00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col's Week in Review with Ryan col Kallan. Here's Cal. Hey all you Col's week in Review listeners, Cal the wild. I feel like there should be like a hour hour there or maybe at this point in time with the state of current events. Uh, what's the last last song that they played on the Titanic? 00:00:39 Speaker 2: Uh? 00:00:39 Speaker 3: Anyway, Celindian, Oh God. 00:00:45 Speaker 1: A hero for women of a certain age. That buttery smooth voice is Mark Kenyon of the Wired to Hunt podcast. And you are probably paying attention to Mark these days because he's putting out a lot of really fantastic, well researched conservation news through all of his channels. It's much appreciated. Mark Kenyon is currently residing in the Great State of Idaho, working on a full time move over there. But Mark and I just got done with a really spectacular trip to the Alretic National Wildlife Refuge. We're like crazy, spoiled kid stuff asked to join a trip up there. Literally the job was just to come see it. And spoiler alert, if you want to start an extractive business, you shouldn't go see this place, because if you do you wouldn't do it like it's just it's it's a hard landscape to walk away from and think it doesn't matter. But we're gonna get into that. We're gonna talk about the roadless Rule, We're gonna talk about where we are right now with the public lands, fight in the Senate, and probably a bunch of other stuff. So Mark Kenyon, happy to have you on the show. What's happening? Man? 00:02:24 Speaker 2: Oh man, I'm happy to be here too, And you're right, there's no shortage of stuff to talk about. It seems like every day there's some big new piece of news, there's some twist in the story. So so yeah, we've got our hands full here, as does everyone who cares about these things. 00:02:42 Speaker 1: And everyone is caring about these things. I one of the most. I was full, so like riddled with anxiety on that trip. I tried to give that trip away to everybody we know, even though I my sales pitch is like I desperately want to go on this trip, but I just can't swing it. Please go on this and tell me all about it, And nobody took me up on it due to you know, family re unions and I don't know, kids being born and things like that. So but I was so riddled with anxiety over the state of the potential loss of public lands that I didn't want to be disconnected from the world for a week, which is the exact opposite of how I am all the rest of the time. 00:03:37 Speaker 2: I think what we learned, though, Kel was that maybe you and I need to take off for these trips more often, because in the five days between when we left and went off grid to when we came back, a lot happened that was, you know, largely positive, wouldn't you say? 00:03:55 Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean it was like a light switch all of a sudden, like flipped and that feeling of like shouting into the void like hey, this is happening. You can make a difference. You got to get active. This is real, and people being like, well, it's a nice day of fish. That kind of switched over to like, holy shit, it's in my backyard. Wilderness Society released those maps. That was a huge, huge catalyst, I believe, because all of a sudden, people were like, oh my god, hunters love reading maps, right, They're like, this is real. I recognize some of these spots. We just came out of a BHA board meeting, one of our board members, James Brandenburg from Arkansas, was like the spot where I learned about public lands. They were on a family road trip to Colorado. The kids needed to stretch their legs. They went out and they were hiking around. They kept seeing these signs being like your public lands, your public lands. And one of his kids was like, Dad, what what is public land? And he had to google it? 00:05:19 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: Right, And ever since then he was like, I cannot believe we have this and have access to this, And ever since then has been like kind of an evangelist for public lands. That spot is up for sale, right, and thousands and thousands of stories like that, because the sales pitch had a Senator Mike Lee is like, oh, these these places aren't iconic landscapes. They don't matter. They're low bounden variety, garden variety. Right. And to somebody who doesn't leave DC and only cares about the machinations of the federal government and how to divest people of something so valuable to the rank and file of America, they don't matter, right, And that's that's like a hard thing with certain people. Is this particular individual Senator Mike Lee out of Utah, like he is a true believer in the fact that land is only valuable once it's lost its ecological value, like the things that people who care about hunting, fishing, wide open spaces care about. Once those things are gone, then that land is living up to its true potential, which is, you know, producing income. But you know it's like where the where do we get our food? 00:07:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, so many, so many questions there. I felt the same way that when I saw that map, because I saw a mountain that was right next to the mountain that I killed my first elk. I saw a piece of national forest where my kids had their first backpacking trip ever. I saw the place that I went for a trail run the day before I saw that map, So that definitely hit home. 00:07:26 Speaker 3: For me too. 00:07:27 Speaker 2: It's amazing the breadth of possible lands that were, you know, up for grabs in that sale. Now it does sound like things are changing now, hopefully, but I'm sure we'll cover that in more detail. But there's a lot in flux right now, and largely because of I mean, there's some rule type stuff that's dictating some of this, but then there's also no doubt about it, like public pressure is making a difference right now. 00:07:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're seeing the things that we know to be true, but for whatever reason, we'ren't being talked about out in the open, which is this stuff belongs to everybody, It matters to everybody. And what I'm seeing is the belly of the bell curve of America sometimes pot bellied belly of the Bell Curve of America is saying, oh, that stuff matters, it's ours, It is benefiting America as is. And as we talked about a lot, right like, this is the stuff that families can access, that people can access before after work or over their lunch hours. It's the stuff that you can quickly get to for a short weekend. And what happens when all that front country's gone? What happens to the back country. We just penned a letter on behalf of hunting specif Businesses that release today. I think we're calling it like the Hunting Brands Hunt Brands Coalition, just stating like the clear economics of what will happen to hunting industry brands, This includes firearm ammunition manufacturers if we lose access to places, right and it's like every season is somebody's first season and somebody's last season. I put in terms of bird dogs, like you're bringing on a new puppy and you're doing that last retirement hunt with an old dog. Then that happens every season. Every season is critical and when we remove access, like we