00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening un podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer. UM. All right, So right now we're sitting in uh in what do you call this place? We're in Albuquerque Regional Headquarters. Yeah, this is the Southwestern Regional Office, the Southwestern Regional Office of the US for US Service. Do you guys mind going around and saying like what you do and what like what your job titles are. So I'm Jerry Monzingo. UM, I'm Wildlife Fishing and rare plant program manager on the Healand National Forest which is in southwest New Mexico. And you grew up doing a little fur trapping. I did? I did? Yeah? Um. When growing up, I lived along the HeLa River, which is headwaters are in the HeLa Wilderness. And my grandpa started me out, um probably when I was ten eleven years old. UM gave me three old number two Victor long springs that were the springs were just about warring out um, and that and that started me. I walked to the river from the house, set out a few traps um. And then of course for what muskrats, no coons, raccoons, gray fox, the occasional bobcat, lots of skunks. Um. Occasionally you're saying ring ring tales. Yeah, what was like, what what's the market like for those bads? You know, that was back when fur prices were good. Fur prices were good then, Um, you know ring tales were twelve bucks a little gray fox was worth Yeah. I started trappling right at the tail end of the super good fur prices. And it was the same single spring number one, single spring, single long spring victors that that launched me into the biz. But then you also came out like, ah, you came out of a mining family. I did. Yeah. Um, my dad worked at the local copper mine. Um, all my life, that's you know, that's all he knew was the copper mine. I think he ended up when he retired. It was thirty six years at the copper mine. I spent a three and a half year stint at the copper mine. In about a year into that, I figured that wasn't for me. Um, it was shift work. I had grown up with that my whole life, and a graveyard shift around my house me and my sister is always left because you know, when somebody's trying to sleep during the middle of the day and a bunch of kids running around the house. Um, and even if it even if it wasn't us that woke him up, um, we got blamed. So we just it away from the house. I stayed at the river, fishing, trapping, whatever, just to be clear of home, just to be clear of home. And then you didn't you mind for you did mining for three years. I did three and a half years UM and then when up going from that into school and came up through wildlife mild right. Yeah, when I got out of UM high school, what I wanted to do was get a degree in wildlife management for sua a career with a state agency. At that time, about the time when I graduated, the mind shut down. My family was always very serious about not being in debt, so really the only place that they could afford for me to go to school was the local university, which was thirty miles away. That university didn't offer a degree in wildlife management, nothing really even close. So it is a typical seventeen year old that thinks they know best. Um, I decided I wasn't going to go to college, and my mom decided for me that I was. So I went to the local college got a associate's degree in welding technology. And prior to that, during high school, um the summers and during and during the college, I had worked for a local ranch um in hayfields, working cattle. I got out of college with that degree, I went back to the ranch for two two years, a little over two years, making twenty five bucks a day, fourteen sixteen hour days, sometimes seven days a week, like around what time, what year was at oh eighty. I worked at the ranch in the summers from about eighty one until eighty four when I graduated, and then I went back to work for a little over two years solid about eighty five eighty six. So now when you like, as a as a biology is now working, how far from where you grew up are you now that you work for the Forest Service? Like how close and what proximity to all where you were trapping and growing up and and mining is your work now? Like right there? Yeah, it's right there. Yeah, So I grew up in a Do you work now in places you were familiar with as a kid? Yeah? Yeah, you know, I didn't do a whole lot of hunting and all on the National Forest growing up, um, and we gathered fuelwood there to heat our house. I grew up hunting with my my grandfather, um on my mom's side, because my dad just my dad wasn't an outdoorsman, and my grandfather's family had settled in the cliff La Valley, you know, in the late eighteen hundreds, um, along the river, and so he he knew all the local folks that had been there a long time. He you know, it was friends with the large land owners, the ranchers. So my early time was hunting private property. I mean I fished some on the National Forest, um, because it was you know, an hour's drive and hike basically into the heel of wilderness from my house where I grew up. UM. So I did spend a lot of time along the river in the forest, but most of my early hunt and all was done um on private land. Yeah. How long you've been with the Forest Service now? Twenty two years? I was twenty two years. Yeah, long time and on the same forest for twenty two years, which is very you don't see that very often people stay in that long. But it's I love the country, I love my job, um, and I really have no desires to go somewhere else. If you're doing good work, I leave. Yeah, now, Beyord, you're from far off. Yeah, I grew up in Seattle. Yeah. Where How did you come to be here and do what you're doing? I was a long, long journey. I you know, I grew up playing on public lands in the Northwest. You know, my dad was before he had me and my my brother and sister, was an alpine climber. Climbed all over the world. Yeah, so a guy. I think he was like on the on the cusp of doing some pretty big things. And you know, as as things go in the mountains, never never quite pulled off some of these big climbs. But so he instill in that's really early, this kind of ethic of or passion for the outdoors, and was dragging us all over the Cascades growing up. And so have many a fond memory of camping trips and backpacking all over the place growing up. And so left Seattle when I was eighteen after after get out of high school, went to school on the East Coast. Um had an interest in environmental issues due to that upbringing and and you know, growing up in Seattle and just hearing a lot about Yeah, there's a lot of interest that part of the world, as I'm sure you know about environmental issues and sustainability and it's kind of a weird, like I'm not a climber, but it's it's a real next is for the climbing world. It is, it is. I mean there's some some really famous folks who uh yeah, who who grew up there, um lived there today in the in the climbing world, alpine climbing in particular. You think you talked about rock it's them down in Yosemite. And he spent a lot of time down there too. But yeah, well international, yeah, exactly exactly. So Um anyway, went to school, studied, uh studied environmental studies as an undergrad had a kind of interest in international applications of that that sort of feel to study. And so along the way, I spent about a year in China. I went to grad school and and uh did an environmental science degree, And based on my experience in China, wanted to get some other exposure in India being another huge kind of developing country. You know that's going to be um amazingly significant on the world stage and in the context of environmental issues. And UM, during my time abroad, you know, what I really missed was was the outdoors, you know, in our public lands. And and so I did a lot of reflecting. I missed my family and friends too, of course, and I was meeting experts who had spent their whole lives abroad, their whole adult lives anyway, and UM, it just kind of concluded, this is not the lifestyle that I want to live. And UM, I think, you know, there's a lot of good, important work that we can be doing at home. So I kind of did this mental ship in terms of where I thought I was going to be taking my career. Came back and had an opportunity to to start up with the Forest Service in Washington d C. I was joked, that's like a backwards career path. Um. You know, looks like Jerry started in the field on a national forest and UM, you know those who aspire, um, worked their way up to d C towards the end of their careers and had the chance to start out there and fascinating experience. Met a lot of really great people who had rich careers and turned around after two years there and went um did a brieft in eastern Washington on the Calville National Forest, and then went down to the Cleveland National Force in southern California for about four or five years before coming out to Albuquerque. And part of your deal like just say caves, caves. Yeah, So I'm I'm the regional program manager for a wilderness, wild sink, rivers and caves and and it's kind of an odd, odd grouping of programs at face value, but the rationale behind it is that we have um federal law that protects each of these resources. And so I'm, in essence the specialist um protect our special places within the region. That's that's my job. In a nutshell, what does the law that protects caves? Like, I know, like when you say, when you say wilderness, so as we're gonna we're gonna as we're gonna be discussing it today when we say wilderness, like we're talking about wilderns of the Capital w like federally designated wilderness. We'll get into what that is. But and wild and scenic rivers that's its own piece of legislation. Right when we when we designate generally a stretch of river, right, explain it and explain the cave thing, and how like what kind of administration occurs around caves. I I had no idea there was anything like that. Yeah. So so, yeah, wilderness is actually kind of the odd odd one out in that bunch, in the sense that it's just a broader landscape that's gets protected where you have rivers and caves that are discrete resources. And so wild Rivers um So that Wild Rivers Act passed in nine, basically allows Congress to designate stretches of free flowing so you know, rivers that are free of dams and other impoundments and diversions, rivers that have um hy degree of water quality, and what we call outstandingly remarkable values. Um So, these really, when you look at a regional or national context, these really special values. They might be fisher widlife species, that might be a recreation, They might be scenery or geologic resources. And so there's got to be something about that free flowing river that has really kind of really specially unique qualities. And so we placed that protection over it. Wild sc Rivers Act really in a in a nutshell, um it prohibits damn building is the biggest, most direct thing any kind of any kind of firk hydroelectric type of project is outright prohibited. And then we have this mandate as managers to protect that free flowing condition, to protect water quality and protect those outstandingly remarkable values. That was next. So that was kind of they're both in that era of really significant major environmental legislation being passed in this country, and you get into the seventies and you have you know, the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and so I was really the heyday of these big and Nixon that's right, yeah, SA, of course, yep, yep. And then right down the caves, you because I didn't know there's any kind of special there's like a there's like a protective designation for caves, that's right. So there's a Federal Cave Resources Protection Act, kind of like the Wild Stink Rivers Act, and it basically says that or Congress has the ability. Actually actually in this case, Congress doesn't have the ability. They differ. They delegate that to the agency to to identify and protect significant caves. And so it's similar to wild sink rivers. It's these caves that have some special unique value to them again recreation, wildlife, um, scientific values. And so that law, once we designate as an agency these caves is significant. We have to protect. We're required by a lot of protective special values. Got you. Yeah, how many stretches of river have our wild scenic rivers because that's all over the country. Yeah, Like I used to fish small mouth on one a stretch of the Delaware River, Yeah, which is like very you know, I mean it's houses, cottages, right, So it's not like wilderness is so wilderness designations Like a criticism is that they're all high country in the not a criticism, but like when someone looks at the scope and it feels like a very Western issue because they're in these like very remote areas in the mountains generally at higher altitude. But in the wild scenic rivers, man, I mean they're all over the plaster or the east, you know. Yeah, we shake with wilderness. It's like the rock and ice, you know, back in the day where there were no other you know, really immediately accessible economic values, and so they were remote, undeveloped, and it's a lot of the early wilderness where these kind of rock and ice type of places, and there are people doing good work to try to diversify the system. So we have representative set of ecosystems that you know, are are protected as wilderness. And like you said, rivers um a little different all over the country. Off the top of