examples right of of aquatic eva invasive species AIS because those lamp ray in the Great Lakes system. Those are are not a native lamp ray like we have out here in like the Snake River system, which is a great example of something that also gets federal assistance and should be in the system. These are things that should not be in the system and also have the ability to reproduce at super high high rates. For folks who don't remember, and it's going a long way back, we used to do a lot of talking about silver carp invasive carp and what they They have the ability to affect all other species because they feed throughout their whole lives on zoplankton and zoplankton is is that that first step on the ladder to growing any fish, including our game species that we really like to talk to, we'll talk about yeah, but to go on that that same example, right, we have quagga muscles zebra muscles, two examples that transform fisheries, uh by removing filtering food out of the system and in some cases I would say transform fisheries because they can clear the water so much that sunlight penetrates deeper and and you get different. You're not fishing your lake the same way you used to or for the same species in some cases, and then those muscles also attached to infrastructure in ways that cause you know, millions and millions of dollars worth of damage to water filtration systems from your little half horse water pump that you used to water your lawn if you're on a lake or river and you got a little share a share of water from the local water board, all the way to your your city water supply. Boat motors, list goes goes on and on. So what other examples do you have, Doug. 00:12:46 Speaker 2: Well, So you're out in the Pacific Northwest, I mean there's a lot of work being done out there by NOAH National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration. Within NOAH is National Marine Fishery Service. They are the ones responsible for a lot of the work on some models. They also across the federal government as a whole. What these federal agencies provide to the states is capabilities that the states often don't have. For example, genetics labs. A lot of states don't have the ability to look at the genetics of the fish because they don't have the capacity. The state agencies simply don't have the funds. They have their own genetics lab So we rely upon the federal government to put those in place that we can use across multiple states, and we'll cast share it with them. Things like dam removal and fish passage, highly technical type of things, really important. Just in Pennsylvania, we have over six thousand low head dams. 00:13:42 Speaker 1: These are all. 00:13:42 Speaker 2: Artifacts of old mills and things like that. Most of them are negative impacts, almost all of their negative maximum fisheries. But to remove those dams and to restore those habitats, you need technical expertise, and a lot of that comes from the US fish and lycerous engineers who do this around the region and also around the nation. So there's those sort of services that we rely upon. Earlier you mentioned academics and things like that. All those researchers, those wonky researchers are sitting universities. One of the really important programs, and I'm not sure you guys know about, it's called the Cooperative Fish and Wilife Research Units. It's a it's an organization within the US Geological Survey. It's a partnership between the USGS and universities and the state agency to put researchers on university campuses. And there's they have these and forty one of the states, and these researchers focus on things that the state agency says is our biggest issues in managing fish and wildlife, things like you know, chronic wasting disease, invasive species you know, quiga muscles, zebra muscles of things, movement of invasive species, you know, migratory issues of big game in the West, and how you get them across highways without them killing you know, themselves and vehicles. So these units are often the major resource agencies research arm because the states and again a lot of states don't have the money and have their own independent research bureau. Some states do, but most don't, so they rely upon these units. And these are federal units. These are within USSH, which has taken a huge hit. In fact, twelve of their new staff and people who got promoted were just let go right up front. These are researchers who are doing workforce state agencies for you and I and others on issues that are you know, problematic. They're they're going to hurt us if we don't get them resolved, or they're finding new ways of dealing with things like invasive issues and genetics and all those sorts of things. So, so those academics are the people. And this is also where we train our new biologists. Five to six hundred graduate students are in that program. These are the people who are going to be hired by agencies to be the next fisheries manager, wilife managers to work for us. If we lose them, we lose our futures. Like taking the Triple A Ball you know, program out of a major League baseball team, just telling you, guys, we don't need anymore. Where's where's our next group of players coming from? I mean, you've cut off the source of all your talent when you're starting to hurt these sorts of programs, like the coop units. So the problem is that when this Doge group came in, they just started axing things everywhere, and they took the two lowest hanging fruits. One is new hires because they're on a probationary period, and the other is people who got promoted because you're also on a probationary period. So think about that. You got you let go of the people you're promoted. You prone bonted these people because of what Because they're your best people. You want them to be your next leaders. You lost them, and then you're also losing your new blood. The new people are bringing in ideas or bringing an energy. They're the people that are going to manage our resources in the future. So you've lost two really important parts of these federal agencies that it's going to impact us for a generation to try to rebuild these sorts of things. It's so easy to