00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything. You're telling me. You're telling me nine point five two nine point five to million acres of American ground, public publicly owned American ground is inaccessible. The people who like to hunting fish and walk around landlocked landlocked. If you added up all the acreage I own, that's four point to five six million times the acres I own. It's a big chunk of land. Dude. Yeah, Uh, how do you put it in terms of how do you put it in terms of like, you know, everybody, when everyone's trying to make something seem big, they compared to Rhode Island. Right, if you want to make something small, you compare it to Texas. But you guys don't even need to do the Rhode Island comparison. New Hampshire in Connecticut right to state combo. Still it's still the dinky states in the East. But still nine point five two million acres of landlocked land in America. Well, isn't yellow still like two million acres. It's a way of putting it. It's like five times that size five Yellowstone National Parks owned by the American people but not accessible to the public, and most of them are BLM land. It's mostly BLM and it's like a Western deal, right, But there's not a lot of landlocked land in the East. Not that what listen, Easterners do not now because this is gonna because we're talking about your ground, your dirt here. It's just far away from your house, I'm sure. But it's in the West. Well, that's what we looked at. I mean, the majority of it is. But I'm sure there's landlocked lands across the nation that we just have them looked at. Can you guys introduce yourselves? Go ahead, John, all right, Sure. I'm Joel Webster. I'm the Western Lands Director with Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership TRCP. I'm based in Montana. I grew up out West and I work across the West on public land issues, so habitat conservation, but also access. I'm Eric stick Freedom, the founder of on x. We make a GPS app that helps people get outdoors and stay safe and stay legal and stay frustrated when they're looking at and when they're looking at landlocked land. Being like dude, but it's right there. I just can't get to it. No matter how I finagle my way around, I can't them that get to it. We're gonna define landlocked playing a minute here, okay, And I'm Lisa Nichols. I'm one of the g I S supervisors at on X, and explain g i S geographic information systems or geographic information science UM basically compiling data that has a location component into a system so that you can make maps from it or run analyzes like this. Okay, And then Mark Kenny from Wire to Hunt's here, Sir, Mark Gills is on a daily basis. I don't know about daily basis. Being in Michigan, you do it a lot. You're just dealing with the R day. Why are you? Why are you trying to knock me down? You gotta be like hourly bro. I was dealing with this like two weeks ago on my white Tail hunt Montana and then this weekend chasing ELK. I wasn't dealing with this all the time, but I was looking at a couple of situations like that on my map using my Onyx maps all weekend. So yeah, very we're we're very well aware of the issue and then jay as poodless, well get anything you want to hell here still here after all these years, So define landlocked man? Like I I think I feel like everybody's cann know because one of my favorite things to talk about is uh, I like to talk about corner happened, how it's right kind of right behind not recommended? Well yeah yeah yeah the day I defind I like my two favorite subjects lately would be like different names for how one loads chew and then um things that make Turkey's gobble, and then corner happened is right up there with it. But but we're we'll get into corner happened. Maybe who wants to take on what a landlocked land is? Okay? So um For this analysis, we were just looking at places where public roads do not provide access to pieces of public land. So certainly there's opportunities to fly into places with helicopters. There's opportunities to access places um by water. When you say public roads, public roads or trails or anything, well just for this was public roads. Yeah, there's certainly places where you could hike in. You know that a landowner would allow you to cross their land, or that there's an established trail and there's a trailhead outside of the land. But for this purpose, for the purpose of this analysis, we were just looking at access from roads. Uh, quickly, what happens that number? If you turn it into that you can walk in across public land. It's just not um something that we could really capture with the data. What do you call NASH what do you call designated wilderness? You can't walk, you can't drive on it. It's not landlocked. We explain the direct indirect analysis. So yeah, so UM, we kind of broke it down into two different categories. So the direct access component would be like if you had a public road that would cross or intersect a peace of public land or actually skirt alongside next to the public land where you could park your vehicle, get out and get right onto the public land without crossing any sort of private property. UM, that's direct access. And then the indirect access component was if you could access um, a piece of public land through another accessible land, so like if you could take BLM to get to force service or vice versa. UM, then then we considered that indirect access and that's not counted in this figure. UM. So yeah, if if you could access it indirectly. It's not part of this number. It's not part of the nine million. And I think trail access across private land to public land with established permanent easements, which we'll get into, that's pretty rare. That's rare. It's pretty rare. Yeah, I got you. But Steve to like to your point of can you walk across it? Yeah, if there's a road that touches any piece of that public land, and it's a huge chunk of public land, we considered it accessible as long as there was a public road touching it. Anywhere you could walk across, anywhere there might be trails. But yeah, it's it was considered in the will, not considered in the number of of land law. A million acre parcel with one roil to the corner that would be considered accessible. So it's not that you need to be able to drive across, but you can get to it, that's right. Um. So I think actually, if you wanted to look at accessibility um in terms of like terrain right, Um, Like there could be a giant piece of land that has an access point on one side of it and the other side of it's very difficult to access. Um that by is you know that's pretty inaccessible, but that was not counted to this report. So I think you can actually argue that there's a lot more land than this that isn't accessible if you wanted to change the definition. But we had to create a definition. So that's what we did. Can we talk from it, uh? Can we talk from it? Just to help people understand what we're talking about the Dirty Hills situation, because here you have like, unless it's a better case, unless there's a better case study, do you guys not like that one because it's so sticky? I think it's great virchel. Okay, So there is a place in Montana known as the Dirty Hills, which five years ago, ten years ago, whatever it was, no one knew what the Dirty Hills were. But they've become an emblem, right, they become like symbolic of landlocked lands in general. Where you have a acre two acre chunk of ground that has really good hunting on it, has a lot of elk on it, surrounded by lands owned by uh two individuals. I think there's a pair of brothers the own lands surrounding this thing. There's no public access to it, and what kind of makes it one of the reasons that makes it kind of sticky and and interesting is that at some point in time people started saying, well, Okay, if I can't access it by walking in or driving in, I'm gonna find a way to start accessing it with aircraft. So some number of people, maybe thirty to sixty people a year, have begun flying in on helicopters or flying in on fixed wing aircraft and landing on old roads to go and hunt this land locked area. And I think on one hand they're making a statement is that fair? And no one hand, they just want to get some good hunting. There's a lot of good hunting. I think it's almost like, um, it's not even civil disobedience, because it's not disobedient. It's like exercising of one's rights to fly in to the Dirty Hills. The way this gets even more interesting as a as a case study, is that the same people that own the Dirty Hills own a bunch more properties, including a property that is has the potential to block vehicular access to fifty tho acres of public land. And some years ago they proposed to the Bureau of Land Management. They came and said, I'll tell you what I'll give you one of my ranches which will open up roaded access to fifty thousand acres of public land in exchange for the two thousand, five hundred acres of public land you own in the middle of my ranch. And the BLM wasn't able to take the deal. I must pay some big balls on that ranch. Well some so when when this ranch that allows the access to the fifty acres, when they enrolled themselves in a public access program, eight hundred public users signed up to access through that ranch. So eight hundred public users use that ranch to access the Bullwhacker Creek drainage, and around thirty people hunt this Dirty Hills section. So there was like competing interests for some people saying it's not a fair swap, the hunting opportunities aren't equal, or it's not a fair swap for whatever. But anyways, the BLM, I think not because they were interested. Because of cost and manpower and other issues with with roads and whatnot, they were not able to to seriously entertain the deal. While are you guys giving knowing glances, Well, I think the reason that deal wasn't entertained is because there was so much backlash from from Montana sportsman in Central Montana. You mean the thirty guys that like hunting Dirfy Hills. No, I mean there was significant blowback from that proposal. What was the I only see the real quick. I only like, without knowing the particulars, it seemed like at the surface level, for what I explained, it seems like an enticing deal. But I haven't dug into it. What makes it not enticing? I you know, I'm not claiming to be an expert on a sort of ball whacker deal. I do know that there was an alternative route proposed, um, you know to access those blm lands we've wanted off canoes. Yeah, and you can also get in there if you walk along ways from a different direction. I just know that there's some folks that are pretty passionate about the dirties and they'd love to hunt it. Um you know, some pretty good all cutting and then there's some big bowls on that ranch around there, and so aircraft. I think part of it too is that, um there was a big you know, legal fight over and now we'll get into Eastman's probably later, but um, you know, there was a route that crossed that ranch that was open to the public and then the Wilkes brothers who owned that piece of property closed it. There was some litigation over that that went to court, and um, the sportsman's community lost people who are involved in that. And so as a result that that route was closed. And so I also think that there's UM a little bit of a taste in people's mouths. Yeah, I got you. There's another one, um, just to give it people another example of what we're talking about. We're talking about struggles over landlocked lands. There's a ranch in Colorado where Joel, you and I have been there. Why are you give an annoying lands? But we're good, Okay. There's a ranch called the High Lonesome Ranch who's in a big legal piss and match with the county in this case where there's a county road that accesses public lands and they're in a protracted legal battle where where the county gets outspent the county or you know, they put forty dollars in the legal fees and it's not I don't know if it's sustainable. They keep getting outspent. But they're saying, hey, man, that's our road. That's an open road. The ranch has a gated They say no, it's not open. We got a gate across it to prevent to prevent people from