00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number four fourteen and tay the show. I'm joined by the one and only Randy Newburgh to explore the current state of affairs of public lands in America and the topics, issues, and policies that we hunters need to be paying attention to and taking action on. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First Light, and today, like I mentioned, we've got my buddy Randy Newburgh on the show, and Randy is gonna help us kick off what I'm thinking of as Conservation Month here on the Wired Hunt Podcast. It's the month of April. Got Earth Day coming up this month. You know, we're a long ways off from deer hunting season. It's that kind of time of year, at least for me, when I'm thinking about I don't know, spring, the renewal of the year, new growth, new birth of fauns and turkeys and all those different things. It just got me thinking about I don't know about giving back, about the importance of what I just mentioned conservation. If we as hunters want to be able to have a good time out in the field and fill our freezers and have wild places to explore and deer to chase, well it's on us to make sure that those things are around. And that's why hunters for so long have been some of the most impactful conservationists in the entire country. So this month I want to talk through and explore a variety of different topics along those lines. Today it's gonna be public lands. Later this month we might be exploring some things like on the groundwork we can be doing to improve habitat and and to help deer another ecs. We're gonna talk about national level stuff, We're gonna talk about state level stuff. Uh, explore a variety of different things. But today it's public land. If you hunt deer on public land, or if you have dreams of heading out west to hunt for elk or bears or mule deer, pronghorn, if you want to go out to these places, whether being the Smoky Mountains of the Rocky Mountains of the Cascades and and go backpacking or camping, if you want to have places I don't know wild beautiful rivers to go rafting or fishing, any and all that stuff. It depends on our public lands. We've talked about this a lot over the years in the podcast, but this is a topic that evolves every single year. There's new things going on. There's new opportunities, there's new threats, there's new policies being proposed, there's new bills being moved through Congress. There's new stuff going on at all levels. And one of the people who is more up to speed on that kind of stuff than anyone else in our hunting community is Randy Newburgh. I think most of you guys and girls know Randy, but if not, he is, Oh gosh, he's all over the place. You can be watching his show on YouTube or Amazon. You can be listening to his podcast. You can be following him on Instagram, his forum, hunt Talk Radio, as the podcast on your Own Adventures Fresh Tracks. He's got a lot of stuff out there. He's been doing great work when it comes to entertainment, but also educating folks on the importance of public lands, the importance of conservation, and and ways that we can actually um you know, take action as people on the ground. He's been one of those leading voices and today, you know, that's why I want to talk to him. I wanted to talk to Randy about where we stand right now with public lands. How have things progressed over the last five years, What are the good things? What are the best things that have happened over the last five years, And what are some of the things that have been done, maybe a little bit behind the scenes, that have been damaging to our wild places. What are those things we need to be keeping tabs on and trying to fix what's coming on the line now? You know, there's the pendulum as far as politics has swung again. So what threats do we need to be watching out over the next four years. What opportunities do we have over the next four years. We talked about all that and a whole lot more. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed this. It was helpful for me. I think you will feel the same way, and and I'm just glad that Randy was able to take the time to chat. So I hope you enjoyed this one. I hope you'll be tuning in for the rest of the month, as we're gonna cover a whole bunch of different things along these lines that I think will be relevant to all of us deer hunters and and any one of us that love wild places, wild critters, and and all things in between. So that's what's in store to date. Real quick. Before we get onto that, and kind of along these same lines of conservation, I want to give you a quick update on something new that has just dropped from our pals at first LFE just launched the Camo for Conservation Initiative. The basic gist of this is is, as most of you probably know if you listen to this podcast, First Light launched a white Tail specific camera pattern this past fall. Just this week, that camera pattern is available to buy on some of the white Tail gear, So if if you're looking for that kind of stuff, it is available now on the first website. But what's really cool is that this Camera for Conservation initiative launched at the same time in which First Light is penciling in a certain percentage of proceeds from every sale of specter gear. So if there's a shirt, print, inspector pants, hat, whatever it is, a percent of every one of those sales is going to be donated to the National Deer Association. It's going to them to help with habitat, work, to help with their field, the four Hunter Mentorship program, to help with all the different things that in the ND eight is doing to make sure that we have deer and deer habitat and the deer hunting traditions that matter so much to all of us. So I'm personally it's really excited about that because those are things that I really care about, and I'm glad to see the first light and the company I work for, Meat Eater, is stepping up and you know, putting our putting our money where our mouth is and and I'm proud of that and excited about that. So that's uh, that's my little update that I'm personally excited to share. And otherwise I think I should stop beating around the bush. Let's get to my conversation with Randy Newberg. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for being here with me, Thanks for tuning in, and here we go. All right with me. Now back on the show is Randy Newberg. Randy, welcome back, Mark, thanks so much for having me. I can't believe that anyone would ask me back for a second ord for whatever time. I really appreciate it. Oh man, the the thank you goes right back to you. And um, I gotta tell you this is kind of crazy. When I was thinking through this conversation and what I was hoping we could talk about, I thought to myself, and let's look back and see what I talked to Randy about last time, or you know, see how far things it comes since we last talked. And I went back to my archives and I'm trying to look, and I'm thinking, man, it must have been last year was on. I was looking through there and nothing, and then I thought, well, maybe two years before that. And I went back and looked, and I realized, I can't believe this. You haven't been on the show since two thousands seventeen. Unless I'm missing something, I don't know. I don't know how that's possible, um, but but it's it's it's a horrible overset on my part. So I cannot imagine that that much time has passed and we haven't had you on the podcast. I'm just glad that you're finally back, and uh, glad that we can talk some more. Because every time, you know, whether it's on a podcast or coffee or whatever. I really honestly appreciate and take something from every one of our conversations. Um, so I'm looking forward to this one, righty. Well, thanks Mark. That goes both ways. But since two thousands seventeen, your subscriber base in your listening audience probably grew by mounds, just master or not my growth since since since I wasn't on there, So I guess I've been. I've been known to ruin a brand in a half an hour. Well, we'll see how much damage you can do, Randy, let's test the lit it. But thanks for having me Mark. I I enjoy the times we do get to catch up, whether it's on a podcast or just on the phone or whatever. It's uh, it's always very helpful for me. Yeah. Well, you know, since you were first on the show. I think I first hedge on the show back in I don't know, it was probably of fifteen maybe, And at that point was when I was kind of going through a little bit of an awakening of understanding what was going on around me in the world of public lands. And I was, you know, learning so much about um public land policy and various contingencies and folks that were less uh, supportive of public lands, and I was, and this is when the land transfer movement was really picking up steam, and I was looking to you for a lot of insight on that. And and obviously you've been in that world for decades before I had, and obviously are so well versed on it. So at that point we're kind of at this There was this rising concern around public lands and the land transfer movement. And now you fast forward, you know, almost six years and and we're in a a different place. And I'm curious if you were to take a step back and look at how far we have come, whether it be the hunting community. Well, I'll do a two part how we've how far we've come as a hunting community and as just a public land you know this the oh gosh, I'm blanking on the right work here, But where we stand on public lands as far as from now, if you had to take a look back and say, okay, how far have we come? And are we in a better place, a worse place, the same kind of place? How do you feel like if you were to put your finger on the pulse of that randy, how do we compare now? Pair to them? All Right, I've when you're there doing it and you got your head down and you're fighting this battle and that battle and pushing the wagon up the hill, you you really think, I'm we're not making any progress. This is such laborious, just tedious effort. And now when you get to measure it in five year ten year windows, you look back and say, all right, two thousand, two thousand fifteen, the folks who wanted to grab our public lands and take them have pretty much retreated because once again they got their political teeth handed to them by thinking the public was somehow going to forget the value these lands have. And if you could have told me in two thousand and fourteen that we would have elevated the public land issue within the hunting community, with the within the total outdoor community to the level it it is at right now, that that would have cleared my my greatest wish by a mile. I because it just at the time it seems so daunting and so so much momentum to the other side and so little to our side. And through a lot of hard work, a lot of people showing how much they care, how much they're concerned, uh getting the attention of policy leaders who said oh, this was not a good idea. Who talked us into this idea? Uh? Here we are six seven years later, and I'm I'm impressed, very very impressed with how well versed the hunting community is and and to some degree, the total outdoor community, but also how engaged we are when we feel that there are issues that are going to hurt or or complicate our ability to enjoy these public lands. It's Uh, it's been an interesting journey, but we've traveled away further than I could have ever dreamed. Yeah. So if if we were I don't know, doing like an award show of the last five years, and you were gonna rank the biggest win of this five year, has half day decade period from a public land perspective, Like, what's been our biggest win? Do you think? Um, there's been a lot, there's been a lot of good things have happened, But what ranks up to the top for you? Um? Boy? That's that's interesting that you say it in a like an award show, because I would be like, okay, Rookie of