00:00:10 Speaker 1: From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. 00:00:14 Speaker 2: This is Cowl's Week in Review with Ryan cow Callahan. Here's Cal. Hello, everybody, hell herring. 00:00:24 Speaker 3: I'm at Rendezvous back Country Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous in Missoula, Montana, June fifteenth, and I am with Ryan Callahan. 00:00:33 Speaker 2: I told him I was going to say he was a man who needs no reintroduction. He's not like a wolf. I've been reintroduced. He's been reintroduced to his natural habitat. I like the idea of that. And what location Where would they put you? Yeah? I think they put me somewhere like like down on the Tongue River. Oh thereat season. 00:00:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he goes you breeding by nightfall, and then we may have to put some controls on him. 00:01:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, stealing and breeding. Yeah kidding, we'll. 00:01:13 Speaker 2: Running run a trap line. 00:01:15 Speaker 3: But yeah, man, uh so, I guess everybody knows who you are. Introduce yourself, yeah, Ryan Callahan, Cal, uh boy, I've been being I've been around back country hunters and anglers for. 00:01:30 Speaker 2: A long time. 00:01:32 Speaker 1: And I am the director of conservation over at Meat Eater host Cal's Week in Review podcast, and that director of Conservation title allows me to spend a bunch of time on b h A work as the North American board chair of these days, and work with a lot of other conservation groups out there, you know, working on on the habitat issues and the access issues and the hunting rights issues and seeing where we can help out from the kind of meat eater awareness megaphone and try to find some some funding and do some fundraising and you know, just see see where we can help from a from a for profit business side of things. 00:02:22 Speaker 2: And right now I don't. 00:02:29 Speaker 1: I thought it was smart, like a few months ago when I kind of like really formally integrated my nonprofit working with my paycheck work. And now I'm like, boy, that's not that smart, because this ship never ends. 00:02:43 Speaker 3: How right, Well, my first question to you is, Cow, what the heck are we gonna do? I was, and I just remember so long ago I was doing some lands with wilderness characteristic stuff out eastern Montana and I ran into you. 00:03:03 Speaker 2: Were you already working at First Light? Yeah? 00:03:06 Speaker 3: Yeah, and you knew exactly what I was talking about when you and I I'm not gonna name. 00:03:11 Speaker 2: It, but chunks of BLM. 00:03:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, And and I was all of a sudden, like I got this whole insight as to where this place was. I had been there, camped out for a few days, and I came back. We were in great Falls at the Sipping Dick. That's right, right, Yeah, And I mentioned this to you, and you go, well, you go there, so and so, and this is who owns the land contiguous to it, remember that. 00:03:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:03:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, I was highly impressed you had done some mule deer guiding or something there. 00:03:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, antalope and and then just yeah, running the bird dog and back in those times and earlier, obviously that was just a wild place. Like it was big high prairie yep. And you know, nobody had a real reason to go up there. 00:04:00 Speaker 3: And that was true even when I was doing that. It was twelve maybe twenty twelve, because it was. 00:04:07 Speaker 1: Just cattle country and it was full chock full antelope in those days. 00:04:13 Speaker 3: And yeah, and that was so it might have been before twenty eleven, then till twenty eleven. 00:04:18 Speaker 2: They went down. Then they came way back up later. I mean it crazied. 00:04:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know the winner of twenty eleven Up there was really wild. 00:04:26 Speaker 1: It was also like drought times and yeah, yeah, b and and so yeah, I mean it took a certain type of person to see the beauty in it, you. 00:04:39 Speaker 3: Know, right, but it has a it's a real sage bunch of grass ecosystem. Though. 00:04:46 Speaker 2: You get up on some of those buttes. 00:04:48 Speaker 3: When there is a little water in the ground and you'll see you'll see what the great American prairie, sage brush prairie looked like. 00:04:56 Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, yeah, yeah, and yeah yeah, like that kind of like that sagebrush sea type of yep. Stuff. 00:05:03 Speaker 1: But yeah, back back in those days, you know, you had tough, tough locals who uh probably thought often that they would rather be someplace else, yep, but didn't know how to do that, right, And so they're just here. 00:05:25 Speaker 3: Right, there's some of those, and then they're working through the tough time, that's right, you know. Then I met some of them that would they had gone other places and had come back and they're never leaving again. 00:05:35 Speaker 2: That was further south though, like like down in the breaks. 00:05:39 Speaker 3: Yeah, people raising their families, like in the one of the freest places in the world, but you got to pay because there's eight cows to a section and exactly yeah, and then what did it make money one one out of five years and the other before you got to carry. 00:05:53 Speaker 1: And that right there is one of the conversations I've been having on these public land sales. 00:05:59 Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, people are like, is two million acres a lot? Yeah yeah, let's go to that right now. 00:06:06 Speaker 3: So so this is this is you and I both are well versed in this topic. But you you have been front and center in this, like you tell me, driving around with the radio off thinking about it, right, And so there is there is a belief somehow amongst these people who are not directly connected to this, that there's this treasure trove of real estate just waiting to be unlocked by the likes of Mike Lee or Ken Ivory, who once said that American public lands, the privatization of American public lands was like having your hands on the lever of a new Louis Louisiana purchase. 00:06:44 Speaker 2: In other words, he was he was ready to take it. 00:06:47 Speaker 3: He didn't he didn't want to go to war with anybody, which we did and paid in blood and treasure and whatever, fifteen million dollars in gold. He's not done by that, he was, meaning he's gonna pull the lever and it's gonna be him and his friends taking it from us. 00:07:01 Speaker 2: Right. 00:07:02 Speaker 3: That always blew my mind because when he when he said that, he was quoted everywhere with that, and I was like, well, we went to war as a nation, like like they assaulted the palace at Chapultepec in Mexico City. 00:07:15 Speaker 2: For that, right. Yeah. 00:07:18 Speaker 3: I mean there was terrible, terrible attrition of both of Ores and the Mexicans over. 00:07:24 Speaker 2: That Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Yes, and here's a guy saying that he's just gonna take it. I was just I've never gotten over that anyway, continue with you. We take it because it's not doing anything. Yes, it's not doing anything. It's just it's just uh Escalante. 00:07:39 Speaker 3: Uh, it's it's just you know the sagebrush sea where everybody antelope punts and small ranchers make their living. 00:07:48 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, and and folks like that looking out there and say, these jackasses don't know how to make money. 00:07:54 Speaker 2: Off of this. Right, I'll show you again. The land's not doing anything, right, you know. Yeah. 00:08:01 Speaker 1: But to kind of go back to what you said, right, it's like takes eight sections per colclf pair. That's something that maybe by design people do not understand, right, what they know is their backyard, and how do we elevate these things to backyard issues? But you know, an acre in Florida, you can raise a hell of a lot of cattle in Florida for a reason. 00:08:29 Speaker 3: Coleman County, Alabama is probably two a u ms for acre. 00:08:35 Speaker 2: If you own a good year, right. 00:08:37 Speaker 1: That's I mean, that's a high density, high return. 00:08:41 Speaker 2: It's great. 00:08:42 Speaker 1: The Shenandoah Valley right, the west can be like that here and there, very very small areas. 00:08:53 Speaker 2: In good years. 00:08:54 Speaker 1: But by and large, it takes a lot of space to raise any thing, and. 00:09:01 Speaker 2: In most years you can't. 00:09:03 Speaker 1: In most years you can't. And that's why we have biological diversity. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: Right. 