00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Col's Week in Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Here's Cal, A thirty seven year old The Austrian man has been convicted of mayanslaughter after leaving his thirty three year old girlfriend near the peak of Austria's highest mountain, where she froze to death. Because he was the more experienced climber, prosecutors charged that he was responsible for the decisions that led to the woman's death. I think most of us who head into the back country have struggled with the decision about turning back when things get hairy, but this couple really didn't know when to quit. The pair, known in the press only as Thomas P. And Kirsten G, started climbing the gross Glockner Mountain in the Austrian Alps on the morning of January eighteen last year, but strong win and falling temperatures delayed them. A police helicopter flew overhead in the late afternoon, but the climbers didn't signal to it, indicating that they needed help. They still weren't close to the peak by nightfall, but they kept moving uphill into the dark. Soon it got down to fifteen degrees fahrenheit with wind chilled down to minus four. You know, because this is a euro story, I'm valiantly doing the math here on the temperature from you know, fahrenheit's centigrade and you know centigrade fahrenheit. It's math, gang, It's a big deal. Anyway, the couple kept going, even though they didn't have any shelter and Kirsten was only wearing snowboarding boots. Webcam footage shows that even at nine PM, the pair were still climbing. Finally, at two am, Thomas began a descent to get help, leaving Kirsten fifty meters below the peak where she succumbed to exposure. Crosskeeters were seeking three years of prison time for Thomas, but the sentencing judge was convinced of his bad judgment but good intentions, giving him only a five month suspended sentence in a fine of eleven three hundred dollars, again translating euros to dollars. Dying to know, no pun intended. What you all think of this story? Your team out there takes two to tango, as they say, and it's kind of like a is ignorance Bliss type of argument. We should have a general idea what you're getting into, and if you don't, does that make somebody else in the group liable? For you being able to make a call as far as like when to call it quits, that's a skill for sure. Sometimes the most dangerous thing out there in the wilderness is your pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps. This week, we've got the crime desk, affordable housing, government acronyms, and so much more. But first I'm going to tell you about my week, and my week is moving right along. We got to see the HJ one aka the Boundary Waters vote kicked down the road for another week, which is great. And we got to watch the hearing of Steve Pierce for Director of the BLM. Now, the hearing was interesting. I'll tell you, Pierce could have done a better job in my opinion, of just answering straightforward questions, which is something I value and job applicants. But Jim Rish Idaho did a great job of asking tough questions. Big thank you to Senator Rish and his staff for lining those questions up for states that have just been tied up in the public land sell off battle that went down through budget reconciliation and quite honestly, is still going on right now. You saw firsthand how unpopular the idea of selling off and privatizing our American freedoms are. So to put a candidate in there who has a track record of saying that they are in support of selling off public lands not own, is unappealing, but seems like a giant pan in the butt, right. So I think it's great that Rish made him work for it a little bit, you know, and all the senators up there had a couple of points. But for what it's worth, Jim rish Idaho stuck out to me, so good one to look up and go through. You know. Paying attention is part of the accountability game, right Like we got to watch what's going on in order to hold folks feet to the fire. A couple of highlights, to be fair of mister Pierce, he made a couple of clear personal connections with public lands, referenced backpacking California after returning from the Vietnam War and acknowledging that public lands were the vacation spot for his low income family when he was growing up. Those are solid connections and something that mister Pierce needs to be reminded that those are the same types of connections and experience answers that people are seeking right now. It's not just a thing of the past. Should he get the job. These public lands provide the same benefits right now as they did in the seventies and long before that. What else, so much more, so much more, But it's time to get on with the news. We're going to start off at the crime desk. The Sheriff's office in Rutherford County, North Carolina received a breaking and entering call last week that turned out to be more of a bacon and entering situation. A pig had found its way inside someone's house, and, according to a Facebook post from the sheriff's office, was intent on adding some variety to its usual diet quote. The unexpected guests showed zero fear, maximum confidence, and the motive seemed to be finding snacks. After a short standoff involving a pack of crackers and some highly questionable negotiations, deputies successfully convinced the suspicuous individual to surrender. She was taken into custody without further incident, transported to our good friends at