00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T l I t E dot com. Joined today by Scott Fitzwilliams. Scott is here for very important sorry, a very important that port and a very important discussion about our public lands, our US National Forest System. Scott got on our radar, Yes it was well. Here, I'll tell you the exact date. Scott got at our radar in late February twenty twenty five when in our community, in our circle, there was circulated a headline White River Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams resigns amid slashing of agency workforce. Then the follow up sentence. Fitzwilliams guided the two point three million acre forests for fifteen years, helping manage soaring visitation and an annual one point six billion dollar impact in Colorado. The most trafficked forest in the country. Spanning two point three million acres, the White River National Forest has eleven major ski areas, eight wilderness areas, four reservoirs. Regularly hosts more than seventeen million visitors a year. The forest supports more than twenty two thousand jobs with forest dependent workers in its communities, including Aspen, Breckenridge, Carbondale, Eagle, Glenwood Springs, Meeker, Rifle, and Veil, earning nine hundred and sixty million years. According to the Forest Service economic analysis of its top one hundred and eleven properties, the term I'm not hip on but properties. The Forest's annual impact of one point six billion dollars of financial activity in its communities ranks as the highest in the agency. And the gentleman we have here joining us today was prompted to leave that post at the age of sixty based on some of the things that are going on right now with attack on federal land management agencies. So we're going to talk about that story. But first, welcome Scott. 00:03:05 Speaker 2: Good to be here. Uh. 00:03:07 Speaker 1: First, cal wanted to say something. 00:03:10 Speaker 3: Oh, well, you know, it's customary on this this here podcast and we talk about other things and rarely do we even introduce our guests or acknowledge their existence during that time, so ahead of schedule on that, But on the other things topic. 00:03:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, the Newsy part, the people write in like, hey, when you do the Newsy thing up front, you know, and I'll be like, that's a great name for this, the Newsy part. Yeah, No, they're I'm not afraid to write with that. This this, this is what you're talking about, matters a lot to me because this is like a in many states, this is a thing that a lot of hunters and anglers rely on. And I'll I'll leave off a version of it, not leave off, but I'll mention too, a version of it is in some states all water trappers. Yeah, Like it's how they conduct their It's how they conduct their business. 00:03:59 Speaker 3: Yeah. Is I mean there's a version of this that is that is like class warfare almost right. So, I mean this is one of the most accessible ways to get out and recreate for the vast majority of US. North Carolina Senate Bill two twenty, I think it got heard yesterday. But there's always you always have a dog in the fight. So North Carolina Senate Bill to twenty, Section four, specifically if it were to pass, it would become illegal to launch a vessel and this is primarily kayaks, canoes, small vessels off of the public road right of ways, meaning that certainly in a lot of states, your your public roads have an easemnt. It's like shoulder to shoulder where you can park, and if public ground abuts that shoulder, it's it's legal access to that public ground or in this case, public water. So you would you would be charged with I think a class four misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina if this were where to go through. As Steve pointed out, if you are a trapper, this is very important, but if you're even a large water angler, this would eliminate a lot of access to water, and it would in a lot of places become prohibitive to go go fishing unless you have access to a larger, larger boat. 00:05:40 Speaker 1: So let's be frank, it's a it's a war on high schoolers and college kids. How else they supposed to get in the water. 00:05:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, So all those. 00:05:50 Speaker 1: Beage access in this area. You go like cruising out north of town, west of town, north northwest of town, every bridge absolutely in the summer, you can't go to any bridge without some college kid climbing in the water, and I well, I mean, I know it's a different state, but this is like a fight that gets fought. This is a fight that gets fought like access, stream access. It's like it's it's, uh, the same plot. Now what am I trying to say here? I'm trying to make an analogy the same issue. It just gets fought in like little different micro waves. 00:06:26 Speaker 4: So this isn't just stream access. This could be a lake upon like. 00:06:30 Speaker 1: Any yeah, yeah, but I mean like it's it's I don't know the particulars here, but it's usually coming like this. It's it's people have there's some dude in Neon's riverfront property or he owns lakefront property, and there's nothing that burns his ass more than looking out the window and here comes some dirt bag floating by yep, cash and fish, and he's like, how in the world could it be? How could it possibly be that I own this? In some cases, I own both sides, and I got to wake up to some dirt bag fishing yep, I mean like fish how And then they get on the phone and whatever. 00:07:14 Speaker 4: Every other day there's like a video that shows up some landowners screaming at someone for being in the water that they're legally able to be in, you know. 00:07:24 Speaker 1: Every day. Yeah, so it's always that. It's like this is like a public they're putting it as a public safety issue. It's not. This is someone talking about there, they're they're talking about something that's not what they're talking about. 00:07:37 Speaker 4: Does the person that proposed this bill own some some land, some waterfront land. 00:07:43 Speaker 1: Someone someone has his ear. 00:07:45 Speaker 3: Whoever introduced this bill may be friendly with some of those folks. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: You can picture the phone call. He's like, they're all in the I can't figure it out. When I bought this place, I thought, but there's all these kids floating by, they're parked up and down the road. Hell, someone's going to get hit. 00:08:02 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:08:02 Speaker 3: So this is in fact, yes. 00:08:06 Speaker 1: Someone's gonna get hit. That's the problem. 00:08:08 Speaker 3: You know, this is such an established form of access in use in in North Carolina. There's guide books and maps of where it is, you know, good places to launch, safe places to park, et cetera. So this is not like a brand new thing. All of a sudden, people started showing up to you know, that dirt baggy spot that I have to drive past in order to get to my pay to play boat launch for my big boat. 00:08:40 Speaker 2: And that. 00:08:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's exactly what it is. So people need to be aware. This North Carolina Senate Bill two twenty, specifically section four, would turn you in to a misdemeanor. 00:08:54 Speaker 4: Does this thing contrast with like an existing access law in North Carolina, like a high water mark? Yeah, public domain kind of thing. 00:09:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, oddly enough, it wouldn't touch the water access in the state of North Carolina, their water access law, but it would just say as long as you try to do it from here to here, it's illegal now and you're you're going to get a misdemeanor. One of the folks who wrote in on this sums it up pretty well, says North Carolina has had a long history of excellent water access and has a constitutional right to use traditional methods to hunt fish and trap game. This bill seems to be in violation of that. So amen, yep, that's one of the good ones. 00:09:48 Speaker 1: It's a war on college kids. 00:09:51 Speaker 3: It is for fishing. 00:09:53 Speaker 1: You know. I was like, I try not to do this, but now and then I'll catch myself just like looking through like stuff on social media, you know, like never leaves me where I want to be mentally, No, But this guy's got a video. It's so funny. It's like, there's this dude fishing. He's like, you tell, he's in a kayak or something and he's got he's got one of those like fishing go pro. So it's not aiming. It's aiming at him fishing, but it's not aiming at what's going what's going on around him. But you can see that he's like at a bridge and he says, he goes, hey buddy, you tell he's like addressing someone. Hey buddy, I'm not trying to come after you on this, but just like, let me give you a little life advice. If someone's fishing a hole, you don't want to come in and start fishing it. And often the distance your. 00:10:38 Speaker 2: Like a little kid. 00:10:40 Speaker 1: So that uh, oh, well, you know what. I wasn't gonna do this. But now since we're on legislation. 00:10:48 Speaker 5: No wonder they're worrying against those college kids. Oh yeah, rude bastards. No, this was a little kid's voice. 00:10:58 Speaker 1: Uh. One more piece of legislation. Peace years ago. I can't remember what the hell year it was California made, in my view, an enormous mistake when they banned mountain lion hunting. They banned lion hunting with dogs, they banned mountain lion hunting. Now in California, thanks to this wisdom, they now Yeah, one of the one of the funniest things about the lion banning in California. I might I might be fudging my numbers a little bit, but they're basically this. It was like hunters used to kill about three hundred and fifty mountain lions a year in California. Take a wild stab at about how many mountain lions get killed every year now by animal damage control specialists more a. Yeah, it was like they were like, okay, dudes by licenses and they hunt lions. That's get rid of that. And then we'll start paying people to kill those lines and put them in the dumpster. 00:12:04 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:12:05 Speaker 1: And it's created where there's a problem now where And like I don't want to necessarily call it, I want to choose my words carefully. It has been observed in California that that man, I hate to say this because I don't want to like feed into I don't want to you know, I don't want to do that thing where you're trying to get people to agree with you, and so you create like a false narrative. It has been observed by some people who are like pretty good on mountain lions and and pretty good on human wildlife interactions. It has been observed that in the decades since then, there has been less pressure on lions to avoid the kind of human lion interface. Really good biologists, really good line experts, dudes that we know, uh Bart George, No, Bruce Bart, Yeah, Bruce's hunt these bruces in Idahoa, Washington State. Bruces in Washington State. Yeah, Okay, whole career and chase the moulines. And he has observed that over the years in these states where they've put like heavy restrictions or band lion hunting, you see an increase in human lion conflicts because they just don't the lions just don't have a perception of like trouble. They don't associate humans with trouble. We've had on a researcher Bart George is even working on a project where they'll go out and they'll get a they'll get a collar on a mountain lion that's causing trouble like killing pets, killing livestock, whatever. They'll get a collar on it and they'll see, can we train this lion to avoid people by Because it's wearing a collar, we know right where it is. So we're gonna go and play the sound of human voices. When he was doing this project, he would use this podcast. He would play this podcast to the lions and monitor how close can I get to the lion before the lion will move, And at times he would get fifteen feet thirty feet from the lion playing human voices before the lion moves. Then they put dogs on it and treat the lion and mess with it. That's not the word he uses, but they mess with it. They hair assed. 00:14:22 Speaker 5: Yeah, we did a whole episode on it, Living with lions. 00:14:25 Speaker 1: Living with lions. They worry it, that's what they say. In Europe. They would worry the lion with dogs. And then you let some time go by, and then you come and play human voices to the lion, and the lion like, ah shit, these guys comes again. These people are trouble and he wants to leave. 00:14:40 Speaker 2: Well. 00:14:40 Speaker 1: Bart had found some positive reinforcement that some level of human pressure some level of inconvenience around humans, and the use of dogs pushes lions away and makes them kind of like less inclined to come to you human voices. We had on some guys on the show. We had Wyatt Brooks on the show, and Wyatt Brooks was hunting shed hunting hunting shed Antler's with his brother Taylor, and his brother Taylor was killed by a mountain lion in el Dorado County, California, and those guys came on the show. Or sorry, Taylor who's passed away obviously did not, but Wyatt came on the show to talk about Taylor's death. In response to this, Senator Marie Alvarado Gill has introduced a bill SB eighteen, which she views would enhance public safety and reduced loss of livestock by establishing a five year pilot program in Eldorado County, during which permitted houndsman with trained hounds may Hayes' problem mountain lions away from areas where they posed a threat to public safety, livestock or pets. I like that's great, I applauded. I don't mean to trivialize it. 00:16:00 Speaker 2: I just. 00:16:02 Speaker 1: I guess it's a step in the right direction, I would be so much happier. And I don't I know it would take like an act of God, meaning an act of Congress to undo the mountain lion hunting band, but I think that that's what needs to happen in California. 00:16:17 Speaker 4: The thing is that that I find with that might happen with this is the anti hunting folks, the animal rights activists would probably look at this as a negative, like it's bad to go hace those lions, and they should be looking at it, you know, like, don't go bother those lions, just don't harass them with dogs, and they should be all for it because it's probably gonna save some lions lives. 