00:09:09 Speaker 1: It's like certain things hung out. The white tailed deer likes to hang out in that one mile one square mile zone. If it can, it'll do its whole life right there. The American buffalo not the same, nope, Right, And the American buffalo wasn't you know, thriving in fringe habitat around you know, the capital of the United States. 00:09:37 Speaker 3: Right. 00:09:38 Speaker 1: So when people are like, Okay, how do I contextualize this sale? 00:09:45 Speaker 2: Like what does it mean? Right? And let's tell what we're talking about. 00:09:49 Speaker 3: So Senator Mike Lee has shoehorned a is it a rider? 00:09:55 Speaker 2: It's not. I mean, it's just the language that is in in the big beautiful bit budget bill. 00:10:01 Speaker 1: Yeah, and so yeah, he's the chair of the Senate UH Natural Resources and Energy Committee, and he's this inenerger from U dah. 00:10:09 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:09 Speaker 1: The way these things come together is everybody breaks off into their committees, they write their portion, those committees reconvene, and all of those portions written in committee come together to create the final bill. And lo and behold, here comes the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committees language. And there is a mandated with a timestamp five years mandated UH sale of both US Forest Service and BLM land I think in eleven states, Montana magically being excluded. 00:10:54 Speaker 2: We can talk about that. 00:10:55 Speaker 3: Later, which also is a red flag as as to the integrity of this plan. 00:11:02 Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yep, because it almost says, well, it's not that necessary. 00:11:11 Speaker 2: It does, and it also says I want some support. 00:11:14 Speaker 3: And there's two people here who could lose support if we force it into Montana because Montanas don't want to give up any public land. 00:11:22 Speaker 2: We already we've got We're doing good. Thank you. 00:11:27 Speaker 1: It is and you know where we're at. We are front and center. And I'm not excluding other Western states you see this too, but we are front and center with we see year round now, not seasonally. We see year round the amount of people who want access to public land, yep. And they're not just coming from Utah, right, A lot of them come from Utah, but they're coming from every other state and multiple countries in this world. And they're they're flying here, they're driving here, they're renting houses, they're they're camping, and they are coming here for access to public land. 00:12:14 Speaker 2: They're coming here for freedom. I mean, that's that's public freedom is. 00:12:20 Speaker 1: It's it's a weird thing because we've been living it, I know, for a long time and taking it for granted for a long time, right to a degree. Right, But you know, I can't say I'm growing up, but it's taking me a while to get to where I am right now. 00:12:38 Speaker 2: The scales have fallen from our eyes. I think a lot of this in. 00:12:43 Speaker 3: Biblical terms, you know, because the the you know, the Bible is such chronicle like like human conflict as well as as the beautiful like sermon on the mountain stuff. 00:12:56 Speaker 2: And I think of it. 00:12:56 Speaker 3: As like people prostrate on the ultar of Mammon, where you can can't see anything but the gold, but the potential gold. 00:13:03 Speaker 2: Right. 00:13:04 Speaker 3: You know, you can't see freedom, You can't see water, watersheds, you know, the beauty of say that great basin country, the beauty of this scante canyons. 00:13:16 Speaker 2: You know, you just see gold. And that's very very biblical to me. You can't. 00:13:24 Speaker 1: It's it's blinding, yes, And and I think blinding is a great term, right, like if unless you have a connection to it, and sometimes when when you do too, but or when you don't. But unless you have a connection to it, you don't see the value of that landscape, the what it is providing. You only see what you could do with it, right. 00:13:53 Speaker 3: Or they don't care, Like I told you, I was reading that post on Instagram with that guy in Iowa. 00:13:58 Speaker 2: He said, I'm from Iowa. 00:14:00 Speaker 3: Do I care what they do in Utah selling off some land I'm never gonna see. I was blown away by that because it just it's a direct, like cannon shot into the United States of America, where what befalls people in Utah befalls me and and you know, and I'm so I miss so much that that not not the cliche, silly part, the powerful part of the United States of America where we all believe in something. 00:14:32 Speaker 1: Right and then we get told like we have been right, and these horrible lines get brought up over and over again. 00:14:41 Speaker 3: Uh. 00:14:42 Speaker 1: You know, a couple of months ago, there was that article saying talking about the potential for public land sales before it was even brought up in the House, and it's like, but not Montana. Montana's just different, right, And I'm like, gang, if if this were a Montana centric ideal, we would not have public land right now. No, like, this is an American ideal. It's something people love, and there are way more passionate people there. I mean there were people telling me, well, you better enjoy it. Well, Alas who were from states like uh, you know, Michigan, Virginia. You know, it's like brother, we know. 00:15:31 Speaker 3: I mean I think of I think of Alabama without the bankhead, the Talladega, the Connecca. 00:15:37 Speaker 1: Right, and just like oh my lord, you know yeah, and and and we don't talk about the water component too. But when I go eastward or to any coastal place, I'm like, thank God for the ocean. 00:15:53 Speaker 2: Thank God for the river, the lake. 00:15:57 Speaker 1: This is the equivalent of stepping out on National Forest or BLM land. 00:16:01 Speaker 3: Right because you can go there without anybody attacking you and are calling this sheriff and you get some space. Yeah, right right, at the end of the day, people need space, just some people do. There are other people maybe are so domesticated. I mean, I think of this public land fight sometimes as a product if I didn't know some of the people who were like, I don't care about the Feds, I hate them, I want to get rid of everything, and I don't you know that's like that guy in that cartoon whos at Yosemite Sam that blows his on it off because he's so angry, isn't that him? 00:16:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, he shoots, He's. 00:16:36 Speaker 3: Always shooting the pistols he sees. He's a rage of holic, right right, So the rage of hoolics are always with us as well. But but there's other people I think are so domesticated that they can't imagine going across the Bob Marshall Wilderness, or or going hiking down the Boulder Male Road, you know, outside of Boulder, Utah, or you can go all for days on the rock. 00:16:58 Speaker 1: And they don't understand and their food system right, or their water system or their water system, and that there are so many of these issues that when you travel back to d C or go even to your state legislature, you're like, oh my gosh, you guys don't understand, as we used to say out in that big eastern Montana country, why the price of beef is the way it is right right right, I'm like, this is not easy, right, this is dangerous. 00:17:34 Speaker 3: And that's why the reason it's public is because you couldn't put enough pounds on beef to pay up an acre a land tax, that's right. 00:17:43 Speaker 2: So they left it unclaimed. 00:17:45 Speaker 3: I mean, and that's what all this stuff, the two point three million or three million acres that he wants like, like, that's it's not inhabited now because it couldn't be. We gave away everything that people wanted. The Homestead Acts went crazy. We incentivized, we incentivised, had taken, and the railroads got I don't know how many millions acres. Yeah, but the nineteen on, you know, John Wesley Powell was out there going please not the nineteen oh nine Homestead Act but there was a lot of unrest in America at the time, with the labor cry struggles and immigration coming in hard, and that railroads wanted people out on the prairie. 00:18:28 Speaker 2: So we passed the nineteen oh nine, which gave away. 00:18:30 Speaker 3: Land that you couldn't live on if on the best raineous year of history. 00:18:35 Speaker 1: Right, And nine percent of those homesteads, Uh, World War one hit and people were so happy to get out of there goodbye. 00:18:46 Speaker 3: Right and then yeah, and then and like in Montanna, we have Bankhead Jones lands, right, those are the ones abandoned by those homesteaders, and they were so destroyed by by people trying to make a living in that in that dust that the federal government took them over. It's restored them at packs taxpayer expense. This is another element here I'm watching and now, and then leased them for grazing. 