Rutherford County Animal control services. A hardy Ada boy goes to the responding deputy, who had to carry the pig from the home and deposit her in the back of his squad car. The swine, whose name turned out to be Penny, was returned home a few days later. An idaho An pled guilty last week to poaching deer from an elementary school parking lot. Nighttime surveillance footage showed Lars Nelson pull up to a bus loading zone and a blue pickup truck shot a whitetail buck that was standing on the school lawn and drove away. His pickup was seen on other surveillance cameras in the area until he returned to the school about two hours later and loaded the deer into the bed. This happened all the way back on November twenty six, twenty twenty four. Sometime later, investigators identified Nelson and executed a search warrant at his home. They seized his truck, clothing, and some deer parts. The antlers and meat from the poast deer were never recovered. Fortunately, blood found at the school matched blood found in Nelson's home, so game wardens knew they had the right guy. Nelson pled guilty to a single count of taking deer during a close season in exchange for having his other charges dismissed. Nelson was sentenced to pay a five hundred dollars fine, one hundred and sixty five dollars court fees, and a four hundred dollars civil penalty, and a seventy five dollars processing fee that's not game processing, by the way. He must serve two forty eight hour weekends in the Clearwater County jail, complete two years of unsupervised probation, and faces a five year revocation of hunting privileges. I'm a little surprised he didn't face any charges for discharging weapon at an elementary school, but I guess the fact that no children were present at the time saved him from facing much more serious penalties. The competitive fishing community is sounding the alarm over what some say is the biggest scam in the sports history. A new fishing league called Dual Threat Fishing had claimed to offer the highest paying team phishing events in the nation. They were supposed to hold six events in twenty twenty six, but so far they've only held two and none of the winners have been paid competitors say the league's organizer, a man who claimed to be named Ethan Phillips, asked teams to pay a five thousand dollars entry fee to fish all six tournaments. The first was held on Lake Okechobee in January, and the winners were promised fifty thousand dollars a piece, but even though they received those giant novelty checks at the end of the tournament, their actual checks still have not cleared. The same story played out over the second tournament, at which point Phillips stopped responding to calls and messages. As of this recording, no one knows where Phillips is, and some anglers are claiming that's not even his real name. Those who participated in the first two tournaments but paid to fish in all six say their deposits have not been returned. They've also lost all the money they spent on travel and lodging, not to mention the time they took off work. No one is guaranteed to recoup those expenses, but most are happy to pay them in the hope that they can win some prize money. If there was never any prize money to win, They understandably feel like they've been cheated. Dak Collins over at Outdoor Life has the full rite up if you want more details, and we'll continue following the story as it progresses, But for now, I think it's safe to say that if something seems too good to be true, it is. A California hunter will spend six months in the federal slammer for attempting to smuggle an endangered wild sheep into the United States. Jason Keith Bruce paid fifty thousand dollars in twenty seventeen to travel to Pakistan to hunt a type of sheep called a uriel. Many uriel are not protected and can be legally hunted, but the Justice Department says Bruce conspired with a Pakistani outfitter named Peer Danish Ali to kill a ledc uriel. Court documents say that Bruce was aware the local population of La doc Ural numbered only about one hundred, but he shot one anyway and traveled home that year without the sheep. Then the next year he went back to Pakistan and returned with eight sheep in tow, one of which was the Ledac. The plan was to try to hide the endangered sheep among the non endangered trophies, But shortly after arriving at the airport in San fran Bruce realized the problem with his strategy. He sent Ali a Facebook message expressing his concern that Fish and Wildlife would become suspicious about the large number of animals he was bringing with him. Ali replied with the next plot if that kind of sounds like fudge, followed by we should have thought of that. He then recommended that Bruce tele officials he did shoot all of those animals because he was shooting into a herd. That excuse didn't pan out, and Fish and Wildlife officials seized Bruce's sheep for further investigation. Court documents showed that text messages between the pair of conspirators got more and more frantic over the next few months. At one point, asked Ali to have someone fake call Fish and Wildlife officials and claimed to be from Pakistan's Game department, to which Ali replied, yes, I can certainly do that. The following month, Ali said that if Fish and Wildlife conducted a DNA test on the ladoc Uriel, he will get fudged. Bruce then told Ali, dude, delete all messages, emails and WhatsApps. We have sent each other. In May twenty eighteen, Ali told Bruce