0:08

This is me eater podcast coming

0:11

at you shirtless severely

0:13

bug bitten in my case underwear listening

0:15

Hunt podcast, You

0:18

can't predict anything presented

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0:22

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0:25

for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the

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iTunes or Google play store, nor

0:29

where you stand with on X. Gab

0:36

to Gott to bring people up to speed on

0:38

what we were just talking about. Before Phil hit the power

0:40

button. What what don't you hit

0:42

over there, Phil, Well, there are several

0:45

I do have to hit power first, that's the first step step

0:47

one, Um, and then I armed the board for recording,

0:50

turns on a red light, and then I hit a play

0:53

button that actually

0:55

starts the recording. Yeah, before

0:58

you did all that, Spencer pointed out the

1:00

Phil means

1:02

like the name Phil, so all the Phils

1:04

in the world, Philip means

1:06

horse lover. Yeah,

1:08

well, like you

1:10

know, Yeah,

1:13

Phil and I were having a deep conversation about Phil

1:16

the name over here because my my brother

1:19

Um was the fifth Phill in our family.

1:21

My dad was the fourth. My nephew

1:24

is a sixth pill. So I was asking,

1:26

didn't name you Phil because

1:29

my older brother's eight years came

1:31

eight years he got the name, He got the name.

1:34

That's right, he's Philip the

1:37

he'd be the fifth. I believe my

1:39

nephew is the sixth. So I was

1:41

asking, oh, yeah, that makes sense, so

1:44

that brother had a kid. Correct, my

1:46

nephew was good. Confused. Our film

1:48

was asking if he's a one L or two

1:50

L Phil, what what does he

1:52

feel like to you? One L or two ell? Or? I

1:58

got it wrong? Cow Let me think

2:01

where were you born? Vancouver,

2:03

Washington? Two els? Yeah,

2:08

Phil felt like a two L to me. I

2:10

thought he was a two L guy. What I'm

2:12

okay, Phil,

2:15

but I'd be f I L L just

2:17

as people. Yeah, what two

2:20

ls? Why? Because because

2:22

one which one sounds more like Philippe.

2:26

Well that's that's that's a two pe situation.

2:29

Oh that's right. Yeah. This is strictly

2:31

coming from my personal experience with phills. And

2:33

you're different than those pills, which is

2:35

like your name has to be spelled different. But

2:38

the horse, the horse lover thing um

2:40

is derived from the Greek word Philippo's,

2:44

which means horse loving or fond of horses,

2:47

fondling horses, fond

2:50

of horses. I'm with you. I

2:53

got my on you, Phil Well,

2:55

I gotta say I don't. I don't live up to the name. My parents

2:58

really messed out because I have

3:00

horses. I hates a strong

3:02

word. I have no I have no like attractions.

3:06

Okay, I'm gonna stop talking. I'm

3:08

not drawn to horses. I don't have an attachment to horses.

3:10

I didn't grow up with like a farm, animals

3:12

or anything like that. And I got a lot of admiration

3:15

for people that. Um. I

3:17

know a lot about horses because it's one of those things

3:20

where my sister in law they have a

3:22

immense herd of horses where she lives,

3:25

and when she

3:27

looks at a like I look at a horse, I just see

3:30

I don't know horse. She

3:32

looks at a horse, she sees like not

3:34

only the history of that animal, but

3:37

like the history of its mother. Do

3:40

you know what I mean? Like all of it's like neu

3:42

ro season, past injuries and

3:44

what has been eating. It's just like it's amazing.

3:46

You could never learn at all like you have. I

3:48

think it's one of those you have to be brought up around. I

3:51

sat next to a girl in middle school who wore

3:53

nothing but like horse just

3:56

sweaters and was just spent with Spenter days

3:58

drawing horses all day long. I never understood

4:00

it, like there's a thing with horses. Yeah,

4:02

I bet you. I bet you. She

4:05

had long hair in a ponytail.

4:08

Yeah. I find

4:10

it's a weird thing that happens. My sister

4:12

in law doesn't do this, but I find a lot

4:14

of women who are very interested

4:17

in horses wind up having very long hair

4:19

and a ponytail, as though they were trying to replicate

4:21

the horse's tail. I

4:24

don't know if they're even realize this. Yeah,

4:28

I don't know. If i'd like to start asking people if

4:30

they realize this. Joined today

4:32

by Nell's Johnson, We're gonna

4:34

be talking to a bunch later on. He's

4:36

the North American Energy Program director

4:39

at the Nature Conservancy. So,

4:42

hello Nels, Hello

4:44

Steve. So we we've found you because you

4:46

rode into us offering some clarifications

4:49

and corrections. Someone who knows

4:51

him, someone who knows you suggest

4:53

oh I thought you rolled in. I'm

4:56

fretting about is

5:00

not a self promoter. I

5:02

wouldn't hold it against you. So, so who who are?

5:04

It doesn't matter? But but how did

5:06

we how did we track down? Because because we've been talking

5:09

a little bit about wind farms and how I don't like them.

5:11

There's, uh, I guess a

5:13

listener out there in our community who

5:16

has been you know, who's heard us touch

5:18

on this conversation, and they said, you know, you ought to

5:20

talk to exactly and he's right there. So

5:23

and then we reached out you and you said, yes, well,

5:26

yeah, there was a little arm twisting involved, but yeah,

5:30

happy to do it. So you're gonna answer all of our

5:32

questions about whether or not the planet will

5:34

soon be covered in windmills, wind

5:36

turbans. Uh. Well,

5:38

yeah, that and a few other things. And all the birds

5:41

will be dead. Yeah,

5:43

and uh, the squirrels will be doing great though,

5:48

because I can't climb up those slick turbine

5:51

shafts. We'll get to all that in a minute.

5:53

That's gonna be interesting, because I got, I got. I've been doing a lot of

5:55

handwringing and a lot of fretting. You

5:57

know, it's interesting. Uh,

6:00

I'll point this out, but we don't even to discuss it yet. There's

6:02

a feller that's been making some

6:04

waves. Um

6:06

ah, he's a congressman.

6:09

Ken's anger, Kenzinger, Ken's anger.

6:12

Yeah, I just

6:14

signed up for his email newsletter. So

6:17

he's been making a lot of waves by being um,

6:20

not really like in the direction of the

6:22

Republican Party. Um.

6:26

And I've been kind of interested in

6:28

what he's got to say. And I was looking at

6:30

his Twitter feed and he was saying, Ah,

6:35

let's make sure to keep nuclear in the mix. So

6:38

we'll talk about that. We will. That's

6:41

my thing, man, I want to end it on this, that's

6:43

my thing. It's

6:45

good. Yeah. I hope you can talk me out of it, but I don't

6:47

think you can. I don't even know

6:49

if you're interested in talking me out of it. Okay,

6:54

UM, all right, but but be

6:56

realistic about when and how that

6:58

happens, right, So that's yeah,

7:01

I don't want to get mired nose, kind of make

7:05

sure they're doing it and doing it now. You're either pro

7:07

energy or your anti nature like,

7:09

which is um.

7:13

Okay, we've got a handful of Hank tight nels.

7:15

Feel free to if something strikes your fancy, feel

7:17

free to speak up. Absolutely.

7:20

Thanks. Uh.

7:22

Now, we have to be sitting

7:24

in Montana right now, and I want to talk about

7:26

some bills that are up, some rule changes

7:28

that are up, and I wouldn't talk about it

7:30

if I didn't think that they uh

7:34

weren't kind of like more broadly applicable,

7:36

Like it brings up interesting subjects that I think

7:38

that anyone who's interested in UH

7:41

hunting and fishing rules and whatnot legislation,

7:45

right, they don't need to be

7:47

here to appreciate the complexity

7:51

and relevance of these questions. Do

7:53

you feel like I'm selling us, well, col yeah, absolutely.

7:56

One one thing that's up right now, s

7:58

B one one one. It's

8:02

good they went with s B and that BS one,

8:05

but I think BS one one one would have been

8:07

better. I'll be curious to hear Spencer's

8:09

take on this. They want to legalize

8:12

crossbow hunting. They

8:16

want to legalize, not that it's illegal, they

8:18

want to make it so you can hunt with a crossbow during archery

8:21

season right now, specifically

8:23

for UH impaired

8:26

hunters, handicapped hunters. That's

8:29

it. That's it. That's what I thought.

8:31

But then someone told me it was more complicated than that.

8:33

Well, I think someone gave me the old slippery

8:35

slope argument. That is,

8:37

that's that's our that's our argument

8:40

that we always stand on, right. It's like, yeah,

8:43

but I'm a slippery slope guy, I think that there is

8:45

in fact a slippery

8:47

slope in the world and people fall

8:49

down the slippery Like I'm

8:51

a big believer in slippery slopes. So s

8:54

B one one one is

8:58

is just that. So it would

9:00

uh make crossbows

9:04

legal for those who apply

9:07

for a handicapped

9:10

validation to

9:12

hunt during the season

9:14

and they can hunt with that crossbow during

9:16

the archery season. Right now, crossbows

9:19

are legal to hunt with in the state of Montana

9:22

as long as you use them during the firearms

9:24

season. Mm hmm hmm.

9:27

How are they? I

9:30

didn't know that, Like I I know this from various

9:32

text messages and stuff that I got that didn't

9:35

get into any level of detail. Is just expressing

9:37

horror text messages expressing

9:39

like what

9:42

are the what will happen next? Yes,

9:44

so where is the world headed? So

9:46

so explain the what

9:48

what is caught as the

9:52

handicapped, like to what

9:54

degree? So what this says is that

9:57

it's a discriminatory right. So

9:59

right now that you use a

10:01

device that holds

10:04

a traditional bow, which

10:06

you know traditional I'm encompassing really

10:09

compound bows, or if you could

10:11

figure a device out for a recurve or

10:13

long bow that would hold that bow back

10:15

at full draw with an arrow in it, and

10:18

that would be legal for

10:21

UH handicap hunters to use right

10:24

now, which you can't turn it sideways, but you

10:26

can't turn it horizontal. Um

10:30

hm. And so this basically,

10:34

if folks can't figure

10:37

out how to use that, then

10:39

they can't hunt during ourchery season. However,

10:42

they can use a crossbow

10:45

if that is uh, you know something

10:47

that they can can work, you

10:50

know, something that they can use effectively. They can use

10:52

that during rightful season, not our

10:54

tree season. UM.

10:57

What like Montana traditional bow

10:59

hunters are and is this

11:02

is how crossbow bow

11:05

has become legal during

11:08

our tree season. And the

11:10

issue there is we're gonna see much

11:12

higher success rates, which

11:14

in turn is gonna shorten our

11:18

archery season altogether because our tree is

11:20

gonna be way too effective. Um.

11:23

And then again there's the discrimination

11:26

side of this too. It's like, if this

11:28

is keeping handicapped hunters out

11:30

of our tree season, then

11:33

we need to address that and

11:35

make sure that handicap hunters are included

11:38

in our tree season if they are capable.

11:41

The state code basically says that,

11:44

UM, as long like

11:46

we can adapt anything to

11:49

be as inclusive as possible. As as as long

11:51

as it doesn't change the

11:53

essence of what that thing is. Um.

11:59

The inter susting parts

12:01

here are like I

12:04

have been around,

12:07

I've I've guided some crossbow hunts

12:09

for folks who were

12:12

able to use them under this same

12:15

pretense. UM in

12:17

what state? Colorado? And

12:21

it was for me, being somebody

12:23

who's not familiar with the crossbow, it

12:26

was almost a two person job to

12:28

load the crossbow. UM.

12:31

And that handicapped hunter was not

12:35

capable of loading that thing on their own.

12:38

They were very effective with it, uh

12:40

to shoot, but it wasn't a one

12:43

person job to load the thing. UM.

12:45

I'm sure there's a lot of different

12:48

crossbows out there, but UM,

12:52

this kind of seems like, oh, if we just add

12:54

crossbows, then everybody's gonna be happy. But

12:58

it's like, if you can't use the

13:00

thing that holds your bow back

13:02

at full draw, I don't

13:04

think there's anything that necessarily says crossbows

13:07

are going to fix that. And

13:09

then there's probably people that would still be incapable

13:11

of shooting a cross bow, yeah, absolutely,

13:14

but could shoot a firearm,

13:16

yes for sure. Uh.

13:21

A very near and dear person to me was

13:23

sharing with me that they really hope this does

13:25

not pass. They don't want to see crossbows.

13:28

Their argument was that this is like the

13:30

playbook from the crossbow

13:33

industry, is that it

13:35

always starts with this and then pretty soon

13:37

it's everybody.

13:40

But he said that if they do

13:42

make cross bowls legal, he will start to hunt

13:44

with one because it's the

13:46

arms race. Oh, very

13:48

interesting. I

13:52

sure like I can't. I don't have

13:54

the level expertise about this to really

13:56

have an opinion about it. But if it was just generally

13:58

to make it that you could during archery

14:01

season with crossbows, I would

14:03

point out there's all kinds of times with crossbows with

14:05

the crossbow during rifles season. And and

14:07

that was a great point, Like it's

14:09

not like you can't use it. You can use it for six damn

14:11

weeks. Um. There

14:13

was a point made uh

14:17

during the hearing for this that, uh,

14:20

if you want to take advantage of shoulder

14:22

season hunts, uh

14:25

bird hunting opportunities, there's

14:29

I'm gonna have to dig in dead. You can use it for spring

14:31

bear three hundred days

14:34

of crossbow hunting of crossbow hunting currently

14:37

available. That

14:40

sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty

14:42

good. Okay, here's one Uh, here's

14:44

another bill that's up and this is an interesting one.