00:19:10 Speaker 2: The money went to the education. M say. And it's a great idea, bank Kid. 00:19:14 Speaker 3: Jones, senator from Alabama, right, I mean it's Senator bank Kidd Tulula Bankheads to add the actress all this stuff. 00:19:21 Speaker 2: I love this history, man. 00:19:22 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And the history points to you that you don't want to give Mike Lee three million acres for him to do the same dang thing we did in the homestead at wrecked the place and then leave us on the hook. 00:19:35 Speaker 1: Well, it's in incredibly short sighted, incredibly And the return is that Mike Lee gets to live his dream yep, which is the divestment of federally managed public lands. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: That's it, like they go away, that is his dream yep uh. 00:19:53 Speaker 1: And he's a true believer in this and that that is the win here. And should every city in the United States forfeit what we have so this one person can live his dream because the return to the treasury is not going to make a not going to be felt by any single person, not any single person or the collective citizens of the United States, right, and that is what we have it. 00:20:26 Speaker 2: We have. 00:20:28 Speaker 1: Some elected officials right now that like they have gone rogue, that is, that is what is happening, and like we can't call them back, and we need to get people on these committees to understand, like they've lost the plot, right, I mean. 00:20:50 Speaker 2: Well they're also what's happening. 00:20:51 Speaker 3: I guess they're assuming that we're going to lay down for this as well, which and I think that's a very dangerous assumption. I think I think it's you and I were talking before we started recording those. 00:21:00 Speaker 1: In the Path of Least Resistance, man, like people want the easy button every day. I'm sure you make some decisions where you're like, I probably should have done it that way. I was tinkering on on my place, you know that I've remodeled here and there and stuff like that, and hell, man, just so damn embarrassed. I'd get to some conundrum on something that I noticed and I'd be. 00:21:26 Speaker 2: Like, what jackass did that that way? 00:21:29 Speaker 3: And it was me, Yeah, because it was just easier and faster at the time, right, right, Yeah. I always think about shoveling a truck out of snow, and a friend of mine pointed out many years ago, he said, you know, if you just do the whole job, you'll get out, but if you if you half asset, you just get stuck again. Right, you have to take your shovels and spend the time to completely shovel out the exit, because if you think you're gonna get a little speed up and then ram through because you don't want to shovel, you're you're a nal. 00:22:03 Speaker 2: You're in right yep, And so yeah, and you. 00:22:07 Speaker 1: Just left your work behind where you got to shovel out a whole pickup's length again again. 00:22:14 Speaker 3: That right, exactly, you're going in the hole doing the rest of the half. 00:22:17 Speaker 2: That's it, right, that's it. 00:22:18 Speaker 3: And like ran Randy Newberg says, and I repeat this over and over, but Randy always says, let's just face it, conservation is not convenient. Yeah, you know, the convenient thing is not going to dude, it doesn't work for you in your personal life. If you take the convenient way, you sit on the couch and watch football all day, you're not going to be hiking up the mountain looking for ilk. 00:22:40 Speaker 1: It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. No, it doesn't. But and this apathy. I think we were doing a podcast or we were at least talking, and you know, it's like, well, what's the single biggest threat to conservation, to hunting and fishing? 00:22:57 Speaker 2: Like it's it's apathy. Yeah. 00:22:59 Speaker 1: Like, we are fat and sassy American citizens, right. We enjoy unbelievable liberties that a lot of people on this planet cannot fathom. And our job as citizens is to hold our elected officials accountable do the best job we can electing the right ones regardless of who gets in office, we hold those people accountable. 00:23:26 Speaker 2: Right it does. 00:23:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's the whole contract. And man like there's people are not doing their their job because it's inconvenient. 00:23:37 Speaker 2: It takes time. It's it's a job, which means it's hard. That's right. 00:23:42 Speaker 3: And like you were saying, it's just not that much fun. It's like joab, it's work being a citizen. Yes, it may have its it may have its its joys and rewards. But the but the basic practice of citizenry is showing up at meetings and telling elected officials that they can't. No, they can't, No, they can't sell thefer under our house like I had. 00:24:02 Speaker 2: Now, no you can't. 00:24:04 Speaker 3: I voted for you, but I didn't vote for you to take the aquifer out from under my house and leave my place valueless. 00:24:10 Speaker 2: That's not going to happen. And then you got to keep doing it right. You know, the thing is. 00:24:18 Speaker 1: Well meaning not well meaning, like they put a proposal proposal out there and people don't comment, they go, well. 00:24:24 Speaker 2: Must be okay, okay, right. Also, it's easier for me just to do it right. I want to ask you to a couple of questions to come up all the time. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: So I'm living ala, I live in Iowa. That's that's the one I keep going back to. I've never been to Utah. I don't care. I don't think the federal gunmasould own all that land in Utah. They ought to do whatever they want. 00:24:51 Speaker 2: What do you say? 00:24:53 Speaker 1: I said, if you're concerned about Iowa issues, the whole nation's going to have to support you to get the Iowa issues where you need them to be. 00:25:07 Speaker 2: Like I e. 00:25:08 Speaker 1: The farm bill right right, right, Like Iowa is a great state. The farm Bill, that piece of legislation, which is federal legislation, has a giant. 00:25:22 Speaker 2: Impact on Iowa. 00:25:24 Speaker 1: Right, So if you want Iowa to be healthy, you need people to give a shit about the farm bill, not just in Iowa, but in all fifty states. I yes, that's the federal government for sure, But for God's sakes, can we remember that it's a government of the people. We the people like we are the federal government. And this is a frustrating thing to me, right because people want that degree of separation. If we can create that degree of separation, that means I don't have to do shit my ass and point fingers. Right, but let's take some ownership back here and say, nope, we are the government, right, We're. 00:26:11 Speaker 2: Not somebody else is, buddy, exactly. 00:26:13 Speaker 1: Exactly, And and and we enjoy a lot of the things that this government provides. We may enjoy cutting them down and knocking them down verbally as often as we want. 00:26:30 Speaker 2: It's fun. I've done it myself. 00:26:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, right, but you know we we are we are the government, right, So we're and we're citizens of this government, and we are not subjects. 00:26:42 Speaker 2: We are not subjects. 00:26:44 Speaker 1: But buddy, if you want to be a subject, I bet there's some people that would make that happen because it seems like it's an easier path, right, get in line. 00:26:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, from freedom into what's that? You probably don't rate this. I'm older than you. 00:26:58 Speaker 3: But Jerry Spence, the attorney in Wyoming, he wrote a great book called from Freedom into Slavery or Freedom into serf Them, and it's just a great it's just a really fun book to read. He's he's like a brilliant sort of he's a lawyer. You know, he's not Antigo, but he's he's Jerry Spence. 00:27:18 Speaker 2: Look it up. It's great, great book to the. 00:27:21 Speaker 1: Gentleman in Iowa. Yeah right, It's like you may not use it, should it matter to you that you know millions of people do, of your fellow Americans, of your fellow Americans. And it's like I will never visit your house. I will likely never drive by your house. I don't derive any benefit that I can feel from the fact that you have a house, or a lawn or a car. I'm not ever going to tell somebody to take that away from you. 00:27:59 Speaker 2: Right. In fact, if. 00:28:01 Speaker 1: It comes a time where it's like, oh my god, the federal government's trying to steal this guy's house, I'm gonna write in and be like, what the heck's going on. 00:28:11 Speaker 3: I'm gonna help you out, even if I don't know you, right, yeah. 00:28:15 Speaker 1: Right, Because if they can take that, they can take my house, that's right. And if they can take these acres today, what are they gonna take tomorrow? And again, we're not going to see the benefit of this sale. 00:28:27 Speaker 2: Right, So okay, that believes am not the next question? 