accessing big chunks of public land. So the point being, these are like battles that are being waited. There's like battles being waged around public land access all the time. And I know that you're not coming out of saying that everything should turn into a fight, because there's a lot of situations where these things can be resolved with willing sellers, willing buyers, there's public money available. I don't want to act like it's all the contentious and nasty and people suing each other, but I'm just trying to raise the idea that there are little battles in the war over public land access that do turn ugly and contentious. And I think those battles are becoming more common as we see a shift in ownership patterns across the West, with you know, new people moving in with a lot of money who aren't from there that maybe don't you know, traditionally a lot of these places are open um. You know, just by knocking on the door helping somebody out on their ranch or whatever, you get access to go hunt their property. And that's changed, and so as a result, there's more and more conflict, and um, I think, you know, I think what's going on in Colorado, I think what's happened in the Crazy Mountains. Um, it's just emblematic of what's happening in today's world. And I think the intent of this project we're working on and then we put together here that was really focused on cooperative solutions that bring people together to help solve this problem prevent that from happening in the first place. Can you give me a quick rundown and anyone on if you had to say, like generally, what allowed um lands to become landlocked? Like what were the mechanisms in place that it seems like a really weird oversight, Right, Well, I think it just happened by the nature of the West and how the West was settled. Um, there's a whole you know, bunch of laws that are tied to I mean, I'll start out with the Homestead Act, right, which in eighteen sixty two was the first one, and there were several where, uh, you know, settlers are coming out um from the east and coming out here and getting their hundred and sixty acres and they're gonna make a go at it. But that was when you like stake the claim. That's right. There's a lot of movies on that, um, and you know that that that's where it all began. But then you know, there were the railroad land grants where there are these individual um attempts by Congress to get these railroads to these specific areas where, um, if a company went and built a railroad, they get alternating sections, so a checkerboard checkerboarded style landscape. UM, you know, alternating sections will be given to that railroad across the lands. If you'd have a you know, one section zoned by the federal government or the General Land Office at the time, and then the other section zoned by that railroad. And they allowed him to be corner to corner, corner to corner. And I know you guys have talked a lot about the access. So there that's like you can, I mean there you can like vividly see the problem. Yeah. And there's other crazy stuff too, like during the depression, and um, there's this one thing, this one law that was called the Bankhead Jones Farm Tenant Act, which I find really interesting. It was past the seven and what it did is it bought a bunch of like um, you know, failed farms back from private landowners in places where it just wasn't suitable for farming. People had gone and homestead of that land. It was rough and rocky, and they probably used it pretty hard and it just wasn't proving. And so the federal government actually went and bought that land back, and that went back. Originally all went to them, the four Service, but some of them ended up going to the BLM. And if you look at like the Dakota Grasslands and in North Dakota and South Dakota like that that bad lands country, which is really great meldeer hunting. UM. You look at like the high line in Montana, and then also the lowest town like some of that breaks country right or right right right around it anyway. Um. And then also down in Wyoming and uh in New Mexico and Colorado, there's just eleven million acres went went back to the federalist state that were private, right. And this is all happening and disjointed, and so as long as they're surrounding neighbors stayed solvent. That piece of land in the middle became federally owned but not federally accessible, that's right, that's right. And then there's like you know the notorious Oregon in California sort of railroad scheme where um, there were like three point seven million acres made available um for a railroad company that would build a railroad across western Oregon again in a checkerboard pattern, and then they were required to uh sell that land as settlers for a hundred and sixty acre chunks for two dollars and fifty cents an acre. But they found it about all that stuff. Man, what's that at that price? All right, I'll take it. I'll take it. And I think they felt the same way because they wanted to turn into timber companies, and so instead of giving it to settlers, they figured out a scheme to turn it into timber companies so they could cut a bunch of trees and make a bunch of money and just to have like ghost individuals purchases. Yeah, they go down to the bar, I think, and get somebody to help them to come in and buy that land for two lany cents an acre, and then they get it from him for the same price. Probably, I don't know what they'd give them an exchange for it. I'm sure there was some compensation, but then they just accumulated these you know, mass holding to land and then you know that county people went to jail for it. And then in nineteen sixteen, two point eight million acres of that land came back to the General Land Office, which eventually became BLM Land Oregon. In California, lands in like a southwest and northern California, And if you look at that on the map, it's a mess and that stuff want to be in a messy and inexcestible messy. Yeah, And some of it's accessible because there's a lot of timber production in that country where you've got a lot of timber roads, and so they kind of cut in and out of the checkerboard patterns. So not all checkerboard lands are inaccessible, right, especially like in timber country where oftentimes a four service will own a road easeman across that private land onto their own section, and as a result, that access is sort of maintained to some of those sections where those roads exist, but not all. And we're talking about a lot more. When we say a section, we're talking about a square mile. So like if you live in one of the many states that has townships. Your township is six by six, so six so thirty six square miles is a township. A square mile is only six hundred forty acres. But what's the biggest chunk of landlocked land in the country. The biggest one that we found was twenty two thousand, two hundred and sixty four acres in southern Wyoming. Twenty two thousand acres in one chunk, it's like thirty five square miles. So, without getting into names, does the dude who owns some of this is he just like man, um, I really like this set up where basically you have access to a lot of land, you have no tax burden. I'm sure some dudes are, oh they got yeah. Yeah. Some people gotta hate that this is a conversation that's going on right now. They gotta be like, man, I just want to keep quiet, enjoy my two acres of land that I don't pay taxes on. There are like five to twenty acre parcels all over the place that have no permanent legal public access And doesn't mean that some of them are acre pieces just all over the place. There's tons of them. I see where you got it broken out by state where California has almost a half million, but then Wyoming far and away three million acres in Wyoming's landlocked. It's not something you want to win at, dude. It's incredible. So how um this has always been the case because like one was Bankhead Jones. Again, it was in thirty seven, Okay, So we started making our problems around the time they were caught in big railroads like the Northern Pacific and stuff. Eighteen sixty two with the homestead X when it really started and people begin to accumulate chunks of land, and they were just I mean, if you look at you know, if you a few hunt right you you're trying to figure out, like where's that topography where I can go kill Amelie Buck or whatever in eastern Montana or eastern you know, Wyoming, and you're looking Often times that public land is like following a like a little break of a of a stream, or it's in some bad lands or some coolies where it's just not good farmland or ranch land. And so a lot of these guys were they were settling the prime land and Nevada, they were settling, you know, the right parian areas where the water was. That's the only place there's water, and they're leaving the uplands in public. Um. The railroad stuff is a real mess in in Nevada, but um, you know, in places like eastern Montana and Wyoming, like it was really about, you know, how is which land is most suitable for for farming and ranching and the rest was left public and it's rough, it's rough country. And so these guys would you know, some people would be really good at accumulating land and these giant ranches and they just ended up, you know, having these public parcels inside their estates. And it wasn't it wasn't inadvertent, but it happened. So what is your um and why do you guys explain how TRCP and on X worked together to compile information and what the goal of it was. But what was the thing that initiated the conversation in the first place. Well, Julie, you can tell your story what you learned from being in d C. Okay, okay, it is um. Yeah. So one of the things that happened at the beginning of this administration under the Secretary Ryan Zinki of the Department of the Interior is he issued a series of secretarial orders, which are like directives to the different bureaus of the Department of the Interior. And so you've got like the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service. In the Bureau of Land Management the BLM, you know, the largest public land management agency in the country. They administered two million acres and and through these orders, there a couple of them where he directed the bureaus to identify places where access is limited or non existent and opportunities to make those lands accessible. Really, yeah, it's good stuff. That's good stuff. And um, what what did they what do they have in mind there? Because was it looking for ways to spend Land and Water Conservation Fund money or Yeah, I think they recognize that, you know, public assets access is a huge issue for the hunting and fishing community, and I think they wanted to do something that was beneficial for the hunting and fishing community tied to access. And this is a pretty logical place to go. But what surprised me a little bit is is knowing that it was gonna be that it was going to be received, it was almost inevitably going to be received as adversarial to private landowners. Doesn't need to be I mean, I think this is all about being respectful to private property owners and and focusing on cooperative and voluntary agreements, not forcing anybody to do anything with you, like eminent domain or whatever. This is all about willing buyer willing seller type arrangements, you know. I think the secretary you know, and I'll give him credit for this. He has been ever since he was in Congress, he's been pretty clear about his support from land and water conservation, phone, he has been pretty good on access um and so I think on those issues like this is sort of a natural fit for him. I um. But one of the things we noticed, and I noticed just you know, I know West, I'm from West. I've been using on access technology, you know, first with my handheld GPS down with my smartphone for years. And just like a lot of folks who live out here and hunt a lot on public land, I've learned how to navigate public lands using that phone. And you didn't know how to use a map in the old days. Well, I think it's pretty different when that's that's why this this is gonna hear me out. That's why I hate on X because it used to be that you had to have special secret e skills to find