my head, you know, because it's spent all my time thinking about the southwest UM. I don't know the number of rivers designated UM, you know, but it's not even it's not whole rivers, so it's segments. So we have one here in New Mexico and the Rio Chama that designate wild Stink River and it's right between two dams. Yeah. But but again in that stretch, you know, there are no effects to the free flow, so the river is free to do its thing, meander across the landscape. You know, you go through those channel formation processes and UM has a whole slew of outstanding they remarkable values. And so that's kind of a unique thing people always talk about, like that's kind of weird. It's you know, it's a river that's damn controlled, but you call it free flowing and it's not about UM. You're looking at the entirety of the river. Itself. I mean, there are very few rivers in the West that would be free flowing for their full duration, the HeLa maybe being one of them. Is there a river that is protected from its headwaters all the way down to the mouth or confluence, not in the Southwest? Um? I would? I would? I would say, I mean, I can let me typ step back in The reason the Wild Sink Rivers Act passed was really a response to this this heyday of damn building and kind of the early and middle part of the twentieth century, the exactly the Floyd Domini area. And so there have been a lot of damns built by the time the Act passed. And so I again, that's a question. I I you know, stuff I should probably know, but I would. I would hazard a guess that we might have something in Alaska, But I'm not aware of anything in the lower forty eight because there was so much river development. And that's not to say it doesn't exist, just not off the top of my head. But we went through so much river development before we got to that point in sixty eight when Congress passed that act that, um, you know, it was about protecting some of these really high value segments that we had left at that we're not yet developed. Yeah, I want to get into I want to move on and introduce Carl, but reintroduced Carl. But I want to get into like what was going on why so much of this stuff came out of the sixties. Yeah, and like what was happening culturally at the time. But Carl. Yeah, Now, Carl joined us before. He's been on the show a couple of times and then joined us before and told the fascinating story of the Wisconsin supersow. That's right? Is that what it's called? Wisconsin super Soo, Wisconsin super sow and um, but yeah, just revive people's memories on what what your story is. Yes, I work here in the Southwestern Regional Office. I'm the regional wildlife Ecologist. Um. The cliff Notes version of my journey to this agency is growing up in northwest Lower Peninsula, Michigan, for getting a little fur trapping, a little bit, getting really good at doing chores for private landowners. Um. And I had a a platte book that I pasted pages of on the wall and took a highlighter and drew outlines around the properties where I had obtained permission to hunt fish camp trap and really didn't have easy access to public land. So I was bailing hay, doing chores, um splitting wood, and over time I accumulated what in hindsight now looks a lot to me like a map of a national forest where have little in holdings where you don't have access, especially those eastern nationally crazy on maps right. Um. And then I went to college for natural resources program. I too spent some time working overseas in China as I was working on my PhD, and through that experience realized that we are way luckier here in this country than I had acknowledged growing up. And as I was finishing up grad school and considering different career tracks, UM, I became increasingly interested in getting involved with our public land system. So once I wrapped up my my degree at the University of Wisconsin and Madison, UM I looked west of the Mississippi, really zeroed in on states that had a very high ratio of public land to population. And uh, my wife, who also grew up in Michigan, was interested in states where the winners weren't quite as long and gray and rugged. And so those two key criteria helped us really zero in on the Southwest and on New Mexico in particular. So we moved down here in late and started working for the U. S d A. Forest Service on the Lincoln National Forest. And during my relatively short tenure with the organization, I've had a chance to work at our Washington office headquarters, um work at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and now I'm based here out of the regional office. And the position covers eleven National forests between Arizona and New Mexico, and then there are also four National Grasslands administered by the CIBOLA, and those also fall under the purview of the position. I have. So anything related to wildlife monitoring on a scale that expands beyond a single forest would be something I would work on. As an example. And you drew a bull moose tag in Idaho, man, I got I gotta say so. One of the things, aside from a lot of public land, one of the things that drew me to New Mexico was the ability to hunt elk, mule, deer, and pronghorn. Growing up in Michigan all about white tails. I love white sales. White tail hunting is amazing, don't get me wrong, But you know, reading all the Western hunting magazines growing up, I was like, God, I would love to be able to chase this diversity of big game. So I moved to New Mexico. And my strategy with applying for big game tags here. You know, you get three choices in New Mexico. I put choices that are great for first and second, and then my third choice is always just please give me a tag. So my third choice elk tag is the tag I've drawn every year. I've had an archery elk hunt every year I've been here. And then this year I failed to draw an elk hunt, and I was so sour. You know, It's like I moved west to hunt elk and now I do not have an elk tag. And it turns out there is no better cure for not drawing an elk tag than to draw moose tag. You know. Uh, just quick thing I'll add man here about like the Platt books. When I was a kid, I worked like I I hunted a trap Mosqueton County, Ottawa County, nue Ego County, and and there they have township um and townships or six miles by six miles, And Plat books would come in township plat books or no, you get a county, but to be broken down. And I remember going around like I would identify. I would go through plat books, identify every place I wanted to where I wanted my trap lines, and I would make a list on a legal pad. And my old man would, you know, late summer every year, just as a favor, would get on the phone and he grew up doing sales, you know, because he was an insurance salesman. He would get on the phone and just work that list. And I mean he would score, Like if I put a name down, he would get on the phone and right away would be like some he'd find some connection to church whatever, fraternal organizations ain't something, you'd find some connection. He would just check them off. And I had yeah, and I would put that up in my little trapper area, had all those plat maps, all my property circle, and it was like, yeah, you'd build out a thing. And that One of the things that drew me to public land was the amount of sort of administrative duties surrounding maintaining like a network of properties. And then when you would look at these states that had like a bunch of public landing realized, Oh my god, what a shortcut did you just have? Like this? This? Uh, you know this is right to go out there and be out there, and that's it. No one, no one can tell you know, as long as you're a law abiding person, no one can tell you no. Um. But yeah, So back to have a quick question, Carl. Have you stepped foot on all those forests and grasslands that you oversee? Now, No, I have not nearly all of them, um, But I have not yet visited the Black Kettle National Grassland, which is the farthest east most of our grasslands. But I'm tempted because reports are the Bob White numbers are like through the over there. Um. Yeah. And in phenomenal turkey hunting too. So if you look at the you know, the expanse of country um that include Southwestern regional administrative units, it's a ton of land, um and the diversity is incredible. But you know, we haven't worked out of this office for a few years. It's still a pretty good feat that I've been to each of the forests. And then remember within each of those forests, you have another level of administrative unit, the district, and I'm nowhere near having visited every district. So, for example, on the Lincoln National Forest, there are three different districts, and I've I've been involved with projects on each of those districts. But um, how many districts on the HeLa six districts, And I've visited a couple of the districts on the HeLa, mostly the Wilderness Ranger District because that's one of my favorite chunks of ground in the whole region. Yeah, was it that the first? Like that is it the carl you can tell a story? Is it the first wilderness? The first thing we now recognize is federally designated willness was an idea put forward by Aldo Leopold. Yeah, is that true? It is true? And you know these he wasn't calling it that then. Well, so there was an essay that he published with the title A Plea for Wilderness Hunting Grounds. And Leopold was in this mode of authorship where he was pleaing for a lot of different things. During this kind of he was he was like throwing that word around. He had a number of them. Another one was there's a place in northern New Mexico, if I remember right, called Stinking Lake, And he had a plea for a special designation of this stinking lake as a as a wildlife refuge for waterfowl. But this plea for wilderness hunting grounds. Um, would you guys agree? That's kind of seen as one of the key kernels that ultimately grew into the Heila. So you read that, um, And that was he wrote that night for outdoor Life. Actually that that's right of here. Yeah. Yeah. And and what's funny though it actually, at least by what I've found out, it wasn't published until after four when administratively the HeLa Wilderness had already been set aside, So it wasn't designated yet, but all those early wildernesses were administratively set aside by the agency. UM. And you know in there he compares, you know, he lists all of these areas that in the Southwest that he thinks should be wilderness, and he talks about losing them, and he compares that to the city block in town somewhere, and there's five city blocks left and they start building and those blocks are disappearing, and he talks about, shouldn't we have one left that has nothing on it that the kids can go play in and the weeds can grow on UM, so that that's what he's laici Pality's all called green space now, spent a ton of time talking about it and trying to hang on to it in that plea. That's what he's That's what he's comparing it to um and in the Southwest. You know, I don't know at the time, there was five or six areas that he was talking about and they were just getting chewed up. Um Rhodes pushed him too. Him and here's a guy coming out of he was born in what state? Karl doesn't like when I point out that he married his cousin, but he was born in what state? No, First of all, you don't have that right. That is that is not a fact. Let me let me let me correct a little history for you. He actually married a New Mexican woman, and that's a really kind of unique twist on this story. His parents were, that's what it was. So you don't like when I point that out because it's not correct. I don't like him. You point to false facts for sure. So yeah, he was he was born in Burlington, Iowa or in Iowa. Midwestern He's claimed by He's claimed by three plays. He's probably claimed he's claimed by by more than three plays claimed by New Mexico because it was kind of he like came of age here, he had he had an epiphany here. He had a number of epiphanies here for sure, and then later went to Wisconsin where he wrote much of wrote about the epiphanies he had in New Mexico. Um in Arizona, and he came out to New Mexico in Arizona before the even states yep. His first position was on the Apache National kind of settled into being in the old man in a public intellectual in Wisconsin and had his property where he much of Sand County Almanac, which is sort of his seminal work, San Countie Almanac he wrote there, and that was collected and published after his death. Yeah. Yeah, his his son had a big stake in helping to see that through to publication. Um. And there was a lot of back and forth with various publishers leading up to his his death at a fairly young age fighting a wildfire there and there is no Sand County. Um the county fighting a wildfire on his own property, neighbor's property, yep, and uh. The county is called Sauk County, and the shack is in auh It's it's close to a little town called Baraboo, right on the banks the Wisconsin River. Um. And if you spend any time in that country, you can see where this poetic name of Sand County comes from, because it is really sandy, poor soil. And he obtained that farm in a state of very poor ecological health. It had been essentially pillaged by the previous owners turned back over the bank um, the prior owner forfeited it um and then Leopold and his family. You know, an important point about Leopold's legacy is that his children, I think, in large part due to their experiences on that piece of ground, all have been