the Year, a defensive mb P, m v P offensive m v P. Can your whole team if you want, Okay, I'll start with the defensive m v P. And what I look at there is there are Senate elections, at least in there in the West, where the balance of those elections hang on those swing voters in the middle and how they're going to vote based on public land issues. And I'm looking at uh, Montana, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada. Right there are eight senators who we've we've seen them all cycle through their elections in the last six or seven years, and those eight Senate seats have all bent over backwards almost tried to prove who's the most pro public land. So I'm thinking, you know, from a defensive standpoint, we've built a pretty good wall here now in some parts of the country, and and we see it even expanding to other states Washington, Oregon, UH to some degree in the Dakotas. And you know some of our greatest public land at the cats have been from the south. Uh. You know, Senator Richard Burr was he he doesn't get enough credit, I don't think for how much of a stick in the mud he was when many others wanted him to fold his tent on public lands issues. And here he is a guy from North Carolina, it's like, what, why is he this passionate about it? So I look at that and I think from the defensive side, Uh, whether we're giving ourselves the trophy or we give it out to someone else, the award goes to how good of a defense we have put together? Two force the other side to really think hard about why or how they would approach this. And when you're dealing with the Senate, that's fifty and your issues are now elevated enough in some states where you can sway an election in the US Senate. I could have never expected our issues to become that powerful on a national scale. It's it's a weird alignment of the political planets, but it's the reality. You look at the Colorado Senate election last year and it was almost how can we prove which senator is the greatest public land advocate? And in those instances, it's like, well, even if the lesser, you know, the one who isn't quite as good at public lands were to get elected, that's a whole lot better than ten fifteen years ago when it was let's bury the needle and see how bad we can be on public lands. We've spun that a hundred and eighty degrees. So that's uh, that's been really really interesting to see. Probably the offensive m VP award goes to the fact that we finally got Land and Water Conservation Fund permanently protected and fully funded, and that piece of legislation is the same age I am, Mark. I think about that. It's like who the yep, yeah exactly and not fine, Randy, sorry about that. That's fine. And so I first went my first trip to Washington, d C. Was in there was a bill called partners in Wildlife that the next year got converted to a bill called Conservation and Reinvestment Act. Don Young, a kind of a bit of a no net gain public land dude from Alaska, is the sponsor of the bill, and that bill would have done the same thing, would have permanently and permanently reauthorized and fully funded LWCF. It got killed, and I've been at EC quite a few times since then asking for renewal. And I'm just telling this through my eyes. I don't mean it in a way that I'm the only one doing it. There's hundreds of people carrying the load here. Uh, And just out of some crazy political alignment in the summer of we have a Montana Republican Senator Senator Steve Gaines, and we have a Colorado Republican senator who was Senator Corey Gardner. They were both up for re election in November just whatever, four months ago, and the President and these two senators get together and they throw the ball out there that we are going to permanently reauthorize and fully fund l w CF with this bill called the Great American Outdoors Act. When that came across my news feed, Mark, I'm like, where's the catch. We've been fighting this for I don't know what do the map twenty two years? Something's up that. That's what went through my head, and uh it got passed and ties right back to what you're saying about our defensive MBP situation, right. It was the fact that we had put so much pressure that folks fighting for re elections saw this is as their gold and goose to get in votes. Right, Yeah, exactly. And so that's uh. If you would have told me that we would uh in in that we would have seen the Great American Outdoor Act come forward and get passed by a big man majority in both houses and get signed by the President, I would have said, in what world are you living? Because I just didn't see it coming, but it did, and it's I don't know if people understand what a remarkable accomplishment that is and how beneficial that will be going forward. If I look in the rear view mirror of all of the great work that has been done because of that program and the funding it provides, we could be on a podcast for a week and I don't think I could explain every piece of access that is out there that's been it's either new access, improved access, expanded access that was brought forth because that pool of money is there. You know, I just I'm still laughing at myself doing how did that get pulled off? Well, you know, an interesting illustration of just how powerful we the people can be in this is. And I might get the exact number wrong here, maybe you remember this, Randy, But if I remember correctly, back in January or February, the administration came out with its kind of budget proposes for the year, and they were recommending something like five percent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I mean, it was basically nine less than it's supposed to be, is what they're proposing. And then months later, you know, after what you just described, after the two senators said hey, we need this as a win for us, all of a sudden, now the administration comes out in support of one funding. Uh. And it wasn't like there was this huge change of heart all of a sudden there wanted to support public land. It was it was we need votes. And that's because of us. That's because of hunters and anglers and folks that care about these places making a concerted ruckus. I mean, and that right there proves the power that we can have. Yeah. And some people will say, well, it only happened because uh, people were seeking their political salvation. Oh well, I'll take it that. That's kind of the Unfortunately, you know, the unfortunate way it works in today's world is very often do both sides get together and say, hey, this would be great for America. There's so much political calculus they go into it, so much paying of political favors that you try to now play the game to position it. So, how do we make sure that when political favors are being repaid, or when political calculus is being put on the white board, that our issues are part of the consideration and take the win when you get it. So, I mean you were young during the time period and ask you abous. I don't know how much insight you have or not. But back in the you know, late Sick Seas in early seventies, a lot of these environmental and public land related issues were at least if you believe the history books, they were They were by Parson, they were supported by most everyone. It was a fight to show who was the best for these things. It was you know, a lot of these really important piece of legislation were passed it or signed underneath Republican presidence, um, Congress, etcetera. Um. Was it really hunky dory back then? And it will never be able to get back to it? Or are we actually getting back to what was present last year? Which or not last year? But back in the sixties and seventies, which was it was just a political necessity, like is the will we ever get back to something like that? Or are we getting there? I think it comes and goes. Uh. And I remember being five years old when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio started on fire, and you watched that on Back then you had three news network and were tuned in for the six o'clock news, and here are tugboats floating on the river trying to put the fire out on the river. That was such a powerful image and such a powerful event that even at five years old, you didn't really understand it, but you sure heard a lot of people talking about it. There were jokes about, you know, this river started on fire, or the joke of you know, only Americans can figure out how to burn water. And so from that you see these things like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, uh, you know, public land management acts. It was really the tenor of the times in the late sixties through the seventies. Uh, and then it started changing some again in the in the eighties. And I think you see a generational you know, every twenty years or so, you see these ebbs and flows in it. And I think we're in one of those times where we're going to start seeing some of that, hopefully go back. I mean, how many times do we have to see algae blooms kill off hundreds of thousands of fish. How many times do we have to have waterfowl or migratory birds land in a place and they all die from some chemical exposure. So we're seeing some of these same symptoms that come and go. Uh, and I'm hoping. I mean, look at all the work we now have found out about, at least in the west migration corridors, and that migration corridor work is some of the most compelling, some of the most interesting, and some of the most valuable work that has been done in the wildlife sciences in my lifetime. And so here we are, we're back to that, and people are paying attention to it, and we're making landscape changes, we're adjusting human behavior patterns and human uses on the landscapes to address that. But there's always going to be the other side of the coin, where if you read the most recent study on sage grouse, we've lost eight of our stage grouse since so there's always the one, you know, the old canary in the coal mine. Uh. And so there's always more to do, and the urgency of doing it gets to be greater and greater and greater. And just about all of it comes back to the use of the land, the habitat the land itself. Uh. You know, all the loophold was written about that in the thirties and forties, and here we are today it still applies and so we've got a ton of work to do, but I think we are building more and more of a resolve to do the hard work, and I'm seeing it in all this stuff related to migration corridors. I think we're gonna have to get there with sage grouse. And sometimes the big club that gets used is the threat to you know, hey, we're gonna put them on the endangered species list. Well, that that's the last thing you want you if you're in that situation, you now are in such a bad spot. You've you've let yourself get in in hot water. So how do we change landscape issues to improve the future. For in this example, I'm using sage grouse, how do we get them back up to where they should be so that someone doesn't have to come and bring the big club. And I do think that a lot of groups, whether they're industry, extraction, resource businesses, the general pub black the even down to the local level, they have examples to look at, to say a boy, when someone comes in and says this is now an endangered species, we really are out of options and we're gonna get told what to do. And hopefully people have learned those lessons along the way, and this awareness uh will continue to grow and and we'll have a better place for our public lands and our waterways and stuff like that. I know it doesn't happen quickly, it doesn't happen easily, but I do think America, if we're unique in some ways, it's that we do have a lot of value on our wild things and wild places, and we just got to give that voice and and some political uh priority. And I think I've seen it in the last few years. I'm keeping my fingers. Hey, we're the pendulum is coming back, and let's keep it