00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome to. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: The Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, we are discussing the future of the farm bill and private lands conservation in America. All right, folks, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation initiative, and we are continuing our Habitat series here as we discuss different issues, ideas, tactics, and strategies for helping you get better habitat on the ground for the wildlife and hunting that you care so much about. And today's conversation is definitely within the parameters of that series. This is maybe as important of a discussion as we'll ever have related to getting strong habitat work done on private lands. And that's because today we're talking about bigger picture programs that impact how this stuff happens, how this stuff gets funded, and how you personally, if you are a land manager or landowner, how you might be able to get assistance in improving habitat or actually money and funding towards putting in this kind of work and doing these kinds of projects on your land. And then if you're not a landowner, we're going to discuss about some things that will actually impact the landscape across the country that you very well might be hunting when you're trying to get hunting permission or going through walking access or whatever it might be. The content, the policies, the programs that we're going to talk about today impact all of that. And what we're talking about is the Farm Bill, the twenty well this would be the twenty twenty three Farm Bill that we're still trying to get approved now in twenty twenty five. We're talking today about the Farm Bill because the Farm Bill, even though it sounds like something just related to the agricultural community, is actually the largest piece of conservation legislation impacting private lands, habitat and conservation work across the entire United States. And we've done a handful of episodes over the last ten plus years about this, and we continue to talk about it because it is just that important. And two years ago we had our last chat on this one and we were joined by two folks from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. One of these people was Aaron Field. He is their director of Private Lands Conservation, and he is back with me today to discuss why we are having to have this same conversation just two years after the first one, because, guess what, that farm bill that we hoped to have passed with strong funding for conservation programs back in twenty twenty three, it did not happen. It didn't happen in twenty twenty four, and so now here we are again in twenty twenty five, trying to make sure that a farm bill is passed that has adequate funding to make sure that programs such as CRP continue to be funded and able to be accessed by folks like you or the farmer that you hunt on his ground, or the walk in access programs being available that you benefit from in Kansas or Minnesota or Michigan or Montana. The farm bill impacts all that stuff. So whether you own and manage land and want to make sure you can get involved in these programs and have help getting it done, or if you are a private land door knock and hunter, or you want to get on that access program land. The farm Bill will help, but we need to make sure that something gets passed. We need to make sure that the right bill gets passed, and that is what Aaron and I discussed today. We discuss in much greater detail why this piece of legislation, why the Farm Bill is relevant to us as hunters, and then we discuss what those most important programs are within it, including CRP, which a lot of us have heard about but maybe don't understand in detail, and the voluntary the VPA hip, which is like a habitat access program that funds things like Kansas's walking areas and others. So we're going to talk about all that, and then we're going to discuss why we're in the situation now where we still don't have a new farm bill approved in past, and then what we as individuals can do, What can we kind of difference can we make to make sure this thing finally happens to make sure that we don't lose more CRP land out there, to make sure that we do have the services and the quality habitat out there that we need to have healthy deer and pheasant and grouse and whatever other wildlife we care about it's all dependent on this kind of habitat and the kind projects that the farm bill impacts. So we discuss all that and then finally to wrap it all up, we also talk a little bit about the application of this. So if you are a land owner or manager and you want to get involved and get CRP on your land, or maybe get involved with something called equip where you can be you know, advised on how to make a habitat improvement on your land, and then also have cost share, so where the government will pay for a portion of your seed or a portion of your herbis side, or a portion of the work that needs to get done. They'll help with that payment. If you want to get involved in anything like that so that you can improve your habitat for deer and other wildlife and do it more economically or with some added expertise, Aaron's going to talk about how to get that done, how to get involved with these programs, what all that entails. So that's the plan for today. It is I was going to say action packed. I suppose any kind of conversation about policy and legislation probably doesn't sound action packed, but I'm telling you this stuff really matters. Across Whitetail Country, and if you're a hunter anywhere in the country, there's without a doubt open lands that are owned by private landowners but are benefiting the public. Whether you hunt by permission or on walk and access or public land next door, or just on your very own land, this stuff is impacting you no matter where you are. It's really important. So I really appreciate you listening to this one. I appreciate you getting in touch with your lawmakers about this stuff. Or if you are someone who owns land and wants to do good work on your ground, I appreciate that work too. So, without any further ado, here's my chat with Aaron Field about the future of the farm Bill and private lands conservation in America. All right with me now once again, several years later, is Aaron Field? 00:06:57 Speaker 3: Hi, doing aerin, Doing pretty well? Mark? How about yourself today? 00:07:00 Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm good. I appreciate you taking the time to join me. I'm glad that we have well, I guess I'm happy we get to chat again. I'm not so glad that we're talking about something that we talked about two years ago and which has not seen the kind of movement we were hoping we would see in this twenty four month period since our last chat. But yeah, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. We're talking farm bill today, and for someone who maybe clicked on this one to give it a listen out of curiosity but does not yet really fully understand what the farm bill is, can you give me your elevator pitch on what the farm bill is in relation to conservation and hunters and anglers and why this is relevant to someone that maybe is listening to this podcast that's a diehard deer hunter loves getting outside, maybe Owens land or Manages land. 00:07:56 Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, probably the simplest way to describe the farm bill to somebody who is mostly interested in the conservation side of things, or the hunting and fishing. 00:08:05 Speaker 3: Side of things. 00:08:06 Speaker 4: This is the biggest investment that we as a nation make in conservation, point blank. So our public lands are obviously super important both for you know, wildlife recreation and a. 00:08:18 Speaker 3: Whole host to other uses. 00:08:20 Speaker 4: But still more than sixty percent of the land area in this country is privately owned, and if we're ignoring that from a wildlife habitat and access perspective, we're really missing the boat. That's especially true for those of us, you know, in the eastern half of the United States, where public lands are not as accessible, but it's also true as you go further west, you know some of the biggest public land states we've got. If you actually zoom in and look at the role that the private lands in that state are playing in terms of wildlife, in terms of even hunting access or fishing access, you'll find that they have a disproportionate impact. And so the Farm Bill itself is a massive piece of legislation that covers a whole host of issues. 