00:28:30 Speaker 3: So the federal government, I'm gonna be the devil's advocate the federal government. 00:28:34 Speaker 2: The country is broke, we are so in debt. 00:28:37 Speaker 3: We cannot even manage our own We don't can't afford to manage natural resources anymore. 00:28:42 Speaker 2: We can't afford this land cal and say, well, that's not true. This land does pay for itself. On top of that, every person who visits this land pays into communities all along the way. Plus they paid taxes for the management of it. 00:29:05 Speaker 1: Plus they pay taxes for the management of it. Like, if you don't think you're doing a good job, let's find some ways to improve, right, Yeah, Like but this, I mean, how many times over do you think this stuff has paid out for the American. 00:29:23 Speaker 2: People over the years. 00:29:24 Speaker 1: Right, It's like that if you have stocks and a dividend kicks out, Like that's what's happening. Like, and these lands have paid over and over and over again. I just did this West Virginia Turkey hunt with the West Virginia Chapter BHA. Right, and you're in the New River Gorge floating in that stuff. Oh, unbelievable and incredible for us. Right, and every square inch of that place has just been strip mined, like it was denuded of all vegetation other than what folks could kind of scratch out and try to plant to feed themselves, right, yeah, and you know it's a gorgeous forest. I'm sure it's not exactly where it needs to be, but we're hiking it, we're picking ramps, we're trying to kill turkeys, looking at buck tracks, thinking, boy, I got to come back here next to your type of thing and having a hell of an adventure. Right, And that land is still producing for us. It is still producing for us. 00:30:28 Speaker 3: Plus it's protecting the headwaters the New River or the New Yes, yeah, yeah, now it is yeah, all down in North Carolina, right right, And they look at that, like they look at the White Mountains National Forest that was so denuded of all timber that some of that legacy settlement is down in those rivers today they couldn't even navigate the rivers so much dirt came off of those after they logged it and left at bye now with scorched earth, right, they logged, lugged it and left, But that became White Mountain, White Mountain National Forest, which which the Piska same Pisca natural forest, same Anongo Halo, same Allegany. 00:31:10 Speaker 2: Same and nobody's out there right now being like this place is worthless. 00:31:14 Speaker 3: Right, Well, if they sail off this two to three million. Yeah, you can't tell me that the Daniel Boone and the Mark Quain National Forests like in Missouri sitting back. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: Can you believe the condos? Yeah? Can you? Why are we just letting its sit there? Yeah? 00:31:30 Speaker 1: I can have the suite of vrbos out there, so and then yeah, I do think it's important to talk about like the characteristics of the land sales right now, because the language is very precise and very broad. So only lands adjacent to existing infrastructure may be considered. And then you get down to point number seven, bullet point number seven, and it's lands that are deemed too far away and too expensive to manage may be considered. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: Right, that's all of them, right in between the nearest and the furthest right. That's kind of right. That's kind of everything. 00:32:21 Speaker 1: And then you know, like we' one of the biggest heroes we have walking around b h A rendezvous, Right is Eric Hanson, a guy motivated enough to use his skills to write two amicus briefs for the Corner Crossing Case Wyoming Corner Crossing Case. He spends his personal time researching his law firms behind him in San Francisco, for God's sakes, right, and this Iron Bar Holdings is has got an extension to file and take the corner crossing case to the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest law in the land. 00:33:07 Speaker 2: Right. 00:33:10 Speaker 1: Well, guess what like if this is voted on and goes through, all Iron Bar Holdings will be enabled to purchase all of their checkerboard land. Now, if you and I are interested in buy in federal land, the way it's written in this, we're limited to one one sale as an individual. But if you happen to be a landowner within the checkerboard, you have unlimited purchasing option. 00:33:49 Speaker 2: Right. 00:33:50 Speaker 1: So does that sound like an opportunity for the citizens of the United States? 00:33:55 Speaker 2: No? 00:33:56 Speaker 1: Or does that sound like opportunities for individuals who quite possibly are already known right and. 00:34:06 Speaker 2: Here holding an awful lot of land already? Yes? Yeah, yeah, So again, like you want to talk about this, we have a mechanism to talk about it. 00:34:18 Speaker 3: Let's do talk about this, because we both know you're you right in right to the first of our conversation. Federal and here we are in the weeds. Everybody nobody wants to go there, but that's where the that's the devil's in. 00:34:30 Speaker 2: The details, yeah, and the reality is in the weeds. 00:34:33 Speaker 3: And one of the realities is the Federal Land Land Policy in Management Act of nineteen seventy six. 00:34:40 Speaker 2: Which is that word flipm that people talk about. 00:34:42 Speaker 3: And then the Southern Nevada Land Public Land Management Act of nineteen ninety eight. 00:34:49 Speaker 2: Both of these. 00:34:50 Speaker 3: Are mechanisms for selling, divesting, or trading public federally managed public lands to two communities that need. 00:34:58 Speaker 2: Expansion or infrastructure the MECAN. 00:35:01 Speaker 1: The Congress passed them both, which means it is a voter approved yes. 00:35:07 Speaker 3: And somehow Senator Lee has decided to shoehorn in a very strange thing that that because they don't want to use these mechanisms. 00:35:19 Speaker 2: Can you talk about that? Yeah? So yeah, so talk about leading up a question. 00:35:23 Speaker 1: Yeah, but budget reconciliation where we're at now in the Senate, So it's it's past the House. We there was land sale language in the House. We got that removed. Big community effort. But you know, I think in three days the BHA community got in fourteen thousand phone calls. Yep, in three days. I did it to moves. The neo man, it moves, and they keep it up friends and neighbors, and we should talk about some strategy there too. And then so now it's it's in the Senate, like we talked about committee language. You got submitted last minute submission in that committee. Holy shit, I mean, this guy can't leave it alone. Nor could be upwards of three million acres depending on on how those percentages are exercised in the language. As I like to say, don't believe me. You can look this stuff up. Go to the Federal Register dot g ov. 00:36:24 Speaker 2: You can. You can search for it. 00:36:25 Speaker 1: It's there, out of the mouth mouths of our elected It's it's right there. 00:36:31 Speaker 2: It's source material in it, you know. So the. 00:36:38 Speaker 1: In the reconciliation process, it also takes a smaller amount of votes, I think, because you know, it's kind of like one party has the majority. 00:36:51 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:36:52 Speaker 1: And anything done through this process goes directly to the Treasury, So it circumvents the FLIPMA and the Southern Neva. 00:37:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, and so dig this. 00:37:10 Speaker 3: That means that that those two laws were passed so that the American taxpayers get fair value for the lands that are sold that are needed by communities for or infrastructure. 00:37:22 Speaker 2: That's right. 00:37:22 Speaker 1: And then and also just don't sit in page document. FLIPMA is a four page document. 00:37:29 Speaker 2: Yep, you can read it. Yeah, I mean yeah, you can't like most of this stuff. 00:37:33 Speaker 1: If you want to know, there's not a lot of excuse not to know these days, right, that's great. So yeah, so the fair value thing is super important. It It literally is a document that says, survey the land, so we know what we're giving up, right, So so the American people, that's the we know what what that land sale entails, what we're giving up, and what we're going to get in return, right, so that community. 00:38:08 Speaker 2: An often used example would be like a water. 