00:16:43 Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, my view on it and reluctance to dig into it too much, not reluctant to dig into but like choosing my words carefully is I like, I don't think of mountain lions like as a negative, right, But if I saw a mountainlin and I'd be like cool. When we have bears coming in, I like encourage my neighbors to not tattletale on them because I'm like, if you tattletale on that bear, it's dead. They're not going to spend a bunch of money and have some guys spend two days moving that bear two hundred miles away so we can walk back here. 00:17:16 Speaker 3: I believe I told your wife one time. I'm like, Katie, Uh, you didn't pull the trigger, but you loaded the gun. 00:17:24 Speaker 2: I know. 00:17:25 Speaker 1: I'm always like, can't don't tattletale on bears, because if, like, if one person tattletales, they kind of like, we'll keep an eye on it. When ten people tattletale a bears dead bear. 00:17:37 Speaker 4: When I lived in Eagle, Colorado, we're part of you know, near the White River National Forest. Occasionally we would get reverse nine one one calls saying there's. 00:17:47 Speaker 1: A mountain lion in your neighborhood. 00:17:49 Speaker 4: No way, and usually in like late winter, and so like you know that lion's on the hit list, right. 00:17:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, So in my choose my words carefully, thing is I look at it like I like, like I look at it as a regulated mountain lion hunting under quota systems and bag limits and seasons is in no way detrimental to having a healthy population of lions. 00:18:23 Speaker 6: Uh. 00:18:24 Speaker 1: I think it was wrong. It was ill advised to ban lion hunting, and I look at this as a positive because it's like a step in the right direction hopefully, But I just can't act like I'm glad about it because I'm super scared allions. 00:18:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, and Steve's trying not to like use the the fear argument. There's I don't know if there's there's been a study that like definitively proves hunting reduces wildlife conflict. But at the same time, it's like, well, areas that don't have black bears don't have black bear conflict, that don't have lands, don't have land conflict. 00:19:05 Speaker 4: I was doing some research for project Steve and I are working on, and it was regarding the black bear situation in New Jersey when what was his name, Bill Murphy? Murphy Murphy outlawed essentially, like first it was he outlauded on state and then he let the management plan expire, so bear hunting became completely illegal in New Jersey. 00:19:27 Speaker 1: For com and then they called it be a miakopa. 00:19:31 Speaker 4: Yeah he got he listened to people who were real pissed off. 00:19:34 Speaker 2: Is that what you mean? 00:19:35 Speaker 1: No, he said, I was wrong. 00:19:37 Speaker 4: Yeah, But anyway, they did a study during that time frame of human bear conflicts. 00:19:45 Speaker 2: And and you. 00:19:47 Speaker 4: Said, there's no like study that's been done on increased conflict. But it was something like two and thirty seven percent increase and bears killing pets, bears breaking in the cars, you know, all the thing. So it was like the outlawed hunting and that stuff shot through the roof. 00:20:07 Speaker 2: So you know what you will. 00:20:11 Speaker 1: But yeah, sure anybody could set up their own little experiment, have a garden, and then have a bunch of rabbits eat in the garden, and then do a couple of high profile killings of some of those rabbits, and you will see the other rabbits are like, jeez, I'm going to the middle of the night now, not doing that in the morning anymore. 00:20:30 Speaker 2: You know. 00:20:30 Speaker 1: It's just it's all right, Scott. Tell me about your career, man, how'd you wind up? Like, how'd you wind up there? How'd you wind up as the White River Forest Supervisor? What was your path? 00:20:43 Speaker 2: Oh, it's a long path, you know. I grew up in Wisconsin and uh ended up in Colorado for graduate school and tripped into an internship with a place called the fore Service. I knew nothing about I knew. The difference was you couldn't hunt in parks and you could hunt on the forest. That's what I knew the difference. And so, uh started my career and bounced all over the country. I think I worked in seven states. I was in Cody, Wyoming, Jackson, Wyoming, Dickinson, North Dakota. I was on the National Grasslands out there. And then I went to Sitka, Alaska for five. 00:21:19 Speaker 1: Years really yeah, for the Forest Service, and that was on Tongos, Yeah, working on tongas on the Tongus. 00:21:25 Speaker 2: Yeah. I was Jim Bachell's boss. Really, you know you guys had man, Yeah, yeah, And uh, then I went to Oregon for a few years and Eugene and then ended up in back in Glenwood Springs on the White River. So I started as an intern in Colorado and ended up finishing my career. 00:21:46 Speaker 4: And what kind of work we were you doing like throughout those you. 00:21:49 Speaker 2: Know I started really my originally I started kind of the public affairs and legislative affairs world for a few years, and then uh then I became a line off district ranger and then I was a Recreation Wilderness Minerals land staff on the Tonguus. That's what I worked on that. That's why Jim worked for me. And then uh, because he's a geology's jelogist. Yeah and so and then I was I've been a line officer, you know, either a district granger, deputy for supervisor, for supervisor. So it's been great. I mean to work in so many incredible places, is you know, I'm so grateful for this career. It's been unbelievable. 00:22:30 Speaker 1: Can you explain for folks what is the scope of a force supervisor? And then if you could talk a little bit about how that could get more and more complex as you enter into a forest like the White River forest. 00:22:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, so the way the agencies set up we we they give line officer or delegated authority for a chunk of land and in case of a forest, a forest depends where it is, you know, and on the Tongus it's seventeen million acres or the White Rivers two and a half, and you know in the east there smaller force. And basically you have all responsibilities for that piece of ground. I always told people it's toilets, the targets and everything in between. You you're responsible for everything, and so uh, you know, you're responsible for the money, you know, the budget, the targets, the accomplishments, the people and and but these jobs now, you know, in these line officer jobs, they're they're really evolved into you know, part of a community. You've got to be the the you know, you're the name, you know, the face of the agency in that community. And so you know, and as we collaborate and we work together, it's so you know, it can get complex because you're the one that signs the decision for that timber sale or that new trail or you know, closing that trail and and your name's on it, and so. 00:23:58 Speaker 3: Or you may have had like an up on the tongs Oil and gas or well the gre industry. 00:24:05 Speaker 2: Greene Creek Mine and the Kensington Mine opink do you know, Yeah, those are huge mines, and so you know, and I think like we all know, I mean, everyone loves this public land and wants to see it manage a certain way, and so it gets a little harder and harder as people just you know, a certain way. 00:24:25 Speaker 3: My way I want it done for hunting and fishing specifically. 00:24:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know Gifford Pitcher who started the Force over Sea and Teddy Roosevelt back in nineteen oh five, and I still believe in this, and I hope as the restructuring that has taking place, this doesn't go away. They purposely set it up where it was very decentralized. We want the decision making where the communities are. We want the decision making where the you know, where it affects you know how, where it affects people. And that has been That's why I love the job. Is I rarely in all the years got told you need to do this on this project from a boss or from above. And that's the way Pincho and Roosevelt wanted it and wanted it decentralized on the ground. 00:25:14 Speaker 4: Disregarding what's happened in the last couple of months, Was that consistent from like that ability to be decentralized? Was that consistent from like one administration to the next. 00:25:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean ebbs and flows in different emphasis. That's always been the case. And but we've kind of always navigated through that and and save a few, there's always been a few things where it's been top down. Some of the I don't know how many revisions of the Tonguess Forest plant. 00:25:45 Speaker 1: Oh yeah. 00:25:45 Speaker 2: Oftentimes that became extremely politicized, and Washington kind of ran that towards some undersecretary. 00:25:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, in that case, it fell into like a administrations one administration would a major plan into a fact in another administration and call it into question, right, and you just probably got to roll with. 00:26:06 Speaker 2: That, right absolutely. And you know our laws National Force Management Act and on the on the BLM side, FLIPMA, they're set up to put a ten fifteen twenty year plans together, a force plan that's supposed to take some of that level some of that. It's like, Okay, here's how we're going to do it for the next fifteen years. And it's worked well, and I still have hopes it's going to work well, but certainly under you know what current restructuring, I'm not sure. I just hope we maintain that decentralized management and decision making because I think Pincher and Roosevelt had it right two in nineteen oh five, and I think it still applies today. It's just harder because of more people. 00:26:50 Speaker 1: As a forest supervisor, you got to wake up every day, someone has to be pissed at you pretty much. Yeah, can you lay out a little bit and you can keep it. You can keep it true to Colorado and we can leave tongus in the rearview mirror for a minute. But can you can you explain a little bit like the push and pull? Yeah, I mean, it's got to be like you got just to give you a sense of what I'm picturing. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, it's gotta be like a lot of fire conversation, cattle conversation, logging conversation, access kind of preservation conversations, huge conversations around wildlife, dealing with state Game agency, like like who is trying to get a hold of you, you know, throughout the year right to tell you how you ought to be doing things. 00:27:37 Speaker 2: All of the above, Steve, it's it ebbs and flows, a little bit, vegetation management, you know, timber harvest, fuels projects are all can always be a pinch point for people, you know people, and certainly in Montana it's you know, it's Montana in this region is one of the most litigated regions as far as fuels projects and timber sales and stuff. You know, it's it's the contrast of leave it alone, preservation first, conservation use you know, that's whatever it is it doesn't matter if it's cattle, if it doesn't matter if it's you know, logging mining. People just have visions of what their national force should look like and don't want to change. It's getting harder because so many people are moving from places that they think it's a national park. Yeah, I mean we've had what are you doing cutting trees? Well, we've been doing it since nineteen oh five. I mean it's part of our mission. It's in legislation requiring us to do that. And the toughest ones these days, especially in places like Vale and Aspen and Summit County and is individual landowners with the easement or a lands issue or need something. They're tough because they're generally rich. 00:29:06 Speaker 1: And you mean you're. 00:29:08 Speaker 4: Talking like second homeowners that butt up against exactly. 00:29:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot that's that's been really challenging over the years. But it's all challenging, but it's all about, like, help. 00:29:17 Speaker 1: Help people understand what you're talking about. I have a sense of what you're talking about, but say people that aren't really that don't follow the politics. 00:29:22 Speaker 2: Of Yeah, as as more and more people move into the urban interface, you know, the forested lands, a lot of it. They have to get an easement from the for service to put a driveway in, or to put a power lion in, or to or they have a crappy survey and they ended up building part of their house, which happens all the time on National Force System lands. And then and then we say, hey, you got to move your house. Or there's this thing called the Small Tracks Act that can purchase the land if if if it was proven it was done accidentally, you know, bad survey or something. So so as more and more people coming into these areas are building these homes in the forest and up in the hills, you know, they require all these easements and right aways and permits and things like that. It's one or two people that consume a tremendous amount of time and and they just don't understand. 00:30:13 Speaker 1: Because they're lawyered up, totally lawyered up. 00:30:16 Speaker 2: Ah and and they you know, and they know people, Well, I'm gonna call so and so so that that's how that that bugs me because it's not a you know, collective society wide discussion of how we should manage a landscape or forest. It's just one dude with a house. And yet my staff is spending you know, three days a week working on that you know project, So got it. 00:30:39 Speaker 4: How was it dealing with the big ski industry corporations because like you're, you're you're in a posi, you are in a position where a lot of national forest managers aren't you know, dealing with so much of that. 00:30:52 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's they're big companies and and and but most of the ski areas have been permitted. I think it would have been harder when they were permitting new ski ariers. You know. Now it was more about can they do this expansion, can they replace this lift or build this new restaurant. It's still tough. I mean those numbers you talked about at the beginning, the twenty two thousand employees, and you know, one point six billion dollar contribution to GDP. Most of it's from that industry. I mean they employ a lot of people and pour a lot of money. But it's challenging because you look around the West and where we have these resort communities, it's completely changed. I mean, nobody could afford to live there. You know, it's crowded, it's expensive, it's you know, seventy percent of the homes for example, in Summit County where Breckenridge and a Basin and Keystone are seventy percent of the homes are second home owners. 00:31:51 Speaker 5: Seventy seven right, Well. 00:31:55 Speaker 2: So no one can afford to live there, and so then you struggle with like all these mountain top I'm dealing with with affordable housing and. 00:32:03 Speaker 3: Those ski areas too, Like they'll tell you that they can't exist without a summer program as well. So it's not just in the winter when there's a ton of snow and the animals aren't visible. 