0:09

This is the me eat your podcast, coming

0:11

at you shirtless, severely bug

0:13

bitten in my case underwear, listening

0:16

me to eat the podcast. You can't

0:18

predict anything. Oh

0:37

all right, before before we get two started.

0:39

Uh, Jimmy Dorn you're

0:42

freshman the wheat fields of Montana. Yeah, I'm

0:44

just back, just just the other day. You

0:46

go out every year and cut wheat every year and my

0:49

friends wheat farm. Yeah two

0:51

Uh, a couple of weeks of harvests and just

0:53

had a little break, came back to the bar for a couple

0:56

of days, take care for the business, the restaurant. Uh,

0:58

end of the month stuff, and then right

1:01

back to go. We just switched over from cutting winter

1:03

wheat. Now we're moving on to spring wheet, which is still

1:05

a little bit high moisture. So it's worked

1:07

out perfect. Like how why did you?

1:09

Why? And how how many years have been caught in wheat?

1:11

Poor? This is my four or third year and

1:14

it was one of my best friends his family.

1:16

I met him actually we worked at a restaurant together

1:19

here in Seattle, and um,

1:21

his his family runs a

1:24

big wheat operation north of Great

1:26

Falls Danner. There's really fantastic people

1:28

in the Gas botas and uh,

1:30

we just went through a deal and and he

1:32

had his father actually unfortunately passed away at

1:35

a pretty young age, and kind of, you know, it was

1:37

kind of a it's like just kind of all

1:39

hands on deck kind of things. So I went back and helped

1:41

out. And I just love it. I mean, driving

1:43

a big kind

1:45

of raccoons and a yeah, yeah,

1:48

definitely the raccoons skit the way

1:50

occasionally, but yeah, they

1:52

trust me driving really huge, cool,

1:55

super expensive piece of equipment, and I just

1:57

love it. So tell me how like give me the both of even

2:00

getting like how much we cut? How quick? Well,

2:02

I couldn't really break it down how much? How quick?

2:04

I mean we feel a lot of semis.

2:07

It's it's we can fill up like

2:09

a seven fifty bushel hopper in

2:11

minutes. I mean it's forty five um

2:14

header moving it like three

2:16

and you're swat

2:19

at a time. Yeah, did mow lawn so fast?

2:22

It'd be quick. We can we cut six acres

2:24

and you know, just under a couple of hours.

2:27

It was. It was pretty amazing. When it's humming, we

2:29

have three machines going, three combines and the

2:32

grain cart and uh, we can just

2:34

flat out knock it out. Is it getting hauld

2:36

to a silo or is it going right to so much? We

2:39

have two different things. You'll haul to grain

2:41

silos, yeah, commercial operations

2:43

and or we'll ben it and uh, they

2:45

speculate on prices and stuff like that. We can

2:47

weak stores for quite a while. So and

2:50

uh, it just depends on where it's going what it

2:52

is you said, I think we talked about

2:54

it before it You kind of do it for therapeutic reasons.

2:56

Man. It gets me out of the city. And

2:59

uh, wait for the eats the business away from the

3:01

pizza business instead of like yoga and

3:03

surf camp. Some of these wheat farmers might want

3:05

to look into sell them like gold

3:09

retreats. Yeah, they should go cut wheat week.

3:13

It is very therapeutic. I mean you spend it. It's

3:15

it's I don't want to sell it short. It's a grind.

3:17

I mean we cut from you

3:19

know, you wake up

3:21

at six and your servicing machines by

3:24

seven thirty and then you're generally cutting by around

3:26

nine. And he worked all day and

3:29

they the cool thing is dinner in the field.

3:31

And also you get these you

3:33

know, the cooler shows up and around you with your face

3:36

up in that faced off.

3:38

That would not that kind of cool lunch cool

3:40

lunch cooler. Getting

3:43

ship house might not go over too well. There's

3:46

really expensive gear, but uh,

3:48

I don't know. Uh yeah, and

3:50

you know, dinner comes around and he cut until

3:53

dark and then generally the rule is once

3:55

the you know, these machines

3:57

all have fantastic light arrage. You could work all

4:00

night if you wanted to, and uh,

4:02

generally we just fill up all the machines

4:05

at once it gets dark dark, that's when we're just like,

4:07

all right, just fill up the semis and

4:09

then we tarp them off overnight and uh

4:12

that's generally the end of the day. But you'll generally cut

4:14

from nine am

4:16

two generally around ten thirty

4:18

eleven pm. So it's it gets

4:21

things start moving kind of wavy

4:24

after you know, twelve hours

4:26

or so. But you

4:28

do, like later on you have to do like a memoir about

4:31

wheat coding. I love it,

4:33

I really do. And then you know, the scenery is pretty cool,

4:35

and I mean, uh,

4:37

you know it's it's a climate controlled,

4:40

you know environment. You're sitting in air conditioning

4:42

with the air chair and you have XM

4:44

radio and I download

4:47

you know, I've listened to forty podcasts

4:49

and but it still doesn't you know, we

4:51

did. We cut for a hundred and thirty

4:53

plus hours in ten days. I mean, it's

4:56

it's definitely grind. You close your eyes

4:58

when you hit the sheets, you

5:01

opened them and it's time to go again. It's just like you

5:03

don't even feel like he had a break for real. So

5:05

at the end of the year, they just cut you big badass check

5:07

and you walk up. Well, we'll see about the badass

5:09

part, but yeah, I definitely get drive

5:12

off in a brand new truck. Gold Team. I

5:14

wish, I wish. No,

5:16

it's good. They're super nice people and they've been

5:18

you know, I was a total greenhorn and it's like I'm the

5:20

city guy showing up playing farmer and so

5:23

they're you know, they're nice enough to a

5:25

trust me and be I take

5:27

instruction. I can learn pretty much anything pretty

5:29

quick, and you know, they're like, hey, do

5:32

this, do that, and they literally just kind of threw

5:34

two the wolves. Man. They're like, all right, here you go. Don't

5:36

wreck it because it's really expensive, and

5:39

then I take it from there. It's great, it's been it's

5:41

been really fantastic learning experience, and I've

5:43

met a lot of fantastic people and farmers

5:46

I think are some of the best people we got. It's

5:49

been. It's been fantastic. I really enjoy it.

5:51

And then Tuesday you head back cup more week. Tuesday

5:53

I go back. Yeah, I got my trucks after likes

5:55

and my trucks at the Great Falls Airport right now,

5:58

just gonna go and get right back after

6:00

it. And I think it's probably another ten days

6:02

of two weeks, and then we'll

6:04

probably drinks some beer and eat mistakes when it's

6:06

all said and done. So it's been great.

6:09

I just like I said, I love it. Just the nicest people

6:11

and amazingly resilience

6:14

and just something breaks. You don't

6:16

just you're sixty miles from anything, so it's

6:18

not like you can just I mean, guys know how

6:20

to well thinking. You know this guy that I work

6:22

with, you know, Josh and and his brother

6:25

in law Brandon, they can literally fix anything,

6:28

like on the fly, Like this crazy

6:30

bracket broke on the combine I was driving, and this

6:32

guy Brandon, uh had a new one

6:34

fabbed up installed in like an

6:37

hour and a half, Like just oh

6:39

yeah, I got that. They're just they're that kind of people.

6:41

And when stuff goes south. We had a big fire

6:44

um on the farm adjacent to ours, which

6:46

is like just a disaster, right.

6:48

You know, you're watching your whole year's work go up

6:51

and smoke wheat

6:53

fire and it's degrees and there's

6:55

a fifteen mile our wind. I mean, it is astonishing

6:58

how fast or fire will move and

7:00

how dangerous it is. But like every

7:02

wheat that's still standing, still standing wheat,

7:05

and there's actually some cut. There's this lay

7:07

down it's like swath. I'm not exactly sure the technique

7:09

for harvesting, but so basically it's

7:11

just like it's laid down in these long rows, just

7:14

tinder dry, and it's this massive amount of fuel

7:16

for the fire. And uh, I

7:19

mean everybody drops everything from

7:21

like a three mile radius and everybody you have to

7:23

have you know, we have these big we drag a disc

7:25

or behind a tractor, and we have a fire rake set

7:27

up with you know, a massive container water with

7:29

a pump like a legit fire set

7:32

up, and everybody just drops what they're

7:34

doing and it's like all hands on deck.

7:36

Everybody shows up and puts out their neighbor's fire.

7:38

It's really, it's really astonishing to see how

7:41

everybody comes together. It's pretty cool. That

7:43

is nice. Yeah, that's solid that people are.

7:45

They're just good salt of the earth, just awesome

7:48

folks. Year

7:52

no no, no, no. But here in Seattle, if a

7:55

if a competitor down the road, if

7:57

another pizza guy down the road's place burning

7:59

down, like I'd

8:03

lend a hand. We're

8:05

all in it together, like I like to

8:07

think. So yeah, our only

8:09

guests Mike rule, Mike tell tell everybody what what

8:11

what? What? Your story is, what you do for a living. So

8:14

I'm the native Fish program manager

8:17

for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish,

8:19

and people are thinking New Mexico has fish.

8:23

They do when I when I when I moved

8:25

into that job, I thought, man, this is probably

8:27

gonna be easy. I don't think there's really any water in New

8:29

Mexico. But it turns

8:31

out that's not true. There's there's water

8:34

and quite a few places and a

8:36

whole lot of data fish that

8:38

are are pretty unique to that part

8:40

of the world. But if you were to weigh up like tonnages,

8:43

Okay, let's say let's say you

8:45

had a giant pile they had all

8:47

of the non native fish in New Mexico, and the

8:49

next to it was a giant pile with

8:51

all the native fish of New Mexico. Which pile

8:54

is bigger? Wow,

8:56

this is a tough one. That is

8:59

I probably probably non native fish the

9:01

bigger pile. Yeah, based based mostly

9:03

on on the reservoirs that we have. Yeah.

9:06

Yeah, Why why do reservoirs

9:08

tend to suck so bad for native fish?

9:12

Well, I mean, it's

9:14

certainly not always true that there bad

9:17

for native fish, but but it's like, you

9:19

know, it just seems like everywhere you go, when

9:21

you go to a reservoir, oftentimes

9:26

you're fishing fish that aren't from the area.

9:28

Yeah. So, I mean, definitely a couple of

9:31

things that play. One. It's not it's

9:33

not the historic habitat that's there. You

9:35

know, those native fish evolved

9:37

in those in rivers mostly,

9:40

and then you put a dam on the river and you create a

9:42

lake, and so that's that's just not what they're adapted

9:45

to. And then, of course the other

9:47

thing is you know, the introduction

9:49

of of non native fish,

9:51

both intentionally and accidentally over

9:54

the years, and including you know,

9:56

non native fish that we that we like to

9:58

fish for yeah, because

10:00

it's probably a big thing with you

10:03

deal with the non natives that that you

10:05

want, and there's the non natives you don't want. I

10:08

think it's like where I grew up in the Great Lakes, the

10:10

non natives you don't want are getting almost

10:13

as numerous as the non natives people did

10:15

want. Yeah,

10:17

I mean, I like all these like all the car

10:20

gobies, right, all

10:22

these things to completely rewrite the landscape, the

10:25

deleterious non natives. At the same time,

10:28

they're also trying to like establish more and more the

10:30

ones day, you know, five

10:33

species of four species of Pacific

10:35

salmon in the Great Lakes. That's a tremendous

10:37

amount of money that goes into putting

10:39

those fish in there. Yeah, you know,

10:41

i'd I'd like to think anyway, we're mostly

10:44

done in most places trying

10:46

to establish new populations

10:48

and non native fish. Um. But

10:51

of course you're right, you know, salmon

10:53

and other fish to support him that

10:55

got established in the Great Lakes our

10:57

thing. Um, you're saying that most

11:00

like we as a culture are mostly done

11:02

trying to establish non native fisheries. Yeah,

11:05

I think, I mean, I think here in the United

11:07

States for sure, that's true. I don't know about else in

11:10

the world. I think for the most

11:12

part. I mean that doesn't mean that we

11:14

don't continue to support some

11:17

non native fisheries. But but as

11:19

far as uh, you know, bringing

11:21

in a lot of new non native

11:24

fish at least in the public waters, UM,

11:27

that's lower, that's lower priority. Yeah,

11:29

you know, I'm not familiar,

11:33

certainly not in New Mexico with you know,

11:35

with efforts to do

11:37

that. Yeah, to like get

11:39

more walleye go on or more whatever going. You

11:44

know. I think we want to talk about is

11:46

UM. Like

11:50

I think I think a lot of a lot of people that hunt fish don't

11:52

realize is how wildlife

11:56

management gets funded. UM.

12:00

And I'm gonna set this up real quick. Then you after

12:02

I get done set it up, you take you go with

12:05

or don't go with. You can you

12:07

can like say where I was wrong or right.

12:10

But in so,

12:13

if you're gonna look at American history, UM,

12:16

in a in a wildlife perspective, we

12:20

came in it must say like

12:22

euro American culture, European culture came

12:24

to the US. What's not the US,

12:27

And we spent a couple of hundred years almost

12:32

systematically but not quite intentionally

12:35

depopulating wildlife in

12:37

the country to the point

12:39

where we got to around the turn of the century,

12:42

the early and we'd kind of uh

12:46

almost wiped out virtually everything.

12:51

And then at that time there was a

12:53

big push to try to find a way to recover

12:56

game animals. And

12:58

one of the biggest things that happened that there's

13:00

two stages and recovering wild wildlife

13:03

in America. There's like two stages that happened to it.