that he would create a counterfeit ladoc Uril carcass and give it to the local government so it would appear that the trophy had not been exported. None of this fooled Fish and Wildlife who prosecuted and convicted Bruce in January of last year, as the judge considered what sentenced to hand down, Bruce submitted a letter explaining that he should be given a lighter punishment because he has a quote deep compulsion about hunting. When I hear the word addiction, it seems to refer to drugs, alcohol or gambling, he wrote, But I have definitely felt it deep compulsion about hunting so much that I see it clouds my decisions. Along with his six month prison term, Bruce will serve two years of supervised release and paying eighty five thousand dollars fine. It's unclear whether Pakistan will prosecute Ali, but if I was him, it probably wouldn't take a vacation to the US anytime soon. Moving on to the bear hunting desk, the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission has approved a new game management plan that some worry will open the door to even further restricting bear hunting in the state. You may remember back in twenty twenty two when the same commission voted to end the spring bear hunt. They said at the time that more research on the bear population was needed before reinstating the hunt, but three years later, hunting bears in the spring remains banned now. This management plan includes language that might start to chip away at the fall hunt as well. In a section highlighting black bear management objectives and strategies that could be used to accomplish those objectives, the plan suggests delaying the fall hunt quote in areas where black bear viewing is popular and conflict between user groups is likely to occur to balance competing uses. This is one of the three ideas the Commission recommends that will quote highlight the diverse values of black bears, including ecological, cultural, educational, and esthetic values. Hunters generally support highlighting the critical role game animals play in the ecosystem, but it's clear from this document that the Washington State Commission considers wildlife viewing as on an equal footing with hunting, since those two forms of recreation are generally in conflict. In a way I mean, I do a lot more wildlife watching than I do shooting when I'm hunting. But there's an argument to be made that if you're into just wildlife watching, you could sit on you know, I ninety row your window down and look at wildlife if folks weren't chased them around. Kelsey Ross at the Conservation Coalition of Washington told commissioners during public comment that the provision was quote not only ridiculous, but signals to many the traditional uses of our public lands are being weighed against a likely made up recreational preference and treats legal hunting as conflict instead of a normal use of public land. Well said there Kells. By itself, this management plan doesn't change hunting regulations or policy, but it is supposed to guide future management decisions. So I think Washington State hunters are right to be worried. We'll stay on top of the story as it progresses. But to borrow a famous misquote of Thomas Jefferson, eternal vigilance is the price of bear hunting in Washington State. Some of these commissioners have close ties to groups that would like to see bear hunting band outright. That's not acceptable and we need to make sure the other commissioners know it. Keep writing, keep showing up, and don't let them chip away your right to hunt, fish and left to defend. Moving on to the EPA desk, the Trump administration is keeping up its pace of undoing environmental regulations. Two weeks ago, the Trump EPA rescinded the quote unquote two thousand and nine endangerment Finding, which determined that emissions from vehicles are a threat to the health and welfare of Americans and could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. With that finding voided, the administration would be free to unwind all regulations on pollution from cartailpipes, trucks, power plants, pipelines, and drilling sites. The motivation here is aimed at rules on greenhouse gases. The endangerment finding was the justification for all federal climate regulation. The administration has repeatedly called climate change a hoax and has forbidden the use of the words climate change on any government websites. They're really asking us to believe them instead of our own eyes at this point, or knowses. Perhaps if you will tell you what, you don't fly into Salt Lake City in the winter. With that inversion and go oh emissions don't do anything. Across the West this season, the snowfall has been disastrously light. The National Integrated Drought Information System or NIDIS, shows that the snow cover across the West on February one was just one hundred and thirty nine three hundred and twenty two square miles, the lowest extent as of that date in the satellite record, which goes all the way back to two thousand and one. Colorado farmer Mark Ernish told the Farm Journal that he might have to leave as much as seventy five percent of his acreage IDOL this year, saying, quote, we haven't had any measurable moisture on our farm since early October, and so we're really struggling on what it's going to look like to put a crop out there in the field. Of course, late season snowfall could counteract some small part of this, but water levels for the rest of the year depend on these months