there as long as we can. Yeah, you mentioned how you know so much of what's most important is you know what's actually happening on the ground, how these places are being used. And you know, over the past few years, we've had these big wins like the Great American Outdoors Act and the Dingled Junior Act, which was the year before which UM did a lot of good things on these same lines. But at the same time, there has been what you know, you and I have talked about in the past, this kind of death by a thousand cuts, little things happening behind the scenes a little bit, and if you weren't really paying attention, you wouldn't realize that stuff like the stage sage grouse plan, like there was all this work done over a number of years to develop these compromises around trying to keep the sage grouse off the endangered species list by having some really um I don't know if innovative is is the right word, but like some strong ideas about how everybody can proactively um move forward with conservation efforts, whether it be ranching or energy or uh development. There are all these things put in place to make sure there's a conservation plan to keep stage grouse from going further into decline. These were agreed on back in I can't remember the year twenties sixteen or something like that. And then over the last few years the previous administration cut back on a lot of that stuff, and and so we went we went down, or we went kind of backwards on that. We've gone backwards on things like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge being opened up for leasing on the coastal plaine m We went backwards on protection for the boundary waters as they started moving forward, or allowing permitting on a mine right on the edge of the boundary waters. There's a bunch of things like that that have kind of moved in the wrong direction. So we're seeing like some top level things that looked really good as far as headlines, and then there were these other things that were much more related to land use, um, etcetera, etcetera, that or less. So do you feel like, I guess how do you feel about that side of things, because we have some some legislative winds, but we've had a lot of things when it comes to the quality of the environment or how some of these places are being utilized that have been more discouraging. Um. Where do you feel like things are going on that front? Uh? I think in this is the nature of our political system is there are things that can be done by executive or administrative governments, and then there's stuff that requires actual act of Congress. As much as we joke, you know how taking Act of Congress. Uh, some of that legislature or some of that administrative executive stuff, those are danger areas. That's where we can quickly use ground can lose ground because there's there's not necessarily the political pressure that can be brought to bear. There's a lot more. I don't mean this in a bad way. I could have so many great friends who work for land management agencies, but it's easier for someone to exercise their will in that scenario versus something that requires an Act of Congress to change it. Uh So we have definitely taken some steps back as it relates to that. And it's it's also a function of our system. Um I do feel that two. And this is just an observation of my life and how we as our citizens interact in this stuff and how we look at topics and issues. You know, I'm gonna say, in the last ten years, we have lost most of our local media and you know, whether it's your local newspaper, your local TV station, and we can more of our media online. Well, the online media sources we get are more national and not local, not regional, so our issues get framed in these big national our versus D left versus right binary discussion and so people start either ignoring their local issues or they see their local issues for or through the lens of what team am I on. And that's really damaging to a lot of those things you're talking about. Where before we we started having that, if someone were to come and say, you know, we're gonna significantly manipulate this huge piece of wildlife habitat or this water shed, and it was done by an agency or an executive order, I'm pretty sure that people wouldn't have cared what quote unquote team they were on. They would have showed up, piste off and they would have stop that. Now it's almost like, well, I'm on this team, so I can't say anything. And a big borrow. What I spend my time trying to convince people is if you are on that team, that's even more burden upon you to be the one who speaks up. Uh. And I don't like to make these political discussions and and such, but they really are mark you and I see how this plays out that these groups who want to manipulate either landscapes or species or whatever, they've realized that the best way to do that is through our political processes. Because if you do it over here in our fish and wildlife commissions are you know, state environmental quality boards. Those people have trained scientists, they have they know their stuff, and they're more accountable to the citizens. So what do you do. You take the issue and you bring it to a state legislature, or you bring it to Congress, and there you've got a citizen legislature. Right, they're mostly attorneys or they're whatever else. They don't they're not subject experts on any of this stuff, so they can easily be swayed to go that direction. And all of the work we've done building our mechanisms are institutions to protect and promote and advocate for things of wild places and wild things. We've got it all set up for commissions and you know, all the fish, wildlife parks or whoever it is, the Clean Water Commission, and all of a sudden they do at one eight on us. And we got to fight these things in legislatures and in Congress, and we're just really bad at it. And so right now, uh, we got a lot of uh we need some uh what do the NFL call it O T A s uh organized team activities and the off season we got a lot of O T A time here that we gotta get up to spat because right now we're not fielding a very good team when it comes to combating that stuff. Uh. And you see it and how some of these steps, how we lost a lot of ground over the last few years. Yeah, So yeah, like you mentioned this much too, you know, our dismay. A lot of this stuff has become political and like you said, one team, I mean right, historically, at least over the last handful of decades, when the pendulum swings Republican, we're really good on guns, We're good on hunting rights and that kind of stuff, but we are less good on things like the environment and public lands when it was the other way. If it swings Democrat, bad on guns and hunting rights, stuff like that, but good on public lands and the environment. Um, so we can have a whole another conversation about gun rights and hunting rights. But but sticking on the topic of public lands and environment for now. Right now, right we have a Democratic president, Congress, etcetera. Um, that's where the pendulum is right now. So at least on the public landing environment side, do you do we have an opportunity there for those specific issues? And if so, you know, what's are you optimistic about that over the next few years? What's the opportunity? Um? What what should we do to take advantage of of this this good part of things maybe if if if I'm right on that, Yeah, Um, that's one that's shaking out right now as the new administration is putting together their leadership and who's going to fill a lot of the under secretary positions and in the actual people who oversee the departments and the agencies. Uh some of that stuff. As I'm watching who's coming through the door, it's like, man, can we ever hit the middle? You know? Before four years ago and we go on through this process, it was like the first credential you needed is you had to be a lobbyist for one of the resource industries. And I say that with full disclosure that I come from a logging background. I mean my family we were resources people. But that doesn't mean that's the only voice that gets you or the only credential that gets you a position to represent our land management agencies and all the things that go with that. And now I'm looking at some of the nominations are not nominations, but some of the appointments at the lower these mid levels, like below the secretary, and it's like, Wow, some of these people don't have a very favorable opinion about hunting or what role hunting plays in some of this stuff, and so I don't I'm always let's give everybody the benefit of the doubt. And judge based on the actions. So I'm I'm a little bit of a wait and see on this at this point. I'm hopeful like that I've always been hopeful. I'm I'm the optimist I thought four years ago. Okay, let me see what are the good values some of these people will bring to the table, And hopefully they'll this or they'll that, you know, And then if they don't, I'm gonna have to you know, me and and all of us and involved in this and concerned about it, we're gonna have to push back. And the same will be the case here. There will be some of the places where they swing the pendulum. Uh. It's like, no matter the issue, when we have a change of administration like this from one party to another, the pendulum on every issue is going a hunter navy degrees the other direction. So our job is to make sure that pendulum doesn't go all the way out, you know, where it just has such a wide stroke that no one's going to be happy because then the next time it comes back the other way even further. And I think if they're one thing, hunters, anglers, those of us connected to the land and landscapes the way we are we've been more of that moderate level of Hey, we don't need to go way over here, we don't need to go way over there. Let's focus on the land, the water, the clean air, the habitats, and let's find a way to do it. You know, people, if you say we want some restrictions or some better mitigation or whatever, instantly people want to say, oh, well don't you drive a car. Well, yeah, I drive a car. I eat my house with natural gas. What I'm saying is I would pay more to reflect the true costs of what my gas tank and my natural gas and my air conditioner, my electricity. I am saying I'm willing to pay more because I see the impact out on the landscape, and I think my generation has a responsibility to pay for rather than abuse it and hand a desolate landscape off to the next generation. That's what we're saying when we asked for restraints and guidelines and and actual science and consideration for the bigger picture. And that's a harder place to advocate for because the fringe on either side can just say, oh, you're against this or you're against that. You're no, I'm I'm I'm here for the same middle I'd like to thank Uh yeah, a party that rarely gets hurt unfortunately. Right yeah, And so what's that look like going forward? You know, if we have this conversation in four years, it'll be interesting to look back in the rear view mirror and say, I didn't see that coming. Are yeah, I knew that was coming. Are all right? Yeah, we got that problem fixed, or we put this in place. And uh, the thing I realized in my years to do in this is that the and this goes back to this nationalizing of our issues, right you. You framed it very well marked where the Democrats are known to be uh friendlier to the landscape and the water and the air, and the Republicans are want to be known as you know what, we protect your guns. You're blah blah blah whatever. I work with a lot of people who almost cross that divide, you know. Give an example, Congressman Mike Simpson from Idaho submits a bill after twenty some years of work to say, let's breach the dams on the Lower Snake River because it's ruining salmon and steelhead habitat. It is We're gonna lose these species and these runs if we don't do