13:05

Well, let's for our perposonal stagre's three stages.

13:08

One of the stages was setting

13:11

aside land and habitat okay,

13:13

and Theodore Roosevelt kind of ran

13:16

point on that idea is just like establishing

13:19

landscapes where there could where there you would have if

13:21

they're where you're creating

13:23

land that if there were animals, that's

13:25

where the animals would be. Setting aside

13:27

a habitat um. Another stage

13:30

in this was time to stop the bleeding,

13:34

which was basically

13:36

a war against market hunters, so

13:39

trying to de incentivize

13:42

or otherwise make illegal the

13:45

raping and pillaging of the land and water

13:48

by people who were collecting animals

13:50

to sell be it for the feather trade,

13:54

wild meat, wild fish, so

13:57

that was another step that we had to take was

13:59

to stop market hunters, and

14:02

the third step was to build

14:04

stuff back up again. Eventually, the question comes

14:06

up, right, how are we gonna pay for wildlife

14:08

recovery in this

14:11

country? And one of the first things

14:13

were kind of like one of the big things that happened

14:15

in wildlife recovery happened

14:17

in nineties, right, and

14:20

it was originally called the Wildlife Restoration

14:22

Act. Yeah, I mean, they the

14:26

two acts that you're going to talk about. I think

14:28

you know that we commonly refer to as Pittman

14:30

Robertson and Dingle Johnson are

14:33

actually Pittman Robertson

14:35

is the Wildlife Restoration Act and Dingle

14:37

Johnson is the Sport Fish Restoration Act.

14:40

We we often put

14:43

those two things together and call them the

14:45

Wildlife and sport Fish Restoration Acts.

14:48

In fact, the US Fish and Wildlife Service

14:50

has offices that we

14:52

shortn't even further and call them the whisper Offices,

14:56

UH short for Wildlife and sport Fish

14:58

Restoration, and those are the offices

15:00

that administer those those federal

15:03

excise taxes. But the portion

15:05

of that that became pitt and Robbers and

15:07

happened much earlier. That's

15:10

a good question. You're you're probably actually more

15:12

familiar with the the intimate history

15:14

of the accident than i am. You

15:17

know, my knowledge kind of starts

15:19

with they came into existence in

15:22

nineteen thirty seven and then have

15:24

been amended various times. Look that up

15:26

beyond history, regardless

15:29

of it as a gap. Let me quickly they real

15:31

quick layout, just the background on

15:33

it. So Franklin

15:36

Roosevelt, he

15:39

goes around like he had a big conservation bent, like

15:41

Theodore did. And Franklin Roosevelt goes

15:43

around and he in the

15:46

thirties, he's going around and this is like the you

15:48

know, during the Great Depression. He's

15:50

going around explaining does this rod and gun

15:52

clubs around the country? People who are

15:54

interested in in hunting and fishing.

15:57

He's going around and explaining to them, if some if

15:59

this is gonna happen, if we're going to recover

16:01

American wildlife, you guys

16:03

are gonna have to do it. And they come up

16:05

with this idea that we're gonna put an excise

16:08

tax on guns

16:11

and ammunition and hunting equipment, to the tune of like

16:13

Tenor and

16:17

the sportsmen

16:20

who are going to be paying the tax. It's

16:23

a very targeted tax just on people

16:25

to hunt, and there overwhelmingly

16:29

enthusiastic about it. The

16:31

industry people, the people who are producing guns

16:33

and ammunition, who are gonna theoretically

16:36

lose sales due

16:39

to the fact that their goods are not going to be ten

16:41

or eleven percent more expensive, are

16:44

enthusiastic supporters of this Wildlife

16:47

Restoration Act idea. And

16:49

the thing goes from introduction

16:53

to the president president's signature in

16:55

ninety days. Now the Affordable

16:57

Care Act took over a year. To

17:00

give you a sense of like how quickly this thing

17:02

went through with overwhelming support,

17:05

and it wound up that they're just taking when

17:08

when you buy guns enamel, you get taxed

17:10

on it. That tax we're in top about how this works.

17:13

That money is the money that went

17:15

into we're covering

17:18

American wildlife. Yeah right, it's

17:20

it's what's called a user pay system, So

17:24

you know, it's it's in sports

17:27

AND's best interests to have healthy

17:29

wildlife and fish populations in the landscape.

17:32

And in order to to

17:35

foster that, the idea was that the users

17:37

would help to pay for it, meaning

17:41

that it's gonna favor well, we'll get

17:43

into that, the criticism that it just favors

17:46

game animals. Yeah, and we

17:48

can we can talk about that at

17:51

any point you want to. Um. The

17:54

reality is the the acts are a

17:56

little bit different in uh in

17:59

how they specifically focused. I

18:01

mean, yeah, let yeah, let me let

18:03

me clarify the one I'm talking about became Pittman

18:06

Robertson and follow following that or not what

18:08

you find out? Oh sorry, I didn't. You didn't clarify

18:10

the question, So I didn't. We're talking about you're supposed

18:12

to look up is Dingle

18:15

john What year did Dingle Johnson happened? Okay,

18:18

Now, Dingle Johnson is a real strange name,

18:22

like Pittman Robertson. You know, you kind of like,

18:25

right, it's like an austerity to it, right,

18:28

But Dingle Johnson is just like, uh

18:30

so I would have picked a different name. Well,

18:32

I think it's personally it's you know, just

18:35

like Pittman Robertson named after the two sponsors

18:37

of the bill. No, no, and God bless

18:39

him. But I just would have said, like, you know, considering

18:42

that it's Dingle and Johnson,

18:44

we're gonna go. We're gonna go with different

18:47

names. I don't expect you to have it

18:49

to have a stated opinion on that, but

18:52

can you lay out what so like,

18:54

take it from the perspective the dude likes the hunting fish,

18:57

what stuff is he buying that

19:00

is going into these

19:02

funds? So specifically,

19:05

what kinds of products, like

19:07

when you buy sporting goods, what exact stuff

19:10

are you buying that your pants? Such a humongous tax

19:12

that's that then goes into wildlife funding? Like

19:15

what's on the list? Yeah, so there's I

19:17

mean, there's a there's

19:20

a huge list of things.

19:23

It It really largely

19:25

comes down for for Pittman

19:27

Robertson, A lot of it is guns and ammunition.

19:30

Um, it's archery equipment,

19:33

reloading supplies. I believe

19:35

archery equipment is in there, yep.

19:38

Um, some gunsmith

19:40

thing, I believe if gunsmiths are actually building

19:42

guns, um, muzzle

19:44

loaders. So it's it's

19:47

really, you know, most of the

19:49

common things that we think not and

19:51

stuff. No, that's getting more it's super

19:53

specific. Yeah, that's right. And then what is

19:55

it in the fishing end of things? So, um,

19:58

you know, fishing is is pretty similar

20:01

in that it's it's the things that you would think of.

20:03

It's it's rods and reels and and

20:06

lures. Um. So the very specific

20:08

stuff, right. The one that's

20:11

pretty important to sport fish that

20:13

most folks don't know about is that that

20:15

there's an excise tax on boat fuel. So

20:18

you have a boat fuel is just I mean unlettered

20:21

gas. Yeah, that's correct, But it depends

20:23

on where it's sold exactly. And I'm

20:25

not I'm not entirely sure how they calculate

20:29

what counts as boat fuel. You know, if

20:32

there's some small percentage of all the fuel that's

20:34

sold that's considered to be boat fuel, or if it's just

20:36

what's sold on marina docks

20:39

for instance, or or close to reservoirs.

20:41

But but there's a substantial

20:43

portion of of what comes

20:45

through the Sport Fish Restoration Act is is

20:48

coming from boat game. Yeah, I mean it's an important

20:50

component. Yeah. So the I know that

20:52

the Pittman Robertson funds right

20:54

now. So again, right now, when you go out by guns,

20:56

ammunition, all this kind of stuff, reloading stuff, archery

20:59

equipment is loading stuff. You're

21:01

paying a heavy as tacks on those goods

21:03

and right now, I

21:05

think on average now it raises about

21:08

a billion dollars a year go

21:11

into that fund. Yeah, I think the I'm

21:14

gonna gonna go into government speak

21:16

here the fiscal year, Um, I

21:21

believe seven hundred and eighty

21:23

million dollars is the number that I got

21:25

in front of me coming through just

21:27

through Pittan Robertson, just through the Wildlife

21:30

restaurant, from

21:32

from one fiscal year. And does that stay

21:34

pretty steady every year? Um?

21:38

You know, I don't have the history in front of me. It

21:40

it went up. I think you know almost

21:43

everybody knows the story of of what

21:45

happened during the Obama administration. Yeah,

21:48

go ahead, all right, So there's

21:52

different ways to spin is. I'm gonna try to find a way that

21:55

that rolls into different spins on it. So okay,

21:59

Um, now this is me talking, not Mike

22:02

ah Obama. People

22:04

know it's not like a the gun.

22:07

The firearms industry did not find a

22:09

kindred spirit in Obama. And uh,

22:13

there there was a lot of fear throughout the

22:15

eight years of his pregnant as presidency

22:18

that we would be having some like draconian

22:21

anti gun measures and acted

22:24

and it prompted a lot of people to go out and buy

22:27

firearms and buy AMMO for fear

22:29

that their right to do so

22:32

might be infringed upon in the very near

22:34

future, and it caused

22:37

a like a legit gun rush.

22:40

I think the handgun sales went up under

22:43

his administration some people, and so all

22:46

that gun buying. Some people

22:49

called him um jokingly called

22:51

you know, America's best gun salesman, and

22:53

other people talked about his conservation

22:56

legacy because it

22:59

blew up Pittman Robertson funding. Because

23:01

every time someone goes out and buys a handgun

23:03

for home defense, by

23:06

the way this law has written, ten or eleven

23:08

percent of that purchase price price goes

23:11

into funding wildlife. So

23:13

it was like the good old days for eight

23:16

years and then gun purchases.

23:19

With the the new administration coming in,

23:21

gun purchases plummeted almost

23:24

instantaneously. So I think

23:26

now there's some austere times coming.

23:31

Yeah, that's entirely possible. I mean we

23:33

haven't it'll be it'll be fiscal

23:35

year eighteen when when when

23:38

we see those new numbers. But whether yeah,

23:40

because the real big drive around that is guns

23:42

and ammunition. I mean as far as like

23:44

the percentages go. So yeah, because

23:47

because because Obama fuelled such

23:49

a gun buy and frenzy he fueled like some major

23:51

conservation spending. I even saw her

23:53

one magazine, like a very pro Obama magazine

23:56

had it be like um as

23:58

sort of building in it as part of his

24:00

concert, like I said, his conservation legacy,

24:03

even though it's completely like the Department of Unintended

24:07

Consequences, right, it was like not the

24:09

goal. And if that was the goal, and

24:12

you are that shrewd of a poker player,

24:14

I have to like hand it to you. If

24:17

you're like, well, how could I get more money

24:19

to fund wildlife? I don't all do. I'll

24:21

act like I'm gonna get rid of guns,

24:23

but not really, that's shrewd. No

24:26

one plays that kind of poker. Yeah,

24:29

I got no. I mean I wouldn't

24:32

think so. I would just say that it's been a good

24:35

thing for for conservation funding.

24:38

Okay, so there's seven hund eighty million. Now how much

24:40

comes up from the taxes on fishing gear? You

24:42

got that? Yeah, so it's it's about three and

24:45

fifty millions. Yeah, but

24:48

there's twice as many fishermen. Yeah,

24:50

you know, because they like fishermen are like uh, I

24:53

was sending his conversation your day, Um,

24:56

twice as many people buy fishing licenses, but they're

24:58

not they're not as obsessive. Right,

25:01

There's there's more weekend

25:04

folks that that don't don't

25:07

fish year around, like you know,

25:09

like people who are real dedicated

25:12

with hunting. Yeah, like when you talk when you talk about

25:14

hunting and fishing, like hunter numbers in American

25:16

fisher numbers in America. While they're looking at is

25:18

uh, they're just looking at who bought

25:20

a license? What happens after the guy

25:22

buys a license? You have no idea, so you kind of and

25:24

be like, I can't remember what it is. Just thirty million, I

25:27

don't know. Some years I think like around thirty

25:29

million Americans buy a fishing license, but

25:32

they could be buying three day licenses in order

25:34

to go out, you know,

25:36

one time. So they're

25:38

like twice as many fishermen are only paying half

25:40

as much excise taxes on stuff. Yeah,

25:43

fishing rounds like a hundred bucks, on our rifles

25:45

a thousand bucks. Right, So maybe it's just a

25:48

question of price. Could

25:50

be maybe so

25:52

there so that money,

25:55

Um, so

25:58

we got like what you're buying, it pays the stuff. This

26:00

is something everybody has to do where

26:03

does that, like, what's the path that money takes

26:06

in order to then go into like actual

26:08

fish and wildlife spending. Yeah,

26:11

so, um, I guess you know.

26:13

One thing to note there is is that that

26:16

the the excise tax is in

26:19

the price that you see, you

26:22

know, Yeah, you

26:24

don't get like an itemized bill that shows that part

26:26

of it. Yeah. If you walk up to the counter and they charge

26:28

a tax, that's not the tax that we're talking

26:31

about. It's already built into the price

26:33

of the item. Um. So

26:36

that money essentially

26:39

goes into uh

26:41

pot of money that is administered by the

26:44

US Fish and Wildlife Service. And

26:46

then from there did

26:49

the pots get blended to the pots stay separate.