very involved conservationists in their own right and contributed very importantly UM to various fields of of study related to ecology. His son became a hydrologist. Yeah, Luna has a quote. You probably know the quote better mean, but I think that he said, um, rivers are the gutters through which run the ruins of continents. Yeah, or something longer there. The poetry that that family have collectively been responsible for is amazing. You talked about the words smithing, and another one of his children in the wildlife Arena um Starker Leopold was one of his sons, and he was a phenomenal biologist um in his own right as well. So the family, you know, you could go on Nina. Leopold practiced a certain poetics with his children's names. Yeah, oh absolutely, Yeah, that's because he named his kids things you'd expect someone like if you met someone in Hollywood. Well, there's there's reason for it. So let's talk about Luna. And my Spanish is not gray. But when I first moved here, just south Albuquerque, there's a town called Los Lunas. Okay, when I looked at Los Lunas, I thought to myself, isn't that bad Spanish? Because Lunas is a feminine word, so shouldn't it be Lost Lunas. And this is the town that Leopold's wife, she had, she had deep roots in that town. And the reason it's masculine as opposed to feminine is they're referring to the family the Lunas as opposed to the feminine moon in Spanish. So yeah, he certainly put some thought into naming his kids. But um, he has claimed absolutely by the Southwest, absolutely, by Wisconsin, absolutely by Iowa, and then a number of lesser known uh points along the way that he visited. He's on a lum of the Yale School of Forestry. Yeah, the first School of Forestry. Yeah, so he's claimed by them. Um, you've spent some time in Michigan's Upper Peninsula as a boy growing up, Leopold spent a lot of time in the Latianou Islands eastern up around Cedarville Um, catching perch and um. If you're really interested in the history of Aldo Leopold Um, there's a writer by the name of Kurt Mine who did like the in disputed Ultimate Leopold Biography. So check out Kurt Mine's book if you really want to know the ins and out. I believe it's all the Leopold, his life and work something along those lines. Yeah, but don't read that he read San Connie all oh no, no, no no no. I mean Mine's treatment is phenomenal as a biography. Leopold's work in a Sand County Almanac is poetry and poetry with an ecological twist that every hunter angular conservationist can resonate with. And so he I want to get back like when he first comes up this idea of wild rose because he was trying to sell it and you guys pre mos better. He was selling it being like, up, hey, listen, this the piece of ground I'm talking about here. The best value it could bring us is as itself. And so now we talk about like wilderness, like when we have federally protected wilderness or federally designated wilderness, it's like everybody's like rock and ice. But I think that he kind of knew that that was how it was going to have to work. Where he couldn't take some area that had been identified as being rich and easily extractable natural resources or premier gate grazing land and be like, hey, I got an idea, how about we designate this as wilderness. Like he had to go and find something where he could say it just isn't a value for anything, but being wilderness, like that's its most apparent, readily available worth. Is it just as it is? And I think that want to be like like a a good strategic move probably if you look at what is long term goal was. Yeah, And this discussion about the various uses of a piece of ground I think played a lot into the lead up to the passage of the Wilderness Act in nineteen sixty four, and Boring would be a phenomenal person to speak to the the kind of wrangling that went into finally getting that law passed, and also what some of the trade offs were in terms of the language that ultimately was encapsulated in the Wilderness Act. Yeah. And when we talk about that, talk about whether people were annoyed by this at the time. Oh yeah, I mean originally there was pretty strong push back to the idea. And and so I mean, just for a context, that Act was passed in sixty four, but Congress had been debating it for eight years by that point, so since the mid fifties, and they wrote sixty six drafts. Literally, Yeah, what would be an equivalent of that today? Man, I know, the like I'll defer to you, I I you know, in the context of my my job right now, I'm I'm reluctant to hazard a guess at that. But um, you know, I mean just self like I'm trying to think of selfing that like, because even like like the Affordable Care Act, which was criticized about how slowly it moved, that'll that went through in a year? In a year, yeah, exactly. So they kicked it around for eight years. Yeah, and so what happened is the first draft, Um, you know, look at you look at the main part of the Act and it talks about you know, wilderness is untrammeled and which is a you know word for free willed um um, you know, free of restraint from from mankind or humankind. Um. It's natural. So it has these functioning, intact ecosystems in the full suite of indigenous biota. It's undeveloped. And so these sort of developments of of humankind are are few and far between president all their outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. And then lastly there are these other features of values at times. And so that was basically it in the original act. Um. It was this very purist sort of sense of wilderness. And again, just given the political landscape at that time, um, you know, you have you know, again, the context in the middle part of the twentieth century was we were chewing up natural resources at a pretty alarming and efficient rate, and public lands were really seen as a source of natural resources. So we're we're mining, we're cutting. Timber grazing was a big deal. We're developing water resources all over the place. And so in order to get support from all of these, um, these extractive industries and and the broader public and and you know Congress the congressman at the time, UM, they had to put in some pretty significant compromised compromises by this sixty six draft that ultimately passed. And so you have this list of of what are called special provisions in the Act, and those include grazing where it was pre established, can continue. Um it included. Um. So so back up with that one. So someone holds so if someone held a grazing lease, the grazing permit, it would be it would be grandfather exactly exactly. UM. Mining was another thing. I mean, mining's kind of interesting because, um, there's a provision in the Act that says any valid existing right and that's a term for in essence of property right. So someone who has an established mining claim is that's basically a property right. And so though that can still be grandfathered in with new designations. But the Willerness Act allowed until December four, so full twenty years, you know, a few months after its passage, new mining claims to be established in wilderness as another compromise. UM, motor boats where that use existed, and that's mainly in the boundary waters up in northern Minnesota, was allowed to that kind of use was allowed to continue. But but let me stop in sixty four. Yeah, when they're getting ready to do it, were they actually throwing around specifics about what places they're thinking about? It was that part of the bill. It was just like allowing them these uses where they existed prior to you know, the passage of the Act or subsequent designations. But did the Act carry with it, um, spots that would become wilderness? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Um it was it was fifty some instant I think it's fifty four instant wildernesses, all managed by the Fourth Service. So it wasn't just like giving the right to create eight them, but was also saying, and here's a list. We had this initial list, and then the Act directed it was kind of it's actually an interesting history. It directed the agencies um and at that time it was for service. All the instant wellnesses were National Force System lands, but also directed the Department of the Interior for the National Park Service and fisher Wildlife Service for service as well. To to basically go out inventory and recommend additional designations to Congress within the next five years. And so they that Congress intended at that time that this would be a very agency driven process and and within i mean it was less than ten years where really the public took over in this very democratic sense and worked outside the channels of the federal government to advocate for additional designations. And that's really the way that it works today is these UM grassroots movements and and kind of on the ground collaboration among interest groups to hash out UM you know, support for designations and other other uses of UM specific federal lands for for designation. But it slowed greatly right in the last few years. Yeah, I mean, i'd say, you know, in the last in the last ten years or so, it's it's dramatically slowed. And we had the first Congress UM a handful of years ago that did not pass a single wilderness bill UM, you know, the two year Congress, and so that was, yeah, testament to things really slowing down recently. As far as new designation. New designations were the boundary waters in the initial round, they were what were some like when the bill went through, Yeah, what are there some examples of places that they identified as being like like the type sites of wilderness where they were saying, like, here is a thing that would be a great one to start with. They like the places that were like early like early on identified as eligible for federal wilderness designation. And most of these had already been identified by the Forest Service, you know as these you know, like the HeLa wilderness with a little w in the sense that it was administratively designated and the foresters had gone on after. And so that was put in place in full forty years before the Wilderness Act passed by the agency, and then they went on to develop these series of regulations that prompted the agency to identify other administrative wilderness designations and primitive areas. And so it was all these um agency identified wildernesses and primitive areas that that were designated in sixty four by the Act as the instant wildernesses. So the Helo is one UM we have. It's it's really these big, large, iconic wildernesses that we have today. So like in Arizona, the masts Hals were another um you know that the acts as wilderness should typically be five thousand acres or greater um. There are a lot of exceptions to that, but when we look at those original willernesses, it's these big vast landscapes um that we're protected. Ye, does it. I almost hesitate to bring this stuff because it's so like, it's so kind of out there when yeah, yeah, as you bring it up, tell them what we have a friend. I'm not going to name them, tell them what our friend thinks, because I'd like to talk about like tell them like sort of the whisperings around the campfire about what wilderness is, what will happen the wilderness, and I'd like to speak to the legality of this occurring. Yeah, his he has uh I don't know if it's conspiracy or now, but he has a worry. And I believe it's not just him obviously, Like he's Steve said, there's like these whisperings, and there's people that have this idea that whether it's just the people that manage the wilderness or the people that promoted uh, private organizations that you know, promote wilderness, that there is this hidden agenda that in the end, way down the line, that what they're really driving for yes, is going to be a place where humans are not allowed either, that we will just have these landscapes just for the landscape and the animals that live there. So I would debunk that right at way in the sense that Congress explicitly said in the original Act, one of the core values of wilderness is a human use. It's opportunity for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreations. So to get out of modern society for our you know, for for the public in the United States, to get away from modern society, get away from the masses, and engage in these kind of primitive activities, primitive travel, hunting, and angling, have freedom from all the rules and constraints of society. So I mean, that's a core value in the Act. And um, you know, as managers were beholden to the direction that Congress precisely, precisely. And then I can say from a personal level, I my job, um is managing I don't manage wilderness on the ground. We have folks, wonderful, wonderful people who do that. But you know, I provide program leadership in the region. And I can speak for myself and everybody I've ever known, literally a hundred percent of folks I've known who work on wilderness management, and we all love wilderness us in large part because of our personal experiences in wilderness. Um. You know, there's certainly a whole host of other values that it brings to the table. But um and I I it's it's pretty um, pretty out there kind of thinking in my view. Has anybody sitting here at this table ever heard this ever, ever even heard of a group of like even even organized group that somebody's even out there thinking that way? Well, and actually, I would say so, we're in the midst of our forest planning process right now