00:09:06 Speaker 3: But for the. 00:09:06 Speaker 4: Average hunter, just know that this is the biggest investment in conservation that we. 00:09:10 Speaker 2: Make, so massive investment in private lands conservation that's a part of this big, huge farm bill. Stuff like the CRP program, which is probably something that stands out to a lot of hunters as something they recognize, equip which is another big one. Can you walk us through a quick high level overview of those two programs and any others that you think are particularly relevant to hunters, because those are kind of like the headliners here as far as programs at the Farm bill funds that actually lead to good stuff happening. On the ground for not just farmers and ranchers, but for deer and pheasants and ducks and all sorts of stuff like that. So, can you walk me through a couple of those headliners that you are actually how the farm bill ends up showing up on the landscape. 00:10:00 Speaker 4: Sure. Yeah, And something that's important to point out before we start talking through, you know, all these acronyms and various programs that have been created and tweaked and adjusted throughout the years. You know, different countries take different approaches, Different governments take different approaches as to how they how they get good stewardship, good management done, especially on private lands. And I think if you ask ninety nine percent of landowners in this country if they want to do good stewardship on their land, if they're trying to do good stewardship on their land, they're going to. 00:10:32 Speaker 3: Tell you yes, that's important to me. 00:10:35 Speaker 4: In the US, the primary mechanism by which we try to get more good conservation work done on private land is through voluntary, incentive based programs. And so this is something that nobody is going out and telling a landowner that they have to participate in. Nobody is going out and saying you know, you must plant a cover crop next year, you must put this into perennial graund. We're working with the landowners, farmers and ranchers, forest landowners, recreational landowners too, who want to do this good work. And I mentioned incentive based, incentive based meaning that rather than having a penalty for you not doing this, we're gonna say, listen, we know it costs money to do good conservation work. You know, I'm managing a small property here myself that I hunt on. There's a lot more I'd like to do if I could afford to do it. And so the programs that that you mentioned, Mark and others are designed to sort of help put. 00:11:35 Speaker 3: The bill to get that work done. 00:11:37 Speaker 4: And that's of course beneficial to the landowner who's who's trying to do you know, good conservation work, create wildlife habitat, you know, building long term profitability into their agricultural operation. But it also benefits the rest of us. If we, you know, do something that leads to cleaner water on private land in this country, that's cheaper water treatment plants in our city. If we do something that leads to cleaner airs, that's less respiratory disease. We do something that creates good wildlife habitat. That's obviously more biodiversity and more wildlife on the landscape, which is important for all of us, but especially if. 00:12:13 Speaker 3: You like to hunt for fish. 00:12:15 Speaker 4: So you mentioned a couple. One the Conservation Reserve Program the CRP. That's probably the conservation program that mower hunters are aware of than others. 00:12:25 Speaker 3: And there's a few reasons for that. One it's been around. 00:12:27 Speaker 4: Longer than some of our other programs, and two it has just a massive outsize impact on creating wildlife habitat. Conservation Reserve Program Essentially, what that does is if you've got crop land land that you've been farming, you know, grown corn and grown weeat on whatever it is, and that land is highly erodable, it's degrading, you're losing top soil, it's not usually not particularly productive. The conservation program provides a financial incentive for you to take that land out of crop production and put it into perennial vegetation. So, you know, a lot of people will think about CRP in South Dakota, for example, and you look at CRP in South Dakota and it'll be a tall grass prairie on what used to be a middling corn crop or a middle and wheat crop. And so from a hunting perspective, one of the limiting factors to wildlife populations across the country and especially in you know, further east throughout the Midwest, it's just a lack of perennial habitat, lack of places for nests, lack of places for deer to bed, lack of places for all sorts of wildlife habitat requirements, and a conservation Reserve program or CRP puts that habitat on the ground to the tune of currently about twenty seven million acres in this country. So it's a huge impact and obviously very important for hunters and anglers. 00:13:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one of those, like you said, it's a program that not only has name recognition, but it even has like visual recognition, almost over the top in that I think a lot of hunters now if they see any kind of tall, grassy, kind of brushy field, they just call it CRP. It's become like the generic term for any kind of like early secessional grassland habitat. They're like, oh, yeah, that's CRP. Even though it's not necessarily in a conservation reserve program contract. It's become like the CLINICX of wildlife habitat, which is kind of funny, but yeah, I mean, as a deer hunter, if I see that kind of habitat somewhere, that's an amazing right, bright flashing light like hunt here, there's gonna be wildlife. And what I think is important to note for people listening is that programs like this, in this particular case, the CRP program, it's a really big win for you, whether you own land and want to try to, you know, enroll in this and help get some of your costs taken care of to implement some kind of habitat like this yourself, or if you are a non land owning hunter who is simply trying to get access to habitat and access to places, because this is going to improve habitat and improve hunting opportunities on other people's parcels that either you might be able to hunt around or get access to, or or simply like you said, Aaron, it's going to improve the biodiversity and the health of everything around it when you have this kind of habitat out there. So yeah, CRPS, it just seems like such a huge win. We've lost so much grassland habitat across the country that so many species depend on. Grassland birds are I think, one example of a set of species that have really declined and have been in free fall over the last fifty years because of the lack of that kind of habitat. All sorts of upland birds of course, have been in some places in decline because of loss of that kind of habitat. So I feel like CRP has been one of the big kind of plugs in the leaky boat keeping some of these critters around. If it weren't for that, probably a lot of this stuff would be in even bigger trouble not, wouldn't it. 00:16:15 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's absolutely true. And you point out grassland birds, which is a great one to point out is the fastest declaiming declining clade of wildlife on the continent. And honestly, until recently, we could look at things like ducks and say, well, we've been doing pretty good on ducks, but we've come to a point now where where there's even some evidence that ducks are in a little bit of trouble, and so we need to keep keep going with our wetlands work, and the CRP definitely helps with wetlands work as well, but we need to think about those uplands and the around those wetlands too. And he also brought up a really good point. You know, I've been asked before when I talk about these programs, you know, well, that's great. It helps them make better wildlife habitat on their land. How to that benefit me? And I think the access piece is very important, and that's something the TRCP works on a lot, is finding ways to make sure hunters and anglers have access to quality places. 