26:52

They stay separate. The hunting pot and the

26:54

fishing pot go to US Fish

26:56

and Wildlife Service, but they stay hunting fishing.

26:59

That's correct. Yeah, I mean there you know,

27:01

there are different there are different rules

27:04

for both pots of money, um in

27:06

terms of how things get old

27:09

out to the states and and

27:12

territories and the District of Columbia.

27:14

Um. So they

27:16

stay separate. And then ah,

27:19

essentially what happens is the Fish

27:22

and Wildlife Service runs

27:24

their formula for how much each state is

27:26

going to get from each program every

27:29

years that I want to talk about

27:31

that. But what'd you find out? Do you find it out? Dingle

27:35

Johnson? So quite

27:38

like some idy here twelve years thirteen years

27:40

later, here's nothing to look up.

27:42

Do you remember when a guy told us how much uh,

27:46

Federal and Savage when

27:49

they have to cut their check, they're

27:51

Pittman Robertson check. Uh,

27:54

there's a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah.

27:57

I don't know if I was there for that conversation, though you

28:00

were on the email. I'll find it.

28:03

Um. Okay,

28:06

Yeah, some guy was telling us, like what

28:08

a company like that Federal

28:11

Ammunition, how many how much animal they sell? It's

28:13

gotta be a lot. Oh yeah, at the

28:15

end of the year, you're right, and check for tens and tens

28:17

of millions of dollars. Just think about how much Federal is

28:19

shoot every year? All

28:22

right? So so how

28:25

do the what is the goal? Like, how do you how do you calculate

28:27

that out? Like what are they looking at to say, like, okay, here's

28:30

what states get? What is it? How many dudes hunting

28:32

fish there? Yeah, that's part of it. Um,

28:35

Like I said, they're they're a little bit different at

28:37

at their heart, they

28:40

are both about two things. One

28:43

is land area, so how big

28:45

the state is, and the other is how many license

28:48

buyers there are. Um, you

28:50

know, there there's a little bit of complexity and nuance,

28:53

and we could we could spend a week talking

28:55

about that. But for Wildlife

28:57

Restoration Act, um, it's fifty

29:00

percent land area and it's fifty

29:03

number of paid licensed

29:05

hunters. Now, so who

29:08

are the big winners there? Well,

29:10

I you know, I got to imagine I could, I could

29:12

look at the list, but you know, I have to imagine a

29:14

state like Texas, which has a huge

29:17

land area and a huge number of hunters, would

29:20

would really come out high. But there

29:22

is an additional rule in there, which

29:25

is that no state can receive more

29:27

than five percent of the total or

29:29

less than one Oh, I got you. So

29:32

it keeps it from from, you

29:35

know, having one state really

29:37

dominate. I grew up in Pennsylvania.

29:39

That Pennsylvania would probably be another one that if

29:41

if you base anything off the number of of

29:44

licensed hunters in the state, you know, would

29:47

would really get a big share. Oh yeah, because they are

29:49

Pennsylvania often vised for like the hunting

29:51

the state. Yeah, I have per capital,

29:54

but just total numbers of licenses, right,

29:56

you always hear like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas.

29:59

Yeah, they they used to say when when I was a kid,

30:02

you know, they said there were a million people

30:05

in the woods on the first day of rifle

30:07

deer season every year. So

30:10

I had I had looked it up recently.

30:13

Um, I believe

30:15

in the last couple of years they fell below a

30:17

million licenses sold. But but that

30:19

million number is a threshold that that not

30:22

many places. I think Texas. I

30:24

think for a couple of years ago, five to

30:26

ten years ago, maybe Pennsylvania was was

30:30

number one right there, and now it's

30:32

fallen behind to Texas, a long behind

30:34

Texas. So did you say, again,

30:37

just to back up, did you say it winds up being how many people

30:39

buy a hunting license, how many people live in the state.

30:41

No, it's how many people buy a license. It

30:44

is number of paid licensed

30:47

hunters. So it's land area,

30:49

fift land area and

30:52

fifty number of licensed hunters.

30:54

So then they take the big giant pool of money the

30:57

US Fish and Wildlife Service does or

30:59

there three quarters of a billion dollars

31:02

million whatever? Does they take that and

31:05

then they run their calculation and they

31:07

wind up saying, let's use New Mexico.

31:10

They wind up saying, Okay, here's

31:12

New Mexico's chunk, and

31:15

what is New Mexico's chunk? This is all public information?

31:17

Oh yeah, yeah you can. Uh. I mean if

31:20

you if you do a web

31:22

search for sport, fish

31:24

and Wildlife Restoration Acts, you'll

31:27

you'll end up at at the Fish and Wildlife

31:29

Service UM website

31:31

and and all of this is

31:34

is readily available. Yea. So

31:37

New Mexico UM, make

31:41

sure I'm on the right line in the table

31:44

here. It looks like fifteen

31:46

million dollars fifteen and a half million

31:49

dollars in fiscal year seventeen

31:52

four from the Wildlife

31:54

Restoration Act, So from Pittman Robertson and

31:57

and what for them fishing, I think it's about

32:00

it's six six point one, so

32:04

twenty one and a half million combined.

32:07

And so the FEDS then they don't just like turn

32:09

around and write you at check for twenty one

32:11

and a half million and say go for it. Yeah.

32:14

And so this this was really one of the

32:16

things that I wanted to talk about. You know, we

32:20

talked a little bit about the history of the Act and and

32:22

like I mentioned, I'm you know, I'm not the

32:25

greatest student of that history. I'm

32:28

I come at this more from a pragmatic

32:30

standpoint of of how

32:33

we do this and how the money

32:35

really works and how it flows and where

32:37

it goes, and so

32:41

what happens is the state's

32:43

right grants. I mean, we know how

32:46

much money is is going to be granted

32:48

to us or how much money is available for those

32:50

grants. But we write grants

32:53

too. But you know, like, but you know

32:55

you're gonna get it. We know, we know we're gonna get

32:57

it. I mean, the Fishing

33:00

Wildlife Service, you know, reviews

33:02

the grants to ensure that the projects

33:05

meet the rules that the

33:08

acts put in place. You know, so

33:10

there's a process step there

33:12

that has to be done. But we,

33:16

you know, we still have to write the grants and then

33:18

we report to the US Fish and Wildlife Service at

33:20

the end on what we did with the money. Um.

33:24

But you know, one of the

33:27

real interesting nuances of

33:29

how this works is that both

33:32

programs, as well as some

33:34

other federal grant programs, are

33:37

reimbursement programs. So

33:40

the state, while while we do write

33:42

a grant and the Fish and Wildlife

33:44

Service does come back hopefully

33:47

and say yes, you know, go ahead,

33:49

you can spend money on that. The

33:51

state spends the money

33:54

first, and then once

33:56

we've spent it, we apply

33:59

for reimbursements. But where do you get in the

34:01

first place. So almost

34:03

all of that money, in especially

34:06

in a state like New Mexico, comes

34:09

from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses,

34:11

So the license buyer pays

34:14

for the projects up front and then

34:16

gets reimbursed for a portion of

34:18

the money that has already been

34:20

spent. Can you real quick name,

34:23

like, can you put give people sense

34:25

of what these projects are? Well,

34:28

I mean that's it's tough because they're they're

34:31

really broad in in uh

34:34

scope and scale. UM. We

34:37

use the money to do all kinds of things. Habitat

34:40

restoration is is one thing,

34:42

um, you know, both for for

34:44

fish and wildlife. UM. You

34:47

know, we do surveys, We monitor

34:50

populations of fish and wildlife

34:52

statewide. UM. On

34:55

the fishery side of things, we do things like operate

34:58

our state fish hatcheries using this

35:00

money. UH. Specifically

35:03

in the program that I

35:05

work in, we do. We

35:08

we work with our native

35:10

fish are particularly our native trout,

35:13

both helo trout and real ground the cutler trout

35:16

are considered sport fish.

35:18

So even though helo trouts

35:20

listed as threatened under the Endangered Species

35:22

Act, we're still able to use Dingle

35:25

Johnson money to work on it. So it

35:28

is to do research and habitat improvement,

35:31

try to recover the fish. Yeah, and

35:33

so to a large degree, it

35:37

covers most of the breadth

35:39

of the biology stuff

35:43

that the agency does. And

35:45

so you know, I do wanna. I don't want to move

35:48

on before I mentioned one thing, which is that

35:51

most states work like New Mexico, where

35:54

almost all of our revenue comes through license

35:56

sales. They're are not like You're

35:59

like, you're not getting money just from

36:01

the general taxpayer in New Mexico. That's

36:03

right, and and most states work that way. There

36:06

there are exceptions. I believe Missouri

36:08

and Arkansas are two exceptions that that

36:11

while of course they still get money through license

36:14

sales, they also get other

36:16

money's tax sales, tax revenue

36:18

or general fund moneies. But most

36:20

states um are like

36:23

us. And you know, we we say that we're

36:25

an enterprise agency, which essentially

36:27

means that we generate our

36:29

own revenue. Yeah. I had read somewhere

36:31

that so the country has

36:34

fifties state fish and game agencies obviously,

36:36

and I read somewhere that their budgets

36:39

so all of the work that goes into

36:41

wildlife at a state

36:44

level, which basically all states. Every

36:47

state manages virtually all the wildlife

36:49

in their state. Was some exceptions when you get

36:51

into like things that are listed as in dangered species,

36:54

but states manage their own wildlife and

36:58

across the boarding, all states just

37:00

all the money they use for wildlife, game

37:02

and non games. So just like all wildlife

37:05

in the state is paid for

37:08

sixty six depending

37:10

on which state, is paid for by

37:13

people buying hunting and fishing licenses or

37:16

by people paying taxes on hunting

37:18

and fishing gear. Like

37:20

the hunters and anglers foot the whole thing. Virtually,

37:24

the hunters and anglers through

37:28

buying licenses certainly foot a big

37:31

proportion of it. You know, I don't

37:34

I don't have an agency wide number like

37:36

that. I mean, there there

37:38

are things that you can pay for

37:41

using Sport, Fish and Wildlife

37:43

Restoration Act moneies. We call those

37:45

reimbursable expenses, and other

37:48

things that you can't. So you

37:50

can't reimburse for law enforcement

37:53

expenses, and obviously that's a substantial

37:55

component of a lot of you

37:57

know, agencies do um,

37:59

so actually paying the game wardens. You can't use

38:01

federal funds for that, right, that's correct. That's got

38:04

to come out of your license sales. It does. And

38:07

so one of the other things that the acts prohibit

38:09

are really anything that

38:12

generates revenue. So we

38:14

can't use the money to sell

38:17

licenses. So the staff

38:19

and the infrastructure and everything else that's

38:22

actually selling licenses

38:24

not reimbursable expenses. And

38:27

I want to I want to get back to the to just to to

38:29

the to the part you're talking about where you're doing

38:32

paying out a pocket and then applying for grants.

38:34

But just real quick, a thing,

38:38

a problem that used to happen that this is correct,

38:40

it is. It used to be that states would some

38:43

states would the state Fish and Game

38:45

agency would make money. They

38:48

would raise funds by selling hunting and fishing licenses,

38:51

but then the states would pilfer those

38:54

accounts. And

38:57

if you if a state removes hunting

39:00

fishing license revenue from its state Fishing

39:02

Game agency, doesn't the state then become ineligible

39:05

for the federal money. Like

39:08

there's rules that come with the federal money. There

39:10

there are and and uh, you know, we call

39:12

it the anti diversion portion

39:15

of the bill. So, um, the

39:17

Acts basically say

39:20

what you just said, which is that if

39:23

a state is to be eligible to receive the

39:25

money, they cannot

39:28

transfer that license

39:30

sale money outside of the agency

39:32

to do other unrelated things.

39:35

So they can't divert the money

39:37

for other purposes. They can't take it and put

39:40

it, you know, in their general fund to be spent

39:43

on roads or something. Yeah. So

39:45

your so your licen's money stays on mission,

39:48

right, which is really I mean, that was a absolutely

39:51

brilliant thing to build into

39:54

the Acts. That's what I was just thinking.

39:56

It's like, man, they really like nailed the

39:58

like the game plan this one. Yeah.

40:00

And then Greg blast it's his favorite part of it

40:02

is is if the money doesn't get

40:04

used in two years, it

40:07

just gets rolled into migratory birds.

40:09

I think, Yeah, he likes that little

40:12

final button on it. Yeah. I actually

40:14

just listen to that episode again, and you

40:16

know, I was I was thinking about that when this morning.

40:19

Actually that that if

40:21

if folks wanted to, that would be a great one to to

40:23

listen to before this to kind of, you

40:26

know, start thinking about why that revenue

40:29

is important, you know, before you

40:31

sort of get into the mechanics of how

40:33

it all works. So how crippling is

40:35

it that you guys got to pay up

40:38

front and then get reimbursed

40:41

later. Well, why can't it this give you the money up front?