know, this is not hyperbole, it's an absolute fact. Access is the thing that brings people in to hunting and fishing, and it's the thing that closes people out. It's the thing that makes people hang up their waiters and shotguns straps and say, you know what, it's too much of a pain in the ass anymore. So it impacts all around man. 00:10:17 Speaker 2: And I think that's that's a big part of why this has been you know, this is broken out of some of the usual patterns that you see when it comes to some issues related to public lands or wildlife for the environment. We're starting to see people speak out on this, but maybe traditionally haven't. We're seeing some brands and some individuals who maybe have been you know, resistant to criticizing some of the things happening in recent times all of a sudden saying okay, yeah, this is this is something we all need to speak out. And so you're hearing pushback on this from you know, Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between. I mean, this is as bipartisan of a pushback as you could ever ask for. And I view that despite a lot of the stuff being really concerning, the one silver lining I see out of this is that it's showcasing the influence and the impact that we can make when it comes to you know, standing up for public places, wildlife, wild places. That the impact we can have when we do this across the party divide. When when when we can kind of bridge the gap between left and right or hunt and fish and you know. 00:11:27 Speaker 3: Ari I crowd. 00:11:28 Speaker 2: When these parties and groups come together on some stuff that we have shared interests in, you know, we can change things, We can move the needle. And that is encouraging. 00:11:40 Speaker 1: It is and I think you know, Republican elected officials are starting to understand that if they sit back and let Mike Lee represent the entirety of the Republican Party, that's not a winning strategy. No, that's a losing strategy. And for everybody else there is a version of this where if you didn't speak up over and over and over again, we were going to lose something. Right, So the yeah. I mean there's a lot of versions of this right, And we talked in the conservation space, and that's like conservation organizations as well as individuals, motivated individuals who are willing to speak out about this stuff and catch some heat for it. Right. It's pretty funny how this conversation turned from like an anti Trump conversation to a pro hunting, fishing, public land, public access, outdoor recreation argument, which big shocker. Everybody across the political spectrum is in favor for right, like we need our access, we need our open spaces. It's it's been interesting to see how this this ball has moved, right. 00:13:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, so kil do you think you do you want to get folks up a speed on what has just come out as of last night or this morning, at least as of us recording this, because you know, while we were in Alaska, the you know, the Senate version of the bill became wildly understood by folks. That's when really the opposition became kind of viral when we came back. 00:13:38 Speaker 3: When we got back, we. 00:13:39 Speaker 2: Got news that senators from Idaho were coming out against it, you know, some continued public comments of opposition from your senators there in Montana somewhat. And then just last night slash earlier this morning, we got another piece of big news. Is now the time to kind of explain that. 00:13:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, we we can do that. We need to talk about like the fun, amazing stuff of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge too. So yeah, very succinctly, the Senate is in the balls in the Senate's court as far as like the budget game. So all your state senators are working on their individual pieces of this budget pie. How Senate Energy Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Mike Lee had put together a plan Mike Lee slid in his public land sales provision, which was dumping gasoline on a raging fire. Very divisive. It's becoming more and more clear that there wasn't room for compromise on this. It also turns out, as of last night, it was determined to be in violation of the bird rule, which it is the bird rule, but I think just for fundsies, it's when things are subject to the bird rule, it's referred to as the bird bath. And you know, I'm not an expert on this one, but essentially what it is is when one party controls the House and the Senate, you need fewer votes to get things done. It's like a easy ticket to ride. The Bird rule comes in to make sure that things can't be passed because there is this concentration of power that aren't specific to the budget process. So it's super efficient because the Republicans in this case have the House and the Senate. But that's not like a ticket to steal type of thing, right, can't just jam everything in because you're conveniently passing something like the budget. So in this case, Mike Lee's public land sell off was found to be in violation of the bird rule and that as well as Ambler Road were removed. It was leaked that they were removed last night. It was confirmed early this morning, and that's great. However, it's not done yet. None of the language is set. We haven't seen the text yet. Yea, And right now Mike Lee is running around like his head's on fire and his ass is catching as the man one said to try to make as many allies as he can on revised language of land selloff. So he kind of went for like, to any reasonable person, what would be like the whole Enchilada, millions of acres of public land being sold to a much smaller version where he's trying to make possibly primarily Bureau of Land Management lands only for sale within a certain radius of previous or previously existing infrastructure, towns, municipalities, which is a more reasonable approach, so reasonable in fact that through FLIPFA and flip MA, those types of land sales are already provided for YEP and FLIPFA and flip MA. And I don't want to bog people down in acronyms, but the big thing that you need to know is these are small documents that are basically put together to tell the American taxpayer what the value is of that tract of land, so we know if we're getting a fair deal by selling it off. And then in those provisions that cash the revenue generated from those sales would go back into finding land replacement land, possibly not of equal acreage, but of higher strategic value. So Mike Lee is just trying to get his dream accomplished at the expense of the American people. What he says this is for is already provided for in a way that the AMA, our con taxpayer, has already voted on. We've already signed off, stamped on, it's been subject to public approval, and it's one of those things. It's not perfect for everybody, but the American voter approved of this, and it passed, and it exists. The legal framework exists, and it is not in this budget process where revenues do not go back to the American people, they go into this empty freaking debt, void bucket that not a single person on the planet or in the United States of America will ever feel it is gone and we will not see the benefit of it. Yeah, certain words, I know, but I mean, it's it is just the freaking reality kids, A little appropriate. 