14:47

So it's hard as hell, hard as hell

14:49

to draw. It doesn't matter where

14:51

you are in the West. It's

14:55

hard to draw a moose, sheep or goat tag in

14:58

the West. I'll say, you know, I'll out of Alaska,

15:00

right, so you can apply your whole life and never

15:02

get one. I've been I just drew

15:05

a mountain goat for instance, I just drew a mountain goat

15:07

tag. After twenty six

15:10

years of applying.

15:13

I drew a mountain goat tag in the state of Montana. Took

15:15

me twenty six years. I

15:18

don't know how many They started the bonus point system

15:20

somewhere in the middle of my application period.

15:24

Your bonus points are squared. So

15:27

when I learned multiplication as a youngster, we

15:29

only got up to twelve times twelve, and then we quit

15:31

for some reason. I don't know why.

15:34

We never got into what happens when you times thirteen

15:37

by something, so

15:40

I still don't know. But if

15:42

you had twelve bonus points, your names in the hat a hundred

15:45

and forty four times, and

15:49

I finally drew a mount and go take now

15:52

I have to take off what you gotta quit yell a low

15:54

for five years or seven years, seven years,

15:57

I think before you can apply again, before

15:59

you can eat an amply know. But I have friends

16:01

who because you were successful, that would

16:03

be an important part of this. I had friends who

16:05

drew mount and like applied drew mount

16:08

and goat tag, laid low for

16:10

all the years, started applying

16:12

again, drew a second one, right,

16:15

which I feel is like a great feat it's a

16:17

great triumph. There's a bill that would

16:19

make it that when you draw in some states

16:21

have this already

16:24

that once you draw a moose, sheep,

16:26

or goat tag. I

16:28

think it's if you're successful, if you're

16:30

successful on the hunt, so successful

16:33

drawing and then successful slapping

16:35

that tag on a harvested

16:37

animal, you are done for life.

16:40

You can never get back in the mix. Is

16:43

it individually per animal?

16:46

You're not done with everything, You're done with that one. What

16:49

states have this? Idaho?

16:51

Yeah, Idaho has once in a lifetime stuff.

16:54

There's a bunch of a handfuls like New

16:56

Mexico has some once in a lifetime And

16:58

it's important to note too, if

17:01

you're you can apply for a cow, moose

17:05

you know immediately yeah

17:08

or you know so there's there's you got two

17:10

shots at hunting each animal, just

17:12

one is gonna be the

17:15

animal with the more impressive headgear.

17:17

Now, this rule I was sharing that Cal

17:20

and I were talking about this on the phone. This rule is

17:23

one of those rules where everybody's

17:25

opinion right down

17:28

to whoever wrote this thing up. Everybody's

17:30

I guarantee whoever wrote this up hasn't

17:33

drawn moose, sheep or goat. Take garen

17:36

ted, and they're pissed because

17:39

their cousin he's

17:41

drawn too. I've never drawn one.

17:44

Yep, this is not fair, Like

17:47

I guaren t. You

17:49

should look into that cran if he's the

17:51

person that drew this up piste, there's

17:54

no way they're sitting on There's no way they drew

17:56

all these and they're trying to draw him again. No

17:58

way. Well, I wonder how many

18:01

uh, how many folks who have

18:05

applied what percentage of

18:07

the total I don't know, per year over

18:09

the past I don't know, five years, ten years.

18:11

If we figure out some kind of percentage

18:14

of those who have drawn, who have drawn

18:17

twice and been successful, like what would

18:20

if they were out of the mix, What would it

18:22

really do to the guy that drew this up, this

18:24

bill, what would it really do for

18:26

his oddes? I mean, are we talking about three people out

18:29

of that is? That is the point and

18:32

the pro con argument in

18:34

the debate for House Bill Too oh

18:36

two is it will

18:39

increase people's odds

18:41

who have not drawn yet. And

18:44

the con or the yeah,

18:47

the con why this bill shouldn't exist. This

18:50

will not increase people. I

18:54

don't like it for this reason because

18:57

did I ever tell you about my Civics teacher in ninth

18:59

grade? Al de Young? Al

19:01

de Young? Uh?

19:04

He was. He was. He would do parody, but none

19:06

of us were old enough or smart enough to know he

19:08

was doing parody. Ald

19:11

Young taught government through

19:13

the letter he role played. We

19:15

now know he role played

19:18

as a guy who would say and remember, I

19:20

am concerned only with what effects?

19:23

And you point himself Al de Young,

19:26

and he would be like, there was he was supposed to take everyone

19:28

down to register him to vote. He's

19:31

like, there's no way I would take you people down to register

19:33

to vote. Why would I dilute my vote?

19:37

I don't want you idiots

19:39

voting. That

19:41

was a ship um,

19:44

but it's stuck with me. And like

19:46

a rule like this, I don't like it,

19:48

because what if they made it retroactive and

19:53

I'm out of the run on a mountain

19:55

goat or I'm

19:57

not I'm old, I'm not totally old.

20:00

I could draw a sheep tag next

20:02

year. I would hate to learn that

20:04

I couldn't get back in the running in five years.

20:07

Why not because your bro's got

20:09

to rights that, dude,

20:16

It because Steve and his brother are competing.

20:18

No, I just like, I don't like it,

20:20

and I don't like only. I don't

20:22

like only for what it would mean for me, or

20:25

is it the slippery slope problem? You know

20:27

then it's gonna be white tailed deer and that it's gonna

20:29

be squirrels and you know you're

20:32

done. That is interesting,

20:34

Honestly, I haven't thought about it that way. But

20:38

one good you know, speaking from the Idaho

20:40

standpoint, right, it's

20:44

kind of could be a b S

20:46

bill because already,

20:51

uh, there is a governor's tag,

20:54

which if you love hunting sheep so

20:56

much, why don't you just buy the governor's tag.

20:58

I think it went for four or four yeah last

21:01

year, four kids?

21:04

Right? Uh? State Idaho?

21:07

Is that once a lift, once in lifetime tag unless

21:11

you wanna get in the Governor's

21:13

auction and buy the tag every year

21:16

so you can hunt. You can hunt cheap in perpetuity.

21:18

It's kind of a bunch of crap. Here's

21:22

there's a question of statistics. Yeah,

21:25

I think it's symbolic. I think it's symbolic flat

21:27

statistics. So uh,

21:30

let's say you know, after you'r what

21:33

waiting seven years, you

21:35

apply again. Isn't it if

21:38

a thousand people apply one

21:40

year and two thousand people apply

21:43

the next, whether Steve is

21:45

in the running during that a thousand people

21:47

or not, isn't it just based on the total

21:50

number of people who have applied that year, That's

21:53

what you based on. This is meant to be vindictive

21:55

because even one that dude sits, even when that

21:58

dude sits out seven years, okay,

22:01

he's coming in with zero points, He's

22:04

got to rebuild his whole collection of points.

22:07

He's like inconsequential, it's it's

22:09

a way to punish

22:11

the lucky people, right, that's right. It's not one to

22:13

one. There's people,

22:16

and so is the winning argument. It's

22:19

the war unlucky people. If it doesn't

22:21

matter, then why not get rid of them? Or

22:23

is the winning argument? Is every

22:26

little bit counts. You know, so like when you look,

22:29

especially as a nonresident, if you look at

22:31

your draw odds of getting

22:33

like a premier sheep tag, it

22:35

can be like point oh

22:37

one five percent some places point

22:40

oh five percent. And it's like,

22:42

so if that point oh five

22:44

percent is back in the pool,

22:48

does does it really affect your odds

22:50

of drawing? Oh? Yeah, because when

22:52

you when you get to looking at the odds on draw tags,

22:55

you know, you can see a draw

22:58

tag is point five percent chance

23:00

of drawing, or it's uh,

23:03

another tag is one percent chance of drawing.

23:05

There's something that happens in your head, like you don't

23:07

view it being twice as likely to draw

23:09

the one. You just view it all as being

23:12

shitty. Yes,

23:14

you just view like dah ain't never gonna

23:17

happen. So this goes to directly

23:19

into the next bill, uh,

23:22

which is our bonus points bill, which

23:24

is another great topic. And when you read

23:26

the number on that, this one, okay,

23:30

HB one, this one strikes

23:32

to my core. This

23:35

one. I would go so far. I

23:37

wouldn't go so far as to say that I would storm

23:39

the state Capitol building while they were telling

23:42

the votes. I

23:45

wouldn't go that far. I

23:48

don't know about it. I'm

23:52

not saying I would take it that far. But

23:56

I've already bought my kids a bunch of bonus points. You've

24:00

invested in their future, Listen,

24:03

I've invested in my future. No, I've

24:05

invested in my future because I think it's fun to go

24:07

hunt moves, sheep and go. So my

24:09

kids, my four year old, when

24:12

he knows how old is he know, he's six,

24:15

he's already sitting on three bonus points. When

24:17

he turns twelve, he'll be going into the draw

24:20

with nine points. Do

24:23

you have another trying to rob this from me? Do

24:25

you at all feel partially responsible

24:28

for inspiring this

24:30

bill? No, because you've talked about this so many Yeah,

24:32

listen, you gotta hate the hate the game, not the

24:34

player, bro. So

24:39

I'll tell you what said against this thing. Um.

24:43

These Yeah, these are folks

24:45

coming in against

24:49

the the You

24:52

know, as the bill has written, this

24:55

is not the way the game is supposed

24:57

to be played. So the kids who

24:59

have not invested in hunting

25:01

in the state of Montana are

25:04

coming in as if they have invested

25:07

for well eight, nine, ten

25:09

years, right, But they're they're paying,

25:11

They're paying money to the state agency

25:13

and drawing nothing in return. It's

25:16

a money. Let's let's be frank. Okay,

25:21

Okay, let's hear me out. I'll try

25:23

explain it. Okay, HB one,

25:28

please please, But

25:31

I think you got to talk about a

25:34

bill for an act entitled an

25:36

Act allowing only persons eligible

25:39

to hunt to apply for bonus

25:42

points, which would be an amendment

25:44

of Montana Code's annotated section

25:46

eight seven dash to dash one seven.

25:50

Okay, So in this

25:52

state, a kid can start legally hunting

25:54

at ten with a mentor um

25:58

and they can only hunt over the counter tags.

26:00

They can a ten year old cannot try to

26:02

draw a limited draw permit. You

26:05

have to be twelve to try to draw a limited draw permit.

26:08

It would stand to reason it would make most sense

26:10

that you can at that point you can start applying

26:12

in accruing bonus points.

26:15

But through some weird like

26:18

the thing that I don't even think is that rational, but

26:20

I exploit it. All of a sudden, they

26:22

made it that your kids can start A

26:24

dad could her mom whatever the hell, could

26:27

start stocking up bonus points for their kids

26:30

by just going down and buying them over the counter.

26:34

So I was like, that's really kind

26:36

of strange and a little almost like, you

26:40

know, I almost don't even like it, but again,

26:42

hate the game, not the player. I went

26:44

down and got my kids

26:46

little A L. S numbers that they don't

26:48

even need, and started buying

26:51

them points. How much is a point, I

26:53

don't know. But when it's all said

26:55

and done, I can't remember on each But when

26:57

it's all said and done, I walk out of their

27:00

danged buy a few hundred bucks because

27:02

I buy the points for everything, all of

27:04

them, So all three of them get all

27:06

available points. And

27:09

they don't even know this. Well no, I kind of explained

27:12

it the deal being. I

27:14

told him, if you don't bring me, if you draw one

27:16

of these things and don't bring me with you, I want

27:18

all this money back that

27:21

investing. Yeah, I'm like, dude, this is going

27:23

on the hunt. If you decide to go like with your

27:26

bodies at school or something, you're

27:28

gonna be getting an invoice for all my point

27:30

money back. I love it. I love

27:32

it. Yeah.

27:35

So the bonus points system

27:37

in theory is set up as

27:41

a here is a way to reward

27:43

people who are invested in the system right

27:46

by extending it to people

27:48

who are not invested in the system

27:51

and giving them a conceivably

27:55

very large leg up depending

27:57

on you know, changes in in

28:00

the state. Um,

28:02

it violates the intention of the bill,

28:04

the original bill, um,

28:07

would be my perspective. Now, I

28:10

will also let you in on a little more

28:12

perspective of mine own. I have niece

28:14

and a nephew at this point, right, I

28:17

don't buy them anything.

28:19

Is because you're a tight ass, because you don't agree

28:21

with this. What I do is I opened

28:23

up a life insurance policy, uh

28:28

for each of them on based

28:30

on my own life, and

28:33

they will get cash.

28:36

But I also have to deal with my death.

28:40

That is going to be like their only gift from all uncle

28:42

cal Like they're gonna have to bury your carcass.

28:46

Why did you bring my kids that, um,

28:49

when you have your own nephews and stuff? Was it just

28:52

expedient? See why you brought my kids? The

28:54

No, they're getting a bunch of stuff too.

28:56

Yeah, um, the and

29:01

the I think this is the way to

29:03

go, right because like you and I have a

29:06

screw me over. You

29:09

robbed points from the mouth of my baby.