40:44

Well, you know, I don't like, how do they

40:46

expect you have the money? I

40:48

think that agencies, I mean, I think this has been going

40:50

on. I don't know the early history with agencies,

40:53

but I think this has been going on so long at

40:55

this point that agencies are

40:58

you know, have just learned to plan for this

41:00

um as it as it currently

41:02

stands. Uh, you

41:05

know, I think New Mexico Department

41:07

of Game and Fishes is doing just fine

41:09

with that. But just like moving the money

41:11

around, Yeah, yeah, like taking

41:13

money that everything would go for

41:16

doing a project where it you're gonna get it back later and

41:18

you can use when you get it back, you can use it for things

41:20

that the federal funds aren't eligible for. Yeah,

41:23

you know, I'm not I'm

41:26

not a hundred percent sure that that, but

41:29

that that's a exactly right

41:31

that it's it's not necessarily

41:33

that we wait to get it back and then use it for things

41:35

that it's not eligible for. I think it just all comes

41:39

back into you know, our our

41:41

big fund when it comes back. So

41:44

while't me through the process of like I like, how

41:48

while me through the like follow a dollar? Right, So

41:50

there's a dollar in this pool? How does it come to

41:53

that dollar winds up going to to to Fish

41:55

and Wildlife in

41:58

a case scenario like something you've been involve So

42:00

once it gets to the agency, Yeah, like

42:02

I'm saying, like, like, like, walk me

42:04

through the process of a

42:08

state identifying something

42:10

they'd like to do. Right.

42:12

So so we say, hey, we have a

42:15

real grande Cutler trout project that

42:17

we want to work on. Um, here's

42:20

what it is. We right up to grant, We

42:22

send the grant to Fish and Wildlife Service. They

42:25

come back and say, okay, you're

42:28

approved, and um how

42:30

long does that take? You know? It

42:32

depends, Um, usually

42:35

a couple of months. I Mean, there's there's

42:38

kind of grand cycles that are that are tied

42:40

with these things that you

42:42

know, most most folks understand

42:45

what they are and and when things

42:47

need to be turned into to fit in

42:49

the both the state and the federal fiscal

42:52

year. Um. So they they usually

42:54

turn them around pretty fast. Uh.

42:58

And so then Once we get approval, you

43:00

know, there's grant code set up,

43:02

and uh, if you go work on

43:04

that Rio Grande cut or trout restoration

43:07

project, UM, you

43:09

come back and you report that time that

43:11

you worked or if you buy stuff for the project or

43:13

whatever it is, UM, you report

43:16

it that way. And then we have a

43:18

federal aid office. So New

43:21

Mexico Department of Game and Fish employees who

43:23

who work on this stuff full time financial specialists.

43:26

UM, they gather

43:28

all that information up. They send it to the

43:30

Fishing Wildlife Service, you know, to

43:33

document that the agency spent the money,

43:35

and then the Fishing Wildlife

43:37

Service sends back the reimbursement

43:40

portion UM, which for

43:42

both sport fishing wildlife is is

43:45

sev. So we get

43:47

reimbursed. They don't pay. Now

43:50

we get reimbursed for seventy excuse

43:54

me, sevent the cost? Is

43:56

it competitive or the like? Does

43:58

this Is there some bigger hand at the

44:01

state level that says like, okay,

44:03

we have fifteen

44:05

million dollars to work with here, let's

44:08

figure out how we're going to spread this around. Are

44:11

you competing? Are your grants competing

44:13

against other people within

44:15

the state in that sense?

44:18

Um, it's it's all,

44:20

it's all within our agency. So

44:23

you know, you could you could view it as

44:26

there is some competition in that way

44:28

where you know, upper level management,

44:31

like the chiefs from Fisheries and Wildlife

44:33

and the other divisions, you

44:36

know, would would talk about

44:39

the projects that that are on the docket and

44:42

how they're gonna spend that money. Now, of

44:44

course, because the acts

44:47

are separate, because ones for sport fish

44:49

and ones for wildlife. Generally,

44:51

the Wildlife division is gonna decide

44:54

how to spend their portion of it, and they do

44:56

that in consultation with with you

44:59

know, our our administration are director.

45:02

Um. So, so by that, I mean

45:04

like, let's say, you know, there's fifteen million

45:06

available. They're not sending over

45:09

twenty million grant requests

45:12

to official wildlife there, They're sending over

45:14

fifteen million grants. We work that out

45:16

internally. Yeah, that's okay, that's all

45:18

right. So you're never like fighting against the guy down

45:20

the hall, all

45:23

right now if you got to go make your case right

45:25

at the for the state level. Yes, that's

45:27

correct. Yeah. So what

45:30

was the next part of that? Now, because I interrupted you about

45:32

that, I don't know where we

45:34

were reimbursed. Oh yeah,

45:38

why like, how's that come up? They're

45:41

just like, won't do one? Well, I

45:43

mean I think that that the idea

45:45

is that the state is vested in its own

45:47

projects, you know. I mean we

45:50

ultimately are still I mean, we're

45:52

accountable right up front and spending the

45:54

money. But you

45:56

know, I think it's also right.

45:58

It's also a mechanism, you know, by which

46:00

we own a portion of of what's

46:03

been spent. And you know, we

46:05

have a lot of pride in the projects that

46:07

that we do. So what is it with

46:09

I noticed when you're talking about this, you're saying wildlife,

46:12

but then sport fish. So

46:16

Pittman Rock again, like it just in lingo,

46:18

just for the listener and lingo we've come to talk about.

46:21

The Wildlife Restoration Act is

46:24

known Pittman Robertsons.

46:26

That's like two people that whose

46:30

name replied to the bill, Like two people pushed for the bill.

46:34

That's game and non game animals. Yeah,

46:38

so wildlife is defined by

46:40

the Act as birds

46:43

and mammals. So why

46:45

is the fishing one sport

46:47

fish? That's

46:50

a good question. I mean, um, so

46:52

if there's like a chub that people don't

46:54

regard, a native chub that

46:57

people don't regard as a sport fish. You

47:00

can't use that money on it. It has to be a sport

47:02

fish. Yeah, that's right. And

47:05

so they're that seems kind of like, um, it

47:08

seems like, uh, not

47:10

quite cynical, but it seems like a little bit where

47:13

you're you're opening

47:15

yourself up for um, some

47:17

pretty heavy criticism. Well, you

47:20

know, they're I mean, there's even there. There's

47:22

a couple of nuances. One is that

47:25

that the state has some role

47:27

in defining a sport fish. So you

47:29

know, there are places where a roundtail chub are

47:32

considered sport fish. Not in

47:34

New Mexico, but but there are places,

47:37

Um, I believe, I believe Arizona.

47:42

Um. The other thing is when

47:44

when we go out and do work for

47:47

sport fish, and some sport fish are native.

47:50

You know, I mentioned, I mentioned the two trout species

47:52

and and actually you know down

47:54

in in southeast New Mexico there's there's

47:57

a lot of native fish. There's large

47:59

about bass and other things down there. Um.

48:02

But when we go out

48:04

and do surveys, even if they're sport

48:06

fish surveys, we're almost always learning something

48:08

about the fish community as a whole. So

48:11

even though the work may be focused on sport

48:14

fish, there are ancillary

48:16

benefits to other

48:19

native fish, non game

48:22

fish. And then it's

48:24

not totally discriminatory against non

48:28

game No, not

48:30

totally. But and

48:32

I would think if you're studying habitat, then

48:36

you know, whatever you learn habitat, it's gonna

48:38

be beneficial to all exactly. Or or

48:40

doing habitat improvement projects

48:42

are you know, often good for everything. And

48:45

and so a big chunk of what

48:48

what happens with my team and my program

48:50

is is is

48:52

done through other federal aid grant

48:54

programs that are similar,

48:57

have similar mechanics, uh,

49:00

but different sources of of

49:02

funding give me for instance,

49:05

so there's really two programs

49:07

that we use all the time. UM.

49:10

There is some funding that comes through the

49:12

Fish and Wildlife Service to work on endangered

49:14

species Endangered Species

49:17

Section six funding UM.

49:20

And so you know, one of the hot

49:23

button issues that we're working on right

49:25

now. We also in my program work on aquatic

49:27

invertebrates. UM, we're working

49:29

with a native muscle called the Texas hornshell.

49:32

There's a lot of uh

49:35

things swirling around right now with listing for that

49:38

animal, like did it'll getting threatened or

49:40

endanger Yeah, it's actually they're about to publish

49:42

the final rule, and so we've been

49:45

we've been working on on

49:48

one, getting the best understanding that

49:50

we can of what's going on with

49:52

it. We've also been trying out

49:54

some some new conservation

49:57

approaches to try to repatriate it

49:59

to some his or habitat UH places

50:02

where it's not currently found. And then

50:04

we've also been working with the Fish

50:06

and Wildlife Service and and UH private

50:09

landowner and and business

50:12

folks to UH to

50:14

work on what's called a candidate conservation

50:17

agreement with assurances UM. It's

50:19

essentially a conservation agreement that folks can enter

50:21

into before an animal gets listed, so that

50:23

to try to head off getting listed. Well, it's

50:26

not it's not that particular agreements

50:28

not necessarily so much about the animal

50:30

not getting listed as it is about

50:34

laying out what will happen if it does.

50:37

So that muscle

50:40

lives in the Permian Basin, and if

50:42

you google search the Permian Basin, the

50:45

thing that you'll see pop up is probably about oil

50:47

and gas development. And so you

50:50

know, those businesses are interested in understanding

50:53

what will happen and and

50:56

and so through this process they get

50:59

assurances about what's going to happen if

51:01

the animal gets listed, and they

51:03

probably get real interested in having

51:06

it not get listed. Well you

51:08

know what I mean, Like as far as like supporting

51:11

the paying for biology, Yeah,

51:14

well they I mean through through this

51:16

program they support conservation

51:18

by paying into a fund to to

51:20

ultimately help recover the animal

51:23

if it gets listed, or continued to work

51:25

on it as it goes through the process. What what it tell me

51:27

about the animal? The one you're talking about right now, Texas

51:29

hornshell. Um, you

51:32

know, it's a it's a it's I

51:34

believe it's the only remaining freshwater

51:36

muscle in New Mexico. It it

51:39

lives in the Black River, which is a tributary

51:41

to the to the Pacos River in

51:44

southeastern New Mexico.

51:47

Uh, it's got an interesting life

51:49

history and that it it lives up under these

51:52

mud banks that overhang the river and under

51:55

rock ledges and stuff. So, um,

51:57

it's actually kind of fun to go a sample for it, jump

52:00

in the river and and swim

52:02

around the banks and and feel

52:04

up under the banks trying to trying

52:07

to find a thing. And how big are they they get

52:09

up to I don't know, I'd i'd say

52:11

maybe five inches long way

52:13

across the shell. It looks like a like a

52:16

kind of mossy getting a restaurant. It

52:18

looks kind of like that. I mean, it's you know, it's a bi

52:20

valve muscle, you know, similar

52:23

to what folks would be familiar with their

52:25

and why are they suffering? Are the intolerant

52:27

of pollution? Um? You

52:29

know, water quality is an issue, and of

52:31

course water quantity is an issue

52:34

as well. So drawing water off

52:37

lowers water levels and that screws them. Yeah.

52:39

If if water levels dropped

52:42

below where they where they live up under

52:44

the banks, they don't they don't fare so well. So

52:47

let's say you identify

52:51

um, I mean you specifically, but

52:54

kind of like addresses as you as in just people

52:56

that work at State Fish and Game a state fishing game

52:58

agencies you identify. I think let's

53:00

say, with with this muscle, you're

53:03

like, man, if I had you know, a

53:06

couple hundred thousand dollars, I

53:08

could there's this idea, how to really

53:10

should try it? What

53:13

is it like when you go and present? How

53:16

competitive is it when you go within

53:18

agency to present your

53:20

plan? Like do you have to have your ship dialed

53:22

in when you're going to present your idea because it's a

53:24

competitive environment. It's

53:28

more of a negotiation, I would say, than a competition.

53:31

We we talk about all the

53:33

priorities that the agency may have

53:36

for using that funding, and

53:39

you know, I mean I would know we're we're

53:41

really we're talking about when we

53:43

talk about Sport Fish Restoration

53:46

Act money, you know, millions of

53:48

dollars. It's

53:51

bounced up and down a little bit. But the E s A Section

53:53

six funding is has been around

53:55

two hundred thousand dollars in federal money a year,

53:58

so much smaller

54:00

pot of money. UM. And

54:02

the other program that I wanted to mention is the

54:05

state Wildlife Grant program. UH.

54:08

If you look, most states have what's

54:11

called the State Wildlife Action Plan, which

54:14

is a plan that they

54:16

developed in concert with the

54:18

Fish and Wildlife Service UM and

54:21

that's tied to another grant program

54:23

that that is more UM.

54:27

I I believe it's currently

54:29

in the like eight hundred thousand dollar

54:31

a year neighborhood, so four

54:35

non game fish and

54:38

invertebrates. Those are too

54:41

pots of money that we drawn what

54:44

funds those were, like, where does that money come from? There?

54:46

There money from Congress

54:48

tax revenue money such

54:51

a general pool money. Yeah, so

54:53

when you have an idea, you're not in there like fighting

54:55

the guy down the aisle. No, I'm

54:58

obsessed with this idea, Like I

55:00

just just got you a lot of people that want the money.

55:03

There, I mean there, there is there,

55:05

you know to some degree, there's there's longstanding

55:08

programs that money goes to, like

55:10

some guys kissed because he's got some glamorous

55:13

thing that draws in all the money. That

55:16

doesn't happen. Well, I mean like

55:18

oh, those sheep, those desert big horn sheep

55:20

guys sure gobble up a lot of money, but see

55:23

those those folks can use Pittman

55:26

robertson money, so they're not you

55:29

know, and these more limited people.