how to get into places now anyone. So it's like how I hated the Internet because I was good in the library and then all of a sudden they made information just available to everyone, and I'm like, man, now I lost my advantage and on X. Yeah, it lets you get to walk around and look at the landscape and understand it in a large scale sense easily. That's fair. It makes you Yeah, I'm joking about not like it. I'm just saying, like it was like when we used to drive around with like stacks of maps trying to put these complex puzzles together of how to get into these hard to reach places. It's just at your fingertips. Some of them are hard though, Like I just know going in some of these places where you had a lot of private and you had these small slivers of public, and you're trying to figure out, like how do I line it up with my map and my odometer and figure how I can hit that hundred yards shot where that public land hits that public road where I know I can get on there. And you get there and there's no survey markers, there's no fence and delineate it and I'm just like, I'm not gonna risk. We would bail. We would bail all the time on missions like that, because the minute you hit a fence that doesn't like line up with your understanding. I don't like to hunt looking over my shoulder. So when we used to try to do things off paper, um, it didn't give you the certainty because we had this conversation there day where we're using on x LK hunting and we're showing a property boundary and the fence. In the old days, I would have viewed this fence as being inviable right a line fence clearly not on the line. And then the more you look at it more, you can see that they ran the fence just in what looked like good suitable place to run defense. But the fence didn't conform at all to the property line. And the old days would to be like, well, the fence knows better than me, and I would have just let the fence win the argument. And now you kind of look and there's another way to there's like, you know, there's an extra data point to put in there when you're trying to figure out where you're at. I don't want to sidetrack too much. Are you guys are one of the few that actually knew how to use those paper maps to to do those things. That's why we wanted to That's one of the reasons we went to the Department of the Interior and to d C too educate them on how hunters and the public are actually using technology to help access any type of public land and if it's accessible, the public is finding a way to access even in the case of air flight in the dirty Hills, they if it's accessible by some legal means, they're going to get there, so because they know about it. When you are evaluating acquisition and disposal of public land, make sure you take access into consideration. That was one of the big things that Jewel wanted to make sure everybody understood in DC. I also didn't want them to only be looking at putting in new trailheads with big parking lots and toilets, like developed facilities that are really costly. And I think you look back to like, you know what you think about the way that the public access is public lands. Right, we drive up to the trailhead, we park our car, I go used to pit toilet. We might have a picnic there and then you can hike in on the trail, right. And I think there's a lot of people who still think that that's how everybody accesses public lands. And that's that's a good point, because we even use the term trailhead in the absence of trailheads, it's kind of means sort of like where I started to walk. Yeah, yeah, And and one of the things that we were I was really worried about in particular, are just you know, you got folks back in d C. They're looking at how to provide access right and they've got this big chunk at two million acres of public land UM, and they're gonna be very likely trying to figure out how to create another access point on that instead of thinking about what about this five thousand acre chunk over here UM that has awesome hunting UM opportunities potentially UM, but it's lower profile, it's not a sexy but it's really UM purposefully important And and that's something that I think this project feeds into in terms of this report UM, but also that visit is just really trying to help direct their work. We're really trying to help them focus on the fact that they should be looking at these smaller chunks that you know, I mean, heck, five ten square miles, if you could buy forty acres to tie that to a road or buy buy an easement, you could open that up to the public. It's not that expensive. It's pretty actually pretty inexpensive. And that's a huge amount of land you just opened up for everybody to go use and doesn't require a toilet and a parking area and you know, maintenance and all that. So basically like advising on how to get kind of more bang for the buck on public access, that's right, but also to not ignore these lands either, which I think historically people haven't been looking at them because this technology didn't exist. People thought that they couldn't be accessed, and so people have been ignoring them for a really long time. And that's changed in recent years and we're we're trying to help drive that change. So what was the moment when what was the moment when when like a nonprofit and a tech company decided to like come together around an idea. Well, we had I guess that was late seventeen. As a company, we had defined for ourselves a company purpose to give back to access related causes. Because that's why what's what made our company what we are today. We we show people where you can go in the outdoors, so we wanted to give back to that, so we defined a company purpose for getting back to access related causes. Starting started to look around. And that's when by who knows what, higher power Jewel shows up on her doorstep and says, hey, I've got this problem. You would you mind coming to d C and talking about how technology helps people access these public lands in eastern Montana and random But but at that point you hadn't started to put together all the information, right, So because we made that, we started to can this presentation for d C and then we're like, oh, Joel, we were talking about, let's let's present like a use case of eastern Montana how many landlocked public lands that there are, so we can give them an idea of the scale of the issue. And we did that and like, well, now we got LDBCF coming up, why don't we do a full analysis and I get the whole picture of the western landlocked public lands? So is this analysis more exhausted than anything that the FEDS have put together? If I haven't seen anything else like it? And part of the reason I think this happened is because the FEDS have expressed and interest in this, Like we've been done and sat with not only with the Interior officials about this at the Department of the Interior, we sat down with Beer of Land Management staff and and they're like, we've been directed to figure out, you know, where these inaccessible lands are, and we're trying to figure out exactly what we're gonna do here, and we're just looking at each other like, well, maybe we can help with this. Well I don't think they necessarily can, because our team has done a ton more to actually look at the public lands compare them with the parcel data, and they will We'll use those BLM data sets that say this is public, this is private, and they'll have all these errors in it, and we compare that with the tax records and it says there's an owner that you say this is BLM land, but there's actually an owner on it, so there's a conflict there, and we determine that actually it is privately owned. So we actually have done that across the West, across a lot of the US to make the most accurate picture of land ownership, which our customers really love. Ninety three is BLM land landlocked acreage belongs to BLM. That's right. So that's what you're primarily having a conversation with. And I think there's certainly other access challenges with Forest Service land. But because of the way that, like the Forest Service was established, right with these forest reserves of people like Theodore Roosevelt setting them aside, or the refuge system or the parks, right, those are identified areas of importance that were set aside a long time ago because people are like these are special be a M lands kind of happened by accident in a way, although I have to admit there, like some of my favorite hunting and fishing countries, I love them. I love them like I love I really like them because I feel that I'm BLM land. You get the greatest sense of sort of the greatest sense of kind of freedom and also the greatest sense of in a weird way oftentimes like an exclusivity where there's just always like BLM kind of like HIGHI holes out there, you know, like not very visited places. I think that that you know, the national forces by the mirror fact of being national forests generates some amount of user awareness, but there's just like some BLM lands, you get out there and you just feel like you could sit there a month and nothing's gonna change. You know. They're also great for a Western style hunting and if you like to sit behind a spotter and glass things up from a mile away. Now, am I correct? This is just federal lands you guys looked at. That's right. Do we have any idea of what the quantity of state lands might be their land left because I've run across a lot of that too. That's a good question. Yeah, So we just were looking at federal lands because UM, state and local land have so many different uses. So there's a lot of times where state lands are to generate revenue for the state. Same thing with you know, municipal lands county and city lands UM and so they might not the state and municipal lands might actually not be for public use UM. And so in order to do this sort of standardized analysis across all thirteen states, we we just limited it to UM the federal land for the output. But if there was a way to cross state land that was open to access federal land, we did include UM, or rather we didn't include that in the total landlocked acreage figures and it's just a time thing. I mean, r g AS teams mainly focused on creating accurate landownership and updating landownership. So I had sprung this on him after the whole years plan was out there, and they graciously took it on and did a great job and put an extra time to make it happen. And it's that if you had to guess where is state land at, if you had to take a wild stab at the total for all I got, God, I have percented, like, Okay, here's here's what I like to do. Tell me that you'd be surprised if it was less than X and surprised if it was more than X. Why. I have no idea how to answer that. I told you, if I told you, you know what, there's only one section of landlocked state land in the American West, would that surprise you that that's not true? Okay? If I told you there is a billion acres, So we're getting closer. Now, Let's say I came to you and said, a hundred thousand acres of state land, it's only a hundred thousand acres across these all thirteen states. Hundred thousand acres I think still be higher than so it's a sizeable. I think it's pretty high. I mean, if you look at the way that the states for granted land, they received two sections per township, and so they're like randomly situated in the landscape. I think I saw and I'm I'm pulling from memory here, so it might be slightly off on the acreage, but I think Montana that d NRC did an evaluation and they found one point two million acres in the state of Montana state lands were landlocked. Uh yeah, And I mean you think about it, You've got you've got these you know, these these sections, right and and it was at sixteen and thirty six. Is that I think the two sections that of every township were given to the states and UM as a result of that, like they're just randomly placed on the landscape, and oftentimes they'll be in holdings right on National forest or BLM land, but oftentimes two they're just stuck right in our and some of them are inside national parks too. UM. And so it's kind of a mess. And I know that, UM there's certain states that are working on trying to address