00:17:11 Speaker 3: To hunt and fish. 00:17:13 Speaker 4: But just simply the wildlife population benefits of doing good conservation work on private land, even if you know, I might never get to hunt that particular parcel, but I'm sure glad to see good habitat on the land that's in the area, even of where I'm going to be hunting or fishing. It's just so important that we find ways to incentivize that. 00:17:35 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and there's there's the spillover effect, right. I mean they've found this with with national parks or wildlife reserves or anywhere you can get quality habitat on the ground in a relatively improved or protected landscape. It's going to spill over into the surrounding areas too, and the more of those cores you get, the better it is everywhere. So yeah, it's kind of a no brainer from the perspective of someone who wants to see more wildlife out there and healthier landscapes. But you mentioned access. The Farm bill actually has a hell of an access program within it too. Can you touch on that. 00:18:12 Speaker 4: Yeah, So there is only one federal program that is specifically designed to incentivize access for hunting and fishing on private lands, and we're very proud of that program. It's a Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program vpa HIP. Not a great acronym, it's a great program though. The vpa HIP essentially it's a block grant program, and so rather than so, the CRP is designed at a national scale and it's implemented throughout the country. Vpa HIP is a funding source for state level programs, and so, depending on where you are in the country, most states have some version of a private land access program. Here in Minnesota, I go to Milwaukeean area, and that's someplace that I can walk in and hunt anytime during the season for whatever species I'm looking for. But if I go over to North Dakota, it'd be called plots private Land open to Sportsmen, you know, Kansas WHA's. There's a variety of programs, all with different variations on what the specific regulation and what the specific acronym is, but they're all designed to do the same thing, and that's create hunting and fishing access on private lands. So what vpa HIP does is state wildlife agencies design an access program that creates the access that hunters and english and their state need and want. That is targeted to geographies where they really need to create more access, and that works for landowners in the state. Once they have that program created, they can apply for funding through the vpa HIP Voluntary Public Access and Habitat CETIVE program to support that program. And so what we get is this really locally tailored set of access programs for private land with some federal support so that you can either get better habitat enrolled, or you can get more habitat and rolled. 00:20:17 Speaker 3: Or you can get both. 00:20:19 Speaker 4: And it's just it's a program that it has support pretty much across the board, bipartisan support in Congress, the states really love it. Tribes are eligible as well, and like I said, it's designed to work with landowners in a way that landowners can support. 00:20:40 Speaker 2: Yeah. So the farm bill funds incredible habitat improvements and it helps fund getting folks access to utilize these places in a hunting or fishing or any kind of way. Right. And then there's also EQUIP which is another program within the bill that I think does a lot of the former, which is the improvement side of things. Can you touch on that a little bit as well. 00:21:04 Speaker 4: Yeah, So the Environmental Quality Insteatives program super popular program with landowners. It's one of our most flexible conservation programs. And so what will happen And remind me to talk a little bit about sort of the conservation planning and technical assistance side of this too, But what will happen as a landowner. I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, they've got cattle and crop operation here in western Minnesota. He was talking to me, he said, Man, I'd really like to do some more cover crops. One to prevent soil erosion and improve soil health. And two because hey, that's going to give us a little more forage for our cattle in the fall and potentially in the spring. That's going to take some pressure off our pastures. We're going to have better habitat out there. 00:21:51 Speaker 3: It's it's just. 00:21:52 Speaker 4: A really good idea to do. It's something that we'd like to implement here on our farm. That's that's pretty expensive. You know, if you've ever bought seed, either whether it's for a food plot or a habitat project, or if you're a farmer yourself, seats aren't cheap. And so what this friend of mine did is they went down to their local n RCS Natural Resources Conservation Service office and they put in an application for EQUIP and assuming that application is funded, which is a pretty big question mark, actually they'll essentially get about half their seat costs paid for to do those cover crops. And again that's recognizing that this individual landowner's conservation action benefits the rest of us to such a degree that it's worth us investing in. But besides cover crop, equip can support all sorts of things that can support nutrient management plans. So we put a little less fertilizer into streams, which is obviously important from a fisheries perspective. It can support establishing conservation cover. So if you've got one example would be if you've got an irrigated field, especially in the sort of high planes area where it's where it's real dry, those pivot corners where the irrigation doesn't reach the corner of the field, oftentimes they're not not very productive at all. So EQUIP could fund planting that to habitat. And actually, if you go down to some of those states, they've created access programs so you can hunt those pivot corners and you're hunting a relatively small chunk, but man, there can be a lot of birds in that chunk. And just you know down the list there's livestock practices. You know, EQUIP can be used to support wildlife friendly fencing, so we're hanging up fewer deer, elk, pronghorn that are trying to move across a landscape. One of the coolest ways that we use EQUIP along with some of our other programs, is through through initiative called Working Lands for Wildlife. And what that does is it takes a landscape level approach to okay, what are the conservation needs in say the sagebrush step, and then it targets those EQUIP practices to where they're going to make the most difference for wildlife. 00:24:10 Speaker 3: So let's put the let's. 00:24:12 Speaker 4: Make sure we have wildlife friendly fence along that migration corridor that mule are using to come to winter range, things like that. So again, really flexible program usually relatively short term contracts for landowners as compared to the CRP is a ten or a fifteen year contract, which works great for some folks. It gives you that certainty in planning. But for others, you know, they're a lot more comfortable doing something on the three year timescale, and so EQUIP can deliver that for folks. 00:24:56 Speaker 2: So the EQUIP program, this CRP program, VPA hip, and I know there's there's a number of other programs too, some ease mints and things like that. All of this, as you mentioned, adds up to the largest investment in private lands conservation across the country. Year after a year after a year, it's a big, huge, important thing that's protected and conserved and improved a lot of land across the United States that otherwise would probably be in much much worse health. 00:25:28 Speaker 3: Right now. 00:25:30 Speaker 2: We talked about this in twenty twenty three, because every I think it's every five years right, a new farm bill is supposed to be passed. We're having this very similar conversation in twenty twenty three about, hey, we got to get the next one out, We've got to move it forward. Here's what we're hoping gets done. But here we are now in twenty twenty five and we still don't have a new farm bill. What's going on, Aaron? Why are we in this position? And what does it mean for these programs that we're talking about? You know, is is stuff still getting done? Are people still being incentivized to take this kind of action nowt or we can start losing this habitat or losing these opportunities. 