something more. And we've skirted around the edges for so long. I'm here, I'm willing to introduce a bill that's going to cost US already billion dollars over the next I don't know, decade or two. So if we were to say all Republicans are, you know, painted this way, where does that leave what? Then then there's no place for a Mike Simpson in the world. In the flip side. Senator Martin Heinrich, Senator John Tester, You're not going to pass any gun control through the Senate with those two in a sate with those two guys there, because they're very good on guns. So if we say every Democrat is whatever on guns, where does that leave Tester and Heinrich? So I I used to it's so much easier to view it through the binary good or bad, you know, left right R D. But every piece of progress we've ever made, whether it's moving the ball forward or keeping the dozers from pushing us back, it's been because we had people on both sides who who were willing to to listen. Yeah. The rub then is how do we create more people like that and get them to get them in office? That's what I'm always that. I would say that occupied more of my time right now, Mark than any of this policy stuff, because right now we have state legislatures in session. In Michigan, are you guys a year round legislature. I'm honestly not sure about that, right, Okay, Well, in Montana we're biennial, so every two years they meet for ninety days, and we wish that they met for two days every ninety years because it's it's always chaos. And I look at the legislatures are in session in Idaho and my only Colorado, and you know, pretty much every state I look around, legislatures are in session and we have this tenor this this extremism on both sides that is not reflective of what got us here. And I don't care if it's our issues, whatever issues it is. And so you're back to your question of how do we get more of those people to the table, or how do we get more of those people elected. That's the riddle we have to solve, because we can fight this game to the ends of the time, but really we've got to get to the core of it, and the core of it is how do we get the elected people to understand our case and represent our cause, or how do we I mean, if they don't already understand it, how do we get them to understand it? Or how do we get people elected who bring that perspective with them when they go there? So easier said than done, considering how much it costs to to play in the election space I mean, today's world, from from my uneducated perspective at se, seems like what you get is when you get down to like the primary level or the state legislature level, the the majority of the voters that are active when it's at that level tend to be those that are really really engaged, and that might mean that they are a little bit farther left or farther right. So the people that are making the decisions about who gets into gets to that level of the conversation, the people that are voting at that level, they're pushing it farther and farther to the outside. And by the time you can if you can get through that filter, the only people that made it past that point up to the national level have already been screened by the extremists on either side, and so you only get people that are catering to the far of far side of each base. You never get the moderate. A moderate can really rarely or less common than otherwise. You can't get with a moderate set of positions up to the level we're talking about. Um. Not that they're on exceptions, there are, as you described, but it just seems harder and harder to do that. So is the solution that we have to start getting really active at that local or state or or active in the primary level of things to start getting something going there. Yep, it does. And that's that's what hunters don't want to hear. They don't want to They don't like politics. First of all, their common sense people who say, why should we even have to fight and argue about this stuff? It's common sin. But that's the reality we're faced with. And then if you look at a map, I beture if you took a map of Montana, I have I've looked at the Montana on and if you looked at a similar map in Michigan, you would say, how did they come up with this geographic boundary for House district whatever or Senate district whatever. Well, through jerrymandering, they all get together and say, well, we need the next number of districts that are just super safe Democratic districts and super safe Republican district Well, as quick as you do that, you don't need any bait in that district. You know who's going to carry the day. It's going to be the R or the D just because of how they got together and and arranged the district. So again you get the craziest fringe people possible. And that's why if if there is any place of moderation in our politics, it probably is the US Senate. As much as someone believe that because US sentence races aren't gerrymandered, you have to appeal to the entire population of your of your state. And so uh yeah, they now cost fifty uh fifty two hundred million per side. But your point of are we going to have to start getting more engaged, Yes, absolutely, it's it's going to become part of the the it should almost be part of training in in hunter education, and I mean on our platforms. This spring we started a series called Civics for Hunters. Because I've been spending so much time on this stuff. I've been to Hell on a multiple times, phone calls, meetings, It's I'm in my head I'm like, I don't have this much time, and I feel like it's David and Goliath for all of us who are trying to fight this. And I'm thinking, all right, how do we educate our audience? Is about one, what's at stake? How we got to where we are today, and how we can get out of this and get every answer involved some of what you referred to, and that's hunters are going to have to become more political, politically active, al right, So would that be the case? The term is always like knowing where to focus because I try to stay pretty darn up on all this stuff, and even I can't and and it's my job. Um, the average person out there has got a million other things going on and they can only devote so much time to reading about these things, getting educated, spending time calling people, etcetera, etcetera. So so if we're just looking at the next three and a half years, let's just focus on like what's happening now, who's who's in office right now? And continue with the kind of football analogy. Um, I'm curious about what is your top priority from an offensive perspective for us? So, what's one opportunity that we can focus on going out and getting and then what is one defensive priority? What's one thing we really need to be careful to make sure we don't get attacked on or get a big loss on. Is there two things that may pop to mind that we can think about. Yeah, I think offensively, if we could get back to more uh CRP Conservation Reserve Program National or NAH Wetlands Conservation Act funding for wetland these months. Uh, those do unbelievable things for our egg producers. Uh. You know, when you get in a trade war with China, you don't lose your CRP payment, you know, your shoybean or your corner your grain payments might go down. And you look at the amount of money we've spent in the last however many years propping back up prices because of trade wards related to agriculture, and now producers because of those super thin margins, have to farm every single inch. There's no fence rows, there's no hedgerows, there's there's nothing left at there. You can see that in White Ceil country for sure. Yeah. And so how do we convince are elected officials that this is good for small town, this is good for the farmer and the egg producer. It's good for the land, it's good for the water, it's good for wildlife, it's good for all of us. Somehow along the way, these type of conservation programs got thrown under the bus in the politics, got run through the political machine. So if I was if I was allowed to diagram what our game plan would be, I would say, let's get let's go on offense with more conservation funding that helps the people on the ground. Let's pay them to do the right thing and and right by everybody, right by the land, right right for themselves. And let's quit having to spend so much money on tariff or to uh price supports because of tariffs and all the I mean, that's such a complicated discussion, but suffice to say, and it's simplified manner. It costs US billions and billions of billions of dollars when we get in trade wards that involve egg products. Are there other ways we could be reallocating some of that money, taking some of the land out of production, which would bring prices back up in just about every model. We'd have to pay less in price supports that could go to CRP And you know, whatever the program is there's wet lens. There's there's the old what is it, the whip program. I think it was called w R E P. There's yea, there's all kinds of those programs, and we have lost so many of those over the years. And uh, you know CRP. Everyone says, oh, that's really good for birds. Guess what, it's some of the best deer program the best deer habitat in the northern plains, the foothills of the Rockies, A lot of that was CRP ground. That's when we had our best deer hunting, best bird hunting, songbirds, you name it, our water quality, the whole work. So from an offensive standpoint, that's where I would like to see us go. And that's a that's a farm bill conversation for for folks that aren't familiar. That's those programs are all part of the farm bill, which which I think the next farm bill UH comes up in Uh is that right? Ready? Do you know? I think I'm pretty sure yeah, I should know that. Uh. I think you're right on that mark. I would have to look it up and see. UM. So to me, that's that is where we should be on the offense. Uh. On the defense. I think we're gonna have to think about and I'm trying to think of how to say this without it coming across weird. But uh, we have so many instances where people are going to try to chisel around the hedges, whether it's let me divert some of the land and water conservation funds, let me change how funding of Pittman Robertson happens, or how the money can be used. Let me divert some of this, let me do some of that, let's get let's change the tax code so that conservation easements are no longer allowed. Right now, in the Montana legislature, we are battling all kinds of conservation easement restrictions that and you look at that, and you say, where does this come from? Well, where it comes from is there are groups on the national level, very very conservative groups who do not like what they call the law of perpetuities. Uh, in a conservation easement is I'm going to restrict the use of my property and perpetuity. Some people say that's just a complete violation of everything they believe to be the case for property rights, because whoever inherits or buys that property or takes it over takes its subject to that perpetual restriction. And so I I use that as one example where the tax code is used to chisel around the edges. UH, budget processes are used to chisel around the edges. Those are things that it goes back to that death by a thousand cuts mark where people are like, well, how do I know about all this? How how am I supposed to stay informed? Well, that's part of what the value you get when you become a member of the many many national or state groups. And I know people don't want to check that box that says keep me informed. Please check that box when you sign up with your membership to say please keep me informed, because that's part of what they're doing. They're making you aware of these kind of things. Yesterday I got an email from the Rocky Mountain ol Foundation that said, Hey, alert, there's a bill in the Montana legislature that says nonprofit organizations cannot