that issue, but it's the whole again, historical way in which the lands are allocated has resulted in this situation. When I started whitetail hunting in Montana a few years ago on public land, I was trying to find spots like this, some decent public land. I was in a river valley where there's much state land. Found some stuff that looked like it had road access to it. I was really excited. Showed up there and there's no trespassing signs on the roads that come right off the main county road, like ten yards in and so confusingly, this show's public land on the map. I was looking at a paper map at this point. I'm like, this shirt looks like public So I wasn't sure. They called local game war ner, whatever official it was, whatever office. I can't remember who I called. But turns out that neighbor, a rancher through there, bought the railroad line that runs right along the side of that blocked all the road access to this. Several state parcels that were right there along the road, but just a five yard wide railroad or ten yard wide past Eastman or whatever that. When we were verifying some of these parcels, you know, one of the things, um that Lisa and her team did is they they flagged about sixty parcels that were big they had what they called questionable access and so there were like identified two tracks crossing ranches onto these public parcels and we weren't sure whether or not they had access or not. And so um she handed that over to the TRCP team and we put this out to our field reps, who then reached out to like the BLM and for A service lands and realty specialists, and they reached out to the county recorders and we're trying to figure out whether or not there were Eastmans to these parcels and it was actually, um, pretty astounding how few there were. Um. But one of the things we found was also these these crazy railroad lines like running through these parcels that separated them and stuff, and it's just like, what's going on here? And I wasn't I didn't I wasn't aware that they actually owned that land. I figured they just you known, their tracks on top of it. But yeah, it's kind of crazy. So what was the process of compiling all the information and who did you decide? Who do you decide then to present it to? Uh? So you know, one of the advantages that we had coming into this UM. You know, as on X we we already had a lot of this data compiled for our products. So, like Eric was saying, UM, you know, we could have just used the public land data sets directly from the public agencies, but those are typically generalized boundaries, and so to really drill down to the scale of analysis, we had to use data that had already been reconciled with the private parcel data UM. So we already had that done UM. So that gave us a finer scale to work with. And then UM, you know, the second step was to really define landlocked. As we said, you know, there's certainly places where you can access it from water, from the air, from hiking in. But in order to really address this large scale thirteen state area western half of the United States practically, UM, we had to we had to normalize what we were going to call accessible UM and and so that's when we decided to just look at road access. And then from there we had to decide what was a public road versus a private road. But there's no national data set for public versus private road. Most road data sets that are available UM are classified according to um, you know, whether it's an interstate highway, a county road, or surface type pavement versus dirt versus gravel. So there's no classification in these data sets. So UM our in house road data expert sort of advise that we do. We define a public road as anything that's maintained at the county level or higher, and then some for service road classifications. So once we pulled that data, we were able to look at UM, you know, a road right of way standard width, and then we we looked at where those UM road right of ways crossed the public lands, and then we were able to factor in UM through using the magics of g I S the indirect access as well. And then anything that essentially uh the road right of way across the public land, we gave it a flag. So every single record of public land got a flag as either landlocked or not landlocked. And then we had a script that or you know, an algorithm that would add all that up by state and by agency, and that's how we came up with these numbers. When you when you guys were doing this, were you doing it because you wanted to make the public aware of the magnitude I'll call it a problem. I don't know if you use that word you want to make the public aware of the magnitude of the problem, or you're doing it because you felt that it would be useful for land management agencies too have all this at their fingertips. Both. It's also trying to help get the land Trust to to help them address the issue. But um, I mean, I think the tool to solve this problem, at least in terms of voluntary means of people working together, there is a land and Water Conservation Fund which uses none of you've talked about this on the show, but whole lunch man, Yeah, uses that revenue. Talk about it more, all right, real quick uses revenue from offshore oil and gas development. Um. And then there's basically there's a Congress it's a federal program where it's been around since nine and every yearllion dollars go from offshore oil and gas receipts and go into a trust fund. Back up on that a little bit, because offshore stuff is owned. Offshore oil leases are are federal oil EIAs. Is that they're not individually owned, that's right, and they have to pay their energy companies at the point pay royalties on those the US government and the Land and Water Conservation Fund like earmarks, gets a portion of those. And in every county, now here's a not western thing. Every single county in the United States of America has had a land and water conservation project baseball fields, municipal swimming pools, boat launches on up to you know, major major access points in the in the large parcels of previously landlocked stuff. It's like the key I mean, it is the key driver for public access. That's right, everything recreation, and like half of it goes to the states and local governments and half of it goes to federal programs for the most part in recent years. Um, I want to talk about talking loans around this subject real quick, get into what's going on with it. Yeah. Sure. So the program UM is currently scheduled to expire on September thirties. So I imagine bout time this show airs, UM, this program will have expired, the authorization will be gone because they throw a little it's meant to like initially it was funded, it had like decades, right, twenty five years, Yeah, and then then they kind of like through like a lifeline. Yeah I got and no one can even explain why it's controversial. Well, it's it's like the one thing that like senators seem to agree on. It's not anymore so on sept Um Chairman Bishop, Rob Bishop, you had on your show. Um, you know he helped. He worked out a deal with Democrats with Khovan that committee and they moved a bill out of committee. That's great. Um, it's clean. It uh actually increases funding for access acquisition. Um, it's a fantastic bill. And I know you know he was on your show and he floated the idea. It was interesting, the Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars should be used to train oil field engineers. He's done the right thing here and I want to give him credit for that as well. Yeah, and that part of it didn't make it in there. That's right. And um they did. They did right by Sportsman too by increasing the access allocation. And let me explain something real quick. UM. So LBCF has been around since nineteen This is one of things we discovered this project. Um, but it wasn't until you know, two thousand twelve that they actually specifically started to specifically direct money to public access. And so what we found is is when we're putting this report together, we wanted to find some like great case studies right and of public access being opened up with l WCF, they've only been funding the public access piece of it for six years. And so while there's some good checkerboard consolidation projects that are from a long time ago, these isolated parcels, so these chunks like to the checkerboard of the checkerboards on the landscape, the isolated parcels are like these individual pieces that everyone knows about. When we talked about checkerboards, are you nervous about that, Yannes, I think we should hit it real quick ahead. You haven't done anything. I'm just over here making sure the red light is still on and look at it at least every five seconds. It's gonna do a guest appear. Imagine to do a guest appearance and explain a checkerboarded what we mean when we say it's all when you come back. I was like, how'd you like that new area? And you go, oh, dude, it's all checkerboarded in less than sixty seconds. That's my goal. So imagine you're looking at the wall with a big map on it and then transposed checkerboard on there. And let's just say that all the black spots are private, all the red spots are public well, and and that sort of in most states. And you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's really been defined. In most states. You can't go from red to red. You can't hop on that corner. So that's what we mean by checkerboarded. Only step in the red places, but you can't cross you you can't corner hop. You can't corner hop. You can't bring your foot over any black either, even if you're only setting it down in the red, because the lines are infinitely thin, and all kinds of other issues. Um, And you can only step foot in the red if there's a public road that goes and touches it. And to even enter the red piece that has to have a public road. Is that anything that's been broke? Is that an access idea that's been broached at all? They trying to get that access corner corner. I think you're beating your head against the wall. They floated to the idea in a number of places, a number of states. It's it's uneasy. It's uneasy. People will be a number of states people have been cited for it, challenged it. It hasn't been solved to really anyone's satisfaction. I wonder how much more how much of this landlocked land could be solved for simply by allowing stepping from corner corner, which seems like reasonable public I would say that, well, with the bulk of it, I would say a large portion of it. You'd be surprised. Maybe he can plug that outgum really real quick, and I'll give you two figures. We've had that question a few times, just saying like, if we just changed the policy on corner crossing, exactly how many acres would that open up? And um, you know that's certainly a data challenge right there. Challenge. Yeah, it's a data challenge, mean challenging. Uh yeah, I mean there's places where the corners aren't actually being represented by corners, uh, in the actual data sets. And so um, you know when you look at it, you know, like your human eye can kind of see that it looks like a corner, but if you zoom way way way way way way in the data itself is not actually meeting at a precise corner. And so in order to define that, it would it would. I mean, it's it can be done. It's just a matter of like, do we have the time to really assign someone to every to to explore every section. Yeah, you're trying to capture things with broad strokes. Although although I think she's pointing to the one place where you can legally cross some corners where they do overlap. Yeah, I mean the edges of the surveys. Yeah, if you're a real if you're a real student of the map. So like some surveyors screwed up and now you could do it. Well, you when they did those township range sections, but Earth isn't square, so they put all these squares on there. Occasionally they had to do this correction where there's either a gap or an overlap. When there's an overlap. Once you guys published like a state by state guide, they because you would hate us. This is an onex pro tap right here. Wow, that's that's good. I've seen in both ways. But yeah, in Colorado, RA used to guide, we had that exactly. I just