55:32

Is it that those trout guys

55:34

gobble up a lot of money? Well,

55:37

I mean again that that would be that

55:39

would be DJ money eligible. So

55:42

it's it's really a smaller group

55:44

of folks in the agency that

55:47

work on things that are not reimbursable

55:51

um against PR

55:53

and DJ money and and

55:56

I guess I've honestly never thought much

55:58

about this. Maybe it's in partment because my

56:01

team gets a lot of that a lot

56:03

of that funding, you know, on the wildlife

56:05

side, UM, the herpetology

56:08

stuff, reptiles and amphibians, you

56:10

know, they they use that money

56:13

as well. And then you know, with

56:17

so particularly for that's particularly

56:19

true for the ESA funding. For the State

56:21

Wildlife Grand funding, we have another

56:23

division called UH Ecological

56:26

and Environmental Planning UM, and

56:29

that division also

56:31

works with a lot of State Wildlife Grand money.

56:34

But you know, I feel like those lines

56:36

are relatively clearly

56:38

drawn and and you know, there is

56:41

conversation and negotiation every year about

56:44

how that money is going to be spent, but it's you know,

56:47

it's not it's

56:49

not gladiatorial. Yeah. So

56:52

do you feel like you're well funded all in all? I

56:54

do. Yeah. So here's

56:57

a government guy and it's not going to complain to me

56:59

about he doesn't get an of money. No. I

57:01

you know what, you're able to do what you need to

57:03

do. I think that that we currently

57:06

absolutely have as many projects

57:08

going UM, as many fully

57:11

funded projects going as as we could

57:13

do. You know, if if

57:15

we had more folks in the program, we

57:18

could take on more stuff. But but right

57:20

now we're we're very busy doing

57:23

a number of projects across the state. Jimmy

57:26

Dornany got any questions up to this point. None,

57:28

just everything's been What's the part

57:31

you thought was the most interesting? Um,

57:33

basically the breakdown between the amount

57:36

of money that's gleaned off of sales

57:38

of firearms. I mean, I was just had

57:40

kind of a not

57:43

a really strong knowledge of background.

57:45

I just I'm just amazed that

57:47

there's that kind of revenue, seven hundred fifty million.

57:49

I was wondering if they put it. I was going to

57:52

ask if money gets put away, if it's

57:54

not all spent. He said, it's

57:56

got to be spent on mission, got to be spent instead

57:59

of having a nice big chest somewhere where

58:01

we got it. Uh, well,

58:04

that's good. It seems like it's going to get use And I

58:07

like the idea of our fund and our own deal. You

58:09

know, we can't say how

58:12

do I say it equently? Um, you

58:14

know we're paying for what we're getting. You

58:16

know that that strikes home. That's good. But

58:19

that so, but that becomes controversial

58:21

to some people because here's

58:24

the like, here's a criticism that you here floated

58:26

around, Mike, you might speak to this or not.

58:29

Um. The criticism

58:32

being that they'll even you like like a fish and

58:34

game agency. What you'll hear their language of

58:36

like our customers. Okay,

58:40

so someone who just let's

58:42

say, you have a person doesn't hunting fish and they

58:44

live in a state and they enjoy wildlife. There

58:48

is some resentment in some with some people

58:51

that the agency

58:53

that's responsible for managing and

58:55

handling all wildlife in

58:58

that state views

59:01

it as though they're doing it to service

59:05

a customer base who's

59:07

actually paying for it. Now,

59:10

I would argue that makes sense to me. These

59:12

are the people who are funding it, so they should have a

59:15

bigger say or have their interests served

59:18

as a higher priority than people who aren't funding

59:21

it. But some people feel like a state shouldn't

59:23

be in that situation. They shouldn't

59:25

be looking at If your job is to manage

59:27

wildlife, you shouldn't be doing it through the lens

59:30

of servicing your customers, meaning

59:34

of emphasizing or paying special

59:37

attention to the things that they

59:39

like to go out and shoot and

59:41

catch. That

59:44

they would point to, there's inordinance

59:46

spending on elk,

59:49

turkeys, trout, wal eyes,

59:52

and a lack of attention and a lack

59:55

of funding and a lack

59:57

of management brought to horn

1:00:01

knows chubbed muscles right

1:00:05

because the customers don't

1:00:08

care or don't

1:00:10

care as much. I

1:00:12

like that it's broad that it's not just specific

1:00:14

the stuff that we hunt, but it's also

1:00:17

the money is just distributed all around. But

1:00:20

they but but

1:00:22

it's not like

1:00:25

like a lot of attention is paid to the things that the

1:00:27

customers are interested in. Mm

1:00:29

hmm, I'm putting Devil's advocate.

1:00:31

I'm just saying that that makes people uneasy when

1:00:36

they view it. Being their customers,

1:00:38

it would be like, okay, they'd be like this. Imagine

1:00:41

the governor state. You would

1:00:43

never say, well, you know, rich people pay

1:00:46

a lot more taxes. I'm more interested

1:00:48

in doing the kind of stuff that helps rich people out.

1:00:51

Now, that would not fly well as

1:00:53

a campaign rally, No, it

1:00:56

would not. But fishing game

1:00:58

agencies, some

1:01:00

people feel that efficient game agency's

1:01:02

basically saying that by

1:01:07

managing wildlife, Mike, you care to speak to

1:01:09

this well, I mean, you know, not

1:01:11

your own opinion, but just like would you care to add any

1:01:13

flavor texture? Well? No, I mean, you

1:01:16

know, I I think I think that to some

1:01:18

degree that's a misinterpretation what

1:01:21

we do. And you know, me

1:01:23

being the guy complaining like I'm not doing like

1:01:26

you take you don't

1:01:28

agree with that complaint, that that that that that's

1:01:30

not a valid complaint. I think, you know, I

1:01:33

think I understand where folks are coming

1:01:35

from when when they

1:01:39

they believe that what we do is manage

1:01:42

sport fish and wildlife, um,

1:01:45

you know, and that we just do that for

1:01:47

a customer, and and all that we're doing is

1:01:49

trying to increase populations of things that you can hunt

1:01:51

and fish for. I empathize with

1:01:53

that, you know, I think I can see why people

1:01:56

might see that, but I

1:01:58

think that the reality is a

1:02:01

lot different, and you

1:02:03

know that. I mean, that's really why I wanted to come on today,

1:02:05

was, you know, to to talk about, you

1:02:08

know, how it is that we pay for conservation

1:02:11

and and why why

1:02:14

we manage non game fishing

1:02:17

wildlife. Can

1:02:19

you answer that? Can you just answer that in a sentence? Why

1:02:23

is it a mandate? Well, I don't.

1:02:25

I don't know that I can answer in a sentence. Um.

1:02:28

I think there's you know, there's a big

1:02:31

long bunch of sentences together. So there's about

1:02:33

half a dozen reasons why we do it. I mean one,

1:02:36

New Mexico, like most states, you

1:02:38

know, has in law in

1:02:41

statute that they're

1:02:43

fishing. Game agencies are supposed

1:02:45

to manage fishing wildlife, and there

1:02:48

may be nuances and how they define

1:02:50

those things, but they often include lots of stuff

1:02:52

that's not you know, game

1:02:55

or sport fish, animals. So that's

1:02:57

sort of you know, first reason,

1:02:59

there's there's this legal reason, right, um

1:03:02

the second reason we do it, and I stock

1:03:05

I want to talk with legal reasons. So you're saying a state,

1:03:08

um has

1:03:11

that knowing that the money is going to come

1:03:13

from, knowing that the money is coming

1:03:15

from hunters and fishermen, they

1:03:18

still like with that bit of knowledge,

1:03:20

they still have it written in that you have to manage

1:03:22

all wildlife. I mean, I don't know what

1:03:24

the consideration originally was when

1:03:26

it went into statute and in terms of where

1:03:28

the funding would come from, but yes, it is. You

1:03:31

know, we have a statutory obligation

1:03:34

to manage fisher wildline. It could be sued for not

1:03:36

doing it. I suppose we

1:03:38

could. Okay, so there's

1:03:40

a legal reason, right, so you know,

1:03:43

there's there's the ethical reason.

1:03:45

And I genuinely believe that this one is important

1:03:47

to a lot of people in our agency that you

1:03:49

know, managing ecosystems

1:03:54

as a whole is the right thing to do. Trying

1:03:57

to pass

1:04:00

on our natural history as

1:04:02

intact as possible is the right

1:04:04

thing to do. So that's that's

1:04:06

an ethical argument for for why

1:04:09

we do it. And you feel that that

1:04:11

that sentiment is is held.

1:04:16

That's like a widespread belief within agencies.

1:04:18

I do, yeah, because

1:04:21

you guys didn't just all get into it because a huge paycheck.

1:04:25

It's a great it's a great way to make a living,

1:04:27

it really is, but it is it is h

1:04:30

not one that necessarily comes with lots of zeros.

1:04:34

So you know. The third reason is

1:04:38

the ecological argument. Right, So if

1:04:41

we want healthy populations

1:04:43

of the kind of things that we like to hunt

1:04:46

and fish for out in the landscape, they're

1:04:48

part of an ecosystem. You

1:04:52

you never know what's going to happen when one thing

1:04:54

or another disappears. You you never know, you

1:04:57

know what might cause things to fall

1:04:59

apart from ecosystem level. It's

1:05:01

you know, it's it's the Aldo Leopold

1:05:05

intelligent tinkering quote, right, you

1:05:07

know. Um, so we

1:05:09

want to preserve all the cogs and wheels

1:05:12

from an ecological standpoint. So

1:05:14

that's you know, reason number three. The

1:05:17

the ecological argument that it's it's

1:05:19

good overall to have healthy

1:05:21

functioning ecosystems and all the things that go

1:05:23

with them because of the interconnectedness

1:05:25

of it all. Yeah,

1:05:27

that that's that's what

1:05:30

I think about a lot. I think a lot of people that hunt fish

1:05:32

and look at wildlife through that lens of just

1:05:34

like are there a lot of deer around right now or not? Like

1:05:37

was it a good deer season or not? Because I sat in my

1:05:39

dear blind two days and I want to know if I saw

1:05:41

more deer last year than the year before, Like

1:05:43

if you have like that limited of a view of wildlife,

1:05:46

I think that often times you can kind of miss some bigger

1:05:49

pictures about things, and we're

1:05:51

at some time talk about it's not long ago. Where like

1:05:53

in the in the nineties, in

1:05:57

the eighties and nineties, like we were kind

1:05:59

of change aging in this country. In the middle

1:06:01

of the country, we were changing some practices of how

1:06:03

we are growing grain okay,

1:06:06

and putting tilling up more land

1:06:09

and growing more grain and experimenting

1:06:12

with new fertilizers did

1:06:14

allow us to grow much more grain in

1:06:17

places that we hadn't traditionally grown grain.

1:06:20

And this went on in the eighties and nineties and

1:06:22

kind of rewrote the map on grain production in

1:06:24

the US, and that caused a

1:06:27

massive explosion of

1:06:30

snow geese to the point

1:06:32

where snow geese populations quadruple

1:06:35

and then went beyond that. All

1:06:39

of those snow geese spend their time

1:06:42

they summer and nest in

1:06:44

the Arctic, and they

1:06:47

started to decimate grasslands

1:06:50

on the Arctic slope. And

1:06:55

another thing that happened from this explosion

1:06:57

of snow geese decimating grasslands

1:07:00

leading to the incursion of salt

1:07:02

water into because as

1:07:04

they destroy the grass and the rhizomal

1:07:06

systems, salt water would come

1:07:08

up and entirely change plant

1:07:10

communities on the Arctic slope. And meanwhile,

1:07:13

polar bears. We're

1:07:15

figuring out this new resource, and Hudson's

1:07:18

Bay had polar bears that are eating hundreds

1:07:20

of pounds of snow geese eggs and

1:07:23

not eating things that they used to eat before,

1:07:26

changing their whole diet around to accommodate

1:07:29

or to account for this new resource. So

1:07:32

you realize that like some dude killing

1:07:37

ground in North Dakota to grow

1:07:40

barley, has such

1:07:42

wide reaching effects on

1:07:45

wildlife that, yeah,

1:07:48

like the elder Leopold idea that when you pull

1:07:50

a lever, it's

1:07:53

not happening in a vacuum, like

1:07:55

you're changing many things along with it,

1:07:59

right, And I think a lot of people fail to

1:08:01

realize that when they talk about species

1:08:03

that are you know that we pay attention

1:08:06

to or don't pay attention to. Like, you can't

1:08:08

just have this sort of really

1:08:10

nearly idea that you're just gonna let things vanish

1:08:15

or trash certain things and not have it be felt

1:08:17

in strange, weird ways elsewhere. You

1:08:20

know. Yeah, ecosystems

1:08:23

are are complex things, and

1:08:26

they are much bigger than you think. They are much

1:08:28

much bigger and generally

1:08:31

much more complex because you can't

1:08:33

anticipate yeah,

1:08:36

like things that and you have to get over the idea

1:08:38

too. I think people have to get over the idea that we're like done making

1:08:40

mistakes. There's sort of

1:08:42

a cockiness that comes where we laugh about

1:08:44

ship we used to do, but

1:08:47

right now we're doing, um we just haven't found out

1:08:49

yet, yeah, you know, making

1:08:51

big mistakes right now that we'll later realize we're

1:08:54

laughably stupid. Well, you

1:08:57

know, and I I mean I as

1:08:59

a as a fisheries manager,

1:09:02

right, you know, I hope that we continue

1:09:04

to get better. I mean, you know, we

1:09:06

have a lot more science than

1:09:08

we did when a lot of things were happening,

1:09:11

and you know, the introduction of non native species

1:09:13

has been such a big thing

1:09:15

in the fisheries world for native fish, and

1:09:18

you know, we talked about it earlier that that

1:09:22

those kind of things really are not happening

1:09:24

on on the scale. If

1:09:26

they're happening at all there, they're not happening

1:09:28

on the scale that they were. So it's it's

1:09:31

true. A hundred years ago, fisheries management was

1:09:33

largely about you know, getting fish

1:09:35

out in the landscape for people to catch,

1:09:38

and that meant, you know, anywhere

1:09:40

that you could get a trout from and go stock

1:09:43

it that that was a good

1:09:45

thing, particularly if you could establish new populations.