00:38:20 Speaker 1: Plant, right, like water you know, wastewater management facility that that. 00:38:25 Speaker 2: Gets used a lot. 00:38:26 Speaker 1: I've seen going through the federal register, like some land sales that were like a chunk of BLM inside the municipal airport. You know, it's like, yeah, we the people don't need to own that chunk at this point, right. 00:38:45 Speaker 3: But you it just as if you did own it as a as a as an individual private citizen. You need to know where it is and how much money you're going to get for. 00:38:54 Speaker 2: It exactly exactly. 00:38:56 Speaker 1: And then the back end of this is once that sale goes through the revenue generated from that sale then gets put in a separate bucket that is used to find a land of greater I think strategic value. 00:39:13 Speaker 2: So that could be. 00:39:15 Speaker 1: If we gave up some mental resources, well we got a chunk that's got better mineral resources. But often I think it's more like ecological value. 00:39:23 Speaker 3: It could be ecologically or could be access like on the river or access. 00:39:28 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:39:30 Speaker 3: And so I mean we this this thing we're talking about circumvents that process. 00:39:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, the voter approoved process. 00:39:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, And and I would I would, I'd refer some folks to google up like the Nevada up state land sales, which they sailed so all of the federally granted lands upon statehood. 00:39:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, they got there down had some real guardrails around it. 00:39:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, and they are down to abound three thousand acres left over. And that was called like an or of corruption. And this is this is the precedent we have. It is and you know it's like back then, not all that long ago. Like the need was affordable housing, right, everybody knows, like affordable to who is a great question. 00:40:20 Speaker 2: I know. 00:40:20 Speaker 1: The last round in the bat of sales, they used the word accessible housing. But it's the same accessible. 00:40:26 Speaker 2: To who that was under the nineteen ninety eight yes, yeah. 00:40:29 Speaker 1: Right right, And like you pointed out earlier, like this land wasn't valuable enough for people to immediately seize upon it. 00:40:43 Speaker 2: It would have been offered under all the Homestead Acts. 00:40:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you could have occupied it in nineteen oh nine, it would long be gone up to nineteen seventy six actually, And so I mean what we're talking about. Remember I told you that radio show I was listening to, and a gal from some kind of order management I don't know who these were. 00:41:02 Speaker 2: They were. 00:41:03 Speaker 3: They were complaining about federal land hemming in Las Vegas. And and it wasn't because you could you could buy and sell it, right, But she just said, well, we've never had the water to supply the kind of sprawl that you might have in Washington, d C. Or Boston. Right, you don't have it. There's I don't know if the lake mead, you're not getting anymore. And so to encourage sprawl in Saint George, Utah, is to indulge in. It might work, somebody would make some money, but you're also indulging in a little bit of magical thinking about the availability of water and other infrastructure that yeah, I mean, mean what happens I don't, I don't. 00:41:46 Speaker 1: We can't go and listen whether that happens those sales happen under under flip my right or in this big beautiful bill right, Like don't you think the American people should hold people accountable and say, okay, you're going to fix affordable housing, the affordable housing crisis in America, Like, let's let's not you know, pay attention to the fact that out of the last six tracks that were sold under the Biden administration, those tracks never got a bid. But there's a crisis, which you would think crisis means demand, like that stuff would have got snapped up right away. 00:42:35 Speaker 2: I didn't know that. 00:42:37 Speaker 1: Again, Federal Register dot gov got you, right. So, but it's also like implies that there's like this uniformity to the land, which we touched on earlier, like how many calcav paars can you run on an acre? 00:42:52 Speaker 3: Right? 00:42:52 Speaker 1: Well, there's a wide variability there. So under Lee's situation, he's just saying, this is the time we got to get this out the door. If we can't sell land right now in this moment, well, I'm never going to be able to do it. I got to realize my dream. 00:43:08 Speaker 2: And so. 00:43:10 Speaker 1: It's there's these pieces that I think a lot of people would be like, yeah, I'd rather not have another house there, or a strip mall or. 00:43:19 Speaker 3: Whatever they're or one hundred trailers on dust, yeah, with no water. 00:43:25 Speaker 1: But I can see how we could let this chunk go, right. But there's all these other chunks that are you know, they're the front country. They're the places where we're stuck here in Missoula. 00:43:41 Speaker 2: It's Friday. 00:43:42 Speaker 1: We got to get the hell out of here for a little bit before we return to our responsibilities. And we zip out and there's probably some other folks out there and they're running their dogs, but I got to get my bird dogs exercise. Or uh, it's that chunk of blm where it's not the place that I'm gonna go hike on the weekend, but I can darn sure rip out here, set up some paper sight in my rifle and be ready for the weekend. It's these accessible places and sometimes that sam chunk has a covey of hons on there, Like those are the places, right, And if you're a turkey hunter, you don't need a lot of acreage. If you're an antelope hunter, you need a lot of anchorage. If you are a white tail hunter, you don't need a lot of acreage. But these are these accessible places that you know, the weekend warrior where it's like, I got all my checklists done, all my responsibilities done on Saturday. 00:44:44 Speaker 2: It took all day. 00:44:46 Speaker 1: I got someday to hunt fish clear my head, Like, that's probably the place that you're using, right, So this. 00:44:53 Speaker 3: Is it's also the place that gave us the feeling that America has. Like I've heard this so many times from people who come here from foreign countries and stuff, the space and the and the the life, like the like the space. 00:45:08 Speaker 2: The freedom. Yep. 00:45:10 Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's just really I have a good friend who worked all over the world is construction, International construction, and uh, he's he lives in our town and he just said, man, you can hike in Estonia. He worked in hat too, which really really crowded, you know, and and he was like, there's just nothing like this anywhere else in the world. And he's like super hardcore public lands advocate. He's retired, and he just said, it's just it doesn't exist. Sorry, you can't. You can't if you give it away and make it like everywhere else. You know, Yeah, I'm not doing that, not on my watch. 00:45:48 Speaker 1: And on my watch man, no, And and I mean you just gotta you gotta keep trying. And we do need to get into like the proper advocacy, So we should. 00:45:59 Speaker 3: Get into that now and while we still got some time. But the last thing before we go there is just you. You've really built You've really made a line in the sand here, like you've been. You've been front and center in this thing for the last three months or something. I mean you've been in for ever known you, but three months, I mean you have been the man in here doing this. 00:46:22 Speaker 2: You believe in. 00:46:22 Speaker 1: It, if that's what you want to call it. Sure, it's just it's got to be said. And we got to get other people aware that this is happening, like they they right, Like it is a small group of people who have their own ideals and they are willing to take as much as we're willing to give, right And if you're not speaking, you are willingly giving this stuff away. So yeah, the calling showing up in person and everybody's got the ability to do this call email, show up in person. 00:47:04 Speaker 2: Call email, show up in person. Who. Well, where I'm letting you do. 00:47:11 Speaker 1: Ten times what I've got in here, Senators and and and congress people, your representatives, and then you can reach out to members of these committees and and right now, you know Steve Daines here in Montana, You've got to call that office. And if you call the first time, say hey, this is where I'm from. I love public lands. Please stand up to Mike Lee and tell him not to sell this stuff. 