destroy. It's hard to build because it's taken years to build these programs that we all collectively have been asking for and trying to get legislation put in place for things like abandoned mind drainage, this invasive issues work habit that restoration, dam removal, fish passage. All these culverts, thousands of culverts that were put in on roads in the Northwest is a perfect example this. These culverts that are under engineered. A flood flow comes through that are getting worse all the time, takes out the culvert, takes out the road. You got to replace those. If you just replace them with what was there before, it's going to blow out again. So you have the engineers the biologists all working together to create fish passages that will both deal with the damage to the roads but also allow fish to move up and down these stream systems like they used to. It helps the systems restore themselves and make them more healthy. So all these things are part of where these federal agencies that are being cut are so important for helping us with these natural resources issues. So it's across the spectrum. 00:18:33 Speaker 1: You know, I think like a good way for people to understand this, at least if you're you came from the trades or have ever had a house built, right, It's like it's very very rare to build a house completely by yourself anymore. Meaning you're doing the concrete work, you're doing the rebar work, you're doing the electrical work, you're doing the plumbing work, you're building the trustes, you are installing the windows, the sighting all the finishes on the inside, which is a very different job, moves a lot slower than doing the framing, the fun part of throwing up walls and robes and ceilings, and and if you've hired yourself an awesome, super efficient general contractor, they are not pouring the concrete and doing the plumbing and doing the electrical work and and et cetera. Those are all subcontractors. And and there's some awesome subs out there, just like there's some awesome general contractors out there, and all of those communicating well, coming together, they can make a great structure and a short amount of time and come in under budget. Sometimes they can't, right, But that's kind of what you're describing here. 00:20:05 Speaker 2: Is that's a great that's a really good characterization kel all these things were dealing with. They're complicated. I mean, you pull out a dam, for example, and there's all sorts of issues of water quality. There's sediment. You know, are there PCBs or mercury or metals in the sediment? What's going to happen to the hydrology downstream? You got to revegetate the banks, You got to get all the permits in place, you got to get funding in place. Your metaphor is perfect there and that you know. It takes a team of people and money from a variety of sources to make these sorts of things happen. Local groups that know the community, that can work with the people who may love that dam because it's been there for fifty years, but it's now a dead dam. People die in these dams. It takes federal moneies to fund it, It takes engineering it takes state permitting. All those groups work together to make these sorts of things happen. That's just one example. If you pull out a big component to that, like the federal part of it, it collapses. You don't have the drywall done when the electricians are coming in. You don't have whatever it is you know that actually want to have the electrics done before the drywall people come in. So I had that backwards there. But anyway, you know what I mean, Yeah, yeah, you lose a huge part of this which is going to hamper states. And I think the other things important to know is that and you guys all know this is these programs, fishing, wilid programs, conservation programs have never been funded at the level that they really need to be funded. It's always been trying to do as much as we can with the limited resources that we have. So you know, everybody's stretched thin, everybody's trying to do multiple jobs. You got people who are trying to, you know, cover a lot of these bases that they know they're not maybe the best at, but they have to do it because you know, there isn't the resources there. You know, unlimited budgets. You know, a state agency. Getting a license fee increase in a state ation le You guys know that it's not easy thing to do. You know, as they go for for sometimes decades without getting license fee increases. No business would ever do that. 00:22:20 Speaker 1: You know. 00:22:20 Speaker 2: You need to make your your thing work, your business work. So when you pull out a big piece of this which is a federal side, or diminish it, it really does hamper everybody else along the process. It just it's like that preferbiable throwing the stone in the pond and seeing the rings go out. It doesn't effect everything else in one way or the other. And agencies that are already stretched thinly will have to be stretched even more thinly to try to deal with these issues. 00:22:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. Does like one little bit of experience that I have, right, It's like when we would go do a project for the Forest Service or USGS and it was on grizzly bears, and you're all geared up for grizzly bears, and you would all before you went into the field, you would also get a sheet of also be on the lookout for all these other projects that are going on frogs, salamanders, bats, you know, field observations. This is how you you also get the data that we need for all these other projects that are going on at the same time. But we're only going to get them done if anybody who's going out into the field can help us collect this data. And I you know, I think where in your mind? Right? Because we talk about and I believe that the outdoors, public lands, public wildlife is a non partisan thing that we should be able to come come together on. I also think unless you have like a and I think this does exist us like this strong economic theory that government waste, you know, increases our growth domestic product in relation to to our debt. But I also think, like a non person belief is you know, if we look, I mean, everybody's had this experience as a kid, right, Like you get your first job, you get your first paycheck, and you go, oh my god, did is that much money really being taken out of my paycheck? Like we want that cash to be used wisely and efficiently, and ultimately we would love it to also be used in the stuff that we really care about and we really see, which is pie in the sky on the just use it for what I want it to be used for. But where, like, where is the like the waste fraud inefficiency in our fisheries. 