buy farm ground of more than eighty acres. I just reading about this today. Yeah, Well, that means every public land access program we had and that we've built in Montana that got us UH new Force service access, new BLM accesses, UH whether and here's how it normally happens. Army F goes and buys three hundred acres that has access to thirty thousand acres, and Army F takes that three hundred acres and gives it to a state agency or gives it to the federal you know, the BLM or Force Service. So they only hold it momentarily, but they're the actual transaction party who puts it all together, brings all the funding sources, and as quick as they get it done, they immediately turn it over to an agency. Same with the Nature Conservancy, same with the Trust for Public Lands. And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of acres of access that we have lost or that we will lose if bills like that happen. And it's great that these groups, whether it's Army F, b J, TROUT, Unlimited, t r c P, it's great that they're notifying of a note buying us of this stuff because we got to act, we've got to speak out. And that always brings the next question of all, no one's gonna listen to me. Yeah they will if you and enough of your friends email or call your senator or your legislator, your state legislator, your your congress person. It doesn't take too many to get their attention. And I would tell everyone in your phone you should have the capital switchboard number at the US capital two oh two to two four three one two one, and you should have the same capital switchboard number in your phone for your state legislature. And don't give them a break. And I know people say, oh, they're not gonna listen to me, They listen to you. Trust me on this. It's just that if we have this defeatist attitude that no one's paying attention, no one cares about what I have to say, So I'm not going to call, I'm not going to email. Well, they're not mind readers. Why do you think Jason Travitz withdrew his bill to sell all that public land and one once at two thousands, seventeen or eight two because people picked up the phone and people made it or send emails. So don't don't say that they don't listen. They do. It's just that we too often have the defeatist attitude that they're not going to listen, and we use that as our excuse or why we're not going to engage. You know, the interesting thing is you know, you mentioned how it's how it can be painful for us as hunters to have to get involved at the local level or at the state level because we don't want to get into this nasty civics politics kind of stuff. But the one upside is that at that level, each individual voice matters more. You know. I mean at that level, these people, if they hear from a tho some people, that is overwhelming. Let you know, compared to at the national level, maybe they hear from hundreds of thousands of people at times. You know, we do have greater influence at this level. Um, But you brought up these examples in Montana, and I don't know if it's just because I'm tuned into it more or if it's for real. It just feels like there's a lot of stuff coming out of Montana right now, stuff like that that bill you just mentioned, all the things related to two Predators, um, everything around the the Game Commission right now with these different hunting you know, uh, whether yet non resident allocations of tags and outfitter um preference and there's a lot of stuff happening. Um, what's going on in Montana? Well, I mean, Andrew McKean was denied a commission. Um, what's going on in your state? Right? Yeah? So Andrew, you know, he was appointed to fill one of the positions of one of the five positions of our Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission. U great guy. I mean those of you who know Andrew from his days he was the editor at Outdoor Life, just such an articulate, thought thought out, well spoken guy. So, and I'm gonna use Andrew as the example that that is the symptom of the disease we have here in Montana. And it's not just in Montana. I think when I explain it this way, people will see it's widespread. Uh. Andrew the getting new governor, get a new legislature, and they have to renew Andrew's position. The state Senate does, Uh. So it goes to the Senate Fishing Game Committee. There's a hearing on his appointment, and there wasn't one single piece of testimony either in person that we're doing zoom testimony here. Also, Uh, that was against Andrew, not one. And I don't know of anybody who wrote the commission or wrote the Senate and said I don't like Andrew. He lost on a purely partisan vote. Seven Republicans voted against him and four voted for him, four Democrats. And after the vote, the chairman of that committee gets up and says, it's a new day in town, and we're going to do what the governor wants us to do. In other words, hell with all you people, let's send us here, Hell with all of you who commented and testified. We're we're here to do what we want to do. And some would say, Randy, that flies in the face of what you just said a little bit ago about they listen to us, Well, they listened. They listen to you more if you're active. Let's put it that way. Uh. And so what's the what's what's the reality of what we're dealing with in Montana. Well, what we're dealing with in Montana is we have over the course of years where you were talking about how you know, you can get very active people and you get the far fringe of one side and the far fringe of the other. And that's what we have in Montana right now. We have a supermajority of one party that has a supermajority in the House, supermajority in the Senate, owns the governor's seat and all of the other four statewide offices, and so the crazies are having their go of it right now. But even within the supermajority group, there are some same people. I'm talking to them all the time and they're like, Randy, we're trying our best, man, but your people got a way in. Where are the hunters on this? We need emails, we need phone calls, get them here. And these are people within that party who are saying, we're you know, there's only eight or ten of us. We're on your side, but you better show up or you're going to get wiped out. So right now we're seeing the whip lash effect. And some folks would say, how is it. Montana used to have two Democratic senators and you had sixteen years of democratic governors. What we saw in the election was the trend identified earlier of the nationalization of our elections. We had are the any local news coverage that people were consuming. I mean it was there, but people aren't consuming it. People are watching the national cable news networks. There. They believe that Facebook is news, so they're getting it from social media, and so we've lost all the nuance of how this stuff applies to Montana, and it became an election of anyone with a D next to him was the reincarnation of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, when most of our D s here in Montana would be considered pretty right of center folks in Connecticut or New York or California or wherever. But and I'm not saying that, you know, woe was me or this or that. I'm just saying these are lessons we can look at and say, this is what happens when we lose any local or regional media of substance. This is what happens when we get lazy as a voting public and say, someone make up my mind for me. Let the algorithm of Facebook tell me what news I should consume, which most of it is not even news, it's paid sponsored bs. And on both sides, that's what we in We kind of got the government we voted for, the government we deserve, because if we're going to be that lazy that we're not going to go out and find our own into pennant media sources. If we're that type that we'll spend a hundred dollars a month at the coffee shop. But we won't spend five dollars for a subscription to our local newspapers. That's actually talking about the issues that are going to affect us. If we're so lazy that we're gonna let Facebook or Google or whoever tell us what really is the news or how the news should be spun, well we're gonna end up with these kind of outcome. So I know some people be like Newberry that is way out in the weeds, but it's it's what I saw happened here in Montana, and so yeah, everyone outside of Montana is calling what what what are you guys drinking out there this legislative session, And it's just we it's a perfect storm of where we have gerrymandered our districts, we have disengaged from the primary process, something you brought up earlier as being per important, and now we got the crazies. It's crazies on one side against crazy as on the other. And I'm not saying they're all crazy, but the ones who the ones who get voted to the leadership within these caucuses are pretty fringe, whereas the the rest of them are you know, they're they're trying to do what they think is good. But there's some very politically ambitious people who get into this process for the power that they can obtain, and they've realized the farther out on the fringe, I get in an in an environment like this, the greater my voice, even though the rank and file person on main street is like, what the heck is that person thinking? Yeah, I voted for him, But man, I don't get it. Well, if you voted for him and you're having that feeling of what is this person doing, please call them and say or email them and say, hey, I voted for you, but I think this is a stupid idea. Uh, just because you vote for someone. This is another thing in the American tradition that is new people are of the opinion that if I voted for this person, I can't push back on them. My comment is you're the one who should push back on them. You're the one who can hold them more accountable than anybody else because they know that you're the You're part of the reason. You and people like you who think like you are how they got elected. So I think it's more important for people within those groups to push back on the folks they voted for you. So, yeah, so so a lot of the stuff we talked about, it's it seems like a lot of where things are headed is needing to get more engaged at a deeper level sooner than maybe historically we have. So I want to talk I want to kind of shift to a few more issues or more specific issues that might be things at least that have been on my radar that that maybe we could just learn a little bit more that folks can keep tabs on when it comes to public land stuff. UM. One of them you brought up earlier, which is migration corridor UM issues. And there's been a lot of interesting studies you mentioned. There's been I think a lot of insights as far as how animals use these wider landscapes than maybe we realize. Like a prong horn or mule deer or an elk does not realize that the borders of Yellowstone National Park only go to here, or that the national forests go there, right, they don't operate on that kind of scale. UM. Same thing with bears or wolves. UM. But there was there's a piece of legislation, that legislation that passed the House last year UM called the Wildlife Quarters Conservation Act. UM I'm curious if you know anything more about the future of that or or anything else related to migration corridors or the protection of you know, these connective tissues that that allow animals to move from this protected area to that protective area, or anything on your radar related to that, because I think that it's seeming like that's becoming more and more important for the long term health of wildlife, as as so much of our wild spaces are being developed or cut down or or or whatever, just as human pressure pushes on all sides. You look at your home turf there in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, right, I mean Bozeman and Idol Falls and all these different towns, more and more people growing, growing, growing. Um, you're just seeing these spaces slowly