29:15

Have turned into a pretty decent human being

29:18

and one of those things that has made you a pretty

29:20

decent human being is like paying your

29:22

way through school, right,

29:24

Like, oh god, let

29:27

me tell you this sob story about going

29:29

to state school, trapping

29:31

my way through until I could get into

29:33

the University Montana, and being

29:36

becoming a big swinging dick writer. Right.

29:39

Uh, that's character, right,

29:42

Okay, you're robbing

29:44

your children of knowing the pain of

29:49

yes, exactly, and

29:51

therefore you're you're putting their uh their

29:55

their lives at risk of becoming decent

29:57

humans. You know, these bills. Oh,

29:59

I want to move on here, but these bills are a real

30:01

one to punch to my children because imagine

30:03

that, uh,

30:06

I do well, like I do all this, and

30:09

then one of them draws a tag and they're not even They're

30:11

like twelve years old, right,

30:15

and they don't you know what the hell is going on. They don't

30:17

even know how cool it is. And then they can't

30:19

ever draw another one when they're growing up

30:21

and would appreciate it exactly. It's

30:24

it's a war on children. I'm hung

30:27

up on this life and shirt. So

30:31

do your nieces and nephews know this? Like, do

30:33

you think they root for your death?

30:35

A little bit? A

30:37

little thin? By that point, I've got shirts

30:39

older than my niece I

30:42

got, I got shirts older than my nephew gets

30:44

a little thin down by the nice level. They might be

30:47

kind of being like, He's like, so you're telling me if

30:49

Calle dies exactly,

30:52

And they're like, and I'm currently not getting any

30:54

birthday or Christmas presents. But they know about

30:57

this. The sister knows about

30:59

this. So where is this cal guy live? Yeah?

31:03

So I also want to get

31:06

to this next one, which is super

31:08

interesting. Is just going to be a quick

31:10

beat, which is what's

31:15

the next one on the list with the It

31:18

eliminates the fishing game's ability to

31:21

have special draw tags in units

31:24

that are over objective. Yeah,

31:26

but you're skipping one that I want to understand a little better

31:28

real quick. We gotta hustle though. Yeah.

31:30

Six, Okay, they

31:35

I think we're going to going back in time. So there's another

31:37

thing. Nonresident licenses Okay, nonresid

31:40

license state sp They

31:42

want to make it the outfitters are

31:46

guaranteed a significant

31:48

percentage. That would mean that people

31:50

that would normally, like a nonresident hunter that would normally

31:53

come to a state to just do a d I Y

31:55

hunt, um, that

31:58

they funnel more of that business to outfitters and

32:00

make it be that that they have these

32:02

outfitter specific permits. Yes,

32:05

so it would favor individuals who

32:07

are going to hire an outfitter over

32:10

individuals are going to freelance

32:12

it. Yes, and and it does. The

32:15

truest part of that is this will favor

32:17

those going with who have made the choice

32:19

to go with an outfitter. And you have to make the

32:21

choice earlier in the season than

32:25

the general draw, the general nonresident

32:27

draw. So UM.

32:30

Basically, it's kind of poised

32:32

as a if you're willing

32:34

to commit early and at

32:36

this this point, the revised

32:39

version of spe UM

32:43

of those non residents who are willing to commit

32:45

to hunting with an outfitter for

32:50

the two combination tags that are

32:52

available in state Montana for

32:54

nonresidents, and willing

32:57

to spend an additional three dollars

33:00

on the application process per

33:03

application, they

33:05

will be guaranteed a

33:08

tag up until that threshold

33:10

of of the nonresident tags

33:13

is met. UH.

33:15

An interesting part

33:17

of this so I had a great conversation

33:19

with the head of Montana Outfits,

33:22

Outfitters and Guides Association, Moga

33:24

mcmanard uh

33:27

super nice guy and

33:30

UH. The stated

33:32

intention of SPEE is

33:34

to take care of

33:37

the current customer

33:41

base for outfitters

33:44

and guides in the state of Montana. And

33:46

they're saying that right now, it's

33:49

about of non residents

33:51

already choose to hunt with

33:54

an outfitter and guide. UM.

33:57

However, the amended version here has

34:00

UH ten swing,

34:04

so it could go up to fift and that's

34:06

based on the

34:08

number of applications that

34:10

don't come in under the outfitters bill

34:14

UM from the previous season.

34:16

So if choose

34:19

to apply only guaranteed

34:22

tags, well next year, that can

34:24

be increased to up

34:26

to UM.

34:28

It sounds a little complicated the way I'm saying it, but it's

34:31

it's pretty darn simple UM.

34:34

And you know, the cleanest

34:37

opposition to this bill is

34:40

why the hell should folks who are willing

34:42

to pay more be guaranteed

34:45

A sounds

34:47

like it, uh, you know, privilege

34:51

UM. And the

34:53

counter argument to that, which is an economic

34:56

one. So the University Montana

34:59

has an ongo ng survey,

35:01

and through this ongoing survey, it's a recreation

35:04

based survey, they've determined that

35:06

out of the three point three billion dollars

35:09

that recreation brings into the state of Montana,

35:12

outfitted recreation, which

35:14

is a much larger umbrella than than

35:17

hunting, which is what we're thinking of right now. So

35:19

be hunting fishing, it would

35:21

more than likely be your

35:23

sister in law's outfit as well. Uh.

35:26

You know, guided horseback rides, there's

35:28

guiding, there's rafting, there's

35:31

sled dog runs, all sorts of things.

35:34

UM. I even have a buddy who takes

35:36

people on nature walks. UM.

35:40

All of that recreation amounced

35:42

about ten percent, so bitty, you know,

35:44

big big chunk change for the state of Montana.

35:47

And they found that folks willing to go with an outfitter

35:49

outspend uh non

35:51

outfitted recreators in the state of Montana

35:53

by five to one. UM,

35:56

keep them like this is one study. Everybody

36:00

I've talked to you on this is like, how the heck does that make

36:03

sense? But I think when you

36:05

start thinking about the gamut of outfitted

36:08

experiences in the in the state, UM,

36:10

there's definitely some folks spending a lot

36:12

of money compared to folks who are,

36:14

you know, throwing the kids in the old

36:16

family truckster and coming out to the state of Montana.

36:19

So there's a theme developing here the haves

36:21

versus the have nots, which is like the

36:23

greatest argument of all time. Right, yeah,

36:26

Hey, we got a note from a guy. You remember how we had

36:28

a guy right in that uh

36:31

he was hunting. He listened to our podcast with Adam

36:33

Lazzara, who uh

36:36

helped advise and work on our

36:38

medical section and the Mediator

36:41

Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, which is available

36:43

now on Amazon New York Times bestseller.

36:45

Um, that guy talked

36:48

all about tourniquets, and

36:51

a guy wrote in that he his dad got shot in the arm

36:53

hunting and used the tourniquet to save him. Another guy

36:55

wrote in says, I

36:57

would have never thought about tourniquet applying.

37:00

Driving with his kids, comes across car cash

37:02

oh biker bikers

37:05

in the middle of the road, compound

37:08

fracture, lower left leg bleeding

37:11

profusely. The

37:14

guy says he was not wearing a belt, but

37:16

thought about the episode we had and

37:19

got a belt off a bystander and

37:21

through a tourniquet on the guy stop

37:26

the bleeding. Took

37:30

ten minutes for the ambulance to get there, saved

37:33

his life. That

37:35

is episode Bleeding

37:38

out in case here that was named

37:40

the episode bleeding out right. The

37:45

proper thing to do when you go to administer

37:47

care right is to establish

37:50

who you are. So I'd

37:52

be like Stephen hey, or

37:55

you know, sir, ma'am you, I

37:58

would be like, I'm here on behalf of Dr Adam Lazara,

38:01

right, And so I'm just dying to know, like

38:03

what the bedside manner was? Now, sir,

38:06

I see your legs bleeding out. I have a

38:08

belt here, And I've listened to a podcast

38:10

listening to this year podcast stand

38:13

stand Back called meat Everybody

38:15

stand Back. I heard the podcast No

38:19

Need to Call for Help. Spencer

38:21

Guy wrote in about the Real Foot Lake

38:24

deal Um,

38:26

which recovered extensively,

38:29

but he talked about his grandpa. He had a grandpa

38:31

named Papa Duck, and Papa Duck

38:35

was a guide on a duck club in Utah,

38:39

and the Duck Club had these blinds out in

38:41

a management unit and

38:43

they would bring in clients by airboat and

38:46

drop them off hunt these blinds. But apparently the like

38:48

the blinds were there, but the Duck Club couldn't

38:51

actually prohibit dudes

38:54

from using the blinds. So like they built

38:56

the blinds, but they couldn't do

38:58

away with the public as aspect. And

39:00

he says one day, Gramps rolls in. There's

39:03

a guy in a

39:05

blind. They're getting a fight, and

39:09

he ties a rope off to the blind

39:11

and gets so mad. He ties a rope to the

39:13

blind and ties it off to his airboat

39:15

and tries to pull the blind over, getting

39:20

a big fight. The

39:23

blind tips over. Actually, the hunter

39:26

tries to shoot the rope. Okay,

39:28

tries to shoot the rope clean, gets

39:31

injured. The Sheriff's

39:33

called, and Papa Duck that Papa

39:36

Duck thinking that the guy will get I don't know how

39:38

he thinks that the guy will get in trouble. The sheriff

39:40

comes and gives a citation to Papa

39:43

Duck for harassment.

39:45

Then he ends the

39:48

note by saying, my

39:50

grandpa was later kicked out of the Duck Club

39:53

for reasons I'm not sure about. I

39:58

was really impressed with this guys honesty.

40:01

Oh yeah, like typically

40:05

he's turning his own grandpa And yeah, typically grandparents

40:07

have like some level of divinity that grandchildren

40:10

hold them to classhole.

40:13

Yeah, this was great, my grandpa.

40:27

Before we get into our renewable energy here, speaking

40:29

of talking about hunter

40:32

harassment, now, it's

40:34

a many I don't know how many states. I wish I knew

40:36

this off top of my head. A lot of states,

40:38

most states, I think, have hunter

40:42

harassment laws. You

40:44

know, Jeremiah Johnson when bear claw Chris

40:46

clap, is it clap? That's

40:49

an std isn't it? Clap? Clack

40:52

clap lap bear

40:56

claw Chris clap played

41:00

by the dude who used to play uh the Judge

41:03

and Hardcastle McCormick. Remember

41:06

that it was a guy on like anyhow,

41:09

sorry, st Uh

41:12

can you look that up? Spencer? Is it lap or clap

41:16

anyhow? And Jeremiah Johnson l app

41:18

okay? And Jeremiah Johnson he's out fiddling

41:21

around the mountains trying to make it as a mountain man

41:24

and eventually gets a good hollering at

41:26

from old seasoned,

41:28

grizzled mountain man who accuses

41:31

him of of molesting his

41:33

hunt. You've been molesting my

41:35

hunt, and it's illegal

41:37

to molest someone's hunt. And

41:40

virtually all states like if someone's

41:42

doing like a lawful activity, like they're lawfully

41:44

hunting, lawfully trapping, lawfully fishing,

41:47

and someone comes out to screw with them,

41:49

it's against the law. But we got

41:51

an interesting note from a guy who

41:53

is in a dispute

41:57

with some people over his

42:01

beaver trapping activities, and it's gotten

42:03

heated and

42:05

right now joining us remotely

42:07

from Michigan, my home state, the

42:10

beaver trapping country of Michigan is

42:12

Josh Hagen. I want to ask him some

42:14

questions about his, uh, his experience

42:17

here with within this case beaver

42:19

trapper intimidation, trapping

42:21

intimidation. Now, John, in the interest

42:23

of time, Josh, I want to run through kind

42:26

of the high level particulars and

42:28

then you correct me, uh

42:31

if I screw some part up. Okay, sounds

42:33

good. So you are, your buddy

42:36

owns property on some lake. Your

42:40

buddy owns property on lake in Michigan. There's

42:43

a big beaver colony

42:46

on the lake with a

42:48

beaver lodge. Yeah, you

42:50

guys go out and string a little steel and

42:53

start catching some beavers. Yep.