00:25:08 Speaker 2: Well so, and I think that's that's a really good question. And I think people are always concerned about government spending and you hear this mantra you know, all the time right now, you know, waste fraud and whatever else they're saying. You know, I've been in this business for forty years, and within the fish and wife spectrum, because we are so thinly spread, there's not it's going to be hard to find some of that. What actually, what happens with almost all these projects is that what you have to do is you have to show the benefits of the work you're being doing. You're doing so uses uses diam removal. Example, you invest money in damaryable or culverts is another perfect example. You invest money in those things and the end product not only improves the fishery, brings in tourism, which brings in people on the water, you know, buying food at the restaurant, buying tackle. It addresses an infrastructure issue, which is roads blowing out. So the bang for the buck on almost all these projects is very positive. It's often a multiple order, you know, three four, five times in terms of benefits from the investment in that sort of work. So, and you can go project by project throughout a lot of these things. Or is preventing bad things from happening. Use the Asian carp issue, the silver carp issue. You know, those get into the Great Lakes. You know, they're knocking on the door of Lake Michigan for example, right now through the Kelsa Canal, you know, part of Chicago. There they get into Lake Michigan. The fishery in Lake Michigan is a billion dollar, multi billion dollar fishery. And if that goes down because of these these silver carp getting in there, a big head carp or the black carp, that's going to have huge implications on the economy of the area, jobs, you know, all the things that go off from that. So when I talk about you know, improving our natural resources, the work on habitat, restoration, stocking fish, you know, disease prevention, chronic wasting disease. If you know people don't deer hunt because they're afraid of chronic wasting disease, that's going to have all sorts of implications in terms of lost hunter dollars. You know, habitat, you know, deer in urban areas and suburban areas are a huge problem. Car vehicle you know, vehicle collisions, those sorts of things. All these things have an economic value, a benefit to come from them. 00:27:36 Speaker 1: You know. 00:27:37 Speaker 2: These we're not building things that have no purpose. We're not restoring habitats that people don't use. These are things that almost always have a net positive return on the economy. Jobs, and in a lot of the cases, these are rural jobs and areas that are depressed. So oftentimes the the greatest source of income and jobs in these rural areas is travel tourism, fishing, hunting, hiking, camping in these areas. That's what's bringing people and that's what's supporting jobs in a lot of these areas, and that's a tremendously important thing to keep going. These sorts of cutbacks are going to have direct implications on those jobs. Not just the agency people who are being lost because of it, but they're reduced attendance and parks when they have to close a park or reduce a number of visitor days or reduce services, or campgrounds don't get maintained, or trails aren't open, whatever it might be. All those sorts of things are going to have a negative impact upon these local economies. And I think we're just starting to see as especially rural towns in the West, are saying this is not good. They see the implications of these sorts of things, and they're starting to rise up and say, we didn't sign on for this. We didn't understand what the implications of this would be. But now we're starting to understand that. You know, they're contacting their congressional members and saying, let's let's slow down a little bit here, Let's take a look at this and make sure that what you're doing is in fact not waste and not fraud. But this this is a good investment of federal dollars because we see the benefits of it. And that's really important is that this program has gone so fast, you know, the chainsaw metaphor, going to just cut things without really understanding how these are going to impact you and us and all these people in these areas around the country who are depending upon or value the opportunity to go outdoors and enjoy these national parks and national forces and blm lands where you're hunting on and everything else. That's our that's our future, that's the places that we want to go. You know, next next year, I'm going to go on my first elk hunt in Colorado. It's going to be a National forest land. And if those trails aren't open, if I can't have access, or if you whatever a reason that access is denied because of lack of staff in the Forest Service, that's going to be a really big hit. And multiply that by thousands of other people or hunt on National forest land or beyond land out west. That's going to have a huge impact upon our own personal recreation and our friends and colleagues, but not on the industry as a whole, you know, just you know, just to make this even crazier, think about Terrace, you know, Terrace on aluminum, and a group called the American Sports Fishing Association, which is all the tackle manufacturers, just put out a warning or a notice that you bring in, you know, fishing reels and stuff that are made or parts are produced elsewhere that use illumine, which almost all of them do. All of a sudden, the prices on all of your tackle and probably arrows and other things is going to go up because all those are either sometimes made abroad, use materials abroad or other things, and part of that network of manufacturing that we rely upon within the US for these sorts of things. So it's all these sort of weird, unexpected implications of this that people are just starting to realize now and getting very concerned about. 