being chipped away at and finding ways to to allow wildlife to still be able to move where they need to seems increasingly important. Um, what's what's on your radar on that front? Yeah, you bring up a really cool piece of legislation, mark the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act. The benefit of it was it was it had a answer from each side of the aisle, so it was not a real contentious bill but it died due to the bigger picture of politics of well, we don't want this person to have a win because if they get a win, you know, we got an election coming up in the fall of So I'm hopeful that either this bill or parts of it will end up in possibly the infrastructure or the transportation bill that the current administration is going to put forward, because a lot of these corridor things are related to highways, bridges, stuff like that in development. Uh, there is already talk at the federal agency level to move corridor studies and funding and planning to higher levels so that get that part of it can be done just through administrative ruler, through management of the agencies, but actual funding for more research, for more mitigation that's going to come from Congress. And uh, I think that that bill there. Uh even if there, you know, there's always some piece that somebody doesn't like. Okay, if we got to get rid of some little piece of that. Okay, let's not let perfection get in the way of progress, and let's get it past because we're talking about so many critical things here and the the amount of uh, what would I say, elasticity to the landscape and to these migration corridors is not very high. And the margin for error that we have today compared to thirty fifty years ago, is nowhere near what it was back then. We gotta get this right, and we've got to do it quickly. So with a bill like that, I just if anyone's interesting, go google the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act. Uh, see who the sponsors were, and uh, you know, reach out to your legislative, your your caucus, or your delegation and tell them that you support that bill. And however it gets, whether it's that bill itself or it's something similar to that, you know, in the transportation bill, the infrastructure bill, let people know. And uh, he'd be surprised. How often, you know, eight or ten people email on the same thing, and all of a sudden you get his staff or calls and says, hey, what's going on with this? You know, all of a sudden, we started hearing that people are concerned about the migration corridor for pronghorn. Oh, well, here's what it is. Oh if we didn't know that, let's let's make sure that gets put in the highway bill or the transportation bill. Uh, how that stuff works. I know it sounds like ninth grade cymmics, and it really is. But uh, it's a bill like that or and because often what we see as a bill comes forward and any time you introduce something, that's when you identify who are the people who don't like parts of it, and you hear why they don't like parts of it. Okay, maybe we didn't get it past this Congress or the next congress or this legislative session. There are parts in it that are not controversial, so let's get those pieces going forward. Because wildlife corridors, once they're gone, all the study shows that animals don't relearn their migration. They stop once the corridors are gone. Usually the population disappears and you can you know, relocate or translocate new members of that species, but they don't have the learned behavior to conduct the migrations. And so once they're lost. If if a migration was an organism, it would be extinct once that corridor is gone. And in some of these corridors, we're talking, you know, a half mile wide. So when we're allocating our conservation funding dollars that half mile wide gap, we're ten thousand alk migrate out of Yellowstone. We might want to think about that, because if that half mile wide gap disappears, so does that migration, and so does probably that heard about and all the other species dependent upon them. So if I remember right, Randy, and I want you to fill the gaps here. But if I remember right, some of the things included in that bill would have been funding for stuff like wildlife overpasses, you know, the bridges that go over highways to the animals crossroads. There would be uh funding for conservation easements I think on private land would make sure that some of these important areas didn't get developed and they stay open for wildlife. UM. I think there was something in there about prioritizing, like if we are going to do any land acquisition for growing public land pieces, these connective tissue kind of areas will be prioritized. I think there's something like that. What else is in that bill or that type of bill that we should be thinking about advocating for telling our our representatives like, hey, we support this tactic or this specific thing. Is there anything you can recall? Yeah, I didn't think it was enough money. I think it was only fifty million dollars and people are gonna be like, what that's a lot of money. But when you think about the cost of doing this, Uh, you earlier showed that wildlife when it leaves, it doesn't know when a cross one boundary to another. A lot of these critical migration corridors go through private land or through tribal lands or whatever. If there's a private land steward out there who has done a remarkable job of maintaining their landscape and preserved this migration corridor, seems to me we should We would be well served to go and buy an easement from them to say, this corridor here, we want you get to keep the land, but we want to buy any development rights, any any surface impact rights for you to keep that open for wildlife and and we'll pay you a full market value and you get to keep the land. That So that was one of the things that was in there, and it got some blowback of well, you know, if they don't allow us public access, we shouldn't we shouldn't be spending the money. Yes we should, because that might be a meal there heard or elk or what you know, who knows what it might be moves or that are migrating from this winning public lands to the summering public land, and the critical pinch points in their migration might be on private So, uh, that was one of the things that was in there. A lot of it was building a database about wildlife connectivity, and some people are concerned about a big national database about wildlife connectivity. In other words, how do migration corridors connect wildlife species to their winter rangers, their summer rangers. What are these transition rangers? Because they're like, well, if they do that study and my private land ends up being one of the critical corridors, you know, is that gonna put me on some target list or you know, am I gonna no longer be able to exercise my property rights? Stuff? Stuff like that. It's some of those, in my mind are strawman arguments. Uh, but that's it's stuff like that that was in there. Uh. A lot of times. There's also just fencing where you can put fencing along these places where there's known migrations to keep them from crossing in random spots and you force them to use an underpass or an overpass because of the fans act like a funnel, and you keep them you reduce collisions significantly, which affects the population in the survival of the population, but we also got to look at the bigger picture of what are we doing to allow them to naturally go where they've always went. Uh, their studies going on in Arizona about Interstate forty and how their pronghorn used to move a lot, and now that they call her them, you see where they're moving north and south until they hit I forty and then they just move east and west because it's that much of an impairment impediment to their trail. So uh, that bill would have had stuff like that, and it was money and directive to say, let's not allow for any more habitat, fragment at or loss. And it would have provided a lot of granting to states because a lot of the state highways and and stuff like that, or a lot of the state wildlife agencies know where this stuff is. So uh like that it's interesting stuff, and it it makes a lot of sense. And and and I've been reading a lot about this idea called island bio geography um, which which your you might be already aware, but for folks listening just it's it's kind of looking at the way that wildlife populations thrive and evolve and and um move forward in constrained areas like it like an island. But when you study wildlife on an island, you see something that's very similar to what happens in a region that functionally is an island. Like we'll say the Yellowstone ecosystem, which is uh a central ecosystem of of all this protected lands surround did by you know, development cities, open country that's used in other in other ways, and so certain wildlife species essentially can't connect with another island of other protected land. Let's let's say it's the island of Yellowstone and then the island of the Northern Rockies um up in Glacier National Park, bomb Marshal, that kind of thing. Like, there's there's a lot of talking about how do you connect these places so that there can be transfer across from one to the other. Because if if we get these islands like that that keep getting cut away on the edge, just death by a thousand cuts, they keep getting smaller and smaller, and the border on the outside, while not a physical wall, becomes a stronger and stronger border because now instead of you know, thousands of acres of open range land or farms that the wildlife would use. Maybe now it's becoming little ranchets and housing developments and malls and all that. So this whole thing with migration and connectivity, it just seems like, you know, twenty years from now, it's just gonna get more and more important as we see people racing to develop our areas around public lands, racing to live in these places. Right, the whole COVID migration, when we're talking migration, like everyone who's leaving the cities and moving to Montana and Idaho and Wyoming, like this is only going to get worse. So I think that that's something at least that I personally am like following much more closely now and and and hoping there can be some positive movement on because of those pressures. Yeah, And you know that a good example of those are the they call him the Sky Island Mountain Rangers of Arizona. You have all sorts of different species of squirrels there because they've not been able to connect to the other mountain rangers. Uh, that's because they're here to ten thousand foot mountain with a few other ancillary peaks, and then you've got nothing but desert for fifty before you get to the next mountain range, you go down there and you see it in a fact in Arizona in a big way. But the other thing that that theory applies to is the resiliency of the species in changing conditions, whether it's climatic change, whether it's changes to invasive species, plant species, or other species on their small island landscapes, even it's it's not truly an island, like you said, from the standpoint of Oh, it's surrounded by water, it's surrounded by non favorable habitat. And the smaller it is and the less access they have to other islands, the more vulnerable they are. Two other other pressures and other changes that are happening. Yeah, So what happens when uh fires get worse? What happens when you know, ecoregions within a habitat start moving higher and higher in elevation because it's warmer. Um, there's all sorts of things that become of concerned. Then Yeah, um, kind of along sort of the same lines at least when it comes to you know, focusing, where do we focus our protective efforts or where do we try to grow conservation easements or public land whatever might be there's another big, fancy initiative that has been talked about more and more recently, especially the last few months, And I'm curious about your take on it. Uh. And that's the thirty by thirty initiative. Um, could you give folks? Uh? Could you give folks a really quick rundown of of what I'm assuming your fingers on the pulse of this, what what your thoughts are, like? What it is and what your thoughts are and and kind of where should we be thinking about things as a hunting and fishing community. Um, what's what's your take? Yeah? And what it is? The thirty by thirty comes from thirty percent by the year. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah? And uh, it's an effort that says we would want to conserve thirty of the U. S Land mass by And it's like okay right now where it depends on how you look at it. Uh, Yeah, I don't know what percentage you Here arguments about how much we've currently conserved. Some people say there isn't even enough remaining land to get to I think those are just critics here. Instead of finding the way to yes, they want to find the way to know uh uh. But it's ambitious and instantly. Because it's you know, the current administration, it's a policy they support. You're gonna have some people who just hate it by default. Well whatever, But we're talking about conserving large landscapes, and we're talking about some of the most endangered landscapes in America. Aren't the Rocky Mountain West. Yeah, they might have the largest host of our real you know, warm and cuddly's megafauna, But some of the most endangered landscapes are in the East, the southeast, the Midwest, and the low hanging fruit of conservation has already been plucked. And most of that is our public lands. We had a ton of work that needs to be done to protect critical conservation on private lands. And if we have to give incentives or do whatever to help meet this thirty by thirty. As aggressive as that is, I think in today's political environment, we're gonna have to look at how we do some of this on private land too, because that's where it's harder to do. You have many multiple stakeholders. Private landowners have property rights you've got to consider. Uh. I think it's a cool idea. Uh. I'd like to see more details of you know exactly, how the how does it get funded, how they get implemented, How do we figure out what places are the you know, the the next uh on the on the list? You know, how how do we prioritize uh? Stuff like that. But it's it caught some people off guard because I think there's been a an acceptance that the pie is that is going to shrink. So let's figure out how we fight over a shrinking pie and how along comes this idea that is more of a let's not accept the fact that the pie is gonna shrink. Let's try to make the pie bigger, the pie of conserved lands. Uh. And I don't care what part do you come from. I don't care what your political basis is. The United States in its history of the last hundred and fifty years has definitely been a country, a culture, society that believes in building the bigger pie. Now we can say we've had our like our stock portfolio, right, we've had times where it's flipped down and pop back up. I think you'd have a hard time because the corollary to this, or the flip side of it is, Okay, let's try to get to five percent by forty five. You know, let' let's see if we can destroy more of it by or forty five. And so when you say it in that context, it's like, well, that'd be stupid, right, it would be. So if that's stupid, why isn't it smart to try conserve more and you know, thirty by thirty I get it. You know, you gotta put some markers out there and have some goals and whatever. But the fact that we're talking about it and trying to conserve more land, more water, more water sheds, and we've said let's be aggressive and try to do it by some date. Hey, even if it doesn't meet all that, for those of us who love wild places, wild things, want cleaner and clean water, it's an effort that is headed the right direction. Yeah, I really, I really am bullish bullish on it, I think, And like you said, there's a lot of a lot that has to be sort out in the details, and we have to be I think, really vocal in how this stuff happens, to make sure that you know that the hunting and fishing communities perspective has heard on whatever ends up happening, Right, I think that's important. But for so long we've been on the defensive. Here's a chance to be an offense. Like, let's run with that, let's push the ball forward. Because you look at the big story of you know, America the last hundred and fifty years, and it's just less and less and less wild places, less and less wilderness, more and more development, more and more species lost. Um. You know, we gotta verse that, we got to reverse the trend. We gotta at least try And here's a proposal to to try to do that. Um. I think that's someplace that you know, we hunters are perfectly positioned to to lead on. Um. Given the fact that, as you've said, like oftentimes we are kind of middle of the spectrum. We can speak to the realities of both sides, and we can speak to a middle ground that can take us forward. Um, it's just harder to do that. It seems like it's really easy. I think the thing we saw with the and you tell me if you think I'm wrong on this, because you're way deeper into this than I am. But it seems like with the land transfer movement and everything there, it's really easy to get people piste off and fired up enough to do something when you say we're gonna take something away from you. Like right, that's easy to get someone fired up at It's it's harder to get someone fired up when we say, hey, if you work really hard, you can get this new thing. Um, that's a harder thing to sell. Um. If we can somehow move in that direction, though, like God, there's some good stuff that could come with this. Um, I'm just I'm hopeful. I hope that we can't. Hope it's something that we can put some concrete details around it. We can have a voice at the table that we can try to staunch the bleeding that's happened in a lot of different ways over the last hundred years. Um, you know we can be the solution, oh for sure. And anyone who doubts that that sentiment is not there to do better and to improve the landscapes and conserve more. Uh. Colorado College hardly a bastion of you know, Ivory Towers. This is known to be uh. You know it's where a lot of the mining and engineering and other graduates coming out of the Colorado systems and uh they do a survey. Uh it's uh called this I think it's called conservation in the West Pole. They've been doing it for quite a while now, and uh, seventy two or seventy three percent of the Western residents and or the residents of Western states said that they are in favor of the ideas that underpinned this thirty by thirty. Well, that's that's the I mean, when you're at over seventy percent of support for something, that's you don't have to worry about a pole having a bad margin of air at that point, you know. That's so the the sentiment among the people living on the landscape is there. The question is can we convert that to action among our elected bodies in our institutions. And I hope we can because I you know, when people tell me I don't know about that, that yeah, I don't trust those people. It's like, okay, so you want dirty yer air, you want dirty or water. You want fewer fish, you want fewer elk, you want less public land, you want worse habitat the Usually they're like, can we talk about football? Yeah? You know, it's it's it's there's that Leopold quote when he said the danger of uh, you know, having an ecologist education is living alone in a world of wounds something like that, which basically is like the more you paying attention to this stuff, the more you realize how much damage has been done. And and you know, over the last decade, as I've started studying more and more of this, and you know, you just see how much stuff has changed since fifty years ago, we're eighty years ago. And I don't know, I just keep going back to if, if we don't take a stand. You know, our kids are not going to have the same opportunities we had. They're one of the same places we had. Um. And and I think, coming kind of full circle our whole conversation, like, here's this opportunity, but because it's being presented by one side of the aisle, the impulse is no way this is gonna be you know, this is gonna be a poison pill. Um, let's make sure it isn't. Let's be so damn loud and involved. Let's make sure that this is just as much of a republican plan as a democratic Like, let's push on our side or whatever side do you feel like you are on and say, hey, no, own this, you own this, let's all own this. Let's make sure that this is a biparson thing. Let's make sure that this is something that three years from now, Democrats and Republicans are fighting over who can be the best on conservating more Land, Um, so they can get elected or reelected. Um. We're kind of at the stage in this whole issue that I think that we can still influence. You know, what it actually looks like on the ground. So it seems like a great opportunity. Oh it is. And and even if it doesn't become thirty by thirty, if it takes some other name or some other form, I don't really care. You can call it the you know, blue Skies and Rainbows bill. It doesn't matter to me what I care about. And I don't care who sponsors it. I care about the fact that it would put priority, it would put funding, It would give guidance to agencies that this is something we need to consider in all of our lane management decisions. And we are going to make the affirmative statement that we're here two. Instead of play defense on these conservation issues, we're gonna play some offense, you know. And I like that, you know, Yeah, it's uh, it's it's it's on us. I mean, all these things, all these places if we if we fight the fight in and win, we'll probably have to fight the fight again five years from now or ten years from now. If we fight the fight and lose, it's usually gone forever. So when it comes to these places or or these protections, it's it's something that we just have to keep on keeping on. And if you ever have the opportunity to switch from defense to offense, like gosh, it just seems like you gotta jump on it. And it seems like there's a little sliver of opportunity in this area to go on offense. Now with that right, as we talked about earlier, there's all these other places that now we have to play heavy defense. Um. And that's a whole another story. But in this case, let's let's move on this one. Now. There's one other kind of pivot that I want to get your thoughts on real quick before we run out of your time. And thank you for for for letting me drown on and ask pick your brain about all these things. Um. And this isn't really as much maybe it's a little bit. It's not as much like public policy, but it's more publicly in use. Something that a lot of people saw over the last year with the whole COVID impact, But I think it was just, ah, this is something that's been happening over years and years, but COVID just emphasized it's it's the fact that we're loving our public lands to death. In some cases, right there was this overcrowding in a lot of places. There was more new people coming to these landscapes, which is great, but also maybe not understanding the etiquette of some of these places and leaving toilet paper everywhere, trash everywhere, different stuff like that. Um, there's all sorts of debate right now within uh my own little universe around hunter recruitment and um, that whole thing. Um. So I'm just kind of curious about your take on where we stand now and overcrowding. I don't know, maybe over overcrowding implies a position, so I would say, are we at risk of loving our public lands to death? Or how do we handle increasing use. I'm just kind of curious on what's the Randy Newburgh unfiltered opinion on all things related to that. Uh well, I thought, like you did you know, last