42:56

And then people start doing what

42:58

to you or like, they start doing

43:00

the like people around the lake respond to

43:02

this by how by basically

43:06

messing with our traps, breaking

43:08

our sticks that our traps

43:11

are set in. They wrote us

43:13

a little note one of the times kind of told

43:15

us broke broke the sticks and pulled

43:17

basically the trap out of the water. Wrote

43:19

us a little notes and no more in the snow

43:22

right next to the to the trap. And

43:25

then the fourth and final time through

43:28

maybe a ten fifteen pound rock

43:30

a little smaller than a volleyball, threw

43:33

it in the hole, set the trap off,

43:35

and actually the rock got jammed and stuck

43:37

in the trap. And you

43:40

put out some trail cams in yeah,

43:43

yep. So after after the rock incident,

43:45

we put some trail cams out to try and catch them

43:48

because we had no idea who was doing it. We had

43:50

a little bit of an idea maybe who, but no

43:52

hard evidence. So we

43:54

threw some trail cameras out and within

43:57

twenty four hours probably got three

43:59

guys walking out to our traps kind

44:01

of looking at them, but they didn't

44:03

they didn't mess with the traps. They just kind of hung out there

44:05

and looked at the traps for a couple of minutes. And

44:08

do you feel that they knew you had the trailer camp

44:10

set up? Yeah? Yeah. One of

44:12

the pictures he actually pointed

44:14

at my trail camera. So we set up too. We

44:17

set up a Sellero trail camera kind of

44:19

off hidden a little bit, and then we

44:21

put a dummy camera right over

44:23

the whole Our thought was maybe

44:26

keep their attention on the dummy camera and then

44:28

we'll we'll maybe get who's doing this on

44:30

the other camera. Yea, And

44:33

what's there? What's your best understanding

44:35

of what their gripe is That they like watching

44:37

that they enjoy watching the beavers in the lake,

44:40

and they feel that these beavers should be off off

44:43

limits. They feel that no one should be able to mess with

44:45

these beavers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

44:47

that's what we believe. They're grape as we are. In

44:49

October, we kind of ran out there to

44:52

do some recon of the beaver beaver den

44:54

and um ran into a few of the neighbors

44:57

who clearly didn't

44:59

want us messing the beaver then. So had

45:02

a couple of conversations back in October

45:04

with a few of the neighbors back there. How

45:07

has it been like when you called up fishing

45:10

game to say,

45:12

hey, we got this problem going on.

45:15

What has been there sort of what

45:18

has been their attitude about it? Like, have they

45:20

suggested that want you just go and kinda

45:23

go somewhere else and try to avoid friction.

45:26

Actually, we actually when we got ahold

45:28

of them, we had our our traps

45:31

pulled just we we kind of

45:33

misunderstood one of the rules of checking

45:35

the traps every twenty four hours. So

45:37

she actually told us that we

45:39

were in our right and that

45:42

that day go put the beaver traps back out

45:44

there. Mhm, like encourage

45:46

you to keep at it. Yep, Yeah, she encouraged.

45:49

Uh, told us like, have you run into any

45:51

more problems, give me a call and I'll come

45:53

out and we'll come up with the game plan. Huh.

45:57

Now, this is what kind of the main thing I'm curious

45:59

about with this. A lot of like

46:01

a lot of times you go out, people want to go out

46:03

and do stuff outside, like hunting

46:06

fish or trapp in this case, because

46:08

like, um, some

46:11

level of quietness, you know,

46:13

of nature, like solitude. You picture

46:15

this particularly being convers solitary activity

46:18

in some way. But all of a sudden

46:20

you're like mired in this dispute with

46:22

like a neighborhood h o

46:24

A y Uh.

46:26

Did you feel compelled to

46:29

keep at it because

46:31

you were interested in sort of like

46:34

defending your rights or

46:36

did it still stay fun to do it, you

46:38

know, or did it become like not fun

46:40

but you didn't want to give up the

46:43

terrorist wind, so to speak, say

46:46

a little bit of both. Are. It

46:48

was still fun, but then the other part was kind of like,

46:50

well, we don't want these these people to, you know,

46:52

to beat us, Like we were fairly

46:55

confident we're doing everything we should.

46:58

So it took away from the on

47:00

a little bit and kind of more morphed into

47:02

like we're not gonna let these people beat us type

47:05

thing. Yeah, like they're trying

47:07

to intimidate you, and you're in the right

47:10

not be spooked off. Why do you guys set

47:12

off trapping in the first place. We've

47:14

always been interested in it, so we've always talked about

47:17

doing it. Kind Of where we decided

47:19

this year to do it was they started

47:21

to destroy damn my Buddy Dance

47:23

property. I think they dropped like four

47:26

trees in a couple of weeks back in the fall.

47:28

So that's kind of what let us pushed us into like, yeah,

47:30

let's give this a try and see what happens. Um

47:33

did some part of you everthink,

47:36

man, these people like looking at these

47:39

beavers obviously these beavers alone. Yeah,

47:42

Yeah, we we definitely went down that road

47:45

of just is it worth it, Like we'll let

47:47

the let them look at the beavers and we'll

47:49

go on some public land close

47:51

by and and try and get into it.

47:53

Um. But once the CEO

47:56

of the conservation officer called us kind

47:58

of like made us to just keep

48:00

doing it out there more. Um. Once she

48:02

said that, you know, we're good, We're good to be out there.

48:05

Yeah, because in a way, your

48:08

CEO has

48:10

to be able to enforce

48:14

the idea

48:17

that it's stay owned wildlife,

48:20

and you wind up you kind of like inadvertently

48:22

walked into a little bit of a territorial battle

48:25

where the state claims ownership of the resource

48:28

and sets the guidelines for

48:31

extracting the resource. And

48:33

then you have kind of like a vigilante

48:35

group saying no, this

48:38

resources in our custody,

48:40

will set the rules for it, and

48:43

then they kind of have to be like then it almost

48:45

the beavers don't even matter. It almost becomes like

48:47

this other conversation about who

48:49

owns it and who makes up the rules for it.

48:51

Yeah, exactly. You know, I would imagine, like you,

48:54

you're a little bit inadvertently wind

48:56

up being sort of a pawn in this much larger

48:59

issue going on. I got a friend has

49:02

a ranch and he was explaining to a conservation

49:04

officer. He's talking about his elk. My friend

49:06

saying, you know, the guys

49:09

you know, doing whatever always spooking my elk,

49:11

And he said the Warden's like, come again,

49:18

you have to wonder too, like if

49:20

you're conservation officer is

49:22

also like aware of state

49:25

funded mitigation efforts regarding

49:28

beavers in that area too, just like, well,

49:30

yeah, i'd be great if you guys took a few out because

49:33

every year in the spring we have to go live

49:35

trap them and then move those live traps

49:37

to another body of water where we drowned the beavers,

49:40

which is not fun for anybody.

49:43

Yeah. Well, Josh, Matt, appreciate

49:45

you coming on. Uh, it was pretty

49:47

interesting to read it. So, yeah,

49:50

are you guys still plugging away out there? Is it

49:52

kind of like this is the smoke settled now? Oh?

49:55

No, we're out there. I'm not. When

49:58

I get off here with you guys, I'm gonna head out there and and

50:00

check the traps. So they're still out there. Hey,

50:04

Josh, if something else happens and transpires,

50:07

you know, just let me

50:09

know. Yeah, I will absolutely. Yeah,

50:11

they hanging on the wall behind you. Is that like

50:14

a it's like

50:16

a like an alcohol

50:18

drinking Yeah, that's my fiance's

50:21

it's it's her little idea. I guess,

50:23

I don't know. I like it. She's

50:26

making a bold statement about yeah

50:30

yeah, yeah, yeah,

50:33

all right, man, thanks a lot, appreciated,

50:35

Thanks guys. Yeah. We

50:37

had a duck hunting spot in

50:39

high school and in part

50:41

of college in Missoula, and

50:44

um, it was, you

50:47

know, like a fanned out section of the Clark

50:49

Fork, the lower Clark Fork, and we'd

50:51

set up on one of these little

50:54

stems of it, and every once in a

50:56

while we'd get an adjoining landowner

50:58

that would come out and her ask us and us why

51:00

it was illegal to be there, and instead

51:02

of dealing with it, we just

51:04

pick up, you know, are like six half sunken

51:07

decoys that we had and

51:09

walk out of there. And I

51:12

called a Missoula conservation

51:14

officer and let him know what was going on. And

51:18

the officer that I talked to was like,

51:20

yeah, yeah,

51:22

He's like you're right, and he's

51:24

like, but how good of a spot, isn't

51:28

you know? It's like, you know, that's

51:31

almost too bad it is. Yeah, I

51:33

still want to tp that guy's house. If

51:35

you're listening, you still live there, you know who

51:37

I'm talking about? Didn't Huey Lewis

51:39

getting a big thing with spooking off duck hunters

51:42

and whatnot. Remember this that was on Mitchell

51:44

Sleugh in the Bitter Rout and

51:46

they they fixed that by baiting

51:48

the slough um. So

51:50

it was illegal to duck hunt there because there

51:52

was bait present the

51:55

Mitchell Slough Homeowners Association

51:57

there and then but this was on the lower

52:00

Park Fork um,

52:02

you know what, the and uh Kelly

52:04

Island down there, which

52:06

was like for high school kids. You know, it's

52:09

like you're pretty limited as

52:11

far as like you don't have a lot of stuff

52:14

you don't have, you

52:16

know, it's like none of us had chest waiters. It's

52:19

like knee boots or hip hip boots, right,

52:21

and it's like you're pretty no boats,

52:24

pretty limited, you know, so

52:27

hip to be they cow

52:30

segue us into our oil and gas deal. Spencer

52:33

is not really bringing it this show. You

52:35

know what's that like?

52:38

Name me a single thing? Oh

52:41

no, the stuff about Phil's name, Phil's

52:43

name, Yeah,

52:47

but he didn't mean to do that. Couldn't have been more

52:49

relevant. He didn't mean to do that. I just

52:51

caught that. Uh,

52:55

not really bringing it, Spencer. If there's one

52:57

thing somebody's gonna remember from this episode

53:00

it's gonna be Horace Lever over Montana legislation.

53:04

Fortunately. Yeah, Spencer, he's just,

53:06

I mean, just very recently, I thought he was just an astounding

53:09

personality. That's my fault

53:12

to have on the show. Is happening,

53:15

Spencer. I'm sorry, nfill rock

53:18

counting stories. He's

53:21

got time. There's an hour left.

53:23

St co in with something. There's been so much good content,

53:25

I don't need to interrupt it with yeah, with some lower

53:28

level yeah, but yeah, you're sophisticated.

53:31

Hosting might be just your silence,

53:33

just existing. He's

53:35

doing a good job by not talking. Yeah, it's it's

53:38

restraint and maybe some people

53:40

in this room could you know, you learn

53:42

something. He's not like look at me,

53:44

look at me. It's not his style. Yeah,

53:47

I like it. Cal Segue is into talking

53:49

about the whole planet being

53:51

covered up in wind farms and whatnot. Yeah.

53:54

So you know, recently, real

53:59

interesting or repel looking congressman out

54:01

of the state Idaho put together a

54:03

package that outlines

54:06

a kind of grand scamand

54:12

careful with the word slip

54:15

grand skiing. I gotta owe some people apologies

54:17

on that one. That would remove

54:20

the lower Snake River dams, the four lower

54:23

Snake River dams on

54:25

behalf largely of of salmon,

54:27

is the way it's pitched. And that

54:29

is a really interesting

54:33

topic. As we started talking about

54:35

green energy, and we'll be

54:37

getting into that damn removal. Damn

54:40

right, Oh, cute quick

54:42

thing. This funny. What's

54:44

the name of that writer? It is

54:47

Kemmy Larson. Yeah, I got a book

54:49

for my kids called Beavers. What's the book called Beaver's

54:51

damn Friends. Beaver's damn Friends,

54:53

Beavers. It's about this beavers, real lonely

54:56

and uh Alice says, built a damn

54:59

make a pond. So he makes a pond and all kinds

55:01

of people start showing up, frogs, fish,

55:03

birds, whatnot. And then he's

55:06

not lonely anymore. And my kids like it

55:08

because the last line of the book is about it says,

55:10

now Beaver's got a lot of damn friends,

55:16

and there's old dad walking in with this trap.

55:20

This friend Beaver's

55:27

got a lot of you know, Benny, the Beaver's got

55:29

a lot of damn friends gone. So

55:31

you know, as we you

55:34

know, really begin our path with this

55:36

new administration, green energy

55:38

is a major topic and

55:41

we're damns meant to be green energy at

55:43

a time, because we weren't having that conversation back then.

55:46

No, we really weren't. Well, I mean, very

55:48

few people were having that conversation. The research

55:50

that I've done, it's kind of shocking how

55:54

none of these conservation ideas are are

55:56

original now they're just really

55:58

taking hold now. So there's

56:00

always somebody being like, you know, if

56:03

we put in you know, if

56:05

we do enough blasting with dynamite here

56:09

than all the previous world wars

56:11

and build a dam that

56:13

may affect upward travel

56:15

of salmon it and

56:18

I think it would be bad. And they were like, everybody

56:21

needs jobs right now, and flood

56:24

control is a necessary thing, and

56:26

agriculture is a necessary thing. We'll

56:29

deal with the fish thing later. So people

56:32

when they're building all these giant dams and and

56:34

kind of like destroying the world's

56:36

largest like Salmon River in the Columbia

56:40

drainage, um, people

56:42

had to have been like, but what about the fish?

56:45

Yes, but there's no way, I mean obviously

56:47

not. There's no way there was ever any conversation

56:49

about fossil

56:52

fuel like climate

56:54

issues, fossil fuels,

56:57

certainly nothing that's the sinct

56:59

that I've ever come across. But does anybody now

57:02

are people that have like an ulterior

57:04

motive or that like damns

57:07

okay, that want that there's gonna be like

57:09

pro damn people out there do

57:12

the are the pro This is as much for

57:14

Nels as this for you are

57:16

the pro Damn is the pro damn

57:18

lobby, whatever form it's in

57:21

are They like, I got you. It's

57:23

clean energy, bro, I haven't not

57:26

burning We're not burning oil. From

57:28

a uh an employee at

57:30

Bonneville Power saying

57:32

there is nothing more

57:34

green than hydro electric power.

57:37

M hmm. I

57:40

like them when people latch onto that nothing that.