00:19:56 Speaker 3: I gotta ask you this question, though. 00:19:58 Speaker 2: So in the tweet that likely sent out recently overnight, I think it was talking about the changes he's going to try to make in his new version to try to pass the bird rules. Yeah, he mentions, as you alluded to, he's going to remove all of the Forest Service lands from the sale. 00:20:14 Speaker 1: No, no, no, Mark, you missed some key language there. He said, I won't sell our forests. And when the hell did Mike Lee start considering any of this public land as ours? 00:20:31 Speaker 3: That is funny, that's funny. 00:20:34 Speaker 2: He's conveniently trying to become a user now, right, which there's an amazing This is a total of off topic, but there's a great article that does a deep dive into how the state of Utah hired a PR firm to help them develop their language in their strategy for pitching the land sale or land transfer movement, and part of it was using language from Randy and other people in the hunting industry and nbha yeah, and like analyzing it to learn Okay, this is how they're talking about, how do we use their language and kind of co opt that language to get those same people to believe us instead. 00:21:14 Speaker 3: Can you believe that shit? 00:21:15 Speaker 2: Oh? 00:21:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean we've been talking about it for a long time, right, So, I mean we got to remember, like the Utah part of this started with a case that they tried to expedite to the United States Supreme Court, Yeah, to steal our BLM land. Yeah right, so. 00:21:35 Speaker 3: Yeah, but let me get to this. 00:21:37 Speaker 2: Okay, So he says they're going to get rid of the Forest Service lands in the sale, they're going to significantly reduce the amount of BLM land to just lands within five miles of population centers. But here's the one that gets me that I'm just curious about if you know anything about this, He says they are going to in this new version, they're going to establish freedom zones to ensure these lands benefit American families. 00:21:58 Speaker 3: But the hell are freedom zone? 00:22:00 Speaker 1: So freedom zones come from this like tech world. God, there's kind of like some libertarian notion here, there's kind of some yeah, I mean, it's kind of like rooted in anti government, but like freedom cities were a buzzword under the previous Trump administration, and that that's where that language comes from. So basically it's like an autonomous zone. Ask the city as Seattle how that worked out for tech folks with big money to come in and do whatever the hell they want. But their pitch is it's going to be like, you know, the ultimate city because it's built, you know, by tech oligarchs. Basically they use different words, if you can imagine that. 00:22:56 Speaker 3: So that sounds terrific. 00:23:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, And and what's amazing to me, right is I you any contractor any contractor in any of these states could sit down and write a reasonable affordable housing development plan. And that is one thing we have not seen this dude do. So if it's about affordable housing, where is the affordable housing plan like it is doesn't exist because that is not what this is about. Why because that is already provided for. Like Biden sold off some big chunks that actually got sold ultimately sold under Trump, but that was something that was rubber stamped under him, you know, back in Oh gosh, I want to say the seventies, we have the another Nevada version of flipfah, and then you know what, a lot of folks because it is political and therefore full of screw us and rage is you know, part of Harris's plan had she been elected, was to continue some sales in Nevada. Right, However, those are done under the legal framework that already exists in a way that has way that actually has benefit to the American people. 00:24:38 Speaker 3: And some guardrails. 00:24:39 Speaker 1: Right, Yes, yep, absolutely. 00:24:46 Speaker 2: A lot happening right now and a lot still TBD right like we're waiting to see the real final language of whatever this new version is. We're waiting to see. You know, I know that Ambler supposedly struck out of this, but there's possibly new language around stuff from the Western Arctic, and if we still don't know about Arctic National Wildlife Refuge stuff yet, all sorts of news on so many fronts. 00:25:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is the the thing. It's it's a game of whack a mole political strategy, Like you're not going to be able to get them all. The reason that we bring up boundary waters, Artic National Wildlife Refuge, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or what is it, National Petroleum Reserve, National. 00:25:33 Speaker 3: Control Reserve, Alaska, Yeah. 00:25:35 Speaker 1: Alaska, Yeah, Oak Flat. All you know, all these places is because they're incredible and specifically where you and I were at, Man, Like, where the hell is ducks unlimited on that? Oh? 00:25:59 Speaker 3: I know, I mean there's Yeah. 00:26:02 Speaker 1: So the Arctic Plane is a giant nesting ground and literally birds from all over the world. And when I say all over the world, every place other than Australia will come and stop over on the Arctic Plane. All fifty states, in all fifty states. This is a duck and goose production factory. It's one of those places that is so far flung, it's it's out of sight and out of mind. However, like my observation is, man, pretty damn easy to get there. I left Missoula, Montana, like seven to fifteen pm and was up in the Brooks Range at like three pm, Alaska time the next day. Yeah, so it's inconvenient, but it's right there too, like you can get there fast, and it's staggering, it's beautiful. 00:27:12 Speaker 2: Would it be helpful for me to give like a very fast rundown of like what this place is history wise and scale? 00:27:20 Speaker 1: Oh? 00:27:20 Speaker 3: Yeah, man, because I feel like even the man with the folder. 00:27:24 Speaker 2: The man with the full I literally do have like a forage thick binder that we got on this trip that I'm very excited about. But yeah, so so this place, the Arctic National Wilafe Refuge, it was established. 00:27:37 Speaker 1: In nineteen seven. 00:27:38 Speaker 3: Can you hear that? 00:27:39 Speaker 1: Dog? 00:27:39 Speaker 3: I can't here snort? 00:27:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, trace, Oh no, keep this in phil That's called discipline, all right. 00:27:53 Speaker 3: So the Arctic National Wilife Refuge. 