kept like coming up to this corner that we thought was the corner, and then we realized that it was actually an overlap of ten ft And the next thing you know, we were just gliding over that. I think. I think if you can show the map and how it overlaps, that's the law. What I think that I don't even want you guys to win on this because it's gonna be the kind of thing that makes you give knowing glances to each other. So I'm just talking to the honest and Mark. What I think would be a good exercise, just talking to honest Mark to have to to put together a sort of legal defense fund. Let me back up. There's a good story about when someone was trying to clarify Montana's stream access law that they knew that they had a way they wanted to challenge it. And rather than what they challenged it with was a group of women going tubing. Right, It wasn't like a guy shooting ducks where he's blasting shocking off crazy directions and scaring people. It was like a group of young women on a tubing trip became the thing to challenge and the legal case to challenge and clarify some issue around stream access law. I think that it would be good marketing, honest to established the legal defense fund and have someone go to a place where they can they they feel that there would be a chance do a corner hop and then and then move it through the courts and have someone voluntarily be like, I will carry this cross and if if it winds up that I'm just shocked down, you can easily get all of our fans and chip in a couple of bucks, have bucks to start this fund and then just have someone go in and just see where it leads. If you really if you went to a state where it's in question and just went to see, like, where does it really lead? If you if you really had the energy to challenge decisions and then challenge decisions and challenge decisions eventually set legal precedent, and then just be interested to clarify, maybe you'd be clarified in a way that you would that would just reaffirm the assumption that it's illegal, and then you'd be like, Okay, now we know. Back to our guests, um so I think to your point to Stephen like um um, it's my mom. I think that's the the way this issue is ever going to be solved is in a court. I don't think any legislature is ever gonna have the courage to sort of pick the battles on that issue. I do wonder though, I think part of the reason it's never gone to a state supreme court is I think most judges are probably unwilling to entertain it um. And I don't know how to set up that. I don't know how that scenario be established, but I just would imagine. I'm not taking a position on this, but I'm just sort of thinking about a scenario in my head. Like if you go to a corner pin, you got your on X app in your hand, right, and you can you you walk up, you can see the corners clearly delineated as other markers on the landscape that make it so you know for a fact you're stepping over that um, that boundary from public land to public land, never setting foot on private land um. And you were able to, you know, really demonstrate that and document that and then get sited for it and then you know, go to court, I think a judge will throw it out um. And so how do you actually get a case that's able capable of going to the top. I don't I'm not don't not a grounds. But he's not gonna convict somebody for that, you know, Like he's not going to put you in a situation to appeal it, because he's gonna say, yeah, go ahead. I that is my hypothesis. We've heard that from someone else, some people with some uh an attorney in Wyoming was explained that he's looked and he's yet to found. As much as it's illegal, I hate keep talking about this, but I do like the subject. It's a good one. As much as it's illegal. He's yet to find someone who was actually who had who not that people weren't cited, but anyone that was actually successfully prosecuted, they get cited. But when they challenge it back to our guess um. So I know it makes you uncomfortable to say that the solution is to have black helicopters flying and people kick down the doors and seize the land and in hand the land back to the American people. Like, that's not what we're really after here, right, that's not that's not the that that's not the way to increase access. Despite what social media comments might have you believed. Yes, we are supporting cooperative agreements to bring people together. What does one of these look like? I laid out the one that didn't go anywhere. Yeah, well that would have been a that would have been a hey check it out, so let me can I finish my thought real quick? From before? So there's these isolated chunks, right, and these are like these ten thousand acre parcels, are these twenty acre parcels. And they just started in directing money specifically to access. And before that, when they like scored projects, right, you were like, you bring a project forward, We're gonna acquire this private land, make it for a service or BLM. Access was not a part of the consideration. Historically. They're looking at things like ecosystems and you know, threatened species and clean water and so checkerboard stuff generally got in because it's sort of tied into that. But these big chunks I isolated, like in eastern Wyoming, they were not. And so we found through our research that in places like eastern Montana where the the Mile City Field Office, so like it's just a big chunk of Region seven, Right, everybody's heard of Region seven for meal deer um. It's a pilot deer out there, and there's never been an LWCF project out there on public land. Same with the Miles City Field Office in in Wyoming, and so as we're not even aware of any LWCF projects on those public land parcels because all that money was being directed to where you've got connectivity and and that stuff's really important. I don't want to like disparage it at all, and that stuff needs to continue to happen. Um. However, in twelve they actually started directing money specifically for the purpose of access, like saying meaning that you would point out a thing and be like, hey, if we bought this forty acre chunk that's for sale, it would open up access to this three thousand acres of that would be like an example of what you're talking and the money has to be used for that. And so this latest bill that just passed out of the House committee, UM, it has up to seven million dollars annually that would go just for access. And so this issue is in terms of solving this problem. It's in front of us. It's not something that our grandparents did, you know, like the greatest generation they were restoring wildlife. I think it's times that's right, that's right, and I think you know it's gonna be really the next years is when we open these lines up to access. And this program which is going to expire on is what we need in order to do it. But the car Okay, see now there's a couple of balls in the air right now. It's still going to expire, but the framework for an agreement has been put in place. So just to put that to bed. What needs to happen to get the l w CF funded in perfect like max funding in perpetuity being the best case scenario. Yeah, I mean, I think what we need is leadership in the House and in the Senate to put it up for a vote. If they would put it up for a vote, it would pass tomorrow, but then won't happen till after the mid terms. That's right, Well, that's that is our best guess. I mean, it's very unlikely. I mean, it seems like the House of Representatives is going to be done this Friday until the election, and so we're really looking at the lame duck. Is the earliest time that this is likely going to happen. I mean, I'd love to eat my words, but um uh. And I think then at that point it's gonna depend on, you know, how good of a night the Democrats have. I think if they do really well, um, that they're gonna be like, well, let's just wait until Congress turns over and then we can write our LWCF bill. And so, um, I think there's there's the risk of that, right, Um, but I think that there's a pretty good deal on the table, and we'd like to see dedicated funding. So right now they have to appropriate it every year, so appropriators actually have to even though his money and the trust fund, they have to every year appropriate it. We want to see dedicated funding, so it's just like Social Security or Medicare, where every year it just rolls over and appropriators don't even have to mess with that money is in the pot and we know it's there. It's not a new tax, No, it's not. This has been around since sixty five. That's the one people start freaking out about it. It's not coming out of it's coming out of there's no problems federal oil leases and it's always been that way. It's just like what is being used for alright, so they're not kicking doors down. Um, there's a path forward. Does in your analysis, does it really seem like the best solution where we should be putting all of our attention is what are we doing with L WCF funds. You said that again, I'm sorry. In solving and helping to increase access to landlocked lands, is it that Oh? No, Uh, the l w CF is just one of many ways that we could begin to address this issue. Or do you look at all of the tools and the tool kits, so to speak, and it winds up being there's just like a hammer and it's the LWC. Of Well, I think the LWCF is by far and away the most powerful tool and it can do the most. However, there are other tools in the box. Um, there's also state potential. State programs or existing state programs are gonna help, you know, crack at this issue as well, And so I think we need to be looking at all options. But I mean, you know, twenty seven million dollars every year specifically for access in addition to the other projects, they're doing good habitat work and benefit access by default, right, So the other LBCF projects still do good things for access, they just don't do it as their primary goal, and so as a result that the money ends up going to other places. But I mean, there's nothing, nothing even compares to this, because states just don't have that kind of money have you guys worked with any nonprofits, because I mean, like Rocky mont Olk Foundation has opened up a lot of access through acquisitions. They do great work. Yeah, they've got a whole team that's dedicated, i think, to utilize those LBCF funds for access. So they have a whole team that looks at these projects and the are actually making the acquisition because when the landowners willing or they have a relationship with the landowner, they've got to act on that when the landowners willing, So they have to have this coffer of money to be able to act on that transaction. Then over the five years will LBCF gets approved or however long it takes for them to go through the government process of getting the LBCF funds. So they do do that work. That's an army F to your to your point and to your question, RMF does a lot of that great work. And land local land trusts would be great organizations to give to if you want to see that's another way private funding. If we're really passionate about this issue, like hey, pony up, give the Army F give to your local land trust. And they're doing that type of work and they're utilizing LBCF when it's when they can. A very dear friend of mine passed away a couple of years ago, and and um his family when they resolved all of his estate, they use it to secure a bunch of foot access along the Madison through a strategic purchase. It's really cool stories like that. So it's it's interesting that the people that were looking to do that, you know, what they're doing, like those really annoying, annoying fundraisers UM on public radio, and they have what's called amplifiers, like someone who matches, Like, if you want to spend private dollars for public good, it's a great amplifier to buy land that provides connectivity to landlocked land, because you might be buying forty acres, but you're really sort of you might be buying forty acres as a public gesture, but you're handing the public acres. You know. It's just interesting when people, like when individuals like you know, chip in do my part. Yeah, I'm really curious to see how passionate the public is about this and