57:42

I like them when people when it was like an

57:44

argument sort of presents itself

57:47

in a kind of fortuitous way. We're

57:50

all of a sudden you're like, yeah, things aren't looking good for this

57:52

damn this whole

57:54

salmon thing. Yeah, and they're like

57:56

ha ha suckers. The

57:59

water moves through and energy,

58:02

right, that's it hit

58:05

us with that Nels. Alright, well, so

58:08

there is green energy, but you

58:10

know we need to take a step back.

58:14

Well we should think about clean energy is maybe

58:16

the better term. And then the question is

58:19

can we make clean energy

58:21

green? And you know where

58:23

we put energy, how we develop energy, even

58:26

if it's clean, can have environmental

58:28

impacts. So hydro is probably the

58:31

most clear example of what's

58:34

a clean energy technology that's

58:36

not exactly always green, right because

58:39

of blocking rivers and

58:41

and ending uh and Drameda's

58:44

fish runs like the salmon in the in the Columbia.

58:47

So you know, what we're really

58:49

interested in in the Nature Conservancy is

58:52

how do we develop clean energy?

58:54

There really is green that really ovoids

58:56

and minimizes impacts the environment

58:58

to habitats, to wildlife

59:01

too, people. Um, And so that's what we're

59:03

really interested in. So that word,

59:05

uh, the word I

59:09

never teld this second thought of the difference between clean energy

59:11

and green energy. Did did the

59:13

word green energy come about sort

59:17

of as a way that to

59:19

to to to cause

59:21

a kind of reckoning between

59:25

renewable energy resources and

59:27

its impact on the environment. Was like, was that word

59:30

made up? Was that word coined?

59:33

Because there's this kind of friction. Well,

59:36

I don't know that that friction really existed

59:38

ten and twenty years ago, because we

59:41

hadn't developed all that much clean

59:44

or green energy that except

59:46

for hydro, and a lot of that goes back to the thirties,

59:48

right, I mean the reason why we didn't

59:50

care about the fish so much in the Columbia

59:53

during the Great Depression is because people were

59:55

starving. I mean no, people had no money.

59:58

Uh, people had no electricity in

1:00:01

rural areas, and so the dams

1:00:03

that were built um in the

1:00:05

Columbia weren't partly you know, a job's

1:00:08

creation program an economic

1:00:10

improvement program, and people

1:00:12

thought that tradeoff was worth making back then.

1:00:14

And now we have a different view of that

1:00:16

tradeoff and we have a

1:00:18

greater appreciation how profound that tradeoff

1:00:21

is. Right. I mean, salmon species

1:00:23

that have evolved that have you

1:00:25

know, migrated up the Columbia and the snake rivers

1:00:28

to you know spawn

1:00:32

way up into the rockies

1:00:34

in Idaho are winking out. I mean

1:00:36

they're just they're on the verge being

1:00:39

extirpated. They've been there for hundreds of thousands

1:00:41

of years and now sudden they're about to

1:00:43

be gone. So, you know, we need to

1:00:45

think about the concert. There's no free lunch when it comes

1:00:47

to energy. Regardless of the energy type,

1:00:49

clean energy included. Uh,

1:00:52

every form of energy with

1:00:54

a possible exception of efficiency is

1:00:56

going to have some sort of impact, and

1:00:59

we need to Hey, what those impacts are

1:01:02

so that we make trade offs that we think are acceptable.

1:01:05

Are you familiar with the intellectual

1:01:08

exercise of saying,

1:01:11

um, we

1:01:13

would never have won World War Two if it wasn't

1:01:16

for the

1:01:18

beaute copper mine. Right, There's

1:01:21

one that goes, um,

1:01:24

we won World War two because

1:01:26

we were able to smell aluminum

1:01:30

better than Germany, because

1:01:33

we had all those big ass damns that

1:01:36

it was like, there's like an electricity bottleneck,

1:01:39

and we were able to outproduce aircraft.

1:01:43

I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I've heard this. Yeah,

1:01:46

I haven't heard that one, but you know, I can imagine

1:01:49

that being a legitimate argument. That's

1:01:51

interesting. How far those uh

1:01:54

you know, how how far can it damn

1:01:56

fall? Yeah, And it's

1:01:58

and it's sort of public perception.

1:02:02

But one interesting thing about the whole damn

1:02:04

thing is, you know, it used to be the cheapest

1:02:06

form of electricity out there anywhere

1:02:09

in the planet. Pretty much. Hydro was the cheapest

1:02:12

thing. It's not anymore. The cheapest

1:02:14

thing in the world today is solar and wind.

1:02:17

Really yeah, so, uh,

1:02:19

most of the United States right now, solar

1:02:22

and wind go for three

1:02:24

to six cents per kilowatt hour natural

1:02:28

gas and coal or between five

1:02:30

and seventeen cents per kilowatt hour

1:02:32

hydro is somewhere in between. UM,

1:02:35

So it's still pretty cheap. And hit me with

1:02:37

hit me with that again. I understand like

1:02:40

you're saying, that's

1:02:42

what it costs to produce, to

1:02:44

produce a kilowatt hour of But isn't

1:02:46

it more isn't haven't we made it that

1:02:49

it's more valuable to

1:02:51

the producer depending on how the producer

1:02:53

is making it. Uh,

1:02:57

Like they sell it, they get it, they get a related

1:03:00

rate to encourage renewables.

1:03:03

Now, I mean, most energy markets

1:03:05

in the the United States are extremely competitive today.

1:03:08

So you know that, you know, utilities

1:03:11

put out a call for proposals

1:03:13

to build the next generation

1:03:16

of energy producing

1:03:19

sources. And you

1:03:22

know, the best packages

1:03:25

coming into a lot of utilities these days

1:03:28

are wind and solar or

1:03:30

a combination of the two, usually paired

1:03:32

with storage some storage of some type.

1:03:35

UM And that's you know, you know,

1:03:37

Xcel Energy. Uh

1:03:40

in Colorado. They also have another

1:03:44

major territory in the

1:03:46

Midwest. Most of what

1:03:49

they've you know, put out there has

1:03:51

come back as wind and solar. That's been the

1:03:53

most competitive and so of

1:03:56

all new additions to the electric

1:03:59

generating fleet last year where either wind

1:04:01

or solar kind of split almost

1:04:03

in half, solar actually outpacing

1:04:06

wind for the first time. UM,

1:04:08

you know, and just again, why is this happening?

1:04:11

Well, part of it, of course is we are concerned

1:04:13

about climate change, but economics

1:04:16

is really a huge driver of this. Solar

1:04:19

costs have gone down in a decade.

1:04:24

So that's because

1:04:27

of technological improvements, getting more

1:04:29

and more experience with deploying

1:04:33

UH and setting up systems

1:04:35

UH. You know, if you build a coal plant,

1:04:38

it will take years to get the coal plant

1:04:40

online. If you develop

1:04:43

a wind project or

1:04:45

a solar project, you can

1:04:47

get that thing online after it's permitted in six

1:04:50

months or at most a year, So

1:04:52

it comes online much faster than

1:04:55

than the forms of energy that it's replaces.

1:04:58

So that that's one way where the UH

1:05:00

start up costs

1:05:02

start to even out right, Because one argument

1:05:04

that that I see over and

1:05:07

over again, right is like the

1:05:09

cost of the shafts,

1:05:11

the blades of

1:05:14

those wind turbines, UM,

1:05:17

the you know, the the cost of

1:05:19

the solar farms

1:05:22

in UM, you know, materials

1:05:24

that are mined out of the earth UH

1:05:28

and then compared to what

1:05:30

we have in

1:05:32

in the superstructure

1:05:35

that we have currently, right, and like dams,

1:05:38

think about like a modern

1:05:40

damn, what a modern dam would cost to

1:05:43

build currently versus

1:05:45

you know, I believe the upgrading

1:05:49

um the hydroelectric

1:05:51

capabilities of some of

1:05:53

these damns is also in the tune of

1:05:56

billions of dollars to modernize

1:05:59

them and get them where they need to be. I'm

1:06:04

looking at a thing right here. UM

1:06:09

solar and wind power need

1:06:12

forty to fifty times

1:06:15

more surface space than

1:06:20

coal and gas. So

1:06:24

solar and wind power needs around forty times

1:06:27

more space than coal and nine times

1:06:29

more space than gas. Is

1:06:32

that is that? That's that's roughly right.

1:06:35

So to power our whole country

1:06:39

and UM solar

1:06:43

would mean that we have eight million

1:06:45

acres of solar farms. Yeah,

1:06:48

that's that's yeah, that's consistent

1:06:50

with our That does that intimidate

1:06:53

you? Well, you know how

1:06:55

many millions of acres are there in the United

1:06:57

States? Just even you know, so I

1:06:59

don't know that number is offhand, but

1:07:02

just but just take the Bureau of Land

1:07:04

Management, the largest landowning public

1:07:06

agency in the United States. You know, they have

1:07:08

about two hundred and fifty million acres,

1:07:11

so it's a small fraction of that. The question,

1:07:14

Steve, really is where does it go? You

1:07:17

know, if we put not in my backyard.

1:07:19

Argument, well, there's not in my backyard.

1:07:22

But you know, we'd like to encourage

1:07:24

up upfront planning at a landscape

1:07:27

scale before we decide where to put this stuff.

1:07:30

So some of the first big, really big

1:07:32

solar projects Ivan Paw for example,

1:07:35

right on the Nevada California line. I

1:07:37

don't know if you've ever proven I fifty north

1:07:39

of l A on the way to Las Vegas. Right,

1:07:42

you see these towers that are several hundred

1:07:44

feet in the air with thousands

1:07:47

of you know, solar mirrors all

1:07:49

pointing at the top of those towers beating

1:07:52

you know, this sunlight, so it can hit a

1:07:54

temperature several thousand degrees

1:07:57

the time. I mean, it's like a sun

1:08:00

at the top of this tower. I mean,

1:08:02

pilots have to fly around

1:08:05

these things because they're so bright because

1:08:07

of these thousands of solar rays

1:08:10

um and uh and in fact,

1:08:13

if birds fly through those, those

1:08:15

rays of sunlight that are concentrated

1:08:18

going up to the tower just basically

1:08:20

vaporized. But the problem

1:08:22

with that project is where

1:08:25

it went, it went into an area

1:08:27

that was really important for desert

1:08:30

tortoise, which is an endangered species, and

1:08:32

it also uh is

1:08:35

in an area that is important for

1:08:37

desert bighorn sheep. So you

1:08:39

know, we didn't have the information we should

1:08:41

have used at that point to figure out where that

1:08:43

project goes. I think the point is

1:08:45

is that we have more than enough room

1:08:48

across the United States of what we would call

1:08:50

low impact places that will have minimal

1:08:53

conflicts with habitats, wildlife,

1:08:55

and people that we could put this stuff.

1:08:57

But we've got to think about it up front. And

1:08:59

so that's what we're trying to do is

1:09:01

help figure out where are the best

1:09:04

places for this energy to

1:09:06

go. So one project we have is called Mining

1:09:08

the Sun. Right, so there

1:09:11

are forty three million acres of

1:09:13

mine lands and brown

1:09:15

fields across the United States. E

1:09:18

p A has a program called the Repowering

1:09:20

Program, which is inventory these

1:09:22

sites. And so what we're doing is trying

1:09:24

to figure out how do we unlock

1:09:26

these places and get renewable energy

1:09:29

to go on those acres

1:09:31

instead of out in what we call a

1:09:33

green field situation, right, a natural

1:09:35

environment in the middle of the Maave Desert.

1:09:38

Interesting like doing like super fun

1:09:40

sites and quarries and stuff. Yeah,

1:09:43

or minds. I mean, so, for example, we're work in

1:09:45

Nevada. Actually with the Nevada Mining Association.

1:09:47

We've gotten some regulations

1:09:50

changed to encourage renewable

1:09:53

development to go online sites

1:09:55

in Nevada. You know, it's the biggest hold uranium

1:09:57

minds, well, copper minds

1:09:59

still her minds, you know, they're Nevada

1:10:02

is the biggest hard rock mining state

1:10:04

in the country. Montana's up

1:10:06

there, it's third or fourth maybe after Arizona.

1:10:10

Uh. Then we're also working in West Virginia,

1:10:12

and there we're looking at coal fields. Um.

1:10:15

You know, there's you know, hundreds of thousands

1:10:17

of acres of former uh

1:10:20

coal fields in West Virginia that used

1:10:22

to be mountains that were blasted off and

1:10:25

leveled and and now there's no economic

1:10:27

activity going on there. There's

1:10:29

no jobs anymore there. What about putting

1:10:31

renewable energy there? You know. The great

1:10:34

thing about focusing, we've got to have either

1:10:36

a shipload of wind or a shipload of sun, right,

1:10:40

And what happens when there's no sun and no

1:10:42

wind? Well true,

1:10:44

and that's why we need to look at the whole

1:10:46

country in terms of where we put this stuff. I

1:10:48

mean, the bigger the field

1:10:51

of view we have, the more complementary

1:10:54

we can have wind and so because it's

1:10:56

cloudy here one day, but it's sunny,

1:10:59

you know, hundred miles away

1:11:01

where it's windy uh in

1:11:03

this place now, but it's calm

1:11:05

over there. And so you know, if

1:11:08

we have a big enough field of view, we can

1:11:10

integrate a lot of this stuff. And then we need other things. We

1:11:12

need storage, we need some other

1:11:14

energy technologies that can do some baseload.