00:32:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, we permitted the first at on Veil Mountain, the first summer uses. The Congress passed legislation to allow them to do things like ziplines and you know, alpine coasters and things like that, and we were the first force to do that. The part about our force is the White Rivers, all the big resorts are there, and so we're always first in experimenting with whatever it might be. But you know, they're a good partner and they there. You know, I like working with innovative creative industries, and they're one. You know, they're always looking at the next best thing. And but you know, I think we have to step back and realize Okay, the impacts are real. It's only four thousand acres of permitted land that they have a you know, their permits on that. 00:33:04 Speaker 1: They actually all total. 00:33:05 Speaker 2: Well, let no, on the White River, it's only forty thousand so so of toll. I'm sorry, But say one resort, say a resort like Snow Mass, I think it's about four thousand acres under permit. Forty thousand acres of of land is under permit and skiers on the White River not out of two point three and a half million. That's not a huge amount. But the impact is way past that, you know, because it just brings people and lots of them. And so I think we've got I think that's something when in the future we're gonna have to really start to recognize as these resort towns and these you know, kind of high end tourism places, we're going to have to manage that in some way that at least realize that the effects are way beyond the resort or whatever. 00:33:55 Speaker 3: Oh, just the you know, all these towns like that is the industry there. It's support the ski areas over anything else. And when I used to go to meetings and the ski town that I lived in. It was just amazing, Like the the piddly stuff that the community would get involved in, like horseshit on mountain bike trails that were actually just game trails that uh people started riding mountain bikes on, and the like amount of noise pollution the mountain would put off during non ski season times of year, right that. I mean, if you got up at elevation where they were doing the work, you could hear almost conversations a lot of the times from miles away. The trash associated any same too, you know, that's you know, you goes hike the ski lift lines you know during non ski season and the amount of shit underneath the chairlifts. It's just great. And you know they do like cleanups and stuff, but I mean there's so much stuff. 00:35:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:35:08 Speaker 5: How much does it cost for a ski area to permit, say four thousand acres? Like is it an annual thing? 00:35:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really complicated formula that I can't explain. But it's based on the revenue you derive from activities on national force. So the lift is on national forests, restaurants on National force obviously a permit you know, the pass, so it's you know on our forest, which was by far the most. It was seventy sixty five percent of the entire nation's fees collection. We collected about twenty eight million dollars from the eleven resorts. Wow. Yeah, is a nation it like a profit shared? 00:35:51 Speaker 1: Does it not work as a profit share. It's like a revenue share. 00:35:53 Speaker 2: No, it's just like a permit. I mean, just like a grazing permit. 00:35:57 Speaker 1: They pay No, but you said that they pay relative revenue. 00:36:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:36:01 Speaker 1: No, it's just really their relative tanks. If their visitation tanks. 00:36:05 Speaker 2: They'll pay us less money. Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly, there's a minimum obviously, but their businesses aren't tanking of late anyway. So nationwide we collect about thirty five million dollars off of ski areas in the country. Here's the little catch is not one penny of that comes back to the to the forest that it was. It is the only thing we permit that no money comes back to the local forest. And uh hmm. There's been a act in Congress called the Shred Act that has that has uh yeah, I forget how what an X ski area, but anyway. 00:36:48 Speaker 1: That was whatever it stood for, it was an afterthought. 00:36:50 Speaker 2: Absolutely they figure out, but it would it would return a good portion of the money back to where it came from, which I've been advocating for because they there's a lot of work not just associated with the resorts but all the people that come with it. 00:37:10 Speaker 1: Well, how the hell did that get pulled out of How did that get pulled out of the general system? If you do like like timber harvest cattle leases, you get some of the revenue. But how did skiing sit in a different landscape when back. 00:37:25 Speaker 2: In the nineties when it used to be outfittering god fees used to go to the US Treasury. Okay, campgoground fees went to the US Treasury. 00:37:33 Speaker 1: It all went to So there was example, then there. 00:37:35 Speaker 2: Was what was called the feed Demo program where we got to keep all those fees. Now we get to keep all the outfitter fees and all the campground fees and all everything. And then they looked at skiers and they specifically looked at the White River Forest and said, we're not given that one forest twenty eight million dollars. So that's basically how it got got it. It's just too much jingle, too much jingle in one place, and so now there's a way they can spread it out. But now because of the budget. It there's a term in the in Congress, the Legislative Congress and the budget bills, is called scoring. And it's like golf. And I know how much you like golf too, Steve, you don't want to score. It's the Office of Management Budget gives a piece of legislation a score, and it's a financial score, and the more you score, the less chances has So in that case, I'm sorry, I'm not following. It's it's it's a it's a budget's score and they would look at it and say, okay, that's forty five million dollars that's normally going to the US treasury the ten years scores four hundred and fifty million dollars. You don't want to score four hundred and fifty million dollars because they say, you got to find that money somewhere else, because we're not going to, you know, lose that four hundred and fifty million dollars over ten years to their treasury. So it's the problem is it scores. OMB gives it a score of four hundred and fifty million for a ten year, so we haven't it hasn't been passed bipartisan bill that has significant support on both sides of the aisle. But just what it is right now, it's a bummer because it's the only only fee we collect. 00:39:15 Speaker 1: When you run a forest. How do they present to you or or do they present to you some version of a P and L like like what are the expectations of a forest? 00:39:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're each forest is allocated a budget. Now they've changed a few things and centritized more and more of the budget. But for most of my career, and you'd wrestle for you know, make your point and say you get this much money, and you're going to get this much in recreation, this much in timber, this much and grazing, and with that money, we expect you to achieve these targets I'm gonna give you, you know, the regional office will give me x amount and timber. We want you to produce twenty five thousand cubic feet of timber or a million board feed or whatever. It is same with grazing. If you get this much grazing, you got to, you know, administer this many grazing permits. And recreation is a little more obtuse but miles of trail. We used to get trail maintenance dollars and you get a certain amount of trails, we expect you to clear this many miles of trails. And then, I mean throughout my career, I mean it was a you didn't spend overspend that. If you did, you better had another buddy that could cover you another forest that because budgets are spun up at the regional level. So the accountability was there, we weren't. You know, it's called the Anti Deficiency Act. If an agency spends more that it's appropriated, and I've never seen it happen because it's a big no, no god. 00:40:55 Speaker 1: It is there ever, an expectation articulated to for a supervisor about how much economic activity your force should facilitate, Like is that part of your mandate or is that just something that happens out of it happens by chance? 00:41:13 Speaker 2: No, Uh, it's not. They don't say we want this much economic activity, but they say we're going we want you to be able to produce this much board feet of timber, or we need you you're getting this mineral's money. We need you to get that mind approved or get the eis done and same thing with recreation. Yeah, I mean that's a it's always been a driver in the national force system. Is the economics and not not to the You know, that doesn't mean we don't get to balance it, but it's important for sure. 00:41:49 Speaker 1: Yeah, like fiscal responsibility. 00:41:50 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that doesn't mean there's not areas to improve. 00:41:55 Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, what what is an area to improve? 00:41:57 Speaker 3: I want to get to the areas of improvement. I'd love to get like, how, how is like the permitting for a mine work? Is it on the same because I always get wrapped up with the mining acts and I'm like, yeah, mines don't make us any money. But based off of how you explained the permitting for a ski area, now I'm like, okay, well, obviously the mine has to have some sort of a revenue share there as well, or percentage of revenue. 00:42:31 Speaker 2: Well, they the eighteenth you know, we're still operating under the eighteen seventy two mining law and it's been amended and there's been tweaks to it. But where where there's not a revenue sharing of hard rock minerals, oil and gas, you know, leasing, you know, look at what we call get leaseable minerals. It's twenty five percent. You know, everything that comes off of a federal mineral twenty five percent comes back to the government. 00:42:59 Speaker 3: Not mineral oil and gas. 00:43:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty mineral estate. I'm sorry. And what about coal? 00:43:05 Speaker 1: Is that under mining or is that under oil and gas? 00:43:07 Speaker 2: Coal's undermine, so it's under the eighteen seventy two so it's considered locatable. So coal, gold, silver, Okay, precious metals. So they have to pay a land use fee, you know, for occupying that piece of national force. But they don't pay, you know, if they they don't pay for the loot the stuff, not like they do oil and gas, and not like you do with timber. Nope. No. 00:43:33 Speaker 3: But if you read, like if I were to pop up the eighteen seventy two Mining Act right now, which. 00:43:38 Speaker 1: I got, I got my pocket. 00:43:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean this is I can't believe you because it is referenced all over and depending on what historical source like you read about when it was enacted, it was like, oh, this is really how it's going to be. It was kind of a joke when we wrote it, as was like the diamond clause too. So depending on what worse it was. 00:44:00 Speaker 1: Like, you mean it was written by the it was written by the extractor. 00:44:04 Speaker 3: Yes, and it was, but it was also written and I like, well, this will never go anywhere, ha ha ha type of way. But it's five dollars an acre a surface acre. 00:44:15 Speaker 2: Yeah, that they pay a fee. 00:44:18 Speaker 3: Is that still the Is that still the thing? 00:44:20 Speaker 2: It's yeah, I don't have a lot of my eye. Haven't dealt with minds. Yeah, it's cheap, it's it's ridiculous, But the law hasn't been changed, and so hmm. Yeah. Locatables are hard, you know, because those are just I like dealing with oil and gas leasing. It's a nice organized process. It's clear. Locatables are really complicated. 00:44:44 Speaker 1: And I'm not I'm not a big minerals guy. Can can you help me understand? Like how is oil not a locatable? Like what the hell is locatable mean? The terminology I mean. 00:45:00 Speaker 2: Covered under the eighteen seventy two mining law, and so those are what we normally think of mining gold, silver leads, inc. Where you dig something on the ground. When oil and gas came into play, we evolved a little bit and said, wait, we'll lease these lands so they'll be leasable minerals, and so we just use the term locatable and leasable because two different completely processes manage those and regulatory structure. 00:45:34 Speaker 1: And for the forest, for the taxpayer, for the American taxpayer, they're doing the American taxpayer is doing better on a timber harvest, they're doing better on a ski lease. They're doing better on oil and gas then they're doing on mineral extraction. 00:45:55 Speaker 2: If you're looking dressed at what direct payments go with the treasury or to the agency, Yeah, okay, for sure. 00:46:01 Speaker 1: All right, Uh you brought up there things that could be done better. But I feel like we're a little bit burying the lead. So I don't I'm I don't want to. Let's let's jump ahead. I'm trying to sort all this out in my head. 00:46:15 Speaker 3: If I were to go back and say, here's our guest, got fits William, please let's start. We're going to talk about government waste on national forests, and we're gonna learn how national forests work and how we're pissing away all this money. 00:46:33 Speaker 1: That's how you'd have kicked it off. 00:46:34 Speaker 2: Yep. 00:46:34 Speaker 1: Oh, I was going to come in like that's interesting. I was going to come in like Scott resigned over certain actions that are taking place coming down from Washington, d C. Decisions that are being forced, things that are being stripped away from a level of local control and and local expertise. And then he said, hey, listen, man, there's plenty of ways to clean up, but this is ditching the baby with the bath water. I don't know that's nice. 00:47:13 Speaker 3: But let's play the Spencer New Hearts game, which one is going to get more clicks. 