summer in Montana, we did not close the state, So anyone who had at a vacation plan to a state that was closed. I think they came to Montana. I've never seen that many people on our rivers ever, and I thought, oh, they'll go away once labor Day comes. Nope, they took up hiking and backpacking and mountain biking and everything else. Some of them took up hunting. Uh so, a pandemic once in a hunter year, once in a century pandemic did more to increase the interest in outdoor activities than all the recruiting we've ever done in my lifetime. And that comes with its consequences, and it it's like everything, nothing is all good or all bad. There's some good that comes of this. Some of these people will stick with the outdoors and it will become their lifestyle and they'll become the next Mark Kenyon. They will become the next you know whoever conservation voices and leaders, or they'll just be you know, someone who participates. But they help fund the system and the majority of these people the next time some other cool fad comes along. Skiing has seen these peaks and valleys, as has you know, golf and all kinds of activities. Uh, it will come and go. There will be their fair weather folks um. But what it does illustrate is the absolute critical importance of access. And I don't like talking about these issues of crowding or hunter densities or whatever in the single context of densities or hunting pressure or their single context of this or that. It's multifact set it. We have the issue of access. Every time we lose access to development, two bad hunter behavior and a landowner closes their land to somebody comes in and forms a hunt club. Where ten people used to hunt this farm, and now two people hunt this farm. You've displaced eight people over to the public lends. Some rancher gets you know, something goes wrong there, some bad hunter behavior. He used to let forty people a year hunters place, and now he closes it. Those forty people are now on public lands. So we are seeing in increase in hunter densities because of many things. Yes, we've got this pandemic. I don't think our three has really been that effective, and in my this is my personal view, it has not. For the amount of money spent. The results aren't that great. And some would say, oh, come on, you're you're being too critical. Maybe I am, but I built my platforms based on the idea of access and advocates for public land and public access, and every study we ever read about why hunters quit hunting, why they don't hunt as much as they previously did, or why they didn't get into hunting when they come from a family or background where they normally would be inclined to become hunters. The top answer given to those three questions is access. So if we don't have a place to hunt, all the R three in the world doesn't do us any good. And the other pronged to that is conservation. If we have access, but there's no remaining wildlife there because of how we've managed it, how we've managed the landscape, and the wildlife has all moved to other places that are inaccessible where we don't have anything going for us. So I get that some are looking at last year and saying, oh my gosh, what a tide of people. Yeah, I don't know how much trash I picked up last year. I don't know how many camps I had said at Trailheads were non hunter just campers, and you know, public land user just average citizens game and set up a camp next to us. And I'm with you, Mark, there they must be new because what they understood about etiquette with left a lot to be desired. But I think we can look at some of this and say, even those who lee, who view this and they come and try it and they say it's not for me, even those who have come and experienced it and leave, Having that awareness in our citizenry is useful in the bigger picture of access, of content, servation of clean air, clean water, of all the things we love. I I can't look at it through just a one dimensional window. To me, it has way more pieces it. Yes, it has the number of people on the landscape, and it's not just on the landscape, but on the landscape. At the same time, fishing was crowded, hunting was crowded, camping was crowded. But if that doesn't show us the importance of maintaining every bit of access we can and hopefully expanding an increasing more access, I don't know what kind of an illustration we need to convince us of the importance of access and access to places that are good habitat with good amounts of game. Yeah, that's that's the Randy Newberg version of that. Well, I I appreciated it. I um, I'm right there with you when it comes to the fact that it's this interesting kind of chicken and egg deal because we need enough places, we need enough access for people to go out there and have these experiences. But to keep those places and to keep that access, we need people that care about them to fight for them and make sure they don't keep getting tipped away at So where I fall on this is that, man, I'm all for more people getting out there and seeing these things and and hiking or camping, or learning to hunt or learning to fish or experiencing that, like you said, whether they stick with it or just come and go. Nobody watches, at least not many people in my experience, watch a Netflix documentary about Yellowstone or something and then become lifelong advocates for wild places and really give a damn after they watch something on TV. But if you go out there and experience it, you know, you hear an elk bugle at night, or you get out there and a bear walks up on your while you're fishing and you have that powerful experience, or you you kill your first ear and you eat that. You have experiences like that that transform you and change you from someone who watches something to actually becoming someone who does something. And I think the more people we can get that care enough about these places to do something, the better it is for all of us in the long run. So I'm for it, and I think the I think the one thing I would say that I think this, and nobody will. Nobody likes to hear this, Nobody likes more responsibility. But I think with this it comes with more responsibility for us that already know what we're doing out there, that already have had these experiences. It comes on comes down to the responsibility we have now to not bitch and moan about them, but instead to educate, like, let's help. Let's let's help someone, like, hey, you came out here, you set up camp right next to me, and you know I could be an irritator. You pull up your boat right next to me while I'm fishing this riser here in the corner and you started casting the same fish. Like that might be like something where I could get piste off at you. But instead, let's let's teach people. Let's share our experience. Let's say, hey, you know what, maybe that's not what I would recommend to do, but here's something to try. Over here, or let's teach people about and leave no trace ethics, or teach people how to how to hunt. You know, I don't know. I just I just think there's an opportunity. Let's let's look as an opportunity and teach versus this threat that we're gonna bemoan. I'm a hundred percent on board with you there, Mark, That's one thing I I was trying to bring forth in in my wandering way. I think this is an opportunity and if we view it as a threat or an encumbrance or you know, messing up my way of doing things, we're gonna miss that opportunity. So I'm I'm a hundred percent with you. This is an opportunity. And I don't think we'll ever get this opportunity again, and I know we won't in my lifetime. I hope we don't in my lifetime. I hope we have no more pandemics. But yeah, uh so are we going to squander it? Or are we gonna find the benefits in it and take advantage of those and move forward? Yeah? Well, Randy, I uh I hope that's the case. And uh man, I'll tell you one thing that makes me confident that we have a chance of doing that is that we have people like you who are fighting the good fight and spreading the good words. So I appreciate your Randy, Thank you for talking with me about this stuff and sharing your perspective and everything you're doing well. Thank you, Mark. And that goes both ways that I you know, you and I get to talk a lot offline, and I have so much respect for what you're doing and in the voice you provide, in the audience you have. So I'm I'm honored anytime that you'll have me on and uh, please keep doing what you're doing well. Thank you. I'm gonna say one thing that I promise I'm not gonna wait four more years to get you back on the podcast. That's insane. I don't know how that happens. You're gonna You're gonna have to get used to me calling any more often here because this just needs to happen more and more. Maybe we should do it in a duck blind or something. Hey, I'm all for that. Would that be cool? I wonder what your audience would think. I follow a sudden you and I both went silent, and they hear take them. I think they'd probably like a lot better than hearing me job all the time. At least one last thing, Randy for for people that want more of what you've got going on, um, can you point people in the direction of either the more you know generic platforms or any specific things that might be of interest. Are there any really interesting podcasts you've dropped recently or video projects that you think people should seek out that are relevant to some of the things we talked about. Anything like that I'd love to hear about. I appreciate that, Mark. Uh. This spring has been really really busy, uh with legislative stuff, so a lot of our content has been focused on policy legislation, how to be engaged, how to be involved. We've got YouTube episodes coming out on that on our YouTube channel. I think we've dropped two podcasts already on the topic, and we're gonna be doing more of that. Um. So, yeah, you've been on my Hunt Talk radio podcast before. Pretty easy to find that. And then our YouTube channel is Randy Newburgh Hunter and that's the same for Facebook and Instagram, and so uh yeah, if people want to go there and find it, we love the feedback. If they want more of this, less of it, And what we're finding is, as much as people may not want it, they're saying, hey, thanks for putting that out there. It's it's it's helpful to to understand it and to realize how important it is. And I've seen so much more active engagement this year than I have in previous years. I'm really encouraged by how people are getting after it. So that's great. Well, I uh, I would certainly encourage anyone listening to to go and check all that out. I can tell you from personal experience, everything that you've put out there, Randy has been both entertaining and helpful to me personally and a lot of folks and know so uh so, thanks to that, Randy, and thank you for thanks for this. It was a fun chat. Yeah, thanks Mark anytime. Take care. All right, that's a rap. I hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you for listening. You know, if this kind of stuff intrigues you, if you're interested in learning more about public lands, public land history, public land policy, public land challenges and opportunities and all that kind of stuff, there's a book on all this. I don't know if you ever heard of it. It's called That Wild Country an epic journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands. And I wrote it probably nine percent of you are rolling your eyes because you've heard me talk about a million times. So thanks for baron with you on this. But if you're new and you haven't heard of that book yet, I gotta recommend you check it out because is uh. I hope all the time I put into it is reflected with it being actually helpful and uh and I think I think, I hope it is. So that's all for me. Appreciate you, enjoy the rest of your week, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

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