00:27:56 Speaker 2: It was originally established in nineteen sixty by the Eisenhower administration by way of many years of folks advocating for it, folks like Oloffs and Marty Mury, who are well famed in Wyoming. In many parts across the country, Eldo Leopold advocated for Bob Marshall advocated for it. A whole bunch of folks that are pretty well known in the conservation world still to this day. But nineteen sixty was officially created and it was made about about nine million acres were established as a refuge at that point to be protected for wildlife habitat. Fast forward another twenty years and in nineteen eighty the Carter administration had this huge bill passed. It was the Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act, I think, and that is what established many of the national parks and wildlife refuges and willderness areas in Alaska. And what that one does, it doubled the size of the refuge, so it was now about nineteen million acres as of nineteen eight But they had to make a kind of a little compromise concession there to get that bill passed on that front. And what it did is that it set aside a big chunk of the refuge is wilderness, but a one point five million acre section of it, known as the Coastal Plane, was to be studied for future decisions on whether it should be preserved as wilderness alone or if it could be open to oil extraction in the future. And so that one point five million area, the Coastal Area, or some people referred to as the ten oh two. That is what I'm sure we'll get to. That's this kind of contended part of the refuge. And to your point, you know this nearly almost twenty million acre piece of public land, it's i think the second largest piece of public land in the nation, second to only the the Western Arctic. That National Petroleum Reserve Alaska that's the largest. This is I think the second largest. As you mentioned, the Coastal Plane is a duck and bird factory, migrator birds from all over the world. The largest caribou herd left in the world is here. There's muskos, there's polar bears, the largest inland denning site, the most inland denning sites in Alaska exist here for polar bears. 00:30:15 Speaker 3: There's grizzly bears. 00:30:16 Speaker 2: Wolves, muskos, dimensioned muskos, and lord knows how much else. I mean, it's vast, it's huge. There's the Brooks Range Mountains as you mentioned, and then this Coastal Plane ecosystem, so several very different kind of landscapes that provide this diversity of habitat that leads to the vast wildlife. And the final thing I'll say is that people often refer to this as the American serengetty, like, this is our version of the African serengetti. This is this vast ecosystem where there are huge, sprawling herds of wildlife still migrating across the landscape. This caribou herd moves something like twenty seven hundred miles a year as it travels across the refue huge into Canada and back. So you know, we've got something on scale here, on par here with anything else in the world. And it's pretty amazing that to your point, that that's here in our country, that's you know, to some day accessible to us as Americans and man, like you said, we were just spoiled kid lucky to get to see it and experience it ourselves. But it's uh, it it met and maybe exceeded all expectations I had because it's somewhere I've I've read about, I've watched films about, I've dreamed about for years. To finally see it in the flesh was. 00:31:37 Speaker 1: A transformative I had, like two you know, very like emotional points, like I have literally constructed my life with many sacrifices relationship wise, uh, financial wise, uh, over the course of my life to stay outside as much as possible and and be in wild places. I'm easily impressed. But the Brooks Range I was told ahead of time by a good backpacking buddy of mine, Old Brad Brooks, that it was one of the most impressive places he's ever been, possibly the most impressive place he's ever been. And I was really blown away. But there are two times where I literally had, you know, knots in my guts and just like a heavy emotional thoughts. Which one I'm gonna do this in reverse order. One was flying from our first camp, which would be in general terms, would be on a southern portion of the Porcupine caribou herd migration. We flew literally on the same path as the caribou that we're coming through camp, over several mountain passes to what I would call like the Gates of the Mountains, where a short hike from Camp number two brought you onto the coastal plane. And if anybody's been in eastern Montana driving west towards like Glacier National Park, we talk about the rocky mountain front or the front, and it's this severe landscape where it is high prairie and then it just hits these wall walls of mountains, and this is is similar that not the same, but very similar. And on that flight, following these ancient caribou paths, I just didn't expect the valleys to keep going. Like the scale and complexity of the landscape was so much, so immense that you know, when I've spent a ton of time in the frank Church and the Bob Marshall here in the lower forty eight, and they're hemmed in by like man made boundaries. Right, It's like, got Highway ninety three on the east side. He got Hell's Canyon on the west side, but there's all these highways and dirt roads in between. Highway twelve to the north. You got you know, civilization, Stanley, Idaho is like the little tip of the frank down there on the south end. And then the Bob Marshall Wilderness has just like a brutal complex checkerboard of private land on the east side that's getting worse and worse and constricting access. You got Glacier National Park on the norst west side, Mariah's Pass, you got the Mission Valley that's populated. You got the Blackfoot Corridor that's a huge recreation corridor, essentially like it's rung with people, right, And I can look at those maps and be in those places, and I spent a ton of time in there, and they're they're beautiful and immense on their own, but they are peopled. They're way more people than we were. And I can look at those maps and be like, oh, yeah, I can hoof it out of here, I can hunt it this way, I can break it up in these ways, flying through those mountains and looking at the way that each valley didn't end like it it kept turning and twisting and going on out of sight or culminating in this giant glacial ice cap in a mountain to climb that led to another valley. It just kept opening up and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And it wasn't rung by civilization, like there's points of contact, there's airstrips and small communities in an ocean, but you couldn't walk out of there. And where I started to just kind of get panicky and sad is the fact that I looked at that stuff and it was so it was calling me right, like I wanted to go there. I wanted to explore. I wanted to see it all, and as a forty two year old man, it was just smacking me in the face that I could spend the rest of my life up there and not scratch the surface. And the reality is I could be born up there and live it and breathe it every day and not scratch the surface. But it was conflicting because I was like, Oh, I shouldn't even start, I shouldn't even be here. It's too good, It's it's too awesome. I you know, it was like it was just just a lot to take in and I just haven't had that feeling before. And then the other time that like I just had a what the hell type of moment. Was we hiked up to that peak above Gamp and I and we were aware of this gimmick, right, this this for sale sign that Lily and our crew had brought up specific for this point, but she was pissed about having to haul it up there, and and nobody liked the idea, and it was a gimmick. And and we climb up onto this peak and we're looking around at this onspiring landscape and I throw up the binoculars and I look down at camp and I'm like, oh, the