1:11:17

That's why keeping, for example, existing

1:11:19

nuclear online is important.

1:11:22

You know, about twenty of our energy

1:11:24

today is nuclear? Is it real? Well,

1:11:28

it's maybe about eighteen now because a couple of plants

1:11:30

of clothes in the last few years, but it's

1:11:32

but it's still a big chunk of our electricity

1:11:34

generating capacity and it's essentially

1:11:37

carbon free. The problem

1:11:39

with any you're

1:11:42

probably gonna get there. But I mean, are we doing is anybody

1:11:45

eyeballling um

1:11:49

adding nuclear facilities

1:11:51

online or is it all that they're just all

1:11:54

destined to phase out? We

1:11:56

also uh N

1:11:59

nine three my all island happened in

1:12:02

the forty years since

1:12:04

then, there's been one facility

1:12:07

added that's it Watts

1:12:09

Bar in Tennessee in and

1:12:12

that's the only new nuclear

1:12:14

facility built in the United States since

1:12:17

Three Mile Island. And there's another one that's

1:12:19

being built in Georgia right now that's supposed to come online

1:12:23

later this year. And those those plants are essentially

1:12:25

the same technology we've had for the last

1:12:27

sixty years. Uh. There are

1:12:29

lots of enhancements, of course, because of

1:12:32

of concerns we've had because of Three Mile

1:12:34

Island, Fukushiv and other things, but essentially

1:12:36

it's the same technology and

1:12:38

UM and we have about how

1:12:41

I don't know what the exact number is, somewhere

1:12:43

around sixty existing

1:12:46

nuclear plants across the country. Most

1:12:49

of those were built in the nineteen seventies,

1:12:51

so they're kind of approaching the

1:12:54

end of their original planned lives.

1:12:56

But you know, I think there are

1:12:58

ways to keep them going longer,

1:13:01

and I think utilities are doing that where

1:13:03

they can. So I think, you know,

1:13:05

one of one of the if you will,

1:13:07

the building blocks of our clean energy future

1:13:10

needs to be keeping existing

1:13:12

nuclear in the fleet as

1:13:15

long as it's safe, uh and as

1:13:17

long as it's at least reasonably economic

1:13:19

to do so. UM.

1:13:21

That is going to be one of

1:13:24

many solutions that we need.

1:13:27

There's no silver bullet. There is no

1:13:29

one technology that's going to save us.

1:13:31

We need to combine a lot of

1:13:33

technologies, some of which have been around for a long

1:13:35

time and some of what you're totally new. Were

1:13:38

you, Well,

1:13:41

I was gonna ask let me ask you different thing first, just

1:13:43

to t up. I was gonna ask you about whether you

1:13:45

were surprised when GM made their announcement

1:13:47

about all electric No,

1:13:50

not really, Okay, we'll get to that in a minute. Uh

1:13:55

So the Biden administration, like, what's there?

1:13:57

They have a more They put in a moratorium on

1:14:00

new oil and gas leases on public

1:14:02

land. Is that correct? That's correct?

1:14:05

And that's what it is, like a moratory about issuing new

1:14:07

ones its federal

1:14:10

lands. And yeah, my understanding is it's

1:14:12

leases. It's not permits that have already been

1:14:14

issued, right, so it would be new leases.

1:14:17

Yeah. Um,

1:14:20

do you imagine a

1:14:23

future I'm not so much asking

1:14:25

if you like would like to see it,

1:14:28

but do you imagine a future where

1:14:30

we have a lot of um,

1:14:34

federal, federally managed public

1:14:36

lands that are

1:14:38

given over to renewable

1:14:42

energies, Like, is that part

1:14:45

of the mix. Yeah,

1:14:47

it could be part of the mix. Yes. Um,

1:14:49

Again, we have to look at what the value

1:14:51

of those lands are. They're not all the same.

1:14:53

I mean, Bureau of Land Management, for

1:14:55

example, you know, has

1:14:57

extensive areas that have been to graded

1:15:00

through different processes. Mining

1:15:02

of courses is one of those. And

1:15:04

we think those places may be good

1:15:06

candidates. In fact, we worked

1:15:09

with the BLM five and six

1:15:11

and seven years ago to create what was called the

1:15:13

Southwest Solar Plan, where we

1:15:15

looked across you know, six

1:15:17

southwestern states. We looked across BLM

1:15:20

lands and where

1:15:23

are the places that development

1:15:26

of solar or wind or

1:15:28

geothermal for that matter would

1:15:30

have relatively low impact. And

1:15:33

and the BLM designated

1:15:35

what we're called solar energy zones, and

1:15:37

they've also been called development focus areas,

1:15:40

but they're kind of zones where

1:15:42

there would be relatively

1:15:44

little impact to the habitat or to wildlife

1:15:47

and that we would facilitate development

1:15:49

there. And Congress passed something called the Omnibus,

1:15:52

which is kind of the funding bill

1:15:54

to keep government going back in I guess

1:15:56

it was December, and part of that

1:15:58

bill includes an editor g subtitle,

1:16:01

and within that there's a

1:16:03

a goal now for the federal

1:16:05

government to develop twenty five

1:16:09

gigawatts of renewable energy

1:16:11

on essentially BLM Lands. And you

1:16:13

know, just a little definition here. Gigawatt

1:16:16

is a thousand megawatts, So a

1:16:18

thousand megawatts or one

1:16:21

gigawat, you know, used to be kind

1:16:23

of a typical size of a power plant,

1:16:25

a coal power plant or nuclear

1:16:27

power plant. Not so much anymore because those

1:16:30

economies of scale are less important for natural

1:16:32

gas, solar way and other energy

1:16:35

technologies. But that's roughly the way you can

1:16:37

think of it. So twenty five

1:16:39

large power plants. Uh.

1:16:41

The goal is over the next four years on

1:16:43

on BLM lands again,

1:16:46

you know, that would be you know, a

1:16:48

few hundred thousand acres out of you

1:16:50

know again, two hundred and fifty million. We're

1:16:52

pretty confident we can find low

1:16:55

impact areas that could accommodate

1:16:57

that twenty five gigawatts. Um,

1:17:00

but you know, we need to be thoughtful, We

1:17:02

need to be careful about when we quit news.

1:17:15

Can we just go back for a sect to

1:17:18

what you said, Steve, with the amount

1:17:21

of surface area of

1:17:23

the country or you know, eventually the planet

1:17:26

to be covered. So when I spoke

1:17:28

to you before, um, you

1:17:30

said we are between now and probably

1:17:34

we're about into

1:17:37

our build out of of

1:17:39

space and that we would you

1:17:42

can pick up you said, a

1:17:44

footprint from the size

1:17:47

of Maine to potentially Texas.

1:17:51

Yeah, so just that's

1:17:54

that's essentially right, Karen.

1:17:56

Um. We're roughly

1:17:59

ten I mean maybe into

1:18:02

where we're gonna go with the

1:18:04

build out, which is it's inevitably

1:18:06

going to come. You know, the question is how

1:18:08

fast does it happen and how

1:18:10

careful are we about? But

1:18:12

you don't think that

1:18:15

the technology might act that

1:18:17

in half? It could, Yeah,

1:18:19

I mean it's possible.

1:18:22

I mean, you know, we can. We

1:18:25

have to deal with the data and information

1:18:28

we have and make our best guesses. One

1:18:30

of the reasons why we give a range

1:18:32

in terms of what the spatial impact could be

1:18:35

main being at the small end. Actually Arizona's

1:18:37

right, we think is

1:18:40

the high end. And that's that's that's

1:18:42

because of different assumptions about what technologies

1:18:44

are being deployed. So for example, if

1:18:46

we have a lot more rooftop solar

1:18:49

and a lot more battery storage, that's

1:18:52

less acres than if we have

1:18:55

uh more of a reliance on just utility

1:18:57

scale with less storage, then we have to build

1:18:59

more older plants, we have to build more

1:19:01

wind plants, so that is kind of the more

1:19:04

upper area. UM. And then

1:19:06

actually Princeton released a study just

1:19:08

a couple of months ago, uh

1:19:11

that suggested the footprint could be as

1:19:13

big as the size of Texas. And I think that's because they're

1:19:15

looking at transmission. We didn't, we

1:19:17

didn't have good enough to always felt comfortable

1:19:19

about projecting the transmission footprint.

1:19:23

But it's it's you know, that would be significant,

1:19:25

and that that might you know, and

1:19:28

just well, you know, but but I think it's

1:19:30

worth pointing out that, Um,

1:19:34

if you look at the footprint of hydro

1:19:38

and you count the reservoirs, So

1:19:40

if you look at the footprint of hydro gas

1:19:43

coal, that's not insignificant,

1:19:47

right, It's not like it's not like there's zero

1:19:49

energy footprint now

1:19:51

and we're growing it to the size of Arizona. I don't know

1:19:54

what the hell it is. Presumi is not Arizona,

1:19:56

but it's not nothing. Yeah,

1:19:58

I mean, it's a Rhode Island. It's

1:20:00

it's still been large, right. I mean, if you look

1:20:03

at Mountaintop removable mining

1:20:05

in West Virginia, or

1:20:08

the mining and the Powder River basin just a hundred

1:20:10

and fifty miles from here. I mean there are extensive

1:20:13

areas the West Virginia, Kentucky

1:20:15

examples always strike me,

1:20:17

right because it's like anytime we bring

1:20:20

up mining. Anytime I bring up mining, uh,

1:20:23

I will have emails

1:20:25

that come in. Let's say, and all

1:20:28

those mines have elk on them, now, so how could

1:20:30

they be a bad thing? You know, hey

1:20:32

man, we're just hunting in Pennsylvania.

1:20:34

We were just flint locked deer hunting

1:20:36

on top of some old mine,

1:20:39

on top of hills that are mysteriously

1:20:41

flat on top. Yeah, it's

1:20:43

like what happened? It's kind of going up and then

1:20:45

allously just flat. Yeah. Uh.

1:20:48

Well, infrastructure too, Like I

1:20:51

always think of Cold Strip, Montana. Right, It's

1:20:54

like how much

1:20:56

do you count? There's an entire

1:20:58

railroad that goes us through Colster at

1:21:00

Montana, Right, But that

1:21:03

has a lot of other services involved

1:21:05

with it too. But the reason that it's there is

1:21:09

for that cold which

1:21:12

is like how many yards wide? But

1:21:14

then real damn long. Yeah,

1:21:16

and you take oil and gas infrastructure.

1:21:19

You know, if you've ever been in the Jonah Basin

1:21:21

in southwestern Wyoming,

1:21:23

you can kind of appreciate this. You know, there there are

1:21:26

these oil and gas pads, you

1:21:28

know, sprinkling the landscape

1:21:31

over hundreds of thousands of acres with

1:21:34

roads and and you

1:21:36

know, pump stations and pipeline

1:21:39

corridors, and you know it's a it's

1:21:41

a spider web of impact, right that

1:21:44

makes that area a lot less

1:21:47

uh, appreciated by

1:21:49

mule deer and pronghorn.

1:21:51

And so for example, the Wyoming

1:21:53

Department of Fish and Game, I think it's

1:21:55

tracked about decline now

1:21:57

and in the mule deer herd

1:22:00

that you know would normally winner

1:22:02

in that area because they

1:22:04

just don't like human activity.

1:22:07

You know, in concentrated forms

1:22:09

like that, things are more spread out. You know,

1:22:11

they can live with it, but when you have a lot

1:22:13

of it in one place, uh, it

1:22:15

really starts to impact the way animals

1:22:18

think about the habitat that's there, and

1:22:20

just to look at the footprint, you know, so

1:22:23

it gets you know, it's always like peeling an

1:22:25

onion. You know, we say these numbers

1:22:27

like it's the size of Arizona, but

1:22:30

not all of that impact is exactly the same.

1:22:32

So the numbers we use for solar are

1:22:35

about you know, eight acres are

1:22:38

needed for every megawatt of solar.

1:22:41

We need about sixty or eighty

1:22:43

acres for every wind turbine

1:22:45

that goes up, which might be three or four megawatts

1:22:49

nameplate capacity. But there's

1:22:51

a difference in that impact. I mean that solar

1:22:54

is totally covering the

1:22:56

ground and is totally changing

1:23:00

habitat is something that's totally not what

1:23:02

it was. On the other hand, a

1:23:04

wind turban, you know,

1:23:06

the footprint of the turban itself isn't

1:23:08

very biggest. So when we use that six eight,

1:23:11

we're using the spacing that's required

1:23:14

between the turbans because it can't be too close

1:23:16

to each other. They essentially have to be about a

1:23:18

thousand feet apart. So it's the

1:23:20

project area we're using for

1:23:22

wind. So for some species,

1:23:25

the fact that there's a turban there and there's a sprinkling

1:23:27

of turbans across the landscape not a big deal.

1:23:30

But if you're a bird or a bat, it could

1:23:32

be a big deal. Um. And so

1:23:34

you know their differential impacts to

1:23:38

uh, these these technologies. So

1:23:40

that's that's another thing we have to think about an

1:23:42

account for. Remember

1:23:44

when everybody's kind of realizing the damage

1:23:47

that cigarettes cost, and

1:23:49

then you had tobacco companies that would really

1:23:51

want to like obfuse skate right

1:23:55

what exactly was going on with tobacco to

1:23:57

the point where it became a joke. And

1:23:59

then you've had historically,

1:24:01

we've had oil companies

1:24:04

that wanted to sort of obfuskate

1:24:07

some of the realities around oil.