00:26:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:26:09 Speaker 4: Yeah, it is pretty frustrating to be having a very similar conversation that we had a couple of years ago about this bill, and it really underscores the importance of hunters and anglers getting involved in this process, being informed on, you know, what these programs are, what they're actually accomplishing, and then making sure that their elected officials know that they're important to them. You know, farm bill is a big piece of legislation and includes other things besides conservation. It includes you know, prop insurance and commodity support and basically the farm safety net to keep people farming over a long. 00:26:46 Speaker 3: Period of time. 00:26:46 Speaker 4: So obviously the a community is highly invested in getting farm bills done, but that community is smaller than it used to be. Farmers used to make up something like twenty five percent of the population when we passed the first farm bill about ninety years ago, the first thing we called a farm bill. That's less than one percent of the population now. And although that's I mean, it's a super important demographic, it's a super important, you know, career path, it's a major economic driver in rural America. It's a relatively small voting block. At the same time, and so it can't just be the ad groups that are out there saying, hey, we need to get a farm bill done. We need the conservation community involved in this. We need hunters and anglers speaking up, being informed on these programs and talking about their importance. So, Mark, you mentioned we passed farm bills about every five years. They tend to be written as a five year bill, meaning the provisions within the bill expire after five years. So we've been doing that since we had a really conservation focused bill that started in nineteen eighty five, but the last time we passed a farm bill in the US was in twenty eighteen, which means we're now in the longest stretch without a new farm bill in the modern year. There's a couple of practical issues with that. The biggest one that I'll point out is we haven't updated policy around our farm programs in this country since twenty eighteen, and a lot of that would have been written in twenty seventeen, so we're dealing with, you know, seven eight nine year old ideas on how we should manage these programs. The other one is when a farm bill does expire, yes, you're you're absolutely right, these programs end, so we would not be enrolling in the conservation reserve program, we would not be signing equipped contracts to get people to get work done. That does get mitivate gated and has been mitigated so far by passing what we call farm bill extensions. We passed a one year farm bill extension shortly after the bill expired in twenty twenty three, past another one year extension after that extension expired, so we're about halfway through the second one year extension of the twenty eighteen farm bill. 00:29:09 Speaker 3: Right now. 00:29:09 Speaker 4: What that means is the programs are still going forward. We're still doing the good conservation work. We just haven't had an opportunity to update those programs in the interim. And there's been a few barriers to that. I mean, if you've been paying attention to Congress at all over the last decade or so, you've probably seen that partisanship isn't getting any smaller, it's not becoming less of an issue. And traditionally, and I think still today, the Agriculture committees in Congress and those are. 00:29:42 Speaker 3: That's the group that writes. 00:29:44 Speaker 4: And passes a farm bill, has been the most bipartisan committee on Capitol Hill. It's long been recognized that agg policy will not move as a partisan bill end up getting some really interesting sort of geographical alliances built across party lines when you start talking about a farm bill, and so traditionally that has helped farm bills move even when other things couldn't. But like I said, it hasn't gotten any easier to move things through Congress in recent years, and the farm bill has not been an exception to that. Another big factor was, you know, last year was a presidential election year. It's really difficult to encourage folks to go get bipartisan wins during a presidential election year, so I think that was one of our big hang ups. I still retain a fair bit of optimism going into this Congress, which started in January of this year, for a few reasons. One, I think we've got some fantastic leadership on the egg committees, folks who are used to doing bipartisan work from both parties. We had a farm bill introduced in the House at the end of last Congress that passed out of committee, which meant it had some traction and has some potential to move forward. And so we're not starting from scratch, which is which is another reason for optimism. But early this year we've got you know, Republicans in control of both chambers. Now we've got a Republican in the White House, and so the Republican Party is working on making sure they get their priorities through, which are obviously broader than just egg policy. And so I think we've got to get through things like a reconciliation package, which we probably don't need to get into the weeds done here, Mark, But towards the later this summer into the fall, I'm hopeful that we'll start to really see some movement towards getting a farm built done that we haven't really seen recently. 00:31:54 Speaker 2: And how long does that process take? So once they push this other stuff aside and they're able to focus the farm bill and hypothetically we have the people in place to move something forward finally, hopefully, is that a six month process? Is that a year and a half process? You know, when will people actually be voting to make this thing reality and we'll be able to get on the horn and holler at our elected officials to tell them vote this thing through. 00:32:23 Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean you can start doing that now. And there's a few reasons for that. One because it's always helpful, and we've got tools for that if you're interested in getting involved, and we could talk more about that too, Mark at TRCP dot org. We've got some action alerts running to help folks send that message. Another reason that folks might be thinking about getting involved right now is members of Congress will introduce what we call marker bills, and these are bills that are intended to influence the farm bill and it moves. And so there's just one example of program that we already talked about the Voluntary Public Access and Habitat and Centive program. There is a bipartisan bi camera bill in Congress introduced in Congress right now called the Voluntary Public Access Improvement Act, And what that bill would do is it reauthorizes the program which is currently expired, and it would increase the funding from fifty million dollars over the life of a farm bill to one hundred and fifty million dollars over the life of farm bill, so three times the access. And so we've got an action alert running right now on our website where folks can click on that and it's actually kind of neat technology I'm excited about. If you're member of Congress or your senator has already co sponsored that bill, it'll send them a thank you for co sponsoring that bill. And if your member of Congress has not, it'll send them an ask saying, hey, as a constituent, appreciate if you would if you would co sponsor this bill so folks can get involved right now. And if if you're not ready to take that step of making an ask, absolutely, you know, just just making sure that you're well. 00:34:12 Speaker 3: Informed is super important. 00:34:15 Speaker 4: But timing wise, you know what what folks will tell you is people start writing the next farm bill as soon as the ink is dry on the next one. So the Egg Committee members will be out as soon as the farm bill passes. They're out listening to their constituents, meeting with stakeholder groups, and hearing what changes. 00:34:32 Speaker 3: Might need to happen. 00:34:32 Speaker 4: But where we're sitting now, I mentioned Chairman G. T. Thompson has a bill that was introduced in the House last session, made it through committee, and so I imagine he is working with his Democratic counterparts to make tweaks to that bill to build bipartisan support moving forward. But that bill is largely written at this point, and so theoretically they could move pretty qui in the House, where you know, you get a bill introduced and marked up within a few weeks, and you know, whenever there was four time for a vote, it could move fairly quickly. I think on the Senate side, we've got a new ranking member, which would be the top ranking Democrat on the committee in Senator Amy Klobashar Minnesota, and so I think there's some work going on on the Senate side to make sure that Chairman Bozeman and ranking Member Cloba shar are you know, aligned on what that farm bill needs to look like? And so again, I think they can move relatively quickly. We've been working on bill techs for years. Committee staff have been It's amazing how much work that those folks put into these pieces of legislation. But all that to say, there are still some pretty big barriers to something happening this year. Namely, Congress is pretty distracted right now with things like reconciliation and debt ceiling and budget resolutions, the appropriations process, And so if I was a betting man and I quit being a betting man because of spending time working on farm bills, I think it's going to be pretty challenging to get something done this fault. 00:36:19 Speaker 3: But I think early next year they really could, We really could see some motion. 00:36:24 Speaker 2: You've talked about appropriations and reconciliation and all this budget stuff, and you know, as you said, there's there's a lot going on right now. There's a lot of momentum around cost cutting, pulling, funding, freezing, funding, et cetera, across all sorts of agencies and all sorts of programs. How might that impact the farm bill? How you know, is a chainsaw going to be taken to this thing in one form or another. Is that a possible thing we need to be concerned about. 