for sale sign is up and she had brought like your cookie cutter white vinyl for sale sign, Property twenty one, Remax name, whatever real estate company you can think of. They use those signs. They're ubiquitous, you know them. You see it, you're like, oh, that is a for sale sign. That's a real estate sign. And she has got this thing staked out, and I just, you know, I was like, Oh, Lily's got the for sale sign up. And then I kept looking at it and I was like, Oh, that really makes me feel something here, and it's I think for me, it was like a mix of betrayal and certainly pissed offedness, but I think mostly like betrayal, and maybe that comes from like a lifetime of of underappreciating public lands. And then all of a sudden you're slapped in the face with like, oh, yeah, they're gonna take it away. You just saw this briefly, but we're gonna sell it, right. And then we hiked off that mountain, got back to camp and that for sale side still up, and those feelings didn't go away. If anything, they got more complex and stronger. But it was just like an unexpected, very visceral, real reaction to something that wasn't a surprise, Like we knew that the gimmick was going up, we packed it with us, but then seeing it on the landscape was horrifying. 00:39:55 Speaker 2: What made it feel a whole lot more real. I mean, this proposed all these and it's. 00:40:00 Speaker 3: Not like this is new. 00:40:01 Speaker 2: Different versions of this have been proposed repeatedly over time, but now this latest one seemed even more threatening than ever. And then to see a place that's so amazing, and then to see that physical representation of this god awful idea right there. Yeah, I mean it's like hits you in the face, attention grabbing. And I don't like it either, that's for sure. 00:40:27 Speaker 3: I did not, you know, the. 00:40:30 Speaker 2: Emotional moments scale. I had one of those two, and I felt the same two things you mentioned. But I had another really strong moment for myself, which was when we got to camp too, which is the one that you described there that was near the coastal plane, and we all set up our camps and then kind of people went off in their own direction. You went off looking for a moose paddle to the south. I headed to the north, and I climbed up on top of this knob that was right on the edge of the coastal plane, and I'm up there by myself, about three miles from camp and got to really see the coastal plain for the first time. And so you could see, like you mentioned this like big wide, open grassy plain. You can literally see twenty twenty some miles all the way to the Arctic Ocean. You can see the pack ice. It's like all this huge frozen white pack ice expanse across the ocean there and then to either side, to the east and west, you're just seeing this never ending grassland and you can literally see I mean, I don't know. I knew it was like twenty two or twenty five miles to the ocean to my north, and I could see at least maybe three times that far to the east or west, so I don't know, sixty seventy eighty miles maybe more to the east or west. And as far as you can see it is this unbelievable wild expanse that you know is populated by caribou and muskos, bears, all the things that we talked about the beginning. And I remember just sitting there and just being so in awe of that landscape, so appreciative that we still have a place like this, but then also so simultaneously struck by the very real possibility of that changing in the relative short term. And this is the first time in my life that I've been somewhere where I could see something so tangibly that might be dramatically different in a number of years. Because this coastal plane, as I mentioned, that's the one point five million acre section that they've debated over the over decades about whether or not to open that to oil leases. And in this reconciliation bill right now being debated, if it were to pass as the language is in there currently, it would mandate opening the refuge to oil drilling. It would fast track that process, and it could lead you know, as we talk to these people who have you know, deep experience with us, it could lead to in a matter of a handful of years, this wide open, incredible wildlife habitat becoming vastly different. In five years, maybe if this passes as it's written right now, we might go back there in five years and see instead industrial quarter built across the plane. You know, oil rigs, gas flares, you know, housing for workers, semi trucks. Lord knows what else. I mean, this just unbelievable. Wilderness resource could be dramatically different. And I sat there on top of that mountain looking down on that thinking, number one, this is amazing. Number two I want my children and other future generations to be able to experience this, and number three the real slap you in the face reality that that might not be possible. And as I sat there and contemplate all that, I had very real, a very real emotional response. 00:43:53 Speaker 1: It was. 00:43:54 Speaker 2: It was. 00:43:56 Speaker 3: Daunting. 00:43:57 Speaker 2: It was it was both inspiring to see what's there now and really discouraging to consider what might be there someday. And I've never seen that contrast so starkly and in such a real way right in front of my face like I did then. 00:44:14 Speaker 1: It was It's almost like, you know what I was saying about Every hunting season is a little puppy bird Dogs first season or old bird Dogs last season, and it's like we were having both of those seasons at the same time. 00:44:32 Speaker 3: That's a great one. 00:44:33 Speaker 1: It's like, here's this place. Even if you come back, you'll never see it the same way again if this development goes through. And folks, I'm a total realist. I burn a shitload of gas, so much of my life comes out of the ground in one way or another, as does yours. The fun fact is is we don't need these resources, not right now. They are safely underground, and ultimately one of the most valuable resources underneath one of the most valuable resources this planet has right now, which is wide open space that hasn't been developed, like this is something that is only going to go up in value forever and ever, and the world at large is losing these landscapes at an incredibly fast rate, like we don't understand the value of these places. Not in the context of our time here on this planet. I can confidently tell you that I mean. Just one fun fact to noodle on is once the snow and ice melt has run off all the fresh water up there, of which there is an unbelievable amount, and it's tasty, it takes It's a thousand year old water by the time it bubbles up to the surface out there on the Arctic plane. So the water that seeps in, leeches in to the tops of those mountains and gets down into the aquifer is a thousand years old, thousand year old snowflakes and rain drops by the time it bubbles up on the surface of that plane, So you're literally, you know, drinking the water that fell on some poor hunters shoulders a thousand years ago, got brushed off a muskox back a thousand years ago, which is wild to think about. And if you can put things in that context, there's so much more that we obviously do not know. I mean, we're dealing with timelines on landscapes that we just don't quite have the capacity to understand right now. So I push back on the development of these places because I think, or maybe naively want to believe that if we keep working on our development technology that one day we'll be able to extract from these reserves when we absolutely need them and in a way that does not impact the landscape, certainly not in a way that's going to like quite literally kill off the last remaining healthy caribou herd right or untold amounts of migratory birds. 