1:09:47

You know, people people wanted to go to Yellowstone

1:09:50

for instance, and catch Eastern brook

1:09:52

trout and German brown troute, you know,

1:09:54

along with the native fish. But

1:09:57

for quite a long time now, you know, we've

1:10:00

had a sense that that maybe on the

1:10:02

best idea, and you

1:10:05

know we've been working, you

1:10:08

know, for the last couple of decades

1:10:10

on on doing the

1:10:13

small things that we can to remedy that in

1:10:15

in limited places. Um. So

1:10:19

you know, it's entirely possible

1:10:21

that we'll look back in a hundred

1:10:24

years and and find things that

1:10:27

that we did wrong or that we wish

1:10:29

we hadn't done. Um.

1:10:33

You know, But but I really, I mean, I really

1:10:36

hope that we're you know, that

1:10:39

this idea that we want to manage native

1:10:41

species and that we want to manage

1:10:43

intact ecosystems. I

1:10:45

would be surprised if those concepts

1:10:48

have changed dramatically in the future.

1:10:50

I think the landscape will change to

1:10:53

some degree, but I think that we'll still be

1:10:55

trying to preserve native species and trying to do

1:10:57

the best that we can to two

1:11:01

manage ecosystems. You

1:11:03

know that. The other thing I

1:11:06

guess that I would say about that is is

1:11:09

that you know, Teddy

1:11:11

Roosevelter's a quote that I that

1:11:13

I love. Um. He

1:11:16

said that in any moment of decision,

1:11:19

the best thing that you can do is the right thing,

1:11:22

the next best thing is the

1:11:24

wrong thing, and the worst thing is nothing at

1:11:26

all. Yeah, I don't know about that. He

1:11:29

said that, but I don't know if I entirely agree with that. Well,

1:11:33

but so you know, it's I guess

1:11:35

what I would say about that is he he's talking about

1:11:37

the decision making process, right, So

1:11:41

when when I am not saying, and I want to be clear,

1:11:43

is that sometimes doing nothing is

1:11:45

the right thing to do, and sometimes

1:11:48

we make decisions to do

1:11:50

nothing, you know, because we

1:11:52

think that's the best thing for the resource. My

1:11:55

my point is that you know,

1:11:58

we are really often

1:12:00

faced with problems that

1:12:03

are relatively clear. A species

1:12:05

that is in decline, right, something

1:12:08

that is is going away, and

1:12:11

we want to work to stop that. We want

1:12:13

to keep that species on the

1:12:16

landscape. So the

1:12:19

solutions are not usually nearly

1:12:21

as clear as the problem, right.

1:12:25

Yeah, it's often very hard to understand

1:12:28

what can I do to make this

1:12:30

situation better? But we

1:12:34

we have to make a decision. I mean, we have, you

1:12:37

know, if we want to stop the decline,

1:12:39

we have to try to do something. And

1:12:41

so I think it's important to consider that the standard

1:12:45

can't be that we always get it right

1:12:48

of the time. The standard has

1:12:50

got to be that we do the

1:12:53

best we can with the information

1:12:55

that we have when we come to a point

1:12:58

that we have to make a decision, and

1:13:00

that we're brave in making that

1:13:03

decision and trying to do something

1:13:05

understanding that in a hundred

1:13:08

years somebody might look back

1:13:10

and go, man, those people were

1:13:12

way off the mark. How

1:13:14

much of the stuff you do, how

1:13:17

much of it comes down to like emergencies

1:13:21

or is it more like these like general kind

1:13:23

of long term trends. It's

1:13:28

more Yeah, I mean, it's

1:13:31

an interesting way to look at it. I would say

1:13:33

that it's it's, uh, it's

1:13:37

more slow burning emergencies.

1:13:40

You know, it's slow burning emergency. It's

1:13:42

it's things that you know that you

1:13:45

know are probably headed

1:13:47

in a bad direction, and you

1:13:50

know, but it also takes a long time to implement

1:13:52

solutions. Yeah. Well, when I say, like what

1:13:54

I would classif as emergency, we recently

1:13:56

had a conversation with someone working on Mexican

1:14:00

gray wolves, okay, and they

1:14:03

had you know, there was a point when there was seven in existence.

1:14:06

Okay. I feel like at that point you're

1:14:08

sort of in emergency land. Yeah.

1:14:11

I mean I think any time that if

1:14:14

your goal is to have them not go away, that's

1:14:16

an emergency, right. Other

1:14:18

things are these like I would say,

1:14:21

like salmon in

1:14:23

the lower forty eight so

1:14:25

Pacific North like it's emergency

1:14:27

status right now, I

1:14:30

would argue, Okay, other

1:14:32

things are like man, you know, like like, for instance,

1:14:34

there's we've seen some declines

1:14:36

of turkeys in some states,

1:14:39

and it's kind of mysterious, like what's going on with turkeys?

1:14:41

I like, not quite emergency yet, but

1:14:43

definitely something that warrants watching

1:14:46

for. Well, yeah, and I mean,

1:14:49

ultimately our

1:14:51

hope would be that that we don't get

1:14:53

surprised by things like that nearly

1:14:55

as often anymore. Right, So you

1:14:58

know, I'm I

1:15:01

don't know, I know, I like the hunt turkeys.

1:15:03

I don't know, you know a whole lot about turkey

1:15:05

biology or or the turkey science world.

1:15:07

But you know, I would suspect

1:15:09

that we know in part that turkeys

1:15:11

are in decline because there's monitoring

1:15:14

data out there about turkeys that

1:15:17

state fish and wildlife agencies are collecting,

1:15:19

probably harvest data, you know, as as

1:15:21

well as on the ground things like you

1:15:24

know, nest success and and

1:15:26

had success in those kinds of metrics, and

1:15:29

you know, all of that is

1:15:32

aimed at understanding what's going

1:15:35

on, so that instead

1:15:38

of something getting all the way to the emergency

1:15:40

stage, you know that that we're able

1:15:43

to try to start implementing

1:15:45

solutions before before

1:15:47

we get to the last seven in captivity. Just

1:15:49

yeah, it's a prevent emergencies. Right. What

1:15:54

do you when

1:15:56

you when you take like the long the long view

1:15:59

on wildlife

1:16:01

and wildlife funding, what what are some of your feelings?

1:16:06

Well, I mean, what are some of the things that you're like optimistic

1:16:08

about. What are some things you're pessimistic about?

1:16:13

You know, that's I'm not sure that

1:16:15

there's a whole lot that that I

1:16:18

am really personally pessimistic

1:16:20

about on the funding side of things. Um.

1:16:25

You know you're familiar

1:16:27

with the argument right that Thursday

1:16:31

that if Americans

1:16:35

um were too you

1:16:38

know, become increasingly urbanized

1:16:40

and they and they dissociate from

1:16:42

hunting and fishing. Okay, we

1:16:44

have less people out doing these activities,

1:16:47

um, less people buying firearms

1:16:50

that you're gonna see a diminishment in

1:16:53

dollars to go to wildlife. That

1:16:57

doesn't keep you up at like you like you're not like that's

1:16:59

just too hard to think about? Are

1:17:02

too much unknown? Yeah, I

1:17:04

mean it's that would certainly be be

1:17:07

one of those things that for me right now

1:17:09

and in my role with the agency, you

1:17:12

know, um, I've

1:17:14

got plenty of on the ground immediate

1:17:16

kind of problems. Yeah,

1:17:19

I think I think it's you know, it's it's

1:17:21

a great question. Where do you know,

1:17:24

where do non consumptive users

1:17:26

for for lack of a better term, fit

1:17:29

in the picture of wildlife management? And you

1:17:31

know, how how do we how

1:17:35

do we bring them in and and make

1:17:37

room for for that viewpoint

1:17:40

in the big picture? Um, you

1:17:43

know, And and then I think that

1:17:45

sort of gets to how how can they

1:17:48

contribute? I mean, you know, is there

1:17:51

a similar model to what we currently do

1:17:54

with the money that is all tied back

1:17:56

to the sail hunting and fishing licenses with

1:17:59

other folks simulate looking forward?

1:18:01

Is there a way that non consumptive

1:18:03

wildlife users? Is

1:18:06

there a way we would find that they would start funding

1:18:08

some stuff with wildlife? Well,

1:18:11

I know it's not your department, but it's like a thing that you've here

1:18:13

discussed. Well, you just as a guy that likes

1:18:15

to spend time outdoors, you know, yeah, right,

1:18:17

And I mean I think, you know, I guess

1:18:19

I think to some degree it is the department

1:18:22

that I work in, and you know, in the sense that that

1:18:24

I work with lots of threatened and endangered

1:18:26

and imperiled fish, and you

1:18:29

know that that would be the kind

1:18:31

of funding that you know, that could

1:18:33

really boost budgets for those things. Um,

1:18:37

you know, we we talk about this

1:18:39

sometimes at

1:18:41

work, you know what I mean,

1:18:43

one thing and it almost it

1:18:45

almost sounds funny, but

1:18:48

one thing that people can do to

1:18:50

support fish and wildlife

1:18:52

conservation in the states that they live in

1:18:54

is to buy a hunting or fishing license, whether

1:18:57

they go out or not. And you

1:18:59

know, I mean again, you know, I suppose

1:19:02

some folks might chuckle at that, but

1:19:05

you know, when you look at the fact that that

1:19:09

we spend a lot of state money, you know,

1:19:11

on non game fish and

1:19:13

wildlife, and that the

1:19:16

formulas for money coming

1:19:18

to the states through the excise programs

1:19:21

through PR and DJ are based

1:19:23

on how many licenses. It's

1:19:25

like matching dollars. It's like when you listen to NPR

1:19:27

fundraise and they talk about matching dollars. Yeah,

1:19:29

you're basically getting three

1:19:32

to one back. Yeah

1:19:35

they should just why don't this Why don't the state the

1:19:37

states just start selling Um, I

1:19:40

guess they do, like duck stamp, that's federal, But

1:19:42

why does the state just like have a thing that

1:19:44

they just put out there. Well, and then they who

1:19:47

likes to look at and have no

1:19:49

license plates. No, no, no,

1:19:52

they have like uh they're

1:19:54

like what like recreation cards they call

1:19:56

them or things like that. I don't I'm

1:19:58

not a tax stamps. Yeah. So we

1:20:01

we have a habitat stamp program, which

1:20:03

would be another thing. You know, somebody could

1:20:05

just buy a habitat stamp um. I

1:20:08

believe all of that money gets matched again,

1:20:10

and you can also make a donation on your license

1:20:12

plate motor vehicle

1:20:14

stuff to go to state. Yeah. So, so

1:20:17

like most states, ours is called Share with

1:20:19

Wildlife m and a

1:20:21

lot of that Year with Wildlife funding actually

1:20:23

gets matched against state wildlife grant

1:20:25

money, you know. So that's that's almost

1:20:28

exclusively spent on on

1:20:31

non game. Does that bring any money in? Uh?

1:20:34

You know, I don't know the numbers for for

1:20:36

what's there. It's it's not you know, it's

1:20:39

not millions of dollars. So

1:20:43

so, you know, but I think the path

1:20:46

that you were going down earlier is like

1:20:48

the Holy grail right for this

1:20:51

kind of funding, which would be an excise

1:20:53

tax on other outdoor equipment,

1:20:56

every damn backpack that gets sold in the country.

1:20:59

Well and right, you know that I

1:21:02

think that I think we should pay

1:21:06

that ship. I would just I would draw like I

1:21:09

would come in and I'd go down to r

1:21:11

I and I'd be like, yep, all this ship right,

1:21:14

and just do that across the board. Yeah,

1:21:17

you know, you're at skis anything

1:21:19

if you're doing a thing, if you're

1:21:21

doing a thing in the out of doors. If

1:21:25

I was just like the the emperor of the world,

1:21:27

okay, just the emperor of the country, I

1:21:30

would say that if you're doing an outdoor activity,

1:21:32

I'm going to tax your ship ten percent. Yeah,

1:21:36

have a tat and wildlife, right, I mean then

1:21:38

unless you can convince me that when you see

1:21:40

it elk, you don't look at it, then

1:21:43

I'd give you like some kind of exemption. If

1:21:46

I'm the emperor, that's how I'm gonna run it. That's how I'm

1:21:48

gonna run the program. Yeah, you know obviously,

1:21:51

like you're really telling me honestly you don't look at

1:21:53

wildlife, like really don't look

1:21:55

at it. Then if

1:21:57

that's the case, if you look out your windows like holy ship

1:22:00

out, you pay for all your

1:22:02

ship. That's what I would do.

1:22:04

Yeah, and I can't you know, I would never

1:22:06

advocate a legislative position,

1:22:09

but you know, I mean, I know, but here's the thing

1:22:11

you could be buying. You could

1:22:13

be buying a little like pocket pistol,

1:22:17

okay, for home defense. You're

1:22:21

paying for wildlife. How

1:22:23

does that have How does they have more

1:22:26

to do with wildlife than a pair of hiking

1:22:28

boots. It's

1:22:31

an imperfect system right now. I'm

1:22:33

not saying we should excuse those people. I just think that.