in the Southwest, and that's an exercise I'm you know, per another law plan directs us develop these land management plans um and we need to update them every so often because the world changes are are are understanding the science changes, we have other pressures, like you know, we have a changing climate right now, so we update these plans periodically, and part of the legal framework and directing us to do that says we should be looking at identifying in essence lands that are suitable for wilderness designation to recommend to Congress. And there's all this uh going around owned in the context of these discussions these planning processes, which are very rooted in public process. You know, we want a lot of collaboration in public involvement. But people are going around saying you're trying to close the forest to all human use, you're locking it up, and that's fundamentally I'm not true. And so so it's a little bit illegal. Uh yeah, it would be. I would say, um, you know, we have provisions that allow us to implement discrete kind of closures, but you had to close you know, all of wilderness would be counter to that act absolutely. Like an example of a closure would be when like fire hazard. Yeah, and that's even Yeah, so that's an example that occurs around here. You know, when I was in southern California, we put a closure in place because we had a super fund site due to um unmanaged target shooting for decades and decades, and so people were shooting up appliances and using you know, lead ammunition for long term and a concentrated place, and so we ended up with heavy metal uh levels and in the soil that we're dangerous. You know, you could kick up dust and breathing all kinds of gnarly stuff, and so we put a closure in place, um, so that we could get in there and clean it up and get the public back in there in the future. So, I mean those are the kind it's like these. Usually it's public health and safety. Sometimes it's to protective very unique sensitive resource. But I mean it's been happening a lot lately that people are freaked out about it. I know personally people that have had gates put across road they used to use for access, they used to drive on, and because of limited budgets, that road hasn't been able to have been you know, kept up, and so now there's huge gully washers going right down through the middle of it. I'm guessing that they they're closing that access because the roads become dangerous. But that's not even a wilderness issue that no, no, it's not not at all, but as that feeds that kind of stuff, the closing of the forest. Yeah, I mean part I mean, that's a that's a a fairly complicated question in the sense that some of it is um just inability to maintain our our massive, massive road system. You know, you think about most of our roads were built in the timber heyday, and we had receipts coming in from timber sales as an agency big time. So we had re sources UM coming from our timber program that have with the industry changing just due to global economic forces, are not available and so we not only can't continue building roads like we used to to to provide access to these timber stands that were being harvested, but to maintain these roads for public safety and also natural resource protection in terms of you know, erosion into salmon streams in the Northwest, for example, and so that's that's been a part of that UM is really just a change in in economics with regards to natural resources in this country which has driven a change in the kinds of resources that we have available to us as an agency, and that has uh that has affected our ability to maintain our road systems and places. And then again you think about these systems being put into place for timber harvest, we're managing the land for a much broader suite of values in many cases these days, UM for ecosystem health being a big driver. We're doing a lot of restoration work as an agency, and so sometimes it's determined that you know the presence of these you know, i'd call legacy UM timber era roads on the landscape. Our counter to some of these efforts to provide for restoration, to say, we want to defragment wildlife habitat for example. So there's there's that side of the story to you, I think, and then you get into the whole there's a whole private landowner access thing. You know, in the in the Bowsman areaf I'm not mistaken, their whole sections of the Gallatin that are really not even accessible to the public because they're surrounded by private lands. And that's another you know, as populations grow, we get more and more people interested in the outdoors. Landowners in some cases who used to sort of allow public access have have closed off access. And that's the agency. You know, we all I can say, I mean with a you know, a strong degree of confidence, value and love public access on public lands. I mean, we work for the public, the American public, and we manage these lands on their behalf for you know, whole slew of benefits that they provide. And so when we get um access being closed and I see that differently as our closed roads. At times we're still providing access to the national forest. When we entirely lose access to the public landowner decisions where we have really no you know, no right of way for example. We we hate to see that as much as the rest of the public not being said, you know, that's a private property owner sort of right and decision to make. You know, the thing I said when I'm having this conversation with people about road closures, the thing I often bring up is that even if you look at private timber companies or large like Native corporation lands in Alaska, they'll build roads for timber extractions. So they're cutting a road for a very specific purpose, like to let out a sale, a timber sale, and the road is its course and purpose are designed for timber extraction. The timber extraction happens, it takes how many ever, decades sometimes you're talking almost in terms of close to a century before you're going to go in and do before it's viable for another harvest. And so the road was there for that purpose, and it's closed because it's not serving the purpose that was built for. And there's no sense in maintaining that road during this passage of many decades that would occur before you cut it again. And private timber companies and tribal corporations do the same exact thing with their roads, but you oftentimes don't hear the criticisms there there are people just take it as like a matter of course that that's not the thing. But I have this conversation all the time with people who feel that when a road gets closed on national forests, it's like met as a personal affront to them or somehow is position in their mind as like a condemnation of their activities, rather than looking at like what like a like a very broad category of reasons for why this might be closed at this moment. Yeah, I mean, I can appreciate that in the sense that I mean, I think we can all around this table agree that we've had some really um formative experiences in our lives on public lands that we treasure, we hold dear to our hearts, and folks out there, you know, they may have they're special place that they really hold near and dear to them. UM closed to motorized travel UM for these reasons that we've talked about before and again in a nutshell, the agency is just trying to balance UM the amount of resources has available to maintain roads and these other purposes in terms of natural resource management or restoration. Um and make these decisions, UM you. Of course I'm not thinking about uh any particular person or place, but I can see how folks feel that it's uh it you know, hurts at a personal level because they may be not able to drive to where they used to the places. I love, you know, I have a follow up to just the restrictions around wilderness and people thinking that it could become more restricted than it is now. Right, I mean it's it's no bikes, horses, foot travel, a couple of air strips that you can land on. Steve you said eighteen church again you talked about like grandfathering in so when like the boundary waters motorized boat traffic where it was like some I'm sure argued like imperative to travel in the area, right, and it got Grandfather didn't. Yeah, I think it was just uh, I've I've traveled pretty far in the boundary wires in a canoe. I guess what I would say is that there was a stakeholder group of people who had a really high value on the motorized recreation or travel they were doing. And that's probably more why I got Grandfather that they held it really to be very important to that that group of folks as opposed to necessarily be an imperative. Yeah, and so they made there was like flexibility within the Act to do that right and in the and in the Frank Church, they when it became a wilderness, they honored flights in eighteen airstrips. And that's the same I was talking about that list of exceptions that we call special provisions in the Act, and airstrips are one of them where aircraft landing predated wilderness designation. It could be allowed to can in you when again that's you look at the first part of the Act defines wilderness. You know, these activities that are really antithetical to wilderness, you know, from the pure standpoint of the way Congress defines it. Again, we have this list of exceptions, which was what it took to pass it. And I actually want to add what was really cool In six or four the Senate was unanimous voting for the Act. The House had one dissenting vote. And the rumor is, I mean, I haven't confirmed. That's like voting in to go to World War two. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. The rumor is the one dissenting vote was represented about of Texas and he felt that it it wasn't strong enough in terms of protection of the land. That's the rumor. So it's pretty amazing. You think about unanimous support in the Senate. Yeah, it's amazing bipartisanship work to get this legislation passed. Who are the people that stuck with it through the eight years, like Lee Metcalf was involved in it. The man at the center of it. You want to jump on this, Jerry Well, I you know the answer for sure? Who's that? Howard zon Eiser? He was. He was not in this in the Senator house. I mean he was. He was the primary advocate. He's the one really well we can credit for making it happen. Though, I know you heard of this guy, so you need to check him out. One of the stories about Zion Eiser? Who where? Who was he? Whoere? Did he work? He Wilderness Society? He was that point. I mean at that point early in his career he worked for what is now the Fishing Wildlife Service UM, but he he ended up being the kind of primary advocate for the act. He wrote it, UM. He was the one rewriting and rewriting, and rewrote it and rewrote it, and rewrote it. It wasn't it okay? But wasn't it um the writer the gay wrote hard rock cany like big rock, Candy Mountain um Man, now I know you're talking about now. It was it was this this um, this guy Howard zon Eiser, and so he you know, he had experience in the federal government. He knew the way the system worked. And then he just was this um unstoppable passionate advocate. And unfortunately he passed away months before. Yeah, oh you know, I'm thinking of his uh, Wallace Stegner. I mean he was an a like Stegner was an advocate, and there were town of people advocating. I mean, of course, I mean, you know Leopold, I mean, there's a whole whole long list of folks. I mean, Bob Marshall, another, Frank Church, Edward Abbey, I mean, and then uh and then uh, because a lot of these guys wind up with four like these guys want up with wilderness areas named after him, Frank Church, Bob Marshall, Lee Metcalf, although Leopold all the label yeah so so, but the main I don't I never heard of this guy. Yeah, I know, he was, and he didn't live to see its passage. Unfortunately he did not. But I don't get how how could it be written sixty four times and take eight years to get through and then get your get through with the unanimous vote. It reached like some level of perfection. I think it was all those compromises, you know, I talked about like that early. They've done so much yep. So they're like, we need to get the grazing industry on board, we need to get the mining industry on board, we need to get the sort of recreational you know, um aircraft community on board. And so that's what you know, like I said early on it someone had to be pissed. I guess they were. They were were they were, Yeah, they were rallying together, you know, pretty nearly unanimously across the board. So knowing that it would designate fifty some wilderness areas, right, and it was at nine point one million acres nationally at that time. So, but Willards only Willards is less than two percent of the country. That's not true. Um, so it's five percent about for the full country including Alaska, it's about two point seven percent of the lower And I can speak on behalf of the four Service you know, I'm not I don't know the stats for the other three federal agencies that managed wilderness, but it's a it's about just about ninetent of National Force System lands our designated wilderness. So you know, uh, it's a small proportion of the country. You know, when you look at the actual um land mass, you know that that the four Service manages, it's a it's a decent chunk, you know, just shy thirty six thirty six million. Yeah, so total in in the nation, there's seven d