00:47:42 Speaker 2: Thank you very much. 00:47:43 Speaker 3: And do we tell him not to take it out of the big beautiful bill. 00:47:46 Speaker 1: That's the thing is, tell tell him to this stuff is not for sale under reconciliation. And let's start there, right, Let's get it out of the budget process. No public lands in the budget process. 00:47:58 Speaker 2: There you go. We can have the discussion. I can understand that. By the way. That's that's okay. So let's say it again. Yeah. 00:48:06 Speaker 1: Hey, my name is Ryan Callahan. I'm from Bozeman, Montana. I hate saying I'm from Bozeman, Montana, but I live in Bozman, Montana, and you're my representative or my senator in this case. I love public lands. 00:48:21 Speaker 2: That's all. I do. 00:48:22 Speaker 1: Uh, It's why I'm here, That's why I pay my taxes here. You cannot allow public lands to be included in the budget process. No public land sales in the budget process. Thank you very much. Okay, I call again, say it and and this is good stuff for people listening. Get people's names, these staffers that are answering the phone, you can wake them up, but be like, oh, Jason, I talked to you yesterday. This is Ryan Callahan. I just wanted to call back and make sure that my message was heard. This is who I am, this is where I'm from. This is how much public lands mean to me. I appreciate the Senator's stance on this, but right now it's not enough. I need his leadership. Please ask him to contact Senator Crapo, Senator Rish and Idaho Senator Thune in South Dakota and make sure that they know how much public lands mean to me and they cannot be included in the budget reconciliation process. No public land sales in the budget process. 00:49:34 Speaker 2: Okay, that's very clear, right. 00:49:37 Speaker 1: I can act on that and get those names and have that repertoire and get people not just reporting what you're saying but advocating for you. And if they're they're like, well, god, this guy took the time to just know my name, and they're being polite, and they're obviously passionate about this that I mean, they're people like it makes an impact and they get it over and over and over again, and this is like the simplest thing you can do. And then you know, identify these groups that are doing the work as well. I think b h A Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, National Wildlife Federation is doing a great job. Right now, we're seeing some good movement. I think p f q F has done a great job. And you know they're not they're not. 00:50:32 Speaker 3: A Chris Wood had a great, great, very short concise piece, let's let's not do this. 00:50:42 Speaker 2: Thank you for bringing that up. Is doing a great job. Well, just sign message. I was just looking at it just to just today. 00:50:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, and and you know, sign on to those letters if you can throw some cash to the organizations that you think are doing this this right because that's going to enable those organizations to get the messages to the people that need to read this stuff. And you know, there's strength in numbers, is what I would say. Right So, when BHA can say, hey, our membership has grown from thirty thousand to fifty thousand because of your stance on public land sales. We have fifty thousand people that are aligned and signed on to this message. And they come from these states and these counties. Like people pay attention to that stuff, right, So it does matter. And like we said earlier, it's your job. So it's not necessarily going to be fun every day, but it's just what you gotta do. You got to punch the time clock on this one. 00:51:52 Speaker 3: So well, it's a participatory democratic republic and that means you've got to participate. 00:52:00 Speaker 2: You have the. 00:52:01 Speaker 3: Option, yeah, right, right, which is wonderful, right, Like, like if this was going on in some other country like Mexico, it would just be sold off. Yeah, I mean, I mean, and there's not I like Mexico, right, but that anybody would say that the federal government of Mexico is not particularly effective, not really representative of some of the folks out in the country. 00:52:25 Speaker 2: And I don't want to. 00:52:26 Speaker 3: See that here, No, man, I don't want to see this is this is not this ain't right, you know. 00:52:34 Speaker 1: I was talking with our Armed Forces initiative this morning. The and we have a meet up here at bh A now. And man, if you think you and I care about these places, right, I mean there's there's guys involved there who are like, h this is literally life threatening right, like the way like because of the trauma, uh that we've experienced. This is where we have the solace and the mental space and like you don't understand, like if it goes away for you, it might be a little bit different than than me, right right, yep, So yeah. 00:53:20 Speaker 2: I just. 00:53:23 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And those guys have been incredible voices. I mean, I just that's one of my, uh, one of b h a's great successes is the Armed Forces Initiative. I went on that trip with Trevor Hubbs when he was starting out or working in. 00:53:36 Speaker 2: That, and uh I did. It's just it's one of our one of the great strengths here absolutely, you know. And it's uh. 00:53:44 Speaker 1: That AFI program literally grew because we were welcoming and gave people the space and. 00:53:54 Speaker 3: Had a place to take everybody, you know, like come home, man, come on, let's don't do this. 00:53:59 Speaker 2: I thought. So I keep I keep coming. 00:54:02 Speaker 3: Back to that, like let's look and you and I were talking about social contract you know earlier, and you could you can hate that if you want to say that's academic and all that stuff. But part of my contract with with my country is that I have these public lands and and so it's what Teddy Roosevelt said. He said, it has to work on some level for all of us in order for it to work on any level for. 00:54:28 Speaker 2: Any of us. 00:54:30 Speaker 3: And that was like the basis of what was he the Square deal or was that fdr. 00:54:35 Speaker 2: No, Teddy was he was the Square Yeah? 00:54:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, So the Square deal was that we don't you don't take our lands. 00:54:44 Speaker 2: That we we enjoy, that. 00:54:45 Speaker 3: Protect our watersheds, that that have wildlife that we get to hunt and get to shoot. I mean, shooting has been such a huge part of my life and I don't have any place to go except public lands. And that's been true to itself. Was nine nine years old, and I, you know, we would try to We finally lived. We lived out in the country, so I had a place to shoot. Other people didn't. And I was at the Uchi Shooting Range on the Tuskie National Forest last winter, winter before last, and that's like the only place to have to shoot, like for Auburn, I mean, you. 00:55:16 Speaker 1: Know, yeah, well, I mean that's not just true for you, right, Like the National Shooting Sports Foundation. I keep meaning to reach back out to them because they had such good data on recreational shooting YEP and its ties to public lands, and they could extrapolate that and say, Okay, public lands go away, We're going to see a reduction in firearm ownership. 00:55:43 Speaker 2: You have to in the United States. 00:55:45 Speaker 1: You would definitely have to let alone the amount of ammunition used and numbers of recreational shooters, you know, right, So the shooting sports, the shooting sports, right, yeah, all of. 00:56:00 Speaker 2: That, all of this ties in. 00:56:01 Speaker 3: I'm gonna get abstractor now, but all this ties into. I remember I did a story at film stream about when the military had the two Fat to Fight campaign and that was when the it's particularly the basic trainers like thing was a Marine Corps. First they said, well, we can't we can't give you a soldier in in basic training right now. We can't get them into shape, into combats ready shape because they're coming from this sedentary lifestyle. And I would I would extrapolate that to lack of you know, I mean LWCF Landing Water Conservation Fund that had swimming pools funded for great planes, little towns. 00:56:40 Speaker 2: That was because they wanted kids to be strong so you could you could actually defend the nation. 00:56:45 Speaker 3: It was a huge part of this weird what you would call holistic view of America and public lands, public parks, ballparks where people could run right and get fit, be strong. 00:56:57 Speaker 2: Yeah, all of it. 00:56:58 Speaker 3: All of it was a vision of America where it was a social contract. The poorest people had the chance to go climb a mountain and walk outside of town, like out of Albuquerque or wherever, right on Blm Land and become strong and fit. And and this is like, this is a societal sanity, right, it's a social contract. 00:57:22 Speaker 2: And I would I would, you know, I would indicate. 