00:36:59 Speaker 3: I don't think that that's especially likely. 00:37:01 Speaker 4: And the reason I say that is because of the strong, strong bipartisan support that these programs and provisions within the Farm Bill have. I think that's true, especially on the A Committee, the people who spend a lot of time thinking about this, but I think it's true across Congress as well. 00:37:21 Speaker 3: If you look. 00:37:22 Speaker 4: At, you know, the number of votes that farm bills have generated in the past, you'll see that it's one of the most bipartisan things that Congress does. And so I'm I'm optimistic that that a farm bill will move that you know, all of our stakeholder groups can can be proud of and happy with. As far as you know, other other programs, I can really only speak to USDA, especially at the NRCS. There's a lot going on across the federal government. Those are really outside my area expertise. I should also note it's early April today, and you know, I shut my email offer this podcast. 00:38:01 Speaker 3: Who knows what happens during this hour? 00:38:04 Speaker 4: But short answer is it's really too early to say, I know that's not particularly satisfying, but we're a couple months, a few months into a new presidential administration. In any turnover, any change in administration, especially from one party to the other, there's going to be a lot of changes implemented and that can feel a lot like whiplash. And I think that's kind of where most of us are sitting right now. 00:38:29 Speaker 3: Our job at. 00:38:29 Speaker 4: TRCP is not really to shout from the rooftops. Necessarily. We're trying to work with those decision makers and work with our partners so that we have solutions rather than you know, just necessarily pointing out problems USDA. If you pay attention to sort of the leadership that's being appointed at USTA, that's that's really happening right now. And so you've got folks who are just showing up to their desk and getting in position and starting to implement some of these programs you mentioned a pause. We saw initially a pause on a lot of programs as this administration started getting staff in place, and that was really disconcerting to a lot of people, especially if you were a farmer or rancher. You know, in some cases folks had you know, done work or purchased materials, and they were waiting to be reimbursed for that while they were trying to purchase their inputs for an upcoming crop year. 00:39:30 Speaker 3: That was really. 00:39:31 Speaker 4: Stressful for a lot of folks. But as it sits today again, as we're talking right now, it appears that much of that funding is beginning to move, especially the stuff that's going directly to farmers and ranchers, and really happy to see that. It's a really important step. 00:39:52 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:39:54 Speaker 4: The other piece, mark is the staffing side of things. If uh, what we all want, at least in the conservation community is if if we've got a landowner who wants to do good conservation work, we want them to be able to talk to a human being, get their questions answered, get their you know, resource concerns identified, and we want a conservation plan made and we want it to be simple and easy and quick for that landowner who's trying to to to you know, do good work for the rest of us. For years now, and this this is not new. For years, we've been asking the USDA staff, especially at the Natural Resources Conservation Service, to. 00:40:34 Speaker 3: Do more with less. 00:40:36 Speaker 4: We've had a lot of retirement in that agency, some of that was related to COVID. Some of that was just general attrition as folks aged out of the workforce. But we've lost a lot of expertise, and we've lost a lot of institutional knowledge, and a lot of cases they just those positions haven't been filled and so that would be amplified if we start to see, you know, further cuts among those staff. So anyway, we just we need to work on finding solutions and making sure that we can actually get this conservation on the ground. And there's a few different ways that this is done too. I didn't talk about the partnership model, and so a lot of a lot of the conservation planning and program enrollment that's done for these programs is done through conservation nonprofit organizations and there isn't really a much more efficient model than USDA partnering with groups like that to get this work done. 00:41:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of conservation funding and work getting done, you know, last time we chatted two years ago, one of the most important things that you guys had talked about was the fact that there had been this twenty dollars excuse me, twenty billion dollar addition to the conservation title of the Farm Bill that came from the IRA Funds Inflation Reduction Act essentially directed an additional twenty billion dollars in funding towards these programs. And one of the big asks that you guys had mentioned that was being prioritized within future negotiations is trying to make sure that funding is permanent and that that is included in future iterations of the Farm bill. Where do we stand with that with the new Farm Bill that they're discussing right now, Does it look like that's going to happen. Is this whole funding challenge that we've been talking about, is that going to possibly lead to that disappearing or no? Any idea? 00:42:45 Speaker 4: Yeah, So, one of the biggest problems with these programs is simply the lack of funding that's allocated toward them. And so right now, even with an additional influx of funding through you mentioned through the Reduction Act, depending on what program you're talking about, we fund somewhere between fifteen and thirty five percent of qualified applicants who come in. So if I'm a landowner, I have a good idea that's going to be beneficial for all of us, I still only have about a twenty five percent chance that it's going to get funded. That's a real problem. There's a lot of good conservation work that is not getting done right now because of that. And so there is an opportunity, through some you know, through some economics and budgetary maneuvers that I don't fully understand, Mark, there is an opportunity that we can make those funds permanent. And what that would be is about a twenty five percent increase to the conservation baseline. And so it would it would absolutely not fully address the shortcoming that these programs have in terms of funding. 00:43:58 Speaker 3: But it would make a big dent. 00:44:00 Speaker 4: It would be incredibly beneficial from a habitat perspective. Where we sit now is I think actually better than where we were a couple of years ago in that we have broad by bipartisan support among a committee leadership for doing that. I met the leaders of both parties have have publicly been talking about this, that this is a good thing that we can do that is good for farmers and ranchers and it's good for conservation and UH. In fact, one of the biggest. 00:44:35 Speaker 3: Champions of doing that. 00:44:38 Speaker 4: Through UH through an end of year package at the end of the year last year was was chairman Thompson at the House EG Committee Republican out of Pennsylvania. 00:44:46 Speaker 3: And so we're in a good. 00:44:48 Speaker 4: Position in that the folks who have the most ability to make those decisions understand and appreciate that it's a good idea and have been pushing for it. The channel is that needs to happen as part of another piece of legislation. The one that makes the most sense, of course, is passing a farm bill, and we already talked a little bit about the challenges to getting that done this year, but there may be some other avenues that Congress could explore to get that done. 00:45:18 Speaker 2: So continuing one step further down and kind of looking towards the future of the farm bill in these programs, are there any other important marker bills or important changes or modifications that TRCP or the larger conservation community is advocating for that we should talk to our elected officials about. 00:45:39 Speaker 3: Yes, dozens. 00:45:43 Speaker 4: If you really want to get in the weeds as an individual, I'd encourage you to check out the Agriculture and Wildlife Working Group Farm Bill platform. And that's something that we lead a working group of about twenty five of the top national, mostly national nonprofit organizations in the hut fish space. Those groups came together ahead of when we were expecting a farm bill in twenty twenty three and put together a set of priorities. And we've spent the last couple of years, you know, sharing those priorities with with members of Congress and explaining why these. 