will they be willing to donate organizations not old in holdings too, like just have been purchased over the years where you'll find old structures and apple trees with bears hanging on them about this time of year. We have these examples in the report, like beaver Tail, the Bearmouth Creek. That thirty month Creek is the only example we found of isolated parcels being acquired with l WCF funding. It's currently underway and that's UM Western Rivers Conservancy who led that one. UM and uh, they've really figured out how to use this access money. So that's a that's an LWCF story. These are both beaver Tailed Bearmouth too, which is a Montana one that's done by being done by the Trust for Public Lands. But yeah, they're both l WCF funded success stories that open landlocked lands to the public and great success stories with cooperating with landowners and getting to the table and talking about challenge. Do you feel that it's just gonna happen that the I mean, is it like certain at this point that the l w CF will get fully funded and that it will have the that will have the money, the earmarked money for access. Well, I think we need to be diligent. I wouldn't take it for granted that it's going to happen, But I think if we continue to pound the table and say we must have this. I think it will. When you were working on this, did you ever look and have kind of like a holy ship moment where you saw just some little dinky sliver of land that was that was you know, like if you could like buy an acre, it would have some dramatic impact on access issues. It was all over the place. Yeah, yeah, for sure, there was some places, you know, just doing some quality control work after the automated process ran UM. You know, we're zooming in, panting around the map, kind of looking at different UM landownership patterns, making sure that the analysis as we ran it actually worked UM. And we saw stuff that was like, oh, well there's a road right there must be accessible, and zoom in use you know, all the imagery that we possibly could to verify, and it's like, nope, there's definitely no way to get on there without going across private There was a story in the in Bugle, the Old Foundation's magazine, about a guy that he was going to pick up some AMMO or something and had to do a long, unexpected drive up in the northern part of Montana and his wife picks up one of those His wife or girlfriend picks up one of those like little local like wheeler dealer magazines where people sell used cars and stuff out of him, and she happens to find a piece of land for sale while they're driving and they're not even really in the market, but like, oh, that's where they go to look at it, and it wound up being um and it wound up being a blocker to a bunch of public access. So that person UM help facilitate and fund the purchase of that land, and they put in they put in a little trailhead there for a BLM access. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, that was just like I can imagine the power at your fingertips. But this is just a dude driving along reading like a classified add in the newspaper and identified stuff. So maybe rather than our legal defense fund for the checkerboard case. That's two. I think that it would be an interesting thing if um, it would be an interesting thing to look at the places like you recognize these places where you're kind of like these like sort of wow moments of you it's so close but not there, and we're able to at the same time put something in place to monitor when those again, like the willing seller willing buyer model, to monitor when those places come up, or to make to initiate making offers on those places and just see what sort of public support one would get in and and and driving those dollars. What does that initiation look like like? So you guys brought this information to d C, right, did they do anything with it? They just go, hey, thanks, that was that's interesting? Or have you heard any feedback? Let me answer that a little differently, I guess. Um. So, what we're trying to do is provide information on where these big inaccessible parcels are too people who can help open them up to cooperative agreements. And one of those partners obviously is the peer of land management. But there's also land trusts out there, and there's people out there who do this for a living, where they work with landowners. They sit down over coffee, they're non threatening, you know, they want to like work out a deal that works for that landowner as well as for the public, and can help proker those deals. Those things take years, right, you know, you gotta build that trust. And so that's how I think we want to use this information, not um not create a polarizing fight with some of these landowners because as a lot of people who believe that, um, you know, that it should be a right that private lewners should have to let them cross their land to access these public lands. I know it's not, but we also don't want to you know, pour gasoline on the fire. And I think Scotland they have right to Rome. Yeah, well there's and there's prescriptive easements here, which happened in some places, but for the most part, right, I mean, you've got a prescriptive easement. So and this is something that's you know, playing out in the Crazy Mountains right now, where you've got there's not a prescriptive eassement there, but you have checkerboard land, um, historic trails that have been open to the public for you know, a hundred years or whatever. And each state has its own set laws. But if you can prove, like through sort of regular and continuous use and other sort of conditions in a court of law that you've used that for a certain period of time, then you can get directly an easement. Um. But it's a pretty contentious process and it definitely um you know, puts people, pits people against each other because you're trying to codify a sort of loose understanding. Yeah, I mean there's historic use there, and there's never been any effort to purchase that or sort of get a donation of that use like a trail or a road. I mean historically right like the BLM or the Forest Service you know, did and should have been UM acquiring easements across private land where they actually approach the landowner, they purchase that route, they get a you know whatever right away sixty ft right away across that private land, and then in perpetuity it's recorded in that that title UM or that deed or whatever that um that that's a public route. And in some of these places they never did that, and so people are using them for a hundred years, that place changes hands and all of a sudden it's like, well, we don't like you coming on on our property. UM for various reasons, some of them are probably legitimate, but you know, obviously people have been using that for a long time, and so UM it creates a lot of conflict. And that was one of the things too, that you know, I think not only acquisitions are important, but we need to really be thinking about how we can secure access across these trails and roads. Because one of the things we looked at, especially when we're doing some fact checking on these big chunks, and some of them have existing routes across that private lane on the public and the public is currently using it, but there's nothing in law that protects it. And so this is we're kind of at the beginning of what could be happening with access being shut down. Um and the Crazy Mountains are just a symptom of what's to come. I think there's a potential risk with that. And and so it's really important that I think there's money on the table that people can you know, identify where these important access areas are, where we actually have access, but it's not guaranteed, and how do we maintain that access? And I think buying um, you know, an easement across that property is how we do that. And it's a lot better approach than waiting until somebody decides I don't want you anymore and want you there anymore and it goes to court. I mean that's pretty ugly really and um and so I mean that's something that you know, we've really tried to bring attention to and something we found to this project. It's actually kind of frightening. Um, how a few easements. There are things that people are enjoying now that could be taken away to Mars if if And I don't know what the situation is, but imagine there's a lot of private landowners that think that those are public routes and that there is something recorded, but there isn't. And if they became aware of that, then um, they might close it. And so it's a delicate situation. Yeah, it's frightening to think about losing acres and well, and I think some of these parcels that we've flagged as being large parcels, some of them have some public access. But the way that we um defined the landlocked is if if it requires permission from a private landowner, then it's considered landlocked. And so if it's enrolled, like if that private lands enrolled and like a state walking access program like access Yes and Idaho or whatever that that gives you access to that public land, it's it's it's temporary access, right, it's not, so it's still landlocked in terms of when it comes to permanent access. And we also found some places where there is some existing public use across private land where those landowners to continue to allow it, um, but there's nothing there that protects it tomorrow. Do you guys feel like you'll so you did this collaboration and and took this idea and produce the report and have presumably raised a lot of public awareness. Um, what's next? I mean is this? Did you guys walk off the door now and go your seven directions and never talk again? Or no, it's just the start. We're continue to work with the BLM to make sure they define those easements like where where are easements? Where are your easements? Not and at least have a data set that says these are easements, here's what we're doing, and then we can combine that with our data and then say, hey, we should probably look at this piece right here. Who knows the landowner? Who the landowner is going to be in the future, and we need to maybe secure that access point. Yeah. I forgot to mention the federal agencies oftentimes don't know where their easements are either. Um. So we're trying to get that standardiz and fixed. I think one thing too, We've had a lot of interest in land trust community and so um. You know, I have been talking with them about some specific parcels that are fairly big, but we that's one thing we're talking about. Two is how we can provide them with some information on um you know, the some most sizeable parcels that we think should be a priority for access acquisition that they can then go through in screen. But like you know, every parcel over so so big a size or whatever. Things like that we're talking about, uh at on X are you guys? Is it surprising that that you in some way not transitions but added on Like originally you're just trying to describe the world, right, You're describing the world as it is, and that led to a situation where now you're trying to um provide. You know, you're inviting the idea of change, right, You're you're looking like, here's how it is, Here's how it could be, Here's how it should be. Is that a tough decision like to go in that direction? I don't think it was tough, Just to my points earlier, like we want to be able to give back. That's what made our business, you know, showing people here's how here's where you can access, and here's the public lands, here's roads across public lands you can park on that road and go walking. Um, so we, like you said, we show people where you can access them. Now it makes sense to give back to making sure they keep securing those places where they can access. So it's natural because you view it that, Um, it's all in service of your customer. Yeah, that's it's it's all in service for helping people get outdoors and have a great experience. It's good that it's good that you're doing that. I hope it doesn't. Um, I can't see it causing any trouble for you. Yeah, there's a little. I mean, we have our landowners, our customers, and obviously the public our customers, and we want them. We we believe in