when snow should be steady and piling up. I'm not going to go into all the other consequences of historic drought, but let's just say it looks like it could be a rough summer and nasty fall. We hunters who are out in the woods and mountains are off in the first to notice incremental changes in seasonal weather patterns. But it doesn't take a hunter to look at what's happening with the snowpack and aquafer recharge the situation that we have going on here in the West. So the recision of the endangerment finding may not be as noticeable on our palettes because we're just going to be smelling smoke this summer instead of smog. Last week, the Department of the Interior also dramatically rolled back the National Environmental Protection Act, also known as NIPA. We're sending more than eighty percent of the act's regulations. Passed unanimously by the Senate and signed by Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy, NIPA requires the federal government to conduct a detailed study of how infrastructure projects will affect their surroundings before they're approved and built. The Trump administration argues that NEPA view has hamstrung development of energy projects, and you'll find people all over the political spectrum who think environmental impact studies and other NEPA processes have become two cumbersome over the past decades and need reform, but scrapping NEPA to this extent would let developers cut corners while building their projects and then escape the consequences if those projects do go wrong. It also puts muzzle on all of US citizens raising objections to risky projects and uses of public lands that we disagree with. And just a reminder of where we were when NEPA was drafted. The Cuyahoga River burst into flames due to pollution and contamination, and we had one hundred thousand gallons of crude oil break loose off of Santa Barbara. Now I think we can think progressively about the environment. We don't need or want massive issues like those to spur us into action. To finish up the rollback roundup, Interior also issued a directive to revoke Public Lands Order fifty one fifty to fifty one eighty, which would allow the BLM to transfer control of two point one million acres of public land to the State of Alaska along the proposed Ambler Road development corridor. These protections north of the Yukon River have been in place since the nineteen seventies, and undoing them would allow the state to open the land mining drilling and the huge amount of infrastructure necessary to get resources out not a surprise. We've covered Ambler Rode a bunch, but the news is just confirmation that the people going after our public lands mean business and they'll do whatever they have to in order to get their way. So a reminder for everybody midterm elections just about nine months away. I'd be begging and pleading and asking, always politely, your elected officials right now to represent your interests or you might be able to find somebody who will come in terms. Moving on to the housing desk, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that is is an extreme example of a problem all over the West. The average home there sells for five million bucks, which is okay if you know you got twenty million bucks, but doesn't work so well if you're a cook at the local restaurant or somebody wrenching on chair lifts. Over the weekend, seven and a half acres of the Bridger Teton National Forest in Jackson was designated for quote unquote administrative use over a decade ago. That means that the Forest Service could have built some staff offices or storage sheds there, but the nonprofit Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust started working with Bridger Teton to build fourteen buildings containing thirty six units there instead, which is enough housing to house seventy people. The town of Jackson is chipping in four point one million dollars in the trust is working to raise the other twenty or so that's million. Instead of the land being sold off, it will remain the property of the Forest Service and the housing will be built under a so called special use permit, the same kind of arrangement that allows a ski resort to build on public land. Nelson Drive, as the project is known as, scheduled to break around this spring. This is an example of public land being used for public housing. It was set aside for administrative use, so it was designated for some sort of development, could have been a parking lot. Even the rub here is we don't know if the public housing component will be maintained for actual public housing, or if it goes the way of darn near everything in a boomtown in the West such as Jackson Hole where they just turn into vrbos, or they get monopolized by somebody with deep pockets and they start renting amount at high rates. Whatever it is, it's an experiment. Would love to hear your thoughts on this one, so right in to ask C. A. L. That's askcal at themeeater dot com. Gang. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening right in let me know what's going on in your neck of the woods. You know, I appreciate it. For everybody who wrote in and you know, said hi and thank you and well wishes on old Doc Callahan, I really appreciate it. Just got back from the old codger's funeral. Things went well, kids did great. I think we sent the old fella off in the right way. So I wish the best for you and yours too. Thanks again, We'll talk to you next week.

Save this episode