00:47:21 Speaker 1: What you approach is more appealing to you. 00:47:24 Speaker 2: I'm thinking about, you know, people listening to the show and stuff, you know, context of what's been going on. And it's been pretty wild since the inauguration. I mean, you know, first thing has happened is we all got this email that said fork in the road yep, and we all deleted it because we go to training that says when you get spam email, delete it. Because it came from a source we'd never seen before. It was bizarre. Hey, you can retire right now and get paid till October and so, but it turned out to be real. So that was what they called the deferred resignation program, which I took. Oh you did, okay, Yeah, because I was going to retire in the next year and a half. Yeah, but they offered to pay me till October. I'm good, I'm I'm eligible to retire, so it wouldn't affect my retirement. And then then it was the next thing that happened was what we called the Valentine's Day massacre, where we we just got a letter and said you need to fire all these people. And that was rough. We had sixteen on our forest, but I know the forest here, the Gallot and the Custer Galloton. It was in the forties, and it was we had to give them this, We had to call them up, give them this letter that said you're fire based on your performance, which was a complete lie, a complete utter lie. Their performance was fine. Some of it just had their performance rating. So that wasn't fun. And it was. And on our forests, fifteen to sixteen were field level people. They worked what we were employee called a permanent part time. They're a permanent government employee, but they only work half the year the field season. They started about now, finish after hunting season, and then they go work in the ski resorts or whatever. Yeah, at what salary. They're like TS five. So the cost to the half of the year they're paying for us is eighteen thousand bucks, so annual salary of about forty forty two thousand dollars eighteen nineteen thousand. But they get healthcare and things like that, and most of those were paid with fee money, so it wasn't taxpayer moneys. The fees we collected at room bells and campgrounds and outfit and guides and stuff, and they clean toilets, clear trails, to fire patrol that didn't make any sense. 00:49:57 Speaker 1: That was out of fee money. 00:49:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, feed money. And I had to fire six people who were paid for by the counties. We have pretty well off counties, you know, Picking County and Eagle County and Summit County, and for years and years they've been actually giving us the Feds money because they wanted more people on the ground during the busy season. Because we just didn't have enough money to have patrols and people clear and trails and clean up human waste and all that stuff. So we had to fire people who were paid for by counties. That didn't save any money. 00:50:33 Speaker 4: That's what was How common is that in other Is there other forests that have similar systems. 00:50:38 Speaker 2: Where they're Yeah, lots of forest have. The other big fee we get is we get grants and most I don't know how much in Montana, but certainly Wyoming. You get grants from what we call the sticker fund, where you your ATV stickers and your snow mill stickers. Sure, the state gives us money to hire people to you know, have ATV crew and so we had to let people go that were paid for by the state. 00:51:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, because your off road vehicle stamp, your OHV stamp that you can, like in Montana, you can buy it online with your hunting license, that is that specifically earmarked for trails and possibly campground. 00:51:20 Speaker 2: Too, Yeah, and trailheads. And I'm more familiar in Colorado. But it's a great source of money. I mean. And we had whole crews that were paid for by the state, some of which because they were in this probationary period we had to fire. Didn't make sense. That's when I started to think this, this is not a restructuring. 00:51:38 Speaker 1: Why did it need to come as that it was a performance issue. That's just like a legal Yeah. Sure, they're anticipating litigation. 00:51:45 Speaker 2: Right, which they ended up losing. And some of these people were judges ordered in some states, in some districts that are now back to work. I'm not sure what is efficient about. We paid them the whole time that they were fired because the judge ordered back pay, and so there's nothing effishient about that. 00:52:06 Speaker 4: Did you feel obligated, Oh, I don't know if you can answer this, but did you feel obligated like you had to have the official like you're fired based on performance conversation? Did you feel obligated to have another conversation with them and be like, look my hand like I can't. 00:52:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, and I'm sure I would have gotten in trouble for it, but I just told them this is not true, and you know it's not true. So that was just hard, and that's when it really started to hit me like that. The next thing they offered was a voluntary early retirement program, So tons of people are taking retirement, so you're losing you know, we've hired all our new employees and now people like me and many of my colleagues are failing, so we're losing the you know, institutional knowledge. And then they just offered fork in the road too because they didn't get as many as they wanted, so and then we expect reduction firings. You know, you didn't take any of that. You're gone coming in the next couple of months. And so I just h I've never ran away from a challenge. Fact that I love to fight all kinds of fights. But maybe I'm just too old, and I was like, I can't be part of the dismantling of this organization. And then that's how I see it right now. It's you know, we're just there. Just doesn't seem to be a plan, like Okay, let's sit down together and figure out or give us a number, say for service we need, you need to cut twenty percent and let us figure out. Okay, let's what we don't need. It was just this random, bizarre you know, go fire these people. Okay, Yeah, that didn't make sense to me, and I didn't want to be part of that because I can't support it. I can't. 00:53:53 Speaker 3: But would you say your forest was like without waste, without frauds? 00:54:01 Speaker 2: And I tell you, in thirty five years work for the government, I've seen inefficiency, saw some waste. I didn't see fraud and abuse I can't recall like an actual fraudulent activity. I've seen contractors try to defraud the government, you know, where they we paid the contractor to do something and then they didn't do it, or fudged it, or walked out on it, or defraud it in some way. But I haven't seen like people defraud it. Does it go on? I think in the context of natural resources, the fix, the fixes I would have was hoping for, was one. And I don't know if I bettioned my colleagues in the parksers and BLM with similar we've gotten. We got really top heavy as far as too many people in Washington and regional office at the expense of what we're supposed to be doing that's on the ground, doing the groundwork. That's what the public wants. They want clear, trails clear and they want fuels reduced, and they want the Kyle's taken care of. They want garbage picked up, and we were I would have made that adjustment. And you know, the other thing I think we've really got to come to grips with, and you guys talk a lot about this stuff, is the redundancy and regulations like Endangered Species Act or you know, the Archaeological Projection Act A Section one oh six. So you know, when we do a project we have really good biologists who work on that piece of ground and then and maybe there's a chrissy barrel wolf for whatever the listed species is, and they design mitigation. You know, we're going to do this fuels project or cut the streets. But the biologist comes in. But the way the process works in Dager Species Act, then we send that biological evaluation to a biologist in an office in Montana would be in Helena, who has never seen that piece of ground ever, and then they make an evaluation of what we should be doing. So you have two agencies making redundancy. I think we've got to really step back on that. It's the people on the ground. Know we have biologists that know how to protect these species. Maybe there can be just a concurrence. But with the Fish mode Ie Service, you know, when we have archaeological protection, we have to go through what's called Section one oh six consultation. So we have an archaeologist, they find a site or some resource. Then they have to write up a big fat report, send it to the State Shipo Office, State Historic Preservation Office, and they either agree or don't agree with us. And if we don't agree, then there's a group of national archaeologists who can seems like a lot of archaeologists looking at the same piece of ground and only one of them is looking at the ground. The other people don't see that they're in an office somewhere. And I've always thought that. And when I worked in Wyoming, we had such great bare biologists and working with the state, and then we'd send our you know, biological evaguations to Cheyenne where they had never been on that piece of ground. Yeah, I think we got to look at things like that, and just the redundancy in government, I think is something that I think needs to change. Governments were set up to be a little inefficient and slow, and I think that's by design to protect the public, to protect the taxpayers money. But I think there's a lot we can do, and I just don't think getting rid of the person that makes eighteen thousand dollars a year that clears trails is going to fix any of that. 00:57:49 Speaker 1: Yeah. When I've looked at the when I've looked at the costs that have come to the federal land management agencies, and I'm singling them out because it's of interest to me and because I know some stuff about it. I've wondered, allowed why there wasn't a why there wasn't an approach like this, like a layout that you would get your cabinet in place, you'd get your administrators in place, and you would come to them and say, you have ninety days, you have one hundred and twenty days. It seems always works like that, right, ninety that's like the magic numbers. You have ninety days, you have one hundred and twenty days. It's like doing twelve reps and your exercise. Just the number of people, why not seven to come to me and present to me, how are you going to cut your budget by thirty percent? And then you have the professionals in these spaces propose make a proposal in your mind, like why was that not the approach to use? Look, if you had to get in the head of it, like why why not use that approach which seems like like and how like and how in business that would be a thing that would happen. 00:59:15 Speaker 2: I don't know. I think there was just a more urgency than I've ever seen. Trying to think how many administrations I've been through. So the first change I was through was when Clinton got an office. So someone add up all those presidents since I've been working. But the urgency in this one just seemed we got to do it now. And that's why, you know, we just sent out and fired people and things like that, as opposed to you need to give me a twenty five percent cut. 00:59:43 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:59:43 Speaker 2: I don't care how you do it, or you could say, you know, I still want to emphasize these things, but you got to cut twenty five percent. I don't know. That would have seemed to make more sense. And then why why let people like myself or others like there was no rhyme or reason to who we let take this early resignation program deferred resignation program some people we want, we shouldn't offered it to them. They're going to I mean, they're going to replace me. So what what good did it do to pay me to do nothing for six months? I don't understand that. I don't know. They could have just said, no, you're not eligible for this. I don't know. I you know, there's a it's it's big change, you know, I think Cali, I told you this that I don't know how beneficial it is in today's well, but the four service is about the only agency. I don't know, maybe in all of them, but certainly in all the agencies we all talk about fishing, moll A, servers, Park Service, BLM. That we've our head, our chief has always been a career person. We've never had a political point and tell now, first, Tom Schultz is the new chief from my herd's a good guy. But that's the first time in our history we've ever had a non you know, career employee become chief. So it changes on the way, which is fine. I don't know how what's the difference anymore in today's world, But anyway, I don't know what's you know, the future holds. I'm worried about a couple of things, and the one is do we dismantle the agency the point where we've become ineffective, where they actually can prove you guys can't do shit. Okay, we're at it that way. I mean, based on what I'm seeing. By that time I left, we had lost twenty seven people between firings and people just saying I'm going somewhere else. Twenty some people in thirty days, fifty people in a calendar year. Who's going to be left do the work? And then when people get pissed and say, see the Force servers can't do it, maybe we ought to let the States handle that. 01:02:06 Speaker 3: Can I interject? 01:02:07 Speaker 5: It seems like that's always been a You've probably seen this col Brody to work. Some of the outfitters that we've worked with over the years, some have good relationships with the Forest Service, and I've often heard outfitters refer to you as the forest disservice, right. And then now on the Instagram when you can see sort of some people sort of the ones that are on board with what's going on now, they're like, listen, I've been cutting this trail out myself way before any Forest Service trail crew comes in here and does this. We haven't relied on them anyways, because we've been in here doing it because this is our business. 01:02:45 Speaker 3: Right right. 01:02:47 Speaker 5: That's like a common thing that's always been a theme, right where. 01:02:52 Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's also been true. I mean when I was guiding in Wyoming, I Force has never cut out the trail there were system trails. No, we don't cut out trails that are not system trails. They're just the outfitters trails when they're not supposed to be cutting them out or whatever. 01:03:07 Speaker 1: But one time asked about that. I was trying to see what it requires to make your own trail with a chainsaw, and I was dissuaded. 01:03:14 Speaker 2: Bad idea it was going to trail. 01:03:18 Speaker 3: One of the first meetings I went to here in Bozeman when I first moved to town, I listened to a fellow who happens to be in the conservation world. Just brate the Forest Service for not maintaining the illegally built mountain bike trails. 01:03:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, mountain bikers over the last decade are the worst. The bastards will build a trail anywhere, and that they have this theory. It's like, well, we have three thousand miles. Yeah, but I've been on those mountain bikers oh yeah, absolute across. 