00:46:16 Speaker 3: Changes make sense. 00:46:17 Speaker 4: And you know, I won't run through sort of the full list of those because nobody would listen until the end. 00:46:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, can you give your top like two or three? 00:46:28 Speaker 3: Absolutely? Absolutely. So. 00:46:30 Speaker 4: One is maintaining our baseline funding for conservation programs. That was including farm build baseline plus the Inflation Reduction Act dollars that we already talked about, so trying to boost that funding. Second, one is just making sure that fish and wildlife conservation continues to be prioritized equally alongside things like soil and water conservation, Continuing to support these voluntary and incentive based programs, and making sure that USCA has enough capacity for conservation. 00:46:58 Speaker 3: Planning and. 00:47:00 Speaker 2: Staff. Yeah, we're talking about Yeah, a. 00:47:04 Speaker 4: Couple of marker bills that you might look at. One was introduced last Congress. We're still waiting to see if they will be introduced this Congress. But that's the CRP Improvement Act, and we already talked about the importance of the Conservation Reserve Program, but this would make several tweaks to that program that would essentially make it look more attractive to landowners. And it would also update payment limitations in that program that haven't been updated since nineteen eighty five. So if you've been tracking inflation at all, you understand that dollar in nineteen eighty five is not the same as a dollar in twenty twenty five. So that's again a bipartisan marker bill, the Conservation Reserve programin Act. We are also working with some of our partners on potentially creating a new easement program. If you're not familiar with with conservation easements, but they're essentially are there are most durable tool that we have for private lands conservation. So essentially a landowner is compensated to give up development rights on that property. The program that we are looking to create would be a forest conservation easement program, and essentially what that would do is it would keep working forests as working forests. Right now, there's a bit of a gap in the eastment programs. We have programs that do a good job with wetlands. Other than there's way more demand than we have funding for. We have programs that do pretty good job with with working farmland and and to some degree ranch land as well. 00:48:37 Speaker 3: We we have a bit of a gap on the forest side. And obviously, if. 00:48:40 Speaker 4: You're a you know, if you're a deer hunter, you should care about keeping forests intact, and you probably know a little bit about the importance of of you know, forest management as opposed to you know, stagnant forests management. So that's another market bill that we've been working on. We've also been working on a bill that would caut of I codify some provisions of a big game pilot program that started in Wyoming. It's called Migratory Big Game Initiative. Yeah, and so that's we talked about this a little bit in a working lens for wildlife context, but that would basically allow these programs to work better together, targeted on areas where big game move, so that we would you keep grass line intact and put in wildlife friendly fencing and you know, manage grazing in a way that's. 00:49:31 Speaker 3: More compatible with wildlife. 00:49:34 Speaker 4: So those are a few things that we're working on more specifically within the farm bill. 00:49:49 Speaker 2: I can't remember I'm getting the verbiage right on this, but the North American Grasslands Actor or whatever it was officially called, with that with something like that fall into a future arm bill or is that separate? 00:50:01 Speaker 4: So the North American Grassland Conservation Act is going to be a great bill. I'm really excited that we're seeing some progress towards that. We already talked about the challenges that grasslands are facing. That will not be part of a farm built that's going to live within the US Ficial Wildlife Service, so outside of USDA. 00:50:19 Speaker 2: Okay, all right, cool, all right. So I feel like we've pretty clearly established how important this is, how impactful it is for both landowners and non landowners, anyone who cares about keeping open space is open and productive and providing wildlife habitat all. That seems very important. You've also made it pretty clear, though, that we do have some challenges ahead of us to actually get this thing to move forward, given all of the stuff going on these days. For lack of a better term, so what can we do? What did we not do a good enough job of two years ago or last year or whatever to get this thing moving full. What can I, as an individual do to help get a quality farm bill pass that's going to help my hunting in the future of wildlife in America. 00:51:10 Speaker 4: Yeah, well I'll give I'll give you some some hot intel. 00:51:13 Speaker 3: I was just in Washington, d C. Last week. 00:51:16 Speaker 4: I met with a congressional staffer who told me, hey, we did not hear enough from the conservation community about getting a farm bill done. 00:51:25 Speaker 3: And I took that. 00:51:25 Speaker 4: There's a gut punch personally because I work on this every day. But the reality is most hunters and anglers don't pay too much attention to this, and and and and don't know much about it. There are some diehards who are absolutely out doing the lord's work on this, but if you look at the average hunter, they're not particularly engaged. 00:51:47 Speaker 3: And I get it. 00:51:47 Speaker 4: It can be intimidating to try to you know, if you had asked me several years ago, before I started in this line of work, if I wanted to call my senator's office and tell them to, you know, get off their button get something done, I. 00:51:59 Speaker 3: Would have really hesitated. 00:52:02 Speaker 4: But there's very little that US professionals who are you know, calling these offices and working with these offices on a regular basis can do that has the same impact as a constituent calling and saying, listen, this is important to me. I don't necessarily know every single detail, you know, I'm not going to read the bill and and look for through every minute change, every period that gets switched to a comma or whatever it is. But this is important to me. Wildlife habitat is important for me, and we need a farm bill done that that benefits it. 00:52:34 Speaker 3: And so. 00:52:36 Speaker 4: The biggest thing that I that I hope folks can do is, you know, take the take the time, take the effort to get informed on conservation programs, on private land conservation, learn about some of these key programs that we talked about today. And then once you're you know, once you're to that level, take a step and get engaged. And we try to make that pretty easy at TRCP dot org. We tend to run action alerts that are already you know, prepopulated, and all you've got to do is enter your information and say that you agree with it and hit send. 00:53:14 Speaker 3: And those are great. 00:53:15 Speaker 4: I would love it if everybody who listened to this went and signed on our VPA Improvement Act one right now, that'd be fantastic. But as you gain some comfort, as you gain some some literacy on these programs, just taking that extra step to you know, if your if your congress person is in town and holding a town hall, you know, you don't have to go in and say, hey, we need X dollars for equip and I need you to make sure that it's this ten percent. 00:53:42 Speaker 3: Is for this. 00:53:43 Speaker 4: All you have to do is say, hey, I hunt eye fish, I care about farm build conservation. 00:53:48 Speaker 3: Let's get this done perfect. 