the cooperation of the two groups to come together and we don't want to see anything to Joe's points of forced forcing landowners to do anything they don't want to do. It was not really a mechanism for it anyway. I mean, landowners have rights. We never heard of an eminent domain project in order to give to open up some access. No, but there's a lot of folks who don't know what the law says and they imagine the worst. Yes, and there's people that don't like to lose battles, and I think that this will be the last thing I say, yeah on the issue. But um, if you look at you know, I read this piece and outside not long I was looking at some stuff along. I think it was like the Russian River. I think it's the Russian that there was, you know, for everyone's memory. You could canoe the river and get out on the beaches and have lunch. And now that's just how it always went. And then like a new class of landowner came in and they had an enhanced awareness of not what's happened, but what they could do, and it emboldened some people to be like, you know what I'm gonna like, I could make a case that I can shut that down. And then that idea became infectious. And so you had this river that had once upon a time just been like and people were shocked to learn that it wasn't actually this way. But someone that had the time and the money could come in and begin challenging public access and having some legal wins or at least clouding the issue enough to create the necessary level of uncertainty to push people away from using public resources. The story they fought that the story they followed the specific story they follow in the article, the guy winds up losing, and in fact, he was chaining off a beach that was not his to chain off. But it's kind of like, I think that that's the way in which these things get tested all the time. Is you sort of you brought this thing in the crazies too. It's like always been how we do it, and at some point in time someone comes in and starts pushing and prying on that a little bit to see where it leads, and that can lead to access loss. So I think that clarifying the stuff and earlier were like codifying and clarifying some of these issues is probably pretty important too, just to head off future dispute. That's right. And information is becoming way more available every day, and so I think because the Internet, that's right, damn Internet it is, which is an amazing resource, but I think it also informs people of things that they can do that maybe it's not necessarily the interest of public access. And so um, we need this money now more than ever to maintain and secure and open access because I think the longer we wait, the harder is going to get. Yeah, professionally, where I'm at as when I look at an issue, I try to be like, what's in the best interests of hunters and anglers? And that's how I make a lot of my decisions in life. It doesn't mean that I don't understand both sides of it. It's great to have, you know, it's great to have exclusivity, Like I can see that, I understand, I could articulate the viewpoint, but I generally look and be like, what's in the best interest of, like the broad spectrum of hunters and anglers. And when I look at that, when it comes to access, I'm generally like, generally I believe that there should be more access, enhanced access. That's my general goal in life is to see that happen, realizing that within that there will be some contentious moments in the unhappy people. But that's generally where I'm going to lean. Um on any of these case by case scenarios to come up, we gonna say about all that, honest, I like it. There's you good job in at checkerboard deal. Yeah. When you think of the revenues brought in from the outdoor recreation industry and you think of like rural communities, if you can actually make trail heads and open up outdoor activities for some of these public lands, and you're gonna see a benefit to the community in general. And and you see the numbers like seven billion with a b billion dollar industry. It's getting Yeah, it's getting close to being the outdoor industry is getting close to me in a trillion dollar industry. It'll get there. No, yeah, absolutely, people have to start paying attention to that stuff. That it's a huge sustainable economic driver. That's right, and we'll being able to go outside. It was economically valuable. And of western hunters use public lands for their access. And you think about the fact that there's some of these places where you know a quarter of the lands are land locked. Just think about all that missed opportunity. And also Bucks is hiding out there, you know, we were talking about that. It's I gonna look at that coolly on that parcel. I bet you got some Bucks in there. One of my this is early on X days. I remember driving along one time and just like happened. I was driving on my buddy that passed like a couple of years ago. We're driving down the road, um, and I have like look out, we're going Turkey hunt at one place that happened to look out and I'm looking like we're crossing this kind of coolie and uh I looked out and saw a turkey. I'm like, oh turkey remembers someone going like it's public, just like slamming on the right because like the rest of your life, you just drive baths. But now you drive around that thing open on your GPS orherever you got your phone. You just drive around going, oh yeah, look at that, look at Oh. I never knew that the little corner comes up and hits the road, you know, off you go. Yeah, That's what we're trying to make sure everybody understood is that most people probably think when they think accessing public lands, they're thinking trail head, They're thinking like this parking area. But that's truly not the case anymore. Technology. All you gotta do is drive down any road and Western United States tech the whole United States. You can be driving down an interstate and not realize the public lan that comes in touches there that you can technically park on the side of the road and start walking the knoks and crannies. Man. Yeah, we've got a lot of emails from guys over the years time about all the knooks and crannies they discovered right in their neighborhood they didn't know about. Yeah, we got a lot of emails from people are like, I used my paper match when you figured this spot out, and now there's more people here, but they're still happy about it. I found another spot, So not a big deal. And as the rest of the world has less and less of this and just becomes more and more developed, the more we have this stuff and save it. I mean, I just think that like the economic value of it, we can't even foresee what it's gonna be like in a couple of generations. We look at it as a spot. It's like, oh, it's Sage much Cooley where you can find a big buck. I might go there two to four weeks out of the year. There might be someone that flies over from Japan in the middle of July just to walk out there and go, this is the American West, And that's pretty cool that I can just walk off this road to walk into this country. And that person's air flight and then the uber ride and the you know, all that stuff. Just like it's yeah, we just don't know how valuable it's No, that's the point I'm always trying to make. What I'm talking about um land habitat preservation and stuff is uh, people are always asking, like we were just talking about it's a trillion dollar industry, Like people are always asking that, like it has to justify itself economically, that somehow wildlife habitat And it's like, and I'm glad people do it because it's to some people, it's the only thing they understand is the only thing they understand is they got to play dollars to it. So you have to play their game and be like, oh, you want to talk dollars, Yeah, I welcome it, dude, let's talk dollars, because there's some serious dollars that play here. But on the other hand, you're like, well, yeah, but it's it's not quantified, like the value of it isn't quantifiable that way, but in terms of if you do go and play the dollar game. The things that I want up trying to express the people all the time is we don't know where this whole thing is headed. But when you look at globe like just the global environment and global news around habitat, you're not reading a lot of stories about all this new habitat that's being created every day. Every day, it's every day there's a net loss. Every minute of every day there's an a loss. So in forecasting out the value of I'm not even talking pristine of open, semi pristine, publicly accessible patches of undeveloped land. You cannot anticipate what that's gonna mean in one years. If you want to just talk dollars and yeah, it's shallow existence to be one that can only look at life through through dollar bills. But there are those got any concluders yearning? No, that's it, Mark Kenny. I'm just glad you guys did this. I mean, it's it's something that to Steve's point, I don't want to be knocking you down, like you said the beginning. I was just dealing with this very issue two weeks ago, literally trying to hunt Bucks in Montana. Had this public land I want to hunt. I couldn't get to it. I thought I had permission to cross the private land to get to it. Then a week before the hunt found out, Oh no, I can't. Now I'm scrambling what happened there because the railroad deal that was three years ago. So every time I hunt Montana white tails, I'm dealing with this, I guess. So I had a piece of landlocked public land on the Dakotas. You don't run into this in the Dakotas. In this case, I didn't know, just quite a bit of it though, in the western side. So I go on. But yeah, so I So I had found this piece of public looked great. It was on the back side of some private land with with food on it alfalfa fields, and I thought I could access it publicly. Turns out that there's like gray areas around if you can use this river to access it or not. So I was like, okay, I need private land permission to make sure this is Golden had that permission this spring. So I was going to head back out this year as a I'm Golden, gonna go on for this hunt. It's gonna be great. And then the week before the hunt, I called the private land just a double check on it, just to be safe, and he's like, oh, no, I got family coming out. When You're like, remember how you were saying exactly, And so now I'm um lost, I have nowhere to go. It's a few days before the hunt. So I was going to drive out there and use my Onyx app and just drive up and down the roads, trying to look at some new spots. And so much in this drainage of this valley that was hunting. Almost all the public land that would have white tails on it, which would be along the river was landlocked. So many pieces of land life public all along there, so that I'm like, okay, well, I just need to start knocking on doors to try to get permission to hunt the public land. And luckily I stopped by the landowner's house one more time, just hoping maybe something would change, and after a nice two hour conversation, something did change and I did get that permission. And he then says, you know what, my family isn't coming. I was lying to you. I don't think it was that. I think it was more so like maybe the date range is off or something. And he's like, oh, yeah, so and so probably won't be ou until next weekend. I think I feel like, well, I haven't been there and talked to him. I feel like it was way off. And he was like, it's easier to just it's less this frictionous a word. I don't know you have caused less friction. Yeah, to be like, oh yeah, sure, go ahead. Then it's like when people say to me like, hey, man, in a year, do you want to go do whatever? I'm I was like, yeah, man, great. Right. Then when it's a month out, I'm like, oh man, what did I say? How did I make that happen? I think then when you were coming, he's like, no, no, my cousins coming. Then he met you, He's like, this guy is all right, okay, you only think that was it. I don't care how it happened. I'm just glad it happened. I certainly appreciate it. But I mean it was so that that that big white tail Bucky got public line near this place. Yeah, that's where he gets kill it. Yeah, but accessed through private accessed by