01:03:51 Speaker 5: Hard working suckers man trails. 01:03:55 Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, I mean, oh yeah, I can tell you I've been up drainages. We're like, yeah, like I was here a month ago and there was no side and now there's it's not like it's a trail. There's jumps in ramps and banks and yeah, and. 01:04:10 Speaker 4: Sometimes in wilderness there is oh yeah. 01:04:14 Speaker 7: Supposed to add to my list of people I don't like, but it's a good example of some of the conflicts Today's Well, like, literally, I've had these mom mikes say to me, well we've already you know, people have already done all those trails. 01:04:25 Speaker 2: Well that's an unsustainable mom because sooner or later you will use them all and we'll just keep building more. 01:04:30 Speaker 1: And that's good. I like, I like to engage with them on the logic of it. Right, Well, you're using it, makes it that it's not good anymore, so then you need to make a new one. That would end with all things being. 01:04:42 Speaker 2: A mountain bike trail. 01:04:43 Speaker 1: So you should just sell your bike now because you're headed to the same place. 01:04:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, back to your question, I think there's some truth to it, and and uh I got it. 01:04:56 Speaker 1: I can't sit idly by. This has been the thing I've been thinking about for a long time. Well, you go ahead, then I'll go tell them the truth in it. 01:05:05 Speaker 2: Uh h. 01:05:06 Speaker 3: What for service plans are kind of co op right, Like you there's always going to be a user, even in a user pay system, right Like, if you're an outfitter, you're you're operating under a permit that you pay for. You're not gonna sit there and wait for the Forest Service to clear those trails, you gotta do, get things prepped. You're gonna You're gonna do it. 01:05:27 Speaker 2: And if you're on of those outfitters are using the trails that not a lot of people use. So you take your what little money you have or the staff you have, and okay, I got to send mine to the folks, you know, the places around Eagle and Aspen, because there's eight thousand people a day on those trails and only seven outfitters a week on the other ones. And so I could see they're frustration, especially when you have flowdowns and stuff. And I think we were we got I said a little bit. We we kind of lost our way a little bit too much overhead and not really focusing on what we really needed. And man if I was in charge of reforming, I would have flipped everything upside down and said we were going to fund the ground first and then fund what's left. You know, we're going to fund the overhead last. 01:06:09 Speaker 4: But like I've been places like where we us Turkey Hunt, you know, with your buddy in Nebraska, where they like that National Forest is like it's like a symbol, right, there's like this anti federal government sentiment and that land is just like they look at it and they just they get mad because they can't do whatever they want on it. Right, So there's an aspect of that involved too, And so I don't think that's the case. 01:06:35 Speaker 1: With the White Rooms. 01:06:37 Speaker 2: But they love the places like there's places you know, Idaho and parts of Montana in Utah. 01:06:45 Speaker 1: But yeah, we're public land like stands in the way of your ambitions. 01:06:50 Speaker 2: Yeah, or whatever it might be. And it stands for the federal government, which we don't like. 01:06:54 Speaker 3: I was also I get seen as an apologist sometimes. But you know, it's like nature does not follow your your multi use plan either. So if you have budget for one thousand miles of trail clearing and you're in you know, that burned over pecker Pole zone and you have a windy summer, you can legitimately clear a thousand miles of the same trail, yeah, and never get to the other trails because it's just like and I'd like, we have a lot of trails historically, you know, where we'd leave the first couple of hundred yards down and nasty and stuff, and then we'd clear the rest of it. Right, we'd have our own kind of personal trail for the rest what I want to make and. 01:07:41 Speaker 1: One you'd never know was there, but man, you had to go through hell. And also, like what you're on the trail, You could. 01:07:47 Speaker 3: Go in there and do like a full seventy two hours of busting your ass, cutting, cutting it, cutting trail, and even make a nice little stack of firewood for yourself when you come in there later and the next weekend you go in there and you're. 01:08:03 Speaker 1: Like, oh, trail's gone. 01:08:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, trail's gone, as if nobody had ever been in here. 01:08:09 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I want to speak the thing that you alluded to. And do you remember how earlier were talking about mountain lions. Yeah, And I'm like, my end goal is to restore mountain lion hunting in places where it's been lost in the service of myself as a hunter hunters. To get to that end goal, I wind up feeling guilty if I were to play the card that mountain lions are these terrible, dangerous creatures, like the ends in that case, like the end wouldn't justify the means, right. My end goal is that I want lion hunting, but I can't get there through a disingenuous path of sowing fear of mountain lions right, which is a tempting way to go. It's effective. Yeah, the minute you tell anybody this mountains are gonna kill your kids, we don't hunt them. 01:09:06 Speaker 5: Predator control. 01:09:06 Speaker 1: It's a way to get where you want to get. 01:09:08 Speaker 2: Yep. 01:09:09 Speaker 1: Now, I'm a public lands user, I'm a public lands defender, but there's a just out of moral honesty. I think that it's a little conspiratorial. Maybe you disagree. I think it's conspiratorial to suggest that lawmakers are saying the pathway to being able to sell off all the public lands is to emasculate land management agencies to the point where they do a terrible job, at which point we'll be able to go to the public and say, look what a mess, let's sell it all right, because it's like a little it feels out there to me. 01:09:51 Speaker 2: Well, it also to acquire a lot of connections and a lot of people involved with the same conspiracy. So when I say I'm worried about the dismantling, I'm worried about the disman Like, what if we the basic maintenance of them, the basic stewardship of the land, being able to respond to the public. I think that's what I don't think we're there's I don't think people are smart enough to pull that off. I really don't in any part of government to even Congress to like, Okay, we've got that, because that would take time. 01:10:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's like a fifty year plan. 01:10:27 Speaker 2: Right. However, I based on what I'm seeing and talking to people at the highest levels who are working with these people in Washington, there is a general disregard for maintaining the management and stewardship of public lands. It's like, they're fine, so they're also producing. Let's produce more timber and mining and stuff and partake to the cause. But the rest of that stuff, we don't have to worry about it. 01:10:57 Speaker 4: The end result of the but and the inefficiencies that would result from that could also ultimately result and let's just get rid of it. 01:11:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that. I I think that's a long stretch that would. I hear that a lot. Oh yeah, we do hear it a lot. 01:11:16 Speaker 1: And you hear the mountain lions are going to kill all your. 01:11:18 Speaker 2: Kids kids exactly. Boy, don't you guys think people on both sides I would lose their mind if we really start to sell off public lands or even transfer them to the state. 01:11:32 Speaker 1: That has been in twenty fifteen, it sure looked like that, but your people lost their minds in twenty fifteen. Yeah, I don't know if there's been a fundamental shift, because there's been a I think it's a little harder right now to it's a little harder right now to pick and choose policy, and there's more pressure to get aligned on a wholesale across the board fashion within ideology, and it's harder to it's harder to go like, yeah, oh that's great, but this thing no way right. It's kind of like that you need to there's a temptation to endorse an entire initiative for fear of cracking the coalition. But where I say that, and I was starting, I was feeling that. But in looking at it's been interesting to look at conversations around tariffs. Now, when you get into people's money, you find there's a lot of people going like no, no, no, didn't like this, don't like this. Now what I signed up for. I didn't sign up for losing millions of dollars overnight. So there you see people that are aligned with an ideology saying like, hey, man, I'm into all this, but this part not into So you're seeing that around the tariff discussion where allies or are starting to pick apart what they don't like. So we'll see cal and I messaged about this over the weekend where Senator Heinrich, who's a Democrat from New Mexico, Avid Hunter, he put forward a piece of legislation saying, hey, let's leave selling public lands, selling federal public lands out of the budget reconciliation process. It didn't pass. What I thought was really interesting is our state. We have two Republican senators, Senator Danes and Senator She supported it all. 01:14:02 Speaker 2: That Zinki too, right, Yeah, he verbally support it. 01:14:09 Speaker 1: Yeah. So in this state, Okay, in Montana, you can't win. 01:14:17 Speaker 2: You could lose elections over public land. 01:14:19 Speaker 1: You have to you cannot win, you have to you have to be pro public land. Yeah, in this state. And they were outliers in their party, right. Yeah, this this thing that Hunter did, didn't didn't paden that night. 01:14:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, one one Democrat did not vote, and yeah she and and Danes were the only Republicans to so for it. 01:14:54 Speaker 1: In that case, when you say, like people, Democrats, Republicans whatever, would lose their minds. I don't know, Like I'm not like a DC insider. I don't know all the conversations that went in, but I think that it was clear that like Montanas would lose their minds. But I don't. Montana's a small state. 01:15:12 Speaker 3: But even so, I've been digging into like land. 01:15:14 Speaker 1: Use, small small population. 01:15:16 Speaker 3: Sorry Nevada. You know, Nevada successfully lobbied for largeer land sales on on the BLM side for affordable housing. Right so far they've sold eighteen thousand acres in the name of affordable housing, eighteen eighteen thousand acres of BLM ground since nineteen ninety six. 01:15:40 Speaker 1: I think, how affordable is the housing. 01:15:45 Speaker 5: Nobody else? 01:15:46 Speaker 1: But I laugh when I think about the affordable housing aspect. 01:15:50 Speaker 3: It's really there isn't any They didn't Yeah, unfortunately, I mean there's there's people on both sides of the aisle who are like, oh, yeah, we do need affordable housing. If this is the way we can do it, we can do it. But the math provided by Bloomberg Law yesterday was thirty acres out of that eighteen thousand have actually gone towards affordable housing, and thirty acres out of eighteen. 01:16:13 Speaker 1: Thousand tiny houses, Like what are you talking about? 01:16:16 Speaker 3: Well, and that's the thing. 01:16:17 Speaker 2: That the food restricted houses and things like that. 01:16:20 Speaker 3: And you know, a huge pushback, right is you have landowners who strategically purchased on the edge of BLM being like, well, that stuff's always going to be open. So my property value is based off of access to Bureau of Land Management and the fact that, like, my view is never going to be blocked by another house or housing development. Right. So our state government, who a lot of people argue on behalf of is like, well, the states can do it better. Well, right now, the states aren't doing anything. 01:16:55 Speaker 2: With state trust lands. 01:16:57 Speaker 3: Well, they're not mandate any sort of restrictions on second or third homes, deed restricted housing. They're not doing the work, but they're asking for more land. Interesting, and this is an extremely unpopular opinion, especially for years. Yeah, who goes up to Helena and talks to these folks. They don't want to hear it. They just want more land. So I think there's a giant disconnect between the federal government and the people on the ground because the Feds are like, oh yeah, easy button, sell four hundred thousand acres of BLM ground. Which is under flip my right now. Right it's already gone through the nep of process and flip my. They've been earmarked for a long time four hundred thousand acres of BLM ground. But there's also a lot of conversations around an additional five hundred thousand acres of US Forest Service ground, which hasn't been done before, and that's going to take some serious effort. Again, you have all these people who are like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, public land sales on behalf of this to address affordable housing, but nobody's actually doing the work to address affordable housing. They're just saying if we give this over, people are gonna be like, oh, see, the government's doing something about this, but it's not. There's no follow through. 01:18:26 Speaker 2: No and living in places that you guys are familiar with where there's very little affordable housing. It's the biggest issue. I've spent more time in the last six years of my career dealing with housing and affordable housing. We actually have a program. We got the legislation passed and we're the first one in the country, the White River. I gotta stop saying we they and it was it was in the twenty sixteen farm bell. President Trump actually signed it. Where we have what's called administrative sites where we used to have a district office or a boneyard or something. We'm all over the place where we have you know, crappy housing on them. Now that this legislation allows us to lease this property to we got to give a right of first refusal to a community, a county, a local government, and in exchange for the lease, they will build us employee housing and then they get to build other all affordable housing. So we have a project in Dylan, Colorado where we have eleven acres beautiful overlooking the thing we used to have like six crappy falling apart for service houses on it's now been bulldoz. We're working with the Summit County government where they're going to lease it and they're going to bild one hundred and twenty one million dollars worth of affordable housing deed restricted you know application actual affordable housing. And instead of paying the government for the leasing the land, they're paying us in kind by building us a new you know, fire shop and giving us house and housing. That's cool program, but that's a. 01:20:08 Speaker 4: Lot of work that's not on the side of a mountain somewhere right Like it's like I'm assuming, yeah in. 01:20:14 Speaker 2: Town, Yeah, it's it's next to it a nice site. 01:20:17 Speaker 4: You're not going to build some big affordable housing. 