sixty five wilderness areas. Nineteen sixty four, you had nine point one million acres designated. Since nineteen sixty four, it's gone from nine point one million to a hundred nine million, So a hundred million of the hundred and nine million have come through subsequent legislation, and uh, fairly recently, our home state of Michigan gained one Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes designation coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Wilderness Wilderness Act in Yeah, sever sand that's my backyard, that's where I grew up, thirty two thousand, five hundred fifty six acres, So that wasen and you talk about the slowdown since then, UM there were three designated together in Idaho and twenty and nothing since then. New Mexico UM gained a wilderness. And you know, it's interesting the legal wrangling now that goes into designations. So the most recent addition for our region came through basically a rider in the National Defense Authorization Act that designated Columbine Honda Well. And actually in addition to that, it modified the boundary of Wheeler Peak, which was one of the original sixty four willderness is because the mountain biking community placed such a high value on this trail opportunity in Wheeler Peaked out. Part of the compromise and getting calum Mine Hondo pushed through was to make this minor boundary modification so they could could ride. They had this loop ride opportunity. So that's what Carlson, this kind of like this this wrangling and high level of compromise and we're working through a whole host issues. Yeah, I definitely appreciate the flexibility and being able to look at individual places. But if you guys, like when you guys think, now, what are the biggest challenges in UM sort of the biggest social challenges in managing wilderness. Talking about wilderness my fundamental belief, and I want to hear from Jerry and Carl, but it's really just a lack of public awareness about about what it is and the value that it holds for for people, for all Americans and for you know, whether it be you know, through personal experience visiting wilderness or providing wildlife habitat, fish habitat, clean air, clean water, um. And and so it's just a lack of awareness and understanding of how how really essential it is UM to our well being as a nation. And really, if you look at the deep history, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this necessarily and unless you guys want to talk about it. But as we were as we were, as you know, kind of the European Americans that that came came over and started spreading across North America, developing and taming the frontier. UM, people started to look around and say like, hey, we've been pretty effective. And this notion of wilderness and wild places UM is really unique. You know when we we we all came from Europe. UM. Is that this European American community, UM, this doesn't exist in Europe. This is something that's unique. It's gritty, frontier kind of wild places is unique to the American identity and um so I think that's something part of our national history that we don't talk about as much anymore. And again you look at the contemporary social and ecological values wilderness, people don't perceive that as as as well as I personally wish they would, you know, just because there's a lot of demands on our attention and it's something that slips under the radar a little bit. So I think that's our biggest challenge long term personally. It's funny, like the patriotism element of wilderness is something that I think it's lost. But if you go back to the US Census um after they conducted the U s Census, they realized that there was no frontier left. Like before that they've always looked at population levels and they had a sort of a line and they looked at population. Of course, we settled in the east and settled the west coast and still had a chunker ground in the middle that didn't meet the basic threshold to pull it out of the frontier. In the census turned up that there was no discernible line of settlement in the country anymore, and a prominent historian at the time, Frederick Jackson Turner, came out with this this influential paper and and speech he gave, which was about a thing that quickly became known as frontier anxiety, where he had argued that the American culture and American spirit, and American institutions, we're all built around the idea of of a frontier of of conflict with an engagement with wilderness, right that we'd come out of that that, like frontier spirit, was integral and like shaping who we are. And he pointed out that it made us different than the genteel Europeans, where there was no availability of land and resources for people. And he pointed out that our sense of rugged individualism was built around our interactions with wilderness, and like at that moment, we were in this interesting spot because we were at that moment where we had within our grasp to completely destroy all vestiges of wilderness, like it was wilderness existed at first in spite of our best efforts to get rid of it, and then we had to very quickly transition into this idea that we're gonna have to have it because of our best efforts to preserve it, and that would have been like a really important moment, and figures like like early figures like Theodore Roosevelt were impacted in a dramatic way by that that shift in American history there. And at the time, it was like it was described as sort of a thing you would like to preserve wilderness, to have a forest system was the thing you were doing to preserve like American integrity. I think since then there's some some element of that history has been lost to people where they look at it now that we've come to see it different than this thing that we're gonna do to salvage our you know, to save our somewhat feral wild some some aspect of what made us feral and wild and American in the first place, where now people look at it some people are guilty of somehow having kind of lost sight of the factors that went into our decisions to have federally managed public lands. Yeah, and I mean that's a a very complex problem, but I think it goes back. A big part of that is lack of exposure. And so there are a couple of films out there UM. One is it's I think it's called American Values American Wilderness and it's this film put together that just talks to ordinary citizens about they get them out in wilderness and what what does it mean to you? What's it's importance to you? And UM a second one called Untrammeled that are northern region about a Missoula put together a few years ago for the fiftieth anniversary where they took a group of kids UM out into I think it was the Bob um Or or one of the big Montana wildernesses for the first time ever. And in both films, these people who are being exposed to a wilderness, uh for the first time are just they're astounded. It like the vastness of the places and the fact that they're set aside uh for you know, to to to have ecological systems run their course free of human intervention. And it's pretty moving. Um. But it just it really resonated with me in the sense that it's like these folks, you know, and again, you know, just a small handful in these films. You know, it's not necessarily representative of all of the United States, but first time visitors and and and just have these amazing emotional reactions, um about how special these places are. And so it says to me that I think, uh again, as a broader community of people who are interested in conservation in public lands at working to provide access and exposure, is it? Is it really important priority? In my opinion? What about cultural engagement, um with with people who don't realize sort of what we have. The other thing you guys worry about. Do you have people in the East who live away from large tracts of federally managed public land who might not view it as pertinent to their lives. Yeah, and I you know, I I think public land in the East is is people look at it as at least hunters as a scourge because that's where all the you know, you can't fight your way through the people. Um. And but I don't. I don't think they realized that you come west and and that public land is in such big swaths that that is that isn't an issue. Um. You know. I I think the whole wilderness concept and where we're seeing people not realizing what's out there is I think it started a long time ago. And if you look at the late eighteen hundreds and all when all these folks that were fighting for it early nineteen hundreds. Um. But if you look at the settling of the west and when that line disappeared, there is no more frontier. Um. It wasn't long after that that the demographics change of where people were living. People moved to the city. They weren't in the wilderness anymore. Um. And I think it started way back there with people losing that touch with the land um. And and it's just grown from there, a lack of engagement. I sometimes feel that that that's like one of the more that's one of the bigger things is is getting people to realize that they sort of have a steak and this and they have an ownership. Because I think that even even you hear people say like you always hee like federally owned, right, and other people would be like, well, no, like federally managed. It's owned by the US people. And I feel like people don't have that steak. And it's hard because it's like a learned activity. When I was growing up, I grew up near the Manastee National it was now the Manastee here on National Forest. We had no comprehension of how it came to be you know, I told people before, we just viewed it like it fell from the sky. There was no idea that it was like a thing there because people fought to have it be there, So there was no like you you, We used it all the time, we were always out there, but never put never made this connection in your head, that that that public lands were sort of a system that we worked for and there's people who have dedicated their their lives and careers to maintaining and that it was like a thing that required some public involvement, in public awareness, because until someone goes to take something away from you, you just don't realize. And so I hear from all kinds of people all the time. I have friends who are always like expressing some skepticism about public lands management, but all of their activities occur on public land. They're not even making the connection within their own lives, you know. Um, And that's one of the things that's most alarming to me about That's just like ongoing conversation wherese engaged in about the validity of federal land management. Is his like uh, historic amnesia and then also certain like personal hypocrisy about utilizing things without having any sort of sense of maintaining their well being, Carl, So we think about all of this, I want to go back to that question you post about the the challenges that we face in terms of wilderness stewardship, and I agree wholeheartedly these cultural issues and the lack of awareness about wilderness, and I think furthermore it applies to public lands in general, as you've described, is really relevant. But a couple of things more specific to wilderness stewardship that I view as really pressing challenges right now are the trade offs between these different elements of wilderness character. I'll give you a couple of specifics. So one of them is the trade off between providing for an opportunity for people to experience solitude versus people having an opportunity to experience freedom from regulation or unconfined recreation. So we've talked about the boundary waters a little bit already. Is that as freedom from regulation articulated anywhere? Yeah, so one of the one of the elements of wilderness character. And help me out if I'm wrong here, but it's outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation. And by primitive and un like you're building your only almost purposefully creating your contradiction. Well, in some cases you are so. For example, in the Boundary Waters, you have if you want to go on a trip in the Boundary Waters, they have a permit process. The fact you have to apply for a permit and get approval to go in there. That dampens your ability to experience unconfined recreation because they have this whole system to get a permit. If you look out the window over here, we've got the Sandy A Mountains and it's adjacent to an urban center, Albuquerque, and there are trails here. If you were to hike up, for example, the Lalos Trail right now, especially on a weekend, you might pass literally a hundred or more other hikers on that trail in wilderness. So this, you know, the I don't want to overstate the disconnect between people are culture and wilderness areas because the fact is we have a number of wilderness areas that are essentially getting loved to death, and that trade off between outstanding opportunities for solitude and this primitive and unconfined recreation. That's one big challenge, especially for wildernesses that are adjacent to major metropolitan areas. So that's one and the other one that I think is a little bit more interesting and where I have a lot of mixed emotions personally as somebody who values wild places but also really values the indigenous biota of the landscape. Is this notion that you have a tradeoff between the untrammeled element of wilderness character how free the landscape is from active management and and natural nous. Okay, So one of