00:48:11 Speaker 3: And that's the thing. 00:48:12 Speaker 2: Cal's like, even if we were to, like to your point, we have we need resources, we need these things. I understand that, but aren't there some places where maybe it's not the right place at the right time to do it, especially these last pristine few places, which, to your point are are one of the rarest resources left and will only increase in that value. You know, as I understand it, there's somewhere between like six and ten billion barrels hypothetically underneath the coastal plane, which I'm going to get the SPECIFICUS here wrong, but I think I remember reading something like that would only account for enough oil to be used in the United States for six months to a year, and. 00:48:59 Speaker 1: Those we don't know that, right, it is it's hypothetical. We don't know what those reserves are. The speculation is that if it was really worth getting it already would have been got at this point. And just the exploration practice is pretty brutal on the landscape as far as the impacts of the great term here thumper trucks going across the tundra and doing the seismic readings to determine what's in the ground. And so I mentioned the infrastructure needed to support people doing the work, and then the reality is like this stuff where it's at has got to be subsidized by the US government in order to make it profitable for the companies that want to do the extraction. So it's it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and nobody has been able to explain this to me in a way that it actually makes sense fiscal or otherwise. If you can man Guest number one at the top of the show, I would love, love, love to learn more and hear it. But that's the whole point of doing these moratoriums. In my mind. The Boundary Waters moratorium, which is something we need to talk about too, is like, it's a twenty year moratorium. Show me use that twenty years to show me a better plan that's not going to have tremendous downstream effects that would negate any sort of fiscal positive. You could pull out of this project and we'll talk about it. Then. 00:51:13 Speaker 2: You know, well, because with all these things kel especially up in the Arctic, it's it's a short term resource extraction opportunity in this case hypothetically, but. 00:51:24 Speaker 3: A nearly forever impact on the landscape. 00:51:28 Speaker 2: So it's it's not one of those things that you can like, well, yeah, we'll do it for a little bit and we'll. 00:51:32 Speaker 3: Turn it back to how it was. 00:51:34 Speaker 2: That's just not possible, and so you're you're getting a short term benefit at the price of an extremely long term cost on those other fronts. That's that's a really questionable swap as far as I'm concerned. 00:51:49 Speaker 1: Absolutely, man, Absolutely, the reasoning for the the time line right like doesn't exist. I don't know what the what the what the rush is for. 00:52:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and it's funny. 00:52:10 Speaker 2: It almost seems like every every everything we've read so far and talked to folks have, you know, said, they've echoed what you just mentioned, which is that the economics of drilling in this particular place right now are just not there, Like, it doesn't make sense from a financial perspective, but politicians continue to pursue it regardless. And it almost seems like it's become more of like a trophy, like a political football thrown around, and folks just want to open it up and make it happen to to say they did it, or to spite the opposition, to inspite the you know, the greenies or the environmentalists or whatever you want to call anyone that supports this area. So it feels almost spiteful in that way. Given all of that, and like you said, like if they were to do it, there's there's rumors and talk of well they're you know, if this gets past, the government will simply subsidize and or you know, influence even foreign companies to invest and do this kind of stuff just because they want to get it done, even though it's not profitable. So yea, for so many reasons. It seems like a bad idea to me, even more so now that we've actually experienced what it's like now. 00:53:24 Speaker 1: Absolutely and you know, it's those economic facts right of that landscape is tremendously valuable. It's only going to go up in value as is. There's already gosh, I can't remember how many businesses. There's already already a lot of businesses up on that landscape operating for different industries and capacities, including what we'd call recreation, right like flying people in to check birds off the bird list, hunt all sorts of species, uh, climb ski uh, pack raft raft fish. And those dollars that are collected and then redistributed by the local businesses are recent are recirculated on average between three and five times. And whereas the extractive industries when they go in there, the bulk of that wealth is is literally shipped off with the oil like it's those are extractive dollars that do not circulate over and over in those communities. And when you you try to balance out the wreckage that landscape is going to cause and the timeline in which the profitability will be in effect, I guess you'd say, it just paints like a really bleak picture of like what the hell of our goals are? 00:55:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, here's the thing kill I've you know, I know you've dove into this a lot yourself, but I've read like extensively into the history of our public land system, how we got these places, all of the conservation history that led us to this point, and every you know, every decade, every single year since we first established the early parts of our public land system, every year since, there have been debates and arguments over the same set of issues. The same idea is, like we want to take out resources or we want to conserve these places, and the same general things have been argued over and over and over and over. When you look back at every one of the battles within this fight that conservationists have won, every one of these places we have been able to protect in some kind of way or conserve in some kind Every single one of them. You look back on it now, and folks look back on it, they say, repeatedly, oh my gosh, how did we ever consider losing Mount Deinnali in that area. Oh my gosh, we are so lucky that we still have the area around the tongus. 