01:20:21 Speaker 2: All over the country. We have those administrative sites that are under Utilie. I think you know. I started my career. My first permanent job was in Jackson Hall, where ninety eight percent of the county is federal land. And I don't know how the federal government can't play a role. I think we should, you know, but man, every acre is sacred there. 01:20:41 Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you when I on this issue. One of the areas where I felt like that I had a knowledge gap would be I would want to what I'm asking is I want to have the authority to say. I want to be the final say, and I'll visit every patch the ground and I'll say would this lead my My lit miss will be this, would this lead to a loss of wildlife habitat? If it's yes, then it's no. If it's no, then it's yes. The case you're bringing up where it's like it's already a developed landscape. It's in a town. It's a developed landscape, it has buildings, it's not like on the side of wildlife habitat right now, that makes that's different to me than than uh other you know that that's different to me in other cases. And when you look at the acreage, I feel like when you look at the acreage, it will have to stray, like it'll have to stray from already developed sites. Like do you feel that you're going to get there? 01:21:56 Speaker 2: I don't. I hope not. I mean I think. 01:21:58 Speaker 1: I mean, do you think there's enough already develop sites to like fuel this ambition? 01:22:03 Speaker 2: No, not to fill the gap of what we you know, to meet affordable housing needs. Know you would have, but there are still some spots that again you if you were king, you get to look at and decide it where it's just I don't know, survey from one hundred years ago, where it's like it's kind of it's it's not developed, there's nothing on it, but it's there's a little spot right by Eastvale or. 01:22:26 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not like valuable wildlife habitat range. 01:22:30 Speaker 2: Technically, but it's also surrounded by a hotel and so like forty acres, we should build housing on that, but it's not designated to administrative sites. So but I'm with you one hundred percent. I don't think we can you start to crawl up the mountain and the other thing. It should be for some public good, not let's just sell it off so a rich person could buy it and build a second home. Yeah, like this whole issue of affordable housing indeed restrict to housing, I can get on board some of that. 01:22:56 Speaker 1: Do you feel that there's a way that you would take this affordable housing issue? That's that's forward right now, unless say we have a way that we there's a checks and there's a system to measure, like is this achieving the goal? If the public is behind affordable housing? Is this creating affordable housing? And that seems like to me like a thing that you could either that you could that you could put numbers around and understand if this is true in execution or not, Like define affordable housing and then something will monitor to make sure that this is being effective and creating affordable housing. Is there a way to get there with land swaps where if we're talking if we define like these are like marginal pieces, isolated pieces, marginal pieces of wildlife habitat that are close to urban centers or suburban centers, we're going to open these up. Is there a way to pull this off where there's not a net loss in public acreage? Can we get better stuff. 01:23:57 Speaker 2: And say you can get a gain an actual acre And I think, you know, that's kind of been the trend because the place closer to the resort, if you will, or closer town, is gonna be worth more than some stream side up the hill, some in holding up the hill. So I think that's a great way to do it. The problem is if I don't know, I don't know if the states could do it, I guess the counties would have to zone that to say this has to be affordable housing. We're not helping the situation if we're just making more second homes. That's what's wrecking all these communities. It's and I don't. 01:24:32 Speaker 3: Well, look at Park City, Jackson, Holly Bozeman, Like the neighborhood I live in just just filled up magically with the the the heavy snow gone, including my next door neighbor who's sidewalk I've been maintaining in their absence. Right, Yeah, there's a shitload of housing there that nobody is living in until the weather gets nice. 01:25:02 Speaker 2: Or the VRBO or whatever. 01:25:04 Speaker 3: If you look at the newspaper here in town, it's been every week there's been a oh that affordable housing thing. Nobody liked that in the gallat and Valley. 01:25:16 Speaker 2: We need to just build it somewhere else. 01:25:18 Speaker 3: Well, yeah, exactly, and ketch mydaho. There's a great project for housing for for forest service. 01:25:26 Speaker 2: It's the same leasing program, man, Yeah. 01:25:28 Speaker 3: Same leasing program. The town doesn't like it. It's gonna be put too many people who go to the bars, was one of the quotes in one spot. 01:25:39 Speaker 1: The bar owners like, sweet, the other. 01:25:43 Speaker 5: Built this town makes his town great. Let's not have them here. 01:25:46 Speaker 3: Yeah. The other affordable housing project that they did squeak through in zoning to get one more level on an existing property downtown, right, that all turned into vrbos. Yeah, there's no no affordable housing there. And so you cannot tell me like it'd be like you parents should chime in on this, your kids like, I can't live in my room anymore. You're like, well, why is that? Well, I got too much shit everywhere. 01:26:21 Speaker 4: It sounds familiar. 01:26:22 Speaker 3: I need another room do you go to? 01:26:25 Speaker 1: Which I say, well, why don't you clean up your room? 01:26:28 Speaker 3: Right? And that's the situation that we're in over and over and over again. I mean examples everywhere. It's like, well, we don't want to block people's site lines by letting somebody build a four story building in town, so we would like to build up on that hillside or in that migration area or in winter range because we can't affect anybody who's lived here for thirty years. Park City, Utah. Right, that is a fully a tinerant workforce. And all of those houses like you go through, like I haven't been there in years, but it's all like old mining house, single story, little tiny homes that are overwhelmingly like VRBO vacation rental properties. Right, It's like we can't ignore that problem and expect this new acreage. 01:27:27 Speaker 2: Right, If you're going to do we should that should going to the public land should be towards the end of the resort, more of the last resort. But if you're going to do that, while you don't control short term rentals, you don't control the number of second homeowners. Again, it's not going to be sustainable because we're going to be in the same place because there'll be more people. They're going to take by this land and use it for second homeowners got address the affordable housing. It looks like Bozman's building a lot of apartments. Are those deed restricted? Any of them? 01:28:00 Speaker 3: I'm not sure. It was just the last couple that have been in the paper have been in the downtown core, Like there's a conversion of a Senior citizen center that would allow a lot more people to live downtown. People are up in arms over that. 01:28:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't understand getting up arms over that. Man. 01:28:16 Speaker 3: It's just like, what the hell. 01:28:18 Speaker 1: It's a great place to put people, right. 01:28:19 Speaker 3: We just don't listen. We're all here because we love the out out of doors, but we'd rather construct more stuff on the out of doors if it affects my parking downtown. 01:28:31 Speaker 1: We're getting terribly local. 01:28:32 Speaker 5: Now, you did you brought up land swaps? 01:28:37 Speaker 3: Did you. 01:28:39 Speaker 5: Administrate much of that, because that's a big thing that you know, we talked about, especially now with corner crossing, you know, back up in the news where it sure seems like you could like just quickly make a bunch of these quick moves and consolidate the private people's spots and then you know, not have the private in holdings on the forest, the LM and everybody would be better off. How how come that's not easier to pull off? 01:29:07 Speaker 2: You said quickly, And I was thinking, there's a sixty for we have a sixty four step process for land exchanges. The land deals are hard. You got to praise everyone, and you know you gotta so that just you know, title work, that just takes time. And when you're using you know, checkerboarded land or trying to consolidate. I think you're right on. I think we need to do more of it. It's getting a little harder. People aren't getting punkier about it. Used to be like, oh, you give this little part up in town to someone and then you get all this acreage or close the town and everyone loves it. But now, just like we've been talking about the whole, every every piece seems to matter. You can't give that piece up. 01:29:49 Speaker 3: Now we try finding like an apples to apples comparison. 01:29:52 Speaker 2: And then they're comparables and the values are changing so fast and so there it's getting harder. But I think where Congress can help us do legislative, legislatively mandated ones where you don't have to It's like they tell you, okay, now go figure out the acreage. But you're doing this through legislation as opposed to when it's a discretionary action by a for supervisor. We have to go through the public public benefit determination, which of course gets into values and all that stuff. But I think it's absolutely what we need to do more of and that we could get help legislatively. But they're tough. I mean, you guys are heard of the one over in the Crazies and with the Elstone Club and stuff, and it's pretty good exchange. But there's some folks that don't like it. 01:30:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean you're giving up Elk Habitat for Mountain Goat habitat. Right is one way to look at it. 01:30:47 Speaker 2: I don't know enough about it. 01:30:48 Speaker 3: We can't draw it can't drawn Mountain Goat tag, but you can sure hunt over the counter Elk and the Crazies. Durfy Hills would be another great one that was proposed for land exchange. I mean, that's that's a whole ecosystem would be kind of a strong word, but it's a whole region with its own elchord, all public, totally landlocked. You can fly in there and it's like but the exchange for that is like Antelope Country, oh really right, So like trying to find again, like find that apples to apples comparable and and and then you have historical use. You know, there's still plenty of folks of who have uh hunted that place and traditionally hunted that place for decades and there just is not a comparable swap type of thing. 01:31:39 Speaker 1: You know, it's hard propose. You know, when I get that job, if I get to be the ANA many part of what I'm going to look at and I suggest the poor service adopt this is how much what biomass does that piece of land host or support? An important word and in any swap, any swap would be are you gaining biomass that you're supporting or hosting? 01:32:10 Speaker 4: Well, the White River National Forest supports the largest el kurd in the world, so it'd be a big ass biomass and that's how you help do it. 01:32:18 Speaker 2: And we support the largest biomass of elk hunters in the world. I think. 01:32:23 Speaker 4: Yeah, Speaking of which, like what what uh like, what's going to happen this fault when like if you could crystal ball it based on all the cuts that have been made, like when people are trying to get into their elk spot, Like is it like, are they going to be able to get there? Is there going to be safety issues when they do get there, Like it's. 01:32:42 Speaker 3: Going to be a COVID poop pandemic. 01:32:44 Speaker 2: This is where I need to push all those fear buttons. 01:32:47 Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing is, this is another one. Man, I hate to keep doing this. This is another one that people are throwing out there that I'm not buying what I'm not buying that like that there's like an x extent that it's an existent crisis that the trails won't be cleared. I don't. I don't view it as existentially. 01:33:04 Speaker 3: I think for let's say, like you know, I have a bunch of friends that are in this position where it's like young families. Their best way of getting out is through like established campgrounds with a camper. 01:33:22 Speaker 1: That type of campgrounds is a real problem that. 01:33:24 Speaker 2: Here I can tell we had a budget meeting, so we already knew we were going into this field season, we will have zero seasonal workforce, the people we just hire temporary for the summer. So we knew that. So that's zero is zero. Normally we would have fifty or sixty or something like that. So that's you know, it could be less people clear and trail and things like that. We fired you know these what would be like crew leaders, the people that are permanent, but they only work half the year, and so that'll be problematic. Will it be like our people could go, oh my god, what happened? I don't think. So are our road maintenance the road maintenance budget on the White River when when I left and we had a budget meeting because they signed the continuing resolution, so we know what our budget's going to be the rest of the year. Pretty much. Our road maintenance budget we have twenty We have twenty eight hundred miles in the road was zero, so that's how much. And normally we give that money and to the in the agreements, to counties because they have better equipment, to more people. And now we have a small we have a greater and a three person crew. So we'll we'll we'll clean the culverts, thatch blowout or whatever, beavers filling. 