1:22:35

Yeah, and again you're like, you

1:22:38

know, I know you don't want to, you can't like you don't

1:22:40

want to give an opinion about this because of the capacity

1:22:42

in which you hear. But I just feel like if

1:22:44

that person is paying or do with hiking boots,

1:22:46

should damn should be paying at least a DJ.

1:22:48

They sort of did that with the boat fuel.

1:22:51

I didn't know that because it's not like only fishermen

1:22:53

or Yeah, yesterday I saw a lot of people out

1:22:55

there that obviously are chipping in and they weren't

1:22:58

doing any fishing. Yeah, so that you're right, some

1:23:00

dude pulling wakeboards is like a

1:23:03

is like an urban person

1:23:05

who has a concealed carry and every time they buy

1:23:07

AMMO or whatever they're kicking in. Yeah,

1:23:09

the dude pulling weakeboards is paying for fish.

1:23:12

Yeah, we've heard reasons why

1:23:14

this actor or these things happen gone through.

1:23:16

What's interesting to me is that we out often ask

1:23:18

like a lot of people we work with aren't necessarily hunters

1:23:20

and fishermen, but they are rock

1:23:23

climbers and skiers

1:23:25

and whatever. And everybody we ask are like,

1:23:27

yeah, sure, I pay what

1:23:31

I've heard, and I've only been like, I've

1:23:33

had some conversations around us, and I heard.

1:23:35

An argument they make is that so many people

1:23:37

who make like, for instance, apparel okay,

1:23:40

sown goods, right, sown goods.

1:23:42

It's imported, and

1:23:45

they're already under such a tax burden

1:23:48

from importing their

1:23:50

materials or importing manufactured

1:23:53

goods that they're saying, we're tax too much

1:23:55

already. We can't

1:23:57

afford to add yet another tax.

1:24:01

And I don't know if you went and asked the

1:24:03

gun industry like can you afford more

1:24:05

taxes and not gonna be like, oh, yeah, no problem. Anybody's

1:24:08

gonna say that. But that's the argument you hear.

1:24:11

And they resisted because people go to like outdoor

1:24:13

retailers and push them on this idea

1:24:15

and they don't want it. They don't want it.

1:24:17

But meanwhile, the hunting, the

1:24:19

hunting and fishing industries were like, please do it, let's

1:24:22

do it. But Roosevelt

1:24:24

put Roosevelt put it to and Franklin Roselt put to. He's

1:24:26

like, no one will pay for this

1:24:28

except you. If you want this to happen,

1:24:30

you will have to pay for it because no one else

1:24:32

is going to do it. And they did it. M

1:24:36

Advocating for any taxes on a political

1:24:38

level two is like political different

1:24:41

world suicide. It's a different world

1:24:43

now than it was. But I think

1:24:45

it's like it would solve so many

1:24:47

of our problems. Maybe it doesn't

1:24:49

need to be ten to eleven. We're

1:24:53

getting a light yeah, because they're like, we'll give them

1:24:55

like a lightweight user break. Mhm.

1:25:00

I mean, ultimately, the revenue needs to be generated

1:25:02

somehow, so it's got to come from somewhere.

1:25:05

Didn't the state that the state somewhere to add

1:25:07

a little bit on a sales tax

1:25:10

for wild Yeah?

1:25:13

Um, I believe.

1:25:18

I believe it may have been Missouri,

1:25:20

but I think you should confirm

1:25:23

that one dude

1:25:26

down there. Um, so

1:25:29

you know, I would mention that please

1:25:31

that if if

1:25:35

in in the mythical world that

1:25:37

that were ever to happen, my emperor

1:25:40

idea, right, that. You

1:25:42

know, if they were going to be similar programs

1:25:44

to PR and DJ, they would have to come with

1:25:46

matching state funds. There would have to be a

1:25:49

matching source of state revenue. If it was

1:25:51

exactly the same model. You don't want to all go

1:25:54

into the federal kittie. Well, you know,

1:25:56

I mean because just to say that right

1:25:58

now we have we have license sale

1:26:00

dollars that we match against, you

1:26:02

know, to do the whole reimbursement things we talked

1:26:05

about her. So I'll think of a remedy to that. Then

1:26:08

I would say that that all states

1:26:10

are gonna have to add a one percent sales tax

1:26:12

to fun fishing wildlife to give matching dollars

1:26:14

a draw off. My backpacker tacks, that's

1:26:18

fine. How

1:26:20

do you start a movement like

1:26:24

a like a movement, I

1:26:27

don't know, you to be hard pressed to get people to pay

1:26:29

more. Man, No, that's what I'm saying.

1:26:32

Though, every time we ask the people,

1:26:34

we've yet to have everything. I know that

1:26:37

every backpacker I knows, like dude, that would totally pat

1:26:39

if I knew that that's how it work. If I knew

1:26:42

that that's how it worked, And that's where I went out happily

1:26:44

packed. I think there's a gray when it's voluntary

1:26:47

or mandated. When she started getting

1:26:49

told what to do, because some people just like

1:26:51

the relief of being told what to do. I

1:26:54

don't know, I'll go along,

1:26:56

all right, Mike, what else? Man? What else? What else?

1:26:59

You got? Yeah? So you know, we we covered

1:27:01

We covered a couple of those. Why

1:27:03

do we manage non game fishing,

1:27:06

wildlife, species arguments, and

1:27:11

legal, ethical, ecological right.

1:27:13

So those those are the three that we talked about. But you

1:27:16

know, there are three really pragmatic

1:27:18

reasons why if you say,

1:27:22

you know, I'm

1:27:24

not personally concerned about non

1:27:26

game animals, you know that

1:27:29

there are still some reasons why it's

1:27:31

in your best interests that your state

1:27:35

is managing those things. So

1:27:38

the first one, and you know you guys

1:27:41

have talked a lot about it in the past, is

1:27:44

um it.

1:27:47

We think as a state agency that it's a good thing

1:27:50

for us to maintain as much

1:27:52

management control over species as

1:27:54

as we can. It's generally in the

1:27:56

state's interest to manage its own

1:27:58

fishing wildlife, so we

1:28:01

want to as opposed to what as

1:28:04

opposed to federal manager. So we

1:28:06

want to do what we can in

1:28:09

part because it's the right thing to do, in part because it's

1:28:11

our interests from a management perspective to

1:28:14

keep animals from getting listed under the endangered

1:28:16

species to maintain your jurisdiction,

1:28:19

right, So we want to know what's

1:28:21

going on with those animals out in the

1:28:23

landscape, you know, and we

1:28:25

want to work towards conserving those animals

1:28:28

in the cases when we can, particularly

1:28:30

if we think that they're in decline, that

1:28:32

helps keep them off the list. And then animals

1:28:35

once they do get on the list, or

1:28:37

if they do get on the list, we want to

1:28:39

work towards recovery to bring

1:28:42

more management authority back to the state.

1:28:45

And you know, I want to be clear, we work with

1:28:47

lots of federal partners very closely

1:28:50

in very productive ways. You know.

1:28:52

It is it is not that,

1:28:55

you know, we're not interested in working with our

1:28:58

federal partners. It's just that, you

1:29:00

know, from the state's perspective, keeping

1:29:02

things off the list and recovering animals once they're

1:29:05

on helps us maintain more more management

1:29:07

authority. Yeah, it's like doing your You're

1:29:09

doing your job, right, So

1:29:12

you know, that's that's one pragmatic

1:29:14

reason is to head off

1:29:16

listing and work towards recovery in the cases where

1:29:19

things are listed, because if it gets listed

1:29:21

and the FEDS assumed control of

1:29:23

it, there might be things that would happen

1:29:26

that would have negative implications for people

1:29:29

in your state. Well yeah, and so that that

1:29:31

really ties to to

1:29:34

the second part of that, which

1:29:36

is that because the

1:29:38

Fish and Wildlife Service administers

1:29:40

these federal aid programs, that's

1:29:43

what you know, call them federal aid programs.

1:29:46

Um, we

1:29:48

to get that money, we have

1:29:50

to ensure that we are complying with

1:29:53

all the federal laws. So

1:29:56

getting the money creates this next

1:29:59

us to the federal govern an which means

1:30:01

that you know, we have to consult

1:30:04

on almost everything we do or every

1:30:06

project that we use money on, we have to consult

1:30:08

with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure that

1:30:12

everybody understands what the potential impacts

1:30:15

two animals that are

1:30:17

listed under ESA will be. And

1:30:19

there's other federal laws like the National Environmental

1:30:21

Policy Act NIPA, you

1:30:24

know, and other things that we have to comply with. And

1:30:26

and so a really good give I

1:30:29

need to back up on that one. So you're saying, like, let's say

1:30:31

you wanted to do a project, Um,

1:30:34

you're gonna do a thing to help out trout,

1:30:37

okay, trout habitat you're saying that

1:30:39

you also need to make sure that

1:30:42

that work isn't going to impact

1:30:45

an endangered speed an endanger threatened species.

1:30:48

That's yeah, that's exactly right. And

1:30:50

so you know, a really good example that

1:30:52

that kind of ties these two things together

1:30:55

is that there's

1:30:57

currently action to list to partial

1:31:00

in the lift Rio grande chub. Rio

1:31:03

grande chub exists in a lot of places

1:31:06

in New Mexico. Some of those places

1:31:08

are recreational rainbow trout fisheries

1:31:10

that we stocked with rainbow trout. Right,

1:31:13

so we use Dingle

1:31:16

Johnson money at our

1:31:19

hatcheries, you know, to raise the fish

1:31:21

and to drive him out there to stock them. And

1:31:23

there's you know, there's a there's a fair number of high

1:31:26

use fisheries in New Mexico that you know wouldn't

1:31:28

sustain wild trout populations at the kind

1:31:30

of harvest, and those rainbow trout aren't

1:31:32

good for the chubbs. Well, you know,

1:31:35

I don't I don't know that I would say

1:31:37

that out of hand. Um, I

1:31:40

don't know that we have great data on on

1:31:44

good or not. There are a lot of places that we There

1:31:46

are places that we stock Rio grande chub or

1:31:49

I'm sorry that we stock rainbow trout that also

1:31:51

have Rio grande chub. So it it's

1:31:53

not a completely exclusive thing,

1:31:57

you know. But like

1:32:00

again, you know, from a pragmatic perspective,

1:32:03

if real ground a chub were

1:32:05

to be listed, there would

1:32:09

be a consultation that would have to happen

1:32:11

about the potential impacts of

1:32:14

rainbow trout on chub and

1:32:18

that would have an effect

1:32:21

to you know, the average

1:32:23

trout fisherman out there who utilizes those.

1:32:27

Yeah that, if that,

1:32:29

it could spell bad ship for rainbow trout

1:32:31

in some place. Not that I'm a fan of rainbow trout,

1:32:34

but it could spell bad ship for rainbow trout

1:32:36

if that, if the chub got listed as an endangered

1:32:38

species, yeah, I mean it it had,

1:32:41

it would have the potential to to change

1:32:43

that landscape. And have you ever read the book arguing

1:32:46

that that lays out a really lucid argument

1:32:48

that the rainbow of describing

1:32:50

the rainbow trout as a synthetic fish and entirely

1:32:53

synthetic fish. And there's Tealverston.

1:32:55

I think the man made fish. It's

1:32:59

it's it's when you start reading the history

1:33:01

of that fish and how it's been spread around and how

1:33:03

it all came to be. Yeah, it's

1:33:05

like a make believe fish. Yeah,

1:33:07

and again, you know, very popular make belief

1:33:10

fish. But the path of that people look at and associate

1:33:12

it somehow with wildness or pristineness

1:33:16

is laughable. Yeah,

1:33:18

except for very few watersheds. I don't want to

1:33:20

make a value judgment about rainbow trout. We

1:33:24

certainly have a lot of folks. People

1:33:27

love them, people love them, but it's it's like it's

1:33:29

kind of Jimmy Dorn you raise in your hand, but you

1:33:32

live in actual rainbow trout country, so you

1:33:34

don't county the

1:33:38

Pacific rim you could, you could.

1:33:41

Yeah, it's okay to like rainbow trout on

1:33:43

the Pacific route. It's

1:33:45

all the other people. If you, if

1:33:48

you when you flush

1:33:51

your toilet, if that water

1:33:53

flows into

1:33:56

the Pacific, you can like rainbow

1:33:58

trout. You flush your toilet

1:34:01

and it doesn't. You should not like them. Okay.

1:34:04

That's coming from me, alright, not our guests rule. And

1:34:07

you know I would provide one perspective on that. I mean,

1:34:09

I you know, I grew up in Pennsylvania, right,

1:34:11

and that they stock a lot of trout in Pennsylvania.