00:56:15 Speaker 3: They were trying to raise it to the ground. They were trying to, you know, just cut every single thing that. 00:56:19 Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, how lucky are we that we have the Bob Marshall Wilderness or Glacier National Park. Can you imagine life without Yellowstone or all these different places. Back at the time, there were so many business interests that said, this is crazy to set this side apart, this stuff apart, This is a land grab, this is nuts. You guys are crazy. We need to take the resources. We need to extract the oil, we need to cut the timmer, we need to do whatever it is. And they painted the conservationists or preservationists as nut jobs. But then fifty years down the road, you look back and everyone says, thank goodness, we protected this spot. It's so valuable, it's so special, it's so worthwhile. And I think that's going to be the case now. These last few places that we have, like this, We're never going to get them back if we sacrifice them now and fifty years from now, when my kids are, you know, raising families of their own, they're going to look back on this and they're either going to say to themselves, man, I'm really proud of my you know, my dad and his friends and his you know, cohort of people in that generation who stood up and protected these places that now in twenty seventy we still have around and people can appreciate and value is so so special and rare. Or they're going to look back on this to say, geez, they they took their foot off the pedal. They didn't live up to Roosevelt and Pinchot and Grennelle and Leopold. 00:57:46 Speaker 3: I don't want that to be the case. 00:57:48 Speaker 1: No, no, And I don't understand why there's like this attempted fire sale on our natural resources right now, when it's evident, like the world over, so much of our models of extraction, land use, and land management are so highly regarded, and right now it's like we're trying to tear them down. When you bring up the tongus, right, it's like we got to talk about the roadless rule, which you should probably take the lead on this one. But for folks who don't know, the roadless rule pertains to like I think it's fifty eight or fifty nine million acres of ground in the US, and that rule has been an impediment to certain extractive industry, is mining and logging being really like the top two. I will point out that I had a buddy that used to work at Mitas Gold. They're out of Yellow Pine, Idaho, and we used to roll up there for the Yellow Pine Harmonica Festival. If you've never been, it's pretty darn sweet. Used to have a honor bar so you could grab beers out of the fridge and stuff some cash. Anyway, they would they were in a roadless area that mine, but they would when the price of gold was high enough, they would just mine with helicopters so that they would roll cruise in with helicopter, drop everybody off, do the work, and then take the or out and the personnel at the end of the day via a helicopter. So rollless rule didn't stop everything, but it did force industries to to extract in other ways and sometimes much more costly. But Mark, do you want to want to tackle the roadless rule. 01:00:11 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:00:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, So starting in the nineteen thirties, kil folks like Elder Leopold and Bob Marshall started looking at our National Forest Service lands and saying, wow, they are getting carved up to pieces right now, the last few places that we have. Even in the nineteen thirties, they were beginning to realize this, these last few places that do not have roads provide this unique value that probably should be protected now because everything else is getting very quickly kind of developed in one way or another. So starting then, they began a process within the National Forest Service of inventoring the last remaining roadless areas, and they started designating them. There was like L two and L one lands within the Forest Service were kind of like de facto wilderness. Those areas were kept track of and getting some special protections until the sixties when the Wilderness Act came into play, and that is when some places within the Forest Service and other public lands were designated as like Capital W wilderness, which meante no motorized vehicles, no development, et cetera. But then there still were other lands, specifically within the Forest Service that were inventoried as roadless but not yet protected with Capital w wilderness protections, but they still were unroaded, which you know, roads bring with them a lot of different detriments when it comes to like wildlife or experience or ecosystem impact, stuff like that. The Forest Service has nearly four hundred thousand miles of roads that it has created so far, which I believe makes it one of the largest road managers in the world, I think is what I remember hearing so tremendous amount of road construction they've done to this point. In two thousand and one, a rule was created called the Roadless Rule, which had been advocated for a whole bunch of decades leading up to that, basically saying, all right, these last chunks of forest lands that we have national force that do not have roads yet, let's keep those last places unroaded because we already have four hundred thousand miles of other roads crisscrossing and carving all this other stuff. Let's leave these last few places in a slightly more protected place, so that yes, there are you know, hundreds of millions of acres of lands that are accessible by road, that are developed, that are utilized for resource extraction or easy access recreation, hunting, fishing, all those kinds of things. But this sixty million acre chunk we will have in this state will let this area remain in this unroaded state so that you do have that kind of experience and those places still, you know, available for wildlife that do not respond well to roads, typically like you know, grizzly bears, elk, all these things would prefer to be in unroaded areas. So since two thousand and one we've had that, and it is you know, I mean, these are the places that many of us love. These are the places that many of us hike into for elk hunting or backcountry fishing trips. 01:03:13 Speaker 1: Or yeah, specifically four on the map. 01:03:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, these are these spots like if you are a diehard elk hunter or a mule deer hunter or anything like that, I mean, these are usually. 01:03:22 Speaker 3: The best of the best. 01:03:24 Speaker 2: And as of yesterday now, the administration has announced that they are going to roll back remove the roadless rule and open up this nearly sixty million acres to new road development and all the other things that come with that. It's a huge it's a huge deal. I don't think a lot of people understand that. But this is this is not that this is almost like saying we're going to roll back the Wilderness Act because the roadless Rule has created to some degree a close approximation to wilderness for sixty million acres and removing that is a massive thing that I'm not sure the average everyday person is aware of because it just doesn't get talked. 01:04:04 Speaker 1: About a lot. 01:04:06 Speaker 2: But I sure hope folks learn about it now because this is a big one. 01:04:11 Speaker 1: It is a big one. It is a big one, And do you know where we're at on that. I know there's gonna be like and already are a lot of lawsuits on this announcement, but I'm not clear on whether or not, like we have a chance to comment yet, other than you know, asking our senators and representatives to push back on this again. 