01:34:42 Speaker 4: Have you got someone to do it? 01:34:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, we have three people. We've lost two. 01:34:46 Speaker 3: But so you for you folks and the White you recreationists and the forest over there. If you see this three person crew, I'm sure they'd really like to know the areas that also need work. 01:34:57 Speaker 2: That's right now. 01:34:57 Speaker 1: I'm sure the road system feels custential is maybe too big of a word, right, But the road system that work feels to me like a real issue. 01:35:05 Speaker 2: Right, But it's also something it's like one year, you may not notice it, two years, three years, just like the road you know, just the way maintenance of infrastructure works. The recreation budget on the busiest recreation force in the country, so discretionary. So we've got our people we paid for. But then like the clean toilets, the toilet contracts and you know, toilet paper and whatever stuff was one hundred and forty thousand bucks for two and a half million acres and eighteen million people. Comes to about zero point nine cents per visitor. If you're wondering, you kidding me, Yeah, So will it be? 01:35:45 Speaker 1: Is that intact. 01:35:48 Speaker 2: The budget the toilet paper budget? No, it's not. Literally, we were we don't have enough money. We were looking at and I don't normally get involved with this, we're like in the detail, but they were looking at. Normally these sites are pumped three times a year. We're going to do them once. Well, those are it's not gonna be great. So will people see things, yes, will it be like you know, it's not going to be the end of the world. I think depending on fire seasons and flood seasons and things like that, I think there'll be some change. I'm worried a lot. So when there's a fire of any significance, there's what's called an agency administrator. It's one of us line officers. So if there's a fire on the White River or you know, on the on the Galloton, here the local line officers he had made agency administrators and we we we have overall responsibility. Even if a thousand firefighters come in, we're still overseeing them. We go through a ton of training and stuff. They do the work, but we set objectives. We you know, things like that, here's what I want you to do with this fire, because fire crew would come and just spend money and put it out. I mean, but you know, here's what resources. I want these houses protected as a priority. A lot of us that are retiring are the most experienced people doing that. You know, in our region in Colorado we lost two of the three most experience. That won't matter if there's not a bad fire season. But if it is, that's the stuff that's going to add up. And so that's the stuff I'm worried about in the future. I don't see a land sale real quick, but this stuff matters. 01:37:33 Speaker 1: Can I hit you with a thing I'm worried about. Yeah, maybe you can tell me if this is a reasonable fear, if you should sleep at night. I'm worried about this. I could picture a for a supervisor in a left leaning state. So let's say a forest supervisor in Washington, a forest supervisor in California says, fine, I'm closing my forest because I don't have the staff right and they use it to score political points. Is that possible? 01:38:11 Speaker 2: Before I left, we got explicit direction that shall not happen. 01:38:17 Speaker 1: I was hoping that because I could picture someone saying, right, I'm taking my marbles and going home. 01:38:23 Speaker 2: We call it the you know, the Washington Monument strategy. 01:38:28 Speaker 1: You know, I'm not familiar. 01:38:30 Speaker 2: Park Service is masterful at this. Cut the park service budget close, oh yeah, yeah, and closing the Washington Monument and make it screams and said what happened? And so we've never done that, We've never taken that out. I think I think there's going to be some things that are going to require it. Well, at least when I left a month ago. If you had if you could show your budget couldn't support a campground being opened, it had to go all the way to the Secretary's office to get approval. So that's gonna be hard to get a campground. 01:39:03 Speaker 1: So they're like reviewing a campground site. We have. We have this beautiful four visitors site here. We'd like to get back up and run. 01:39:12 Speaker 2: If a four supervisor proposes to close any public facility, it's got to be run up to change. So I don't think you have to worry to. 01:39:20 Speaker 1: They're like they're anticipating and ten at because it would happen. It's called the Washington Mall strands. 01:39:26 Speaker 2: The Washington Monument was. Moment she closed the monuments, I'll close, Yeah, I have. The Park Service gets away with it. They've gotten away with it since nineteen ninety four. I mean, you guys are all too young for that. But when the Republicans in ninety four took control the House for the first time in forty years, right, they they went after everything, the contract with America and Newt Grich was the speaker of the house, and they were cutting and stuff, and they went after the Park Service pretty harshly, and and they cut their budget pretty good. In the parks said fine. And Mike Finley was the superintendent of Yellowstone here and he was he was like this with President Clinton. He was really close to him and Ted Turner and he eventually went out to run the Turner Foundation. But they just said, fine, we'll close the gates, We'll close the whole faithful and and uh and I mean you you know a little newspaper you get when you go into the park. After those budget cuts, like it was like Bambi's gonna die because of congressional bubjet cuts really really oh yeah, they and within a year and a half there was the give the Park Service as much money as you want, supported by Congressmen on both sides, and they got all the money they wanted. So but the Park Service has gates and you know they can do that. You much better. And back then things weren't quite as well as they are politically, but it was awesome to watch. It was like, damn, how do you guys do that? As they cut our budgets and we didn't get int of it. 01:40:59 Speaker 3: Back that would be. 01:41:01 Speaker 5: My worry is that with lack of employees, there's probably some amount of enforcement employees that will not be on the ground anymore. And if you it kind of links up to the same thing with the maintenance, if that's not getting done well. I think we saw it once in an Eagle County and this is just what I was told. I don't know, and we're not going to bring up the spot with so I don't. 01:41:26 Speaker 3: Want to burn it. 01:41:27 Speaker 5: But because the road couldn't be maintained and the ruts got too big, it was too dangerous, they just closed the road and so I don't know if that was the actual reason. 01:41:36 Speaker 3: But instead of like being. 01:41:37 Speaker 5: Able to drive way up in there, you had to hike from the bottom, and it was a heck of a much longer hunt at that point. But if there's no one to enforce that gate and people just start going around it, and then we end up with like what you see down Alaska when you're flying into your moose spot and the ATV trails just go farther and farther every year, and the big swamp buggy trails go farther and farther every year. 01:42:00 Speaker 1: Zero enforcement action. 01:42:02 Speaker 4: Yeah, it could become like you know, wild West lawless stuff like people doing whatever they want. Right, Okay, so is that a real worry I should have. 01:42:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm hesitating because I don't want to like, hey, this, I mean, you're to go out there and do bad stuff. 01:42:19 Speaker 3: It's happening right now. Yeah, right, I mean it's. 01:42:22 Speaker 2: A huge concern because what I've seen in the data shows the biggest atterrent is just boots on the ground. Doesn't have to be a cop with a gun. Doesn't that be just that they see a white truck or back in the day, a green truck. People behave more. I mean just the way it is, and without those people out there, I absolutely think we're going to have that kind of there's no one to go to take care of it, and then people get frustrated, up, why aren't you doing anything about that? That's the public service cycle I hate to see broken. And what I'm at least at this stage and whatever you know, reform is being done to our public land agencies. 01:43:02 Speaker 4: This is is there a law enforcement aspect to the National Forest Service Like I know we used to see like BLM officers, like service rangers. 01:43:13 Speaker 2: There's there's law enforcement officers again, it's just part of the culture of our agency. We we just we're not the enforcement people. And so you know, our force the busiest in the country and in the most visitors and the inner state running right through the middle of it. There's now one when we're fully staffed, we have. 01:43:33 Speaker 1: Three so pistol pack and rangers. 01:43:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, fully you know vested or whatever they call. 01:43:41 Speaker 3: The Yeah, they can actually arrest you, dat, they. 01:43:44 Speaker 2: Can rescue there. The state has they can enforce some state law, you know, state violations, and yeah we have. 01:43:53 Speaker 3: Because you can also have a lot of people who have the authority to write citations. 01:43:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, those are called force protection officers of PLS. Where you go to a forty r class you can learn how to So that's good. A bunch of people we fired were the force protection officers, So that's too bad. So we got to get more people trained and so cumultively, I'm worried about that. 01:44:18 Speaker 3: But it's not part of the budget discussion, especially after this last uh. I don't know order that that Schultz sent out. I did like his letter to the Forest Service, by the way, that was good, but I imagine it would be a logical discussion to be like Okay, we have point nine cents per visitor to spend on toilet paper, and we can only pump all these toilets wants. So what if we close. 01:44:50 Speaker 2: Three of them and keep five open? Yeah? 01:44:52 Speaker 3: Right? 01:44:53 Speaker 2: More that That is what my predecessors are going to have to all of them. That's what's going on across the country is the massive prioritization. Again, we're thirty six trillion dollars in debt as an age, as a nation, were every aspect the government should be doing this, thirty six trillion dollars. If your kids are not my kid, and your kids your kids, they're going to deal with this, dude. 01:45:17 Speaker 3: But the thing is kind of dealing with it like that, right, So prior Biden administration, you'll love this. Why because I said, Biden, you know the Infrastructure Reduction or sorry, Inflation Reduction Act. You know, I heard a lot of people inside the Forest Service. I'm really nervous about this influx of cash because it didn't end up get getting spent on the boots on the ground stuff the people, the stuff the people can see and rely on, and it got spent in positions that are pretty far removed from the end user. 01:46:06 Speaker 2: No and that's absolutely true. 01:46:09 Speaker 3: And did those positions get cut. 01:46:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, they did. And a huge amount of that money is unspent. Yet, first of all, you throw any that kind of money, I mean you throw billion dollars at the Department of Defense or multi billion dollars in the case of infrat IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill those that was a huge, multi billion dollar pump to the four service. We're not set up to kind of spend that kind of money. Department to Defense. You give me a billion dollars, that's one plane, got it done. We're not set up for that. So that was just poor planning. And and now a lot of that money has not gotten to the fuel's work. A lot of the gao A money, uh Great America Outdoors money, which you know your senator was big and Senator Danes was getting passed again. Influx of money and we're not getting it out there to the ground fast enough. That's the restructuring. I'd like to see why, let's evaluate what's wrong. Well, we don't have people in the right places. Takes engineers. When you're redoing a campground, you gotta have engineers. Well, this force doesn't have one, so it sits there, and it sits there, and it sits there. So there's there's plenty to fix and plenty to evaluate. I just I worry too as we keep going back and forth. This has been the biggest swing Trump Biden Trump. Now, like these eight years have been like why we are going so far? I don't even remember transitions between Bush and Obama. Yeah, they talked more about this, but they were seamless. Now we're getting these big swings, and I think that's like the world we live in, you know, is just more things. You know, in the Biden administration, we had to we had to label everything. Did it's climate change stuff? Yeah? Oh really, I didn't know that clearing that trail was okay, well. 01:48:06 Speaker 1: We've talked about that a bunch. You had to take for a while. You had to find a way to do what you felt was necessary, but you had to rearticulate the reason behind it. And now it led it just some like some pretty crazy, like very elastic thinking that kind of became almost of self parody. 01:48:23 Speaker 2: I thought, yeah, and and and and the emphasis on monuments and wilderness areas and stuff. I'm fall for that. But it's been done. It's been pushed by the the ends of the spectrums. And now you know in this administration it's it's gonna be ol and gas, livestock and timber. And there's just something just came out from in the for Service where they wanted twenty five percent increase in timber production. And the Secretary has declared pretty much every piece of National Force land in the country as an emergency and it's called Secretarials Emergency Declaration. And and what that can do is now that's designated the NEPA process. The process changes considerably. There's only two alternatives. Either you do it. It's action or no action. So that cuts your analysis. Well, what about this alternative? What about this? Ah? See, there you do it? You don't there's no objections. You know that internal process where someone can say I object to this, and we evaluate. 01:49:30 Speaker 1: It and. 01:49:32 Speaker 2: We can implement it immediately. And so you either litigate to stop it immediately or it's going to go through and it's a round fuels forest health. I don't know if that's such a bad thing. It's just such a big swing, you know. 01:49:46 Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I offered my services on land swaps, correct. I will also offer my services. I will come in and unilaterly be red light green light on timber projects. And trust me, there are a lot of timber projects that I would give a green light too. 01:50:00 Speaker 2: I think you would too. 01:50:02 Speaker 3: I am so. 01:50:03 Speaker 1: They're I'm gonna be busy. 01:50:04 Speaker 3: Because you know, it's a free market deal. Like I'm not lighting my hair on fire over the timber mandate because I mean, I don't in a lot of Montana, I don't see anything changing. There's a lot of chunks of forests that people walk into and they're like, oh my god, this should be cleaned up. Well, you're gonna have to pay out a pocket to have somebody coat go clean. 