00:57:25 Speaker 1: To look at what we've lost because people don't know where their food comes from. 00:57:32 Speaker 2: Yep. Abstraction. Yeah, degrees of separation. 00:57:36 Speaker 1: Right, Like like we have hard, bizarre conversations these days because you can't just start, you can't assume that somebody knows. 00:57:49 Speaker 2: Right, You're like, okay, yeah, let's see. Let's see big cow. 00:57:56 Speaker 1: Of reproductive size right falls in with the boycot we call that a bull. And then right, it's like and it's and there's people out there that steward these animals, right, and believe it or not, they have to do this year after year after year after year. So the land that those animals occupy has to be healthy too in order to do that. And so they have to figure out the you know, and on and on and on, and that's the foundation and that I needed to lay it to tell you that these lands are valuable, right right, It's like that's a long way. 00:58:37 Speaker 2: It's a long it's a long way. 00:58:39 Speaker 3: And and people in the west, well, one of the things in Montana, uh particular, understood people who hunt. 00:58:48 Speaker 2: They understood winter range pretty quick. 00:58:50 Speaker 3: And that's why we had like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation working on private lands easemus right, because we knew that the yelk lived in the mountains in the summer, but they couldn't live there in the winter. 00:58:59 Speaker 2: They had to go down. 00:59:00 Speaker 3: All the all the good stuff was homestead It is private whoever owns it now. 00:59:05 Speaker 2: All the good stuff was homestead, right. 00:59:08 Speaker 3: The stuff that we couldn't inhabit is what we left left in the public estate. 00:59:12 Speaker 2: That's public lands. 00:59:14 Speaker 3: And I had a guy from the east was telling me that he couldn't understand why what is it? Seventy percent of seventy three percent of Nevada was federal public land. And I said, have you ever been there? And he said he had been to Vegas And I said, well that if you take a drive from say, down where the Bundanes live gold. But it's a pretty ury, really interesting country. There's no water in there. Virgin River is like by the Bundy's place, and uh, really low and that's like mead, right, But anyway, there's no water, dude, That's why it's That's why people didn't take it over and like build like happy neighborhoods with little kids and playing tennis. 00:59:54 Speaker 2: Right, there's none. And wherever there is. 00:59:57 Speaker 3: Water, ever, you've been there a lot, right, So you got your on X map or your Avinza maps, and you'll look and there'll be a little green spot down there where like an arroyo comes down and it and it dumps into a place you can't get out of. 01:00:14 Speaker 2: And you'll look on your map. That's private. 01:00:17 Speaker 3: It was homesteaded and it is in the private domain because people knew if they control the water there, then you didn't need to own the sage brush. And what's now cheat grass. 01:00:28 Speaker 2: That's right. So that's right. So we gave. 01:00:31 Speaker 3: Away everything that you could use and we have this left. 01:00:39 Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, but that's that's the line. It is. 01:00:42 Speaker 3: I don't and also it's it's okay, it's good the way it is. 01:00:47 Speaker 2: This is the thing. When did we get this this message? 01:00:51 Speaker 3: All? So, I've been in Montown thirty five years and from the people have complained about federal land management from the moment I got to the bitter roots, I really do it wrong. And you do that, federal group, you can't do nothing right. And I'd go up in the bitter roots and get a get a bull which I did. It was it was thirty three percent for me, and I'd like, what, I think they're doing pretty good? 01:01:19 Speaker 2: Right right, you're like the experience that I personally just have, yes, and and all of my firewood. 01:01:26 Speaker 3: And I went down to uh, the fores service guy, I want to say his name, he's gone. Now got a posting polesale because I needed to build some fence boom. 01:01:35 Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. 01:01:36 Speaker 3: I went and got a trailer and went up in the Sapphires and did my own little posting polesale. Now would he give me five thousand acres of posting poles. I don't know, maybe not, And then I could go I just don't get nothing from it, right, I could be dissatisfied. 01:01:53 Speaker 2: But I have watched federal land management feel conflict. 01:01:57 Speaker 3: Just like anything where you have a wonderful asset that everybody's going to argue over. 01:02:01 Speaker 2: They should. 01:02:02 Speaker 3: Yeah, that doesn't mean you give it away. No, don't mean you let somebody take it from. 01:02:06 Speaker 2: You, especially it's making money, right, it's. 01:02:09 Speaker 3: Making money, but it doesn't make enough money. We all have to share in the management costs. If it made money, somebody would be out there owning it. 01:02:19 Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, you know, like like that. That's just the truth of it. 01:02:24 Speaker 1: The value has increased exponentially, the value of that open space. That's right, and it will it will be the greatest asset the United States House. 01:02:37 Speaker 3: That's right, and you better choose if you want to keep it. That's right, because that that's in a nutshell. The population in the United States has doubled in my lifetime. 01:02:45 Speaker 1: People can understand right now in many areas of the country the value of open space, right, and it's way different than it was when they were a kid, yep, right, and this stuff is going to continue to double, triple, quadruple in value. And people in Western States got the shock of a lifetime when COVID hit and all of a sudden, everybody wanted to have their own space. And we were like, oh my god, I thought that land was expensive before, but turns out, in comparison to the rest of the country, we didn't know the true value. It's right, five times yeah what it was priced before all you ding dong showed up. Yeah right, right, shame on it. 01:03:35 Speaker 2: And that's just to be in a proximity to it, right, yeah, exactly. I guess the shock of my life. 01:03:42 Speaker 3: When by this was when the Wilkes brothers bought the three hundred and thirty thousand in Montana, which was some of the most arid Missouri breaks. 01:03:52 Speaker 2: Gumbo country in the world. 01:03:54 Speaker 3: You know, like really it was no homestead or could ever like they nobody had made it. 01:03:59 Speaker 2: Their anchor ranch. All that country. 01:04:00 Speaker 3: It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it was hard to make a living in there, and that's why it was that for sale. So they when that purchase went down, and then I had a guy bought one hundred and sixty five thousand near me, all these these huge landscapes were changing hands. I was like that that means that that can you imagine what they'd pay for the Lewis and Clark National Forest, right? Can you imagine what they pay for the contiguous BLM lands that we were talking about today this morning? 01:04:32 Speaker 2: Yep, you know. 01:04:33 Speaker 3: It's not about putting pounds on cows anymore. It's about controlling huge things of open space and hunting and having your own like kingdom in a time where the population is doubling and people are living harder. 01:04:47 Speaker 1: So again, if that stuff wasn't of value, right, yeah, why is it being snatched up? 01:04:55 Speaker 2: Record crisis? Right? So that's well. 01:05:00 Speaker 1: I think the other threat that I just want to hit before we take off here, this is because we've got to get back to rendezvousing is aside from apathy. It's like, understand what your goal is and be willing to leave your baggage at the door to hit that goal. Make that less abstract for me. Tell my goal is public lands. I want no public lands in this budget sale. I want the same amount, if not more, and I want those lands to be in better shape when I hopefully I'm underneath them, meaning I want to leave it better than I found, you know, That's that's my goal. And I want people to understand that they have the opportunities that I had. They don't need to take them, but they need to ununderstand that they have those opportunities. You know that adventures out there for you too. Yep, should you so choose? 01:06:06 Speaker 2: Should you so choose? 01:06:07 Speaker 3: Right? 01:06:07 Speaker 2: You can wake up tomorrow and go do it or not? And I want to win this thing. 01:06:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do not care who you voted for, what all your other personal ideals are. But if you want access to public lands and you want to see those things. 