01:04:44 Speaker 2: So so I'm not one of this, but my assumption would be that right the announcement came out yesterday, I believe they're gonna have to put some text around this, which then will have to be eventually released to the public register. And once it's released to the public register, I think it has to be open to comment. So at some point there will be a public comment period on this proposed rule change. We'll have an opportunity to weigh in. Not to what degree they take our comments into you know, account, you know, that's questionable, but at least there will be a chance to weigh in on this. And then, yes, I think there's gonna be a lot of litigation. I think there'll be some orgs suing on this one. But because it is an administrative action, like an executive administrative action, this isn't anything that you know, Congress can help us stop or anything like that. This is this is a the administration wants to do this thing. They're going to start changing the rule. They're going to propose that, they're going to put it out there, and then unless you know, the court system can stop it, it'll happen. 01:05:45 Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, well, uh, Secretary Bergham and Secretary Rawlins I, I I'd like to see their plan, Like have they thought about this one? Are they familiar with what it is? Do they know the why? Like, tell me the why? You know, obviously we use a lot of timber in our lives too. I'm gonna need the math on what exists in these areas, the juice and the squeeze argument, just to just put it in context. Right. 01:06:26 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, you know, we've been down this road before. If you if you look at what happened in the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds when there was no there were no guardrails on you know, taking wildlife and selling it or you know, developing mines or oil fields or you know, logging timber or doing anything. When when there were not regulations, when there weren't some kind of guardrails in place, some kind of moderation in place, what happened. It's the tragedy of the commons, is what folks referred to it as we just we use this stuff till it's gone. Everyone races to get their peace, and it ends up decimated. That's why we lost passenger pigeons, That's why we almost lost buffalo. That's why so many of our wildlife populations came just to the very brink because a quote unquote wild West as we kind of know of it now, like an unregulated you know, race to take, take, take that doesn't work in the long term. And now what folks. 01:07:30 Speaker 1: Seemed also to do in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies when much of this four hundred thousand miles of road was built. It was the government that built those roads for the timber companies, right, in order to make it profitable enough for the timber companies to go in and harvest that timber. True, right, And here in the era of Doge and something that we talk about on fire management is we it's like, well, the free market's going to take care of that. So is that is the free market going to protect us from the fact that you can't build, maintain a road into these areas and extract the timber and make it pencil out. Because we know for damn sure living here in Montana that this idea of people taking unmarketable fuels out of the forest in the name of wildfire management is something that you pay for, not get paid to do, right, Like there's no market here in the West for the products that you get for timber that's under four inches in diameter and brush. So yeah, I don't again, I need need somebody to explain it to me. Mark, you got you got time for one more one more thought? Yeah? 01:09:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, you want my thought or you have a question for me? 01:09:03 Speaker 1: No, I want I want your thought here, Like, let's let's uh end on positive. What do you suggest folks do well. 01:09:13 Speaker 2: I think the one big positive from this whole thing is something we talk towards the beginning, which is, despite all of this news, despite a handful of knuckleheads who want to tear this thing down that we have, it does seem that we still have a voice, especially when we work across parties, when we work across demographics, when we work across you know, recreation type of choice, when the hunters and the hikers, and the Democrats and the Republicans and the environmentalists and the conservationists and the Montanans and the Massachusetts folks, when we can, you know, realize that we really care about ninety percent of the same things, and we work together towards protecting or advocating for the those things. 01:10:01 Speaker 3: We do have. 01:10:01 Speaker 2: Some say, still we can, we can still be heard. We can put the fire to the feet of some of these folks who continue to push some of these you know, short term gain ideas that will hurt. 01:10:13 Speaker 3: Us in the long term. 01:10:15 Speaker 2: I think that it proves that our phone calls, our emails, our messages, our visits to the capital or to the state capital, or our signs that we hold up in front of the capitol building whatever it is, it all can help, it all can make a difference, and we just got to keep on, keep it on. This isn't going to be like, oh we want it today. This is going to be I think something we're going to have to continue pounding on for a while. But it is not fruitless, it is not hopeless. We can make a difference and we are and we can keep on doing so if we keep it up. 01:10:52 Speaker 1: Well said man, well said, we got to wrap it up. I'll just throw in if you're waiting to pay play party politics. By weighing in on an election cycle, you're basically saying that you're willing to give up everything until that election cycle starts. So if you're not participating right now, you're just a bum in my eyes, and you're not invested. That's the reality where we're at. Like your conservation stamp is a great thing, paying for your licenses and tags is a great thing, But right now it's not enough. You got to use your voice too, show up, play your part, make phone calls, make those staffers and those senators and representatives' offices know your voice and like you so they become an advocate for you. It's not that hard. They're real people such as you are, and start playing in this game. You owe it to yourself and everybody around you if you really really do give a shit. So also hit the old BHA Action Alert Center. We've got, as of this recording, over one hundred thousand people that have clicked that button and either called or emailed their representative or senator. And being able to point to those numbers is tremendously valuable when you're up there lobbying on the hill. So I appreciate you as per usual. Right in to ask c A. L. That's Askcal at the Meat Eater dot com. Let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. If you got something good to say on this one for old Mark Kenyon, you can hit him up directly, or you can hit me up and we'll have him back on this this show to address those questions. Thanks again, We'll talk to you next week. Thanks Mark,