1:24:11

Do you feel that the renewable industry

1:24:13

is is maybe

1:24:15

hoodwinking people a little bit, like maybe

1:24:18

obfu skating a little bit of what they're

1:24:20

talking about, or do you feel that they're trying

1:24:22

to deal in a way that they're like, this is what it will

1:24:24

require, this is what it will look like, or

1:24:27

are they a little bit of shape, Like are you a little bit like

1:24:29

are you embarrassed about the numbers at all? Uh?

1:24:33

No, I mean the numbers are what the numbers are

1:24:37

in terms of, you know, our companies

1:24:40

obfu skating the reality of

1:24:43

what's going to happen. Uh.

1:24:45

You know, I can't speak to the motivations of all companies.

1:24:48

Companies have different motivations. I think some

1:24:50

of them truly are focused

1:24:53

on the social

1:24:55

and environmental benefits. Yeah,

1:24:57

but let's face it, I mean, companies

1:25:00

have to make money. They have to make a profit.

1:25:02

In order to be in that business.

1:25:05

And an interesting thing about renewables is where

1:25:07

is the money coming from that's

1:25:09

driving all this investment. Ten

1:25:12

trillion dollars going to go into renewable energy

1:25:15

over the next several decades. A

1:25:17

big chunk of that money is coming from oil

1:25:20

and gas companies because they know what's

1:25:22

coming. You know, it's a different world

1:25:24

they're gonna have to operate in, and

1:25:26

so they're hatching their bets and they're investing

1:25:28

substantially and in renewable energy, along with lots

1:25:30

of other folks, right, I mean, including myself.

1:25:33

Um so, uh

1:25:36

it's hard to you know, lump

1:25:38

everybody together and say they're

1:25:40

they're all in cahoots trying to hug

1:25:42

with us. No, I mean I think, uh

1:25:45

they are. You know, if you look at the history

1:25:47

of energy now, we've progressively

1:25:50

gotten better, I would say, I mean,

1:25:52

we we went from wood, right, I mean,

1:25:54

we cleared New England.

1:25:56

There wasn't a tree growing in New England

1:25:59

by about eighteen thirty because we had

1:26:01

chopped everything down to burn it for

1:26:04

charcoal or of course clear it

1:26:06

for farming. And and

1:26:10

yeah it's our whale I got.

1:26:12

I mean, so yeah, wood wasn't a very sustainable

1:26:14

thing. We had to come up with something else and

1:26:17

we did, right, and that was coal. So

1:26:20

coal was the next thing we did, and so um

1:26:23

so we did that for a century.

1:26:25

Uh, and then yeah, we started

1:26:28

to like, well, you know, there are some real problems

1:26:30

with coal. I mean, there's arsenic there's there's

1:26:34

you know, sulfur dioxide. Remember

1:26:36

the remember the acid rain

1:26:38

thing back in the ages. Have

1:26:41

you ever heard about acid rain recently?

1:26:45

Why? Why don't? When

1:26:48

I was in grad school, that was like a

1:26:51

huge topic. That's what you

1:26:53

know, drove a lot of the ecological

1:26:55

research community. By the way, I'm a forest

1:26:57

ecologist by training, I'm

1:27:00

not an energy guy, so you know, but

1:27:02

real quick, Uh, what happened to acid rain

1:27:04

again? Well, you

1:27:06

know, we stopped burning coal. I

1:27:09

mean it's a big part of We use sulfur's

1:27:11

dioxide, you know, scrubbers to keep

1:27:14

nitrous uh oxide

1:27:17

and sulfur dioxide out of the air. But

1:27:19

a big part of it is is because of the

1:27:21

burning of coal, is has been

1:27:24

reduced over the last several decades.

1:27:26

It seemed like during the last presidency you

1:27:28

heard a lot about clean coal.

1:27:31

Can you explain, like what that is what

1:27:33

someone means when they're referring to clean coal and the reality

1:27:36

of it. Spencer trying to get in there, see that

1:27:38

totally. How you know? So, Um

1:27:42

again, I'm a forest ecologist, I've gotten

1:27:44

I've been immersed and energy

1:27:46

development for a couple of decads. I can get to that

1:27:48

in just a moment. But um,

1:27:51

you know, there are ways to reduce

1:27:54

the the various side

1:27:56

effects of burning coal, right, I mean things

1:27:59

like scrubbing the air

1:28:01

to get uh, sulfur dioxide,

1:28:04

nitrous oxides, arsenic mercury.

1:28:08

But the more you do that, the more expensive

1:28:10

it becomes. And one of the reasons why coal has

1:28:13

become less and less competitive economically

1:28:16

is the cost of

1:28:18

dealing with those things that

1:28:20

are in coal that are harmful to

1:28:23

both human health and the environment. So

1:28:25

that's where they point out, that's where they point out that regulations

1:28:28

are killing the coal industry. Yeah,

1:28:30

well, because if it was just unfettered coal

1:28:32

burning, it would be a lot cheaper than when you make

1:28:34

certain stipulations about what you can and can't do.

1:28:36

Correct. Yeah, it would be

1:28:38

cheaper, it's still be arguably

1:28:41

it'd still be expensive for a

1:28:43

whole bunch of reasons. But yeah, there's

1:28:45

no question, you know, society has made

1:28:47

the judgment the right one. I think that

1:28:50

you know, we can't tolerate having

1:28:53

unfettered burning of fossil fuels

1:28:55

with no attempt to curb you

1:28:58

know, they're really damaging side effects

1:29:00

of burning fossil fuels. I mean, there's no

1:29:03

there's no question that burning fossil stuff

1:29:06

creates you know, a slew

1:29:09

of of toxics

1:29:11

that go into the air and go into the water,

1:29:13

and and are you

1:29:15

a real threat to human and environmental

1:29:19

health? But aren't we looking at um?

1:29:23

God? I feel like there's so many misnomers

1:29:26

with green and clean and just Noman's

1:29:28

really telling the we're

1:29:31

the truth that, as you said,

1:29:33

there's no such thing as a free lunch. You

1:29:36

know, who's looking into what do you do

1:29:38

with solar panels

1:29:40

after they've run their life cycle? Or

1:29:42

battery powered cars? Maybe

1:29:44

we're not burning you know, fossil fuels,

1:29:47

but what's you know, when are where

1:29:49

are those Where are we going to bring those things? Where are

1:29:51

we gonna where are they going to break down? What kind of environmental

1:29:54

impact will they have later

1:29:56

on? Like we won't maybe have them in our

1:29:58

backyard country is

1:30:00

will we be disposing of them

1:30:02

in That's that's the thing I've been trying to introduce.

1:30:05

A conversation we're trying to introduce in my family is,

1:30:08

um, everything your kids

1:30:10

go to now, anything

1:30:13

they go to they come home with a

1:30:15

stainless steel water bottle. As

1:30:20

But it's like we have this idea that like the

1:30:23

salvation of the world

1:30:26

is from like the

1:30:28

whole point that whole thing is that you get one and

1:30:31

you hang on to it. But they've become

1:30:33

almost like disposable, and I think

1:30:35

that like people feel better about themselves doing that.

1:30:37

But that ship comes out of the ground. Man, But it's

1:30:39

all nonsense, Like I missed the milkman. Like

1:30:42

everyone's talking about recycling.

1:30:45

It takes a lot of energy space,

1:30:47

it takes a lot of processing and processes

1:30:50

to also recycle. Oh

1:30:52

god, I'm just you. It makes

1:30:54

you. That's

1:30:56

kind of what I meant about the stainless steel bottle thing, is

1:30:58

like it's like it's hard

1:31:00

to it's you want to make it all

1:31:02

super simplified, like plastic

1:31:05

bottles, you know, are bad. Um.

1:31:08

And there's a lot of reasons, like with with plastic

1:31:11

and the oceans, right, there's all kinds of reasons to be

1:31:13

down on plastic bottles, But I don't know that

1:31:15

the answer is that every

1:31:17

family has sixty merch

1:31:21

you know, stainless steel

1:31:23

bottles in there the

1:31:26

cupboards, which is which is where my family went.

1:31:29

Hey, Steve, you know I'm I'm drinking

1:31:31

out of the same coffee thing that my

1:31:33

brother gave me ten or

1:31:36

twenty years ago. Now, by the way,

1:31:38

it's good. Congratulates got a Yellowstone

1:31:40

cutthroat. They're just congratulated.

1:31:44

I try, I try to. I have

1:31:46

this trusty cup. You'll see that I try to use.

1:31:48

But I do see that people are like, it's

1:31:51

you can fall into this thing where like, oh

1:31:53

no, I'm rehabilitated. I

1:31:56

now have eighty stainless steel containers

1:31:59

and I lose one every but

1:32:01

I'm not feeding into the bottlest at

1:32:05

a time. No child is

1:32:09

okay, no school event right has

1:32:11

somebody distributing the stainless steel

1:32:13

bottle, looking each child in the

1:32:15

eyeballs and going, this

1:32:18

is now your drinking about. It

1:32:21

can hold many things. It

1:32:23

is yours. Do not lose it. And

1:32:26

if you ask the child, do you I want you to

1:32:28

ask yourself, do you really

1:32:31

need this stainless steel bottle,

1:32:34

to which they will say, yeah,

1:32:37

no, it's it's absolutely true. We live

1:32:40

in a throw away society, right. But seriously,

1:32:42

I think there's gonna be a lot

1:32:45

of focus moving forward with these

1:32:47

technologies to find ways to

1:32:49

recycle them. For one thing, you know,

1:32:51

you could save money just recycling

1:32:53

batteries. For example, lithium and other

1:32:56

rare earth metals that go into batteries

1:32:59

that are you is now by cars and your cell

1:33:01

phone sitting on the table are are

1:33:04

expensive, really expensive. And so if we can

1:33:06

find ways to recycle those batteries, if

1:33:09

we can find cheaper components

1:33:11

for those batteries, there's you know that the sixty

1:33:14

four million, maybe

1:33:16

billion dollar question is scalable

1:33:20

cheap battery storage. And

1:33:22

you know there's there's a hot

1:33:24

technology race on around the

1:33:26

world define cheaper,

1:33:29

less impact ways to develop

1:33:31

battery storage. There's some really

1:33:34

promising research out there that suggests

1:33:36

we can get beyond some of

1:33:38

the rarers, including lithium,

1:33:41

but we don't know, we don't have enough experience.

1:33:43

There's it's too early in the R and D phase.

1:33:45

But all I can say is there is going

1:33:48

to be a lot of focus and attention

1:33:51

on getting cheaper

1:33:53

and less impactful ways of

1:33:55

developing these technologies over time. I

1:33:57

think the same as going to be true for

1:34:01

you know, wind turbine blades. And you know

1:34:03

one thing that's going on in the wind industry now

1:34:05

is you know some of these wind turbines

1:34:08

have been out there for twenty years. You know, they

1:34:11

were one or one and a half

1:34:13

megawatts. Now we're doing four. So

1:34:15

how do they repurpose those twenty

1:34:17

year old turban towers

1:34:20

and get new blades

1:34:22

on those things that are more efficient, can generate

1:34:24

more energy, so we don't have to go out

1:34:26

and build another turban and just leave that

1:34:29

other one there, take it down

1:34:31

and try and dispose of It's like, how do we

1:34:33

reuse recycling cost? It's

1:34:36

like we want really long lasting batteries.

1:34:38

Yeah, we like, that's what I want because

1:34:41

it's like the cost

1:34:43

of recycling, like it's, uh, the input

1:34:46

can outweigh the output of

1:34:48

recycling, and then it's like what is

1:34:50

the point. Yeah, And that's why recycling

1:34:52

everything every place that always makes sense.

1:34:55

Like right here in Bosen, right you cannot

1:34:57

recycle glass. Why is

1:34:59

that? Because you have to take

1:35:01

it to Spokane or Denver to get

1:35:03

rid of it. I mean that means putting it in a

1:35:06

truck hauling a long ways.

1:35:08

It costs a lot of money and it used a lot of fuel,

1:35:10

So not a good idea. On the

1:35:12

other hand, loom when i'm cans, yes,

1:35:15

I mean let's do that. There are places

1:35:18

that will recycle that. They are much more

1:35:20

affordable and don't require the kind of energy

1:35:23

that's required of glass, for example. So

1:35:25

yeah, I mean we have to use our our

1:35:28

noggins when we think about

1:35:30

these things. There's not always one

1:35:33

solution, you know. We have to think about what

1:35:35

the right solution is in the right place at the right

1:35:37

time. We'll think about what Karen

1:35:40

said, right, It's like I think of salmon

1:35:43

and damns again. Right. I know from

1:35:45

doing a lot of my

1:35:48

own construction that

1:35:50

when I tear apart of house, all

1:35:53

that lumber that's been sitting there forever, if I rip

1:35:55

all the nails out and put

1:35:57

that lumber back in a house or in

1:36:00

to the new addition of the house, or into whatever

1:36:02

I'm working on in the house, that

1:36:04

is way better than me going down to the lumberyard

1:36:07

and buying a brand new wet

1:36:10

two by four. Who

1:36:13

does that? I do know I

1:36:15

mean, you know,

1:36:18

but I also know that if you want to

1:36:20

talk about green, clean energy,

1:36:23

a protein source that can replicate

1:36:25

itself, move halfway

1:36:27

around the fricking globe, and then bring itself

1:36:29

all the way back inland, that

1:36:32

is renewable, that people can eat off of the

1:36:35

entire way you have done responsibly.