00:31:14 Speaker 1: And yeah, that's not something the general contractor, in our metaphor, was able to predict when you bid your house, right, And that is I guess to lean on this metaphor and hopefully not exhausted. Right, Like the reason that your general contractor one of the many reasons that your general contractor is not also the electrician, the concrete person, the trustmaker, the drywaller is you know, that's a lot of expertise. When you specialize in it, you can be efficient and do it really well. But it's also a lot of equipment that needs to be maintained, needs to be stored somewhere, right, heavy equipment for moving earth. You need all the concrete forms, you need the insulating blankets. You need a crew that understands how to take care of ship maintain that stuff. Same for electricians, same for plumbers, same for your framers, your roofers, all all the way through. What is the ability for ability and plausibility of state agencies their their fisheries department. Two take care of the gaps that the federal agencies are going to leave vacant. 00:32:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's you know, that whole web of how we all work together is what you're talking about. And you know, when you when you break one part of the web, can the other one sort of hold on? And that's going to be really hard because states are not in the position to expand their agencies. I mean unless they get some more money somewhere, they can't hire new people just without having the budget for it. And a lot of the state agencies are are funded you know, by two or three different ways, by licensed dollars and by this federal reimbursement of funds. That what you've probably talked about your folks before, the Digeal Johnson funds or the Pittmam robbers and is the excise tax on phishing tackle, most motors hunting gear that goes into the states. They don't get a lot of state tax dollars. Most state agencies, fishing walf agencies are on their own in terms of licensees and this federal money, so the ability of them to grow to fill in these gaps is very limited. What we often do, though, is and I'll give you an example of the sort of this network talking about tonight. I'm talking to a Trodden Limited chapter in Pennsylvania, and Trodden Limited is basically like a contractor to the federal rent in states. In a lot of cases, money flows from the Feds to tu to do habit at restoration work because they can then be very nimble and hire contractors to do the earthwork, you know, to get an excavator in a stream. You know that people that know how to do that is not easy to do, and they can do those sorts of things and work with local engineers and others to do those sorts of design work. But that work, which is jobs in these rural areas, is dependent upon the federal dollars flowing to them, sometimes through the states or in partnerships with the states, to make that sort of thing happen. If the federal money goes away, those contractors are out of a job. So it has another spin off effected this sort of things. And this is a lot of work on everything from in our area of bandoned mind drainage work where we've had these old you know, deep mines or even surface minds that are running off acid, lots of other you know, bad things in there too, habit that restoration work, dan removals, you know, working out west with water, you know, ensuring that there's enough water in the streams to keep the fish and and aquatic life together, all those sorts of things. 00:35:17 Speaker 1: Immediately, too much water isn't diverted for agricultural or even even city yes, right. 00:35:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, water out west is is clearly the big issue these days, and how to deal with that is going to be very, very challenging. 00:35:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I this is going a little bit in a direction that that I wasn't thinking we'd go. But a couple of weeks ago, we had a young guy on our Meteor Meat Eater Radio Live podcast who's brand spanking new BLM range Land ecologist. It was a position that the district that he ended up in and in Colorado had had to open for three years and he finally got to a point where he could apply, applied, got the job, and I think it was a seventy two or seventy five thousand dollars a year job. And I asked him specifically what he was getting paid, which I mean, you can find this stuff out. It's it's public information because he's in a town of fifteen hundred people, and all the economists that I've spoken to, it's it's a fact that a federal dollar spent is considered a multiplied three times on the local economy. So when you're in a town of fifteen hundred people and you have a this is an agriculture based job, but not in the agriculture sector, I would say, and you have a consistent paycheck of a yearly salary of seventy two grand a year, that's a really big impact on a small town, right, And we have I think one of the things that's at stake here to just kind of like let my bias be known, is because I interact with these these younger folks all the time. I was just just came back from a Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic, and I love those organizations because of how they implement knowledge and dollars on the ground for our egg communities. Right. They employ more farm bill biologists than anybody other than the US government. And it's to implement that habitat work on the ground and make sure that these folks in the egg community who don't always have the time to sit and go through government websites, which are aggravating to go through a lot of times where you can actually get access to these programs to improve your ground your bottom dollar, and that's going to have some benefit to wildlife as well. We have all these people that believe in civil service, noble profession. They're willing to go out into rural communities that have