the things that Jerry can speak really well too, are the tradeoffs associate with trying to conserve native species in wilderness through active management, and you're conserving those native species in the interest of protecting the naturalness of the landscape. He's done a lot of great work with HeLa Trout as an example. But by simply engaging in the mettling of the system, you are by default, ah impinging on the untrammeled character. So some examples of this, you know, I'll Royal up in Lake Superior, right that had that that island is virtually all wilderness, and historically there have been predator prey dynamics between the wolf pack there and the moose population on the island. Had had wolf had wolf moose for a long time, and then during a severe winter, wolves were able to cross a large expanse of ice on Lake Superior not only once, and landed in paradise. Right, Yeah, there was food galore um. But not only did that happen once, it happened fairly often, to the point where the wolf pack was sustained by this regular infusion of genetic diversity from the mainland. So there's been much debate, including people like like Howard zon Eiser's relatives have weighed in, like descendants of Howard zon Isiser, on what the right answer is. And if you ask different people who share a lot of our values, you'll get different perspectives on this. But the question has arisen in light of the fact that Lake Superior has not frozen to the banks of Ile Royal in however many years, should we be taking wolves from the mainland and releasing them. Two support the genetic diversity of the wolf pack, which is suffering as a result of low genetic diversity. So in nineteen sixty four, when this Act was passed, and during the decades leading up to it, there was this mindset that you could draw a line around a chunk of ground set it aside and have it be preserved and free from human manipulation. Over the course of the last fifty years, we have come to understand that there's no place on the face of this planet that has not been altered as a result of human activity. Even the very most remote place and the most remote wilderness up in Alaska has experienced change as a result of human beings existing on the face of the earth. I mean the last fifteen thousand years of human history on the landscape. Yeah, and I mean particularly last couple hundred years as we're burning fossil fuels. So if you think about the fact that every every square inch of the planet is somehow affected by human activity, this notion that you can draw a polygon on the map and then protect it as free from human influence is a fundamental fallacy. So the question is what's the appropriate amount of meddling in the system we should do to respond to exogenous outside factors that are human induced. What should we be doing, for example, to protect cold water bowl trout fisheries in the High Country in the face of global change. So that conundrum, that trade off is a really fascinating question, and there's a lot of active debate right now in the wilderness community around that question without weight, I'm gonna ask you to weigh in on it, But can you explain as well, um some issues about some some issues that come up surrounding the use of aircraft UM by state agencies doing management duties, and how even those cases bring people up against the intent. Yeah, that's that's a perfect content and lettering of the wildern. That's that's exactly what exactly what I'm getting at here. So let's take, for example, helicopter used to manage bighorn sheep. Okay state agencies oftentimes want to take management activities to move big horns around on the landscape. Helicopters are the easiest way to do that in ru good remote country. And back up on that, because we're still um like, if you look at a map of historic Bighorn Range in current Bighorn Range, we haven't really scratched the surface on bighorn restoration, and I think probably we never will scratch the surface very deeply because frankly, a lot of the historic Bighorn Range has been so altered and compromised that will never support bighorns again. So I'm I'm very much in favor, and I think everybody here is very much in favor of doing everything we can to restore native bighorn populations on the landscape where they existed historically and where they've been extirpated as a result of human activity. Um. But this this issue hits at the heart of the trade offs between managing for naturalness with bighorns being a key element of the indigenous biota of a particular landscape, and a couple of the qualities of wilderness character, one certainly being untrammeled because you're taking a management action, and it doesn't matter what the management action is. If you're manipulating the system, you're degrading the untrammeled character, even if it's for the betterment of the naturalness of the landscape. And then also the undeveloped character, because when you start landing aircraft in a wilderness area, that degrades the undeveloped character of the wilderness. And so in order to justify UH an activity like that, you go through a process of analyzing these trade offs, and we use a minimum requirements analysis. And where that those words minimum requirement come from as the word of the act it talks about a variety of uses being expressly prohibited in wilderness unless they meet the minimum require, the minimum requirement for the administration of the area's wilderness, the minimum necessary. My brother is a he's an ecologist in Alaska and UH a long time ago, we were having a conversation about the nature of doing recovery and he was describing like he's like describing his job out there, and he's saying, Alaska is still relatively so pristine that we're not really engaged. Um, we're not really engaged in recovery work in Alaska. He described its like in places we're still just trying to describe what's there, and so you're you're afforded the luxury of of a much more hands off approach because you're not in the restorative phase yet you're still in the phase of like, what's here, what steps do we need to take to maintain it? And so natural systems can play out more. But in the lower forty eight we're really engaged in um saving things that are on the brink. And during recovery work, which has to be so much more complicated than just sitting back and trying to still get your arms around what we have, you know, they're still describing fisheries in Alaska. They're still describing and trying to quantify salmon runs in Alaska that are bigger than any runs that we have in the lower forty eight. And so it's like, you really like the borders here, like to what to what Carl was saying, you realize that you can pick these little spots like this little island and say it's wilderness and and sort of dream up this scenario where it's like protected from outside forces, but it has to be the borders are so porous just from factors that are way outside of your control, like the fact that we haven't maintained some of our fisheries. And now it turns up that like maybe an unintended concoct I guess it would be an intended consequence of wilderness designation is that you sort of created a place where this fish species can exist. And maybe at the time when we were articulating the benefits of wilderness, we didn't think that like include that, but it winds up being that, like not quite accidentally, but we saved something that would otherwise probably be gone. So an important point along those lines, Steve, You're you're spot on about the species benefits, uh, but it's important to recognize that human beings are on that list too. And the reason we have Helo trout in the Helo Wilderness is because it's these headwater cold water systems. And if you look at where our nation's water supply comes from, especially in the relatively dry western side of our country, a lot of our most our most important treasured drinking water supplies have their source in the high country. And I think one of the reasons that we still have some really great, clean, healthy water resources is the fact that we have these big chunks of uncompromised high country where that cold, clean waters bubbling forth and melting off every spring, and so you have cold water fisheries certainly benefiting, you have a whole host of of other fish and wildlife species protected. And this is where the conversation about the relevance of wilderness broadly to the American people, I think really gains a lot of traction to is the fact that there are direct benefits to people who will never go to the wilderness. There are direct benefits that people are experiencing right now, and they're completely ignorant of the fact that they have this linkage oftentimes through water, through clean air, these benefits of big chunks of of ecologically intact land. Yeah, that's the thing that troubled me is when people and people on my side of the argument do it too, is people try to draw to apply dollar figures to things. That's something go ahead well as Actually that's something I wanted to interject about to talk about because we haven't really spent any time talking about why would we forego the most efficient tool in wilderness, like a helicopter um in which we can authorize as Jerry was talking about, and we we did use helicopters, determined it was the minimum necessary to do that HeLa trout salvage following the fire, and we've done some follow up helicopter work to reintroduce them as conditions have improved. But the the reason um for we we we use these primitive skills. We emphasize these primitive skills. That's one thing in this untrammeled quality where we're trying to be hands off and let nature run its course. Or that's a pretty unique um approach for a federal land management agency to say, let the ecosystem manage itself ideally and and the reason I can. Can we talk about why that is? I mean, I think that's an important important context here, um to to to for the public who kind of wonders what we're doing with wilderness or thinks it's hands off. So that untraveled quality came about through these series of lessons where we as managers had the best of intentions. Um, I thought we were doing the right thing using the most up to date science we had available the time, and we we proved to ourselves later that we we really didn't know much about the system and in fact, our our work in the best of intentions was actually hugely detrimental to the ecosystem. So an early example that in Leopold's era is these efforts by the federal government, uh, in predator control, you know, to enhance game species and in provide for you know, improved grazing resources. And you know, we all know the stories. I mean, um, you know Leopold rights about in the Southwest, this extirpation of predators leading to booming deer populations and you know, vegetation being denuded and uh starvation events. Yeah, that was one of his tasks exactly. Yeah, yeah, he was, I mean he he has the story about the wolf with the green firing er eyes that occurred on the Apache Secrets National Forest. UM and it was a kind of a yeah, an aha moment for him and in his growing ecological awareness. And so again back in the day, we thought this was the right thing to be doing. UM and and and we and we had some pretty that was a case where we had some pretty rapid evident consequences from that that line of work where we had um, you know, a game animal game species UM starving. We've seen and follow up you know, as our our our our understanding of actually ecological systems as continue to improve, like with the reintroductional wolves and Yellowstone totally changed predator prey dynamics, you know, where he had an absence at this Keystone predator um and changed ecological conditions as a result as the wolves got re established. So so that's an example of, um, why we have this untrammeled quality of willness. You know why zeen Heiser and other thinkers, you know, Leopold's land ethic contributed to that. The intelligence or the sign of an intelligent tinker is to not throw away all the pieces. Right, So we you know, we we may not ever know at all, given the complexity these ecosystems, and so the untrembled quality, you know, I describe it as an essence a small insurance policy to have some of these landscapes left, you know, in North America, or at least United States, five of the United States, where we're trying to let nature run its course because we may not know at all. Right. Another good example here in the Southwest, as we're looking out the window at some smoke right now, too, is a hundred year history of suppressing wildfire from the landscape and thinking that that was the best thing we could be doing for the national forests, you know, from their inception, keeping fire off the ground. And now we're doing everything we can, like Jerry mentioned, to encourage these naturally ignited wildfires to burn. And we acknowledge the fact that fire is a key element of these systems. Some of our forest types here in the Southwest evolved in the face of fires that burned somewhere in the neighborhood of every five to thirty years or so. And we've got chunks of ground here, including that mountain out the window, that haven't burned for over a hundred years. So and when those places go, they tend to go in a catastrophic well, so you go from high high frequency fires that burn at a low severity, So fires that burn often but consume a lot of leaf litter um fine fuels, they burn across the surface of the forest um. In the absence of those fires, you get a lot of fuel building up, so that when there is a fire, it could be on the order of hundreds of thousands of acres burning at very high severity, where even mature trees are eliminated. So during is making a really important point here that you know, as an ecologist, I often contemplate what is it a hundred years from now that they're going to be looking back at our generation and going you idiots, Like what were you thinking? Because hindsight so like, what will be the putting cigarettes and people's see rations exactly of the future. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a good question. What do you think it will be fire suppression? I think we already kind of know that. One man. You don't have to answer. I got some ideas, you got some ideas of what we might later realize we're big mistakes. You don't have to give them to me. I'm gonna go think about it and gonna go back into the thing on top of the dollar, the dollar, is that I find that people often want landscapes to justify themselves, um constantly financially, to be where people look at something like, well, what value is it bringing us or me right now? And that's inspired some some thinkers and some wilderness advocates to be like, Okay, um, let's play this game, and let's start as signing dollar values to clean air and clean water. Oh. It's an interesting concept and one thing that it makes me uneasy because I'm like, but I don't think everything in the world needs to justify itself financially all the time. Like when I wake up in the morning and and and my kids are my three kids are waking up and they climb into bed with me and my wife, I don't look at them and be like, how are you gonna justify your existence today financially to me? Right? Because like, some things are like bigger and better and more important than that. And so I do struggle a little bit with people feeling that it's necessary. But it is a really interesting idea that we would start looking in the West or across the country. At what dollar value is there to place on sources of clean air and clean water? Um. And I don't even think people have really even probably haven't made much progress. And it's it's such a huge idea and difficult to quantify. But I wonder if that in the end will some will in some way be something that helps people realize the hornets of wild landscapes in this country when we do have that more when we do take a more holistic approach looking at natural systems. Yeah, the whole ecosystem services conversation. I mean a quick example. You know, I was in southern California before coming out here, and um, growing population, changing climate stress on aquifers, so less water available in San Diego County is building a new deesel plan and you talk about the billions and billions of dollars um it's gonna take to build that thing and then operate it in the long term so that we can have fresh clean water, you know, out of the ocean. Um, were we to invest in uh, you know, protecting our lands or where we still have intact ecosystems that provide clean water. I mean, that's a that's a huge Um, you know, we're avoiding a huge economic cost. And so I think it's a I think it's a hugely relevant conversation, you know, And I get you that it's a you know, we're at a place where we've had to we've had to really craft these you know, complex uh analyses and arguments about the dollar worth of these these ecosystems serve is. But that's just where we're at, you know. But it wasn't part of the language in absolutely not, No, what did what did a hundred senators in nineteen s four? What we're a hundred senators voting from an emotional standpoint in some way? It had it been it couldn't have been a matter of like practicality, you don't know. Yeah, No, I mean, I I'm not I'm not able to get into their heads. I mean I think again, you know, folks saw the value and we were again look at the historical context, right, I mean we our natural resource economy and extraction was booming. Um, we had this also kind of parallel boom and tourism and an outdoor recreation. You look at the National Parks were building lodges and roads, and the Fourth Service was trying to you know, um, keep up with them in terms of you know, post World War two, people want to get out and enjoy their public lands, and so we're we're we were massively developing resources and lands a parallel from from the extract extraction of natural resources to grow our economy. And then they get people out of doors, and so I think again you get to this thinking about you know, this, this this the role of the frontier and taming the frontier in American history and as an American identity, I think, I mean, it's just this pace of um, all of a sudden booming pace of natural resource development I think was pretty alarming to folks. And that's what you know, really, I think galvanized by the middle of the twentieth century, galvanized the public, and they're elected representatives to do something about it. Where you can look at the time and be like, we're gonna we're rolling, We're gonna keep rolling, but let's sort of put a built in cap on how far this might go. Yeah, exactly exactly. I think It's worth noting, though, that the economic arguments have been there all along, getting back to leopold stance that these were the landscapes that had very little value otherwise. And here's a Leopold quote that kind of agrees with you and kind of disagrees with you. Say, Man, I'm open to that our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation's character and health than they will to its pocket book, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us. So we're saying, these these landscapes aren't really that valuable financially anyway, and if we treat them as if they do, UH will be negating these other inherent intrinsic values. So the economics have been there all along. But I think there is utility, and I like the comparison to the kids greeting you in the morning. In terms of trying to weigh everything in dollars and cents, there's there's danger and attempting that, um, But I don't mean to say that. I mean there's danger in thinking that that. Just as a life philosophy, I think there's danger in thinking that every aspect of our lives and society and humanity is a dollar figure. To the contrary, I would submit to you that the things of the greatest value you cannot affect the dollar figure two, and I would include our nation's wildlife and public lands on that list, along with my family, along with my relationships with friends. I mean, you can't put dollar figures on that stuff, the stuff that we hold most dearly ish indescribable in terms of dollars and cents. And yet when we have to have conversations about the value of these places, there are a lot of ways to argue in terms of dollars and cents. So you feel like bringing on, I'll talk about So, yeah, the outdoor recreation. Let's chat about that for a second. Eighty seven billion dollars a year, seven point six million jobs in the USA from outdoor recreation. Um, you take away public lands. What does that mean in terms of jobs and in terms of the economic engine. Um, there's a powerful one. Think about the ecosystem services, clean air, clean water. Hard to put a dollar figure on, but there are people, there are professors who make six figures dollar. He is thinking about how to do that. So you can make those arguments. But I agree with the fundamental notion that there are some things of such great importance to us as individuals that they defy economics but bring it on if you want to chat in that language. No, I do notice that in that you see a high level of engagement with some businesses that are involved in the outdoor economy, where they hear some of the murmurings that we're dealing with politically and they're like, hey, man, you are fixing to be like infringing on my business here, because I am in the outdoor business. And if we're gonna talk about business friendly to me, that means public access on land because that's my client base. So it is I do like, man, I welcome the input. Yeah. So there's one arena that we haven't touched on about wilderness that I think would be a particular interest to a man of your reading tendencies and and uh general conversation points, and that is the cast of characters that we have stemming from the southwestern wild country at the turn of the last century, some of the mountain men who came into their own in landscapes on the HeLa and there's some stories around the last few grizzly bears in the Southwest, and some of these mountain men of the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds in the landscapes we've been talking about, particularly around the HeLa that you need to add to your reading list. Characters like Ben Lily. I haven't heard of Nat Straw? Hear that guy? How about Bear More? Another dude, You gotta check out Ben Lily. This guy from the age of fifty five to seventy, so a fifteen year period. Ben Lily is claimed to have hunted every single day except for Sundays, for fifteen years. It's estimated that down in the HeLa Country he was responsible for killing somewhere between six hundred and a thousand mountain lions really with however, his lifetime with hounds and along the hounds front, there was a one one particular hound he had named Crook. And on the box in which Ben Lily buried his his treasured dog Crook, he wrote, here lies Crook, a bear and lion dog that helped kill two hundred ten bear and four d twenty six lion since nineteen fourteen, period of eleven years owned by b Van Lily. And that that bear, that that dog's buried somewhere in near Cupio Creek, down in Jerry's Neck of the woods in the HeLa Country. So this guy he literally lived outdoors and um man, some destructive fellows, So that that's it. Yeah, you could get away with That's That's exactly the point. It's like, in some ways, you can look back at at the woodcraft and the you know, you talk about having like the hunting bug to the point that it gets to be a disease that you're hunting, like, you know, six days out of the week for fifteen years. That's that's the hunting bug there. Like when you're talking about the figures that extra pated wildlife during the unregulated years. On one hand, like I always look at him in two ways. On one hand, I'm like, you know, sort of a like even at the time, would have been regarded by many people as a morally grotesque figure. But they also, I thought, is account for Like it's not easy to find that stuffy and the level of woodsmanship. Yeah, in the age years killed thirteen bears before he ate breakfast one day, you know, and it's like that's no easy feat for anyone, right, Yeah, And it is. It is tempting to you know, like venerate the woodcraft that it takes to accomplish something like that. But if you start looking into the folks who are actively pursuing predators in southwest New Mexico eastern Arizona during that time frame that these species were extirpated by these species. I'm talking you know, the the last grizzlies being killed, Mexican wolves being eliminated. Um, you could probably narrow the bulk of that mortality down to like a handful of folks. And they approached their work with almost like a biblical uh fever in terms of how they hunted these species, and if you read some of their journals, you know they were it was very much like a good versus evil mindset that they were in to cleanse the landscape of these predators. UM. And thinking about grizzlies, one of the one of the quotes that I loved UM was along the lines of you'll hear people say that bears and men are inherently good and not looking to get in trouble. But you don't have to go far to find exceptions. When when did the when when of the last grizzly vantage out of New Mexico. I'm not shot in New Mexico, out of Arizona. So like this kind of chunk of wild country on the border of Arizona, New Mexico. The last one was on Escadia Mountain. And there's an essay in the Sand County Almanac by Leopold titled Escodia, And that was in the mid nineteen thirties that that bear was killed. Um, and that essay it's uh, it's a beautiful testament to the bear and one of the and to the mountain and one of the one of my favorite quotes. I'm grabbing my copy here right now because Leopold took issue with the fact that this bear was killed in June, right, and here here's what he said. Uh. The trapper had packed his mule and headed for Escodilla. In a month, he was back his meal, staggering under a heavy hide. There was only one barn in town big enough to dry it on. He had tried traps, poison and all his usual whiles to no avail. Then he had erected a set gun in a defile through which only the bear could pass, and waited. The last grizzly walked into the string and shot himself. It was June. The pelt was foul, patchy, and worthless. It seemed to us rather an insult to deny the last grizzly the chance to leave a good pelt as a memorial to his race. All he left was a skull in the National Museum and a quarrel among scientists over the Latin name of the skull. Really, man, you guys got any last thoughts besides that? I had to ask, is still I have last thought questions still about the wilderness thing? Just so that are are we can appease all my friends worries you you dig that you're gonna dig into the conspiracy theories again? Yeah, because the other question that comes up is that if it's all primitive and and uh, at what point are they're gonna say you can't use