1:36:37

Salmon seems pretty damn green

1:36:40

and clean. Now that's

1:36:42

a hell of a pitch for a farmer. Be like, I got this idea.

1:36:46

But that giant live stock

1:36:49

right, you don't even touch. Yeah,

1:36:51

it goes out into the ocean, it comes back

1:36:54

all fat and good. No one does

1:36:56

ship and we eat

1:36:58

it, pluck a few off as it come by,

1:37:00

and leave, leave enough so we can keep

1:37:02

going up. But then you have

1:37:04

the superstructure in the middle right

1:37:07

that there, My god, the initial

1:37:09

cost of putting that thing there.

1:37:13

Uh, it seems that it would also be very

1:37:15

beneficial to have that

1:37:18

thing there in some capacity and

1:37:22

renew it in a way that

1:37:25

offset that mitigates that cost somehow

1:37:27

while still allowing this miracle

1:37:30

of protein to flow past

1:37:32

at both downward and upward.

1:37:36

Right, And then you look at brand

1:37:38

new clean

1:37:41

energy like this.

1:37:44

The startup cost is is the

1:37:46

hard part right, and it's like, just

1:37:49

like those oil pads and gas

1:37:51

pads, there's gonna be a lot of roads,

1:37:54

probably a lot of chain link fencing

1:37:56

that does not do

1:37:58

a lot of good things for animals either.

1:38:01

And then we talked about the space, right,

1:38:04

so it's like

1:38:06

like, how do we find our cake and eat it too?

1:38:09

Yeah, and that's what we're all about. We

1:38:12

need that. Let's take a step back. The

1:38:14

reason why we think clean

1:38:16

energy is so important is because climate

1:38:19

change really threatens the

1:38:21

mission that we have, which is sustaining

1:38:23

lands and waters that all life

1:38:26

needs to exist. And the

1:38:28

number one threat habitats,

1:38:32

wildlife, ultimately

1:38:34

uan society faces is

1:38:38

runaway climate change. The climate

1:38:40

is changing at

1:38:42

between one hundred and a thousand

1:38:44

times faster than

1:38:47

it has in millennia

1:38:50

m eons. So

1:38:52

we are compressing a huge amount of climate

1:38:55

change into a very short period

1:38:58

of time, a period of time

1:39:00

that species and habitats

1:39:02

will not be able to adapt to unless we slow

1:39:04

it down. Uh. You know,

1:39:06

living here in Montana, we can see it just

1:39:10

in the last few years. You

1:39:13

know, last year we had a record snow

1:39:15

pack in a bunch of western Montana

1:39:19

by June when the runoff normally

1:39:21

peaks, right, I mean, you can't go

1:39:23

fly fishing in June in Montana. That was always

1:39:26

you know, as a kid growing up in North Dakota, we come

1:39:28

out to Montana to go fly fishing because it's

1:39:30

not very good in North Dakota. And

1:39:33

and but you know, you wouldn't come in June because

1:39:35

the water was always too high. You

1:39:38

know, when the water peak last year, it was like the middle

1:39:40

of May. And that's tip

1:39:42

that's going on across the West right now, is

1:39:45

that we are seeing the runoffs.

1:39:47

So we're getting about the same amount of snow at least

1:39:49

here. I mean further south that's not so true.

1:39:52

But but here the northern Rockies,

1:39:54

you know, we've been doing fine on annual snow

1:39:56

pack and maybe even a slight increase. The

1:39:59

problem is it's a running off a lot sooner.

1:40:01

And so what does that mean hoodol

1:40:04

restrictions. I'm the kid, you never heard of anything

1:40:06

called the Hoodalo restriction. For those of the uninitiated,

1:40:09

that means you can't fish. You

1:40:12

can't fly fish for trout, for cold water species

1:40:15

in the afternoon because they get stressed out

1:40:17

because the water temperatures get up to the

1:40:20

upper sixties low seventies,

1:40:22

and you know, if you're a trout, you know, you depend

1:40:25

on cold water because cold water has enough

1:40:27

oxygen that you're used to,

1:40:29

that you've evolved to. If the water

1:40:31

gets above a threshold. You know, some

1:40:35

trout like yellowstone cutthroats have a

1:40:37

fairly low threshold in the upper sixties.

1:40:40

You know, brown trout can tolerate into the

1:40:43

you know, load amid seventies, but at some point

1:40:46

you reach a temperature

1:40:48

where the trout just can't exists.

1:40:51

And certainly moving around and

1:40:53

getting caught for example, um

1:40:56

on one of those really warm afternoons is

1:40:58

really stressful and fish, you know, have been

1:41:01

shown not to survive that stress

1:41:03

very well, and they it kills, you

1:41:05

know, So they might survive that day

1:41:07

to live another day, you know, if they don't get

1:41:10

stressed out because they're being caught that

1:41:12

afternoon. So those hood our

1:41:14

restrictions. I looked online

1:41:16

just trying to track how many of those have been imposed

1:41:19

in Montana and whether there's some trend. I couldn't

1:41:22

find any data on that, but just from my own personal

1:41:24

experience, that's been

1:41:26

going up right, and we have more and more

1:41:28

days look at fire

1:41:30

seasons you know, the fire season across

1:41:33

the West has now

1:41:36

been extended by weeks to several

1:41:38

months, depending on where you are, even

1:41:40

here in Montana, you know, I mean last

1:41:42

fall there were wildfires,

1:41:45

not just grass fires, but wildfires

1:41:48

in four settings in November

1:41:50

and December. That's almost unheard

1:41:52

of. I mean, these changes are happening

1:41:55

now. Um. So

1:41:57

the reason why we're so devated,

1:42:01

uh to advocate for

1:42:04

clean energy is because

1:42:06

of that underlying problem.

1:42:09

Do you foresee that your

1:42:12

organization, the Nature Conservancy? Uh?

1:42:15

Will you guys turn nature conservancy

1:42:18

lands over to renewable energy

1:42:20

production? Uh?

1:42:22

No, with possibly

1:42:25

some exceptions. We own, for

1:42:27

example, agricultural lands that are a

1:42:29

buffer around to preserve that

1:42:31

we might own, and you know, it might actually

1:42:34

be better to have solar panels there then

1:42:37

having a farmer dro corn there,

1:42:39

right, I mean growing corn caused

1:42:41

some erosion. You know, they might be using

1:42:44

pesticides that might be a problem for

1:42:47

insects or birds or whatever.

1:42:49

So maybe solars a better use

1:42:51

of that, But it would be an extremely limited

1:42:53

circumstances. And in fact, actually we're looking we

1:42:56

own two and a half million acres

1:42:58

across the United States, so it's it's receivable

1:43:00

that we would have some places that might be what

1:43:03

we would call low impact for renoubal

1:43:05

energy. But your lands are not.

1:43:07

Your lands are not the kind of compromised

1:43:10

landscapes that converting.

1:43:13

You know a lot of our lands are really the ecological

1:43:15

gems that are out there, right, I mean we need conservancy.

1:43:19

Yeah, So we have about preserves

1:43:21

across the United States. By the way, you can hunt fish

1:43:24

on over a million acres

1:43:26

and we have yeah,

1:43:29

yeah, I mean here here a couple of examples.

1:43:31

One is the Big Two Hearted

1:43:33

Preserve in Michigan, you know where uh

1:43:36

the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway

1:43:39

or said, you know, we own a preserve there and you

1:43:41

can go fly fishing right there

1:43:43

where you know Hemingway at one point

1:43:45

slowly fishing. And then we have someplace

1:43:48

called the Silver Creek Preserve in Idaho, which actually

1:43:50

was the last place at Hemingway lived

1:43:52

and unfortunately committed suicide. But you

1:43:55

could go fly fishing or

1:43:58

duck hunting there. And so any way,

1:44:00

so we yeah, we owned about a million a half acres

1:44:02

I mean two and a half million acres um.

1:44:06

We've acquired another fifteen

1:44:08

or sixteen million acres nationwide

1:44:10

that we've transferred to

1:44:12

state and federal agencies of vast majority

1:44:14

of that's open to hunting and fishing too. So yeah,

1:44:18

yeah, So, I mean a lot of those lands

1:44:20

went to state you know, wildlife

1:44:23

management areas, or they went to the US

1:44:25

four Service and they went to the

1:44:27

Fish and Wildlife Service or the Bureau of Land

1:44:30

Management. You know, some hard didn't know that. I didn't know that

1:44:32

you guys did land transfers. They put

1:44:34

land into public estate. Yeah, I mean

1:44:36

we we Most of the LANDWA acquire

1:44:38

ultimately ends up residing

1:44:41

with a public agency and

1:44:44

open access. Do you know

1:44:47

that about the nature conservans? To be honest, no,

1:44:49

I wasn't. I wasn't hip on the on

1:44:51

the I know of some some

1:44:54

cases, but I didn't know

1:44:56

that that was. Um,

1:44:58

I guess a pillar of the you

1:45:00

hold two and a half million, but you guys

1:45:02

have transferred somewhere around fifteen million

1:45:05

acres. Okay,

1:45:07

Yeah, I pres spent more time on Nature conservancy

1:45:09

land than I thought maybe. Um.

1:45:12

But by the way, before you go charging into

1:45:14

a nature conservancy preserve, you

1:45:17

contact the program ahead of time to

1:45:20

make sure it's because some places

1:45:22

are really sensitive and you know

1:45:25

there's species out of that are sensitive that,

1:45:27

you know, make it hard for us to have public access

1:45:30

to those places. So they're in Michigan. We found

1:45:32

We were hiking one time on

1:45:34

a nature conservancy property and

1:45:37

found a bunch of spawn and bluegills on a

1:45:39

pond. I got a

1:45:41

little nervous about it and did some checking

1:45:43

around. This is not by Traverse City. Did some

1:45:45

checking around and turned out that we were allowed

1:45:47

to go fish those bluegills, and we

1:45:49

did, but we checked

1:45:52

with a fly rode within

1:45:54

that no cooking

1:45:58

worm man, Okay, that giling

1:46:03

that out there. We were interesting. Here's why.

1:46:05

Here's why we got to think. And you couldn't. We

1:46:07

thought you couldn't because no one was And

1:46:11

be like, how could it be the all these blue girls are in here,

1:46:13

like spawning in plain sight and no

1:46:15

one's angling form. It must be that you're not allowed

1:46:17

to. But it's just that everybody else

1:46:20

made the same mistake we made, assuming that you

1:46:22

couldn't. Yeah, well, always check

1:46:24

with your local nature conservancy,

1:46:27

uh program? Yeah we

1:46:29

did and it was cool. Okay,

1:46:33

what else? Give us a final give us a final

1:46:35

thing, man, like, let's do this. Oh,

1:46:37

I want to ask you this too. The thing

1:46:39

I mentioned GM. Yeah,

1:46:42

when they said, Okay, everybody acted like it

1:46:44

was all over the news, but I didn't think that it felt

1:46:46

that ambitious. What was the year twenty fifth,

1:46:50

fifty? Yeah, I think it's

1:46:52

like thirty five or something like that. And they're

1:46:54

you know, they're not the only car company making

1:46:57

that commitment. I mean, Evolve,

1:47:00

Toyota, I think Forward

1:47:02

as well. You know, they've all made commitments

1:47:06

to essentially completely replace

1:47:08

internal combustion engines with electric

1:47:12

or other non fossil

1:47:14

fuel based technologies,

1:47:18

you know, sometime in the next two decades. And

1:47:20

the reason it doesn't surprise me is

1:47:24

twofold one is the

1:47:28

the economics of it are getting better and

1:47:30

better. So, you know, it used

1:47:32

to be the only electric car you get

1:47:34

out There was a Tesla that costs you a hundred grand.

1:47:38

Uh. Now you can get cars

1:47:41

that are thirty

1:47:43

five grand, thirty grand um.

1:47:46

And when you know, obviously if you have a federal

1:47:48

tax credit, that makes it even more attractive. So you're

1:47:50

getting to the point where those

1:47:52

vehicles are starting to be competitive.

1:47:55

You're also are getting batteries that enable

1:47:58

you to power more kinds of vehicles.

1:48:01

You know, it used to be, you know, it would

1:48:03

just cars, sedans, um,

1:48:05

that would be manufactured

1:48:08

as electric vehicles. Now

1:48:10

we have a whole set of you know,

1:48:12

pickups and SUVs that are going to be

1:48:14

coming out that are electric powered. And

1:48:17

they have and here's the second reason. They

1:48:19

have some real advantages over our

1:48:21

conventional internal combustion engine

1:48:23

cars in the following sense.

1:48:26

They almost require no maintenance,

1:48:30

very little maintenance in contrast

1:48:33

to internal complexity. You don't have to change the oil.

1:48:36

Um, you may have gear trains that are much simpler.

1:48:38

You actually have a motor that's in

1:48:40

each wheel. You don't have, you

1:48:42

know, a transmission system with linkages

1:48:45

and things that actually make the engine

1:48:47