01:50:30 Speaker 2: Work a couple thousand bucks an acre? 01:50:33 Speaker 3: How much? 01:50:33 Speaker 2: Oh a couple grand for fuels? Work that just that where there's nothing merchantable at the. 01:50:38 Speaker 3: It's not merchantable, right, and we don't. 01:50:40 Speaker 2: Have that's a lot of money right for us. 01:50:43 Speaker 3: Like plus like like Missoula is such a great example, right, Like when Steve was going to school there, I was growing up, right, we really had three lumber mills right there. We have zero now right right, There's still a lot of forest around Missoula, and a lot that I think people would really argue needs to be something's got to be done here. 01:51:03 Speaker 2: I don't know this for a fact because I'm not an expert in the industry, but there were no tariffs on Canadian timber. 01:51:10 Speaker 1: No I thought there was. I mean they had it led to the emergency order. 01:51:13 Speaker 2: Uh huh. They at the end they pulled out a timber was lumber was not, oh tiff because we don't have the capet. We can't produce enough lumber here in America to keep the builders going. So the builders must have got someone and said, hey, don't do this because you're going to jack the prices through the. 01:51:30 Speaker 1: Real dude, there was recently a big There was real. They wrapped it up, but there was a big clear cut in There was a big clear cut in our area where we hang out in southeast Alaska. 01:51:42 Speaker 5: Oh, I thought, you're going to talk about my spot there in Wisconsin. No. 01:51:45 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he's a private clear cut. 01:51:49 Speaker 3: There's down like twelve trees. 01:51:50 Speaker 1: There was a big clear cut in southeast Alaska and it was tribal land. But there was a bunch of land swaps to put the package together. 01:52:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So it wound up being that state moved. 01:52:03 Speaker 1: To federal, and federal move to tribal, and the tribal moved to state. Whatever the hell. And in the end they put together a cut and we got to wash this cut over the summer and or over many summers. And I'll tell you man, that would okay. Those trees go into the ocean cutting logs with the bark on and then they go on to a barge and they do not touch American soil. Nope, that ship is over seas. It doesn't even get Like I mean, if some bark falls off in the ocean, that's as much processing as that wood is getting in the US. Dude, and it's gone. And then you hear about losing our capacity on lumber and stuff. It's like, dude, it's going over in the round. Yeah, it used to be and I don't even know where it again. Like you could look and be like, oh, that seems crazy, but I don't even know where to begin to start, Like I don't even know how to begin to. 01:52:59 Speaker 2: Dre I sing a problem like that, Well, it used Tonga's lumber used to not be They've approved special provisions to send it in the round overseas. It used to has to be manufactured at least on three sides, you know, in America, but the industry is in such dire straits up there. And yeah, I mean the reality is the old golf the industry cannot survive period. 01:53:24 Speaker 1: I mean, well, this same outfit, the same tribal court that did this clear cut. They they announced a ninety nine year moratorium on old growth. 01:53:36 Speaker 2: Oh no kidding. 01:53:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if they'll stick to it. Yeah, there was internal strife. They announced a ninety nine year moratorium and they closed that cut early. 01:53:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, so. 01:53:47 Speaker 1: Uh, let me. I want to go ahead, and then I want to ask a last question. I just want you to clarify a point. 01:53:53 Speaker 2: I just wonder I've thought a lot about. I don't know if it'll be fixed, but you know how much advocacy and environmental groups and stuff owned some of the extremes. And I think people have got to really look in the mirror and start saying, what are we really fighting against? Is it fighting against something we're really concerned about, or is it this is a really good way to keep our money flowing. Because this model has worked really good. You demonize, say this guy is falling, find an enemy, and then say send us money. We'll save m you know whatever. And I think about that a lot, and I think about if that can work on that in my retirement to try to, you know, bring more collaboration to these discussions about about force management. 01:54:37 Speaker 1: But I want, I want to ask you a retired guy question. Yeah, in all these conversations that are happening right now, I just want to clarify a personal like a personal guiding strategy here in these conversations that we're having. I've tried to an issue and issues about federal management agencies. I've tried to be like to remain like somewhat cooperative because I've been very clear over the years about like the things that matter to me, right, things that matter to me is like hunting, fishing issues and wildlife habitat. And I joke about if I was the emperor of the country, what I would do, and it would be all wildlife all the time, right, And I would if I was the emperor of the country. 01:55:25 Speaker 3: But I'm not. 01:55:26 Speaker 1: No one's asking me to be. So I've tried to look at this issue and say, Okay, there are economic troubles in the country. We overspend, right, there's problems in the country at a macro level. So instead of saying that business as usual is the only acceptable path, I've tried to like find a way in my mind to be a little more constructive and say, Okay, what are the objectives, what are we trying to achieve? What are the objective realities here? And how could it be done in a way that doesn't that is less negative for Americans in my community who use natural resources and and raise their families and spend their time and out, you know, in nature. Okay, with that rambling sort of precursor, what I'm going to say, I'm just like setting this question up. If someone had come to you, based on what you know about the Forest Service, if someone had come to you and said, we need to find efficiencies, like we have to find efficiencies, we have to spend less money, we have to save money, and we don't want to impact the American taxpayer who's utilizing these lands. We want to have minimized impact on that taxpayer. Like our customer, so to speak. And they said to you, here's the ten percent cut package. Okay, bring me a ten percent cut package, drink, bring me a twenty percent cut package, bring me a thirty percent cut package. At what percent would you start to be like impossible. 01:57:17 Speaker 2: Wow, my colleagues are still working. Probably kill me when it hears thirty to forty and and here's what, here's. 01:57:30 Speaker 4: Why is that you like specifically for White River or for Service Service wide? 01:57:35 Speaker 2: Yeah? Uh, there are there are things that we need to come to grips with. Did an analysis before it's cool thing about computers and SharePoint sits and stuff? Did an analysis? Set so for Service has a Washington office and has nine regional offices Denver, Missoula, California, Albuquerque, Salt Lake, blah blah blah. And then there's a field. Then there's the forest, and then there's forest has districts. Thirty five percent of our employees, of all our employees non fire. You got to set fireside because none of this discussion I didn to do with fire. Thirty five percent of our employees had a work at a Washington office or regional office. That seems high because people in Washington regional offices make a lot more than people on the ground. It's well over fifty percent of our salary costs as an agency are not where we delivered this. It's not the mission delivery that alone. There's no company that can survive on those numbers. I mean service companies are different. But if you're producing something or if you have a service to deliver, I mean I know is really well. I know for a fact that if they put over fifty of their you know, veil resorts, our corporate office in Broomfield, it's on the mountain because that's where the money's made, that's where the mission is delivered. So there's a problem. I think I've said a couple of times we got upside down and is where our mission was? We just delivering the mission and all the things you want to protect from your constituents our communities are clean water and all that stuff that all happens on the ground for cheap now fuels projects and stuff are get expensive when you you know. The other thing I think you have to look at is big things. You know we have and again my colleagues would kill me. We have a huge research department in the force. VICE created because when the back then there was not a single university in the country that researched any natural resource or forest re issues. So we created we have a state in private division a whole thousands of people because there were no state foresters. Now every state in the country has a whole state forestry division, but yet those were legacied in over years and years, so between thirty it's just I just believe in is the people on the ground. And I'm biased because that's work I did. Do we need policy? People? Do we need you know? You know, cio, But that's the cheap part of the job. So I, you know, I don't know what's going to happen. You guys don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of crazy times in our country. But I always tell people public lands are not in the constitution. Nowhere in the constitution are they, and I and yet I believe it is one of the great experiments in democracy. No other country the world says, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take whatever seven percent or whatever the percentage of our country's land base. We're gonna put it in public trust manage for everyone, owned by everyone. And it what an experiment in democracy. And so far one hundred and twenty five years, it's we're doing all right. But I remind people it's not in the constitution. There's no guarantee that it can stay and so the endgame is stay involved, pay attention. I guess I'm not ready to light my hair and fire and say the public lands are going away. They're gonna sell them all. I'm going to pay attention now, obviously because my back. But I think your listener should pay attention. I think there are things in the system now that require, especially for hunters and anglers and people who enjoy it the way we do, pay attention. This is a time to pay attention, you know, get involved with that NEPA process a little more. Make sure your voices are heard, because there is no guarantee in the institution that this crazy experiment will continue. 02:02:06 Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on, man, pleasure to be here. What are your hobbies? What are you going to do now? 02:02:12 Speaker 2: Turkey hunting starts Saturday, So you know I love to hunt and fish and and get outside. 02:02:22 Speaker 4: You must stay where you're at in Colorado for a while. 02:02:25 Speaker 3: I mean you're sitting here right now because you're on a fishing. 02:02:27 Speaker 2: Tour, right yeah, and visit some friends tour. But yeah, my brothers and I you know, I'm from Wisconsin and uh and listening to you talk about how you grew up with your brothers identical. I mean right, Yeah, we were just across the pond from you, the Wisconsin side, and uh, we're building. We're almost done. We're building the cabin in the up Oh yeah, up in west of waters Meet. That's where we went as kids. That you know, there was with six kids in the cop salary. There was no Disneyland vacations. So yeah, we're just they're just about don I write the checks. I write checks to pay for things because they do. 02:03:08 Speaker 1: They do the work. 02:03:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, because they're there. I mean they're back there and so be doing that. And I don't know. I'm not ready to not be involved. I've gotten some calls about some work and we'll see. I'm gonna take two months to see what's out there. And then I'd love this stuff too much. I like to mix it up too much. 02:03:30 Speaker 1: And man, I well, just the fact that you're the fact that you're passionate about the forest, you're passionate about public lands, you put in a lot of years. Yeah, you have opinions. I can't vet whether all of your opinions. I mean, you know enough, you know more than I know, so I can't say that all your opinions are right or wrong. 02:03:51 Speaker 2: Or whatever, but. 02:03:54 Speaker 1: Just the fact that you care. I would sure hope that people that need to start the people that do need to make decisions about where money goes and what money is there. If I knew that they were reaching out to guys like you to get an opinion that they could give an honest way. Now that you're not there anymore, I would be like, well, that sounds like a good idea to me. So hopefully some conversations will happen for you, you know, where someone can say like, well, now I can tell you what I actually think, and here's what I think, right, and no one's going to fire me for it. 02:04:27 Speaker 2: Good feeling. 02:04:28 Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we always have a hard time having agency people on the show because they're so paranoid. But it's nice to have the Poe like you're hearing a post paranoid sense. 02:04:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I would have come on and said most of this while I was working. That's what I got my reputation for, although I would have got in trouble, but you know, not fired. But I don't think what I had to say was all that controversial. 02:04:52 Speaker 1: You're not saying it, You're not. 02:04:54 Speaker 2: I'm not hacking on anyone. I just I think you know. There's changes coming, and some of them are good, some of them. I don't be here far. 02:05:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk to the guys that are like that recognize a reality and recognize how can we do this in the in the best way possible and not in ways that are kind of like ham handed knee jerk reactions. So thanks man, you bet. 02:05:22 Speaker 2: It's good to be here. 02:05:23 Speaker 1: Appreciate it, Thanks for coming on. 02:05:25 Speaker 3: Thanks Scott,