01:06:25 Speaker 2: Thrive, then yeah, then you're on my team. Yep, that's right. 01:06:29 Speaker 3: And I'll tell you what we will make this great because I would say I believe that we're We needed to be asked this question. A lot of people were telling me, they were going, can you believe this is happening? Can you believe this happening? It was like, wait, it's been happening for fifty years, but it hasn't happened in your face, like like they've been kind of throwing the left jab, this is the overhand right right, and and I believe that in a good strong overhand right to a person who ain't paying attention is not a bad thing. Now, you know you're in a fight, right, We've been in a fight for fifty years over Colonel. 01:07:07 Speaker 1: Abel says, did he nothing? Nothing gets you woken up like a good fight. 01:07:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. 01:07:14 Speaker 3: And and finally you can drop the the the baggage, the silliness, the nonsense, right and and and address the opponent. 01:07:22 Speaker 2: And that's what we're doing here, yep. 01:07:24 Speaker 3: And dude, I believe that once woken up from the from the trance of apathy, I believe we're gonna have land management. I believe we're gonna come. Here's what I think. I think we're gonna keep the public lands. I think we're gonna win this one. I think we're gonna have fuels reduction projects, watershed hunting, habitat management. I think we're gonna prioritize public lands after this because we're gonna be awakened. 01:07:54 Speaker 2: And before that there was too easy to go like, you know, I don't like blam. You go what would you rather have? 01:08:01 Speaker 3: And they go, I don't know, but I don't like them, And he goes, what do they do that you don't like, and they'll have like a laundry list of small things and he goes, you know, dude, how important is that when it comes to like not having this ever ever? 01:08:16 Speaker 2: And in Montana, the BLM doesne. 01:08:20 Speaker 1: Uh private land work like they they implement all the federal uh funding. Yeah yeah, to help improve rangeland gotcha the private landowners use right right right, yeah. 01:08:40 Speaker 3: Right right yeah? Or I got I went, I went packing for ILK, I got the mules out of counting, you know, like I'm at a class of young people who are uh. Is another controversy over like Native American to get the lands back, right, They're gonna they're gonna give the Lewis and Clark National Forest back to I came. 01:09:06 Speaker 2: Not the black Feet. I don't know, I can't. It was. 01:09:08 Speaker 3: It was very strange, but anyway, and they told me they've had the same idea. 01:09:13 Speaker 2: They said, it's all been mismanaged. 01:09:16 Speaker 3: It's been mismanaged to the point where we might as well give it away. And I and we were up on the front and I said, can you ride with me? 01:09:26 Speaker 2: Take a take a walk, ride with me to the trail. I said, show me, show me the mismanagement there you would find. 01:09:33 Speaker 3: Some if you if you spent the rest of your life going over to the Custer National Forest, you say, well, some of this is overgrazed, right, Does that mean that means we're gonna get rid of if. 01:09:42 Speaker 1: You had the background and noxious weeds, and I think you don't, and then you could look at things and. 01:09:47 Speaker 3: You know what, you'd say, we need more work on this noxious weed problem exactly. And that's exactly what we've been doing on Blm Lands with the sagebrush effort through Mule Deer Foundation. Yeah, and it's been it's really great. I just indeed, you gotta get over. I love that Nietzsche quote. You said, I am a ya sayer that from us, that spake Sarah Thustra, you know then Nietzsche philoph of German philosopher. Well, I am a ya sayer. I'm not here to be negative with you. I'm gonna I'm a ya sayer man, and we're gonna keep this. 01:10:26 Speaker 2: We're gonna win this. Oh, I think I think we're gonna win this one man. 01:10:30 Speaker 1: And and like we we may or may not have talked about on the podcast here, right, it's like man tough times make great people, yep. And you see the people who have been doing lip service during the easy times, yep, cowering and and moving further and further to the back yep. Right, And don't worry, once we win this thing, they'll be right back up to the front. 01:10:57 Speaker 2: Probably just before right, you know. 01:10:59 Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they have an innate ability to smell success and a part of it, right, But so it does does excite me, right, And I think we've been talking about BHA, right Like, BHA is kind of like a few the proud organization, right Like, we're not one of the biggest ones out there by far, but when our membership gets active, they outperform bigger memberships who have been trained to not do stuff. Give money, sit back, we'll take care of it. Well, right now, we need all the above, right, So, our membership is punching so far above its weight class because they're willing to show up, show up at a rally, show up at a committee meeting. They're willing to testify, They're willing to pick up the phone, they're willing to make the emails. They're willing to tell their friends to do the same darn thing. Right, They're willing to throw in a couple of bucks and sign on to the the group letters, right, like they're they're doing the work because like uh, Katie Morrison one of her. 01:12:13 Speaker 2: Night, Yeah, fantastic person. 01:12:16 Speaker 1: She's like, because we know the value right, right, and unfortunately that's that's like a responsibility on our shoulders, right. 01:12:25 Speaker 2: It's huge. 01:12:25 Speaker 3: I mean I think it's a beautiful burden. Yeah, Like like I just I welcome this. I think this is BHA's moment like never before. I mean, if it's not, well, when would be right? I mean, I mean it is the moment. 01:12:38 Speaker 2: It is the moment and all it is. 01:12:39 Speaker 3: I was talking with Jim Taylor from Arkansas last night and he said, he said, we've been. He's a old probably my age, you know, and he said, I've been. This is my moment, this is this is it, this is I've been preparing for this my whole life. 01:12:55 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:12:56 Speaker 3: Yeah, by being a conservationist in a public lands hunter and being in the Delta Arkansas and the National Wildlife Refuge is oh man, come on, come on, Cash River, White River, you know, you know US Fish and Wildlife Service, Like like nobody in the world's ever done what we've done. Let's don't don't break, don't wreck this boat. 01:13:19 Speaker 2: That's what kills me. 01:13:20 Speaker 1: How is I I do stuff that I post on Instagram and the podcast and stuff like that. 01:13:26 Speaker 2: The international people's the darn foreigners. 01:13:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, they write in all the time and say, are you guys really gonna fuck this up? 01:13:36 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yes, they're like, are you really gonna? Like do you not know what you have? Right? And it's like, no, some of these people do not know, but what we have they don't and and right. 01:13:49 Speaker 3: And then the fact that somebody doesn't care about something doesn't mean it's not important, you know, that's right. I mean the fact that somebody's gonna turn on the water at their house and drink the water and say they don't won't Clean Water Act or whatever, that's a minority of folks. It's we're gonna have to leave you behind. We're gonna we're gonna have a couple of coffee later. Yeah, right now, we're gonna we're busy. 01:14:11 Speaker 2: You know, that's right. 01:14:12 Speaker 3: Like you were saying, with all these other issues, to tell that one, that was an awesome one. Because we've been at Rendezvoue where there's a lot of issues there as a lot of trouble in the world, right there are, yeah, but this one, this particular land sale I described like this right, this is happening right now, It's gonna happen within the next two weeks. 01:14:33 Speaker 1: There's a raging fire on your front door. It's about to consume the house. It's maybe even taking down your neighbor's house already. There's a bucket brigade running water to the front door to put out this fire, and you're grabbing people out of that bucket brigade to tell them about what's going on with the back lawn. 01:14:53 Speaker 2: You're right on. 01:14:56 Speaker 1: Right, listen, the back lawn. We love it, everybody loves it. Yeah, but we're gonna put this fire out and then we're gonna talk about the back line. Okay, And until then, grab a fucking bucket or a minimum. 01:15:11 Speaker 2: Quit pulling people out of the 01:15:12 Speaker 3: Line right over, man, I'm gonna leave it right there, all right, buddy,