way fewer amenities, make not a lot of money because they want to do these jobs and they believe so strongly in the fact that they're they're a benefit. And I really do worry right now if we are going to teach these people before they can can even do the job, that is not worth it. Because nobody likes to call. 00:39:04 Speaker 2: If you talk with this gentleman, you're saying, man a couple of weeks ago, when he got a job with him last year, there's a high likelihood that this person does not have a job anymore. You should check up with him because that you know, as we talked earlier, these new hires, they're on probation for twelve months, and a lot of those probationary staff were the first group of people to be let go because you know, they're easier to get rid of. Is what the what the government or which the doge in the White House was saying, So that young person who's been working to get this job, probably as a master's degree, because most people to get these jobs to have master's degrees, you know, is now and I don't know if that's the case, but I know lots and lots of other people because I've talked with them, or you know, we were collecting stories of these people who are in this position talking about getting this job or being promoted and doing this incredibly important work that creating hunting. You know, you know, this guy's working on land restoration work or habitat it's probably quail habitat or pheasant habitat or whatever it might be. You know, it's a fisheries person. They're let go and that job is gone, that income is gone, and it's not only a disaster for their family, but it does have impacts on the community. These small towns, like you say, we're a good solid job like that is important, and that's that's you know, in these rural areas, these little towns you're talking about, that's really going to be a hard issue. 00:40:33 Speaker 1: You know. 00:40:34 Speaker 2: Along with this, offices offices are being closed. There's this huge listing of facilities being shut down by the Feds. In Pennsylvania where I live, we have state water offices. These are the offices where staff manage these stream gages. You talk about going fishing, and I'm going fishing tomorrow. I'm looking at the stream gauge, that hydrological gage. It says how much water is in that stream, and I use that to tell me it is the stream too high? Should they just not even go there? Spring flow they're coming down? 00:41:02 Speaker 1: Or whatever it is. 00:41:04 Speaker 2: Three of the four offices in Pennsylvania are targeted to be closed that manage that network of gauges. I don't know what we're going to do if we don't have that information, you know, selfishly from the fishing side, but flood people use that for understanding when they need to get people out of the floodplains. What are quality people use it to know, you know, when things are happening with their filtration system, their treatment plant, and what's the impacts of that. All sorts of things like this are going to start unwinding in all these areas and cause problems that clearly aren't being known by the people who are making these cuts. And that's that's I mean, that's what I'm trying to do now is help people recognize that these cuts are being made without thinking, they're being made without people understanding the ramifications of these these cuts. And that's what your audience and others need to recognize is that, yeah, everybody can be concerned about government waste at all levels, just as if there's and there's as much waste in the private sector. I know that as well. Don't don't elude your delude yourself and think the private sector doesn't waste money. 00:42:16 Speaker 1: Well, to go back to our metaphor, but anybody who's been on a crew of any kind, we we know there's folks who bust their ass, and we know there's folks who cost. 00:42:29 Speaker 2: There's people that power people too, right, Yeah exactly. But but yeah, so I mean that that's you know, letting people know that what's happening now is not only good for your your individual enjoyments and your kids and grandkids. You can have all these other effects, the spinoff effects, economic impacts, you know, quality, environment impacts, water quality, public safety that people aren't taking into account that people need to understand. And you know what I'm trying to do is get people to say, this isn't what we want. You need to let your congressional members know that this is not going in the right direction. You need to stop this and think about this before moving ahead with any of these sorts of things, because it's going to have impacts upon us for years, if not generations, And I'm not kidding about that. It could be years for these sorts of things to fix get fixed if we let them continue to go on. 00:43:32 Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Doug. You know, I think this has been great. If folks want to take action, we encourage you to do so. And remember, just because you want healthy fisheries and fish numbers and the ability for the next generation to go out there and have access to public waters, public wildlife, that doesn't mean that you also then hate the dude who's in office or hate everything they're doing. This is America. We get a pick and choose. You can have your cake and eat it too. You can love, love what our elected officials are doing on certain issues, and you can not complain but inform them on how to do a better job when dealing with other issues. And write an email, make a phone call. It's absolutely within every citizen of this great country's purview to even have an in person meeting with your elected officials. They owe that to you, that's why they're in that office, and go do it. It's very eye opening. Doug, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time today and I appreciate you going out and volunteering and talking with these other groups too. 00:44:59 Speaker 2: So McKellen Jordan, I really appreciate the oportuny to visit with you guys, and yeah, this is important and I appreciate your helping folks understand the issues. 00:45:09 Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks a bunch, Thank you all. M