a river. So that's a whole weird thing, but it should be. It's a public river, like the stream access laws allow me to walk it and fish it, but to be super safe, I also had to get permission to do that because I was accessing this public the other river to hunt. And I've heard people saying there's some weird things around that have what picked this up late? Because I've never don't can you explain that if you want me to. I've been trying to get clarification on this myself and I can't. I have never heard of so I know in Montana, you know, you're allowed to use you know, blow the high water mark for fishing, but you're not and you're allowed to use it for water fowl, honey, you're not allowed to use it for big game hunting. And so if you go below the below the high water mark and walk up a stream to access public land, it's your rifle over your shoulder. You're technically trespassing. Um. There's an exception to this though that once you jump out on the land, you're fine. You're not supposed to cross that private land even if you're below the high water mark that I have been told, though, the way to get around that is to bring your fly right or your fishing rod or whatever. And when you leave the public land and go down um into the stream, you walk with your gun packed up in your backpack or whatever, and can you fish your way up the stream when you get to the public land, then you can lose your fishing pole and grab your gun. And I'm getting uncomfortable because I feel like we're entering into an area where something's not right. I've been told by a game warden. I've been told by a game ward And that's how you do it legal La Montana. But you certainly can float down. That's one of the methods that we talked about at the Department Interior. You can float down the river to a piece of public lane and get out. You're just talking about like being on the river. Think what you're saying. Think about what you're saying. We'll say, I'm on the Mississippi River, okay, and I'm floating down the Mississippi River and on I mean, you know wherever Mark Twain's old Stomper grounds, flowing on the Mississippi River. I got private land on each side. But then all of a sudden, well here I am at the I'm down by the Daniel Boone National Forest, and I hop out of my canoe and and go hunt and be like, oh nobody. Because you've passed through land in your canoe, you're now ineligible to access public property. So it's a state law issue first off, So I don't know what's going on down there. Um, but I when I'm referring to as somebody like waiting. I I don't know how that changes if you're in a boat and you do not touch at the bottom. But it's every state's access laws are different. Every state stream access laws are different, which is why we stayed far away from that. Right in Colorado, Wyoming, UM, you cannot. With exception maybe a couple of counties you cannot. Um they don't have a stream access law that that you know, favors the public. It said, it's the landowners are in control there, and so it's different in every statement. In Montown states you can't set an anchor. That's the states. You can't hop out of your boat, that's right. And so in Montana, as I understand, if you're gonna walk down the stream through private below the high water mark to go big game hunting, you must fish while you're doing that. I was told the same thing. I thought the game ward said the same thing, and I thought that was so bizarre. But yeah, I didn't want to risk anything, so I just I'll just get permission. Be a great episode. Steve would listen you. I don't know, it's not gonna be a whole one, but listen. First off, we're gonna have a thousand emails as will clarify it. This this will not go unclarified because I'm really struggling with what I'm hearing right now. But we will. But I'm not and I'm not a certified game ward and so, and you have and you haven't presented yourself. You have not presented yourself as a subject matter expert on this particular side particular side note that Mark Kenyon so innocently raised, please verify it. Yes, yeah, and you because all you just said extra safe. You're being extra safe, which is always smart. Which it is not fun to hunt looking over your shoulder now. But to tell you truth, it was it was a little frustrating to me to have to do that, you know, to see, there's this public land right here, and then there's a public stream access law that says I should be able to that's publicly accessible via that. I could fish it, I could float it. It was a little bit confusing to me why I couldn't walk it. Huh yeah, So yeah, I mean it is what it is. I'm glad I could get in there some way and hunt it. And I appreciate the private landowner very very much. Um, I appreciate the pupa wind to ladies and gentlemen. Mark Kenyon word hunt yet any concluders, Eric just on that point. I mean in Montana, if you can put in at a fishing access that you can float down and then you see a piece of public land it's touching the river, you can get out and hunting that. Joel agrees with that, but he's just talking about you're actually walking in the riverbed. Let's just to clarify that. You know, I'm with tracking. So so I could have I don't know, God, please go ahead like taking like a little rubber boat. Rubber boat rafted, no questions asked. So I would just encourage listeners to reach out to the representatives and tell them their their support for LWCF. Yeah, don't you think? And then uh, I would also encourage listeners if they're gonna look into this a little bit more, go to Unlocking public lands dot org and read through the full report, read through all the assumptions. Well that's where all this is, yep, Unlocking public lands dot org TRCP website And yeah, you can read through the full report, read through all the assumptions, and then that might answer some of the questions you're attempted to throw out there. Yeah, we put it up on the we put up links on the mediator dot com in other places. But yeah, unlocking public lands dot org. Is that right? That's right, And there's actually additional resources on the website, um, where there's a few more details that break it down by agency in each state, as well as identifying the acre to the largest parcel in each state. And Deerk's point about contacting your congressional presentatives, there's an action page there, so we make it really easy. You can look at those findings and then send an email directly your decision makers because I think we need to be continuing to point out the importance of this issue and they need to reauthorize the line of Water Conservation Fund and in order to get it done. Yeah, when you send your message, just be like enough already exactly, everyone knows where it's going. Just get it there. It's expiring like this week, Yeah, pretty quick? Is that your concluder? Um, I'll just say that, I mean the one highlight of land Water Conservation Fund not being reauthorized permanently three years ago. As I gotta work on this school project, and um, I'm pretty excited about this I think it's it's been a fun project and I just want to say thanks to the Onyx team. They only make a great product, but you know they're a bunch of good people too. Um And hopefully this this uh, this report is you know, put to use and and after LWCF is reauthorized, you know we're able to start chipping away at this number. Yeah, I'm knocked down to knock a couple million acres off it. That's ambitious. Yeah, but I think it can be done. And I think, I mean, LBCF is like the big tool, right, but there's other things we can be looking at to and I think we're going to continue to investigate that. The image selection on the front of your report, the print version, is a provocative image because it's a mug who's walking through the woods. This guy's rifle, he's already to hunt. He's staring at his GPS up against the barbed wer fence. Is he thinking like I was gonna jump and run? Or is he you know, you just don't know what's going through his mind. Man. I like that he's confident. He's looking at his GPS, he knows exactly where that boundary is. He's like, oh, yeah, finally I'm here. This is my public easement, or maybe maybe there's public lands like a hundred yards away. That's what I see, is him being like, oh man, no he was. What he's saying is, oh man, this I saw that a huge deal over there five years ago. And I have my paper maps. It's actually blm across this film. I could have gone and gotten out if I had only known the truth. You got that was your concluder. Got a concluder, just more the same. You know what the concluder is. Yeah, yeah, I think I got it. Uh, just let's keep the pressure on for LBCF authorized. So you've come to um, you've come to admire the tool, oh for sure, Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean it was it was pretty cool to get to work on some of these inset maps. Um. You know our our analysts who really did the groundwork here, Brian Tutt. You know, we we went back and forth, um, and then we discussed things with Joel and Randall and uh, you know, we were really drilling down into some of these areas to produce these inset maps. And so yeah, it kind of brings the story alive. Yeah, that's as important for people to see like the little examples. If now you just get lost in these huge numbers, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, And I mean you can see the pretty picture and you can see the pretty map, and I think it together they they tell the story. And uh so I would encourage people to go to the website and actually take a take a peek at the report itself. I got it, I got a little I'll do that. I got a little anecdote for you here, just real quick based on the inset maps at least I mentioned so on this thirty mile Creek one, we actually found a forty acre parcel that's not on the BLM maps. And one of the things that we kind of uncovered this project is all these emergent findings. You're like, whoa, you know, like, where did that come from? And um, this is one of them. So on the beaver Tailed Barmouth example, there's this Department of Transportation example, and we're trying to figure out, well, how our Department of Department of Transportation Montana Department of Transportation lands managed. Are they open to the public or they closed? Like are they managed like DNRC lands? And come to find out, yes, access is the same between Montana, d O T and d NRC lands unless posted otherwise. However, and in talking with the Montana Department of Transportation, they're like, Yeah, there's these parcels that we own, we bought in the sixties and seventies. We don't even know we have them, and and people call us now and then asking to buy them, and that's when we realize we have them. And and then after that, after that, we we're working on this thirty mile day like, which is organ like, look, there's another forty acre parcel of BLM and so I don't think that problem is limited to the Montana Department of Transportation. Like there are, um, you know, some errors in the data. But that's one of the cool things about you know, with what on accidente with their technology is like looking at this county assessor stuff and comparing it to private lands data, is they've actually uncovered some of those parcels that aren't on your standard public land map. And that was kind of a fun little thing to that no one knew was BLM land. Well, I'm sure somewhere in some plat book in the basement of a building in Portland it's recorded as public. But when I think when they probably turned it into maps, it was missed and and so I'm sure that um it's recorded somewhere, but you know somehow when it was public, users wouldn't have way to be readily exactly exactly. So anyway, UM yeah, so check this out. Go to unlocking public lands dot org. Look at the findings, but also be sure and send a letter to your decision makers to reauthorized the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It's our most powerful public access tool. So that CONNA be the last thing anybody says, I couldn't let it go. I had to say. I thought I'm not doing my job. I appreciate that is the last thing anybody says. What Joel just said, thank you, you're your sides. Would you just said ye,