00:53:52 Speaker 2: It's not as scary as some people think it is. Like you said, it doesn't require a whole lot more than a couple of minutes to make a phone call or send one of those action aleart emails. And to your point, every single one of those does help. It does add up. And yeah, we got to make sure that our voice is heard absolutely. Is there is there anything that you have learned over the years eron or heard you know, as you've been on you know, been to DC, talking to folks in office when it comes to the most effective means of doing that, Is there any is there anything that we can do to make our emails a little bit more effective or our voicemail messages a little bit more poignant, or or the timing of when we do this. Sure, I'm just looking for, like any little tweaks or tactics or ways that we can go from doing the baseline to like the best we could do. Is there anything that comes to mind? 00:54:50 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question, and I'll defer back to something a state legislator in North Dakota told me, and he said, half half of people want to hear the story and half of people want to see the numbers. And so if you have both, that's the best. But if you only have one or the other, make sure you use it. And so some of the most effective things that I have seen, specifically from hunters or anglers is hey, if you send a polaroid of you and your kid hunting on a walk in access and say, hey, I care about VPA hip and this is why this is where you know my son or daughter got there first brewster, or you know, hey, I really appreciate your support for the conservation title. The river that I fish is cleaner because of that. Here's a picture you know, we're out, we're out fishing, or even a story of how that happened. That's that's incredibly important, and the numbers are a little trickier for the general public to do. We try to do our best to provide that information. Just as an example, voluntary public Access and Habitat and Center program. For every dollar that Congress and in that program, it generates about eight dollars of spending in rural communities. Well, so you create access, hunters and anglers show up, we spend money, We benefit those rural economies. And so the combination of those two. If I, if I've got that polaroid of a kid with their first rooster, and I've got an eight to one ROI for the program, I can make a pretty compelling argument, and so can so can anybody. 00:56:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a hard one to argue with when you have both of those arrows in your quiver. Yep, Okay. I want to really quickly shift briefly to the other side of the farm bill conversation, which is, if I'm listening to this and I'm saying yes, yes, yes, I want this stuff to move forward. I'd like these things to happen, and a lot of it's because I own land and I want to actually get involved in some of these programs. I have some friends who are in that boat who have been able to participate in EQUIP or CRP contracts and have better wildlife habitat on their land because of it. And it's become more economical for them to do it because of these cost share programs or payments. But I do think some people are intimidated by getting involved with the government. You know, there's there's some concerns people have about getting in bed with the federal government all that kind of stuff. So can you give us a crash course, a quick rundown of, Hey, if I want to go down this path, how do I do it? What's involved? What kind of best practices should I be aware of if I want to get into the CRP program or participate with any equipped project or something like that. 00:57:38 Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, that's a that's a good one. The first thing I would say is to the folks who are hesitant to work with a federal agency, I get that myself. If I was going to pick one to work with, it would absolutely be USDA. And I'd say that for a couple of reasons. Number One, USDA's data privacy regular relations are about as stiff as probably the CIA or the irs, which can be pretty frustrating when you're a person like me who's trying to get information about what these programs are doing and where. But it's incredible the level of security that that agency has. The other thing I'll say on that is, if you don't want to dive in straight with the federal agency themselves, look at some of the partner organizations that are enrolling. One would be your conservation districts. That's a local unit of government, usually at the county level. You can talk to somebody who lives in your community who does this work, has worked with your neighbors. I think that's almost always true of the federal staff as well. But if that's not the step you want to take, but talk to your conservation district. They might be in the same building, so you still might have to walk into a federal building, but you'd be dealing with a local person. The same is true for conservation nonprofits, and there's a whole host of them who partner with USTA to do this work. And I always hesitate to name partners because we have so many of them who do this work. But Pheasants forever pops. 00:59:07 Speaker 3: Into my head right away. 00:59:08 Speaker 4: They've got a couple hundred farm built biologists who work directly with landowners, and then you've got that intermediarya where you're working with a Pheasants Forever staff person as opposed to know the agency themselves. 00:59:21 Speaker 2: But that really is Yeah, go ahead, I'm gonna introject really quickly. What does that actually look like. I've never worked with a Pheasant Forever farm biologists, but I've heard a lot of people mention, all they have these farm biologists, they have these farmer guys that do this well. They actually handhold you and help you through the process and be the person that deals with USDA rather than you have And too, how does that work? Do I have to pay them? What goes into that? 00:59:47 Speaker 3: Yeah? 00:59:47 Speaker 4: No, I imagine you could find a private contractor and pay them to do that. But no, you would not be right in the check to Pheasants Forever to get that level of assistance. If I can give you a bit of an anecdote, if you don't mind me going on a head for a minute. 01:00:01 Speaker 3: We get hung up on the. 01:00:02 Speaker 4: Cost share side of things. We get hung up on the financial assistance. And that's for good reason. We already talked about it. It costs money to do this work. But again, one of the barriers is where there's a lot of demand for those same dollars. So we need to from a landowner benefit perspective, we need to think about the technical assistance side a little bit. So here's what technical assistance is really. So this is this is a personal example. I'm going to reveal a deep, dark secret of the ceiling behind me. I got a walk out basement in my house. As you walk in the door, the very first thing you're going to see after you get past the dogs is a big hole in the drywall and the ceiling two foot by four foot, jagged, ugly hole. What happened was the shower above that leaked. By the time I got to it, I had a mold issue. I cut that drywall out. I'm ashamed to say. It's probably been there about as long as since we last talked Mark, so. 01:01:02 Speaker 3: It's probably been there a couple of years. So it's in my basement. 01:01:06 Speaker 4: I see it. 01:01:06 Speaker 3: I see it multiple times a day. But you know, the average. 01:01:10 Speaker 4: Person who comes to the house isn't going to see it. They're not going to walk down there. So technical assistance, I remember, that's the whole point of the story. I'd make a phone call. I'd call that Pheasants Forever Farm build biologist, or I'd call in our CS and I'd say, hey, I got a I got a hole in my drywall. And they'd say, you know what I've been I've been doing drywall for fifteen years. I've worked with ten of your neighbors on a very similar problem. 01:01:32 Speaker 3: You want me to come out and take a look. 01:01:35 Speaker 4: No cost, Okay, So they come out, they check out that hole, spend a little time looking at some of my other unfinished progate projects around the place. What are my goals? You know what am I actually trying to accomplish. They'd give me some examples of folks who tried some of the things, some of my hair braiding schemes, and tell me why that was a good idea or a bad idea. We'd sit down together, we'd write up a plan. It would have several options that would fix that hole. It would include my budget. They'd probably tell me how to keep my other shower drains from drainings from lencoln so I wouldn't have to do this again. And then they might, you know, they might tell me why, how to keep my closet door handles from unscrewing every time I open them. More than likely, just based on that technical assistance, I'd have that hole patched real quick, right, I'd be a lot better situated to avoid it in the future. Now, if we took that the step further and I applied for something but whatever, the hole in the ceiling reduction program, whatever that would be, and they said, okay, well, also we're going to pay fifty percent of the cost to fix that hole, I'm probably going to get it, get it done even faster. But I mean, honestly, that hole in my ceiling only hurts me. So we're never going to create a federal program to fix that hole. If we were talking about soil erosion or wildlife habitat, that's when we might start thinking about that cost share. But anyway, that's a lot about that conservation planning process. Looks like you've got an expert who has done this before, who is doing it in your area, with your neighbors helping you work through that process. And if you want to take the next step and apply for a federal program to help you pay for it, great. If you just want to have another set of eyes on your property giving you some good advice about what made what you could possibly do. 01:03:29 Speaker 3: You can do that without ever signing a sheet of paper. 