modern firearms anymore in the wilderness. I think that's maybe not even really like the question that needs to be answered, but just answered to me. You already said it that it would take an act of Congress like make any But what change? Right? That's ridiculous because the nineteen sixty four you're not it's not seventeen sixty four barrels shooting two seventies. No, I know, but it's like it's a mechanized piece of equipment. Right, let me go back, It's not motorized motorizing, wheeled conveyances. Yeah, so I mean that's the Acting. This listing of prohibity uses talks about you know, landing of aircraft, motor vehicles, motorized equipment, and mechanized transportation. Mechanized transport, so these wheeled vehicles, um or you know, sailboats, anything that allows one to travel or to carry goods via mechanical advantage. So um, a firearm doesn't fall within any of those categories. So again you read, you go back to the the Act, and that's our guidance, as are the four Wilderness Managing Agencies, and and we have no legal basis to ever even entertain something like that. Excellent, That's exactly what I needed to hear your email with somebody right now about this. No no, no, no no. This is from a recent conversation I had, but that tooks actly what needed to be stated, like it's awesome, thank you. You know. In um and Joan Didion's book, uh, she wrote to two books about the sixties, almost called the White Album, and one was called Slouching towards Bethlehem. And I think it wasn't Slouching towards Bethlehem, Uh, which was written in the pre Internet age. Okay, so the Internet wasn't even here yet. But in Slouching towards Bethlehem, she talked, she's talking about people who who live in a in a in an intellectual fantasy land, and she describes it like that that we have so much and she again pre internet, which is something we have. There's so much information out there, and there's so much like factual information out there that people get overwhelmed by the duties that they would have to inform themselves about certain issues. And it's such an overwhelming, daunting task to really go out and find out the truth of a matter that you just kind of get to a place where you're like, screw it. It's a lot easier just to listen to what my buddy at the bar said, because that saves me. That gives me this thing where I feel like I know the real story without having to do any of the work of finding out like what actually is going on. And I think that that is only it's like only become worse as the amount of information has increased. People's tendency to retreat from information as increased because it's hard to go find out, like to get a nuanced perspective on things. It's just so much easy to be like, yeah, well what Bob told me that any what Bob said you so kind of along those lines that you guys are I mean still in the mode of closing thoughts. I mean, I just wanted to share that we dragged the closers on. Go ahead, Yeah, that's cool. I mean, you know, so I name everyone around this tape values, you know, fish, wildlife, wilderness and other wild lands and these experiences that you can have. UM. And you know, I feel like I'm a new hunter. We didn't talk about that. UM started last year in earnest UM grew up in Seattle, Like I said, run around public lands. I joke around that I'm like the long haired you know, for you guys can't see me on the podcast, I'm like a long haired granola eating you know, seattleleite wilderness guy. UM. But recently, I mean through my upbringing in in that context and value on local food where you know where it comes from, and you know, you have ethics about the well being of you know, any any kind of animal products that you eat, Hunting was a natural fit for me, and so I make friends with guys like Jerry and Carl, who I know value they span these kind of traditional communities like the hunters and anglers and the wilderness people. Um so I'm I'm pleased, and I know the two of you are the same pleased to have a company like that. But you know, there's still a ton of work to be done, you know where we share. I mean, you know, I look at my friends who are are you know, maybe who don't know as much as about wilderness, who who value hunting, my wilderness friends who are not hunters and anglers, and you look at their value systems and there's far more overlap in common value than difference. You know, they're gonna be some minor differences. And so my closing thought as a person who cares deeply about you know, wilderness, wild places, ecosystems, and biodiversity, is for folks to get out of their comfort zones, get out of their communities and where they don't have these established relationships, you know with the quote other side, you know, build those relationships, or get out and give back to your public lands, Volunteer for one of your your national forests, and in some kind of stewardship activity, get involved with you know, I'm gonna speak on on behalf of the wilderness community. You know, we have organizations like the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, who do they do advocacy, which we don't do in the government, but they also have a stewardship program. They're helping us take care of these wild places, keeping them natural, keeping them wild, get engaged, and they've actually done a great job. I'm in working with the back country hunters and anglers and New Mexican Wildlife Federation to to find and sort of, you know, act upon that common value system. But I think there's a lot more really fruitful work to be done on behalf of public lands and acknowledging we all have a lot of a lot of interest in common to continue building those relationships, you know, kind of outside of our traditional communities. So that's something that I you know, it strikes me as sort of a again a long term sort of a part of the willerness community that's newer to the hunting and angland community. Yeah, my allegiance, like my lifelong allegiance to hunting and fishing is what delivered me into wilderness advocacy. It wasn't the other way. Around. It was like my question all the time is like when faced with an issue, as you asked myself, um, what's best for hunters and fishermen and wildlife? You know, that's like my guiding principle on things that pertained to that space. And it was in asking myself that question all the time that I came to be a proponent and an advocate for wilderness. I would flip it around there and say, you know, what's best for a wilderness? And there are certainly multiple things, but hunters and english you know, people who get out enjoy take advantage of these these wild places, and we'll turn around and and advocate for their stewardship, you know. And so I'd say, I'd say it's a two way street. Yeah, anyone else. I got a couple of thoughts at you. So, first of all, I think, you know, these two guys, Born and Jerry are a really interesting kind of pair the direction that took them into this line of work. If you if you compare the process by which Jerry came aboard with Federal Land Management Agency to that a Born, you've got a rural guy an urban guy, but both of them very passionate about the public lands system and our agency and the folks who work for other agencies at the state level, other federal land management agencies, we all tend to have a very strong relationship to the resources that we manage. And I think there's a tendency when you're talking about a big organization like the Forest Service has more than thirty thousand employees, it becomes kind of faceless. It's just this big, mysterious organization. But I think it's important for people to realize that a lot of the folks working in this outfit and others again at the state and federal level, are coming into these jobs from a place of deep passion and reverence over the resources that we're managing on behalf of the public and we share a lot of the same motivations and passions, even though we come from a lot of different directions. Like Pyrn and Jerry and then the parting shot I'll take it gets back to this question you asked about the biggest the biggest threats that we face like in the in the long run here um and I'm just going to speak about this country because I think there's some challenges we face as a global community that are very pressing as well before Yeah, I want I want to back up, just clarify, because you can't. You're saying something that's kind of blowing my mind. Are you saying you guys didn't come to work for the force service for the money. Well, so let me let me respond to that. I will say I think a lot. You know, people who go into natural resource management UM tend to be motivated by motivated primarily by things other than making millions of dollars. Yeah, it's not like it's not like going to word for Goldman. That being set for folks out there listening who are contemplating career tracks in natural resources management, for the the young men and women who are in high school right now listening to this, there are jobs, there are career tracks available in these agencies where your quality of life can be phenomenal. And when you get up and go to work and you're doing a job that feels like important work and it resonates with you on a personal level, you have a form of wealth that few people on the face of this planet can lay claim to. To feel like the work that you're doing is important, and uh, you get up wanting to go in and contribute it's something very few people experience. So if you think that something you might want to do, not mean that as I did not mean that as a hack. I just meant that, And I'm talking about relatives of mine and my dearest friends. It's like like adventure, right, a sense of adventure, a sense of wine to see new things, a sense of wanting to do public service, a sense of wine to find a way to have a life that that has a strong outdoor element. These, more than other factors, seem to bring people to public service in land management agencies. I was not I don't mean you're not the wrong way. I just want people to know, like we we you know these agencies, state agencies, federal agencies. We need people coming into our doors, into public service careers who embody what we're talking about, that passion for the resource. And that being said, you know, the salaries are very competitive if you're in this line of work. I feel very thankful for every aspect of the job I'm in and have a comfortable lifestyle, very comfortable lifestyle. So along these lines, I've got a tr quote for you, Steve, far and away, the best prize that life has to offer is working hard. At work worth doing the best prize that life has to offer. And I feel like the work that Jerry bjorn I and thirties some thousand other people in this outfit are doing, we're working hard at work worth doing, and we're doing it for the public. And that's a really sweet thing to be doing as a professional. And then getting back to your question about the biggest challenges, like what what do I see as kind of existential threats to our culture and how it relates to wilderness. We talked a lot about the rugged individualism in this notion of self reliance and how wilderness has played into our history and our ethos as an American culture. And I I'm speaking personally right now, but I feel like our are increasingly tame existence as a species is inherently a threat to our well being. And I mean in terms of our our mental and physical well being, and I mean in terms of our ecological awareness and literacy. So if we have places where people can immerse themselves in a natural setting and become acutely attuned to our relationship with and dependence upon the natural world, that translates into a whole host of behaviors that I think are imperative for our persistence on a healthy planet. Yeah, just relevancy, an engagement. Yeah, so the big threat to summarize our lifestyles are becoming to tame wilderness in contrast to the normal routine of an Americans life now in this era, is an opportunity to escape that tameness, to be humbled, to experience humility, to be really uncomfortable sometimes, to be challenged. And you know, all the opportunities for recreation, hunting, fishing, et cetera feed right into that. But the key, the key ingredient is having those places on the map where you have an escape. And most countries around the world do not have that at their ready disposal way that we do. Yeah. I once heard wilderness described as the nation's proving grounds, and uh that that resonated with me because at the time that I discovered it, it served that purpose. I mean, it gave shape to my life that it. Honey, I was just gonna say out nice closing thought, but yeah, that willness is a set place where you can go and uh, you can really feel how small you are in the universe. You know, when you go there and you're humbled and you just realize that environment doesn't really care about you. And um that my brother always talked about how much he likes it because he likes how scared it makes him feel all the time. Here is an important emotion that I experienced for sure that I would add it to Carl's list. What's the what's the Leopold quote? Man? Um, poor is the life that achieves freedom from fear? Right? Yeah? Yeah, man, laying in bed at night, just waiting for that old bear to get you. That's good for you. I'm glad. I shall never be young without while places to be young in. Yeah, go on all day, all right, thank you,

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