1:34:14

And I grew up fishing rainbows. Oh, we did

1:34:16

was fishing non natives in Michigan. I'm not saying

1:34:19

like I'm not holier than thou. I'm just saying it's

1:34:21

like we've created a weird situation

1:34:25

all over the country. When I was growing

1:34:27

up, we we did fish something. We fished native

1:34:29

fish. We spend a ton of time fishing

1:34:32

a lot of things that had been introduced

1:34:35

into our ecosystem to

1:34:38

the detriment of native species,

1:34:42

right. And I think that we're gonna have if

1:34:45

we're looking long ways, I

1:34:48

think that we're going to continue that there's gonna

1:34:50

be a forced reckoning with that going

1:34:53

forward. And you've kind of alluded it to yourself a little

1:34:55

bit. I mean, I you know, I think to a degree,

1:34:57

we're we're in the reckoning. We're

1:35:00

we're at least constantly looking for

1:35:03

a balance. I mean for you

1:35:06

know, how and where we

1:35:08

manage water specifically for native

1:35:11

fish, you know, in other places where

1:35:13

we manage water for recreational

1:35:16

opportunities, and you know, we recently

1:35:18

published a statewide fisheries

1:35:20

management plan. If you know, if anybody's interested

1:35:23

in a particular water in New Mexico, you

1:35:25

can go in there and it will outline,

1:35:28

you know, what are our main management

1:35:30

objective is. And and that is not to

1:35:33

say, you know, just

1:35:35

because it says the water is going to be managed

1:35:37

for native fish that they're absolutely

1:35:40

won't be any sport fish there, but you

1:35:43

know, it does provide some insight

1:35:45

into what the state's thinking. Yeah,

1:35:47

because a lot but because a lot of the relationships are

1:35:49

totally harmonious, Like it's really

1:35:51

hard. People try, but people don't

1:35:54

have a lot of luck. And there are exceptions to this,

1:35:56

but like generally people look and be like, it's

1:35:58

hard to find rock

1:36:01

solid evidence that turkeys are delaterious

1:36:05

in all the places they've been introduced, right,

1:36:07

It's like there's some suspicions here

1:36:09

and there, but it's just generally like when

1:36:12

you put turkeys on the ground, we haven't yet

1:36:14

identified away

1:36:17

in which that's a major screw up, quite

1:36:20

like we had when you put common carp into

1:36:22

a waterway. There's a tremendous amount

1:36:24

of evidence that suggests we shouldn't

1:36:26

have dumped carp everywhere, right,

1:36:29

you know, you know,

1:36:32

and I mean, to

1:36:34

my point, even I worked in the Elsta National

1:36:36

Park before I worked for New Mexico UM,

1:36:39

and even there, in their current Native

1:36:42

fish Conservation plan, you know,

1:36:44

they identify a portion of the park it's

1:36:48

uh the Firehole River,

1:36:50

the Given River below the falls, and

1:36:53

the Madison where you

1:36:56

know, they are essentially saying, this

1:36:58

is an area that is a high value recreational

1:37:01

trout fishery, and we,

1:37:04

at least in the I believe the twenty

1:37:06

year time frame of that plan, don't intend to

1:37:08

do native fish work in that reach.

1:37:11

That's the balance. So

1:37:13

they're saying, like, we're gonna have room for non

1:37:16

native trout, brown trout, rainbow trout.

1:37:18

We're making room for those fisheries because people

1:37:20

value it. Well, they're not necessarily saying they're

1:37:23

not making room in the sense that they're expanding

1:37:25

them in any way. They're they're

1:37:28

just not actively working

1:37:30

to control non native trout

1:37:33

in those places. Yeah.

1:37:36

So so go back to talk about the thing you guys published

1:37:38

the where you can look up your waterway. Yeah,

1:37:41

it's it's the it's the statewide

1:37:43

UH Fisheries Management Plan. It's available

1:37:46

through the New Mexico Department. It lays out like what

1:37:48

long term goals are. Yeah. It it

1:37:51

lays out what are what our management

1:37:53

objectives are in

1:37:56

uh in the waters of the state. Is

1:37:58

there anything in there that's real like introversial?

1:38:02

Um? You know, I suppose

1:38:04

that that would that would depend who you ask

1:38:07

it. Uh. It has

1:38:10

largely been supported by by the public,

1:38:13

and of course it was approved by by

1:38:15

our commissions. So UM,

1:38:18

you know, there may be folks

1:38:20

that are unhappy

1:38:22

with with the direction

1:38:25

some specific waters are going. But of

1:38:27

course it's a quite a hard thing to do to

1:38:29

make everybody happy all the time. So

1:38:33

does that exhaust your list of why? Your

1:38:36

list of things about why we should I

1:38:38

want to hear the long list, not want more? I got

1:38:40

you know. The last one is is that UM,

1:38:43

when we work on on

1:38:47

projects that benefit non game

1:38:50

animals, they almost always

1:38:52

have ancillary benefits for things

1:38:56

that we more generally associate with hunting

1:38:59

or angling. UM. I've been working

1:39:01

on a project for Chihuahua chub in the Members River,

1:39:04

which is in southwestern New Mexico, kind

1:39:06

of south of the HeLa. How big is this chub?

1:39:09

Up to ten or twelve inches? It's

1:39:11

it is in the essay listed species.

1:39:15

UM. So we've been working to do habitat

1:39:17

improvement, which includes work

1:39:19

in the Riparian Corridor for the

1:39:22

chub and for cherich how leopard

1:39:24

frog also a listed

1:39:27

species of frog. Um, you

1:39:29

know. But but overall we're doing habitat

1:39:32

improvement work both in the river and in the

1:39:34

Riparian corridor. And that

1:39:36

Reparian corridor has havelina,

1:39:39

it has mule, deer, quail. Uh.

1:39:42

The last time I was down there, I saw bear tracks along

1:39:44

the river. It's not the kind of place that a guy

1:39:46

from Pennsylvania would expect to encounter bear

1:39:48

tracks. But but they're there, um,

1:39:51

you know, as well as bats and uh

1:39:54

rio grande sucker and other nine game

1:39:56

um fish and wildlife. So you

1:39:59

know that you will have a benefit

1:40:01

for that system on the whole. So

1:40:04

even though somebody could look at it and say you're

1:40:06

spending money on chubb, while

1:40:09

that's true, there's also ancillary

1:40:12

benefits for other fish

1:40:14

and wildlife. Yeah. Um,

1:40:18

do you do anybody fish with those chubs? Uh?

1:40:21

Not that I know of. I've

1:40:23

I've seen them rise to uh

1:40:26

two, you know, may flies

1:40:28

on the surface of the river. In theory,

1:40:31

you could do

1:40:33

you feel that there cases where

1:40:35

you get do you ever feel blowback

1:40:38

from people saying like, why are we spending money? Like

1:40:41

do you hear it? We're people within

1:40:44

government, like even elected people, um

1:40:48

will kind of lampoon

1:40:50

yeah, you know, mock the idea

1:40:52

of spending money on things that no one like cares,

1:40:54

like quote cares about. I

1:40:57

mean, like you know, probably like

1:40:59

you I hear about it. It's

1:41:01

not been a personal experience

1:41:03

that I've that I've had were where

1:41:06

I had a project that got lampooned

1:41:08

in that way and shutdown. I

1:41:11

mean, there was a fellow running for president last fall

1:41:13

that was mocking a smelt in

1:41:16

the He was mocking like

1:41:18

actually mocking the fish, mocking a smelt

1:41:22

in California as being too

1:41:24

small to care about. I mean, it does

1:41:26

happen, Yeah, I mean there's there is

1:41:28

politics and involved in everything,

1:41:31

and you know, some

1:41:33

consideration of politics is is probably

1:41:37

always prudent, Like why would anyone care

1:41:39

about that? Yeah? And that's

1:41:41

you know, let me count the weights, right, And that's

1:41:43

in part what I hope to provide people

1:41:46

is you know, if you get into those conversations

1:41:48

about why should I care about that, you

1:41:51

know there's a couple of reasons. I

1:41:53

mean, you know, some some pragmatic

1:41:55

reasons about you know, why,

1:41:58

particularly as hunters and anglers, we should

1:42:00

care about working with non

1:42:03

game fish and wildlife. The

1:42:06

thing that that I returned to again and again and

1:42:08

thinking about this and talking about it with other hunters

1:42:10

and fishermen is um, it's

1:42:13

just kind of like a sickening kind of audacity

1:42:17

that we would somehow come

1:42:20

to the idea that's that certain species

1:42:23

don't warrant existing, like

1:42:27

you want to talk about sort of human

1:42:30

hubris and arrogance

1:42:33

would be that. And I don't care what your

1:42:36

understanding of the world is if you have this a completely

1:42:38

secular view, if you have a religious

1:42:40

view of the world, Like, there's no worldview

1:42:44

that I think could really support

1:42:46

the idea that we could sit back and

1:42:49

let species that exist on

1:42:51

this earth vanish

1:42:54

because we in this particular moment

1:42:56

in time don't really care about

1:42:58

it. It's just like it

1:43:01

just strikes me as being like absolutely

1:43:03

immoral. Yeah, And I

1:43:05

don't throw that stuff around, Like I don't weigh in on a lot

1:43:07

of like social morality issues. I'm kind of like

1:43:09

a you know, when

1:43:11

it comes like general terms of morality,

1:43:14

I'm kind of like a um.

1:43:16

Privacy of your own home kind

1:43:19

of guy. Right, Like, I don't really believe in getting

1:43:21

in there and legislating activities

1:43:24

between consenting adults and stuff.

1:43:27

Uh, but when it comes to like moral

1:43:29

issues, I feel that wiping

1:43:33

things off of the face of the earth gone

1:43:35

forever, you are playing

1:43:38

with some ship that you should not be playing with. Yeah,

1:43:40

I think that's the you know, that's the ethical

1:43:43

argument, right, is that that's the right thing

1:43:45

to do to to preserve our natural history

1:43:48

as intact as we can. The

1:43:51

idea that some people find it acceptable

1:43:54

that we would have less species

1:43:56

on earth, you

1:43:59

know, but then some people

1:44:01

get swept up in the some people get

1:44:03

slept up in the idea that like things

1:44:05

go extinct all the time. So it's okay,

1:44:09

right, we used to have these big as huge

1:44:12

dinosaurs and they're gone now, so I

1:44:16

guess doesn't matter. It's kind

1:44:18

of like people argue that, but I find it's

1:44:20

such like a flawed way of thinking that

1:44:22

because extinctions do happen,

1:44:24

that we would just open it up and allow

1:44:27

them to happen, especially from

1:44:29

human caused activities. Yeah, I

1:44:31

mean, you know, because you can't argue that's not

1:44:33

natural. Even the genesis that we spoke

1:44:35

with a right, She's like, extinction. Extinction

1:44:38

is natural. Yeah, far more things have gone extinct

1:44:40

than here in existence right now. But

1:44:43

that's not but but our

1:44:45

activities exactly, So I think on our watch,

1:44:49

we can't let it happen on our watch.

1:44:52

And there's a matter of time scale at play there too,

1:44:55

I mean, you know, get

1:44:57

in a geological time, you

1:44:59

know. Uh. And John John McFee

1:45:02

has a have you ever read

1:45:04

Annals of the Former World? So

1:45:06

John McFee wrote three books about geology,

1:45:08

and when they were they were eventually published together

1:45:11

as Annals of the Former World. And

1:45:15

in this book there's there's a couple of things. One he says

1:45:17

that if he was gonna, if he had to sum up his

1:45:21

his trilogy in one sentence,

1:45:24

it would be that the peak of

1:45:26

Mount Everest is marine limestone.

1:45:29

So the top of Mount Everest

1:45:32

is rock that was laid out on the bottom

1:45:34

of an ocean. But another point

1:45:36

he makes is that if you imagine

1:45:40

life on Earth, so not just

1:45:42

like the form, but life on Earth. If you imagines

1:45:45

being a man's outstretched

1:45:47

arms, his life on Earth from one

1:45:50

fingertip to the other fingertip as a timeline,

1:45:53

you could remove human history with

1:45:55

one stroke of a nail file. Right,

1:46:00

It's a powerful image. And when

1:46:02

you imagine the amount of extinctions that

1:46:04

have occurred under our watch, and that

1:46:07

one's the amount of extinctions that we have conducted

1:46:09

in that one stroke of a nail file, that

1:46:13

we're not living at a sustainable rate

1:46:17

as far as letting ship slide, you

1:46:20

know, and a lot of that ship would have been good

1:46:22

hunting fish in the passenger pitch, right,

1:46:26

So it is it does impact hunters and fishermen.

1:46:28

Man, there's a lot of ship that had been a good to hunt you can't hunt

1:46:30

anymore. What

1:46:33

else, Mike, you

1:46:36

know, other things you want to talk about? No,

1:46:39

I mean, you know, I think I think we we

1:46:42

we covered most of it there. I think there are a couple

1:46:44

interesting points when, you know, when we sort

1:46:47

of come at at things from

1:46:49

the perspective of of you

1:46:53

know, what what our agencies doing with the

1:46:55

money and and what does what

1:46:57

do those things mean not just to

1:47:00

hunters and anglers but to other folks?

1:47:03

Right? So, um, you

1:47:05

know, we mentioned that law enforcement is not reimbursable

1:47:08

under Wildlife Sports fish restoration.

1:47:11

Next, that's a little surprising

1:47:13

because they're doing enforcement

1:47:15

on too for the betterment of wildlife.

1:47:18

But okay, I'll tell you, like, at face value, I I

1:47:21

like, I except what you're saying. But it is a little bit surprising

1:47:23

to me, right, And I mean I think it is a little bit

1:47:25

surprising because you know, I mean, we

1:47:27

essentially police our own ranks

1:47:29

in that way, right, I mean we're completely

1:47:32

paying for, uh, you know, a

1:47:34

law enforcement system to protect the resource.

1:47:36

That's ultimately what it's about, right, is to

1:47:39

protect those resources. Yeah, and poachers

1:47:42

a lot of probably aren't buying licenses, so they're not even

1:47:44

paying into this. They're not even paying for the guy that's

1:47:46

going to arrest them. That's right there. I mean, you

1:47:48

know, they're they're they're doing it for

1:47:50

us so that you know, the

1:47:53

license buyers have a

1:47:55

resource to recreate through. But

1:47:58

you know, obviously game wardens do um

1:48:01

lots of things that aren't just checking

1:48:04

fishing licenses. Um. You

1:48:07

know, for instance, when when there's

1:48:09

a call about a black bear in somebody's