01:03:33 Speaker 2: And so the way to get this process started is to either look and see if you have a Pheasants Forever Farm Bill biologist in your area, and or to just call your local NRCS office. Is that right? 01:03:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, you'd have a USDA service center most likely within the county you live in. You can you can just call the first number you see for that office and you'll talk to a person who's able to connect you to the right spot. Again if you if you prefer to work with one of the various nonprofits. Again, there's there's dozens of them who have similar agreements like this. But pick your conservation organization of choice and see if they've got somebody who's working on a partnership with USDDA. 01:04:18 Speaker 2: And there's there's a whole lot of ways that this can manifest itself on the ground, right, I mean, I know there are dozens of different habitat improvement ideas out there that are being discussed within the hunting world and various you know, there's ways to improve pollinator habitat, and there's native grasslands, and there's forest management, and there's early successional habitat, and there's people who want to put in water holes or put in prairie strips, or they want to put in tree plantings to improve There's all these different things that you could do to make your habitat better on your land, and I think a lot of people probably don't realize that a lot of those projects would fall within the scope of something like equip where there might be this technical assistance that could be provided to you, or coast share provided to you, or maybe what you want to do would fall into one of the CRP programs where you could be paid to have that habitat out there. Right, So, it seems like almost almost with anything you might want to do to make your deer hunting or pheasant hunting or turkey hunting better, they're very likely at least cause enough to call your local office and say, Hey, here's the kind of thing we're trying to do, here's my goals. Can you help. Absolutely, since it's free to at least get that help and have that conversation, it seems it seems really hard to argue at least trying them. 01:05:39 Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, you know, you want to do prescribe fire, there's a practice standard for prescribe fire. You want to put in a fuel break so that. 01:05:46 Speaker 3: You can burn. 01:05:47 Speaker 4: There's all sorts of you know, these all have numbers, and they all have very specific names because they're within a federal system. But you don't have to know, you know, oh this this fits as this six or four to three restoration of rare declining natural communities. You know, you don't have to know that. You just have to say, you know, I'm trying to improve habitat I've got a eighty acre piece of woods, or I've got a ten acre piece that used to be farmed, or you know, whatever it is. 01:06:15 Speaker 3: Taking that step is a big one. 01:06:17 Speaker 4: And so I mentioned there's tremendous demand for the financial side of these programs. That's absolutely true. But oftentimes if there's a state program, or there's a you know, philanthropic organization that's putting money towards these things, or or or or nonprofit organization that has funding to do this kind of work, the folks at that USDA service center are going to know about that program. So they might say, yeah, we could do it through equip that's what this process looks like. But you know, State of Minnesota has a similar program. You might be better off talking to them first. It's just a really good repository for both the technical knowledge and the technical assistance and conservation planning. But also you know where else might I be able to find financial assistance? 01:07:08 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I I feel ashamed to say that. You know, I've not called the nrc office up up north where we have a family, uh property that we probably should have touched base with, to see if there's something we've We've talked to foresters and stuff up there, but I actually haven't called n RCS to see if there's some kind of state or federal program that we could have gotten involved in. So I've got my uh my marching orders now too with this reminder. 01:07:35 Speaker 3: So yeah, that's great. 01:07:36 Speaker 2: So with that all said, Aaron, wrapping things up here, you mentioned that TRCP has some materials and resources on your website. Is there any other specific action items you want to give to folks today other than going to t RCP dot org and and maybe following through on some of those action itms you called to called attention to could you could you give us the final one two three that you want us to move forward on. 01:08:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so we I mean we talked a little bit about making sure you're informed. 01:08:07 Speaker 3: And I'll broaden this out. 01:08:10 Speaker 4: You might have listened to this as a casual you've got a casual interest in egg or or a private lands conservation, but you're really at heart you're a public lands person or you know you're listening to this. You like to hunt deer, but I'm I'm a I'm a trout fisherman and I fish in Colorado. We work on all those issues. My my chunk of that is what we talked about today. But we work on all those issues. So if if you if you're willing to take the time to visit the website, I think you'll find something that speaks to you as an individual, and I hope you'll you'll get involved there. But just you know, zooming out a little bit. Uh, hunters and anglers, especially if you take those two groups together, as you know so many of us are overlap. Of course, that's a that's a big group of people in this country, and the traditionally and historically has not been a better set of advocates for getting good conservation work done in this country than hunters and anglers. And if we allow that voice to become quiet, if we allow that voice to you know, sit back and watch, we're not going to get the outcomes. 01:09:22 Speaker 3: That we want to see. 01:09:23 Speaker 4: And so I hope folks, uh, we'll just take that, take that initiative to you know, just take that next step and find. 01:09:30 Speaker 3: A way to get involved. And that might mean, you. 01:09:32 Speaker 4: Know, spending time on our website and signing up for action alerts and calling your congress person. Or it might mean becoming a member of one of our partner organizations and you know, going out and doing that habitat work on the ground yourself, or fundraising U there's a there's a whole different, whole lot of different ways that folks can do that. 01:09:51 Speaker 3: I just hope that folks are willing to take one. 01:09:53 Speaker 2: Of those steps right there with you, Aaron, I I will do my best to do my part and on everyone listening to join you and me and doing that. 01:10:03 Speaker 4: So I really appreciate you, you know, being a voice for conservation, Mark and you know, drawing attention to these issues. 01:10:11 Speaker 2: My pleasure. At the least I can do, given how how incredibly much these open spaces, these working lands, these white tailed deer and pheasants and grouse and trout and bluegill and rabbits have given me and my family. At least I can do is try to keep him around, right, absolutely, well, Erin, I really appreciate you. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I hope that we don't have to have the same conversation two years from now. I hope we can touch base again and celebrate. How about that. 01:10:40 Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll have to have me on when we get something passed, and we can tell you all the good things that are in there for hunters and anglers. 01:10:46 Speaker 2: That's a good plan to me, all right, And that's a wrap. Thanks for being here, Thank you for tuning in, Thanks for being a part of the solution, helping move this thing forward. Getting a far bill finally passed, it's gonna be good for deer, deer, hunters, pheasants, quale, songbirds, pollinators, open spaces, clean water, clean air. It's gonna do all that kind of stuff if we can make sure it gets over the finish line. So going over to TRCP dot org, follow the prompts to get to their farm bill page. You know, send that action email, keep on getting in touch with your lawmakers on this stuff. Let's get this sucker done until next time, Thank you, and stay wired to hunt